Star Spengled Banter

Friday, July 22, 2022

On Starting Strength and StrongLifts

I've had the thought rolling around in my head for a while to do what I'm about to do, which is take this page off the Wiki and put it here. There are a lot of reasons I think this is a good idea, and one of them is that as I reflect from a distance, I come to realize that because the Wiki is a small but still valuable contribution to the pursuit of fitness, and the primary focus should probably be on What's Good rather than What Smells Like Shit. We took those things out of the Wiki years ago, and everybody else who was around to notice and care stopped pretending they worked out not long after. It served its purpose and in a way it probably just looks petty now.

Another reason is that, to paraphrase Dave Chappelle, "I don't give a fuck, because Reddit is not a real place", and therefore what people there think about SS and SL don't matter, they never mattered in the first place, and so Things That Are Important shouldn't be concerned with them.

As an aside - I haven't engaged with Reddit for a year and a half now, including and especially the practice of arguing about training with people on Reddit, which is something Jim Wendler told us 13 years ago was stupid and none of us listened. And let me tell you, Dear Reader, you need to unplug yourself because nobody outside Reddit cares or even knows about what arguments are going on there. I've met zero people in zero places in meat space that have heard of Rippetoe or Mehdi, and the same number that have heard of Wendler, Alsruhe, Smith, Israetel, Bromley, Pollack, or any other God we cared to hold up, and that count includes active competitors in strength sports. None of the people you're arguing with ever cared what you had to say about it to begin with, that's why they're arguing with you about lifting instead of lifting, because the other thing they were never going to do to begin with was lift. People who are going to lift don't go to a place like Reddit, the intellectual masturbator's paradise, to learn about lifting. It's too macho a pursuit to satisfy their emotional needs. They go there to construct a digital simulacrum of someone who is better at lifting than "the meatheads", and that's why the only hypertrophy is in their fingers.

Which is to say, I live in current year America and as of December I will have two daughters who have to grow up in it, so as far as the list of battles available for the fightin', I cannot fathom one less important than trying to convince bingbongs of which samey program will tickle their balls the most for the three to five months they're about to spend throwing themselves in slow motion off the wagon.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it lets me be frank, honest, and uncharitable in ways that I can't be there, because it's an educational resource and that wouldn't be appropriate. But this is my blog, and I'll present as many middle fingers as I please, because the point is to be an outlet, not a guidebook. The only people that are going to read that article anyway are jerkers and people they link it to, who are only going to read it up until the point that they find their first low effort excuse to dismiss it by dismissing me. Citation: Every time it's been linked to anyone.

To wit - 2,800 words of being farmers carried by Greg Nuckols articles notwithstanding, there is no more important reason not to present SS and SL to beginners than the simple fact that they cannot be disentangled from being gateways to Rippetoe and Mehdi, who rank only slightly behind Jeff Cavaliere - The Dr. Oz of Fitness, who if you're keeping up has a surname so appropriate that it makes me question if this is actually a TV show - on the Top 10 list of Biggest Dumb Assholes in Strength Training.

Together they embody all of the worst stereotypes of people who are "into" strength training, including and especially the part where they are unabashed misogynists who only think they're not because that word has too many syllables. And the Broken Clock joke about their training advice doesn't work, because twice a day is too generous an assumption in how often they are right about anything, even something as straightforward as which color crayon was used to write the first draft of "Starting Strength". Not the book, the two words that went on the cover, because don't tell me a gorilla in an Edgar suit can produce a work with all the words flowing in a single direction when it can't even pick up a rigid hexagonal object in a straight vertical line.

Coming rapidly on the heels of being gateways to Two Elephantine Rectums is being gateways to the communities of Lifetime Beginners - no, Intermediate is absolutely too charitable - that formed around them, which if we're going to keep carrying this analogy forward can only be made up entirely of copies of that thing from Dogma. That's what an anus does to things that begin as nutritious, it turns them into dung. And this is the kind of dung that thought Dom Mazzetti was a role model instead of satire, because dung doesn't know that if it's not A Man already, lifting and tank tops are absolutely not going to make it into one. I've seen what the SS and SL forums had to say about this piece, and if it screamed First Girlfriend Syndrome any more loudly I might think I'd stumbled onto an alternate draft of Star Wars: Episode 2 in which Dooku picks Sean Cassidy instead of Jango Fett.

What I'm saying is, SS and SL are like a toilet - specifically, a Kohler. The problem isn't so much about what they are and that they exist as it is where you're going to end up if you stand in them a while.

If tomorrow your gym toilet introduced itself as "Max" and then told you to do 5x5, would you listen or back away slowly?

Anyway, for posteriority:

Why are Starting Strength and StrongLifts not in the Recommended Routines list?

In short: They aren't good routines and don't do what they claim to do for you. They are too low in training volume, the way they try to handle stalls doesn't make any sense, they create unrealistic expectations of progress rate, and they push you to stay on them a lot longer than you should. Their only possible benefit is their simplicity, which is a need that's better met by better routines.

Obviously that's not a sufficient answer, so let's talk specifics.

The volume is too low, and poorly distributed

Volume is important for muscle growth, especially long term. We have known this for a long time. Mark Rippetoe and Mehdi, authors of Starting Strength (SS) and StrongLifts (SL), do not know this.

SS is much more guilty of this than SL, but they're both very low volume overall. In addition, the volume is disproportionately distributed towards your lower body. Have you heard the term "T-Rex Mode"? It's what you'll get - Big lower body, small upper body. There is too much squatting and not enough everything else.

We'll start with the upper body volume problems. As an example, in both routines, the only exercise that works your chest directly is the Bench Press. Let's quantify how much work your chest is getting in terms we can all understand, like total sets over the course of two weeks.

Sunday - Nothing
Monday - 3/5 sets of Bench Press
Tuesday - Nothing
Wednesday - Nothing
Thursday - Nothing
Friday - 3/5 sets of Bench Press
Saturday - Nothing
Sunday - Nothing
Monday - Nothing
Tuesday - Nothing
Wednesday - 3/5 sets of Bench Press
Thursday - Nothing
Friday - Nothing
Saturday - Nothing

In total, only 9 or 15 sets of any chest exercise, in only three days, over two weeks. Depending on the individual week, you could have 3/5 or 6/10 sets. To put this in perspective, compare that to some other beginners programs:

An often recommended beginners' PPL program, which has 6-8 chest sets (Bench/DB Incline Bench) in a single workout and 16 per week. This is 2.5 to 5 times more chest volume of SS and ~1.5 to 3 times more than that of SL in a single week.
5/3/1 for Beginners, which has 8 bench press sets in a single workout and 16 per week. On top of that, depending on your choice of Push accessory work, you can have 10-30 sets of other chest exercises in a week, for a total of 26-56. This lands anywhere from ~2.6 to 18.5 times more volume than SS and ~2.5 to 11 times more volume than SL in a given week.

You can repeat this math not just with many other routines, but with many other muscles in the upper body as well. Triceps are slightly better because they're hit by both Bench Press and Overhead Press, but still low compared to most other routines. The comparison gets even more dismal when you look at volume for biceps (no direct work), back (only rows, only in SL), shoulders (only OHP), and everyone's favorite - abs (no direct work). And contrary to what the creators of these routines will tell you, the idea that you can stimulate adequate strength and growth in your abs (or core in general) just from doing squats and a single set of deadlifts is completely false. This goes likewise with your back - SS itself has no significant back work until you get to "Phase 3" and add chinups, which could be months.

Here's the picture we're painting - If you care about upper body aesthetics, strength, or balance, SS and SL are absolutely terrible choices. This is not just a problem for those who are focused on building muscle, so don't think this isn't relevant for you if your goal is strength and not aesthetics. Even setting aside the fact that strength is strongly correlated with muscle size, consider that if your goal is to build a stronger bench/overhead press, you are not doing those lifts enough, or often enough, because the volume and frequency are both extremely low. That is also true for row and chin/pull-up (ie, back) strength. Another side effect is that this extremely low volume and frequency does not give you enough practice with those lifts to develop good technique as quickly, which is also important for the expression of strength.

Further compounding this problem is the fact that you're doing a ton of squatting in both routines compared to the volume of upper body work. Over two weeks, you're doing 18-30 (SS/SL) sets of squats. Your legs are already bigger, and they will grow more, faster than your entire upper body, and you will look ridiculous for it. This result is so widespread and commonplace that the term "T-Rex Mode" was quite literally coined because of Starting Strength trainees.

Meanwhile, the deadlift volume is so low you may as well not be doing deadlifts at all. Three sets over two weeks for a very important lift for developing strength and muscle in your posterior chain is indefensible. But it's defended anyway - citing "excessive fatigue" by the authors of these programs. The only problem with this is that CNS fatigue is a bogeyman which is wildly overstated, there is no reason to be afraid of it when deadlifting, and three working sets in two weeks is so far from the overtraining line that it can't even see the line.

The way they handle stalls is nonsensical

This is an arena in which SL significantly outshines SS in being poorly written. In both programs, if you miss completing all the prescribed reps (twice for SS, three times for SL), you remove 10% of the weight for that lift and work your way back up. As Greg Nuckols very eloquently puts it:

What’s supposed to happen in the couple of weeks while you build back to your old plateau? Is that when the gains fairy visits to defy the basic principle of progressive overload, thereby granting you a substantially improved response to the exact same stimulus?

