For fans of the podcast (which is being resurrected soon and will likely involve video), you know Paul and I spoke with Kiefer, the progenitor of Carb Backloading.  As I stated on the podcast, I'm generally of the opinion that CBL is perfect for getting fat and contracting Type II diabetes, and I'm skeptical of its real-world applicability.  The majority of the people I know who tried it either felt like Gary Busey after a week-long Jack and coke (Columbian marching powder, not the Beetus-bringer) binge the majority of the time but leaned out a bit or felt like Busey and got fat.  No one I've seen, however, thrived off the diet.  As such, my skepticism seems to have been justified.  When I learned of a Duke grad in strength training world who shared my psychotic, balls to the wall training approach and had the credentials to back his opinion of CBL, I felt compelled to drop an interview bomb in his lap to hash this whole thing out.  Thus, without further adieu, the interview:


Alrighty, it's interview time.  In the interest of dogmatic adherence to the typical structure of an interview, why don't you brag about yourself a bit.

My name’s Alex Viada, and I run a company called Complete Human Performance.  We’re a small coaching company with one primary focus- building world class strength AND top level endurance in ALL our athletes. We’ve never felt those two goals are mutually exclusive, just damn difficult to put together. There are a lot of guys and girls out there who love throwing around huge piles of iron, but either for professional reasons (military, police, fire, etc.) or personal reasons (enjoy mountain biking, trail running, marathons, etc.) need excellent endurance.  Most of the crap you read out there either tells you that you can’t do both, or throws out this minimalist garbage that says you can train for Ultramarathons and Ironmans by doing 30 minute sprints and metcons.  The former is flat out wrong, the latter, well, let’s just say one of the best known founders of one of those systems has successfully DNFed every race he’s done since switching to a minimalist program. For us, everything we do is proven- based on solid, no BS training routines that are backed by actual sports science and plenty of results.  Basically, we take on people who want to do it all, but have been told they can’t… and help them shut the naysayers up.

Personally speaking, well, I’m a lousy athlete [ed.- yes, all 4:20 milers are terrible athletes], genetically speaking (sorry dad).  Never been very strong or fast, was quite honestly just a “smart kid” growing up.  Played a lot of sports in high school and succeeded mostly on determination, and I never had much of that. When I tried to gain weight, I ended up fat.  When I tried to cut, I ended up skinny fat.  Currently, at 33 years old and 220 pounds, my best raw squat is 615 (695 single ply currently), best bench is 445 raw (485 shirted currently), and deadlift 705 in gear or without (as of five weeks ago).  I currently run a 4:23 mile, have done 4 marathons, 1 Ultramarathon, 1 Ironman triathlon, and 1 half Ironman in the last three years, regularly compete in mountain centuries (100 mile bike rides through the mountains), and drink entirely too much high gravity beer.  On the education side, graduated from Duke University with a degree in biochemistry, am a USA Triathlon certified coach, and an NSCA-CSCS.  Eleven years of coaching experience, but worked in the clinical trial world for 8 years as well, which gave me an excellent bullshit detector and made me a real skeptic.


Careful with the jogging- I hear joggers have had a problem with spontaneous combustion up North.  For some reason I thought you were a grad student- I guess because you still lift in Duke's gym, where the next strongest person is my 130 lb girlfriend.

I was going after my Msc in physiology from NC State, but honestly the program was pretty mediocre.  Either switching to biomechanics or transferring to UNC when I got the time to reapply.  Work and life gets in the way, man.  Either way, wasn't going to mention something in progress.

Understandable, I suppose.  Now, I've heard a rumor that you rock a supertotal that's even more ridiculous than combining real lifting with clog-wearing trick lifting.  What's your version of a supertotal- what I heard about you doing passed the Carrot Top-on-angel-dust-fellating-a-rabid-badger level of insanity.  

My supertotals (and there are a few I use to judge progress) are always zero.  In other words, take a measure of strength (weight) and pit it against a measure of speed and endurance (time), with the goal of them canceling each other out.  My most frequently used supertotal- run a marathon in less than your bench press.  Bench 400?  Run a sub 4:00.  Bench 350?  Run a sub 3:30.  For the ladies, it’s 2.5 times your bench versus your marathon.  Most people, with proper training, should be able to do this.  My personal goal this next year or two is run a 100 mile ultra in less than my PL total, but this will take some serious work…  for now I’d like to be the only guy who’s qualified for Kona (Ironman world championship) with a 700 pound deadlift.


That's fucking ridiculous.  I would rather masturbate using Freddy Krueger's glove than run a marathon.  I heard you recently did a meet, tore your quad, and still did the marathon anyway.  Why the fuck would you do that?  How'd it turn out?

Ha.  It went pretty damn badly.  I sustained a pretty serious quad tear on my opening squat during a meet three weeks out from a 50 mile ultramarathon.  Missed what was supposed to be my longest training run…  8 days out from the race I was thrilled that I could finally walk without limping and that the swelling had gone down enough for me to wear regular pants.  6 days out I successfully jogged a mile.  The race itself was brutal- I couldn’t run or walk downhill, (I had to sidestep slowly), and by the end of it there was so much swelling in my calves and ankles (from pooled blood and fluid) that I couldn’t feel my right foot. Finished about 2.5 hours slower than I’d planned, but got it done.  As for why, well, look at it this way- You learn more about yourself and your tolerances pushing through and competing under crap conditions than when things are perfect. Most folks who’ve been at this long enough are always injured in some form or another, and if you let it hold you back, you’ll never leave the house.  Besides, I work with disabled athletes as well- some of these people have less than half an intact limb and they’re out there running a hundred miles.  I can suck it up for 50 with a bit of swelling. Finally, I’m a cheap, stubborn son of a bitch, and having folks tell me that A) I should just stay home, and B) No, I couldn’t get a refund on the entry fee, meant I had really no choice.

I don't give a shit if disabled people can hop on one foot and sing the national anthem for an entire marathon- I'm still not fucking running.  Alas, down to the meat and potatoes-  I hear you and Kiefer have heat.  How'd this happen?

Man, truthfully speaking the guy probably has no idea who I am- I don’t have heat with him in particular, just with bullshit science and those who make a buck off it.  All these diet and health gurus are interchangeable, whether they be dangerously hardcore or bulletproof executives- they learn just enough about a topic to sound authoritative, then put down half-baked theories that would get torn apart by a first year biochem major, back it with a whole bunch of references that they either haven’t read or don’t really understand, then say shit like “This works, and you can’t disagree because I know science and I’m over 200 pounds.”  My real beef with this is that nobody seems to question this stuff- they just fall into the pack and go “wow, this works”.  Of course it works- eat next to nothing all day except some eggs and protein powder, pound coffee until you’re tweaked to shit, then only stuff yourself with sugar after your evening workout?  I know a whole bunch of sorority girls who went all through college like this.  Controlling cravings through fasting then binge eating at night makes it hard to take in enough calories for most folks, so they lose weight.  Miraculous.

Look, I have nothing against the guy personally- I don’t know him.  Could be the nicest guy on earth, and he’s certainly earnest about the field.  What I don’t like is bad bullshit science being repackaged and sold.  I’ve picked apart a lot of his stuff, but…  hey, it’s the internet, what are the odds he’s seen any of it and felt the need to respond?  Pretty low.  It’s not about debunking anyhow- most of what I write isn’t an attack on people trying to come up with new ideas, it’s just stating the facts.  People can draw their own conclusions from there.  If that makes some popular diet or amazing new underground renegade magic bullet systemic manipulation whatever the crap sound like bullshit, then, hey, maybe it is bullshit.


Goddamn, you're going strong to the hoop.  So you're saying the idea of carb backloading is, in essence, bullshit?

The concept might have some merit when it comes to helping people restrict calories, control cravings and take in an overall solid nutrient profile, but there’s no magic to it.  The concept of clinically significant modulated tissue response using your body’s natural hormones is bullshit.  Which, yes, basically undercuts the entire premise. If the tagline was “CBL- it’ll make you less hungry during the day and you’ll lose weight”, I’d say GREAT.  But no, it’s pages and pages of hyperbole and in-text citations to 20 year old studies on diabetics.


Christ almighty, I'm sure half of my audience has already rage-quit this article and has some half-formed, incoherent, all-caps diatribe against you and your family forming on their fingertips.  Half of Supertraining now wants you dead.  As such, it might behoove you to tell us with what, specifically, you disagree?

Oh man, I’d be doing you (and myself) a disservice if I tried to condense this into anything shorter than a novella.  We’re talking basic, basic stuff, things like the clinical insignificance of morning growth hormone pulses (i.e., the pulses are far too low to really affect muscle gain or fat loss in any meaningful way), a seeming lack of comprehension regarding digestion times and insulin peaks (particularly digestion of large meals- CBL as designed will have most people waking up with carbohydrates still digesting in their small intestine), flaws in understanding receptor kinetics and response to hormones (i.e. the entire concept of Modulated Tissue Response…and I’m not dignifying that with the trademark symbol, assumes you can cause selective expression of certain receptors in muscle as opposed to fat via resistance training and insulin regulation, but fails to understand that this selective expression is upended the moment you ingest ANY glucose.. unless you’re diabetic….  Which is why most of that cited research on diabetics here is not really relevant.).  This last part is the biggest problem, for me.  Any entire system based on a shaky foundation is, to me, completely suspect… and the foundation simply doesn’t hold water. Sort of like chiropractors.  Sure, you can seem to know what you’re talking about and can be right about a lot of things, but your entire field is based on quackery bullshit… so I’m not trusting you over a more reputable source.


You're the only other person of whom I know who knows that the founder of chiropractic/osteopathy was a med school dropout and out-and-out quack.  Mention that in some circles and people get very stabby in a hurry.  That motherfucker thought he could cure cancer by cracking the joints in peoples' skulls... nevermind the fact that they fuse when you're a child.  That science shit is SCARY.

Oh man.  The founder claimed you could heal people with magnets.  There are some good chiropractors out there who are really trying hard to become more scientific and restrict their practice to conditions that they might actually be able to treat, but… if they really wanted to be legit, they’d go into orthopedics. I think about it a little like Scientologists- you might seem like a rational, reasonable person who might occasionally have some good insights on life, but underneath it all your beliefs are batshit crazy. The only things I’d have a chiropractor treat outside of lower back pain are fibromyalgia and chronic Lyme disease [ed. aka Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever / Valley Fever for those of you outside of the NE United States.  I've no clue what they call it overseas, but I don't even know if they have ticks overseas].  Because nonexistent illnesses respond well to useless treatments...  (I’m going to catch some heat for this one).


Ok, so now just about half of the women in the United States want you dead, too.  You're making a lot of friends here.  So, in your opinion, is there any fact behind Kiefer's work, or do you just consider Carb Backloading to be a work of fiction?

There’s fact behind it somewhere.  Look, the guy did some homework.  Problem is, he did what most first year bio grad students do before they figure out how to really examine research- he looked at a few mechanisms in isolation, then figured these would translate to the real world.  Problem is, this ignores the reality of the human body.  I spent enough time in pharma to know that out of every 10,000 “can’t fail” perfect mechanisms discovered by some very very smart people (driven by money, so they got incentive), only 1 of them turns out to be applicable in the real world.  Most of these ideas sound great in theory, but when the systems involved are examined in more detail and all the body’s various homeostatic safeguards kick in, the ideas fall apart.  When you read this stuff (CBL), it’s really a lot of selective interpretation of data (Hell, his own references contract his statements and conclusions), hand-waving about MTR, and other “Trust me, I’m a scientist and I’ve read 40,000 studies”.  Bullshit.

A) Your PhD is in an entirely unrelated field, probably about as diametrically opposed to biochemistry as you can get.
B) Really READING a study, understanding it, analyzing it, reading its references, examining the mechanisms in question, cross referencing its conclusions, and otherwise being able to draw YOUR OWN conclusions from it takes HOURS and HOURS- there’s a reason that post docs have journal clubs to help them understand new research.  You do the math here.  If the 40,000 figure is true, then this most likely equates to about two or three minutes spent scanning each abstract and looking at pretty graphs.  

AAAAANNNNNNND now physicists want you dead as well, which is not all that awesome because they've apparently been building death rays with which to kill Obama.  Soon, the Japanese will send giant robots after you and you'll have to hide in the Nazi base on the dark side of the Moon.  Before you depart this Earth in a fiery blast of physicist-fueled rage, could you expand a bit on the insulin peaks?  I've been arguing this point with people since I first saw a powerlifting face those cookie sandwiches with the frosting in between the cookies postworkout.  To me, that shit seems like a recipe for the beetus.

Yeah, absolutely.  I think selective citation of clinical studies have done people in this community a tremendous disservice.  When people think insulin peaks, they think insulin spike, post workout anabolic windows, thirty minute periods of high levels that can be taken advantage of to shuttle nutrients into the body, etc.  The major problem- this is NOT how the body works the majority of the time.  Insulin spikes, followed by a return to baseline, are the norm in studies that test insulin response to foods because these are conducted on FASTED SUBJECTS.  These are people who have ZERO food in their guts who then take in small quantities of carbohydrates, which allows researchers to study the dynamics of glucose and insulin response.  For MOST of us, our insulin levels look like a sine wave that’s always above zero- they’re constantly rising and falling throughout the day in response to a semi-constant release of nutrients in the gut (insulin oscillation).  And it is a semi-constant release- very few of us are EVER in a truly fasted state, since food digestion is measured in multiple hours, not minutes.  Look at it this way- say I take in 500 grams of PURE sugar, as would be an ideal post workout carb meal as per CBL.  What ACTUALLY happens?  First of all, most of that will sit in the gut for hours- transporting sugar across the intestinal lining requires both ample amounts of water and ample amounts of sodium- too little of each and it just sits in the stomach (ever seen a distance runner puke up pure Gatorade even when totally dehydrated?  This is why- that sugar’s just sitting in the stomach sloshing around for hours, holding water there to maintain osmotic balance).  What then happens is a relatively slow absorption of sugar for the next 8-10 HOURS.  Yes, you get a huge insulin spike that then REMAINS elevated all night. Fact is, post-training is one of the WORST times to take in huge amounts of sugar, since not only are you probably slightly dehydrated, but your gut is also operating on low power mode (since your muscles are receiving most of the blood), further delaying gut emptying time.  Hence, you get a fat insulin spike that lasts for hours and hours.    You want a recipe for insulin resistance?  There you go.


I am not a fan of the post-workout carb-up either, but I imagine the hordes of people screaming for your blood are calling bullshit for lack of citations while stuffing their faces with Twinkies.  While you're pissing everyone off, though, would you mind expanding on Modulated Tissue Response as well?

Sure.  So the general idea here is that you can, and I quote, “give each tissue of the body a specific instruction, either through diet, activity or both.”  Generally speaking, this is a natural part of how the body works- each system operates under a set of rules and feedback mechanisms, and depending on the conditions it can operate in different ways.

Now there are two primary mechanisms that CBL discusses:

1. The overnight increase in insulin sensitivity, and 
2. non-insulin mediated glucose transport into muscle cells.  

First, just to recap, insulin has MANY purposes in the human body, but the most significant one here is its ability to cause glucose uptake by the cell.  Basically, when insulin encounters any nutrient storing cell (muscle, liver, fat, etc.), it binds to the insulin receptor, which then (simplify simplify) causes a glucose transporter receptor to come to the surface. It’s essentially telling these cells to “open their gates” to glucose.

There’s a problem with number 1.  The CBL book states “Both fat and muscle cells react strongly to insulin in the morning and less so as the day goes on, i.e. insulin sensitivity is high in the morning.”  …this is actually completely, 100% INcorrect.  Even his own references state the exact opposite (as does every biochemistry textbook ever written).  The body is insulin RESISTANT in the morning (the well documented “dawn phenomenon”), which means it is LESS capable of quickly storing excess glucose.  So, no, your fat cells won’t “soak up sugar like a fat kid with a gallon of melted ice cream and a straw” as the book states- quite the opposite., Now, the data supporting a few other claims based around this (Including all-day suppression of fat burning) is not really supported by any references- there is a SINGLE study done on ten volunteers where the researchers make this claim, but they themselves state it’s a theory, with more research needed.  At least somebody’s being responsible here.

As for number 2, there’s an even bigger problem with this.  When you’re exercising, your body is burning glycogen (even at low intensities, some is being used).  At high intensities (as when weight training), your muscles are using glycogen as its primary fuel source. In response, your body releases small amounts from your liver as glucose and dumps it into the bloodstream, with the goal of getting this sugar to the working muscles.  This is a small amount of sugar- not enough to cause an insulin response.  Now, as an adaptation, your muscles themselves, when stimulated by high intensity activity, signal their OWN cells to “open their gates” to glucose WITHOUT needing insulin to tell them to- this is precisely to facilitate uptake of this liver-sourced glucose by the muscles that need it most. The CBL argument is then, post exercise, you can take advantage of this selective response by flooding the system with sugar, and the muscles will take up a huge amount of it before insulin is released…  thus avoiding an insulin spike and minimizing fat storage.  Bzzt.  False.  The reason this is so studied for diabetics is because they do NOT release insulin naturally (or, in the case of type 2 diabetics, do not respond to it), so ANY non-insulin related expression of glucose receptors is beneficial- it’s one of the few ways the body can clear sugar from the system (which is toxic in high amounts).  For NON-diabetics, this isn’t a concern.  And, in fact, within SECONDS after taking in simple sugars, whether post workout or otherwise, your body releases JUST AS MUCH insulin as any other time of day. Insulin expression is not governed by the amount of receptors open on muscle cells, it is released a) by high levels of glucose in the blood, and b) on its own in pulses throughout the day. The few seconds that a handful of muscles have their glucose transporters open before the floodgates open are in no way clinically significant… you’d be talking maybe a few extra grams shunted into muscles as opposed to fat cells.  The reason is simple- there’s only so much glycogen storage capacity in your muscle cells, and even prolonged high intensity weight training won’t do much to drain these stores.  All they really need is a few grams to fill them up again, and any extra glucose simply floats on by, right to the fat cells it was destined for all along.

