Thoughts about life, crap, training and stuff - Fake Friday Edition

I still haven't made it in to see the movies I promised Jamie I'd go watch, and I fully expect him to make fun of me for it.  I have 100% intent on making it in to see them, however I still spent all last weekend on drugs because of my dry socket.

Which leads me to my next segment....

Wisdom tooth extraction wasn't that big of a deal.  However I did end up with dry socket, and had to go in and get it treated.  Treated meaning they had to pack it with strips that were coated with clove oil and some other shit.  I wasn't even sure I had dry socket because of my high pain tolerance.  Again, this is not a "I'm such a tough mother fucker thing" like SOME dipshits say/do.  If some shit hurts, I say it hurts!  It's just that I often tear/break/have pain that usually downs most people and I barely notice.  

So I go into the dentist because I called in and told them my ear was bothering me a little bit, and I had a very slight pain in my jaw.  I go in and the receptionist tells me "if it were dry socket you'd be dying.  I had it and it was worse than childbirth."  

"Cool, I don't have it.  Awesome."

Dentist comes in, takes a look at it "yeah you definitely have dry socket.  That's pretty inflamed.  You're not in pain?"

"Hmmmmm....it's annoying."  

He laughed and told me that was the first time someone had used the term "annoying" to describe dry socket.  

He then proceeded to tell me that "I gotta pack it and that's going to be very tender.  It's going to be pretty rough."

"Sure.  Let's do it."

He packs it.  I feel nothing.  

"You done?" I ask him.  

"Yeah." he says, looking at me incredulously.  

I was fine......for 10 minutes.  THEN I had some god damn pain worth mentioning.  I sat in my car in the parking lot and got quite dizzy.  As I noted, I do not "play" tough guy.   If some shit hurts, I'll say it hurts.  That shit hurt.  I drove home in quite the daze but by the time I got home, it was getting better.  I ended up having to go back in the next day to get it packed again......and the day after that as well.  I finally told the dentist to give me some strips and tools and I'd save him the time and have the wife do this shit herself.  He agreed and handed me some shit over and Tiff packed it for two days.  Good to go now.  

First week of meet training - 

So the first week of squats, bench, and deads are in the books for meet training.  I feel pretty fantastic really.  I am not going to start calling shots because lots of things can happen in 8 weeks but I feel really solid about this first week.  I will be in Vegas for a week, and if anyone can tell me of a solid gym to train at while there I'd be very appreciative.  I will need to bench and pull the week I am there.  If anyone wants to hang, train, grab a drink or whatever, hit me up.  I'm always more than happy to hang out and bullshit.  

I'm doing something a little different with deads than I have in the past.  

Prez Debate - 

Jesus jumped up on a cross Christ.......does Obama know what 2 minutes means?  I felt like Romney did a great job, but I would have given a testicle to have watched Ron Paul break his foot 18 feet deep off in Obama's asshole.  Either way, to me it seemed like Romney knew his shit and really walked away with it.  I'm sure some won't see it that way, however you gotta remember, I'm not for either of these guys.  And to me, Romney clearly outclassed Obama.  

Even MORE on ultra high reps - 

Ok so I'm not saying I started this whole ultra high rep craze right now....but I'm saying I started it.

In all seriousness, it's getting absurd.

I've now seen routines made up entirely of 100 rep sets and shit.  This is bananas.

Both Jim and I outlined good movements you can use to do 100 rep stuff with.  Yet since then, I've gotten tons of questions about trying this movement and that movement with it.  We narrowed down that list to those particular movements for a reason.  100 rep bench presses?  100 rep squat?  Whole routines with nothing but 100 rep sets???  Never go full retard.

Look, I've already talked about the purpose of doing the ultra high rep work.  It works!  It works well too.  It doesn't mean because it's good, you can bastardize it, and make it better.  Some things are as good as they are going to get AS IS.  To me, this is one of those things.

Big movements = strength and mass movements - squats, bench, deads, chins, rows, dips, overheads
100 rep work = prehab, joint health, some added hypertrophy - curls, front raises, upright rows, pull aparts, tricep extensions, sit ups, leg curls, leg ext, etc.

One of the worst things people do about training ideas, is fucking then up by trying to spread it across every aspect of their training.  This is not what you want to do here.  Have some of it spread in parts of your training, but NOT the foundation of what you are doing.  I mean, I feel like I shouldn't even have to write this but here I am, after reading dumb articles with routines consisting of nothing but ultra high rep training across the board.

ARRRGGGGG!!!!!!!!!

Lifer Series Wrapping up - 

There is one more installment left in the Lifer series.  Becoming the fucking lion.  I am really going to try and pour myself into this one.  This series has mattered to me and I want to end with what becoming the lion really means to me.

So, off topic.  I was at work yesterday and my site manager called me over, and said that I had two complaints come in about me.  "What's that?" I say.  "Wellll....he says" with a long pause...."for chewing gum too loud."

I stared at him for a long time and finally asked, "Is this a fucking joke?"

"No I'm serious.  Here let me hear you chew gum."

/I chew gum/

"Seems fine."

"Wow, people really are children sometimes aren't they?"

"They certainly can be." he says.

Don't believe that just because you work around adults, they are going to act like adults.  I can tell you this from experience.  An adult workplace is not a lot different than being in kindergarten.  I'm not embellishing either.

More on back off sets and increasing your lifts - 

So I had several deadlift questions after putting up the deadlift vids from last night.  This brings to me a point I've been trying to make to you guys for some time.  The meat and potatoes of your programs should be the back off sets.  I did some reps last night because I'm going to play with reps on my top set during this cycle.  But the most important pieces are the back offs.  I did my back offs on deficit deads, then some stiff legs.

Your assistance work has TWO purposes.  To keep you healthy (prehab), and to help the main lift.  If it doesn't do either of those two things it's fucking worthless.  Back off sets do the latter, because well, it's still the main lift.  So this makes life easy.  Just pick some movements that you know will keep you healthy if you've had some injury problems.  If you haven't had any injury problems then you are weak.  Just wait and get stronger and you'll know what you need to do.

In the mean time, if you are stale, just plug in more and more and more back off sets until the main lift starts getting easier on the top single.  Also, if you are not competing, don't be afraid to stay at a certain weight and back off scheme for a few weeks until it feels easier.  I can't ever get guys to see this!  This is what the big-15 is based around.  Constantly trying to hammer home more and more reps on the back off set until you're repping out like crazy with what used to be a tough weight.  Where do you think this will get you?  Yeah, really big and strong!  It's that simple.

1 more day until Friday.........