But SL takes this a step further - If you continue to stall, you are supposed to reduce your already low total volume to 3 sets of 5, then 3 sets of 3, and finally to a single set of 5. This goes beyond simply nonsensical and into "Quite Literally Knowing Nothing About Training" territory. You may think that description is hyperbole, but it really is such a serious misunderstanding of everything we know about effective training that one has to question everything else the author of SL might say on the subject.

As Greg Nuckols points out in the above article, the scientific literature agrees almost unanimously on the importance of volume for driving strength and muscle growth. What SL prescribes for dealing with a stall is the exact opposite of everything that you should actually do - add volume to the lift, add accessory work, use different loads and rep ranges while maintaining total volume, increase work capacity. Greg Nuckols discusses the trap of reducing volume further in his article on work capacity:

So, lo and behold, they dial back their training volume and the gains start coming again. Only they last for a mere 4-8 weeks. Then they plateau even harder. Why? They weren’t getting stronger. They were peaking. Their body was accustomed to a certain level of work. When they reduced the amount of work, supercompensation happened, and they could put more weight on the bar. However, that’s not something that happens indefinitely. But, the fact is, it “worked” for a while, so this person ends up banging their head against a wall on a super low volume routine wondering why they’re not getting any stronger, not questioning the efficacy of their new routine because it worked initially.

Emphasis ours. In this way, SL tricks you into spending extra time on a routine that is not actually working or breaking your plateau.

They neglect all aspects of strength development except one

Mark Rippetoe, author of Starting Strength, is famous on the internet for his quote about "pounds on the bar through full range of motion". The narrow focus and emphasis on "pounds on the bar" in these programs is a detriment to long term strength (and especially athletic) development - both physically and mentally.

On the physical side, the problem is that all other aspects of training - such as cardio, conditioning, periodization, and work capacity - are completely neglected. The authors of both routines actively try to discourage trainees from doing cardio because it could affect "pounds on the bar" - despite the fact that we know that regularly doing cardio can improve your recovery between sets, which helps you get more volume done in the same time frame to drive more progress, reduces injury risk, and, when done appropriately, will not interfere with your gains at all. The routines themselves suffer from using a single, stagnant set x rep scheme and contain no periodization, which scientific study has concluded is almost always superior to non-periodized training. Finally, a trainee is told to rest as long as they feel is necessary in order to hit their target reps on the next set, which is detrimental to building work capacity, which is important for long term growth and development. This last has the bonus of making you into the worst part of the meme everyone fears to be - "strong" guy who gets out of breath walking across the room - except without the part where you're at least strong.

The results of this neglect are something we have seen on r/Fitness and other beginner forums for over a decade. Regardless of how much they squat, trainees are completely out of shape and have become allergic to doing anything that might compromise "pounds on the bar" - no matter how temporary the reduction may be. Reducing rest times, adding cardio and conditioning, adding more volume - all of these things have near immediate negative impacts because the trainee's work and recovery capacities are so low. They must take several steps back in order to handle the changes that are necessary to continue to grow.

The discouragement and aversion that comes from the above is only the beginning of the mental side of the problems with focusing on only a single dimension of progression. Some of the common mental or motivational roadblocks that happen as a result of training this way for a prolonged period of time are:

With only one measure of progression, any reduction in "pounds on the bar" often ends up feeling like an absolute loss of progress. Deloading can feel like a punishment for failure instead of its intended purpose (though misguided implementation) - to help drive further progress by giving a period of extra recovery after an intense training block.
It can ingrain a need to see clear progress every training session, which is a reality that only absolute novices can realize and then only very briefly on the scale of a training career. This can cause discouragement and an aversion to any program that does not "progress as fast" (such as: most programs by reputable coaches) as the trainee believes they are doing on routines that add weight every session.
The dogmatism from the authors of these programs can cause trainees to convince themselves that, when they inevitably stall out (which is frequently hard), it is not the program that is wrong but they themselves. They can begin to blame factors such as genetics, proportions, or "leverages", which are non-actionable and overblown. Worse, sometimes the conclusion (often with the help of other novices) is made that they're not eating enough, and they start eating so far beyond their body's ability to build muscle that they get very, very fat.

Where can I read some comments on Reddit about this?

But SS and SL are only meant to be short term programs for a few months, so none of this matters

Not if you listen to the authors of those programs, which an unfortunate many people do.

StrongLifts is particularly heinous in this regard. Here is a series of connected quotes directly from the StrongLifts FAQ:

You can also reach the Intermediate I level with StrongLifts 5×5. But you’ll usually have to switch to 3×5/3×3/1×3 to break through plateaus and get there.
This doesn’t mean you should switch to a new training program when you reach these strength goals. You switch program when your current one stops working. As long as the weight increases over time, keep going – even if you’ve reached these strength goals. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Most guys can easily reach the intermediate I level in 12 months.
I recommend you set the Intermediate I goal by this day next year. Set the Beginner goals for within the next six months.

Following the author's advice will have you doing StrongLifts for a year or more as you chase the (completely arbitrary) "Intermediate I" level.

Starting Strength does not suffer from this problem nearly as much, as it is left open ended and up to the trainee to decide when to move on. This is, in theory, a somewhat good recommendation. In practice, however, it's been observed over many years that the combination of such a hard focus on "linear progression" (aka, "adding weight every session") and letting a trainee decide when it's time to move on are recipes for spending far more time than appropriate on the program trying to eek out as much "linear progress" as possible.

Doesn't this all apply to the Basic Beginner Routine too? Why is that recommended instead?

There is one actual, important benefit to SS and SL as beginner programs - their simplicity. For many beginners, programs that use percentages and periodization can feel too complicated, intimidating, or overwhelming, on top of the same feelings of just walking into a gym and picking up a barbell for the first time. The Basic Beginner Routine fills this need while also being a superior program.

The core of Greyskull LP, which the Basic Beginner Routine is derived from, has a significant advantage over SS and SL - it uses an AMRAP set as your last set of the day. This has several benefits and partially addresses two of the big problems with SS and SL.

When you fail to complete your prescribed reps and deload, the AMRAP set naturally adds volume.
It helps you to learn to measure your progress in more than one dimension - weight on the bar and reps performed. When you deload, you will set rep PRs for weights you've already done. You will also likely set weight and rep PRs as you add weight.
It helps you better explore your limits and helps teach you what approaching real failure feels like while the weight is still low and so are the dangers of failing.

On top of this, the Basic Beginner Routine has some key differences that improve on the groundwork laid by GSLP:

It has a better balance of squat and deadlift volume by alternating these lifts instead of 2x squat, 1x deadlift each week.
It has greater total deadlift volume by using 3x5+ instead of 1x5.
It has greater and more balanced upper body volume than SS through the addition of Barbell Rows and Chinups from Day 1.
It includes cardio and conditioning as part of the routine, rather than actively discouraging you from doing it as SS/SL do.
It keeps rest intervals fixed at a maximum of 3 minutes, rather than giving you room to hang yourself on recovery and work capacity by taking ridiculously long rest times.
It is presented as a routine that is solely for learning barbell lifts, to be run for a maximum of three months, rather than a routine to try to milk "linear progression" out of for as long as you can and at all costs. The deliberately short shelf life helps solve or at least mediate the remaining problems.
It is presented with optional guidelines for accessories to help target muscles you want to grow more as you're learning the barbell lifts, where SS/SL discourage you from changing or adding to the routine in any way.

Finally, the Basic Beginner Routine takes advantage of a common (but inaccurate) defense of SS/SL - "They are only supposed to be short term programs" - and makes it clear, up front and repeatedly, that it is only supposed to be used a short term program for complete beginners who are learning. This change in framing helps maintain the advantages of starting with a simple program without suffering from the problems of running it for way too long, as SS and SL will have you do.

Friday, April 9, 2021

Auf Wiedersehen

This one isn't a joke.

Earlier today I was given a 7 day suspension from Reddit for calling a misogynist a dumbass.

This is not the first time I've been suspended for something absurd. Last year I was given 3 days for telling a spammer to print out their spam and shove it up their ass.

I've been the target of death threats and all manner of harassment in my 7 years being a moderator. This happens whether I am polite or an asshole. I've experimented. It doesn't make a difference. Reddit, Inc has never cared about any of that as much as they apparently care about... I don't actually know. Their priorities make zero sense to me.

At one point last year Reddit's head of community sent me a page long PM, chastising me for being too mean because they kept getting reports about me. I asked for examples. Every single example was a spammer - not a person, a spammer. One example, I told some uppity yoga cunt who had just got done blasting links to her YouTube channel to half the subs I moderate to fuck off - because she threatened to have me prosecuted for discrimination for the ban. He really didn't like that one.

He didn't have anything to say when I wanted to know why a mod telling a spammer to fuck off was a bigger deal to him than the countless people who have sent hateful, threatening messages to me. Of course he didn't, he's a fucking muppet. Despite their PR, I think these people all know that the way they're running Reddit is trash.