These are basic, BASIC fallacies.  It makes the book hard to read.


Well then.  Fatties are wheezing with rage and conspiring to kill you.  Before they heave their sweaty bulks out of their chairs and begin their labored-breath struggle towards their front door and vans equipped with chair lifts, I figure we can cover your endurance stuff.  You kind of sound like a powerlifting version of J. Stanton from Gnolls.org.  He's a huge fan of doing shit like hiking a mountain fasted and then going directly into the gym to deadlift to max.  Frankly, I think it's lunacy, but more power to you guys.  After all of the nonsense about the SEAL who ran a bunch of marathons while looking muscular, your take is refreshing in that you actually lift serious weights.  Since people are going to ask, how do you combine training for the two sports?

Funny you asked!  I actually have a series up about it on my website (So you want to run and be strong parts 1 and 2) that outline the framework.  I basically use a complex/parallel form of periodization for my lifting (alternating upper and lower max effort and dynamic effort/hypertrophy days), similar to Westside, but with more emphasis on straight weight and the competition lifts as opposed to frequent rotation.  For the endurance training, it’s basic block periodization (a la Verkhoshansky).  What really makes the system work, though, is that the programming is all integrated- the lifting and endurance pieces are not treated like separate components, every workout is programmed in with full consideration to the others.  This is usually the downfall of most combination attempts- few coaches or trainees are accustomed to, say, taking the duration or intensity of last week’s trail run (with ten minutes of hill repeats) into full consideration when deciding on the intensity and rep range of the second accessory lift during the next lower body day.  Lastly, I try to keep the systems as separate as possible- there is ZERO reason for me to incorporate barbell complexes or high intensity conditioning into my lifting workouts (as these do not benefit my endurance training as much as, say, running or biking), and there is zero reason for me to incorporate “strength” intervals into my running or cycling. (Pedaling in a high gear may increase leg strength for a typical cyclist, but I’d rather squat 600 for a few reps).


Agreed on the squatting.  Frankly, I'm still confused by your psychotic obsession with "endurance", but everyone has their faults.  How off base did you think I was, then, in my "Run and You Will Only Die Tired" series?

I thought it was pretty damn excellent- one of the best systematic breakdowns of the limitations of steady state LSD type training, any why the costs FAR outweigh the often limited benefits.  I definitely agree with most of your points- I would NOT recommend long duration steady state cardiovascular work for most folks.  It makes it hard to maintain muscle, harder to gain strength, and it’s not ideal for staying lean (you’re taking in huge amounts of calories to fuel energy…  take in too few, and you’ll drop muscle.  Take in too many, and you’ll just get fat.  Long distance training doesn’t make your body want to add on lean mass).  Add on to the fact that I agree most of us aren’t “born to run”… neither you nor I is built much like a Tarahumara.

There are still a few cases where I DO recommend low intensity steady state cardio, though, which tends to spark some disagreement.

1. First is, surprise, if low intensity steady state activity is the goal.  Put simply, if you’re looking to run a marathon, you have to run long distances.  Doing nothing but high intensity training may improve peripheral vascularity, stroke capacity, etc. etc., but doing enough volume here would result in ANY athlete burning out.  The long slow distance work is actually relatively easy to recover from, provided energy intake is high enough, and still results in a number of these same adaptations.  Much like you can’t go balls out with heavy max attempts and sets to failure every time you lift, you can’t trash your body every time you hit the track.  Other side of this is, if you don’t run long distances, you’ll never know what it’s like to run long distances.  There’s a reason why CrossFit Endurance’s founder didn’t finish a single ultra for years after adopting his own routine- there’s NO way 30-60 minutes of cardio can prepare you for what happens to your body after 15 hours on the trail.  You need to learn what you can eat, you need to learn pacing, you need to learn how to run after you’re bonked, you need to learn stride efficiency, etc.
2. The second is if you’re a top level powerlifter or strength athlete already pushing the ragged edge of your training envelope.  If your routine is designed to give you JUST ENOUGH time to recover from your workouts, you can’t afford to throw in additional high intensity work without experiencing some diminishing returns.  If you’re tearing your hamstrings to pieces three times a week in the weight room, and every time you get back in there you’re JUST recovered enough to push a little more weight, throwing in sprints or extra prowler pushes will do nothing but hinder that recovery (and if you find you CAN handle additional work, then squat more, you lazy bitch).  Far better for this type of guy to do a nice steady walk or slow jog for thirty minutes to get the heart rate up and improve cardiovascular endurance somewhat.  The impact to maximum strength and recovery will be absolutely minimal.

I generally don't stroke my cock as hard as you just stroked my ego.  In any event, I figure we ought to wrap this bitch up by having you divulge what diet to you recommend to your clients, and why.

If it fits your macros.  I tell them all to basically come up with a diet framework that accounts for about half their calories and gets in the basics of what they need- enough protein, enough good fats, and enough carbs.  What they do beyond that, as long as they don’t go batshit crazy high on the calories or starve themselves, is up to them. Calories, macronutrients, and training is 95% percent of this all.  Diet timing and hormone manipulation is the other 5%... I make sure they worry about the bigger things first.  The only time I really tell them to worry about exact macros and timing is either when they’re trying to make weight or during contest prep.  Period, full stop.  Thing is, no matter what you end up doing, there’s some diet system out there that probably has, at some point, claimed it’s the absolute best way to do things.  Between “8 small meals” old school bodybuilding lore, intermittent fasting, CBL, paleo, Mediterranean diets, the Warrior Diet, etc. etc., you’ve pretty much got the bases covered no matter what your eating habits are.


As I'm sure you know, my diet (the Apex Predator Diet) and Kiefer's Carbnite Diets are similar, and I think they're generally a far saner approach to fat loss.

Agreed.  What I read of your diet, it uses ACTUAL well-documented systemic processes to suppress appetite, minimize muscle loss, and still allow you a few days of normal eating to both maintain sanity and account for ANY micronutrients you could be eating.  I also like the fact that you recommend cycling calories- between that and the higher protein (which also keeps people eating a bit more), you definitely managed to fix some of the biggest problems I have with CKDs…  mainly that people starve themselves and wind up looking and feeling like shit when all is said and done.  I have to be honest, I haven’t read nearly as much on Carbnite- after reading CBL I sat under my kitchen table rocking back and forth alternately weeping and screaming at the cats for three days, I don’t think I could handle that again.  Neither could the cats.

Goddamn, I am awesome.  Well, guys, there you have it- a Duke biochemist powerlifter-endurance athlete's take on CBL.  I'm sure you guys will have 11,000 follow up questions, so feel free to bring the heat in the comments.  I'll shoot Kiefer an email to see if he feels like making this a debate, and if he does, I'll get you guys front row seats to the battle royale.  In the meantime, check out Alex's website here and direct your hatemail to alex.viada@completehumanperformance.com.

For every bitch who hits the "Dislike" button on these entries, there are ten emails and ten IMs and ten comments asking for more recommendations.  As I love pissing people off and enjoy a good review as much as the next guy, I'm happy to provide some reviews.  For those of you who hate these entries, have a big booty and a smile and shut the fuck up.

Movies You Should See, Stat
Iron Sky

This movie sat in my recommendations list on Netflix instant for months while I dithered about watching a movie I assumed would suck harder the least singer of Wham! in a rest stop bathroom.  Those were many months wasted, however, because this movie is one of the greatest unknown gems available for the general public's viewing pleasure today.  Set in a dystopic future in which a Michelle Bachman look- and sound-alike sends a black model to the moon as part of a publicity stunt, the moon lander touches down right on the edge of the dark side of the moon, whereupon one astronaut is clipped by a Nazi in a leather-trenchcoated spacesuit and the black model, spouting rather amusing ghetto slang, is captured.  Upon discovering the computing power of the iPhone, the Nazis send a landing party to Earth to secure more "supercomputers" to power the Nazis' ultimate weapon for the "pacification" of Earth.  Two of the landing party become aides to Bachman and utilize Naziesque propaganda to secure her reelection, upon the eve of which the remainder of the Nazis invade.  From space.  The movie is not only as good as it sounds- it's far, far better.  You will never forgive yourself for failing to see this priceless piece of Finno-German moviemaking.

The Woman

For some reason, I've been a fan of Jack Ketchum in the way the US government is a fan of the US Constitution- I like his stuff in theory, but in practice can't stand the sight of it.  So it was with the film adaptation of the predecessor to the Woman (the Offspring), and so it is with most of Ketchum's books.  The Woman, however, was astonishingly good.  I always enjoy a good condemnation of modern society in its comparison to the past, and even moreso enjoy seeing the hypocrisy of "Western civilization" thrown back in its face, and for this reason I couldn't have enjoyed The Woman more.  Set in the modern day, the Woman is a tale of a family whose well-to-do family man patriarch captures a feral girl in the woods and chains her up in his barn in an effort to "civilize her".  Predictably, the family's vague attempts at civilizing the girl are anything but, and though a violent psychotic, the feral girl is a sympathetic character in the face of the civilized world.  Topped off with some excellent revenge sequences, the triumph of "the uncivilized", and very cool plot twist at the end, you pretty much cannot not like this film.

A Serbian Film
Truth be told, I didn't watch all of this movie because I often spend as much time fucking during horribly twisted erotic horror films as I do watching them.  This film was even more fucked up than the German horror porn classic Nekromantik (which is an awesome film about a couple that has a long-term threesome with a rotting corpse), so much more fucking was required.  Description of the plot will then be somewhat difficult, but here goes- a world-famous Serbian porn star is contracted to make an epic but small-release "special" porn film, which turns out to be the most fucked up thing anyone's ever done, watched, or considered.  It features multiple murders, bestiality, necrophilia, incest, homosexual incest, homosexual rape, date rape, outright rape, infant rape, eyehole fucking, group suicide... the list goes on and on.  The film is so awesome that it's been in the home of the Inquisition (Spain), a nation-wide repository for violent criminals and thieves (Australia), a nation renowned for its inhabitants' cannibalistic tendencies (New Zealand), a nation well known for its big-booty scat porn (Brazil), and a couple of authoritarian nations that suck per their Constitutions. If you want to check out a film that inspires you to masturbate and consider killing yourself for the good of humanity at the same time, this film is for you.

Perhaps we need a bit of a cleanse after that review.


Your New Favorite Bands
It's rare that my jaw drops when I hear a band for the first time- most bands have such a hackneyed sound that it's like listening to any band on an alt rock radio station circa 2002.  Luckily, not every band on Earth sounds like Creed anymore, but there's still a general lack of innovation out of a lot of bands.  When I first heard Fear Factory's Demanufacture, my mind was blown by the speed and precision of the drumming.  When I heard Acacia Strain's 3750, I felt the same way about the utter bleakness, brutality, and hate pouring through the speakers.  Infant Annihilator managed to pull off both sensations simultaneously.  Never before have I been so surprised by a band than when I first heard Morbid Angel and Carcass in the same day- Infant Annihilator combines all the speed and aggression of American death metal, then adds the brutality of Acacia Strain, the technicality of Meshuggah and Veil of Maya, and finally slathers it with the goofiness of Anal Cunt or Agoraphobic Nosebleed.  If your tits aren't blown clean off by this band, nothing will astonish you, and there's a reasonably decent chance that you're clinically dead.  Were you to play IA on loudspeakers in Croatia, there's a decent chance there'd be a massive outbreak moshing in what were formerly Muslim mass graves, followed by an outbreak of hyperspeed brain-eating that would look like the end of Return Of The Dead in 36x fast forward.  Bear witness as they exercise their exorcism:

They also pulled off two of the best covers ever, which are available free on Mediafire- what is possibly Bring Me The Horizon's best song, Pray for Plagues, and the most annoyingly catchy song of all time, Gangnam Style.  If you like their shit, it's cheap on Bandcamp- support the band so they make more of this shit, as it is epic.

If Infant Annihilator gives you such hard eargasms that your bloody eardrums are splattered all over your neck like strawberry Pop Tart bukkake, you'll love Rings of Saturn and Signal The Firing Squad more than Aaron Hernandez loves incriminating himself in felonious acts.  Don't believe me?

Rings of Saturn is all of the technicality of IA with more noodly bits, atmospherics that would not be out of place in a Portishead song, and less silliness than you'd see in an Orthodox Jew's countdown of a store's register.

Signal the Firing Squad brings more brutality per second than most bands bring per lifetime.  Saddam Hussein's kids WISH they were this fucking brutal, and those motherfuckers threatened soccer players with dismemberment over a game in which scoring happens less often than Screech from Saved By The Bell gets laid.



Thy Art Is Murder

I was recently warned not to support Satanism, even as a goof, as support for the forces of evil only lends the people who control the world more power.  Given that absurdity, I've decided to throw the full weight of my support behind the Beast, and am rocking Thy Art Is Murder on the regular.  There are more breakdowns in TAIM songs than you'd see on a Cuban highway and more blasphemy than you'd see in a typical Westboro Baptist church sermon.  These motherfuckers would shank Jesus and pour acid in the Virgin Mary's eyes, just fucking because.  Though I don't condone hippie bashing, I do condone the everloving fuck out of Thy Art Is Murder.  If there is anything on Earth tougher than this song, I am unaware of its existence. If Jack Palance fucked a badger, this would be the soundtrack for their "love making".



Black Tongue

I bought Acacia's Strain's 3750 without having heard it, on the recommendation of a friend that nothing would ever be heavier than that band.  Brown Noise, the first non-noise track on 3750, blew out my car's two back speakers in the first bar, as I unwittingly had the shit turned way up and the bass maxed.  Thus, Acacia Strain's "Brown Noise" nearly fulfilled the promise of the song title, as their three drop A guitars proved too much for my stereo and nearly my bowels.  Acacia Strain's followups, however, have done nothing (in my opinion) to improve on the formula they created.  Luckily, however, Black Tongue's exploded onto the scene to pick up where Acacia Strain's first major release left off.  This shit is about to rape your soul with a cock made of pure hate.  Interestingly enough, I discovered while researching this blog that Black Tongue is Infant Annihilator's touring side band, which explains why they roll harder than a 1990's era Ultimate Warrior with a fistful of Viagra and a backpack full of d-bol and coke.


Drowning

Chicago's putting out the best hardcore in the US, bar none.  Drowning, then, is pretty much Eric Roberts in Best of the Best, in spite of the fact that they appear to be a pack of wiggers, a symptom of sucking.  Down-tempo, jam-packed with breakdowns, actually intelligible vocals, and an apparent desire to start fistfights whenever they're not starting riots.  For those of you who actually want a touch of melody, they have a tiny bit, which strikes me as weird as hell for a band that wants to do little more than make music to kick peoples' fucking heads in to.  Also, the first track off their upcoming album features Jorge from Merauder, which is fucking awesome.


Bonus:  Weird Bands OF Whom You've Almost Certainly Never Heard
Sikth

I honestly have no idea how to categorize these guys- they're unlike anything of which you might have ever heard.  If you took the bassist from Mudvayne, threw him into Dillinger Escape Plan, grabbed the vocalist from December (another unknown band you should also check out) and gave Serj Tankian another mike and a handful of acid, then locked the lot of them in a room with mental patients and between the Buried and me records, you'd get Sikth.  They're weird as fuck, cool as shit, and worth adding to your mp3 player for a bit of insanity.

Sub Dub Micromachine

Some of you will balk at this band, as they look like Slipknot if they got their costumes from a BDSM shop frequented by motocross fans.  You're missing out, though, as Sub Dub's a pretty badass changeup if all you listen to is deathcore and dubstep.  Additionally, this band defies description almost as hard as Sikth- they look industrial, which they're not, and they change sounds several times in almost every song.  They can shift effortlessly from Devildriver to Korn to Slipknot to Powerman 5000 and then drop in a Crowbar-esque breakdown for no fucking reason whatsoever.    For those of you who take yourselves far too seriously, you'll probably hate this almost as much as the people around you hate you.  For the rest of you, enjoy.


Dope D.O.D.

Quite frankly, I don't listen to a hell of a lot of rap, and honestly have no idea how I stumbled across this group.  Oddly, they hail from the Netherlands, a country generally associated with dikes and clogs and not much else, save perhaps for their Socialists' current ridiculous attempt to ban pornography in the European Union. On the opposite end of the spectrum from the loathsome hag heading that movement is Dope D.O.D., who've opened for Snoop Dogg, have cameos by rap legends Kool Keith and FUCKING ONYX on their latest album, and boast backbeats comprised mostly of dubstep.  Basically, these guys are the Geto Boys meet Natas updated for the 21st Century and overlaid on some dirty dubstep drops.  If you don't find yourself head-nodding to this shit, you should check your fucking pulse.



