OliveBlood

Well, you guys have finally got me. I no longer trust store fish or chicken. Low fat dieting is not going to cut it anymore, not when I have discovered it's possible to grow your own spirulina in a fish tank. I'm finally on board with the vegan thing. Let's do this.

Why would you want "help" with your aggression? Most people are much too passive and emotionally dependent.

Deadlifting: Well, I don't fully have my strength back yet. I initially noticed I was sick when I could only pull 350x2.5 despite pulling 330x15 earlier that week. With that experience fresh in my memory, I was a little reluctant to start working with 350. I did find that my grip seems to have suffered a good bit from this last illness, and so it was still difficult for me to get more than two or three reps. Last time I stopped after only a few pulls because something just felt "off" in a way that I knew exactly what was happening, but this time I wasn't dismayed: since I couldn't do any 10 rep sets or any of that, I did a bunch of triples, doubles and singles with 350 just to get my volume up. My plan is a progression something like this: 350xMx3, 350xMx1->350xMx5->350x10->350x15+ where M is the number of sets you can do without working to failure. There's something interesting here in that if I can pull this off successfully, I will officially have mastered progression at every rep range, starting all the way down from a single heavy triple and working with it all the way until I can do an entire continuous set of 15-20 reps with that same weight. I don't think this will be as big of a feat as I may be imagining though, because really all I need to do is have my hands grow back to where they can hold a heavy weight for many reps. My back and legs can already take it.

Today I got my first front lever with my legs sticking out. I'm now practicing doing my martial arts while running and doing novice level parkour. You know, seemless transitions between the one and the other. Never going to become an IRL Jackie Chan/Solid Snake hybrid if I don't train that way. Today I overhead pressed. Got 155x13. That's surprising to me since I was so weak when I was sick lately. I expected my strength would waste away, but I only lost about 1 rep. After one more lift I should hit 15+, after which I should be working with 175x10 and going from there. Sick. Oh, and while we're at it I figured out the solution to breathing while lifting, in case I hadn't already mentioned. All I had to do to make weight lifting feel even more effortless was to disregard all common advice about breathing technique. Everyone advocates exhaling while you push on the weight, but that just leads to a poor man's valsalva maneuver, like a valsalva maneuver in denial. I instead find it more natural and simple to INHALE on the positive and then exhale on the negative. It goes against all advice on breathing technique ever given since time began, but it works great. It turns out my father did the same thing, and since he used to be monstrously strong that means I must be onto something good.

I'm back from being sick. Time to start working out again. I'm still at ~201-202. Hoping another few days of going to bed hungry will put me sub-200. As for lifting, my strength in some areas has returned fast. I did upright rows with 135, aimed for 10 but only got 2x8. Next round I'll aim for 135x10, then 135x15+. I kinda feel like post illness I ought to start with the smaller muscles and work up to deadlifts from there. Not sure why but it's a gut feeling and I will go with it. That said, I plan next to do kickbacks and curls, then chest, then get back to overhead pressing and deadlifting. Interestingly enough my levers are easier now. Not sure why.

Today: 201.8. Goal: 185 I've been sick so I haven't been lifting, I've pretty much lost a week. It doesn't bother me though because I'll get it back quickly.

Today I weighed in at 202.5. In other words, I've broken my weight loss plateau by using my liver theory. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that a bunked liver is the source of most of today's epidemic health problems, including not only internal ones like heart disease and hypertension but external junk like obesity as well. I'm growing to strongly believe that in order for body fat to be lost from your body, your liver must first starve a little bit or the fat on your body won't even be touched. I've now known several people who have hit insurmountable multi-year weight loss plateaus that they have instantly and dramatically broken the second they did any kind of liver cleanse or started trying to do anything for their liver at all, and I am one of them. I will come back with some kind of pubmed sources or other justification for this idea, but whether or not I do that it seems experientially true. -the liver is responsible for converting free fatty acids into other forms of energy -"The liver is the major site for converting excess carbohydrates and proteins into fatty acids and triglyceride, which are then exported and stored in adipose tissue." (translation: if you're fat it's because your liver dictates it) -the liver is also the site where protein is processed before use, being converted into nonessential amino acids, as well as where it's converted to urea if unneeded. In other words, eating bodybuilder amounts of protein may be overloading your liver. Eating less protein (more like 100g/day) and gaining size and strength gradually may be better in the long run for health reasons. -This whole article from the Intermittent Fasting community on the subject: http://www.theiflife.com/speed-up-your-metabolism-fatty-liver-disease/ This article confirms almost everything I've ever said on the subject of nutrition and your liver: So in summary, I am right. They then go on to discuss how to fix the problem: So, in summary, the reason I have broken my weight loss plateau is not because I managed to tweak my macros or do more cardio or any of that, it's because I'm finally undestroying my liver and it's rewarding me with effortless weight loss. Now if you'll all excuse me, I have deadlifting to do.

