Thoughts about life, training, crap and stuff

Well as noted, OBL is dead.  I still think it's funny that we have aluminum hat wearers that think that our own government was behind the WTC's coming down when OBL took credit for everything, and the fact that scientists and engineers have debunked every conspiracy theory there is about it.  But some people just want to hate the government I suppose.  I wish we had less government for sure, but anyone that believes our own government was behind the towers coming down needs a straight jacket.  And please don't send me any links about the tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theories.  I've read them all.  They are retarded.  I wonder how many of the tin foil hat wearers will also say that Bin Laden is not dead?

My musical taste lately has softened a bit.  This is not unusual for me.  I go through phases where I prefer shit that sounds like someone threw baby goats into a blender and times where I prefer almost "rock radio" type shit.  So what I'm saying is right now Foo Fighters and older Disturbed and shit like that is more appealing to me right now than my usual cache of speed/death/black metal.  I have a fairly wide and eclectic range of musical tastes so what I'm digging at the moment can REALLY vary.  I can't imagine just listening to one genre almost all the time.

Training is really going awesome.  It's been refreshing to back off the weight on the bar, and get a lot of reps in.  I also feel like this may keep me injury free for a while.  The last week or so the lighter lifting got me to thinking about my doggcrapp days and I realized I was pretty much injury free during that time and my reps were always high.  On pressing my first set was usual failure at around 15-18 reps.  On legs it was higher.  I gained a ton of mass like this, and I was never beat up like I have been the last couple of years.  The only thing I am going to stay somewhat heavy on will be the triples I am doing with the deadlift at the moment.  How heavy I am going to push them I don't know.  I will probably go off of PI (perceived intensity) and if it gets too high, I will back off.  I am mainly using it as a primer for the stiff legs off of a box and those are doing nicely.  I think that 500x8 could be doable for stiff legs in the next couple of months.

The other thing about this training is that I haven't worried so much about weight on the bar in comparison to working harder than I had been, and busting out rep PR's.  I have a great feeling about this transferring over to my top singles after I am done with this phase.

I'm not really a George Carlin fan but I love this bit by him because I hate the Go Green/Save the Planet bullshit I have to hear about now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01ed-IMeV5E

UFC 129 was a great card, until the main event.  After GSP took that eye poke/gouge you could tell he wasn't the same.  And Jake Shields as the best guy GSP has ever fought?  I've seen plenty of Jake Shields fights and I've never been impressed with the guy.  Yeah I know he beat a lot of guys but his stand up is beyond atrocious and unless he can get a guy to the ground he really has no way to finish anyone.  BJJ guys with no stand up ability bore and annoy me.  You know the saying about BJJ guys getting hit right?  So true.

I can tell you that I didn't watch 1 minute of the NFL draft this past week/weekend.  I think the league is full of the greediest MF'ers in the United States outside of the people involved in the fall of the bank and mortgage industry.  You have 100 million dollars in your bank, and your gripe is what?

I've had some discussions on boards about some of my takes on things pointed out to me, and I find them all very interesting.  The most common one I hear people bitch about is my dieting advice.  This has to be from people who don't read my articles or thoughts with any kind of context.  If I am talking about eating everything under the sun, including candy bars and chocolate milk and shit like that, that's for really really skinny guys with super fast metabolisms that cannot gain weight.  This is also not some shit I made up.  This is something I have used in real life on real life super skinny guys that couldn't gain weight.  Getting a guy to learn how to eat like there is no tomorrow is hard.  It's pretty much impossible to do with clean foods.  If you've ever tried to get in 4500-5000 calories clean, then you know what I'm talking about.  It's a fucking chore.  And guys who don't eat enough as is, aren't going to eat bland food all day long.  They won't.  And they won't gain weight.  So you take a guy like this, and you feed him everything he likes to eat that has enough protein, carbs, and fat in it, and you go from there.  On the flip side, if it's a guy/gal that is lean, but has a solid foundation of muscle,  I do go with mostly clean eating for mass gain.  So I'm not sure what the bitching is about.  That I myself am not lean enough?  My pic below is current and I'm 250 pounds at a legit 12% bodyfat.  I am not a bodybuilder.  And even if I were, my conditioning in the offseason would be about what it is now.  So again, I don't understand the complaint.  I will never get to that ultra shredded state because there is no reason to.  What would that do for me?  Not a damn thing.  It won't make me stronger, and I will never step on stage and do a bodybuilding competition.  So getting below 9-10% bodayfat doesn't serve any real purpose for me.

I've also come across lots of the "weak point brigade" people bitching, and well, I just laugh.  Guys were setting records for decades doing side laterals, pushdowns, and leg extensions as their assistance work.  Now guys that are weak as shit spend all their time trying to find every perfect weak point fixing exercise.  Then wonder why their main lifts don't move very much.  I do think it is important to get strong as hell on 5-8 basic exercises but getting specific about weak points isn't really required.  If you can stiff leg 500x10, do t-bars with 300x20 and chin with 100 pounds around your waist you don't have any "posterior chain" weakness issues.  If you can overhead press 300 for reps and do dips with 200 extra pounds, you don't have shoulder or tricep "weak point" issues.  So then guys will say "oh it's about weak points within the movement".  Here is a fucking news flash from the city.  THOSE ARE ALWAYS GOING TO EXIST.  You can't get rid of them and they will be there every single time you fail at a weight you aren't strong enough to lift yet.  So guess what?  Get stronger.  Yeah, it's that simple.  If you used a movement that helped you make a lift you had been missing, all you did was get stronger.  You didn't fix a "weak point".  It's like some people can't get their head around this.  If you put enough weight on again, you'll miss a lift in that SAME SPOT again.  Sheesh.

When my wife graduates from radiology I'm getting a Viper.  Like, that day.  I'm just sayin.

I still haven't figured out why I see raw guys doing box squats.  And I've heard every excuse under the sun as to why, and none of them still make any fucking sense.  As I have said before, if you do them low to where you don't pause on the box but barely touch it, fine.  But sitting on the box and taking the quads out of the squat is utterly retarded.  I love it when I see some article titled something like "Learn how to squat" and it's nothing but box squatting.  Well, when the fuck do you learn how to squat?  I agree that the box squat is a decent tool for a beginner trainee who needs to learn how to squat, but I take the box away after three or four weeks.

Getting strong with your bottom strength is where its at.  I still see so many guys utilizing geared training shit for raw training.  If you are a freak and can run with that by all means, more power to you.  But if you're not, you're going to find out eventually, that protocols based around geared lifting aren't worth two shits on a rainy Monday for raw lifting.  I feel the same way about Chuck Taylor shoes for squatting.  Who the fuck came up with this?  My foots slides around in that god damn shoe like I'm ice skating.  Not only that, if you squat with a medium or close stance, there is no heel.  There is a reason virtually every Olympic lifter in the world uses shoes made for squatting, uh, and they all have a heel.

And speaking of squatting, I usually squat in cargo shorts or something like that to give my hips a little support.  Last night at the gym I sunk that 455 for the first rep and totally blew out the back of my short.  I mean Incredible Hulk ripped em.  I did the second rep and racked it.  Thought about it for a while, and said screw it and finished my squat workout with my ass hanging out the back the whole time.  I'm not sure if anyone even noticed.  I don't know if this is good or bad.