Books To Sate The Intellectual Black Hole Left By Comments On Internet Message Boards

The Joe Ledger series, by Jonathan Maberry
Jonathan Mayberry is one of the most underrated authors in mass market fiction today.  He's written a spate of novels in the last ten years that combine elements of sci-fi, thriller, espionage, and horror in every novel.  This series features Joe Ledger, a former cop recruited into a government quick response team for "abnormal" events like zombie outbreaks, Nazi mad scientist geneticists using cloned Neanderthals as slaves, and the like.  Always jammed with action, they read like a cross between Larry Correia and Vince Flynn, and the unique plots make for interesting reading.  i can see how he'd not be tremendously popular, as his works span too many genres to specifically appeal to any one demographic, but they're highly enjoyable reads and worth picking up to read on the plane or the beach.  If you don't mind starting in the middle of the series, you might want to start with the Dragon Factory, as it's the best of the bunch in my opinion.


Infernal City series, by Edward Lee
The first in what is now a four book series, Lee smashes erotica and splatterpunk together to make one of the best horror series of all time.  In the Infernal City series, a variety of different houses serve as gateways to hell, which exists as a mirror of our own world and repository for damned souls.  In hell, bio-electricity created from the torture of souls replaces electricity, there are zones in which demons spontaneously arrive and slaughter everyone around, and bones, organs, and flesh comprise the brick, mortar, and fabric of Hell's civilization.  It'd be dark as shit if half of it wasn't hilarious and the other half didn't leave you ready to fuck a hole in a cinder block wall- instead, it's just randomly fantastic.  The whole concept drips with insanity and is generally awesome.

Due to popular demand, and by that I mean people outright demanding we rekindle the series, we've changed our format slightly and the medium by which we're transmitting it.  Given that neither of us has any interest in figuring out how to put something on iTunes, we've put it up on Youtube, from which you can rip your own mp3 and put it on whatever device you so choose.  I spent a lot of unnecessary time finding the images, which are of Ashley Blue, Alexis Texas, Lucy Pinder, Geisa Vitorino, Fabi Froto, Holly Peers, and a couple of other Nuts girls.  In the even you're playing this thing and happen to look at the screen at any point, you shouldn't be disappointed.

Every time I've had a picture taken of myself in the last couple of years, I've heard from my friends that I have a tiny head.  Not Beetlejuice tiny, but damn small in comparison to my body.  Most of that, it seems was attributed to the size of my neck, which while not superhuman certainly isn't the pipe cleaner most guys seem to have holding up their heads.  I've already outlined the myriad ways I've built my neck over the years, but it stands to reason one might need a bit more variety than I offer.  Unlike most people, I'm perfectly content to eat the same two things day in and day out, do the same lifts (by and large) and endlessly repeat the same Groundhog Day-esque life of wake, fuck, work, train, fuck, watch Top Gear UK, fuck, sleep day in and day out for years- clearly, variety is not the spice of my life.


Clearly, the first place to start when looking at big necks would be wrestlers.  Known since time immemorial for having necks that more closely resembled tree trunks than normal human soft tissue anatomy, wrestlers focused on neck training out of necessity- it's hard to win a match when your opponent can smash your teeth out on the ground by leaning on you a bit.  The Greeks were known for their heavy musculature and obsession with training to physical perfection, so there's little point in investigating their methods- when they weren't lifting or wrestling, they were stomping around Europe wearing helmets that weighed almost twenty pounds.  As such, they'd basically have a neck as thick as their thigh or their head would fall the fuck off every other Wednesday.  In the interest of finding out what guys who weren't literally forced to rock huge necks, we have to look to India, current land of the 11" neck and the 44" waistline on a 150lb man.


The greatest of all Indian wrestlers is pretty much universally acknowledged to be the Great Gama.  Gama ran a mile every day with a 120 lb stone ring around his neck, then did his traditional bridging movements to build his neck further.  While Gama can't be used as an example of a typical pehlwan due to the fact that no one ever watched his workout from start to finish (due to their extreme length- Gama trained harder and longer than anyone had the patience to watch), his neck isn't terribly atypical of what you'd see in pehlwan at the height of Indian wrestling preeminence (Alter).  As a general rule, however, Indian wrestlers performed dhakuli, in which you begin in a kneeling position in a wrestling pit. From there, you lean forward and place your head on the ground, and then shift your weight to your head, driving it into the ground. At that point, you do a quick headstand, then twist so you land on your knees facing the opposite direction.  This builds massive neck strength, as well as balance.  To further build their necks, Indian wrestlers also performed the basic neck bridge I outlined in the previous entry.  Rather than add weight, however, Indian wrestlers typically added resistance by arching and then rolling from the back of their head to their forehead, switching from a back to a front arch, stepping over one leg so that they rotate in a circle around the axis of their head.


While all of that is well and good, most of us really don't give a fuck what people who wipe their ass with their left hand have to say about much of anything, much less lifting.  That said, I decided to get some neck training tips from a man who lives in a slightly more first world section of the worst of the third world.  Terence Mitchell is the owner and proprietor of Off The Grid Athletic in an unpronounceable city in South Africa.  Interestingly, Terence's gym is one of the nicest I've ever seen, something you'd not expect on the "dark continent".  Putting it to full use, Terence has taken time out of his busy deadlifting and overhead pressing schedule (Terence has the worst mental barrier to a 605 deadlift anyone's ever seen and has been training deads like a maniac as a result) to do a shitload of neck, and is currently rocking a 19" neck at a bodyweight of 200 lbs. Given that his neck's incredibly large for someone so light, I asked him for a little insight into his neck workouts.  As it happens, his approach is pretty similar to my own- just like Nick Manning in a porn shoot, we hit it hard, heavy, and with a shitload of volume.  Terence's favorite two neck exercises are neck harness extensions and weighted neck crunches, which he has been doing twice a day, six days a week of late.  Consistency is key to success in his opinion, as are high reps and extremely strict form- he busts out 100 reps of each exercise in each neck workout using 25kg for sets of 50 reps on the neck harness and a 45lb plate for 50 reps on plate raises. He worked up to that weight and volume, so start with a weight you can get for 50 reps and go up from there.


If Terence's small neck apartheid isn't to your liking, you've still got a shitload of weighted neck training options.  You could try my ultra-simple option with an ab strap and a cable crossover or lat pulldown machine, or try one of Steve Helmicki's options, which as you are about to see are more numerous than lesions on the inside of a Transnistrian prostitute's pussy.  Bear in mind that while I fixed glaring errors and formatting, these are his words, not mine (Helmicki, pp. 14-19)

It's no secret that I've long espoused the myriad benefits of jerking off as a method for unchaining your inner beast so you can go out and dominate heavy things in particular and life in general.  Perhaps that's due to the fact that I'm trying to justify my formative years, much of which were spent like a juvenile spider monkey, abusing myself like I was a one man bdsm show and my cock was my gimp.  Perhaps, however, it's because I know what I'm fucking talking about, and given the fact that I've actually done my research, it's highly likely that both reasons are equally valid.  To clarify a bit more, however, my interest in the promotion of masturbation as a useful endocrinological activity stems in large part from the fact that I learned, at a rather heavy cost, exactly what the abstention from masturbation accomplishes, and it likely does not take much inductive reasoning to come to the conclusion that it worked out about as well for me as Aaron Hernandez's imitation of Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction worked for him.


One summer in college I somehow found myself in a conversation with a geriatric at my gym who still boasted veins on his biceps that rivaled my own, currently.  At the time I was still in heavy pursuit of what my friends and I had dubbed "the Arnold veins", and so I naturally assumed any man with the requisite muscularity and leanness to boast them under skin ensconced in liver spots likely knew what the fuck he was talking about.  As such, when he told me that his strength and virility came from abstention from both sex and masturbation, as spilling his seed was a waste of his vitality, I soaked the information up like a Bounty paper towel and resolved to quit cold turkey.  This was not easy- I've masturbated two or more times a day since I was in second grade, and falling asleep without jerking off was then and is now about as likely as Verne Troyer successfully dunking on a basketball hoop without the use of a jetpack.  Nevertheless, I gave it hell, and for about a year I jerked off to completion somewhere between twice and four times a month.  Proud of my "self control", I waited patiently for Brodin to bless me with the gains for which I prayed nightly.  They did not arrive, but what did was a horrifying case of erectile dysfunction when I attempted to have sex that was as breathtaking as it was infuriating.  It wasn't that I couldn't get it up- my erections became penile strobe lights, flashing on and off without rhyme or reason and not allowing either party to cum.  In a panic, I scheduled a doctor's appointment with a urologist, who proceeded to laugh out loud when I explained what I'd done (or not done, as the case may be) for the last year.  That's right- a panicky 23 year old was nearly laughed out of a medical doctor's office, so stupid was his mindset over the last year.  After assuring me my dick would stop randomly playing dead during sex if I followed his advice, he sent me on my way with "Buy some Penthouses (not Playboys) and masturbate as often as possible, and no fewer than three times a day" scribbled in chicken scratch on a prescription sheet.


You can see, then, why I wish to expose the people who would have you believe that abstention from masturbation and frequent sex as the lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-assed, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sacks of monkey shit that they are.  Not only is their reasoning flawed- they misunderstand science worse than Young Earthers, lack competitive spirit, and are (to borrow a phrase I generally find ridiculous but is perfect for this) beta as fuck.


It should come as no surprise to you that the progenitor of the anti-masturbation/No Fap movement on Reddit is a closeted Christian homosexual who stopped jacking it so Jesus wouldn't toss his ass into the universe's largest barbecue.  That falls right in line with the historical anti-masturbation movements, all of which were motivated by Christians who were terrified that their terrible Jewish overlord in the sky would suddenly decide one of the half-million contradicting minor rules and forgettable platitudes he bleated over the last two thousand years would suddenly be the most important of them all.  Nevermind the Ten Commandments, these assholes were scouring every inch of their holy book of Hebrew fables to vilify every fucking activity they possibly could.  As such, masturbators in New Haven, Connecticut were eligible for the death penalty if caught, and masturbation was thought to lead to illness and death in puritanical circles for a couple of hundred years.  Like the anti-masturbatory psychotics of the modern era, those of bygone days had all sorts of beliefs about the evils of masturbation with no relation to reality whatsoever.  For instance, they though masturbation caused:

• vomiting
• nausea
• weakening of the organs of breathing
• coughing
• hoarseness
• paralysis
• weakening of the organ of generation to the point of impotence
• lack of libido
• back pain
• disorders of the eye and ear
• total diminution of bodily powers
• paleness
• thinness
• pimples on the face
• decline of intellectual powers
• loss of memory
• attacks of rage
• madness
• idiocy
• epilepsy
• fever
• suicide
• disturbances of the stomach and digestion
• loss of appetite or ravenous hunger [ed- this is one of my personal faves, as it pretty much covers the whole range of appetites]
• a perceptible reduction of strength, of memory and even of reason
• blurred vision
• all the nervous disorders
• all types of gout and rheumatism
• weakening of the organs of generation
• blood in the urine
• disturbance of the appetite
• headaches
• such as affection of the liver and lungs
• neuralgia
• rheumatism
• affection of the spine
• diseased kidneys
• cancerous tumors

The meta-psychotic inventor of Corn Flakes, John Harvey Kellogg, routinely burned off broads' clitorises and sewed guys' foreskins shut to prevent masturbation, which is an insight into exactly how wrong-headed and psychotic anti-masturbation campaigners are.  You might also find it interesting that no two anti-masturbation campaigners identified the same deleterious effects from masturbation.  This is, of course, because like the modern proponents of masturbation abstention, their reasoning is basically a giant bowl of lies drowned in pants-shitting insanity gravy and topped with little sprinkles of misplaced religious zealotry.  There are likely castratos with more fact-based opinions on masturbatory health effects than these idiots, and the Voynich Manuscript provides a far better example of well-reasoned argumentation despite the fact it's written in a gibberish language.  I would sooner entrust Edward Scissorhands with the care of an infant than I would a no-fap psychotic with computer access.  In short, taking the words of a no-fapper as truth is tantamount to hanging on every word of a lecture on feminism delivered by a Muslim man who punctuates the end of every sentence by punching a pregnant infidel in the stomach and beats his wife every ten minutes to improve the circulation in his hands.


In the past, I've stated strongly that test levels are raised when one ejaculates frequently.  As there are studies that back this and others that refute it, I've found myself defending myself against eunuchs who are barely literate enough to frame their rebuttals in human English.  Hopefully, however, I've found the Fat Man to their Nagasaki- at no point in any of the studies testing testosterone levels in relation to orgasm do the scientists involved take note of free testosterone or sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG).  The contentions of the no-fappers are that refraining from masturbation will raise your total testosterone levels to unprecedented levels and thereby result in extreme hypertrophy and Ron Jeremy-like sexual prowess.  Though a quick glance at the profile of any poster in a no fap forum will immediately disabuse you of the veracity of their claims, science comes to the rescue to encourage everyone to grab their cocks and jerk like they're trying to rip-start a particularly recalcitrant lawnmower.   The No Fap movement is entirely based (at least scientifically based) on a Chinese study that showed a 46% one-day increase in total testosterone after seven days of abstention.


The problem here, is that it's free testosterone, not total testosterone, that is the hormone that really matters.  Additionally, total testosterone has been shown not to be a reliable indicator for free testosterone in most men (Anawalt).  For those of you who are as unaware of the importance of free testosterone and SHGB in your bodies, bear this in mind- only about 2% of your total testosterone is free testosterone. That means that only 2% of the testosterone in your body is biologically active, and only 2% of your body's testosterone is available to help in the muscle-building process.  Additionally, it's free testosterone and SHBG levels that are significantly correlated with orgasmic function and/or erectile function (Ahn).  High levels of free test correlate with positive erectile function, whereas high levels of SHBG correlate strongly with erectile dysfunction- total testosterone doesn't factor into the equation.  Thus, if you have higher total levels of testosterone but increased SHGB, you should theoretically have the sexual function and hypertrophy results of... any poster on a no fap forum, which is to say, none of either.  Science again has my back here, as a study of epileptics placed on anti-convulsant medication found that although total testosterone and luteinizing hormone were increased, the concurrent rise in SHGB and fall of free test led to diminished sex drive and erectile dysfunction (Toone).

I am, of course, simply speculating on the free testosterone/total testosterone/SHGB idea, but I wanted to point out that studies showing increased total testosterone are completely useless for showing the efficacy of infrequent masturbation.  What is plainly evident to scientists, however, is that a lack of intercourse makes your dick throw in the towel like it was a fat white tomato can in the ring with Mike Tyson fresh out of prison.  In other words, "the risk of erectile dysfunction was inversely related to the frequency of intercourse" (Koskimäki).  Another study showed that masturbation was an excellent method for resolving erectile dysfunction (Sue).  As erectile dysfuntion is inversely correlated with free testosterone levels, it stands to reason that frequent sexual activity may well raise free testosterone levels.   Even if the eunuchs are correct, however, and they do enjoy a one day spike in their free testosterone after seven days of abstinence, they're potentially sacrificing a day of increased hypertrophy a week for a lifetime of broke-dick cuckolding at the hands of a woman who happens to like guys with working dicks (that would be about 93% of them, i.e. all non-lesbians).  If that's your thing, fine- strap on a chastity belt and rock out with your cock locked- I will caution you, however, that neither anecdotal nor scientific evidence supports the idea that cuckolds are jacked.


The very fact that I felt it necessary to spend time researching this topic turns my stomach- the no fap premise is so counter-intuitive and asinine that its existence defies logical explanation.  The fact that they feel comfortable discussing their newfound sexual prowess after a period of abstention is even more ridiculous- it's like that obnoxious fat bitch at the gym who feels confident giving advice about dieting to everyone around her because she was allegedly able to see her abs once.  While dating a person of whom no one had ever heard, who lived out of state.  And another dimension.  You know- that dimension in which people with 30% body fat can see their abs and idiots who fuck once fortnightly break off nuts like porn stars and make chicks cum so hard it looks like they've got Parkinsons, Bell's Palsy, and epilepsy.  In summary, proponents of the no fap movement are lying sacks of weak sauce, scrawny, socially retarded, Christian fundamentalist dogshit with no understanding of science and even less understanding of human sexuality.

Sources:
Ahn HS, Park CM, Lee SW.  The clinical relevance of sex hormone levels and sexual activity in the ageing male.  BJU Int. 2002 Apr;89(6):526-30.

Sue D.  Masturbation in the in vivo treatment of impotence.  J Behav Ther Exp Psychrot.  1978 Mar;9(1):15-16.

Recently, I received an email from a gym owner in which he threw a lot of credit at me for championing high-volume, ultra-heavy training in an America obsessed with 10 minute abs and using beginner lifting programs for years on end.  If, of course, took every ounce of credit for inventing the idea and proceeded to lay claim to the invention of the question mark, the concept of perpetual motion, and having resolved the unified field theory at a picnic when I was twelve.  If you hadn't caught on, that's hyperbole- I only laid claim to the question mark.  In any event, I came to find that my new best friend was in fact far more interesting than your average person, as he competes in strength sports and participates in my favorite spectator sport- Ninja Warrior.  As such, I decided to ask Chaos and Pain's answer to Michael Dudikoff a variety of questions about his training, as getting different perspectives is generally the best way to learn.  Our Michael Dudikoff's name is Nate Aye, and here is the interview:


First, give everyone a little a little background on yourself.  Summarize the book you've already written me, add in whatever you like, but perhaps refrain from repeating the House Of Leaves-style delivery you busted out initially.  There are many reasons I've never recommended a book by Mark Z. Danielewski on CnP, not the least of which is the fact that anyone who's been photographed wearing a fedora should be beheaded on national television.