Hit 330x15+ deathlift. Now working with 350. I have also regained my motivation to lift again, mostly after somebody who does cleans with 40 lb dumbbells and works his back with a back extension machine set to 120 pounds tried to convince me that Convict Conditioning can make a person strong enough to deadlift a car despite not having any exercises that target the lower back. This is not somebody who can deadlift a car. On that basis I have regained my motivation for lifting weights rather than getting most of my training via calisthenics. In fact, I am exploring an entirely new area of weight training, and that is the holistic effects or at least blood pressure mitigating effects of proper breathing while lifting. I'm training my whole body one lift per day using my own home brewed 20 rep protocol, and now I'm focusing on controlled negatives and natural, relaxed breath during the exercises. I feel better when I lift this way, and I do not feel the uncomfortable heart pounding head rush feeling I used to get during certain full body exercises. I wonder in fact if I haven't been unintentionally using a "vented" valsalva maneuver the whole time, using the same glottal stop to build intraabdominal pressure but with a slight venting of air so as to create the illusion of natural breath. I always kinda held my breath during sets - who knows, maybe my earlier brush with hypertension had nothing to do with diet and was actually a result of poor breathing technique during lifting. I may never know, but I know I can't hurt anything by improving the way I breathe as I exercise. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna hit some lever pullups, shower and sleep. In the absence of the equipment required for pullovers, front lever pullups are amazing on the lats. Same general movement around the shoulder joint, but the length of the lever is multiplied by two. It's like the lat version of attaching weights to a 5 foot pole for chest flies.

Cliffs?

I have beef with the people who run that site.

That sounds pretty subjective. How are you so sure you're right?

When they are unable to perform bodyweight routines, I have a simple but extremely effective program that will allow them to build up to pushups, pullups etcetera using negative repetitions. It allows them to build up to these feats in sometimes as little as one or two weeks with diligent practice. Not trying to be argumentative but I'm pretty sure rapidly building up to doing full deadhang pullups for reps is going to cause them to gain more strength than using light weights because they're comfortable.

Women honestly don't even need to work out with weights except for their lower backs. The difference in strength between their upper bodies and mens' upper bodies is such that normal calisthenics will give them far above average strength. If I were a woman, for the sake of convenience alone I'd comprise a workout of the following: -pushup variants -pullup variants -dip variants -handstand pushups -situps/dragon flags/other ab moves -pistol squats -high volume kicking/leg raising exercises -deadlifts (calisthenics neglects the lower back) That would be more convenient, as almost all of it can be done without any equipment at all. In the unlikely event somebody decides to actually listen to me for a change, I'll be happy to explain how absolutely anybody can quickly and aggressively build up to completing any of these moves in case they're unable to do them.

