THINGS I LIKE RIGHT NOW

 

 

This is definitely a new style post for me, but I’m going to engage in enough solipsism to assume I’m important enough to have an opinion worth listening to and share some things I’m really digging at this exact moment in my life.  Ideally I’ll raise awareness of products or ideas that folks aren’t aware of or just never took the time to really take onto consideration.  I want to note that I am not sponsored by any of these companies (I TECHNICALLY have a limited sponsorship with one of them, but I never actually share my code with anyone to be able to receive any compensation): these are simply products that I’ve appreciating right now.

 

Without further ado…

 

 

NUTRITION

 

* “Nuts N More” Peanut/Almond Spread. 

I am more than certain that they tried to call name these "Deez" at one point

Website here (https://nuts-n-more.com/collections/online-store).  I am an absolute peanut butter fiend, and can and WILL eat it everyday if given the opportunity.  I ate the exact same lunch for all 4 years of high school: 2 PBJs, a tin of fruit cocktail, a protein bar and a bottle of water.  And I looked forward to those PBJs EVERY day.  These days, every night, before bed, I have peanut or almond butter spread across 4 stalks of celery and 2 slices of keto friendly bread (info on that to come later).  On the bread, I opt for plain ‘ol natural PB/almond butter, but on the celery, I use the Nuts N More spread.

 

So what the hell is it?  It’s really just souped up PB/Almond butter.  It has a protein supplement mixed in along with an artificial sweetener and flax, so that it has a slightly better protein to carb to fat ratio compared to traditional stuff and a better balance of Omega 3s to 6s.  It also comes in a variety of flavors that suit a variety of tastes.  I haven’t found anything I like more than the cinnamon raisin almond butter, but my wife is a big fan of the birthday cake peanut butter.  You’re bound to find a flavor you like.  Some are no stir, while some are gonna need some stirring to be less soupy, and they even sell convenient travel packs that you can just rip open and suck out the contents.  Perfect for bringing along to competition or throwing into a travel bag.  I’ve even gotten creative with it and used it to “frost” some muffins my kid was eating to turn into slightly more good for you cupcakes.  The stuff really goes well on just about anything.

 

* Egg Whites International Drinkable Egg Whites.

Not gonna lie: I LOVE when the box for these comes to the door

Website here (https://www.eggwhitesint.com/product-category/liquid-egg-whites/)  I got turned onto these from Jon Andersen’s Deep Water thrive/badass book and have effectively replaced all milk in my diet with egg whites.  I use it to make protein shakes and was using it with breakfast cereal when I was doing carb up meals before training deep into a weight cut.  These aren’t just the egg whites in a carton you buy at a grocery store: they’re pre-cooked, which eliminates smell, taste, and slime.  It tastes like nothing and takes on the flavor of whatever you mix it with.  It’s pure protein with trace carbs and no fat, so makes macros super simple, for those of you that count.  Make sure to call up the company: you get much better deals over the phone vs online.

 

* Piedmontese Beef.  

r/nattyorjuice just exploded

Website here (https://www.piedmontese.com/)  For the unaware, Piedmontese cattle are the cows born without the myostatin gene, so they are “double muscled”.  This means that they produce incredibly lean, stupidly high in protein meat.  The nutrition on them is insane.  I get grassfed, as I’m doing some sort of pseudo Mountain Dog/Deep Water approach to nutrition these days, but they’re all solid products, and they get delivered right to your door. 

 

* Biotest’s “Flameout”

Yes, every supplement they sell DOES look this goofy

Found here (https://biotest.t-nation.com/products/flameout)  I’m using a lot of Biotest products these days, and the jury is out on some of them, but this one was like night and day as soon as I used it.  I’ve been using fish oil since around 2007, back when the advise on dosage was “keep taking it until you get oily stool and then take 1 less”, and I’ve always opted for the cheap stuff at Costco/Sam’s Club.  I took a gamble on Flameout, and used half the dosage, since I still have a ton of the cheap stuff left, and within days some very persistent elbow pain that I ALWAYS get in the winter due to having to shovel snow just vanished, and I’ve been able to beat my joints up way more than usual.  I’m still keeping half a dose each day while I work through my cheap stuff, but once that’s sorted out this will definitely become my go to for fish oil.

 

* Natural Ovens “Keto Friendly Bread”  

Sold in 2 packs, because you'll tear through them quick

Website here (https://www.naturalovens.com/18oz-keto-bread/80653/)  I get this at my local Costco, and it may be available at yours.  If not, there are other companies out there making keto friendly bread too: use your google machines.  I’m not a keto dieter, but I DO like to keep carbs low so I can keep my dietary fats high (reference the Nuts n More), and the Keto Friendly bread has re-opened a chapter of my life I thought had long since closed.  I can once again pack sandwiches for work, eat toast at breakfast, use breadcrumbs, etc etc.  This stuff tends to go stale quickly, which, if nothing else, speaks to the freshness of ingredients, but it ALSO toasts up rather well, which will hide staleness, so feel free to use that.