I'm 28 years old, 5'9'' on a good day and hover around 170-175 lbs. I'll try to keep this narrative relatively short, and I'll elaborate where necessary if you want me to include something. So here it goes:

I graduated high school in 2002, where I was a 4 year varsity wrestler, state placer, and holder of multiple records which still stand to this day, including single season takedowns (238), most tech falls, fastest techfall (1:58) and a few others. I finished my HS career at 135 lbs, where I was a weight cutting jackass, dropping about 15 pounds a week subsisting on naught but skoal and little whatever food wouldn't put me over on the scale.


Just out of curiosity, what was your go-to takedown?  We had a kid on our team in high school who likely was similar to you- a takedown specialist.  He'd win all of his matches by tech fall after taking his opponents down and letting them up over and over.  He grew up playing judo, so his inside trip was pretty much unstoppable.  I, on the other hand, pretty much only used the Russian double.  I was not, however, a particularly good wrestler.  My goal was just to make it to whatever period would give me top and immediately go for the pin after hurting my opponent as much as possible.

Arm drags and duck unders were my bread and butter. But I also made it a point to put on a clinic every time I stepped onto the mat. My goal was not to hurt, but rather to humiliate.
I turned down multiple college offers and decided to join the Marine Corps.There are myriad reasons I joined the military, some personal, but mostly I wanted to test myself and experience the challenge.  I was still 17 years old when I left home and "celebrated" my 18th birthday in bootcamp. I became and 0311/Rifleman and learned how to kill motherfuckers. At this time the invasion in Iraq had not yet kicked off, but rumors were flying and we knew shit was about to go down.

Though I have no idea what would possess you to skip scholarships for the Marines, continue with your life story- I appear to be the one turning this shit into House of Leaves this time around.

During my time in the service, I deployed to Iraq and various other parts of the world 3 times. During my 1st deployment, I volunteered for the Scout/Sniper indoc, managed to pass, and spent the next 2 1/2 years with the sniper section. I failed the first time I went to the school and never got a chance to go again, but I was an assistant team leader in my sniper team. Lost some good friends, and a lot of brain cells.

In 2006, on my last deployment to Anbar province, my vehicle was struck by an IED. Thankfully, we all walked away, but I lost consciousness and suffered a class 3 concussion. I believe that rates a purple heart, but my higher-ups were too lazy and I haven't bothered to try and get it corrected. It seems petty compared to the guys who got killed or fucked up.

The operation tempo was really high, and we were carrying loads in excess of 100 pounds in 120 degree heat. Needless to say I withered down to 145 pounds.

After I got out of the Marines, I stayed in Cali for a little while, messed around and basically spent the next 6 months doing nothing but training for MMA. A surfer dude I used to roll with introduced me to CrossFit and it was a good match.

To that point, I was doing basically bodypart splits and then a bunch of bodyweight in conjunction with a ton of BJJ and Boxing.

I took a brief hiatus from training in order to deploy to Baghdad as a protective security specialist with a small company. They were fucked up and the situation was incredibly dangerous, as this was at the height of sectarian violence in Baghdad and just before the troop surge. After a few short months, I got the hell out of there. That's a story best told over beers.

Anyway, mid 2007, wasn't sure what I was going to do with my life, started working as a vet tech, found out my wife was pregnant with our first son. I fought a few times in MMA, still doing CrossFit, then I got recalled back into the military. A Marine I served with was working with a more reputable company overseas and promptly got me job there. So I found myself back in Baghdad in 2008, just after my son was born.

I started training my friends and designing post-partum workouts for my wife, and found I had a knack for it.

In 09 I opened a CF affiliate. I had my last fight in fall of 09. My training was not where it should have been and I got another pretty good concussion. I had bed spins for 3 nights and had to sleep sitting up. Said fuck that, and decided I wanted to get bigger and stronger.

Did some competitive CrossFit and qualified for the regionals. I placed 17th out of 130+ competitors, but the vibe just wasn't for me. As Kenny Powers put it, I play real sports, I'm not trying to be the best at exercise. So I started doing less conditioning and more strength work and keeping bodyweight in the mix, and got better. In 2011 I did my first strongman comp and finished dead last. I did ok on some events, as I was able to use good o-lift techniq and I taught myself how to continental clean.

Last year, I dropped my affiliation with CrossFit, and rebranded my gym as "Golden Age Strength Club". Basically, I wanted to get back to my roots and my true passion for training, as MMA was out of the picture, and I wanted to pay homage to the greats of yesteryear.

Now, I compete a couple times a year in strongman, which now has a 175 lb. class and I've been on American Ninja Warrior the last 2 years.

As much as I'd love to hear about you shooting assholes in the Mideast with bullets dipped in pig fat, I suppose most everyone else cares about your lifting.  Thus, hit us with some of your best lifts, in the gym and in competition.

Gym Lifts
Squat- 395 X 3, 405 X 1
1-Arm Barbell Press- 135 X 1
Bench- 290 ( i don't do it often, shitty shoulder from wrestling)
Pullups- 39 from a dead hang on a fat bar.
Strict Press- 185 lb
Tire Flip- 1000 lb
Log Press- 250 lb log press
Axle Clean and Press- 255 lb

Competition Lifts
Circus Dumbbell Press- 130 lb
Push Press- 275 lb (state record)
Clean and Jerk- 275 lb (state record)
Deadlift- 500
Axle Deadlift- 500 X 6 (pick was just below knees)


Whew- 275 C&J is a state record?  I think we've just identified the reason why we haven't medaled much in olympic lifting in the last 60 years.  What's your training like?  I assume you're a high volume guy, but how do you break up your training for such disparate goals?

Good question, I follow a loose template and kind of modify it based on my schedule, how I'm feeling and what I want to do that day. But my basic breakdown is:

Monday- Squat and press, I usually go in weeks of 5s, 3s, 2s, and 1s. I aim for 3-5 sets sometimes more, sometimes less. Then I'll do some rows of some kind and lighter presses.

Tuesday and Thursday- Bodyweight, which I rotate between strength, volume, and skill or a blend of these. For example, on a volume day, I'll put a weight vest on and do push/pull, every grip variation you can imagine and do small sets, like 10-20 sets of 5-20 reps. On a strength day, I'll do heavier weighted stuff, and on skill day, I'll try to practice things like press into handstand, levers, and ring work. Sometimes I'll do combos and throw in odd lifts. Like yesterday, I did 1-arm deads and handstands.

Wed- I deadlift and bench or press. I try to get a good variety in pressing different implements and pulling different implements. Might be trap bar, deficits, sumo, farmers handles, whatever. Same with bench. I like more reps on bench and fewer on pulls. Then I'll shrug, row, do pullups and dips.

Friday- Squat with a specialty bar or onto a box and pressing with odd objects. More bodyweight, and arms.

Saturday- Either strongman or ninja warrior depending on the season.

Sidenotes- I like to do some plyos, and a lot of my extra work comes from just playing around climbing and just fucking about in the gym.


Do you kip your pullups in training?  If so, why?  If not, why not?

No I don't kip (anymore). Here's the deal, kipping is an important skill. Especially if you are interested in Ninja Warrior, however, lets think about what a kip really is: it's what gymnasts do to GET ON THE APPARATUS and do REAL GYMNASTICS!!!!!! Show me one real gymnast who reps out kipping pullups. You can't. Why? Because it's fucking stupid, that's why. Most people lack the requisite strength in the shoulder girdle to make kipping safe and effective. If you can't heave your bulk over the bar with out flailing about like some kind of inner city krumper, you're asking for double SLAP tears. I've seen it happen, thankfully never to any of my clients, but due to my proximity to a major airport, I used to get a lot of visiting crossfitters, you get the idea.


I completely agree on the kipping pullups- they're an awesome way to tear a rotator cuff, and that's about it.  They would seem to be useful for Ninja Warrior, though, as a method for easily climbing obstacles.  Would you agree?

Allow me to elucidate. I don't think including kipping pullups is useful, namely because of the shoulder risks. However, when I train people to do things like salmon ladder or muscle ups, we learn the proper technique of kipping. Specifically, the kipping swing. As soon as someone is competent in the swing, then we start doing the real stuff, like clapping pullups, muscle ups, and salmon ladder. That's not to say that when I'm hitting high numbers of pullups, a little bit of kipping sneaks in there to hit a few more reps, that's not a big deal. Bottom line, get the strength first, because if the strength is there, your shoulders are protected.


Your squat number is the same as Rich Froning's I think, which is pretty much a disgrace, especially against your other numbers.  What the fuck is with Crossfit and back squatting?  It seems like Crossfit affiliation is tantamount to AIDS of the cancer for one's back squat.  Any idea why?  Do you just not train it that hard?

Ah, I knew that was coming. In my defense, that was the last time I legitimately "maxed" back in March I believe. Since then a couple weeks ago, I did 425X2 with a safety squat bar off a box....either way, I know my squat is nothing to thump my chest about...yet. There are a number of reasons, which will probably shed light on the situation. For myself personally, I've suffered numerous setbacks due to minor injuries. Nothing serious, but enough to pretty much derail me on basically a quarterly basis for the last 2 years. Rolled ankles, knee tweaks, hip stuff. So for a while I was making one step forward and 2 steps back. I started lifting young, but it was always and after thought. I played football for a few years in high school, but I fucking hated it. That, and I also wrestled year-round. I probably averaged around 120 matches per year in high school, and when I wasn't wrestling, I was working with my dad installing hardwood floors in order to pay for my wrestling, or screwing around. That being said, I originally started training with barbells for strength at the end of 2010 and was doing 3X5 linear progressions on and off.

To give a broader answer though, with CrossFit as a whole, if you look at "main page" programming, they are only doing 3-4 heavy lifting sessions per month. As a CrossFit affiliate owner, you have the freedom to design the program however you want to, most people just shit in their palm and smear it all over a whiteboard. Problem is, you get a lot of chicks as clients in a  CF gym, they avid heavy lifting like the plague, and if you make too many of your workouts heavy lifting, they leave in droves and you go broke....finally, I stopped giving a fuck and the ones who stuck with it got great results.

A couple of supporting albeit "random" thoughts:

-much of my physical activity over the last 15 years was endurance related. Especially in the military. If and when I did get to lift, it was mostly bodybuilding style shit workouts. I never, ever, trained legs. Why the fuck would I want to after putting in dozens of miles per week on mountainous terrain with 50-100 pounds on my back? Then we ran a lot and did calisthenics.


Your comments on the squat make sense, in a rather depressing romcom sort of way.  You're like the Jason Segel of the strength world. Hopefully, we can avoid any singing about how misunderstood Dracula is. Back before I realized how ridiculous running is, I aped Bruce Lee and ran daily.  As I would only run 3 miles at a dead sprint when I did run, however, I never really ran into much of a problem with squatting.  Squatting was a once a week thing I did because that's what you're supposed to do, I guess.  I honestly cannot recall a week in which I didn't squat, though, going back to high school.  Even when injured, I was still squatting in the smith machine, on the body master machine, or with a safety bar.  I'd imagine that would account for much of my ridiculous squat- consistency goes a long ways.

Given the state of your squat and your litany of excuses for it, haha, have you given any thought to competing in push pull meets? 

Sure, I love competing. I might not be setting any records any time soon, but I still consider myself "green" in terms of strength sports. I'm only 28 years old, I've only been legitimately lifting heavy for a couple of years. I'm just getting started.
Gotcha.  Now, onto a topic that doesn't make people break into hives (both CrossFit and dieting seem to annoy the fuck out of people lately)- I've had a ton of people ask me why I've not done Ninja Warrior, as I love the shit out of it and my bodyweight strength is excellent.  What they fail to realize, however, is that you need to be flexible, and I'm of the opinion that only gymnasts can touch their toes.  Would you agree with that statement?

Not really. If you can sit in the 3rd world squat position and lengthen your stride both forward and laterally, you're good to go. Aside from something like the spider jump, which statistically speaking, is a non-issue as so few competitors ever even make it that far. If you can jump over a mud puddle, you're good to go.

I'd imagine if you cut off both of my legs and then severed them at the knees, then glued it all back together in the third world squat, I might be able to hold that position for 3 to five seconds.  I can jump a puddle, on a good day, without pulling anything.  Perhaps there is Ninja Warrior in my future.  Should I decide to go that route, how would you recommend I go about training for it?  Do lots of climbing?

Nah, you should probably just give up. You wouldn't make it past the quintuple steps...In all seriousness, I'm a geek for training and technique, I have a tendency for obsessing over certain things, and a subsequent knack for being able to observe and dissect and apply whatever it is to my own purposes. The first time I got on the show, I did no specific training for it, as I found out about the tryouts, put a submission video together, and drove to Dallas for last year's regional in the space of 2 weeks.

If you dig around, you'll notice that the courses follow a certain pattern. If you understand the pattern, you know that regardless of the obstacle there are only a few basic skills you need to get good at in order to be prepared for whatever is in front of you. It basically boils down to balance, jumping, hanging/climbing, and the mental game.


I wasn't actually being serious about Ninja Warrior- I pull a calf every time I sprint, and would probably tear a hamstring on the first obstacle.  Additionally, I don't give much of a shit about technique on anything- brute strength and a ridiculous hatred of losing is how I win shit.  I was actually attempting to get your opinion on how anyone would go about training for Ninja Warrior, if they were so inclined.  Were I to program for it, I'd likely limit heavy training to two days a week and focus the rest of the time on jumping and climbing- box jumps, long jumps, jumps to a hang, etc, then just throw my ass up a rock wall as many times as possible for a couple of hours.

Come on man! Here's my quick and dirty: I approach it similar to the way many strongman competitors do, where they focus on basics and usually do event training maybe once per week. I lift consistently 3 days, do just bodyweight and some plyos the other 2 and train on obstacles 1-2 times. During the "pre-season" if you will, I lift M,W,F, Bodyweight/plyo/recovery activities T/Th, and train obstacles Friday night and Saturday morning.

Realizing that most people don't have access to a training course, I would recommend hitting up open gyms at gymnastics facilities, "free-running", or at the very least, familiarizing yourself with either elementary gymnastics skills and/or some "primal movement" type shit, like Erwan Le Corre. I often incorporate gymnastics drills from my 5 year old son's gymnastics class, and you would be surprised at just how bad many people suck at moving. Simply put, be able to do anything on a playground a 7 year old can.

I have never in my life heard of "primal movements" or Erwan LeCorre.  Both sound suspiciously French and ridiculous-even-without-the-metrosexuality-drenched-in-mayonnaise on the other.  As I find the French and mayo equally disgusting, we shall just avoid that topic altogether and move on.  

It seems like grip strength is really the most important factor in Ninja Warrior, and would play a very large part in success in strongman.  Most of the contestants on the new season of American Ninja Warrior seem to be failing on the nunchuks, which is pure grip strength.  I would think rope pullups, rope climbing, and lots of pinch grip work, in addition to mountain climber pullups (finger tip pullups) would put you in prime position to kick ass in NW, and would also translate nicely to strongman.  Would you agree?  How big are your forearms, and how do you train them and grip?

I would generally agree with that. In regards to the nunchuks, I don't think grip strength is nearly as much of a factor as the coordination and body position when making the transition. As an aside, according to first hand accounts of people who were on the course that night, there is a lot of mist in the air at Venice, and moisture on the obstacles was a big problem.

To address the point, grip is important, but not the end-all. Again, if you look at it statistically, you have about a %0.0004 chance of making it to stage 3 where grip becomes really important. Rather than focussing on grip, the focus should be on being able to keep the arms bent when hanging on an obstacle. On any uppor body oriented obstacle, people fall for one of 2 reasons. Either a technical error/flub, or they were just too weak and their arms straighten out. Once the arms straighten out, you're done. By climbing, deadlifting, rowing, pulling, swinging, etc. Grip is a byproduct of being strong.

To summarize, you need to be able to climb and transition from a controlled kip into a swing or vice versa, and muscle up, while fatigued and under pressure.

I don't really do any grip specific training. I'm of the opinion that grip training is for people who are too fat and lazy to do anything else. I will however do pullups on a fat bar, and stuff like that, and I'll mess around from time to time. But I don't dedicate specific work to training grip.

I just measured my forearms: right 14 3/4" left 14 1/4 "


Someone over at Diesel Crew just went Scanners on the deal and had their head explode.   Luckily, it didn't get on any of their strongman trophies, as from what I hear they don't have any.  I enjoy needling those guys for no reason at all, as they appear to be a very, very touchy lot.  I would tend to agree with you- grip specialists seem to suck at everything else.  Grip afficianados tend to do remarkably well at sports in which they have no aptitude, however, just because they can hang on to shit most people couldn't.  For instance, I've seen wrestlers with decent athleticism and unreal grip strength ruin kids on the mat, without much skill in wrestling whatsoever.  Grip is an awesome add-on, then, but hardly a good primary focus.

Hahaha, that Diesel crew line had me rolling. As I alluded to previously, I think grip is a result of work rather than something you attain through specific practice. But hey, if you want to be the plate pinch or captain of crush world champion, go for it. I just dislike the message targeted to weak ass beginners that you need to do grip training to accomplish whatever.

I paid my way through wrestling by swinging a fucking hammer and shoveling shit. If you want the secret to a vice-like grip, get your ass in front of home depot at 4am and become a day laborer....

I know what you're talking about, the wrestlers who suck, but are just the meanest motherfuckers ever.