Since people seem ill inclined to actually respond to the things I post in my training journal, I'll log some of my other thoughts here in this thread and see how it goes. Item of business #1: Tonight I hung out with my girlfriend and several people roughly our age. I'm 25. My girlfriend I believe is 24, and some of the other people were also roughly mid 20's. Two men were 26. They were complaining about "getting old" and lacking energy etcetera. I was floored because in my way of thinking, I'm at least another DECADE from my physical prime. At age 45 I intend to be stronger and more fit than I am right now. I have no idea why 26 would be considered "getting old" by anybody. I came to realize that it amazes me how much we humans try to hide from our age, because we hide not from the things that make aging suck but from the visible appearance of aging. People put on their makeup and dye their hair and get plastic surgery and so on to make a fat, weak, decrepit body appear youthful, when they could just as well let their face/head go completely natural but instead invest their time into eating well and exercising, and while looking "older" they would have the actual essence of youth - speed, energy, flexibility, strength, durability, good health. By having your priorities in different places, you can change over from being a tarted up walking corpse like most people over age 30 to actually being a vital and youthful human being. I guess what I don't understand is why people hit a certain milestone in their lives (usually graduating highschool or getting married) and then decide "well, my time is passed, time to get fat and rot away until I physically meld with the couch in my living room." I have personally met men in their MID 60's who can and will beat the crap out of young men in their 20's. My own father was still pulling some amazing feats of strength most people my age can't even touch when he was 58. You reap what you sow - whatever your goal is, whatever you put effort into, that will be your reward. I, who exercise diligently and constantly try to get stronger, more flexible, more coordinated, more enduring, who eat very well and take some extra precautions for the sake of my health, I expect that I might end up like the "old men" I've observed - gray haired but none the worse for wear. People who invest into their bodies with bad food, a sedentary lifestyle and a defeatist attitude will get exactly what they have been moving towards - a crippled body doomed to premature death. There's hardly any excuse to suck, age is in your head in my opinion. Run, climb, swim, lift, throw, work, stretch, dance, fight, tumble. We as aspiring bodybuilders are in just that same business - to build a body up in every dimension to the level we want it to be at. The body was meant to be used, use it and you will be rewarded, maintain it and you will be rewarded even greater. Frankly, if I can get a little bit personal, I don't understand how a woman could have sex with her husband if he was a couch potato - why would she want to? Why would a man be attracted to a wife who was a landwhale or a nasty skeletal ghoul? Vegetarianism and yoga have been creating hot old ladies for time eternal, and weight lifting and good diets have been making normal men into silver haired Greek gods since the dawn of man. When I am "old," I intend to be this guy but without the bad MMA: Through diet and the physical culture, we can get the most out of life. I just don't understand how anybody can think otherwise.

Today was good. I went to a haunted house with my girlfriend and some of our friends. It was totally badass and was an excellent experience. Exercise today: Deathlift: 330x12, 330x5 <-should only be one more workout until 330x15+, aka time to start working with 350 One arm chin negative: 10x/arm Straight bar dips, legs in an L-sit: 20, 15, 10 <-These rape my triceps whereas I don't even feel them on parallel bar dips. It wasn't a bad day at all. I think from now on I'm gonna alternate deadlift/arms and deadlift/upper back/chest. Need to hit planches more. Will do that and stretch hard tomorrow.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/type-1-diabetes-paleo-primal/ I happened to find something on a paleotard website that actually supports my theory about liver health perfectly. Fuxed liver->diabeetus and metabolic syndrome. Go to bed hungry, wake up healthy.

Why is being obsessively healthy even considered a problem? In this modern age of double digit obesity rates and metabolic syndrome epidemics, we should be promoting this. I vote that we start calling it Awesomeorexia.

Your workouts are remarkably well thought out for somebody who says they never had a background in exercise. Where did you get the information you used to put them together?

Thank you for the feedback. It's very motivational to me to know people read this stuff. Today's update is much simpler. ...So after being unable to progress beyond bodyweight on my overhead presses for quite some time due to pain in my back, I decided that I may as well focus on deadlifting above all else so my back will grow strong enough to handle heavier curls and overhead presses, and that just for the hell of it I may as well train calisthenics on the rest because there are some things I can't do yet. Well, as of today my lever hold is beginning to visibly progress beyond 45º. My upper body in fact is mostly parallel to the ground now, it's just that my lower body sags. I'll start doing "lever knee raises" for several sets to failure, shooting for 3x20 as a short term goal. I'm also progressing on my one armed chin ups. I can now hold the very top of the movement before continuing with the negative. That's how it starts, you keep training with negatives going down as slowly as you can, then one day you gain the ability to hold yourself in place. Then you train a slow negative with a 5 count pause at multiple points, and once you can do a few rounds of that you're just a few days from your first positive. Let me tell you, this crap has been RAPING my biceps and forearms. I look forward to reporting my first deadhang one arm chinup as much as I look forward to reporting my first 400x10 double overhand deadlift. As for the full ROM handstand pushups with my head going in between chairs, I finally graduated from negatives to my first positive, which I got the other day. It took enough effort to get just one single positive rep that I still intend to train high volume negatives with pauses for a while though. In general, things are looking up. I'm getting stronger while living healthier. I've also begun trending away from potatoes and towards rice as a carb source. That's it! Stuff is going good.