 

* Mr Tortilla 1 carb tortillas  

My inner San Diegan exploded when I saw these

Website here (https://mrtortilla.com/products/1-carb)  This was something a facebook add got me on that I was pleasantly surprised with.  I tried the whole gain flavor and first, and it was pretty underwhelmed, but the Pico de Gallo is money.  For those of you that aren’t “taco cultured”, these are STREET taco tortillas, which means they are SMALL.  Like 4” diameter.  It makes the 1 carb claim a little more believable.  HOWEVER, you can use these to make some really baller mini-quesadillas, which are awesome, and, of course, all the street tacos you desire.  Just another awesome way to bring things that use to be “low carb off limits” back into the fold.

 

TRAINING

* Rows/Shrugs Against Bands  

Amazingly NOT found in this book...but it's still a great read

For my birthday this year, I treated myself to a new power rack after 13 years with my old TDS 2x2.  I got a Titan T-3 (2x3) rack that finally allowed me to set up against bands without a circus act.  I also got some strap safeties, which allowed me to be willing to pull stuff on a rack without fear of warping my equipment.  With that, I took to doing axle rows and axle shrugs against bands, and they are amazing.  I never cared for either movement before because they were a total pain in the butt to set up, but with bands I don’t even use any straight weight on the axle: I can just use a stronger band if I need to increase tension.  This cuts set-up time down immensely while also turning the movement into something REALLY gnarly, as the load gets “heavier” the closer you get to lockout, as bands, of course, tend to do.  I’ve found that, for the rows, I do better to NOT have straps, and can get a better mind muscle connection with the axle in my hands, but for the shrugs, straps are the absolute right call.  

 

* Daily Work  

Hey, it had Chris Farley in it: it gets a pass

I’m tempted to write an entire entry on this at some point, but what this boils down to is, during periods of weight gain, I like to implement “daily work” to build up more volume and drive more growth.  Typically my daily work is stuff that I’d rather include in my lifting sessions but tend to cut out due to time constraints: all those things you SHOULD be doing.  For me, this is direct ab work, reverse hypers, direct tricep work, rear delt work, GHRs, and then chins and dips.  So for the past few months I’ve had a requirement that, every day, I need to do at least

 

20 standing ab wheels
30 GHRs
40 bodyweight reverse hypers
50 chins (any grip)
50 dips
50 band pull aparts
25 band pushdowns

 

Now, if any of these movements are already in the day’s training, I no longer need to do them as part of my daily work, but these are simply minimum requirements.  I can exceed them if I so desire (I often do on the chins, just because I can bust out a set whenever I walk through my garage), but at a minimum, this needs to get done along with any other training I do.

 

The trick is to keep things VERY sub-max.  I find keeping it all bodyweight work to help there.  You don’t want this to tax your recovery: you just want it to add volume on top of whatever else it is that you’re doing.  And believe me: when you do it everyday for months at a time, it adds up.  Watch for signs of lacking recovery, aches and pains though: you don’t want this to interrupt your REAL training.

 

* Front Squat/Burpee Juarez Valley 

Huh...maybe shoulda used THIS for the shrug photo...

This is a workout I came up with that I’ve been using for the past 3 weeks that I’m a big fan of.  I feel like it hits just about everything: size, strength, and conditioning.  “Juarez Valley” comes from Josh Bryant’s “Jailhouse Strong”, and is a training protocol where we go for a max-ish amount of reps at the start of the workout, then the next set is 1 rep, next set is 1 less than the first set, then a set of 2, etc etc, until we eventually meet in the middle of the valley.  For example, if the topset is a set of 10, you’d go

10
1
9
2
8
3
7
4
6
5

 

In between sets, inmates would walk the length of their jail cell, so like 8-12 paces. 

 

What I’ve taken to doing is to do front squats (originally it was a set of 10), and in between each set, I’ll do 5 six count burpees.  A bit more strenuous than that walk, and it calls in the rest of the body to play. 

 

What I really dig about this workout is how much can be changed in the pursuit of progress.  I can keep everything the same and try to beat my previous time, or I can add a rep to the topset (what I’ve been doing) which adds more SETS to the whole program, or I can add weight to the front squat, or I could change the movement in the middle by adding reps or make it something entirely different.  Very adaptable, and very gnarly.  It’s constant work.

 

* Slingshot Stripsets.  I did a video on youtube recently showing this off

 

 

But this is a solid idea for those of you with limited dumbbells/weights during these COVID times.  I have 2 different slingshot-esque products: a blue “reactive” slingshot, and a “Catapult” from Metal.  The former provides less assistance than the latter and so, once I reach failure on a set of DB presses, I throw on the slingshot, rep until failure, take it off, throw on the catapult and then do the same.  It’s an excellent way to really milk a set of DBs for all that they’re worth, especially when you consider the cost of a slingshot compared to a new set of DBs.  There are SO many resistance levels available out there right now that you could easily build up a stash of these and run it completely into the ground.  If you wanna make it even sillier, you can start off by having a resistance band in each hand with the band looped against your back and have ADDED resistance that you gradually take away before adding in the assistance of the slingshot.  And then, of course, you can play around with the incline, use lower weights, drop down to push ups, etc etc.  Again: lots of ways to make a limited amount of weight go a long way.

