LOSE LIKE A WINNER; NIHILISM IN COMPETITION

I've been seeing some people out there talking about competing, and for the most part the talk is sadly negative.  People say they're never going to compete, or if they ARE going to compete, they say that they're going to get crushed.  Some even go so far as to say that they're going to wait until they don't get laughed out of the competition before they compete.  They need to get ready to be able to compete.

All these guys want to add another 100lbs before their squat before they compete in the novice category

Look; it's true not everyone can win.  In fact, if everyone COULD win, you wouldn't want to be at that competition in the first place.  Participation trophies are crap.  That said, first, I need to clear up the fact that no one is going to laugh at you in a competition.  In fact, I gotta imagine that the people who even say these quotes must be psychopaths, because if you even think that's an acceptable form of behavior to the point that YOU'RE going to encounter it, your worldview is a little skewed.  But once again, I digress.  Competition are full of supportive people, and if you go to one, no one is going to be a jerk to you.  As for WHY you should compete, reference my earlier work (aptly titled "Why compete").


However, what I present to you today is the proper way to lose; like a winner.  No, this isn't going to be anything about being a good sport and all that trite stuff that you already know (although you SHOULD endeavor to not be an asshole when possible), it's going to be about how KNOWING that you're going to lose can be empowering.

I mean...maybe not ALL the time

I've written before about how, in "The Art of War", Sun Tzu advises to never completely surround your enemy with no chance of survival, because this means they will fight until the very last man.  If given a chance to escape, they will fight hard enough to be able to create distance and flee, but when there is no escape, they will fight harder than ever, because there is nothing to lose.  So why not CHOOSE to have nothing to lose?


The people chasing trophies and first place put themselves at a disadvantage; they are at risk of losing.  The people who do not seek victory cannot lose.  You're not here to win the war; you're here to holdout in the siege for as long as possible, draining the enemy's resources and exhausting their morale while you set fire to the oilfields and take potshots from sniper dens.  It's not about winning the fight, it's about seeing how many motherf**kers it takes to finally take you down.


When I used to wrestle in high school, and during my brief foray into MMA, I always had the same thought; the other guy has already won, but by the time this is over, he's gonna know he was in a fight.  I wanted him to break his hands punching my skull in while I was just smiled a bloody toothless smile at him.  I wanted to lose on points because I took too many hits coming in to throw a shovel hook that ruptured his liver.  We're talking about Jack Dempsey's "bad intentions" here.  You're not coming in to win; you're here to make the other guy lose.

I'm just saying that it's pretty obvious who came to box and who came to kill

When you compete, compete knowing that you're going to lose, but that you're going to ruin someone's day by doing so.  Know that you're going to get beat on the car deadlift, but that you're going to hit so many goddamn reps that the guy who beats you is going to get rhabdomyolysis.  Know that you can't possibly place by doing well in the last event, but that you're going to blow everyone else away so much that you're going to screw up the placings for everyone else.  Make it your goal to be that guy that no one saw coming; that while you're behind the 8 ball, you aren't holding anything back.


Knowing that you aren't going to win doesn't HAVE to be an admission of weakness; it can very well be an admission of strength.  You don't have to be a loser just because you're going to lose.  Go out there, lose, and lose so goddamn hard that you bring everyone else down with you.  Lose so spectacularly that no one can top just how majestic your downward spiral was.  Shoot out the biggest fireball when you crash and burn and erupt with such fury that the effort expended in your failure is unquestionable.

Reminder: NEVER mix poprocks and coke

What else have you got to lose?

THE WEAKNESS OF STRENGTH; A DISCUSSION ON STRENGTH, SKILL AND CONDITIONING

(This is one of those kind of posts that just got away from me.  It's gonna go all over, but I think you might enjoy the journey)


As obvious as we might want to think it is, “strength”, as a concept, has grown increasingly confusing and nebulous as more and more trainees get into lifting.  I think it’s time we nail down this idea, discuss what strength really is, and talk about when, sometimes, strength can be a weakness.