While we're waiting for the first angry missive in the comments over my Diesel Crew jokes, I might as well ask a final Ninja Warrior question- I've noticed that the parkour guys kick ass on NW until they really need strength, and for whatever reason those motherfuckers seem to think strength training is the devil.  Any idea why?  One would think that they'd see the benefit strength has on competitions like the Ultimate Banzuke and NW due to the fact that 150 lb fishermen with 18" forearms tended to win NW all the time in the past.

Very astute observation. I honestly have no idea. There are a few guys who are starting to see the light, but from my experience, it's pretty much ignorance combined with the mentality of Traceurs (practitioners of Parkour) and freerunners. A lot of these guys are pretty spazzy ADD types who can't sit still for more than 5 seconds and feel the need to jump and climb on everything they can. Most don't train in gyms at all, save for the few dedicated Parkour facilities around the country. A lot of these guys think that there is no carryover and that they will be negatively impacted  by extra weight. It's the athletic male version of "I don't want to become too bulky".


I've met Makoto Nagano, and I'll tell you what, I've never seen a thicker set of lats on anyone before. His arms are huge too, and he smokes like a chimney. Dude is a beast.

And there you have it- a 500 lb back squat is unnecessary (but probably couldn't hurt) in CrossFit and Ninja Warrior, dudes who do Parkour are actually French feminist drag kings, Japanese fisherman are hard motherfuckers, and being a Marine gives you a cancer patient physique.  If you want to check out Nate's ANW submission video, which has a hodge-podge of training footage, here it is:


If you, like I, are curious about how awesome a gym with Ninja Warrior training apparatus would be, check it out here and his new site with training advice and question answering (without all of the mocking of an Ask the Asshole) is here.  Up next will be the newest installment of Chaos and Bang, with our new cohost Jay Nera, and then back to titties and scat porn and training.  In case you're jonesing for titties, here you are:

THIS JUST IN: there's no way in hell I can make 165.  

Thus, to all of the people who told me I was insane and that it couldn't be done, you were right.  After hot baths, wearing a sauna suit in a sauna, and about 18 hours without food or water, I managed to get to 170, and could go no further.  I'd thought that it would be just as simple to drop 15 lbs to get to 165 as it was to get to 181, but I was apparently wholly incorrect.  As I was bigger and leaner than I was a month ago, there was just not enough of me holding water to get 15 lbs off me.  Thus, I ended up guest lifting at 181 and have completely banished any thought of a future cut to 165 from my mind.  Again, naysayers, you were right and I was wrong; you are smart and I am dumb; you are good-looking and I am unattractive...

All of the cutting nonsense will go into the new competition prep book, I'm writing, which should be out next month sometime.  There was nothing new or Earth shattering in it, other than the fact that just because your brain says you can do something and you think you're essentially the fucking Terminator does not necessarily mean you can pull off any wacky weight cutting trick you want.


The meet itself went pretty well.  I went 606-622 (called for depth)-644 (fail) on the squat, 227-355-369.8 on bench, and 617-644-655 (fail)on the deadlift.  My second squat was so easy I just decided to pile on the weight and try to tie or break my total record at 181, and got a little overly ambitious.  While I was recovered from walking pneumonia, I still had back tightness issues plaguing me throughout the last month that prevented me from doing a lot of heavy training.  Additionally, Canadian 181 lb badass Willie Albert clued me in to the fact that the record at 181 in the squat is actually 673 (a Russian broke the squat record without knee sleeves, even, in 2011 or 2012), so I decided not to try 650.  Thus, I was pretty aggressive in calling attempts because the whole thing was pretty much a wash anyway- my total reflected that as a result.


Bench actually went well due to my addition of volume training one day a week for chest, it seems.  Rather than simply pounding singles, as I am wont to do, I took one day a week and did singles and doubles on close grip, and on another day did a traditional bodybuilder-type program.  Thus, my benching looked like this:

Bench Day 1
Close Grip Bench Press
1 x 1 x 135, 225, 315
10 x 2 x 325-345
5 x 1 x 345-365

Pushdowns
10 x 10-20

Bench Day 2
Bench Press
5 x max 135
5 x max 225

Dumbbell Bench Press
5 x 10-20

Cable Crossover
5 x 10-20

Having more volume in my program seems to have helped with stabilizing my bench, which has a tendency to vary wildly from week to week and month to month.  With this, I was able to steadily improve my lifting and actually ended up far stronger than my numbers would indicate from the meet- I erred on the side of caution for my third after missing my second and third on the squat.

Getting back to the meet, the most impressive lifter there was Vashon Perryman, apparent love child of Bryant Gumbel and Wayne Brady.  This dude is nice as hell and so low on street cred that standing next to him I look like Eazy E, but he is one phenomenally strong motherfucker.  Vashon broke both the squat and the deadlift record at this meet, which is a feat one would generally ascribe to Klokov and his ilk, and pretty soundly fucks my "specialize in one or the other theory" directly in its ass.  In any event, Perryman hit 606 for his fourth on the squat and a ridiculous 716 on the deadlift to break both records.  Sadly, his bench is even worse than mine and he thus left the total record remarkably unscathed, but the dude is definitely one to watch.  Get on Facebook or something and show the dude some love- none of us are making any money at this, so you might as well make him grin more than usual over his afternoon tea and Tom Jones break by telling him what a bad motherfucker he is. That, or buy him a celebratory cardigan or something.


For those of you who are curious, the gf did damn well in spite of the fact I forgot to tell her half of the rules, and hit a 242 squat, 126 bench, and was credited with her 275 opener on deadlift and not her 303 pull because I forgot to tell her she couldn't drop it from her waist.  She was a little overly hopped up on Hellfire at the time and appeared to have been having a panic attack as a result, but it was a badass performance for a 130 lb chick who's only been powerlifting since August.  She can only train with me when she's in town, and thus doesn't get the benefit of basking under the soft glow of my knowledge... though she never listens to me anyway, so anything I attempt to impart is ignored until someone else tells her.  Apparently, I need to beat her more.


Post meet, I went out with Willie (who's a fucking maniac and generally awesome guy), Jay Nera (who I'm going to try to get on a podcast for at least one episode to discuss libertarianism, training, his love of Reese's cups, and Crossfit), Kade Weber (who came within a hair's breadth of breaking Larry Pacifico's total record at 242), Jason Manenkoff, Krista (the gf), Sin Leung, Paul Ngyuen, Noriko Kariya (who has an awesome, full-back geisha tat) and a couple of other people and tore it up at some shitty dive bar in downtown Tampa.  The post meet and day after hangouts with the lifters were probably more fun than the meet, and it was a good meet. In any event, good times were had, butts were hurt about a variety of things, and vascular abdominals were prominently displayed (including a set on Ann Vanderbush, who is now fucking shredded).

For now, it's back to training whatever the fuck I want and eating my face off.  No idea when I'll do another meet, but the people shown above are definitely descending upon Clash for Cash to wreck fucking shop if it ends up happening.

For those of you who hate it when I post these, get fucked.  I get perhaps ten texts, IMs, and emails a week asking for book, music, and movie recommendations, and making a blanket post is far easier than replying with the same information over and over.  To those of you who have asked for recommendations, enjoy- all of the books are linked to make it easier to find them.

Books

Mark Lawrence's Prince of Thorns (The Broken Empire) series.
In looking for quotes from the book online, I was amused to read the blatherings of various feminist halfwits (and their dickless, simpering bitch boys) who reveled in giving reviews of this series, which they, to a person, had not read.  Instead, they based their reviews off other reviews, each confused Tori Amos t-shirt wearing idiot after another trying to out-inflame the previous waterhead's idiot remarks with tales of woe and injustice from the pages of Mark Lawrence's books.  Many of you have already clicked the hyperlink to buy the books, I'm sure, because with each purchase, an washed feminazi broad buys a bra the same day she loses her job at Starbucks.  I'm not going to link their idiocy, because i don't want to send them any traffic, and because self-professed "feminists" are perhaps the least well-educated, over-opinionated, illogical creatures on the planet.  For those females who read my blog, you've likely come to the realization that I don't hate women- I hate women who are "typical" feminine women- namely, stupid, materialistic, pop-culture obsessed, vain, lazy, greedy, soul-sucking broads who populate any college campus and think "like" is a word as important and ubiquitous as "fuck".  We'll have to add to that list penis-envying, man-hating, delusionally-seeing-oppression-at-every-corner, feminist cunts.


In any event, these books are phenomenal.  The protagonist is the ultimate anti-hero, and is a 13 year old killing machine bereft of empathy or compassion in the first book.  He literally guts a man and mocks him as he dies about having raped the guy's daughters in the first 10 pages.  From there, the books just gets better, as you discover the protagonist is not only an unstoppable killing machine surrounded by an entertaining cast of brigands, but that he's also well educated, highly intelligent, and clever as shit.  I won't divulge much of the plot because I don't want to spoil it, but know these books serve as an adequate pre-workout supplement if you left your stimulant of choice at home.


Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International and Grimnoir Chronicles series.
Larry Correia is one of the most innovative authors currently working in the sci-fi/fantasy game, and these series are proof.  The former series chronicles the life of Owen Zastavia Pitt, a hulking behemoth of an accountant-turned monster hunter who also happens to be a former underground pit fighter and son of a psychotic survivalist.  Correia opens the first book with Pitt's brutal beating of his boss with his bare hands... after his boss turns into a werewolf.  He then gets invited to join Monster Hunter International, where he fights a litany of interesting creatures plucked from mythologies around the world.  Not only are these books fun as shit and violent as hell, but they're educational- you learn a hell of a lot about mythological creatures.


The latter series features a protagonist not unlike Owen Pitt, in a world wherein people began displaying magical powers in the mid-19th Century.  Not everyone has powers, however, and not all magical persons have the same powers.  As such, there's basically a constant chess match going on between combatants as they battle each others' magic.  All-American badass Jake Sullivan can control gravity with magic, and does so to dispatch any and all comers with ease.  Basically, he's the Hulk during the mob-enforcer story arc but with the added ability of controlling gravity.  Mash together a bit of steampunk, magic, and hard boiled noir and you get this series.  For those of you who like me are leery of books involving magic- this is no Harry Potter- you'll actually remain awake while reading this and no one wields a twig as a magical talisman/weapon.


Gordon Lavelle's Bodybuilding: Tracing the Evolution of the Ultimate Physique
This is pretty much a must have for any student of bodybuilding, the history of physical culture in the United States, or anyone curious about the roots of widespread bodybuilding in the United States.  This book really illuminated the drastic difference between the Golden Age of bodybuilding and now, detailed the battles between Bob Hoffman, Doug Lurie, and Joe Wieder, and covered some of the more modern competitions in pretty intense detail.  Prior to reading this book, I thought I knew a great deal about the history of modern bodybuilding, but after reading Lavelle's work decided that I'd really known quite little.

Interestingly, this well-written tome is the work of a bodybuilder and sometime author for the website Muscle and Strength.  According to his bio on Muscle and Strength, Lavelle's "competition record includes two runner-up finishes at the NPC California State Championships; he was also overall winner of the Contra Costa Championships, first place at the Orange County Championships, and winner of the AAU Mr. Western USA teenage division".  Thus, you're getting the historical perspective of an athlete, not a casual bystander, which is probably what makes the book so enthralling.


John Ringo's Troy Rising series
I've long been a fan of Ringo and have already recommended his Posleen series, I think.  Though Ringo's a bit hit and miss with his books, this hard sci fi trilogy is spot on the entire way through.  The series chronicles the arrival of two alien species to Earth, using a sort of stargate to transport from system to system.  One of the species uses kinetic energy weapons to destroy major cities on Earth, and then establishes themselves as the "protectors and liberators" of the Earth system.  The only man bright enough to figure out a way to toss them out is an out-of-work comic book artist who becomes the richest man on Earth trading a very cheap Earth commodity to the non-warlike aliens for exorbitant amounts.  With his wealth, he builds an orbital defense system that becomes the launching pad for an Earth fleet to take out the warlike aliens.  Yeah, these books are as badass as they sound.


Ernest Clines's Ready Player One
If you've not heard of this book, you're not paying attention.  Ready Player One has only been out for a year or so and is already considered a cult classic.  It's set in a dystopic 2044, wherein most of the world spends their lives in virtual reality, working, playing, and learning without moving a muscle.  The progenitor of this virtual world dies and leaves behind a massive fortune.  The protagonist, an impoverished prole who would not be out of sorts if dropped into a Dickens novel sets out to win that fortune by following the clues left by the virtual world's creator, battling other online players, corporate ninjas, and the occasional trailer park bomb to do so.  RPO is full of 1980s pop culture and video game references, so it's great for old fucks like myself.  Interestingly, the book's been so popular that it's extended into reality, and if you follow clues left online, you can apparently win an actual DeLorean, the hideously slow stainless steel deathtrap Michael J. Fox drove in Back To The Future.


David Wong's John Dies at the End and This Book is Filled With Spiders
Trippy, gory, and generally fucking awesome.  I'd try to describe the books, but they're insane enough that doing so would be more or less a lost cause.  Nevertheless, I'll try.  Two guys in an unnamed town take a sentient drug that kills nearly everyone else that takes it, whereafter they can see and must do battle with extra-dimensional aliens bent on domination of our world and who utilize a variety of horrifying means to do so, such as monsters made of frozen cuts of meat, flesh eating worms, spiders covered with legs like a Coosh ball, zombies, poop demons, and any other Cronenberg-esque horror of which you could think.  Equally awesome and bizarre, you must read these.


Katy Stauber's Revolution World
This is, to my knowledge, the only female-penned book not by Ursula K. LeGuin I've ever liked.  Generally I find that female authors spend far too much time on character motivations and emotions and not enough on the action.  not so with Katy Stauber, though she does have some amusing moments of insights into the wild and woolly depths of the female mind.  How women stand their own thoughts, I'll never know.  In any event, this is also a near future dystopia in which geneticists from Texas team up with online gamers to foment a libertarian revolution in an increasingly fascist United States.  If you have an ounce of Libertarian sentiment in you, you will love the shit out of this book.


J. Stanton's The Gnoll Credo
For those of you who don't know who J. Stanton is, he's a nerd who happens to lift decent amounts of weight while retaining the ability to do shit like fasted mountain climbs.  He's also a widely recognized paleo dieting authority and a hell of an intellectual.  the Gnoll Credo has nothing to do with any of taht, while simultaneously having everything to do with it- it's a social critique of modern society written as a novel.  in it, a man travels to the land of the Gnolls to study their behavior (Gnolls are mythical hyena/human hybrids).  For those of you (who like Paul Carter of Lift Run Bang) are woefully unaware, hyenas are probably the coolest animals on Earth- they're apex predators with intelligence greater than that of the higher primates.  They've gotten a bad rap from Africans for being scavengers, but Africans are notoriously poor protectors of the environment, scholars, scientists, and pretty much everything else at which one would need to be awesome to be an authority on wildlife.  Thus, forget what you know about them and read National Geographic.  In any event, Stanton's book skewers all of modern society, pointing out (from the perspective of the Gnoll), that modern humans focus entirely on the trivial and ignore the most important shit in life.

This is perhaps the only readable book you'll ever find with a philosophy that might echo your own, and thus you must read this forthwith- it's more life changing than Fight Club, and the perfect companion novel to that badass book.



Music
In case you guys want some new shit to listen to, here's what I've been rocking of late.

Battlecross- Hostile

Nasty- Love
Nasty's previous efforts have been marred by shitty, muddy production, but this album is the unadulterated balls.  Belgium's hardest bring the ruckus on Love.  Additionally, this is the best hardcore video ever produced, bar none.

Texas In July- S/T
For once, I recommend pretty much just straight up metal.  Though I suppose these guys are technically metalcore, it's well worth a listen, and for me is a nice change from the "chug chug blech" sound to which I predominantly listen.  Additionally, the song in the video below has one of the coolest, if tragically short, breakdowns I've heard recently.

Within The Ruins- Elite
What do you get when you cross crushing deathcore with At The Gates and maybe a tiny bit of syphonic death metal?  Probably the most ridiculous music of all time.  Within the Ruins pretty much defies description.  Just listen to it.  Not great for the gym, but great for pretty much any other time.  The title pretty much sums up this album- shit is too elite for words.


The Browning- Burn This World
Before you assholes flip out, consider this electroniccore band's pedigree- the singer is the original signer for As Blood Runs Black.  metal enough for you?  Now get over yourselves and enjoy something just because it's fucking fun.

Asking Alexandria- Stepped Up and Scratched

Of late, I've noticed that people seem immensely preoccupied, at least on the internet, with comparing their "achievements" in the gym with those of others.  Numerous benchmarks have been bandied about as indicators of a particular level of strength, all of which I've found to range between laughably low and downright embarrassing.  It would seem that this is because everyone appears to be very preoccupied with comparing themselves to an average, which is never a good way to determine excellence, and it's either a salve to the ego of someone who sucks at lifting or completely inconsequential to someone who doesn't.  In either case, they're pointless.  For those of you who are blissfully unaware of the existence of these charts, here they are (ladies, the misogynist who made this chart apparently felt that you are undeserving of a chart... of which you should probably be glad):


I find this one particularly funny, because according to it, I was a pro level lifter before I'd even had a sip of protein powder as a 134 lb wrestler.  I was that strong not because I'm a freak, but because I trained 6 days a week with people a hell of a lot bigger and stronger than myself... and I actually put some effort into lifting.