Anyway, that's not the real point.

When I got the notification and saw how fucking stupid it was, I was angry about it. I was having lunch with my son at the time, and as I was trying to write an appeal, he dropped some food on his pants because he wasn't paying attention - something my wife and I have been harping on him about for months. I lost my temper and yelled at him for not paying attention and making me clean up his mess. There is nothing that hurts me more than seeing my boy get upset and knowing that it's my fault. So I am where I am now.

This has forced me to confront the fact that I have been lying to myself for a long time. Lie Number 1 is that Reddit is not making my life worse. But it is. The only thing that having Reddit in my life does is make me annoyed. Lie Number 2 is that this has not been affecting other people, but I know now that it has - it can't not.

I've been brooding about this for a few hours. WeaponizedSleep has been trying to convince me to svunt for years. Today, my body is ready.

ZBGBs suggested that I try taking the suspension as a time out, to take a break, see how it makes me feel to unplug from Reddit for a while. I'm not sure why, but for the first time I saw, clearly, that no amount of temporary unplugging is going to help. Because the things that make me angry on Reddit are never-ending. They aren't going to stop, ever, because the problem is Reddit.

I think it's more accurate to say that I've been brooding about this since we shut Fittit down to protest a fucking child rape apologist being hired as a Reddit admin and given access to millions of teenagers. There has never been a clearer sign that the things I want Reddit, Inc to do correctly are things they are always going to be too stupid to do correctly. That is only a small piece of the pie, though.

I started down this road almost 7 years ago when I was invited to moderate Fittit. I've put a lot of time and effort into making it a better, more useful place to get fitness information. I think I succeeded. But as time has gone on, more and more I've realized that the kind of person who comes to Reddit asking for fitness information doesn't want what I want to give them, which is fitness information. They want sympathy, they want a personal trainer and dietician except free, they want to LARP as scientists, they want someone to give them excuses, they want their stupid worries to be validated, they want permission to do everything, they want to be garbage to each other, they want to spread shit information because it makes them feel good.

And it's all endless. It's like the mail, Jerry. It never stops. No matter how many times anyone links to the Wiki, links to reputable resources, bans garbagepeople, gives someone everything they need to know, debunks bullshit, it doesn't matter. It's a fart in the hurricane. I had hoped that, much as we were able to turn the ship in a better direction re: SS/SL, we might be able to do the same with help vampirism. I think it's time to admit that that's a dream and a dumb one.

I once read a comment from another mod who talked about how he disabled all notifications and ignores everything, because "The only thing that comes in modmail is bullshit". That phrase has been a brain worm ever since I saw it, and it applies entirely to Reddit.

There is a part of me that says - This is what they want. They want you to give up. The people who've tried to harass you, the admins that suspended you. You're letting them win!

That stubborn part of me has kept me from doing this for longer than it should have. The epiphany I had today, that I found in the sad face of my little dude, is that all of those pieces of shit already won a long time ago. I tricked myself into thinking I wasn't losing by letting Reddit, in aggregate, make my life worse.

In some sectors of the coaching world, there is a concept called a "toleration" - It's a little thing that frustrates or annoys you, that instead of doing something about you just tolerate because it's familiar or a habit. I could write a novel about the myriad of little things that all add up to "god damnit". Even just being a regular person instead of a mod would not be enough. Come to think of it, it would probably make it worse, because then I couldn't ban and remove stupid anymore.

I keep thinking about the Wiki and what to do with it. I don't want it to be lost. It's paid for for the year, so it's going to stay up for now. Maybe that can be a thing I still do in my spare time to make the world a better place, because I really do think it does that. I don't know yet.

I have had some good times that came out of Reddit. I've made good friends, and I know that what I've done in my time here has helped a lot of people - they've told me. I won't lose those things by walking away. But ultimately Reddit is a barely mitigated shitheap and I'm finally seeing that it has no value in my life anymore.

I've never had an alt because I think it's weird, so I'm not swapping over to another account. It'd defeat the purpose anyway. Maybe I'll come back after a while and poke around the jerk or WR since they're the only two places I really like anymore. But no promises.

Take care, everyone.

Saturday, February 6, 2021

Rambling About Reddit

What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
- Billy Madison

Don't Start a Fitness YouTube Channel

Warning: This is not a rant about training and you probably don't care.

The fitness industry, including and especially the part that labels itself as "evidence based", is a gigantic shithole in which most people are two-faced assholes that should be set on fire and punched in every genital they own. They say, I want to help other people achieve their goals, and only mean it as much as they need to for branding and to rope in suckers. Sometimes they have even convinced themselves at the surface level that what they're doing actually is about helping other people, even though it is absolutely not.

I had the opportunity to meet Greg Nuckols a couple of times around the time (I think) he was just getting started making a name for himself. One of the reasons I think Greg has become such a powerhouse is because he is one of the few truly genuine people in the industry, and it shows in pretty much everything he does. That was the impression I walked away with from the times I hung out with him - This is a dude who is legitimately good - and he has reinforced that in the intervening years. I mention this because Greg, being somebody genuine, who grew in popularity and respect because he is legitimately adding value to the lifting community in ways nobody else does, is the perfect contrast I know of to everything I hate about nearly everybody fucking else.

I was also just getting started as a mod on Reddit, which is obviously the far more prestigious position, at the same time I first met Greg. Over the years I have watched the number of people on various lifting subreddits that use him as a reference when giving advice skyrocket. And in all that time, you know what I never saw?

I never clicked on Greg's Reddit account and saw 50 posts to 50 different lifting, fitness, and health communities all linking to the same article he just wrote, or video he just put up. The reason for this is that Greg is not a fuckhead.

I grew up as the internet was growing up. As I've gotten older, things I used to think were amazing and incredible are things I have come to hate. One of those things is how easy it is for any idiot to throw up a blog, website, or YouTube channel and start vomiting useless information onto the digital carpet.

This rant is a conglomerate of things I have said to these people over the many years I have been forced to pull out a mop and bucket to clean up their shit.

Doug Stanhope makes this joke in one of his really old standup routines:

You ever get stuck reading somebody's poems? That girl brings her ratty ass notebook out from underneath the bed, I'm gonna let you read my poems! hehehehe! I never let anybody read my poems I'm so embarrassed but I'm gonna let you read all of my poems! ...O..h, oh thanks. Wow... you musta been dumped by a lotta guys...

And I think it's perfect for this, because every time one of you sad, lonely, boring motherfuckers starts up a fitness video diary (or "vlog" as people who should be choked would call it), this is what you are doing. You are pulling your ratty ass notebook out from underneath the bed and trying to make other people read your poems. But nobody wants to read your goddamn poems.

If you are one of these people and you don't understand this, try to think of the last time somebody wanted to tell you about the dream they had last night. They were probably really into it, it was probably a big deal to them. And you were probably polite and smiled and nodded and went, Oh whoa yeah that's sooooo crazy man. But inside you were begging for it to be over, and possibly death or a concussion, because that's how much nobody wants to hear about somebody else's dreams.

That is what a fitness vlog is. Wait so let me get this straight, so you went to the gym today and you did a workout and you went to make your shake but you spilled the milk and lol it was the last milk you had so you were like shit I have to go to the groceries but then you walked out the door and you were in your 7th grade Math class taking a test and all the numbers were jumbled and your pencil was a samurai? Who the fuck do you think wants to listen to that story?

A concept that a lot of parents need to be better at helping their children understand is that by default, other people mostly don't care that you exist. They don't care about your life, they don't care what you did today, they don't care about your feelings - none of it matters unless it affects them in some way. And most importantly, that isn't wrong and doesn't make them bad people. Here's an example: Try answering the question "How's it going?" with detailed honesty. Nobody wants it. They want you to follow the social script where you say "Oh you know, same shit different day, how about you?" so they can say "Yep, that is how it is" and move on. It's 100% bullshit but it's the grease that keeps the gears turning. You telling them about how you just spent 30 minutes cleaning up the shit in your pants because you drank too much preworkout before testing your squat max, meanwhile, is a wrench.

Sidebar - You might think this is extremely pessimistic, jaded, and negative, but I've found that it is actually a good thing. One benefit, for example, is that you're not constantly getting angry that your expectations of being cared about aren't met by people who were never going to care. It's a big load off to not constantly feel obligated to care about every other person you encounter and their shit that has nothing to do with you. That's just personal benefit. One benefit to the rest of the world, on the other hand, is that you aren't producing shitty content and then throwing it all over the place for other people to clean up.

This is a long walk but fuck you I do this stream of consciousness.

Let me guess, fitness vlogger - you're an 18-30 year old out of shape male with low self esteem and poor body image who has always wanted to be muscular like some third party you idolize. Is it Zyzz? I bet it's Zyzz. You've done a lot of research and you're gonna lift super hard so you can wow people at some event in a year or whatever, OR, you just got done with your T R A N S F O R M A T I O N and now you want to share everything you've learned with the world. You wanted to start your YouTubes to help people achieve their goals just like you did / are totally going to. You want to bust through the myths and scams and snake oil.