 

 

This is already a bit on the long side, so I’ll cut it here, but hopefully you got to learn about something new from this.

 

ON BEGINNERS

 

This post is going to be an ultimate case of irony, because through it I’m going to discuss how there is no need to spend so much effort discussing beginners, but this is what I’ve been reduced to.  And my longtime readers/viewers will be fully aware that I have a rant video on youtube wherein I discuss beginners as well, and, in fact, it was the very FIRST rant video, and it even pre-dates this blog, so it goes to show just how long this topic has been something I’ve discussed, so let’s already come to terms with the fact I’m a fraud.  But I’m one fraud among many, because so many charlatans are preying on beginners in order to fill their pockets and bolster their reputations.  Fortunately for you, I write for free and my reputation is equally as poor, so now I can just say whatever I want.  And what I want to say is this: there’s no need for beginners to spend so much time worrying about how to train.

Seriously: all you need is to take your vitamins and say your prayers.  Duh!

 

It’s true: it REALLY doesn’t need to be as complicated as people make it out to be.  Why?  Because the beginner phase of training is INCREDIBLY short.  We’re talking like 3 months.  Oh, after 3 months you get to be an intermediate?  No: shut up with that stupid internet stuff.  This isn’t a role-playing game: you didn’t level up.  After 3 months, you’re simply NOT a beginner.  It just means you can take the training wheels off your bike now: it doesn’t mean you’re ready to race motocross.  And if that analogy is a bit crazy for you, I’ll spell it out completely: after that 3 month period, you can stop doing beginner “programs” and start doing an ACTUAL training program.

 

Before things get even more stupid: yes, 3 months is just a ballpark figure.  You may need a little more time, you may need a little less.  Ultimately though, the super en vogue training programs for beginners (Starting Strength, Stronglifts, and all the other 5 rep based linear progression programs) will eventually cap out.  They’re SUPPOSED to do that.  They’re not meant to be run indefinitely.  Their ENTIRE purpose is just to get a trainee used to lifting and groove the motor patterns.  It’s why reps are kept low: so a beginner doesn’t generate so much fatigue within a set that they start having form breakdown and end up grooving poor technique.  It’s why it has the trainee train so frequently: they’re too weak to be able to generate enough fatigue during a workout to require a significant amount of rest.  And they use linear progression because the beginner’s PROFICIENCY in the lift is increasing rapidly with each practice session they engage in.  They improve their ability to move heavier weights, eventually reaching their REAL potential at the end of the training program, at which point, they can start ACTUALLY training.  Because beginner “programs” aren’t programs at all: they’re routines.

Absent here: a progression model

 

Oh boy, I just became an elitist didn’t I?  No: come on: words mean things.  A program, by definition, has programMING in it.  In the absence of actual programming, you don’t have a program, you have a routine.  A routine is just something you do regularly.  You don’t have a teeth brushing program (at least I hope you don’t): you have a routine.  But a program is building toward something.  It’s a series of interrelated activities and mechanisms working together toward some sort of established end.  In the world of lifting, a program contains a progression model that includes some method of fatigue management (whether it be scheduled deloads, implementation of REP/RIR, MRV [yuck], deloads based around performance metrics, etc etc), along with typically some sort of method of load selection (percentage based off a training max/1rm, based off a daily max, double progression) or possibly even progression outside of weights entirely, based around things like rest times or bar speed.  It’s true: a beginner doesn’t need any of this stuff at first; they can just spend their first few months working the movements and adding weight to the bar each time, BUT once they’re done with that, they’re far better served getting onto an actual programming vs “milking their beginner gains”.

 

Because now we get to discuss the people out there trying to make a buck off the impressionable beginners.  There are SO many more books and media channels out there aimed at beginners vs experienced athletes and it’s for 2 reasons.  1: there are, at any given time, MORE beginners than experienced athletes out there, so it’s a much bigger market to tap, a secondly, experienced athletes are going to see through the crap many of these dudes peddle and know when someone is blowing smoke.  A dude with sick abs on Instagram may be able to hoodwink someone that hasn’t played a sport since 3^rd grade, but anyone with some dedicated time under the iron will know right quick when someone is full of crap.  The unfortunate impact though is that the professional charlatans have been able to cultivate a cult-of-personality among beginners that self-perpetuates as they begin to recruit more among their ranks, and suddenly there are widespread “beginner wars” as trainees who haven’t even crested the elusive rank of “not beginner” fight to the death over which beginner program is the best one.  And these dudes making money from beginners have it in their best interest to convince them that they’re going to be beginners for a LONG time, and thus they need to hang on the author’s every word to make sure that they make the absolute most out of this most CRITICAL time in their young training careers.

