Monday, October 20, 2014

Training - "...harden the fuck up."

10/20 - press, btn press/push press, seated db press, side swings, plate front raise, plate halos, side/rear lateral combo, treadmill intervals, stretch

"Forget all the fad equipment. The barbell is king, the dumbbell is queen, and everything else is a court jester."— Jim Wendler 



LIFT-RUN-BANG: The Lifer Series Part 9 - I will cut off emotional leeches and vagrants: "Failures in life are not only inevitable, but a requirement for getting better.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar.  Period.  Unless you are a prodigy, everything you do in life will come with some success, and some failure.  It's what you do with that failure that defines whether you get bitter, or better. Learning how to be happy with who you are is most often about what to do with those failures.  A failure could be something that steers you away from something you shouldn't have been doing in the first place.  Like a job, or a relationship, or MMA fighting, or smoking crack.  It may not be evident at that moment, and may not reveal itself until later, but if you dwell on the "failure" aspect of the present, instead of looking to the future, you will stay mired in the sludge and quicksand. If you are ever to eradicate the blackness that envelopes you, you must come to terms with the fact that crawling out of the depths of it means your hands will become blistered and torn.  At times the climb will be incredibly painful, and you will question if it's really worth it.  However you have to focus on the goal.  The goal is to climb up and rise out.  Not to do so unscathed.  The blisters and blood and pain is all part of the climb, not part of "failing". 

Death is winning...    At the end of the day, we are all inevitably carcasses on the safari planes we call life.  Do the winds echo your name with a whisper of respect, dignity, strength, honesty, and integrity?  Do they whisper that you were a coward, backstabber, leech, and liar? Or do they not even whisper you were here at all? Build your body to make it strong.  You cannot protect or provide for anything or anyone, if you are weak and feeble.     Be responsible for your decisions, and don't pass the buck.  You get all of the power in regards to your own actions.  No one can MAKE you feel anything.  You decide that for yourself. Cut off emotional vagrants and leeches.  You must learn how to let go of a hand that is attached to someone that desires the abyss.     Cast out backstabbers, and liars.  You have no reason to keep anyone who fits this description in your life.  Most important, don't become either of the two. Stop caring what others are doing that have no matter in your life.  Your own accomplishments and purpose should be at the forefront of what your energy is going into. Have specific goals in lifting and life.  Your next minute or hour is not promised to you.  Don't drift aimlessly in the pit of iron or in life, not knowing what you are doing. Find your purpose, accept the responsibilities that come with it, and harden the fuck up."







Dmitry Klokov is Awesome.  LIFT-RUN-BANG: Montreal overview: "Dmitry was BIG on getting the muscles stronger in order to build the lifts.  This had me nodding in agreement a lot.  It's something I don't see a lot of powerlifters doing in their offseason when not training for a competition.  That is, they are still in "build the lift" mode and not in "make the muscle bigger and stronger mode".  The latter will carryover directly into the former.  What's funny is, the old timers knew this but it seems to be lost on a large portion of the guys lifting today.  I see guys not training for a meet still trying to hit 1 rep maxes in the gym the whole offseason.  I honestly believe this is due to youtube, and I'm not even kidding.   Spend your offseason trying to get bigger, and get the muscles involved with the lift stronger via reps.  Not "testing".  I've harped on this so many times, but it was great to hear that Dmitry had the exact same philosophy. ..

Dmitry doesn't like foam rollers.  He likes to use the barbell for that.  He has a bunch of ways to use the bar like most people use the foam roller.  And he does this a lot.  He puts the bar in the rack at waist height and then puts his low back on it, and goes up and down.  Then sits on it and does hamstrings.  He will lay sideways on a bench, and run the bar up and down his body.  Basically, he used the barbell for all the ways most people use foam rolling.  He thought foam rolling was silly when all this time you had a barbell to be doing this shit on...
On day 1 of Dmitry being there, after he was done with his Olympic stuff and the class cleared out for lecture he asked him to go train with him.  Well how am I going to say no to that?  So I asked him what we would do.  He wanted to bench press, oddly enough.  All he did was 5 sets of 12-15 at 225.  Very smoothly and controlled.  While we were benching, he looked around at the massive gym we were in and goes..."I don't understand all of these machines?"  "You mean, you don't know how to use them or don't like them?" I said.  He hesitated for a moment then said "Both."  I laughed and then he said, "Everything you want to do, can be done with barbell.  Just barbell.  In Russia just barbell only.  And everything can be done.  If injured, then yes, I can see using them some that, but otherwise, barbell only...

I have too many Dmitry jokes to list.  So for some of them..... I told Dmitry a joke..."what's red and bad for your teeth?  A brick."  He didn't laugh.  The next day at lunch he looks at me and goes "I think about joke....red...brick....teeth.  It's very funny.  I like it...

His preferred training music is hip hop.  NOT RAP.  He was very adamant there was a difference in rap and hip hop."

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