You made a video about the best chest exercises? And it's bench press, incline bench press, and flies? Your favorite biceps exercises are curls, preacher curls, chinups, and 21s? No fuckin way. You're gonna give us another explanation of creatine and how much protein you need to eat? Fitness truths that include such earth shattering revelations as cardio doesn't kill your gains, compound lifts are really useful, and man lol aren't squats the greatest roflcopters my oats hip drive amirite? Hit yourself in your head with your video camera until one or the other is broken, please.

Nobody cares. None of that is interesting because neither are you. You're a nobody. When you are trying to break into the YouTube fitness space, you are trying to stand next to world class athletes and the people who coach them, PhDs and researchers, people who have been training for decades, people who have overcome enormous obstacles. What do you have to offer that they aren't already doing better? The answer is nothing.

Inevitably the defense will be that you are just trying to help other people, man, why so hostile, who hurt you?

Because I know you don't actually give a shit about helping anybody even if you think you do.

And here's how I know - Because I see every day in the r/Fitness Daily Thread what actual helping looks like, and it's not an unaccomplished nobody firing off a bunch of self indulgent videos, sitting in front of a camera and talking for 40 minutes about their meal prep and workout, reminding people to Like and Subscribe for more amazingly banal content, and trying to get others to see themselves as the authority they should get their information from. You do that because what you want is fame, attention, recognition, and eventually money from ads and a sponsorship from some fly by night supplement company.

Just like the fact that Greg Nuckols is a good dude who really wants to help shows through in what he does and how he does it, the fact that you are in it solely for yourself shows through in everything you do.

And what you do is take a shit, tell yourself it's gold, then try to get everybody else to play Emperor's New Clothes right along with you. But it's still just shit, somebody has to clean it up, and that somebody is often me, because Reddit is run by a bunch of fucking morons who think a "user" that posts a hundred links to their YouTube channel a day is a "content creator" that they want to keep on their platform, and the fact that nobody on the website wants their shit is the problem they need to solve. Can you tell I resent Reddit's administration? It definitely doesn't have anything to do with spending six years trying to keep my communities spam free only to be - and I cannot make this shit up - eight paragraphs of chewed out by their head of community for saying "lol fuck off" to a cunt who threatened to sue and prosecute me for harassment and gender discrimination, crimes that are apparently committed when one bans a woman from a forum for spamming her shitty Yoga channel everywhere.

But I digress.

I am sincere in my convictions that at this point, anybody who tries to be a new strength training content creator is being an asshole. Looking at you, Greg Douchebaguette, you shifty charlatan fuck. I can grant, at least, that that shithead has done something, though. If the world doesn't need a former pro bodybuilder making more content - and let me tell you, when it's that content it really, really doesn't - it definitely doesn't need some skinnyfat mid-life crisis, only child asshat doing it.

And if for some reason you're really, seriously too stupid to figure out that you're boring, at least clean your fucking room and get some lights in there first. God damn.

The potential irony of using a blog to rant about how nobody cares about your blog is not lost on me. Does it make me more self aware, or less, to call that out?

Thursday, April 23, 2020

Beginners: Think Less, Not More

Nobutada: Please forgive, too many mind.
Nathan Algren: Too many mind?
Nobutada: Hai. Mind the sword, mind the people watching, mind the enemy, too many mind... [pause] No mind.
- The Last Samurai

You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have a theory that I've been ruminating on. I can't tell if - in whole or in part - it is something I found in my brain or my ass. I don't think it applies to everybody. Few things do. Just like with everything, many roads lead to Rome.

This theory branches out from my observation over close to the last decade that the people who think the most about training seem to be the people who are the worst at it. They fuck around the most, they stick with their training the least, they do the least work, they change things too often. It seems to me that the people who are the most successful have a tendency to focus their efforts on really simple shit - eat properly, train hard, train consistently.

The theory is that it is easier for some people to just go do the right things - instead of pursuing the answers to a thousand masturbatory questions - because they were on a sports team as a kid. They didn't get to ask questions. Their coach told them what to do, and they did it, or they were in for it. Through this experience, they learned to just shut up and train.

Let me reiterate - I don't think this applies to everybody. I sure didn't play sports as a kid. But here I am, in Rome.

I'm rambling, but I guess that's what I always do. Rule #1 of doing this blog is that I just write and don't get to go back and edit.

Training is a physical thing. The quality or "efficiency" - excuse me while I spit at that fucking insufferable word - of your plan doesn't matter if you don't go out and do it, over and over, for a long period of time. You can't think or plan or research or optimize super duper hard and then it just naturally follows that you get big and strong. You have to actually train.

Thought and planning are not a substitute for effort and time. I feel like people who think too much somehow cannot grasp this, because they just cannot seem to stop trying to make that sieve hold water.

I sometimes get into arguments about overthinking, over-planning, over-researching. It always seems to be with some bozo who has spent years trying to do it their way and having nothing to show for it. But they still think that they're doing things the right way. And they always ask the same question:

What is the harm in researching and learning more and being more efficient and optimizing?

I have thought about that question more than it deserves to be thought about. I can come up with a lot of ideas. I can argue that it takes time, effort, and energy away from the most important part - the actual training. I can argue that it is often little more than productive procrastination. I could make some analogy about how you don't learn to juggle by throwing 30 balls at yourself on Day 1 that some fucking dildo who has been juggling for a month would WELL AKSHULLY me about. I can drop that quote by Patton about good plans violently executed today. I can say some shit about Hick's Law or how perfect is the enemy of good. I can lob out phrases like "majoring in the minors", "the last 5% that matters", "premature optimization", "analysis paralysis" and "god damnit".

But these people make me tired, and I've decided that I give up. I don't think they even care about the answer - they just want to either do a cost-benefit analysis or prove to themselves that there isn't an answer so they can feel even smarter when they do the thing they were already going to do no matter what you said to them.

I don't know what the harm is. I don't know why it's apparently impossible for so many people to both do a ton of research and learning and actually train hard enough, consistently enough, to get the results that they want. Above all else, I don't know how to explain that a strategy is problematic to someone who can't even get it by looking back at their own history of failure.

I know the harm is there, because I have seen the results of it for years. I know that there are a large number of people who cannot handle both thinking and training. I don't know why, and I've decided that I also don't care, because trying to drag people away from the cliff they're trying desperately to throw themselves off of is exhausting.

You cannot prattle on about efficiency and optimization at the very same time that you are waiting for peak efficiency and maximum optimization to get started. People do this, and it makes me insane.

The act of training is what is the most important. This must be understood. Not the specifics - The act. This is what should receive the most attention and the most time.

If you were to plop a human bread loaf in front of me that would for just once trust that I am not a deep cover Russian agent sent to deliver shitty training advice so Americans will become weak - because I swear to God that is the degree of resistance some people give when asking for training advice - this is what I would tell them:

Find a training program that came from somebody who knows what they are doing. This is not as hard as people make it out to be. Well respected professionals are easy to find and you can pick any of them. Failing that, pick anything in the r/Fitness Wiki. Then do the program. Don't ask questions, don't tweak it unless you absolutely have to because of equipment restrictions, don't think about it at all. Just go and do it. Don't go LARPing that you're an academic researcher, don't go read a bunch of shit about rep ranges and INOLs and MRVs. Don't spend more than a day picking something to do. Don't try to make your own routine.

What you should be learning first is the process of shoving your shrieking brain into a corner with a gag in its mouth, and going out to execute a plan with ferocity and dedication. This is a skill and a tool that every person should have in their toolbox. It is not the right tool for every job. It is the right one for this job.

Get into the habit of training consistently without dwelling on what you're doing, where you might be in six months, what you might be doing wrong, what you could do better - learn how to train based on trust. Your results are measured on a time scale that is long - you have to be able to pick and stick with something for a long time so it has time to bear fruit. Think about refining your approach to training later, when it matters. Because it may never matter.

This is a thing that I believe strongly - Most people can achieve their training goals by doing nothing more glamorous than walking in someone else's footsteps, and it is not until one is at a competitive level that it begins to matter which someone that is or where the footsteps are. There is no shame in painting by numbers, because reinventing the wheel is stupid. Using a wheel someone else already created and refined ahead of you is much smarter than pretending you can replace decades of trial and error and experience with a few days of reading.

You do not get bonus gains points for making up a routine on your own instead of doing an existing one - and I'm here to tell you, after looking over years worth of routine critique posts, none of you are making anything new or interesting anyway. All the hours you are pouring into doing research and carefully crafting optimal volume and exercise selection and timing is for shit, because what you're producing from it is also for shit. There are only two answers to 99% of routine critiques - "It's fucking retarded" and "It looks like one of any of two dozen existing, proven routines except you picked a different kind of curls".

I'm rambling again.

When I was growing up, I was "one of the smart kids", and everybody told me this. Looking back now, I can say with certainty that it did more harm to me than it did good. I understand the shackles of needing to be "smart" in everything by thinking, researching, and planning, and I know that I am more useful as a person having taken them off. These things are just tools and they are not the right tool for every job. "Being smart" is not found in trying to use the same tools to tackle every problem.