Don't squander this opportunity!

 

This is a short phase of life, and the decisions made during this time are going to be entirely inconsequential.  “Beginner gains” cannot be wasted: that’s a silly internet thing.  When you start training, spend time learning how to do the movements well and how to push yourself hard.  If you need a blueprint, check out Dave Tate’s “Education of a Powerlifter” and “Iron Evolution Phase 9” (specifically “The Super Strength Soldier”), but otherwise, get to the point where you don’t feel really stupid with a bar on your back or in your hands, and then start doing some REAL programming.  Or hell, just start with the real programming from the get go.  Lifting is a long game: you measure in YEARS, not weeks.  10 years down the line, the dude that did Starting Strength for the first 3 months isn’t going to look or perform any different from the dude that started with 5/3/1.  The only dude that’s going to look like 10lbs of melted ice cream after 10 years is the dude that spent 10 years trying to make sure they were running the absolute most bestest beginner program ever.

 

Don’t be that beginner.

ON “GETTING FAT”

 

 

This has been a pet peeve of mine for quite a while, and I think I’ve finally built up a headful of enough steam to really just pour out about it.  I genuinely cannot stand it whenever someone brings up the concern of “getting fat”, and it may be because I’ve actually DONE it a few times to the point that I find worrying about “getting fat” to be akin to worrying about accidentally becoming a bodybuilder.  Size, irrespective of if it’s fat or muscle, does not “just happen”: it takes work.  And it may not SEEM like work when people eat themselves into obesity every year, but trust me: they’re putting in the hours to get there.  No one accidentally gets fat: it’s through a dedicated campaign of poor decisions repeated over and over with minimal breaks in routine or deviations from the plan.  Yes, just like getting jacked, you gotta employ some effort, consistency and time in order to “get fat”.  So let’s go even further down the rabbit hole to find out why people worrying about “getting fat” are being silly.

Some even manage to fat AND jacked

 

Two of the most notorious programs for generating the “getting fat” comments are Super Squats and 5/3/1 Building the Monolith, primarily because both come with some intense nutritional advice attached: a gallon of milk a day (on top of a diet heavy in food) for the former, and 1.5lbs of ground beef and a dozen eggs a day for the latter.  “If you eat like that, you’re just going to get fat”.  Alright, so here’s the thing: if you can “get fat” in 6 weeks you were already fat.  No one goes from not fat to fat in 6 weeks: you instead go from fat to fatter in 6 weeks.  If you start out “not fat” on one of these programs and actually FOLLOW them (which means doing the conditioning work in Building the Monolith and actually taking the 3+ deep breaths between EVERY rep in Super Squats) you will not get fat.  In fact, while running Building the Monolith, I had to go ABOVE the recommended minimums for meat intake, to around 2-2.5lbs a day, just to recover from the intense training, and managed to put on about 4.5lbs in 6 weeks.  No one that is training hard is going to get fat in 6 weeks and, in most cases, they’re actually going to be STRUGGLING to put away enough calories to recover from that sort of training.  I know when I ran Deep Water my life revolved around eating for 12 weeks, because I NEEDED calories to recover from my training demand.

 

Going even further though, “getting fat” also shows up ALL the time when people talk about longer timelines of training outside of those two aforementioned programs, to which I am forced to cop to the idea that, yes, on a long enough timeline, getting fat IS possible.  But so what?  For one: if you end up “getting fat” in the pursuit of muscular gain, it’s assumed that, while you were “getting fat”, you WERE engaging in some manner of regular, intense physical training.  You weren’t like the dudes riding around on scooters at your local Walmart: you were overeating while you were also pounding away at the training.  You got fat but you ALSO got muscle.  Congrats: muscle is HARD to build.  Far harder than all that fat was.   And, in turn, fat is easy to lose.  Far easier than muscle is.  All you need to do is eat LESS than you were eating.  And if you were doing things RIGHT, this is going to be a blessing.  FINALLY, a break from all this goddamn eating.

Homer, seen here, hard at work

 

Which is the other thing that I find goofy: people always refute the idea of losing fat (aka: cutting, as much as I loathe that term) because it’s time spent NOT building muscle.  It’s seen as some sort of failure if you ever divert away from building muscle and spend time losing fat instead.  To this I say: you aren’t training hard enough if you feel that way.  If you think spending ALL of your training time building muscle is in any way sustainable, viable or desirable, you’re screwing around in the weightroom and not actually training effectively in the first place, so your opinion on the matter is totally moot.  Anyone that has spent any dedicated time to REALLY seeking to build muscle KNOWS that breaks NEED to happen.  This is why you see this concept expressed by any individual and program of worth.  Super Squats is 6 weeks followed by 6 weeks of a low rep 5x5 style program before you start it up again, DoggCrapp employs “Blast and Cruise” protocols in training, 5/3/1 is heavily built around rotating programs, John McCallum wrote about the value of “softening up” before heavy training phases, Stuart McRobert wrote about starting light on your next training phase after maxing out the value in your current one, periodization is a thing that’s been realized by EVERY country that fields successful athletes, etc etc.  The only people who DON’T suggest a break from gaining are youtube charlatans trying to sell you a product because it sounds sexy to ALWAYS be gaining muscle.  Don’t be gullible.