Weirdly, for the pre-internet generations, the only benchmarks in the gym were beating gym records, beating your friends' best lifts, and adding another 45lb plate to any lift.  Those were cool milestones in retrospect, but hardly our overarching goal- we just liked lifting and knew strength would result naturally out of training.  Our milestones arose out of having fun in the gym, and trying to be better than everyone else, rather than simply trying to reassure ourselves that we didn't suck.  If you're looking to the internet for validation that you don't suck, here's a newsflash- you suck harder than any other person whose lifetime predated the internet.


For instance, I started out with a sub-135 lb bench as a freshman in high school.  During my sophomore year, I took a weightlifting class and began competing on bench and weighted dips with another guy about my weight.  We benched 3 to 5 times a week, using ever angle on the bench, rep range, volume, and chest exercise permutation of which we could think.  By the end of that year, we were both benching 255 with regularity, and by the time Thanksgiving of my junior year rolled around, he hit 300 on the bench and I hit 285.


We're not the only people I've seen make those jumps, either.  My girlfriend Krista, who grew up chubby as hell and totally unathletic, took up Olympic weightlifting her junior year in high school and continued through last year.  During that time, she never benched.  When she started benching in August of last year, she maxed out with a bounced touch-and-go 85lbs at a bodyweight of about 140.  She's now "strong" by the standards of the dumbass charts above for men because she's been training her ass off at the lift for 6 months and is now hitting paused singles at 155 at a bodyweight of 130.  That's right, she got leaner and much stronger in 6 months by busting her ass in the gym and dieting hard.


In college, my 150 lb rock climber roommate went from a 225 lb shitfest of a deadlift to 405 for ten in one year, and he never even took a protein supplement.  He just deadlifted and did pullups four or five days a week for a year.  He and I even got a kid we hated to squat 225 for a double after 6 months of training when he'd never squatted before in his life, and literally folded up like an accordion under 135 the first time he squatted.  Another guy in the gym at the time did an unassisted liftoff and touch and go bench of 495 at a bodyweight of around 250 and wouldn't even let anyone stand nearby to spot... just because it was badass.  This is how people get fucking strong.


Your goal in life should never be to do "as well", be "as good", or work "as hard" as any other person.  Instead, you should be striving to overachieve at all times- this is how humanity has lurched forward even while monomaniacal assholes, religious zealots, and harbingers of economic doom wrought havoc on society at large.  Measurement by a standard set by the average person leads only to mediocrity, socialism, venereal disease, and eventual burial in an unmarked grave.  Transcendence of the human condition, however, leads to every extreme of which you could think- fame, infamy, riches, poverty, brilliance, insanity, super strength, and crippledness, but no matter what the goal, those people will be remembered for their efforts.  It's hardly a matter of what other people are doing that drives you forward, as other people are inconsequential nothings, motes of dust, and a possible minor irritation in the quest to achieve greatness, whether that greatness come in the form of intellectual or physical pursuits.


Since time immemorial, man has striven to transcend the human condition. Ancient people revered those who did so as gods, and they then became immortalized in the writings of the time.  Thus, the ancient warriors who served as the Michael Jordans of the battlefield are still remembered today, as Achilles and Ajax, Gilgamesh and Herecles.  Even at that time, humans looked for ways to vastly outdistance the performance of their peers, as we are a naturally competitive species, and codified systems of weight training emerged with specialized diets and concomitant performance enhancing drugs.  Herecles purportedly trained with weights under the tutelage of his patron Chiron (History of Weight Training), and Greek Olympians took everything from opium to bull testicles to improve their performance, all while eating a meat-heavy diet unlike anything eaten by the average Greek (History of PEDs in Sports) and using systems of weight training nearly as old as the written word.  This was not done in an effort to "cheat" as there was no draconian prohibition on the substances one could consume in order to exceed the performance of the average person, but rather simply to be better than the simpering, weak, ignorant troglodytes these great men found themselves surrounded by.  In short, they wanted to transcend the human condition through their own actions and self-improvement.


Fast forward to the modern era- Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra ushers in a new era of transhumanism, a field of study that grew directly from Nietzsche's concept of the "Übermensch".  Amusingly, Nietzsche's work inspired the hero Superman, the goody-two-shoes alien superhero who taught generations of little boys to mind their p's a nd q's and do what they're told.  This was about as like the intent of Nietzsche's work as it was the creators of Silly Putty to have created a toy out of plastic explosives, and yet, just as the toy, Superman became a G-rated joke of what he was originally intended.  Nietzsche's original intent was that the übermensch (overman / superhuman) should transcend all of the trappings of humanity and exceed the intellectual, physical, and moral performances of their human underlings... most of which were embodied in Superman.  Superman, however, became a joke version of Nietzsche's theories because his superhuman strength and intellect were still bound to humanity by his laughable adherence to Judeo-Christian morality, which is neither logical nor laudable in the eyes of an übermensch.


Driving the übermensch, and man in general, is the "will to power", a concept Nietzsche championed throughout his works and also serves as the basis for my interpretation of transhumanism.  For those who are unaware of the concept, transhumanism is generally the purview of people who want to become the Borg from Star Trek.  Instead of simply improving upon nature's design through force of will, these people seek to remove and replace parts they feel are weak, ugly, or ill-designed with technological constructs that serve the same, or better, purpose.  This concept, however, is at odds with what I believe to have been Nietzsche's intent, in addition to just being weirdly distasteful, if for no other reason than the fact that electing to allow someone to hack bits off your body and replace them with man-made parts is fucking strange.  Thus, instead of improving themselves by force of will, they are willing to pay for improvements to themselves that aren't really "theirs"- they're foreign objects where their parts used to be.


The driving force behind the two sides of transhumanism, and many training protocols bandied about on the internet, is an age old question- "is it nature or nurture that makes us who we are?"  Philosophers have argued for centuries about this issue, and in spite of lengthy discourses written by men like Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, and Grotius, philosophers still cannot come to a consensus on the subject.  luckily, however, I exist to finally put an end to the debate.  It is nurture, not nature, that makes man who he is.  At his essence, man is a brutish, violent, greedy, physical creature with the requisite mental acuity to wreak havoc on the world wholesale.  It is nurture that has forced man to become a simpering, cowering, weak-willed and -bodied version of his prototype, and it is nurture that can bring forth the best that prototype has to offer.  This process is neither pleasant, nor is it quick, but enduring it will allow you to regain the physical and intellectual superiority of our ancestors.


For those of you, and I'm sure you are legion, who will contend that genetics play a large role in your current level of suckitude, allow me to pre-emptively retort- there has been no long-standing eugenics program of which I am aware that has created a race of subhumans.  The body somatotypes that are bandied about in bodybuilding magazine are well-recognized as psuedoscience by everyone but Joe Wieder and Reddit.  Your physical stature is a direct result of the food your parents fed you growing up and your level of physical activity.  That's called nurture, motherfuckers, not nature.  If you suck, it's because your parents trained you to do so and you decided to continue on the path they chose for you.  those people you think of when you think "genetic freak" are actually just people raised in an environment that made them what they are.  To wit:

• Nikola Tesla, one of the most prolific inventors and intelligent people of all time, was constantly forced to do memory exercises and study as a child.  Because of this rigorous training, Tesla was able to do calculus in his head as a youth, and he retained most of what he learned through his father's rigourous mental exercises.  As for his inventive side, his mother was an inventor who created a number of devices to aid her in housework, which Tesla credited with inspiring his inventive side (PBS).  
• Alexander Karelin, who was nicknamed "The Experiment", grew up in Siberia, the son of a truck driver and an office worker.  As he lived in Siberia, Karelin's life was far from cushy, and he grew incredibly strong from skiing everywhere and dragging trees he felled by hand through the tundra to their house for firewood.  This lifestyle inured him to hard and heavy training, which he initially conducted by rowing boats through ice-filled rivers and running for hours through waist deep snow.  He continued his brutal training throughout his career, eventually amassing a record in Greco-Roman wrestling of twelve European Championships, nine World Championships, and three Olympic gold medals, winning every match he entered for thirteen years, and going ten years without giving up a single point (Karelin).
• Jerry Rice, widely considered to be the greatest wide receiver in NFL history, credits his brutal training regime with his success.  Rice had very average speed, but was able to set records that surpassed those of the second place receivers in total reception yards, total touchdowns, and total receptions by over 50%. Rice busted his ass in training to get the skills necessary to achieve these accomplishments, training twice a day, 6 days a week in the offseason.  Rice's workouts were so brutal that his trainer won't release them to the general public for fear someone would gravely injure themselves trying to replicate Rice's feats (Colvin).  

Sources:
Alexander Karelin Biography - Siberian Childhood, A Terrifying Maneuver, A Political Career, A Brilliant Career Ends, Chronology. Russia, Olympic, Ancient, and Gold - JRank Articles. Web.  20 Mar 2013. http://sports.jrank.org/pages/2441/Karelin-Alexander.html#ixzz2O8eH2IpT

Colvin, Geoff. Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else. .  London: Penguin Books, 2008.

Historical Timeline: History of Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sports.  Sports and Drugs- ProCon.Org.  Web.  17 Feb 2013.  http://sportsanddrugs.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=002366

Tesla:  Life and Legacy.  PBS.  Web.  20 March 2013.  http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_early.html
The History of Weight Training.  Personal Power Training.  Web.  17 Feb 2013.  http://www.personalpowertraining.net/Articles/the_history_of_weight_training.htm

Of all of the horrible dreck foisted upon the American public by television production companies, the worst of them is without question the paean to failure called The Biggest Loser.  No one, no matter how disconnected from society they are, can possibly be unaware of this circus sideshow of obesity, given its ubiquitousness around the world.  I found the fact that it's a worldwide phenomenon to be rather surprising, given that it's accepted as a matter of course that Americans are the sloppiest bunch of hamburger-guzzling, sloth-like gluttons on the planet, but our fatness has apparently spilled over into other countries, like a wheezing fat man's gut over and under the armrest separating your chair from his on the airplane.  No fewer than 27 other countries and regions have aired this pathetic spectacle at some point, and America's actually had two concurrent shows at once- one in English and one in Spanish.


My problems with the show are hardly the average litany of criticisms, as I am hardly the average man.  Most people find issue with the fact that the "poor" fatties on the show suffer while dehydrating themselves and subsisting on a starvation diet to win a game show.  Welcome to high school wrestling, big wide world- they're not doing shit high school and collegiate wrestlers do as a matter of course.  Shit, powerlifters cut weight all the time, and there's nothing but a medal at the end of the meet, rather than the Losers' hundreds of thousands of dollars.


They bemoan the fact that two contestants were hospitalized after a 1 mile foot race.  A one mile foot race?  Those fat fucks should have been shot on the side of the road, as the laggards (rightly) were in the Kurt Russell epic Soldier.  If you cannot make it a fucking mile on foot and you've got two working legs, you should shuffle off your mortal coil- there is absolutely no excuse on Earth to be in that kind of shape, and if you're in it, fucking die already.  You're a disgrace even to a species that worships people like the Kardashians and who think that living under a fascist dictatorship is "safety".


They claim that the show sets unrealistic expectations for weight loss.  We're talking about a show wherein obese people go on hiatus from their jobs and train with trainers and have meals prepared by chefs and nutritionists while on a weight training vacation.  Did I mention they get paid on that vacation?  Well, they do.  Thus, they effectively have sponsorship while taking that weight training vacation.  How could that be anything but unrealistic?  Who on Earth, other than Marius Pudzianowski and Stan Efferding, can do that?  What could possibly be realistic about that.  Moreover, if you're a fat person using that show for inspiration, you've already failed- there's no pot of gold sitting at the end of your fatloss rainbow.  There's just a lot of loose skin and a gremlin sitting on your shoulder screaming at you to eat Oreos.


They decry the fact that most of the contestants regain the weight they lost.  Welcome back to reality, people- that's what fucking happens.  Apparently, the concept of a bodyfat set point is as elusive to most people as it is that a distinct and driving predilection to make shitty food choices and be a lazy piece of shit is how those assholes got fat in the first place.  If they didn't care enough to do something about waistlines growing faster than the yeast infections between their sweaty thighs, they're certainly not going to do something about their weight after they get off the show, either.  We're talking about people who need a $300k carrot and a stick wielded by screaming trainers who chase them hither and yon 12 hours a day and direct their every move- without external motivation, those fatties are completely fucking useless.


Clearly, the world is missing the point entirely.  If anything, the show the Biggest Loser exists because it makes less fat people feel better about themselves, and most of America is fat as shit.  It's a visual Xanax for fatties thinking of (rightly) blowing their brains out because they've failed to keep the machine that is their body in top working order.  You don't see gearheads whining that the automotive makeovers common on stations that typically feature hunting and fishing are "unrealistic" because the people on those shows have unlimited time and resources to repair and refit hunks of junk.  That's because they know it's fantasy come to life, just like taking a 500 lb pile of dogshit and attempting to transform them into a productive member of society.  There's a difference, however- the car played no part in it's own destruction, whereas the fatties' self-destruction is pointed, willful, and persistent.


Quite frankly, I have no idea how I have come across these things, but one blog has stood out as a bulwark of nonsense amidst all of the moaning about the fatties on the Biggest Loser- the ridiculously titled "Dances With Fat".  This blog is the produce of a morbidly obese broad who champions the cause of "size acceptance" and rails against "fat discrimination", two concepts that are as stupid as they are pointless.  Fat acceptance, for instance, violates a deeply ingrained cultural response to the obese that all of the whining in the world isn't going to resolve- the Western World's distaste for obesity.  There are three categories for social stigma, according to anthropologists and psychologists- tribal stigma, abominations of the body, and blemishes of physical character.  Over the last half a century  researchers have determined that obese people fall into the latter two categories, as they are considered "undesirable and physically unattractive", and because their obesity is indicative of sloth and other moral failings in those around them (Carr).  There is little evidence, however, to suggest that these stigmas manifest in actual discriminatory action- people are too scared of being perceived as discriminatory to act on their distaste for land whales (Carr).  Instead, Carr argues, it is the Jabbas' own self-loathing projected onto other people that leads them to believe that they are the victims of discrimination.  They literally hate themselves so much that they (rightly) think everyone else should as well.


"Size acceptance" is an equally pointless enterprise, as whining about how equal you are when all empirical evidence shows otherwise, and because heath care costs are rising due to the fact that the self-destructive lifestyles of homo sapiens hippopomus.  It's one thing to have to dodge their ridiculous mechanical conveyances in Walmart because they've given up on walking and suffer behind them as they slowly trudge down an isle that they block completely with their bulk- it's yet another to have to subsidize those things because they're covered by Social Security and Medicare.  No one will accept a person's willful attempts to inconvenience those around them because they lack the self control in the baked goods isle necessary to keep themselves to a svelte 299 lbs.


That said, the author of Dances With Fat recently railed against the current, horrifyingly disgusting season of The Biggest Loser.  For those of you who (blissfully) do not have that awful shit playing on the televisions in your gym nightly, this season has some of the whiniest fat kids you've ever seen making failed attempts to resemble their peers.  Not a moment goes by without complaint or tears, and 30 seconds into each episode you want to drag those fat fuckers to death behind your car blasting "Good Vibrations" from the radio and chugging a protein shake.  Never before have I been stronger in my resolve that we should just round up obese children and send them to the camps (in rail cars fit for cattle, as passenger cars would likely not withstand the strain created by their bulk), because if there's anything worse than children, it's whiny fat children in constant search of a Ring Ding while ostensibly well-intentioned people are trying to help them achieve their goals.  That's right, each of these fat fuckers has delivered a tearful missive describing the horrors of being left out of kickball because they can't run, or the shame of getting stuck on the slide.  The kids have explicitly stated that they want to lose weight, yet they bitch the entire goddamned time about the unfairness of having to diet and exercise.  I don't know about you guys, but when I was a kid, I didn't need to exercise, because I was constantly playing.  I ran everywhere, jumped off shit, rode my bike, and did the normal kid shit that keeps you from becoming a fat piece of shit.  If anything, the show's a waste of time because those lazy little fuckers are incapable of enjoying physical activity.  Rather than chain them to a treadmill, it'd be easier to drive them to the long-term lot at the airport in a stolen car, shoot them in the back of the head, and leave the car there to be discovered months later.  No one will miss hearing those fucking kids cry, and we've saved ourselves the time and money of trying to resuscitate their fat asses when they keel over from a heart attack at age 30.


Dick Talens, who apparently is someone people on Reddit care about, insists that it's not a lack of willpower that's keeping that winter coat of fat on the good people at your local buffet, it's that they've failed to create a positive feedback loop for themselves that spurs them on to "fitness", something he apparently champions.  Frankly, I could give a fuck about "fitness"- it's a throwaway blanket term to describe an ephemeral and subjective state of being.  In other words, making "fitness" your goal is fucking retarded.  In any event, he argues that the Biggest Loser is a terrible role model for the poor fat people of the world because it suggests that they should work really hard to achieve their goal, with the single-minded focus of a young Jeffrey Dahmer torturing his neighbor's cat.  Heaven's no!  Not hard work!  Anything but hard work!  What Talens fails to take into account when making his positive feedback loop is that the rewards must outweigh the costs for the fat slobs he champions, and that's often not going to happen.  Giving up Oreos to some people is tantamount to the French Foreign Legion throwing down their weapons the second they entered the city limits of Camerone.  We're talking about people whose entire existence is based upon the instant gratification they get from shitty foods and sloth- they're not going to be satisfied with the incremental progression they might get if they can avoid too many dietary indiscretions while doing something they hate (i.e. exercising).