If you need to know what the harm in thinking too much is in order to take this advice, I don't have an answer for you. What I have is that I have watched tens of thousands of people spend so much time trying to be smart that they forget to do the most important thing in reaching their goals, and so fail. I have fallen into that trap myself. I do not recommend banking on the idea that you might be the kind of person who can think without sacrificing training.

Think less, act more. Act now, think later. Train constantly, think intermittently.

Monday, April 20, 2020

"Is that person taking steroids?"

If you care about the answer to this question enough to want other people to weigh in on it, there's a good chance you don't have it in you to succeed in training - unless your only training goal is "Don't do nothing", at which point I don't know why you care about anything because nothing you do matters.

There is no point in knowing the answer to this. It doesn't change what you can achieve or what you need to do to achieve it. The only thing you can do with this information is tell yourself "I can't get that because I'm not steroids", which is a statement that has absolutely no value in the pursuit of success - only in the pursuit of being a sad bastard and dragging your ass.

"Should I bulk or cut?"

What you should do is be a god damn adult.

You have eyeballs. You can look in the mirror, decide which kind of shit you look like and make a decision about what to do about it. There is no good reason to outsource this decision to other people. There are no crack experts in bulkorcutology. No experience is necessary to eyeball Play-Doh wearing a person suit and tell it it needs to get leaner. You do not want "the advice of veterans", you want someone else to bear the responsibility of deciding because you are a coward.

If you want to blame something other than yourself if you bulk/cut and don't like how you look at the end, dart boards and dice are very inexpensive.

"Is [thing that is not remotely like strength training at all] an ok substitute for leg day?"

No. Unless it's this:

Hate BOSU Balls? Don't Use Manual Perturbations - Driveline Baseball

Dear everybody: Stop trying to get out of doing strength training in an entire half of your body. It's not that bad, you are just being a baby. If you want to be a baby about training your legs, just be a baby. It's ok. Your all biceps, chest, and abs routine wasn't going to trick Tinders (or Grindrs, I don't judge) into climbing into bed with you despite the gaping holes in your personality anyway.

"What would happen if I did X but didn't do Y?"

You'll explode. Every disc in your spine and the spine of everyone in a 20 foot radius will herniate, your knees will spontaneously reverse themselves, and the Doom Slayer himself will descend into your shoulder and tear your rotator cuffs asunder. You will contract leprosy, and your ass will grow taste buds.

Or nothing. Or, most likely, you'll get worse results than you could otherwise, and you already know that, so why the fuck are you asking?

This is a type of "What can I get away with?" question that's about tackling one factor well and another factor poorly. And if you dig into it with the person, the reason not to do Y is always just "I don't waaaannnnnaaaa". It's never "I can't eat vegetables because I live on a remote island in the Pacific and I have no way to acquire them" - It's always some childish shit like "vegetables are yucky and I forgot salt exists". It's never "I can't change my diet because my best friend framed me for treason and now I'm imprisoned in Chateau d'If", it's "I gave up after a day because cookies are too good to not eat whole boxes of".

"I saw somebody [doing thing], what's that about?"

Only a person doing a thing can tell you why they are doing that thing. If you really have to know - and here's a hint, you don't - ask them directly. But you won't. You will go onto the internet and ask strangers to speculate on a vague description of what you saw instead. You will tell yourself that it's because you didn't want to be rude, and that's not entirely a lie, but it's really just that you are afraid to say words at another person.

This kind of question reminds me of how my son likes to run up to me and say "Daddy whayoudoon" and then run off. It is something that a toddler does out of necessity that an adult should not feel a need to do and should also know better than to be doing - and even then, my toddler asks me directly when he wants to know what I'm doing. Now, granted, he does that because toddlers just don't give a fuck. But as an adult, you should do it because you're not to be afraid of dumb shit like talking to other human beings - or simply recognize it's a question that doesn't deserve to be answered and just move on.

"How do I train to be functional? I don't want to be a fat waddling powerlifter or a gross mass monster bodybuilder."

You don't. Because that word doesn't fucking mean anything. A function is a specific action. But not to worry - based on my observations, I will answer this question for you with the most common functions that people who ask this want to perform.

Be a smug knob on the internet: Do some strength training and some running, but deliberately never reach results above low-intermediate levels. Yoga is optional but recommended - bonus points for hot yoga.
Accuse bigger, stronger people of having a disorder: Same as above, except you stop at mid-beginner level and deliberately never gain muscle.
Impress unfit people: Learn a couple of basic bodyweight moves that have a skill/practice component. Do lots of unweighted pullups.
Fantasize that you could be Batman: Do CrossFit, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and Krav Maga. Train your vertical jump.
The mundane functions you actually perform in your everyday life: You don't need to train at all.

"Do you count the weight of the bar when you say how much you lift?"

Head Is Full Of Fuck (@HeadFullOfFcuk) | Twitter

Sunday, January 5, 2020

"Good Will Hunting", Part 2 - For Dingdongs

When ZBGBs browbeat me into making my thought-vomit into a blog instead of just leaving it sitting on my computer, I only felt okay with doing it if I first set a couple of hard rules for myself.

I'm breaking Rule #3 with this post, and I think I can justify doing it just this one time because A) This is really short and B) It's primarily for giggles.

I made a diagram for everyone who got all wrapped up trying to "WELL ACTUALLY..." the themes of a Mett Daymin movie because the post was about them, and zoomed past the point.

I hope my use of crayons and bright colors helps.

Friday, January 3, 2020

"Good Will Hunting" is Not a Documentary

How many times did your mother tell you not to touch the stove when it was hot?
How many more times did you touch it after you didn't listen to her and found out for yourself what it feels like?
- Sgt. Rory Miller

If you bury a gold coin in the center of a pile of shit, no one walking by is going to say, "Oh hey, maybe I'll dig through this big steamy pile of shit to see if there's something valuable there." They just see a pile of shit. "Potential" is the worst fucking measure of humanity, and yet everyone bitches about it constantly. Potential is absolutely nothing. Which means a person with potential has absolutely nothing. You're only as good as what you do.
- u/Cammorak

When this first started brewing in my chamber pot many months ago, it was only about a very specific instance of arrogance. But as it simmered without boiling over, and I've spent time ruminating on it, it's become broader in scope. Looking back, I think it is fair to say that many of my rants are, in one way or another, about this. One might even go so far as to say that this is the All-Rant.

This is a rant about arrogance.

I have a core belief about the importance of direct experience as it relates to a person's ability to synthesize a useful opinion about a given topic. It's odd to me that this ends up being a controversial stance to take because it's something that nearly every part of our society is built on. Pick just about any profession, consider hiring someone from it to perform their work for you, and consider whether you want someone fresh out of education or someone who's been doing it successfully for 20 years. I can't think of a case where there is a contest here. Job interviews don't just want to know what information you can repeat - they want to know what you've done.

I must apologize. I forgot. This is an Appeal to Authority and everything I have to say going forward is therefore false because an infographic said so.

I've spent about 10 minutes at this point thinking about how to transition from where I'm at to the point I want to really rant about. I think that means I'm trying too hard. So, fuck it.

Good Will Hunting is a movie about a nobody janitor who has done literally nothing in his life but is smarter than everybody because he reads a lot. Don't get me wrong, it's a good movie. But that's what it's about. And it's just a goddamn movie, so some people need to stop acting like it's a documentary that was sent back from the future about their life as an internet lifting wizard.

There are people who, in the process of trying to adopt lifting as a hobby, decide that what they need to do to be successful is to assemble an encyclopedia of as many facts as possible, and then use that encyclopedia to construct their plan. I have ranted about this a bit before. What is left out from that rant is that I think this practice is incredibly arrogant. Allow me to explain by expressing in the least charitable way possible what a person is saying when they do this:

I know that there are professionals with many years of knowledge, experience, and/or concrete successes under their belt - professionals who have a solid track record, who have worked with high caliber athletes, who have put together everything they have learned into training and dietary methodologies. But I, a novice and a layman, am smarter than they are, and I can do better. In a short period of time, I will teach myself more than they have learned in decades by reading scientific studies. My encyclopedic knowledge of facts will be equal to or greater in value than theirs, and I will have the best opinions.

I can hear the voices of a thousand Abstract Warriors crying out, That's just gatekeeping based on a strawman!

It's not. It's the truth of what every novice and layperson is saying when they throw out established methodologies in favor of trying to create their own by reading.

I want to take a moment to say a few words about Brad Schoenfeld, PhD, CSCS, CSPS, FNSCA. Schoenfeld is well known, well respected, and what he has to say about training is valued very highly in the fitness world. Somebody like Schoenfeld is what the really, truly smart people become (or are working to become) - not Will fucking Hunting. But the thing about him is that he also only barely looks like he lifts. But because of everything else he has done in the field, there is no reason to care at all that he is not big and strong.

This would be the part of House of Cards where Kevin Spacey looks directly at the camera.

If you are just a guy trying to learn about training on the internet, you are not Brad Schoenfeld. You never will be. It is arrogant to pretend that you - a layman - can be. Even more arrogant is the claim that all it will take for you to stop being a layman is the ability to parrot articles and study abstracts you've memorized.

See title.