 

Which goes to show the fundamental misunderstanding when someone asks “how do I eat to make sure I don’t get fat while I’m gaining muscle”.  Your lean bulk fantasies are cute, but they’re telling as well.  You’ve already admitted that you have NO intention of actually training hard enough to put on any muscle at all during this muscle building phase, because your concern is on riding some sort of razor’s edge of nutrition so that you eat JUST enough to put on muscle without accumulating fat, rather than asking the question of “how the hell am I going to eat enough to be able to recover from this insane training demand I’ve placed upon myself?”  If you followed Elitefts in the mid 2000s, you know that this was what a LOT of Dave’s writing was dedicated to: how to actually get in enough calories, because those dudes were trying to overcome a ridiculous demand in order to grow.  It’s why there are articles dedicated to how to eat a package of Oreos in 10 minutes, the most effective way to eat Reeces’ peanut butter cups, the first telling of J M Blakely’s “extra large pizza with half a bottle of oil” diet, etc etc.  The people that are planning on succeeding aren’t asking how to eat to not get fat: they’re asking how to eat so that they can get enough calories in their gut before it explodes.

There is a reason Elitefts created this mascot in the first place

 

Don’t worry about getting fat: worry about why you’re worrying about it.      

THINGS THAT ARE AND ARE NOT IMPORTANT

 

I’m once again pulling my “I’ve trained for 21 years” old man card to write out some of the things I’ve encountered during my time and my observations on which of them mattered and which of them didn’t.  Keep in mind, like ALL of my writing, this only applies to me.  If, for some reason, something I’ve found to be unimportant to me is super important to you, that doesn’t somehow invalidate your experience.  Allow a little more solipsism in your life: it makes everything else make so much more sense.

 

 

THINGS THAT ARE NOT IMPORTANT

Like attention to detail

* Sleep.  This is originally what kicked off this post, as suggested by timmanser2 on reddit.  It also tends to upset a lot of people whenever I say this, because it’s currently en vogue to say things like “not sleeping enough is like smoking”, which is also what people say about sitting down too much.  My go to quote is “Sleep is awesome, get as much as you can, but you can still get big and strong without much of it”, and I hold firm on that.  Purely on the discussion of getting bigger and stronger, sleep is nice, but not required.  If it was, there’d be no jacked parents.  And if you’ve never experienced the joy of being a parent, it IS awesome, but those first few years are ROUGH on sleep.  It’s a somewhat similar experience if you’ve ever brought home a new puppy, or been a shift/on call worker, or any other situation where sleep is compromised.  Kroc was notorious for sleeping 4 hours a night for YEARS.  Sleep is simply an agent of recovery, and there are OTHER ones available to you if sleep isn’t quite up to snuff: like food and rest.  Because we understand that “rest” can mean simply not being physically active while not actually being unconscious.  In any case, when I was a teenager, I’d regularly sleep 10-12 hours a day in the summer, and I wasn’t terribly jacked.  I’m in my 30s and haven’t gotten 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep since 2010, and I’m much bigger and stronger now than I was then.  From my own observations, sleep isn’t nearly as important as some of the other factors.

 

* Mobility and flexibility work.  People act like this is mandatory, and will spend substantial amounts on books, foam rollers, massagers, etc etc.  I hadn’t done dedicated stretching or mobility work for 20 years, minus single leg stuff when I was rehabbing my new ACL post-surgical reconstruction.  When COVID hit and I found myself with an abundance of downtime, I started getting back into martial arts and decided to start doing some dedicated stretching so I could kick above my waist again.  After 4 months of dedicated daily stretching and mobility work, doing at least 30 minutes a day, I saw zero improvement in getting bigger and stronger, but I DID manage to tear my hamstring on a partial deadlift and then tear something in my left abductor on a set of squats.

 

Not as epic as the Kroc video, but still amazing

 

Did the stretching and mobility contribute to that?  I’ll piss off a lot of people if I say it did, so how about I just note that there is definitely a correlation between the two activities if nothing else.  The same reason I don’t do direct oblique work, as every time I did, the very same week I started it I’d tweak something in my back doing something else.  I got plenty big and strong WITHOUT stretching or mobility work, it did nothing to improve my lifting once I started doing it, and now that I’ve stopped again, I’m still getting big and strong.