This, my friends, is because fatness is not caused by genetics, or environment, or bad parenting (unless the kid is really young).  It's from failure.  A fat adult is a person whose life history is written on their body- they've failed.  They've failed themselves, they've failed their sexual partners, they've failed their children... fuck, they even fail their pets, because those fat motherfuckers aren't taking their pooches on a needed 2 mile walk.  These are people who think "KFC Bowl" is a legitimate answer to the question "what's for dinner?"  They're the people who think a 40 inch waisted pair of jeans isn't a horrifying prospect and who haven't seen their genitalia without the aid of a mirror in years.  These, my friends, are unmitigated failures, and no amount of positive feedback loops are going to reverse the damage their failure has wrought- they will push those failures uphill for eternity, giant sloppy, Sisyphean sacks of cellulite rather than boulders, up a hill paved with Oreos and dried tears.


In summary, the Biggest Loser would only be acceptable entertainment if the contestants were constantly mocked and tormented with their favorite foods, all while the commentators for Most Extreme Challenge and Wipeout cracked jokes at the contestants' collective expense.  Sadly, the show fails to account for the inherent hilarity in fat people running and jumping, and focuses more on their incessant weeping and complaints.  Since a Venn Diagram displaying the body types of the people featured on Hoarders and the people on the Biggest Loser would consist of a single circle, it might just be easier to drive around to their houses, shoot all of the occupants, and burn them to the ground.  Either way, fat people should shut the fuck up about their fatness and suffer the miserable lives they've chosen to live in silence or fucking do something about their fatness, also silently, and not on television.  As they likely will refuse to do so and claim they have one of the many genetic disorders they love to insist are the problem, I'll just have to settle for mocking them in public and having a rage seizure every time Biggest Loser airs in the gym.


Here's part one of the series if you're interested.
Sources:
Carr D, Friedman MA.  Is obesity stigmatizing? Body weight, perceived discrimination, and psychological well-being in the United States.  J Health Soc Behav. 2005 Sep;46(3):244-59.

Godzilla and Mothra.  Tyson and Holyfield.  Tom and Jerry.  Frazier and Ali.  Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant.  David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar.  Humanity has always loved a good rivalry, and the World's Strongest Man is no exception.  Unfortunately, WSM is no longer as it was, with huge men with huger personalities doing battle on what amounted to a game show for the illustrious British Meat trophy.  Certainly, modern athletes are better prepared for the events, better conditioned, and altogether superhuman, but the contest lacks the pitched battles of its forebears, the compelling characters, and the yearly rivalries.  The earliest of these rivalries was Britain's Geoff Capes, a man who from his appearance seemed better suited to beach volleyball than strongman, versus a psychotic, foaming at-the-mouth, apoplectic Bill Kazmaier.   Capes really couldn't hang with Kaz on anything, and was far too nice a guy to really make the rivalry interesting.  The hilariously named British Meat company was the sponsor at the time, however, so the show really tried to prop up their Brits as much as humanly possible.  Kaz dominated the field in 1981 and 1982, crushing his competition so completely that he was not invited back to the competition until 1988.


By the time Kaz got back into the WSM, Jon Pall Sigmarsson, a hilarious, jacked, and Norse-pride-infused Icelander was on top of the WSM heap.  Jon Pall was an interesting counterpoint to Kaz- whereas Kaz seemed to rely on a blend of hate-fueled rage and brute strength, Jon Pall combined a wry sense of humor, a hell of a lot of Viking pride, and an extremely diligent training schedule.  The two men then battled for preeminence in the world of strongman from 1987 through 1989, when Kaz finally quit the sport as his injuries accumulated faster than he could recover from each.  Frankly, one could say that their rivalry began after Kaz's strongman and powerlifting careers had reached their zenith, but their rivalry managed to transcend that fact simply because each was batshit insane enough, each in his own way, to make the competitions featuring both behemoths the greatest in history.

First, a tale of the tape:

On paper, both of these massive dudes were fairly similar- they were of similar height, more or less similar weight, and both began as powerlifters, though Kaz competed as a superheavyweight and Jon Pall competed in the 275 lb class.  Kaz, eldest of the two by seven years, started lifting weights when he was at the University of Wisconsin, where he played fullback.  After two years, Kaz dropped out of school to pursue powerlifting, doing virtually every ridiculously manly job he could find while doing so.  It's said that a man once immediately grew a full beard after accidentally brushing shoulders with Kaz in the gym, and that he was able to induce pregnancy and miscarriage in any woman within 100 yards of him simply by thrusting his hips in her general direction and giving her his most alluring, bug-eyed, psychotic, "I'm going to eat your babies" stare.


He obtained his unbelievable machismo and testosterone levels at least in part from the jobs he held after leaving football, as he worked as a Patrick Swayze-esque "cooler" in the roughest bars he could find, an oil rig roughneck, and a lumberjack, looking equally magnificent in a leather duster, whatever it is that roughnecks wear, and plaid and a bushy beard.  While working his way through his list of jobs guaranteed to put 100 lbs on your bench and an inch on your penis, Kaz set a world record in the raw bench press and completely dominated the superheavy weight class.  Bored with his dominance of a sport that consisted of three measly events, Kaz shifted his attention to the wild and woolly world of strongman, wherein he became the first man mountain to lift all five of the famed McGlashan stones (now known as the Atlas stones) in competition, the first man to press the Thomas Inch dumbbell overhead, the first man to win three World's Strongest Man competitions in a row, and the only person of whom I've ever heard who has had their physique compared favorably to that of a dinosaur and an elephant.  I'm not bullshitting you- in one Cambridge University text on animal physiology, Kaz's superhuman squat and bench press were used by a scientist to determine how large an animal could possibly get on our planet.


Kaz rounded out his storied strength career with a tryout with the green Bay Packers (a move later imitated with similar failure by the man with the worst tattoo in history, Brock Lesnar) and stints in the WCW, RINGS, and New Japan, wherein he was at his leanest and most intimidating.  Before moving his one-man circus to wrestling, however, Kaz compiled one hell of a record in strength sports:


Strongman Competitions

World's Strongest Man
1979-  3rd
1980- 1st
1981- 1st
1982-  1st
1988- 2nd
1989- 4th

World Muscle Power Championships
1985- 3rd
1988- 1st

World Strongman Challenge
1988- 3rd
1990- 2nd

Pure Strength
1987- 2nd
1988- 1st w/Stuart Thompson
1989- 2nd w/O.D. Wilson
1990- 1stw/O.D. Wilson

Scottish Power Challenge
1984- 1st
1985- 1st
1986- 1st
1987- 1st
1988- 1st
1989- 1st

Strongbow Strongman
1980- 1st

Le Defi Mark Ten Challenge
1987- 1st
1990- 2nd

Powerlifting Competitions

• Junior National Powerlifting Champion-275 Pound Class-(760-512-760-2033) (1978)
• Senior National Powerlifting Champion-275 Pound Class-(782-534-804-2121) (1978)
• World Powerlifting Champion-Superheavyweight-(865-622-804-2292 lbs) (1979)
• World Record-Bench Press-Superheavyweight-622 lbs (1979)
• World Record-Bench Press-Superheavyweight-634 lbs (1980)
• World Record-Bench Press-Superheavyweight-639 lbs (1981)
• World Record-Bench Press-Superheavyweight-661 lbs (1981)
• World Record-Powerlifting Total-Superheavyweight-(926-661-837-2424 lbs) (1981)
• World Record-Deadlift-Superheavyweight-887 lbs (1981)
• Senior National Powerlifting Champion-Superheavyweight Class-(870-540-837-2248) (1982)
• World Powerlifting Champion-Superheavyweight Class-(848-501-799-2149) (1983)

As if that wasn't enough, Kaz set some other random records and benchmarks worth noting for comparison with Jon Pall:

• Louis Cyr Dumbbell Side Raise and Hold- (Louis Cyr-88 lbs in one hand and 97 lbs in the other); 89 lbs in one hand and 101 lbs in the other for 6 reps. 
• Louis Cyr Dumbbell Front Raise and Hold- (Louis Cyr-131 lbs. for 1 rep.) 210 lbs x 6 reps.
• Loglift- 375 lbs 
• Dumbbell Press-100 lbs X 40 reps
• Member of 10 Man Team that Pulled a 14 ton Tractor and Attached Caravan for 2 Miles
• Barbell Curl- 440 lbs
• Barbell Cheat Curl- 315 lbs x 15
• Seated Barbell Press- 448 lbs X 3 
• Deadlift (with straps)-904 lbs 
• 56 lb. Weight Toss Over Bar (Scottish Highland Games)-Height: 18 feet and 3 inches 
• 374 Clean and Jerk, 837 Deadlift, 120s x 17 Dumbbell Press in the Strongbow Superman Contest

Jon Pall was no slouch in the awesome department, either.  Growing up on an island near Iceland's largest fjord, Jon Pall apparently wandered the countryside lifting frozen rocks and sacrificing babies to the Norse gods.  By the time he was 15, Jon Pall started competing in Olympic weightlifting, as Europeans seem to think destroying their joins and masturbating with PVC pipe is an enjoyable way to pass the time.  He trained in glima from the age of five onward as well, as he put on at least one public exhibition of his skills in the sport during his strongman career.  For those of you who lack Wikipedia access, glima is a type of belt wrestling not dissimilar to that of the Mongolians and Tibetans, Schwingen, and a couple of other random styles scattered throughout the world, and glima is basically Iceland's national sport.  In any event, Jon Pall eventually tired of his wacky Eastern European trick lifting and joined the legions of beasts who were at that time setting a new world record in powerlifting every other hour.


After excelling in the sport and coming to the realization that a world record in powerlifting is little more important to the world at large than the release of a new model Daewoo automobile, Jon Pall decided to try his hand at strongman.  Unfortunately, Sigmarsson's breakout year occurred in concert with Kaz's shunning, so the two did not meet on a battlefield blessed by Brodin in 1983.  Like Kaz, Sigmarsson kept competing in powerlifting while a strongman, and set the Iceland and European world records in the bench, squat and deadlift in 1983.  In 1984, discontented with merely ruling two strength sports, Jon Pall oiled up, strapped on a banana hammock, and won the Icelandic bodybuilding championships.  Thereafter, he went back and shit all over his competition for a few years in strongman (becoming the first man to win four WSMs in a row) until his heart exploded while deadlifting- just as a Viking would want to go.


Jon Pall's competition resume reads much like Kaz's, which is part of what made their rivalry so awesome.

Strongman
World's Strongest Man
1983 - 2nd
1984 - 1st
1985 - 2nd
1986 - 1st
1988 - 1st
1989 - 3rd
1990 - 1st

World Muscle Power Championship
1985 - 1st
1986 - 1st
1987 - 2nd
1988 - 3rd
1989 - 1st
1990 - 1st
1991 - 1st
1992 - 3rd

Europe's Strongest Man
1983 - 3rd
1985 - 1st
1986 - 1st
1987 - 3rd
1988 - 2nd
1989 - 3rd
1990 - 4th
1992 - 4th

Scottish Power Challenge
1989 - 1st

Le Defi Mark Ten Challenge
1985  - 3rd
1986 - 2nd
1987 - 5th

Pure Strength
1987 - 1st

Scandinavian Strongest Man
1982 - 1st

European Hercules
1991 - 2nd
1992 - 6th

Ultimate Challenge Competition 
1987 - 1st
1987 Japan Grand Prix - 2nd

Corby Great Eccleston (England) 
1989 - 1st

Iceland's Kraftur Contest 
1989 - 1st

Nissan Power Cup 
1990 - 1st

European Muscle Power Championship
1990 - 1st

Iceland's Strongest Man 
1985 - 1st
1990 - 1st
1991 - 1st
1992 - 1st

Finland's Strongest Man
1989 - 1st
1992 - 1st


Powerlifting

IPF World Powerlifting Championships 
1981 - 3rd 125kg

EPF European Powerlifting Championships
1980 - 2nd 125kg
1981 - 2nd 125kg
1983 -1st 125kg

NPF Nordic Powerlifting Championships
1979 - 2nd +110kg
1980 - 1st +125kg
1981 - 1st +125kg

Olympic Weightlifting
1980 Icelandic Olympic weightlifting Championships - 1st

Highland Games
1986 Carmunnock Highland Games (Scotland) - 7th
1986 Commonwealth Highland Games (Scotland) - 1st

Also like Kaz, Jon Pall set some fairly impressive personal records worth noting for their upcoming comparison:

• In competition (1980)- Snatch: 242 lbs, Clean and Jerk: 330 lbs at 272 lbs.
• One arm deadlift- 506 lbs (without straps)
• First man to load a 150kg Atlas stone
• Pushed 3,000 lb wheelbarrow 3.06m

This is how the stage was set for these two titans of strength to meet in our Earthly Valhalla known as the World's Strongest Man.  Up next, Kaz talks some shit and Jon Pall metaphorically bitch slaps him in their first meeting, then they become friends even while screaming and foaming at the mouth, plus the workouts that made them the beasts they were.

Please the Facebook gods and like this shit on Facebook.  Apparently it means something if you do.
Sources:
Bill Kazmaier.  American Strength Legends.  Web.  1 Apr 2013.  http://samson-power.com/ASL/kaz.html

Bill Kazmaier.  Wikipedia.  Web.  4 Apr 2013.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Kazmaier

Freedman, Lisa.  Fittest Americans of All-Time.  Men's Fitness.  Web.  3 Apr 2013.  http://www.mensfitness.com/leisure/entertainment/fittest-americans-of-all-time?page=6

Holden, Ted.  Dinosaurs and the gravity problem.  The Anomalist.  Summer 1994.  Web.  11 Apr 2013.  http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_dinosaurs01.htm

Henderson, Bill.  Jon Pall Sigmarsson.  Strongestman.billhenderson.org.  Web.  11 Apr 2013.  http://strongestman.billhenderson.org/bios/jonpall.html

Jon-Pall Sigmarsson Tribute Page.  Web. 11 Apr 2013.  http://home.earthlink.net/~jonpallsigmarsson/

Jón Páll Sigmarsson.  Wikipedia.  Web.  11 Apr 2013.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3n_P%C3%A1ll_Sigmarsson

One reason for the slowdown in posts after a flurry last month was because I'm going through all of the old nutrition articles and rewriting them for the new nutrition ebook, which should be out presently.  Additionally, I've been spending a lot of time on new merch for CnP and the new supplements, plus working my day job.  As such, I've been getting out what I can, when I can.  To tide you fuckers over until my next epic post, I thought I'd drop the following on you, which is something I'm working on for the forthcoming corporate CnP (www.chaosandpain.com) website.  Lest you worry, the blog will remain as is, porn-and-gore-filled and generallyawesome.  The new site will feature semi-sanitized articles from the myself and uncensored articles by other authors (Jay Nera being among them), in addition to being a sales and info site for the supplements and new merch (CnP beer mugs and shot glasses, anyone?).  Some of you will find this interesting, and the rest of you can yank the panties out of your cracks, as there will be new shit posted soon, and there's a week-long 2 hour podcast (which I cannot get to upload to Youtube for some reason) that features our new addition, the aforementioned Jay Nera.



Long ago, at the University of Arizona, Chaos and Pain's founder Jamie Lewis was in the nascence of his writing career, but already deep into his lifelong campaign of anti-authoritarianism and shit-stirring.  It was here that he was enjoined to pen a paper either defending or critiquing the plan detailed in Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, a satire in which Swift suggested that the English begin eating Irish babies to rid them simultaneously of the scourge of Catholicism and the Irish.  At the time, there was strong anti-Catholic sentiment in the strongly Anglican nation, concomitant with a virulent hatred of the Irish, who were considered basically subhuman by the Brits.  True to form, Jamie chose to defend the proposal as an intellectual exercise, and because he knew this would anger his class full of born-again Christians and foaming-at-the-mouth liberals beyond words.  As such, he set to discovering who had been cannibals in the past, and how they fared.


What he discovered shocked him- provided they avoided eating uncooked brains (which all but the people of Papua New Guinea did), cannibal tribes around the world were renown for their strength, size, speed, and ferocity.  Far from being the sickly, backward malcontents of unenlightened lands, many of these peoples were so feared and respected by others that they resisted colonization and the "civilizing" hand of Christian missionaries almost into the modern era.  This, of course, made a defense of "A Modest Proposal" a simple affair, and Jamie enjoyed watching security escort several enthusiastic missionaries from the classroom as he read his paper, the sole defense of cannibalism, aloud.


Cannibalism, he posited, was not merely the purview of the insane or the starved, the afflicted or the deranged.  Instead, cannibalism among primates is a rather common occurrence, as chimpanzees show rather frequently.  Likewise, cannibalism was common amongst Neanderthals and Australopithecines, and this practice has a profoundly positive effect.  The massive influx of protein from prey that was easier to catch and consume contributed to rapid evolution of hominid brains, and reinforced a desire for meat and a concomitant aggressiveness in succeeding generations.  Springing forward into modern humanity, the word "cannibal" was coined by the Greek historian Herodotus.  Prior to the invention of the word, cannibalism was apparently so common that a word to describe the practice of eating human flesh, as opposed to that of other species, simply did not exist.  Much later, sociologists would further define the word by dividing cannibalistic practices into two types- funerary endo-cannibalism, and aggressive gustatory cannibalism.