Strength isn’t about weight moved.  This is the most common misconception about strength.  Now, I don’t say this to mean some cliché’ nonsense about how “strength comes from within” or “strength is all in the mind”, or anything else some guru is trying to sell you.  What I’m saying is that we cannot use a metric as evidence of strength’s presence.  This is due to the fact that weight moved can be influenced by a variety of factors completely unrelated to strength proper.

I'm just saying

I like the bench as a classic example of the failings of identifying strength.  Say that you hear that someone has a 500lb bench.  That’s a strong dude, right?  But what if that guy has the biggest arch you’ve ever seen in your life?  What if that guy is a bench specialist, who sought out the best instruction available for benching, and has quite literally mastered the movement?  They know exactly how and when to flare their elbows, they have mastered irradiation, their leg drive is phenomenal, they know how to raise their chest to meet the bar on the way down, etc.  What if this guy hit his 500lb bench after a 12 week peaking phase, and could never hit it again if their life depended on it?  What if they were jacked out of their mind on nose tork and amphetamines and spent 3 hours psyching themselves up for this one lift?  Keep in mind; none of this negates the impressiveness of a 500lb bench, nor does it mean it “doesn’t count”; it more goes to show that a LOT of things contribute to this movement.

What if we take another 500lb bencher, but we find out he’s actually a strongman who occasionally benches as assistance work.  He doesn’t know how to set up an arch, his body is loose on the bench, and this was just a lift he managed to hit in the gym one day when he wanted to see how much he could bench.  Both guys are 500lb benchers, but the latter is the stronger lifter, while the former is a much better bencher.  And again; this isn’t a judgement of one lifter being somehow superior to the other.  These are different qualities, both of which are important for being a lifter in totality.  It’s why it is necessary to have a clear understanding of what it is we’re discussing.

The nature of strength is such that it should be non-specific.  Strength that can only manifest itself in select movements is by definition NOT strength but skill.  A strong athlete is one that, regardless of movement, can move heavy weight.  My go to example for this is Paul Anderson during his time at the Olympics.  Watch how he essentially cleans a barbell in slow motion and then presses it to lockout.  Paul was simply ungodly strong, and was so strong that he could win in a sport against trainees who spent their entire lives perfecting their SKILL in the movement.

You ever see a guy clean 400lbs in slow motion before?

It is for this reason that I oppose the currently en vogue “beginner programs” as strength builders.  These programs create the illusion of building strength, because they allow a trainee to rapidly acquire skill in a handful of lifts that are associated with strength.  Yes; the power lifts are lifts used by big and strong lifters, but simply being able to move more weight on these lifts is not necessarily an indication of increasing strength.  Strength is built slowly, while skill increases quickly, and at the end of a beginner program, one has finally tapped out their skill potential and is ready to actually start building some strength.  If one understands this, it is fine, but when one deludes themselves into believing that they are building strength with this approach, THAT is when things get murky.

Strength is built during the unfun parts of training.  As great as chasing and setting weight PRs on the 1-5 range can be, this is simply the time where one learns how to harness their strength into singular focus.  One is BUILDING strength during their assistance work; hammering away at the muscles with lots of volume and repetition in order to force them to grow.  Yes, this can be done with lots of sets of low rep work, but it can also be done with the “bodybuilding” style of assistance work.  It’s the long, hard, dull, monotonous grind of building and acquiring strength over the course of many years.

Because strength takes so long to build and requires so much effort, it tends to be neglected by trainees who wish to find a quick fix.  These people are always seeking out new avenues of acquiring more skill to move weights.  These are the people who strict press little, so they learn how to push press, focus on maximizing their leg drive, before moving on to push jerks, before moving onto the jerk proper, before finally mastering the split jerk.  They are constantly finding ways to move more and more weight overhead, and kudos to them for doing so, because that’s what counts in a competition, but it’s not building strength. 