 

* Counting calorie and macros.  Yup: I still don’t do this.  I, quite frankly, find it obsessive.  And given the already obsessive nature of this hobby, we don’t need to stack onto it.  I also think it’s super goofy that people think they can determine their body’s metabolic needs to the 100 calorie point such that they can manipulate bodycomp by adding or subtracting 100 calories.  That’s like A cookie, or a slice of bread. 

 

* Pre/post/peri workout nutrition.  This is honestly something I have to tell myself as well, because I still catch myself buying into supplement company hype, but I’ve tried all sorts of different nutritional protocols around workouts, and the truth is, I’ve never seen any significant difference.  Like all things in life, it’s not the stuff you do 10% of the time that matters: it’s the 90% that does.  When 90% of your nutrition is dialed in, you’re going to get great results irrespective of what you do during that 10% window of time surrounding your training.  Right now, the most carbs I take in around training is 19g of carbs from oatmeal once a week pre-squat workout, and otherwise it’s moderate fats before training and high protein with minimal carbs and no fats post training, and I’m still seeing solid results.  I’ve also had several fasted workouts this training cycle and they worked just fine.  The big thing to remember is that training ISN’T testing.  Trainees get too concerned about staging themselves to be able to produce their best possible output in EVERY training session, but you don’t need to perform at your max to get maximal results: you need to perform at your max AT THAT TIME for maximal results.  Which is a great seque into what IS important.

 

THINGS THAT ARE IMPORTANT

Go ahead and count the macros on that

* Effort.  I prefer to call this “intensity”, but that unfortunately gets misunderstood to mean “percentage of 1rm”, so let’s go with effort.  When I was younger in my training, I was very fixated on making sure I ALWAYS lifted more weight, or did more reps or more sets on an exercise compared to last time.  Those are great goals when you can control all the OTHER variables, but if you hit your last workout late in the afternoon with a few meals in your belly and this workout is done first thing in the morning fasted with little sleep, numbers aren’t going to match up.  The thing is: that’s fine, as long as we exert maximal effort into THIS workout.  The body isn’t a calibrated scale: it can’t tell what a thing weighs, it just knows that it’s “heavy”, and as long as we train the body to exert against the heavy load, it will improve in its ability to do so.  If the demand we subject it to is significant enough, it will build muscle in order to get better at this task.  I smashed an overhead press PR in competition by 20lbs over what I had managed in training, because I was training first thing in the morning off little food and sleep and got to show up to the competition well rested and well fed.  It was a weight I had never lifted before but it went up easy, because it didn’t matter how much load I was moving in training: just that I was straining and exerting as much as I could.  Trainees will get so fixated on trying to beat the log book that they forget the effort piece, and when they fail to beat their previous work, they just quit the workout entirely and go home.  THIS is an opportunity to exert MORE effort and force growth.  This also leads me to the next thing that is important.

 

* Consistency.  It’s weird for me to write this out, because I’ve legit never had a period of downtime from training unless it was forced by circumstances, and even then, I trained 6 days after rupturing my ACL and always find a way to do push ups or some bodyweight work when I’m taken away from the gym.  But I guess that’s my point: some dudes out there think “off and on training” is a valid way to go about things, and it just simply ain’t.  Taking a little bit of time off after a big competition or PR is ok, but ramping up training for 3 months because summer is coming around and you look like melted ice cream and then quitting training for 3 months because now it’s fall and it’s getting too chilly to go the gym is not how you build size or strength.  The people that succeed at this are the folks that have YEARS of unbroken training.  It’s no different than learning to play a music instrument or speak a foreign language or any other skill out there: consistent practice and repetition builds results, and “off and on” approaches maintain mediocrity. 

* Time: This is the dirty secret no one likes talking about.  All the hype from supplement companies, all the super secret training plans, all the nutritional hacks, the testosterone boosters, etc etc, they’re all trying to say that they found a way to circumvent the most important variable of all: time.  You have to do all of this for a LONG time to get good results.  And the thing is, the longer you spent NOT training, the more time you need to spend training before you even START to see results.  What do I mean by that?  If you spent your entire childhood playing video games and doing no sports whatsoever, and then you get a desk job and let yourself fall into physical decline until you’re 36 and then decide you’re going to turn your life around, that means you spent 36 years NOT training.  Inevitably, these dudes train for 3 months and then go online and ask “How come I’m not seeing results after 3 MONTHS of solid eating and training?”  Really?  You spent 36 years NOT training: it’s going to take a significant amount of time to UNDO all that damage, let alone actually get to the point where you start seeing IMPROVEMENT.  You have to dig yourself out of physical debt first and THEN you can start making profits.  The best way to get back into shape is to never get out of it in the first place, but if that’s not an option, buckle down and settle in for the long haul.