Crossfit belongs in Hell and Glassman belongs right there next to it for all of the crippling injuries he's given people by posing as an actual expert.

Until better vegan protein products were developed, yes, there was a very real disadvantage. Now, I'm fairly confident you can be a beast and a vegan at the same time. The fact is that high achievement in anything is usually difficult and is rare by definition, so whether or not there's a disadvantage is immaterial - it's always hard.

The longer I live, the more I see how dramatically different individual metabolisms can be. I thrive on a plant based diet. Some people would shrivel up and die. I know I get unhealthy when I diverge more than slightly from veganism, but I know I have a very unique metabolism. Anecdotally, it seems like the slower a person's metabolism the better they will do on a vegetarian/vegan diet. I've seen literature to suggest that slow metabolisms are highly correlated with a lot of the chronic diseases plant based diets are designed to avoid (i.e. blood pressure, metabolic syndrome, bad lipid profile, diabeetus). It wouldn't surprise me if a double digit percentile of the population was just genetically ill equipped for veganism. I mean, even as much as I support this general purview of dietary knowledge, anybody who says it's the only way to be healthy is frankly wrong. There are many ways to accomplish anything, and methods always need to be individualized for best results.

Personal crisis of nihilism and lost faith in humankind: over. In my moment of weakness I neglected to mention something that's of great interest to me at the moment, and that is the effect of diet on the human liver. There is so much talk now among the dietary world that takes the general form, "such and such food is generally toxic to the body and should not be eaten." The commentariat has thousands of theories on exactly what food is nonspecifically harmful to your body and to be avoided, but I've gone and used both my rational brain and science to come to what I feel to be a more conclusive answer, not just by correlation but by mechanism. Regardless of what you eat or how much or at what time, your body will utilize your liver to generate bile and digestive enzymes to break it down into raw nutrients. When those nutrients hit the blood stream, for better or for worse, it will be your liver's job to detoxify everything that might be harmful to your body. Drugs, alcohol, fatty acids, sugar, if you go look at some physiology/biochemistry textbook diagrams you'll quickly realize that your liver is largely responsible for digesting and detoxifying everything. I had a theory once that only now am I finding medical science to support. Medicine refers to something called a "slow liver" or a "sluggish liver." Here's a link that will provide cliff notes on this: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/sluggish-liver-symptoms.html In summary, a slow liver is one with reduced processing capacity. Its ability to detoxify ingested substances is more easily overwhelmed. The symptoms boil down to metabolic syndrome, diabeetus and becoming prematurely oldfat. Many years ago I reasoned that perhaps these were not symptoms specific to "sluggish liver syndrome" so much as syndromes of having a liver's detoxification capacity overwhelmed. I concluded that it was absolutely crucial for health minded people to take care not to overwhelm their liver. With that in mind, I reasoned further that perhaps no matter what you eat, if you eat too much of it you can "clog" your liver, leaving it "backed up" to detoxify a certain workload of potentially toxic nutrients while a measure of the same nutrients have free reign on your bloodstream. I also reasoned that it is perhaps possible to survive in a state of total bodily purity on a diet of absolute garbage so long as little enough of it was eaten, both in daily total and at any given time, so that you could practically live on fingernail clippings and crude oil so long as you gave your liver an easy enough time that it could process it all before it hit your blood. Therefore, based on reviewing some liver cleansing protocols, I have rediscovered a critical element of the Ultimate Health Practice which I knew so long ago, and it is the only element of nutrition nobody seems to focus on anymore: when and how to eat. By the simple rationale listed above, I am strongly convinced that if you're to eat anything, eat it slowly or in the form of a bunch of snacks throughout the day. I am also convinced that fasting is good for you. Furthermore, go to bed at least moderately hungry every night of your life. Reason: your organs are supposed to repair themselves during sleep. Do you want your liver to be busy fixing itself or busy spitting out bile and digestive enzymes to process your midnight snack? Can it do both at once? I don't personally think it can, at least with any efficiency at all. Being able to magically fix itself with 100% efficiency forever without problems while still operating at full capacity certainly isn't consistent of the limitations of other organs. If your heart, kidneys and pancreas are all commonly known to just wear out one day and never work again, at all, ever, why should the liver be any exception to the rule that all organs need their rest? I don't want to chance it, not with those odds. We're in luck though - the liver is probably the most forgiving organ in the body when it comes to repairing damage done to it, and the more I read about it the more I begin to suspect that most of the chronic health problems people encounter start in the liver and only start to overwhelm other organs after the liver is so clogged that it's causing subtle jaundice, easily detectable by looking at the whites of the eyes. I've seen things for and against the consumption of both green tea and grapefruit by many people, so I'll partake of small to moderate amounts of both, but I am confident that there is nothing any one week liver flush can do that a regular habit of not overburdening your liver can't do 100 times better. Is pecking away at food over the course of the day some magic secret to "kick start the metabolism?" Is going to bed hungry going to magically take pounds off of your body? Probably not, although I have reason to expect: the liver is also responsible for governing lipid levels in the body and carrying out gluconeogenesis, among other things, so this probably could have some implications for weight loss - however, that's not my goal so much as having a body that works. If I magically get shredded because of doing what every other forum on the internet would immediately label as "broscience," sweet, but either way I'll be healthier and longer lived for it, and so long as it doesn't interfere with my strength or energy levels I don't see any reason why not to utilize that practice.