 
I legitimately typed in "small weightlifter" trying to make a point, but I got this photo and it's awesome

I do not make these comments to denigrate skill, but only to explain the difference between it and strength.  In turn, I now discuss the weakness of BEING strong.  I am a strong athlete, and I say that not as some sort of declaration of my superiority over other athletes, but more to identify the variety of athlete that I am.  I do not possess much skill in ANY sport I’ve ever played; instead having always relied on brute strength to accomplish my objectives.  This, in turn, displays the pitfall of being strong; you don’t NEED technique.  Not in the way that someone who ISN’T strong needs technique.  If you are lacking strength, you have to become proficient at moving weight overhead if you want to compete, but if you’re strong, you can just ignore technique and shove the weight overhead.  You might even win.  However, it comes at a cost; you end up not spending any time learning the finer points of technique.  It frustrates the strong athlete to try to figure out a way to maximize physics in order to achieve an objective that they can just DO through brute strength.  Why learn to jerk when I can just press?  Jerking takes too long to learn; that’s time I could spend building my press.  This is where strength can become a detriment, as it is now a barrier towards learning.

The athlete who only has strength needs to pair it with a ridiculous degree of conditioning if they have any hope of actually being competitive.  He is not conserving his strength by relying on technique, which means, on every single event and lift, he is greatly depleting his body.  Yes, a skilled lifter also pushes to the max for an event, but they know how to distribute the load through out their entire body and maximize all of their power.  The strong athlete is simply utilizing force of will and brawn to get to the end, and it’s exhausting.  Without a solid base of conditioning, the strong athlete will make a strong showing in 1-2 events and then just be exhausted by the end, having to rely on skill that simply isn’t there.

 
I suppose you could just try being so awesome that it doesn't matter

If you CAN build up this level of conditioning though, you will now have a quality going in your favor that those who are relying on skill don’t; your brute strength.  Skill is about laser focusing one’s strength, but if that strength simply isn’t available, one cannot utilize their skill.  If, in a contest, you were forced to perform a truck pull as your first event, and now your legs are incredibly taxed, suddenly your leg drive is no longer applicable to the press event.  If you were relying on skill, you are now in a bind, but if you were relying on strength, you still have some potential to win.  Your legs may be shot, but your shoulders may have enough in them to still win the event.

I suppose now this rant has turned into a commentary on the 3 qualities that can really impact your odds of winning; strength, skill and conditioning.  If you only have 1 of those, you aren’t going to win.  If you have all 3, you’re going to dominate.  If you have 2, you’ve got a chance of winning.  Of those 2, strength and conditioning are going to require no talent; just some brutality in your life and being a little wrong in the head.  The lesson here is; if you’re an oaf, make sure you can outcondition everyone too, or else you’re going to get beat by someone who is better than you.

NO ONE CARES THAT YOU NEVER SKIP LEG DAY IF YOUR UPPER BODY SUCKS

It's so trendy these days to talk about how awesome you are for never skipping leg day, and to mock those with lacking lower body development as some sort of freakshow loser.  It's even got to the point where people are mocking injured veterans and people with disabilities, because no excuses, right?  Having a really jacked upper body and tiny bird legs is ridiculous, and a real hardcore serious lifter is going to be balanced; big and strong on top and bottom.  But that's the thing; you need to be big and strong on TOP too.

"Oh...THAT kind of cycle"

It's true; we've come full circle and now, here I am, telling you that you need to build your UPPER body.  And "build" is the right word here.  You're not going to cut it with your 15 reps of bench one day and your 15 reps of press another and maybe some chins and rows here and there.  You don't get to build your upper body the way you build your lower; it takes some serious hardcore volume, effort, and godforbid bodybuilding to see the progress you want to see.