 

Let's go ahead and say "not training" is the new smoking instead

* Good training gear.  This doesn’t need to be over the top, but I noticed a HUGE difference when I switched from squatting and deadlifting in running shoes to using Chuck Taylors.  And that’s all I needed, so it’s not that you need EXPENSIVE gear: just the right gear for the right job.  And for the love of god, if I hear one more kid complaining about having to change shoes at the gym for different activities I’m going to blow out another blood vessel in my eye.  Yes: you have to wear the right clothes for your activity.  For a belt, it was a bit different: I’ve used cheap belts, and once I got an Inzer 13mm Forever lever belt I could never go back.  That belt is awesome and makes me feel bulletproof, and whenever I use any other belt it feels like I’m not even wearing one.  For knee and elbow sleeves, I’ve been using the same Elitefts HD sleeves for about a decade with no issue.  Never felt a need to get sleeves that are built for performance enhancement: that just seemed goofy.  I just like having warm connective tissues.  For straps, it’s worth spending the money to get the Ironmind ones so that you know your straps won’t break. 

 

* Books from established authors I know everyone likes information to be free, but you get what you pay for.  People love themselves some youtube too, but when you factor in that videos have to be a certain length in order for the channel creator to get paid, you get a LOT of wasted time trying to get to a nugget of useful information.  It’s worth spending the money to get a decent book on training and using your youtube time to read and digest it.  I’ve done a ton of book reviews already, but if you need help on where to go, get Powerlifting Basics Texas Style, The Complete Keys to Progress, Super Squats, 5/3/1 Forever, Purposeful Primitive, Think Big, and a Thoughtful Pursuit of Strength Training.   

BOOK REVIEW: JOSH BRYANT'S "THE SAGA OF THE TIJUANA BARBELL CLUB"

 

Like a bad relationship, I keep coming back to Josh Bryant books.  Metroflex Gym’s Powerbuilding 101 book was so solid that I think it allowed me to forgive many of the transgressions from Tactical Strongman and Jailhouse Strong.  With that, I purchased “The Saga of the Tijuana Barbell Club” and read it over the course of a few hours.  The description had me thinking it would be done in a similar style to Paul Kelso’s “Powerlifitng Basics Texas Style”, which it was…which also meant it had the unenviable situation of now directly competing with my favorite book on lifting.  It, of course, failed to meet that mark, BUT, I will say it was far more enjoyable than Jailhouse Strong and Tactical Strongman.  I, once again, took notes as I read, and will leave those for you below with a summary/recommendation to follow.

 

Between this and "Texas Style", there's a LOT of Mexican influence to go around

 

 

* I am always going to compare Josh to Paul Kelso’s “Powerlifting Basics Texas Style”, which is most likely very unfair to Josh, as Kelso was a professional writer that lifted/coached, while Josh is a professional lifter/coach that writes.  That said, where Josh always comes up short in these stories is his inability to portray actual humanity in his characters.  The protagonists are PURE heroes, the NPCs are incredibly flawed, etc etc.  It becomes cringe* inducing when you see how positively Josh will speak of himself as a teenager instead of being willing to acknowledge that he was, most likely, just as much a knucklehead as the rest of us.

 

* So far though (page 26 of 114), I’m enjoying the characters in this story far more than the ones from “Tactical Strongman”.  They’re overly heroic, but not to the point of absurdity. 

 

* The bit on cluster sets is pretty awesome and, for once, NOT percentage based.  Suits me so much better.

 

* The bit on somatypes is probably going to upset a lot of people, but my dirty secret is I still believe in them.  And fast metabolisms.  And the post workout nutrition window.  And eating more frequent meals speeding up metabolism.  I’m a total bro-scientist…but it’s worked for me.

Pretty obvious: elves are ecto, dwarves are endo, half-orcs are meso, other races are too boring to play

 

* On the above, Josh’s recommendations for hard gainers goes TOTALLY in the face of the likes of Stuart McRobert/Perry Radar.  Whereas those dudes pushed training very infrequently with low volume and stupid high effort (early HIT stuff right there), Josh is pushing more frequent training with MORE volume for the ecto/hardgainer, operating under the premise that they won’t train hard enough to need as much recovery time as a trainee better suited for lifting.  That…makes a LOT of sense.  My wide endomorph hips made it so I could load up heavy on the lower body compounds early in my training, whereas I was friends with a dude with a legit 24” waist that would most likely fold in half with a barbell on their back, despite the fact that none of their muscles really endured any work. 

 

* He proposes low carb diets for endomorphs.  I was a fat kid growing up: I dig low carb diets.  Jon Andersen was a fat kid: he digs low carb diets.  Might be something here.