If you think about it, it's pretty bizarre how some of us just have this insatiable urge to pour ourselves out to the internet. Essentially, we're spewing to strangers in a one sided discourse, typing up giant walls of text for the benefit of whoever happens to be passing through. If you think about it though, it kinda makes sense in light of human nature. I am the kind of person who constantly has to remind himself that humans have potential, and that humans are neither inherently good nor inherently bad - they just are, and they have a fundamental choice of how to apply themselves. Lately I've been unable to avert my eyes from the fact that most people are simply so ugly, trashy, lazy and dumb. If it sounds like I think I'm better than them, you're right on track because I do - I am a superior person in all rights to the vast majority of people I encounter on a daily basis. Don't be appalled or waste the breath trying to take a moral high ground over this; I'm just openly stating the exact kind of thoughts that have kept you awake at night. Recently I had occasion to go observe a felony drug trial recently, and it took me to the local courthouse. The trial I was watching was on the top floor, but obviously I had to enter the building through the bottom floor. On that bottom floor, I observed not only the bottom floor of the building but what surely was also the bottom floor of humanity. That was where people went to sort out child custody, alimony, traffic violations, small claims, misdemeanors and every other thing under the sun that my mind associates with petty, trashy people. If I hadn't associated those things with petty, trashy people before, I sure would have after walking through those halls. Tattoos, matted unkempt hair, scraggly beards, stained clothing. Harsh language at every turn, haggard sunken eyes glaring at each other as they squabbled in the hallways, women with giant herniated guts jiggling with every overly animated gesture so as to make their overly tight animal print tank tops appear to flow like water. It's not so much that I have an issue with how other people choose to live their lives, to reek of cigarettes and old alcohol and trade child support payments and food stamps, it's that something in my head always protests that this is wrong and that this is not how humanity is supposed to be. Fast forward to today, where I'm taking a real estate class at a local community college just to broaden my knowledge in the general purview of finance. The class is composed largely of adults - not "over 18" adults, but real adults with careers and families. What consistently drives me insane about this class is the fact that nobody in there acts anything like an adult. I am still pretty young, I am in my mid 20's, I am still a baby by "adult" standards. Yet, even old balding men and the teacher scream over each other in conversation, bicker over assignments, have side conversations on every corner of the room. People try to "burn" others by saying something condescending after someone else speaks. They text on their phones, play games on computers, come and go as they please. The teacher himself is not much better. These are grown adults, predominantly white with about 20% representation from minorities. No black people, but Mexicans, far Eastern Europeans, central americans, an eastern Indian or two and some Asians. Everyone all acts the same - somehow they look and act just like the trashy people I saw at the courthouse to sort out their child support, probation and restraining orders. These people are The Public. We live in an age where many people speculate about why the West seems to be going downhill - immigration, poor economic policy, welfare queens, multiculturalism, corporate greed. Everyone has their theory, and here's mine: an advanced sort of social decay has caused the majority of people in this country to become Nietzchean Undermen. I don't know why, but it seems to be a personal choice: live and act with no standards because everyone else is doing it. Tonight, I actually ditched class over it. After a certain time of listening to people holler over each other and the teacher, get animated and whoop and yell and slap their desks to punctuate