It's easy to get tricked into thinking you're hardcore simply by training your lower body at all.  Yes, it's true; a lot of folks simply don't do ANY lower body training, so you're ahead of the curve that way.  And yes; a heavy, high rep set of squats or deads absolutely sucks.  However, that's the thing; just 1 big ass heavy, hardcore, miserable set of squats or deads is enough to really get the whole lower body growing like a weed.  20 rep squats was great evidence of this, and there have been several successful training programs with a minimal amount of sets dedicated toward the squat and deadlift.  Since you can move so much weight with these movements, volume becomes easy to accumulate in short order, and you can get your work done quick, even if it's brutal and terrible.

Never have so few sets created so much muscle...and vomit

The upper body doesn't enjoy this luxury.  In most cases, the weights you can use for your upper body are paltry compared to your lower body, which means that one big ass set most likely won't do the trick for growth.  You're going to need to hammer your upper body with work to get it to grow.  And guess what; your upper body has a back side AND a front side.  When you hit a heavy set of squats, you get to train the back and the front of the legs all at once, but no dice for the bench or press.  Yes, I know some nerd right now is going to go to exrx and tell me that the bench relies heavily on the back, but go do me a favor; go do nothing but bench for 10 years, then take a photo of your rear lat spread.  Yeah; you need to train both.


So we already understand that we need to spend more time on the upper body simply because we can't hit it all at once like we can with squats, and that we also have to spend more time trying to accumulate volume.  The other thing to factor in; the upper body lifts have to rely on tiny little muscles to get the job done which; surprise, you can't lift ANY weight with.  Once again, you look at a set of squats or deads and you're using some BIG muscles to get the job done.  If your quads are weak and need bringing up, you hop on the leg press and move 1000lbs, or you go hammer out some heavy front squats or backwards sled drags or something heavy and aggressive.  Guess what you get to do if your medial delts are holding you back?  Lateral raises.  And unless you're Branch Warren, it's gonna be with some pink dumbbells to really get the pump.  Weak biceps?  Hope you like some curls, and unless you're Ct Fletcher of Magnus Samuelson, it ain't gonna be heavy.

Keep in mind; most people do this with far fewer plates on the dumbbell...and less muscle...but sometimes equal amounts of swearing

And now we've arrived at WHY there are suddenly all these Captain Squats running around with zero upper body growth and silly high squat numbers; because it's no FUN building your upper body.  Not the way it is to chase squat and deadlift numbers.  It's awesome seeing the plates get slapped onto the bar, 1 after the other, and grinding away a few heavy reps or 1 big drop set and seeing growth week in and week out.  It's not so awesome spending weeks and months just to add 5lbs to your press, and knowing that you get the super exciting joy of chasing your press workout with 3 rounds of the shoulder shocker with 15lb dumbbells.  But, get this, it's the people who just do the work that get the results.  All you kids trying to get jacked with 15 reps a day are spinning your wheels; it's those idiots you're mocking in the gym spending an hour on shoulders who are finally going to get somewhere.


THIS is why you see so many guys with jacked upper bodies with small legs; not because it's easier than building a big and strong lower body, but because it's more "fun".  Meatheads like to lift weights, and you can spend way more time lifting weights for your upper body than you can for the lower.  You go to the gym 4 days a week for 2 hours at a time and you can get a jacked upper body.  You do that for the lower body and you end up getting rhabdomyolysis.  Or you're running Smolov. Who did Smolov train again?  Anyway, I digress.

Looks like it worked great for this guy!

Take a page from the meatheads you've been mocking, because clearly it's been working for them and FAILING for you.  You don't have to live with envy; talking about how you're clearly the superior lifter because you squat 315 for reps, even if your upper body looks like it belongs to a 9 year old.  You can be big and strong EVERYWHERE.  Spend some time grinding away on those lifts you make fun of people for doing.  Do your curls, raises, lat pulldowns, pushdowns.  You could also get crazy with some kelso shrugs, and actually start doing a good amount of chins and rows (shoot for 50-100 reps a workout to start), and just get big, jacked and wide.


A little muscle never hurt anyone.  Go build some.