 

* What he proposes for mesomorphs is exactly what McCallum, Radar, McRobert and the like would have recommended for the hard gainer.  Up is down, left is right, dogs and cats living together.  But again, this is kinda making sense to me.  Assuming Arthur Jones told the truth (HUGE stretch), he trained the Metzger brothers and Casey Viator with HIT, and they were most likely “mesomorophs” based on outcome. Many who attempt to employ HIT otherwise end up failing, and are always told the same answer: they didn’t train hard enough, so the method didn’t work.  Or maybe what we’re learning from this process is that, once one learns how to actually push themselves, amount of volume will need to drop as will frequency because they’ll dig far deeper when they train.  Paul Carter was big on advocating this style of training, and again, he had enough experience to really push himself, while the beginner trainee RX tends to be much higher volume and frequency.  This can also explain “transformative genetics” where, the longer one trains, the better their genetics apparently become…

 

* Oh Jesus Christ: Chapter 3 is “Gas Station Ready Interval Training”.  Have I just not been filling up at the right gas station?  The closest I had to an incident the other day was losing my cool waiting in line for someone that was buying scratcher tickets, winning, and then using their winnings to buy more tickets, creating an infinite loop.  All I wanted was a Rockstar…

Perhaps if I went with a Reign...and was 400lbs at 6'9

 

* The cringey terms are back.  “A kick and stab bar in Ciudad Juarez”.  I know this this is double jeopardy, as I’ve already written about how goofy this is in my review of Tactical Strongman…but really…

 

* This chapter is looking like the same chapter on fighting from Jailhouse Strong (I still need to write my review of that).  You’re not gonna learn to fight from a book, let alone a CHAPTER of a book on lifting weights. 

 

* All of THAT being said, the workout itself is nice.  It’s got a built in progression to it, and should provide a decent challenge, so long as one appreciates that it’s a conditioning drill and not a self defense builder.

 

* At chapter 4 and, once again, Josh and his merry band of teenage friends are not at all endearing in how amazing and perfect they are.  Some flaws would go a long way in making them relatable to the reader.

 

* I appreciate this rest pause chapter employing different percentages for different goals (size, strength or endurance).  I prefer the initial entry talking about taking a weight you can use for 6-10 reps vs a fixed percentage, but if you’re interested in employing this variety, you could always just use it with 5/3/1 percentages.

 

* Ok, now some of the characters are actually serving a purpose and I dig it: Josh is talking about why it was that certain individuals employed certain methods as a result of their background coming into lifting.  Anyone can appreciate a good story.

Even if that good story is told in the craziest way possible...or maybe even ESPECIALLY so

 

* The workouts in the rest pause section talk about using your 10rm/8rm/whatever weight vs percentages, and for some reason I just respond so much better to that.

 

* I’m sorry, but “maximum intensity face pulls” is just f**king stupid.

 

* Within the chapter on rest pause is full on rest pause training program that was clearly written OUTSIDE of the original document, as it goes about re* explaining what rest pause is and how to do it.  These little things annoy me in these sorts of books: just shows a lack of editing.  That said, the information in this section IS solid especially for a new trainee.

 

* I like the above mentioned program’s structure, but once again, the lack of editing shines through.  It tells the trainee to pick supplemental/auxiliary exercises from the list below….and there is no such list included.  I’m sure whatever original article this was sniped form had it, but they forgot to include it here.

 

* Halfway through the book and this is the second time Josh wrote how he offered “an incoherent adolescent response” to a question asked of him.  That’s just sloppy writing dude.  Come on: make SOME dialogue if you’re going to make a story.

A good dungeon master knows that names are the most difficult part about creating characters, but come ON man...

 

* It just dawned on me that “Chato” the old wise mentor of the young boys in the story, operates in a very similar manner as “Lope Delk” from Powerlifting Basics Texas Style.  The latter even allegedly spent some time south of the border.  Would be an interesting premise to tell the story as though they were one in the same: just in different timelines.

 

* The shock workout for triceps talks about using a weight that is 10% more than your heaviest skull crusher.  Who the hell knows their 1rm on skull crushers?

 

* It’s tiresome how much this book wants to denigrate people that lift to look good vs people that lift to be strong.  I get appealing to your audience, but it’s stupidly transparent.  I’ll always dig Paul Kelso having the courage to say we should all just get along and appreciate that we’re all lifting weights and getting some exercise.

 

* I am pretty upset that the “shock workout” chapter had programs for frickin’ calves and forearms and NOTHING for the back.  What the hell?

 

* The shock training chapter actually takes up the vast majority of the book too, so if that sort of thing is unappealing to you, beware. 

 

 

SHOULD YOU BUY IT?

 

In this case, I’m gonna say yes, but ONLY as a $10 kindle book.  I think that’s the right value for it.  The book introduces some very helpful training concepts for intensity modifiers, which are especially relevant in the COVID era (god I hope that when people read this several years from now this is just a blip in our history), as it means making lighter weight go further.  I walked away with some ideas I could use in my own training, which is always a plus. The combat conditioning workout is a solid approach to getting in some conditioning with limited equipment, and there’s a lot to scalp otherwise.  That said, this won’t occupy the “Powerlifting Basics” area of my brain, where I’ll be compelled to re-read the stories just for pure entertainment for years to come.  The characters here are far more palatable than the ones from Tactical Strongman, but it’s still really hamfisted and lacking in nuance.  It got me thinking though, and that’s always something.