Brad Schoenfeld is an outlier. You are not. Your lane is over there. And in your lane, you have to have done something before you can have anything truly valuable to say. The reason for this is - Lacking experience, your only possible source of words is the rote regurgitation of information derived from the experience of others. There is nothing a layperson can add to the conversation which is uniquely valuable if they also lack experience. What remains is aping something more experienced people are already saying - and likely saying better - which is almost always just noise and rarely signal.

Novice laypersons having the ability to add value to a discussion is a myth, repeated only by novice laypersons who want to participate and feel useful despite that they should not and are not. I know no one experienced who wants to hear from such people about their field(s) of experience. In fact, I know of no person who has not at some point gotten angry because someone who has never done a thing gave them advice on how to do a thing they do all the time.

Imagine asking your great grandmother how to fix your computer. Imagine asking your child how to manage your budget. Imagine asking a plumber to rewire your electricity. Imagine asking a gorilla how to solve algebra. Imagine asking a bartender how to treat your cancer. Imagine asking a 130lb guy who started lifting a few months ago how to bench 500lbs.

Now take the reverse.

Imagine being 100 years old, knowing almost nothing about technology, and telling someone how to fix a computer. Imagine being a six year old, having only the barest concept of "money", and telling your parents how to manage it. Imagine being a plumber and offering to rewire somebody's electricity. Imagine being ZBGBs and telling somebody how to do math. Imagine being a bartender and telling a drunk who just got diagnosed with cancer about the treatment you read about on Facebook. Imagine benching 95lbs and trying to tell a 400lb bench presser how to reach 500lbs.

Most of these imaginings are uncontroversially dickheaded things. But one of them is something that happens in internet lifting discussions all the time. And it should not. But it will. Because there is a kind of person who cares more about being able to (feel like they) win arguments than about actually knowing useful things, and that person thrives on the internet.

-

All that being said, there is another side of this coin.

It's perfectly okay to:

Be a novice
Be a layperson
Lack experience
Lack accomplishments
Not participate in conversations

There is nothing wrong with any of these things.

What is wrong - what I am raving about - is people who refuse to recognize what their current station is, and refuse to act in congruence with that station.

It is okay bench only 95lbs.

It is not okay to give people advice on how to bench when you only bench 95lbs.

I want to stress this heavily. It is important to be honest with yourself about a lack of experience and thereby a lack of useful knowledge. It is important to listen instead of speak when you lack experience. A person who does this is a much better person than one who denies it and tries to be a Helper anyway. Being silent can also be a way of helping - by not adding noise that others have to sort through or argue with.

If you are inexperienced and want to help others, the best way to do that is to spend time gaining experience that you can speak from when you give them advice. Learn to be ok with not being able to help now, but rather in the future. It makes you more useful to others than just being another dildo who mic drops PubMed links and starts slapfights.

Monday, November 18, 2019

You Are Dumber Than a Toddler

I'm going to tell you about my son learning to walk.

This may come as a surprise to those of you that aren't parents, but babies don't propel themselves out of their mothers' nethers, land on their feet, and start doing the Charleston in the delivery room. They can't run, walk, stand, crawl, hold themselves up, lift their head, or even roll around. They have to develop the ability to do all of these things over time.

The road to being able to walk is a long one for a baby that requires both physical growth and trial and error on their part. It never enters their head, at any point, that they are not going to be able to walk. They know it can be done because they've seen it done, and the premise they start with is that they can do it too.

The way I know this is that they keep trying until they're able to first stand up while holding on to something. Then they try to stand up on their own, then take a step, then take more steps. No matter how many times they miss, slip, fall down, bonk their head, stumble, or trip, they try again. Sometimes they try immediately, sometimes they take a break to grab their teddy bear, drink a bottle, scream, or take a nap. But no matter what, they try again.

And when walking finally does click for them, they aren't satisfied with those wobbly, uneven, stumbly steps. They want to walk like the big kids do, like mom and dad do - they want to run, they want to jump, they want to climb stairs, do cartwheels, stand on one leg, kick a ball, kick someone *in* the balls. They know all of these things can be done because they have seen them done by someone else first, so they try over and over until they get it too.

But learning to walk, walk well, run, climb, jump is not just about what they do do, it's also about what they don't do, which is a lot more than just "they don't give up".

My son has a cousin that's a little bit younger than he is. So far she's done all the major developmental milestones earlier than he has - rolling, crawling, walking, noises, words. At no point did my son see his cousin walking when he could only crawl, say to himself, "She can only do that because she got good quad insertions and hamstring genetics, and Uncle Bob clearly gave her extra grape juice, I guess I'll just crawl and let that fuckin' cheater walk without earning it and that'll show her," and then shove his pacifier in his mouth and go pout in a corner.

He's been to the playground and seen older kids running around fall and run into things or each other and get hurt. He's tried to stand up and whacked his head on the bottom of a slide and a table and a chair and the cabinets, and scraped his knee trying to take a step on the sidewalk. At no point did he say to himself, "The risk of getting a booboo while trying to walk is just too risky, it's safer to perfect my crawling form," and then grab his teddy and give up on trying to walk entirely.

There were times that he clearly got frustrated that he wasn't getting what he wanted. I didn't know that babies would do this and I assume he must've seen me or his mom, but some of the times he tried to take a step and fell, he balled his little hands into fists and shook them and grunted. But he didn't say to himself, "This is too hard, fuck this, I give up, I can already crawl, I don't need to walk," and then pick up his bottle and chug it down and never try to walk again.

You might be thinking, If you can read a baby's mind, why aren't you rich, dumbass?

Because my technology is too dangerous to fall in the wrong hands and I have since destroyed it.

Fortunately, I don't need to. I know that my son never did these things because he is currently running around my kitchen trying his damnedest to step on everything he could possibly slip or lose his balance on. I know that seeing others succeed faster, seeing others get hurt, getting hurt himself, and repeatedly failing didn't stop him from trying to walk because I watched him try until he walked a few steps, and then keep going. And now he runs. And he's still wobbly, and he still falls, and sometimes he gets hurt, and there are still things he can't do yet, and sometimes he has to ask me to help him get somewhere. But he also still hasn't given up.

-

Somebody out there is going to read this, and get where I'm going with it, and say, "Fuck you purplespengler, it's not the same, a toddler isn't blah blah blah blah blah".

You're right. It's not the same. A toddler completely lacks the mental and emotional development to have the thoughts that I described.

When I turn off my son's favorite Cookie Monster song, there are no words that I can say to him to explain that it's bedtime and I know he's falling asleep and if he doesn't go to bed he's going to feel really shitty tomorrow and be cranky, because those concepts don't exist for him. Only Cookie Monster and not-Cookie Monster exists for him, so he screams until I pat his back and put a pacifier in his mouth. Because a toddler also completely lacks the mental and emotional development to understand consequences, think and plan ahead, be rational, or exercise self-control.

And if you said "Fuck you purplespengler, it's not the same" when you realized my parable is about you, I want you to think about what it means that a toddler who has no control of their emotional state didn't give up on their goals and compare that to how little it takes to make you consider it.

And then when you read that, and you again think "Fuck you purplespengler, that's bullshit because blah blah blah blah", I want you to think about what that means too.

It means you're being a baby.

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

Barbellyaga

He's just your father, man. He's just as full of shit as anybody.

- "Crash" Davis, Bull Durham

Learning how to break another person's body is easy. The only reason it's hard is because we make it special. If you want to effectively learn to defend yourself, you have to stop making it special.

- Sgt. Rory Miller

Apply this sentiment to everything*.

This rant is inspired by a post made by someone who is but one in a legion, who are victims of a terrible disorder - Barbell Bogeymanism. This tragic mental affliction manifests itself as an extreme aversion to the use of traditional, effective strength training implements and a manic, obsessive pursuit of strength training using anything but, including literally flushing currency down their toilets rather than train using a barbell. This disease is made all the more terrible by the mental health community's refusal to accept it as real, namely due to the fact that it isn't goddamn real and is just a bunch of people being dinks for no reason.

In this case, the dink who has - to put it in internet terms - "tweaked my jimmies into maximum over-rustle" was faced with a stupid problem, and came up with a stupid solution. He had found out about a product that purported to be better than all known strength training methods. It promised him the gains of a lifetime, protection for his joints, reduced injury risk, and definitely not looking like an asshole - all for a mere $550. And for his money, he was to receive a veritable treasure trove:

Two feet of metal shaped like a tube.
A flat piece of plastic.
Four resistance bands.
That's it.
THAT'S IT.

I'm aware of the concept of the Curse of Knowledge. It's very possible that I've known enough for long enough that this is much easier for me than for a total layman. But I don't think I want to grant that. Because in my mind, when presented with:

A high cost product
A website that looks like someone just took an Internet Marking 101 online course

A person exercising normal common sense and worldly acumen should recognize this immediately for what it is, and bail out. This person did not do that. They bought it hook, line, and sinker. But, thankfully (?), the internet rescued them from spending $550 and helped them spend just $150 instead. On the same thing. But built yourself. That's right! For only $150, this brilliant individual achieved a strength training device equivalent to $60 in resistance bands and $10 on a pipe from Home Depot! Isn't modern technology wonderful and amazing?

By the way, he also admitted that he would rather have spent the $550 just to save the time it took him to build the thing. Put that in your craw and throw it up.