their remarks, baggy clothing and matted hair flapping in the breeze created by their own flailing, I actually began to feel sick to my stomach and had to leave. If this is what most of humanity is like, they're doomed. I went to go see some of my friends and realized that largely I was still feeling very private, because some of them pissed me off too. Someone wanted to play chess randomly, and I obliged them and basically dicked around, and then when the other person won by a fairly narrow margin despite me playing like an idiot on purpose, they got cocky and started taking the small victory all seriously. I feel sometimes as if I can never get away from people who want nothing more in life than to try to compete with everyone around them over every retarded thing they can find a way to yardstick. Everything from bank accounts to penis size to effectiveness at taking home silly bar wenches to grades to profession to make and model of cars and electronic gizmos. Hell, even children are an accessory to this sick self aggrandizing competition of life - whose kid got the highest grades or did whatever to become the best talking point at work or Starbucks or whatever the hell. Times like these make me wonder why it's even worth it to walk out my door unless I need to buy something or further my career. I suppose this is why I like the physical world and don't give much of a crap about the social world. In the physical world, be it physical science, fitness, sports or the creation of product/art/science/technology, you simply accomplish things or you do not. Glory and achievement are self evident, you do not have to factor in the flighty opinions and whims of a million double digit IQ spectators into the equation: you think, you do, the end. Meanwhile, everybody you meet is trying to overtly or subtly assert their superiority over you. All. The. Time. I swear to this day that competition among human beings is of the Devil. If people just tried to improve themselves and ignored others, they would become great. If many did that, society would become great. I suppose ironically that all I can do is enter the social world and try to persuade people of it. This is why people like me spend our nights monologuing great walls of text into the night: we want to vent, but writing in a journal just doesn't cut it compared to the possibility that you might actually be heard, even understood, if only anonymously. My fitness has been going pretty well on that note. I've lost some lower back/hand strength and so my deadlift has gone down, but for how long of a break I took from weight lifting it hasn't gone down that dramatically. Whereas before I was deadlifting 300x20 double overhand, now that I've finally acquired 90 lbs more weights I've taken to 3-4 sets of at least 5 with 330. I'm gonna keep doing that every 2 or 3 days until it starts to look more like 330 x 10+, then work it up to 330x15-20 and move up again by about 20 pounds and do it all over again until I run out of weight, this time at 400 pounds. Once I can double overhand 400x15-20, I'll feel like a bad mofo. As for the rest of my fitness, aka my calisthenics, I've been feeling very nice and relaxed. It's interesting how weight lifting leaves me feeling stiffer, but calisthenics leave me feeling like a limp noodle. I personally believe that must have some kind of health implication, but it doesn't matter - I am a fickle creature, and I suspect it won't even be a month before I decide I want to train everything with weights again instead of just my back. Either way I'm making a LOT of progress towards real front levers and one armed chins. Tomorrow I intend to slaughter those movements, and then the next workout work full depth handstand pushups (chairs) and more skateboard flies. Those handstand pushups to full ROM really kick your ass, by the way. On that note, I'm going to go do something nice and reclusive. A nice cup of soy hot chocolate and a game of Minecraft sounds about right. For your own sake and for the sake of the rest of humanity, please don't suck at life. Thank you and goodnight.

No question. http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/67154108/Book+of+Mormon+e091.gif This, 1000 times this.