Which brings me to the point of this rant -

Stop.
Just go to a fucking gym.
Just use a fucking barbell.
Probably also just use some fucking dumbbells.
Probably also just do some simple bodyweight shit.
God damnit.

Picture a man that has a powerful need for a lemonade to quench his thirst. He knows that grocery stores exist - he even lives down the street from them. So he drives 20 miles to his local arboretum, purchases a lemon tree, plants it in his back yard, harvests the lemons, purchases sugar and a lemon squisher from the grocery store, watches some YouTube videos on the proper ratio of lemon to water to sugar, and makes himself a glass of lemonade. Ahh, refreshing!

It is a known quality of the above things that they can be used - effectively and reliably - to build strength and/or muscle. But for reasons that approach Lovecraftian horror degrees of being unfathomable to my mind, some people refuse to use them - going so far as to react to the very idea of them with fear and aversion.

These things need to be framed properly.

A gym is just a building. A barbell is just a long piece of metal. Dumbbells are just smaller pieces of metal. Get over it. Having aversions to these things is dumb. If you have goals that involve getting stronger or building muscle, and you aren't using the most time proven effective implements for doing that, you are being dumb, and you are probably making the world a worse place.

Whoa there cowboy, come on back to the ranch, what was that last bit?

Yes.

Inappropriate aversion to basic, time tested, nearly ubiquitous strength training implements like barbells and dumbbells, or basic bodyweight exercises, makes the world a worse place.

Because people like you make it possible for a company to sell a two foot piece of metal, four pieces of rubber, and a piece of plastic for five hundred and fifty dollars - and not just get away with it, but be profitable. Your hangups make it possible for a dickhole to sell a product that's worth $100 in actual equipment for $800. You are a human gazelle, except dumber - because even a gazelle has the good sense to take off for the hills when a giant drooling predator that wants nothing more than to eat it alive is standing right in its face. And if you are opening your mouth and talking about your aversions, and your search for gimmick alternatives - the ones that are based on nothing - you are helping to spread that thought AIDS to the rest of the world.

And that is what makes me the most angry - That people insist on making a building and metal special and in doing so, enable scumbags to run skipping through a field of doe-eyed prey just waiting to ejaculate their money into their open, waiting mouth.

Listen to me, hear me very well.

It's just a building with people grunting in it.

It's just a long stick made of metal.

It's not going to leap at you from the grasses of the savannah to maul and eat you. It's not going to follow you down a dark alley, knock you out, and steal your wallet. It's not going to kill you and fuck your wife, and burn your house to the ground. It's not going to kidnap your dog and give it a different, dumber name like "Crusher", "Mr. Flufferpumpkins", or "Paul". It's not going to come to your office and use your computer to look up strange pornography so that you get fired. There is no threat to you to be found in them.

It's just a building.

It's just a metal stick.

Just go to the building. Just pick up and move the stick of metal around in varying planes of motion and from varying bodily orientations. Maybe add some metal discs to the ends. There is nothing to be afraid of. It's fine.

You might think I am being flippant. I am. It serves a purpose.

You know what I've found is an incredibly useful skill in being a technology professional? Being able to tell my 90 year old grandmother what I do. If I can explain my job to a person who is slowly losing their mind and knows how to use a computer only to the extent necessary to read e-mails on a 10 year old version of Outlook, I can explain it to the Product Manager who is only slightly more technologically savvy. Turns out, that skill is also useful in finding ways to help people understand that the thing they've built a castle of complexity out of in their mind is actually just a rock with googly eyes sitting in an empty field.

That is what I hope someone, anyone, will maybe understand here. Because I've found that when I've got a hangup about something, and I boil it down to its most base components, to the point of absurdity, I get over it a lot quicker. And that is what some people really, really need to do - See how absurd it is to be hung up on walking into a building and picking up a metal stick.

Failing all of that, at least just quit looking to gimmick products for an alternative to real training implements and stick with bodyweight shit instead. You are better off 99% of the time - and it's even free!

One final note:

Are you seven hundred years old and have dust running through your veins where blood should be? Do you have a crippling disease that makes it wildly unsafe for you to engage in barbell training? Do you have a diagnosed anxiety disorder that causes you to have full blown panic attacks if you are surrounded by too many other people? Do you have a complete inability to access a training facility with free weights due to either severe financial hardship or the simple virtue of where you live and work in relation to them? Do you have fitness goals that have absolutely nothing, in any possible way, to do with getting bigger or stronger? Do you - genuinely, and not just as an excuse for being afraid of buildings and metal sticks - have any of about seven hundred thousand possible outlier life situations that make an avoidance of gyms and/or free weights totally legitimate and understandable?

That sucks, and I'm sorry. This rant isn't about you. You know it's not about you. As the kids say - Don't fuckin' @ me.

Friday, September 6, 2019

Been There, Done That

Also as a little sidenote. Have you gone through the same process as the people you're modding (skinny to fit/big)? If so surely you would have some sort of respect for people doing it and not just walk around calling everyone skeletons, trying to destroy their self-esteem.

- A sobbing weenie, to WeaponizedSleep

Deakins: You know, Hale, I considered bringing you in on this. You know why I didn't?
Hale: Because I would have said "no"?
Deakins: Nah, if you'd said "no" I'd have just killed you; I was afraid that you were going to say "yes". 'Cause you don't have the balls to follow through with something like this, we both know that.'

- Broken Arrow, 1996*

I like to think of this blog as a brain toilet, in that most of what ends up here is the barely controlled expulsion of thoughts about something that's gotten stuck in my craw in much the same way as one might expel vomit when one has had too much to drink. In this case it is closer to having an immediate violent reaction to eating a bad sandwich, smelling moldy milk, or feeling the squish of the dog shit your asshole roommate has left all over the yard. I read a thing and something bubbled up in me rapidly, and I don't want to spend the weekend thinking about it.

There are people who come to internet forums convinced that they have a problem that is unique in such a way as to require an equally unique, personal human touch in order to solve it. They believe that their problem is too unique, their situation too complex, to get answers from, say, an FAQ page or searching for past posts that are similar. They are rarely in touch with reality.

There is a philosophy that I developed through my career as a software engineer which has spread to much of the rest of my life which can be put very simply - I will never be the first person to do anything. Anything that I will try to do, someone else has done before me. Any problem that I may have, someone else has also had, and solved. Thinking this way has served me very well in keeping a proper perspective about everything I set out to accomplish. I feel more people should embrace this mindset and all that it implies - including and especially the part where it means that you are not as unique as you want to believe yourself to be - especially in an age where decades worth of people talking about their problems is available in the palm of your hand, even while taking a dump.

The sentiment in the quote above is one that comes up often when some kinds of people, believing they are more unique than they are, run head first into the brick wall of being told that the only person to whom they are Mommy's Special Little Guy is their mother, at the age of four. It is an irredeemably whiny accusation that sounds the same in my ears as the noises my toddler makes when I turn off Sesame Street in the middle of Cookie Monster - "The only possible reason you don't have sympathy for me and my special problem is that you've never been where I am right now." This sad, whimpering finger-pointing is particularly popular with perpetually frustrated skinny dudes who view putting more food into their food hole much as a crippled man might view Mount Everest.

For everyone I know who routinely is a target for this accusation, it misses the mark so completely that the walking Halloween decoration slinging it would likely miss water if they fell out of a fucking boat.

I'm going to be an old man for a moment. Pull up a chair, reach into my front pocket, grab a Werther's Original, and have a listen.

When I was in college, I ended up with a roommate that sounds like the kind of person that is totally made up because nobody is actually like this. But Terry (not his real name) was somehow real anyway. Terry was really, really into bodybuilding and also one of the nicest, most helpful and humble guys I've ever known. At that time I was around 120lbs at 5'10, and desperately didn't want to be. Terry gave me a workout plan he thought would be good for me, helped me learn how to do a couple of lifts I couldn't figure out on my own, and told me "If you wanna get big, you gotta eat big".

I walked in on Terry giving himself an injection that I assumed was steroids a couple of times. I had this in the back of my mind for every month after the first that I had trouble gaining weight and making progress. After five or six months of mostly going nowhere, gaining only a couple of pounds, I worked up the courage to get past my embarrassment of failure and begged Terry to help me get started with steroids so I could get big, because I just couldn't get big. I told him I thought I had a fast metabolism, something my mother had always said about me. He laughed at me. He told me the same thing I now tell every skinny dude who claims they have a fast metabolism - I clearly wasn't eating enough. I protested that I was eating as much as I could.

It was this moment that was a turning point for me. I will never forget the way that Terry said, "I'll prove you're full of shit, Spengler. Peanut butter or milk - pick one." I chose peanut butter. He told me that for the next three months, I was to eat exactly as I had been, except also eat a quarter jar of peanut butter in front of him every day that he saw me, and I was not allowed to weigh myself. If I didn't gain weight, he'd hook me up.

I was determined to prove Terry wrong, that he was being an asshole, and get the fast track to being shredded. It was hard and miserable at first, but I got used to it over time. And at the end of three months, I had gained almost 20 lbs, and it was not Terry who was the asshole but me.

I will always be grateful for that experience, because it showed me that I hadn't really been trying, no matter what I had told myself. It formed the foundation of how I approach pursuing my fitness goals - forcing myself to do things that I know I need to do even (especially) when they're hard. Not making excuses. Always looking first to myself, my actions, my mindset as the source of a failure to achieve. In the humble opinion of one ultimately random anonymous mouthpiece, this is the way a person - an adult - should behave.

All that is a very long winded way of saying - "Nah."

It's not because any of us haven't been there that we don't have respect for people who caterwaul all over the digital universe about how hard things are and how they can't do them and why won't anybody just give them sympathy and support. It's because we have been there and therefore we know, from our own experience, that the only thing these people are missing most of the time is a backbone and the will to force themselves forward no matter what it takes.

And that's what it's all about. It is not the people who don't know your "struggle", but the people with direct experience, who have been there, who least want to hear you bleat endlessly about how tough it is. Because, having been there, they know that all that bitch-squeaking is just an excuse, a deflection, a smoke screen so that you don't have to look yourself in the soul and see that the only reason you haven't succeeded is that you haven't mustered the balls to go through with what's needed. Blaming a lack of external support, sympathy, compassion for a failure to succeed is the act of a coward. And for many of the experienced, accomplished people that don't have the patience for caterwauling, all of this can be said just as much to the person that they used to be as it can be said to you.

I know that there are people out there for whom all this is preaching to the choir. I also know that there are people out there who might categorize what I've written here as "macho bullshit" or "toxic masculinity" or "being a jock meathead asshole". It is to the latter that, in closing, I say this:

Deliberate fragility is neither virtuous nor defensible, and it should be discouraged - not spread.
Strength, determination, backbone, and grit are important traits for all people to cultivate in themselves and encourage in others.
Some ways of thinking, acting, and being are so shameful that the only thing they deserve is vigorous disparagement, and the only thing those who cling to them deserve is to be ostracized until they change.
Having the kind of pride that it takes to see yourself as a problem, and try to be different, is a goal worth aspiring to.
It is more useful to treat obstacles as a challenge than it is to treat them as a threat.
Fuck you.

*Inclusion of this quote not to be taken as an endorsement for stealing nuclear weapons.

Tuesday, September 3, 2019

On Trying

"Try trying" is a phrase you may have heard.

There is a small but nevertheless determined group of people who can only be described with the action of rolling one's eyes that has decided this phrase is a circlejerk, and that the best way to defeat something you see as a circlejerk is to become a circlejerk yourself. Sure.

There is a refrain that comes from these people, which they seem to believe is the Yugioh card that instantly wins and makes them right and then everybody bangs them or whatever. Can you guess what it is?

That's right, constant reader. The anti-try-tryers are righteous and you are not, because they are on the side of the most noble of causes - helping. Should you tell some poor, defenseless novice to "try trying", you will be blown away when they dispel your illusions and reveal to you that you are not being helpful and are therefore the Bad Guy. The Villain. Hitler himself, risen from his tomb.

But come close and listen closer, O Ye Pure, O Ye Crusaders of Helping. There is a secret, long hidden, which I have found buried on a tablet of ancient gold, that I must reveal to you. Are you ready?

That's the fucking point.

The purpose of saying "try trying" is not to be helpful. It is to be dismissive. One may as well criticize water for being wet. And in most cases I've seen, that purpose is righteous, because the only thing that the person on the receiving end has actually been trying is "everybody else's patience".

Simply asking for help does not mean that a person should be helped, or should be given the specific kind of help that they've asked for. Contrary to what you may believe, achieving your goals is not a basic human right. Contrary to what a teacher probably once told you in grade school, when it could still be true, in the adult world there are stupid questions. It is rarely enough to want and wonder. You have to try.

To understand this better, it is necessary to consider context. The important facets of this context are these:

A person asking a stranger that they have no prior relationship or social contract with to spend their free time giving them help which is derived from their own invested time, experience, and sometimes money.
An industry that is worth tens of billions of dollars revolves around the exchange of information, advice, and experience in the arena of fitness and fitness goals, and it is possible for a person's entire career (as well as, less likely, wealth) to be built on providing help, advice, and information to others in achieving their fitness goals.
On internet forums, there is not only no offer of compensation to those that provide advice and help, but often a taking of offense at the concept of compensating anyone for advice and help, and sometimes not even an expression of gratitude.

First consider those three things as the foundation of our context. The next layer to build on top of that foundation is a simple, natural observation.

When #3 is the venue, a person in #1 is asking others to perform the same service that thousands of professionals get paid to perform, except without paying them anything.

This, friends, is rudeness and entitlement at its finest - setting the expectation of others to provide a service, equivalent in quality and personal attention to that of a normally paid professional, which is completely free of cost. There is at this moment a push at revolution in the world of creative works against "spec work" for very similar reasons - it is rude to ask everything and give nothing. Civil, polite social interaction is not all take and no give.

But, one Champion of Auto-fellatio might protest, if you don't like it, just ignore those people instead of being a dick.

No.

Here's why you should take that reply and shovel it - The person from #1 can pay those who help them, easily, in another form of currency which is immune to inflation and is infinitely replenishable - a respect for their time. That is all that's really being asked of them, and all that it takes not to be a slimy, stinky leech. This costs them nothing, and the rudeness of not doing so should be answered in kind.

And no, inspiring feelings of altruism and the satisfaction of helping another human in need are not adequate replacement.

Let me draw a contrasting picture. Some of those who, doing battle against "try trying", in fancying themselves to have an "S" on their chest would say - "If your friend / family member asked you for advice, would you treat them so poorly?" And the answer is no, of course not, you fucking putz. They're my friends and family. It's not the same and you goddamn well know it.

I have had numerous friends and family members, seeing my success in various fitness goals, ask me for advice, and I have gladly offered all the advice I have to give. Not once have I ever had to say to any of them "try trying". Because they understand the value of what they are asking of me and meet me in the middle - they treat me and the time I give them with respect - and they never give me cause to tell them "try trying". When I say "These are good articles to read / videos to watch about your question", they make a good faith effort to consume that content, give it their full attention, attempt to parse it, and only ask questions that they've thought about a bit and tried to answer with what I've put in front of them. When they fail to achieve their goals, they put the effort into recognizing when it's because they didn't put honest effort into the advice I gave them, and don't waste my time saying that what I told them didn't work.

But the people to whom "try trying" is directed don't do that, because the faceless usernames on the internet are not friends, or family, or even people to them - they are a personal question and answer box. They want to receive everything and give nothing. "Try trying" is a rebuke for a person who, in the age of nearly unlimited and immediate access to information thanks to sites like Google or Wikipedia, demands that others be a human Google search results page. It is for a person who communicates by their low effort question, "I know articles about this exist, but I don't want to spend the time to read them. Read them for me and give me the bullet points." It is for a person who tries nothing, and flails that they are all out of ideas. It is for a person who, upon encountering the smallest amount of difficulty, always and only looks for ways to make it easier instead of trying harder. It is for a person who "wants to have a human conversation" about mundane, banal bullshit like what vegetables, mobile apps, and bicep exercises there are, broad questions that can be summed up as "How do I fitness", or topics that have been discussed a thousand times before and do not need to be discussed again. It is for a person who cannot get into working out unless they have an app to tell them everything. It is for a person who wants all of the benefits of having a super best friend who trains, but makes no effort to be somebody worth treating as a super best friend.

I believe that that is a reasonable expectation to set - When you are asking someone to spend their free time on you but not paying them, treat that time with respect and don't waste it. It's not hard or too much to ask. And that is the core of what I feel the phrase "try trying" is about. It is short-hand for a longer chastisement about the rudeness of asking for infinite hand-holding for free:

You are trying to force me to spend more effort on solving your problems than you are willing to spend on solving them yourself, and giving me nothing in return to make that worth my time. You are wasting my time, and that is rude. Fuck you, try harder.

Or about a complete lack of effort in execution:

The results you want are wildly out of proportion to how hard you're actually trying to achieve them. You are wasting everybody's time asking for advice when you aren't even working at what you already know you need to do. Quit fucking around and try harder.

And it is short-hand on purpose, because the purpose of saying the above would not be to help someone, but to be dismissive, and shortening it improves on the dismissal.

Yes, it is rude and unhelpful. But the argument of rude = wrong as a universal truth is silly and naive. If someone says "Fuck you", it is appropriate and acceptable to say "No, fuck you" in return. The rudeness of telling somebody "try trying" is, in almost all cases I've witnessed, reciprocal. The only difference is the nature of the initiating "Fuck you", because it is not overt. But it is nonetheless fundamentally rude to ask others to engage with you at the level of a normally paid professional, except for free and without any respect for their time.

This is what many fail to understand - Rudeness does not need to be direct and overt to be rudeness. If you were to say directly to someone, "My time is more important to me than your time, and I want you to spend your own time so that I do not have to spend mine, and I will also give you nothing in return. I may not even thank you.", there would be no confusion that you are being a shithead. Make no mistake - In asking a low effort question or fucking around, a person may not be saying it, but that is still what they are communicating. And "try trying" is the reply that they have earned.