From what essentially amounted to an act of academic trolling sprang an idea- would human flesh then be the most healthy protein source humans could eat?  It only seemed reasonable that it would be, as it should naturally contain exactly the amino acids and nutrients that the human body would favor, and was famous among cannibals for being the most delicious meat on Earth.  Though the evidence gradually found its way into Jamie's hands, his concept for a "Cannibal Fuel" product seemed a pipe dream, as Jamie had neither the capital nor the necessary manufacturing experience to make it happen.  It wasn't until he met the other half of Chaos and Pain LLC's braintrust, Wayne Banks, that the idea began to solidify as the duo discussed its merits between sets of deadlifts and bench presses.  It was in the gym, then, that Cannibal Fuel and Chaos and Pain LLC sprang into being.


As it happens, protein powders are incredibly expensive to produce and unless the company has the capital to produce massive quantities, not a tremendously lucrative business.  Luckily, however, cannibals around the world found themselves competing with pre-modern humans for resources, land, and calories.  Were they to exist in large numbers today, finding food would be a simple affair- they'd simply find the nearest herd of ridiculously obese people and slaughter them en masse.  There existed few people, however, that resembles beluga whales more than humans, which forced the cannibal tribes to supplement their meat-heavy diets with various herbs to make them faster, stronger, and smarter, so as to facilitate the conquest of neighboring peoples and ensure a steady supply of human flesh.  The use of stimulants by hunters is ubiquitous to improve reaction time, strength, and performance, and foremost among the herbs used in that regard was ephedra.  Common throughout Eurasia, ephedra has been found in every Neanderthal burial, and has been commonly used by tribesmen from Europe to China since as a "performance enhancing drug".  Likewise, tribesmen in Africa have used the coffee bean and the herb khat as a stimulant for generations.  The Maoris used micropiper exelsum as a stimulant on hunts and an aphrodisiac thereafter, and the natives of the Americas used herb ranging from the coca plant to chocolate and western ephedra strains for energy.  Botanicals were also used to aid in everything from sex to sleep, and written records of ancient athletic competitions are replete with mention of athletes using the same herbs hunters and warriors used to help them on the athletic field.


This, then, is why Chaos and Pain's supplements carry the "cannibal" title- in a long line of badasses, we wish to produce the baddest of the bad, and harkens back to the days when the Androphagi dominated the Russian steppes, striking fear into the hearts of their neighbors- people known to be hyper-warlike, overly muscled, insatiably libidinous and wildly bloodthirsty.  These Mad Max psychos bowed before the Androphagi, men "more savage than those of any other race. They neither observe justice, nor are governed, by any laws. The "man-eaters", as the Greeks named them, "were in the habit of drinking out of human skulls, and placing the scalps, with the hair attached, upon their breasts, like so many napkins." No man or woman was tougher, larger, or more fearsome that the Greeks encountered, and are thus the ideal classical group of maniacs of whom we could think to emulate in the present.


Go forth and conquer, fellow cannibals- we'll supply the num nums.

It's rare that I have an issue titling a post, as the title usually pops out of my fingers simultaneously with the idea for the article.  The title for this post eluded me, however, as if I were an obese, mustachoied, unwashed child molester, rocking a turgid 4" hard on, chasing the last remaining child through a McDonald's Playland with a leaky bag of opiate laced candy with ten minutes left before the end of the world.  This is odd, because hilarity usually comes fairly easy to me, and I know exactly what it is this article is to be, and yet the best I can come up with is "Holy Shit, Westerners Are All Retarded", because holy shit, Western lifters are fucking retarded.  Blinded by an endless spate of fad diets, immersed in endless debates about nutrition and buried in mounds of research conducted by people who have no understanding of weightlifting outside of theory, and in the US in particular without a traditional ethnic diet, we're left standing on a desert island with a vile protein shake in hand, staring wistfully across a small strait filled with piranhas and sharks at a party island replete with lifters pushing weights of which we can only dream, drunk out of their skulls, and eating delicious foods.  For the kids on message boards with sub 315 squats, the only answer is "DRUGS, LOTS OF DRUGS", because they're giant retarded vaginas with less understanding of what it takes to get strong than my 75 year old ice cream-obsessed, white collar father, who could easily outlift 85% of message board posters simply because he's a fucking man with full grown testicles and a modicum of personal pride.


The missing element in English speaking countries isn't drugs, and though it's partially related to work ethic, that's not it either.  Instead, the missing element is the paucity of giant iron kettles constantly filled with stews that are consumed in massive quantities by men who could not fit into their girlfriends' jeans.



For those of you with short attention spans, let's run down a quick list of people who traditionally eat stew and their concomitant skill at strength sports:

• Russians and Ukranians.  They eat stew by the bucketful, and they probably just recycle their trophies and medals in weightlifting at this point because they've got nowhere to store the fucking things.
• Bulgarians.  Bulgarians have, per capita, more trophies in Olympic weightlifting than any other country in history, in spite of the fact that they live in a tiny, landlocked, dour, cold, poor country whose only traditional export is humongous mustaches.  Like their former Eastern bloc comrades, they're slurping down wheelbarrows full of stews called moussaka and kavarma 24/7/365.
• Iranians.  Persian traditional cuisine is pretty much just kebebs and stew (khoresht) with a variety of breads and rice.  For a small country, they have a disproportionately massive number of Olympic medals in weightlifting and wrestling, and have an incredibly long and rich history of strongman and wrestling training called varzesh e bastani that literally could not have existed in a place wherein the diet wasn't centered around their traditional fare.  Unlike the Indians, they never gave up on a meat-heavy diet, so they've been able to keep dominating strength sports while the Indians have languished in estrogen-fueled vegetarian weakness.
• Turks.  Most of the meals cooked in the home start with meat-rich soup followed by thick stews made with beans and minced meat.  If you're unaware, the Turks always do well in Olympic weightlifting, and have wiped the mats with foreign wrestlers since the dawn of man.
• Hungarians.  Though you don't think of Hungary when you think of strength sports, Hungary has 20 medals in weightlifting and a shitload in wrestling, in spite of the fact that they have fewer people in their country than live in Paris.  Their secret?  Goulash by the bucket.
• Sumo Wrestlers.  All those motherfuckers do is eat stew and drink beer when they're not training, and they average 412 lbs at 6'2".  Yes, they're fat, but science says "so what?", because sumo wrestlers carry more lean body mass than bodybuilders (Kondo).  The average sumo carries only 26% bodyfat, which means that that in contest shape they'd be stepping onto the bodybuilding stage at 307.8 lbs.
• Icelanders.  Iceland has long been renown for its strongmen, all of whom credit their disgusting fish stew as being the secret of their success.
• Chinese.  Though neither soup nor stew is a mainstay of the traditional Chinese diet, Chinese weightlifters eat loads a heavy soup made of chicken and pork ribs, and they're working over the lighter weight classes in Oly lifting like they're mini Mike Tysons hanging beatings on Robin Givens lookalikes.

I realize that due to the fact that no renown author has written at length about the utility of stew, my contention here is likely being viewed with no small amount of skepticism.  No bodybuilder has ever touted the benefits of stew, and it's never been said that any phenomenal American athlete credited stew with their success.  As such, stew could not possible be in vogue, because nowhere are people more lemming-like than in Western strength sports.  As such, my theory begs more investigation.  Prepare yourselves for a fact dump that makes your typical deuce dropping in German scat porn seem positively reserved by comparison.


Stewed foods are probably as old as pottery, likely due to the fact that stewing is a very simple way to cook a wide variety of foods, and is perhaps the best method of retaining as much nutrition in the cooked foods as possible.  The Scythians, a tribe of man-eating, death dealing superhumans who dominated the Russian steppes for centuries were huge fans of stewing, and would stew their food whenever they weren't sewing their enemies' scalps into horse blankets and capes.  As ingenious as they were pants-shittingly brutal, the Scythians were known to cook their food by "put[ting] the flesh into an animal's paunch, mix[ing] water with it, and boil[ it like that over the bone fire. The bones burn very well, and the paunch easily contains all the meat once it has been stripped off. In this way an ox, or any other sacrificial beast, is ingeniously made to boil itself." (Wiki)  Ever fans of stewing, one neighboring tribe to the Scythians known as the Issedones would walk their elderly men right into a crock pot and cook them up, then gild their skullcaps and use them as drinking vessels.  Motherfuckers back in the day knew how to throw a fucking party.

The reasons behind stewing are simple:

• none of the nutrients generally lost in drippings from roasting or in the water from boiling are discarded- instead, they're either cooked right back into the meat or remain intact in the broth.  
• meat loses less weight by being stewed than if cooked by any other method.
• stewing denatures protein, making it far more digestible (hydrolyzed whey is denatured, for instance)
• for those of us who view vegetables as a necessary but horrible evil, you end up eating far more of them in stews than you would otherwise.
• stews can be easily kept hot and reheated.
• acrylamides (cancer-causing agents in starchy foods) are not formed in stewing.

Beyond the above list, there is one other reason that you should be eating a wheelbarrow full of stew daily- history has shown that the biggest and strongest people on Earth eat stew with more alacrity than a dog shows when drinking from the toilet.  Stew isn't just food- it's stew-roids.    Take, for instance, the example of Icelandic strongmen.  These gigantic motherfuckers buck the trend of small bodies leading to long life, as the Icelanders are second only to the Japanese in terms of longevity, and are second in the world for males under the age of twenty.  Their secret?  A stew called kjotsupafor- a traditional lamb soup made of fatty lamb, rutabaga, onion, carrot, celery, cabbage, leeks, and a fistful of rice.  Icelandic strongmen credit this stew single-handedly with their size and strength, and claim that this was the stew that made their Viking ancestors the skull-smashing, cervix-displacing, monastery-burning behemoths they were.  Currently, Icelandic strongmen eat kjotsupafor before, during, and after training, and up to six times per day to fuel their training (Bourdain).  If you're curious how it's made, here's a recipe:


2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. finely chopped garlic
3 pounds lamb, on the bone (thick chops or shoulder … whatever is cheapest!)
1 medium onion, sliced
1/3 cup brown rice (traditionalists use rolled oats as an alternative)
6 cups water
1/2 tsp. dried thyme
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 cabbage, roughly chopped
3 carrots, diced into 1/2" pieces
1/2 rutabaga, uniformly diced
1 cup cauliflower florets (optional)
4 potatoes, scrubbed well and diced into uniform 1/2" pieces (see alternative note below)

In a large pot or dutch oven, briefly sauté the garlic in the olive oil for 1-2 minutes over medium heat (do not brown). Add the lamb pieces and brown on all sides. Add the sliced onion to the pot and sauté very lightly (about 1 minute), then pour in the brown rice and water. Raise heat to high, bringing the soup to a low boil; allow to boil for 5 minutes, skimming away the froth as it rises.

Reduce heat to medium, stir in dried thyme and oregano, cover pot, and cook for 40 minutes.

Add cabbage, carrots, rutabaga, cauliflower (if using), and diced potatoes. Cook, covered, for an additional 20 minutes, or until vegetables are fork-tender.

Remove meat and bones from pot, chop meat coarsely, then return. Warm for an additional 5 minutes. (Alternatively, some Icelanders will remove the lamb and potatoes from the pot and serve these on a plate, separately from the soup. If presenting the meal this way, chop the potatoes into larger, 1" chunks).

Yield: 6-8 servings of kjötsúpa.

One bowl of kjötsúpa yields the following nutrition:



Perhaps Iceland isn't your thing- you hate vikings, prefer samurai, and are the one fucking asshole on Earth who thinks Deadliest Warrior got it right when they stated a viking would lose 522 out of 1000 fights to a samurai.  Let's look past the fact that your parents hate you and want you out of their basement, you were the smelly, paste-eating kid in school, and you likely have never been in a fistfight, yet have a black belt in some kind of useless karate.  We can get past that.  Really.  Actually, we can't, and I hope someone sets you on fire.  Despite that fact, you should still be eating stew more often than a 1920's cartoon hobo, because that's just about all sumo wrestlers ever eat, and if you've already forgotten, scientists have declared that sumo wrestlers carry the most lean body mass of any humans on Earth, so it's not as though they're simply giant babies tottering around in diapers.


The stew, of which sumo wrestlers eat prodigious amounts, is called chankonabe, and is comprised of tossed sliced tofu, carrots, cabbages, leeks, potatoes, lotus roots, daikon radishes, shiitake mushrooms, and giant burdock in chicken broth. they wash all that down with massive amounts of beer and saki, then take a nap to allow the massive meal to digest.  Chanko is considered a "sort of legal steroid" in Japan- "Of all the performance enhancers used in sports, it's perhaps the oldest and most venerated. Chanko dates to at least the late 19th century, when short-order cooks from Niigata prefecture fixed meals for wrestlers. The word 'chan' (regional dialect for "father") was conflated with 'nabe,' the name for one-pot meals often served at the table. 'It's the main course of a sumo meal,' says Konishiki. 'All the sumo wrestlers have to eat it, whether they like it or not'" (Lidz).  Here's how chankonabe is made in Tokyo's Tomoegata:


Tachiyama Chanko-Nabe (Tachiyama's Beef and Chicken Hot Pot)
Serves 4

3 lbs. chicken bones
1  2.8-oz. package abura-age (deep-fried tofu), cut into large pieces
1 clove garlic, peeled
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tbsp. mirin (sweet rice wine)
Salt
1 medium waxy potato, peeled, quartered lengthwise, sliced crosswise, and blanched
2" piece daikon, peeled, quartered lengthwise, sliced crosswise, and blanched
1 small carrot, trimmed, peeled, sliced on the bias, and blanched
1 leek, white part only, trimmed, washed, and sliced on the bias
1/4 head napa cabbage, cored and cut into large pieces
4 shiitake mushrooms, stemmed
4 oz. shimeji mushrooms. trimmed and separated
4 oz. fresh burdock root, trimmed, peeled, and shaved into long thin strips
10 oz. yaki-dofu (grilled tofu), halved lengthwise and cut into 1/2"-thick pieces
1/2lb. boneless chicken thighs. cut into thin strips
1/2 bunch chrysanthemum greens, trimmed
1/2 lb. very thinly sliced prime rib eye of beef
1 lb. udon noodles

Bring a medium pot of water to a boil over high heat. Put chicken bones and fried tofu into 2 separate colanders set in sink and pour two-thirds of the boiling water over the bones to rinse off any impurities and the remaining boiling water over the tofu to rinse off excess oil. Transfer bones to the medium pot and set tofu aside to drain.
Add garlic and 14 cups cold water to pot with bones and bring to a boil over high heat, skimming any foam that rises to the surface. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until broth has reduced by one-third, about 21/2 hours. Strain broth into a clean, wide medium pot, discarding solids, and skim off fat.

At the table, set pot on a portable stove in center of table, add soy sauce and mirin, season to taste with salt, and bring to a simmer over medium heat.

Add about one-third of the potatoes, daikon, carrots, leeks, cabbage, mushrooms, burdock, grilled tofu. chicken, fried tofu, and chrysanthemum greens to simmering broth.

Cook until vegetables begin to soften and chicken is just cooked through, about 5 minutes. Add about one-third of the beef.

Simmer until just cooked through, about 1 minute.


Once all the vegetables, tofu, chicken, greens, and beef have been eaten, use a small sieve to pick out scraps. Bring remaining broth in pot back to a simmer, add noodles, and simmer until cooked through, 6-8 minutes. Serve in individual bowls.

One serving of Chankonabe yields the following nutritional awesome:

As though the above information weren't compelling enough, lifters at David Rigert's training camp eat copious amounts of veal broth filled with boiled meat and potatoes, Glenn Pendlay strongly recommends that lifters eat stew as a regular part of their diet, and the Chinese Olympic weightlifting team eats chicken and pork rib soup as a staple of their diets.  Essentially, everyone BUT powerlifters in the Western world are eating stew all the live long day, to their great benefit.  This is a tragedy for us Westerners, but this tragedy can be averted... with the liberal use of a crock pot and a willingness to depart from the norm.  To give you an idea of what it is you're missing out on, here is a bit of the nutritional information for some of the best choices for stew:

Beef Goulash nutrition:

Borscht nutrition:

Khoresht nutrition:

Beef Chili nutrition:


Sources:
Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations - Iceland (Hello Darkness, My Old Friend).  Arc Tv.  30 Nov 2009.  Web.  6 Aug 2013.  http://livedash.ark.com/transcript/anthony_bourdain__no_reservations-(iceland_(hello_darkness,_my_old_friend))/6630/TRAVP/Monday_November_30_2009/131494/
AP.  Japan Sumo Association to crack down on obesity.  Dimensions Online.  Web.  5 Aug 2013.  http://www.dimensionsmagazine.com/news/083958.htm
Chinese Weightlifters Eating in Korea.  Youtube.  25 Nov 2009.  Web.  6 Aug 2013.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uYmxb-A4Ag
Diehl, Kari.  Kjötsúpa, Icelandic Lamb Soup.  Web.  6 Aug 2013.  http://scandinavianfood.about.com/od/souprecipes/r/kjotsupa.htm
Hofmekler, Ori.  Warrior Diet.  St. Paul:  Dragon Door, 2003.
Kadokura, Tania.  Sumo Stew.  Saveur Magazine.  Nov 2002.  Web.  7 Aug 2013.  http://www.banzuke.com/chanko-nabe/
Klokov Discusses Diet.  Forum Post.  12 Aug 2011.  Web.  6 Aug 2013.  http://pendlayforum.com/showthread.php?t=3610
Kondo M, Abe T, Ikegawa S, Kawakami Y, Fukunaga T.  Upper limit of fat-free mass in humans: A study on Japanese Sumo wrestlers.  Am J Hum Bio. 1994.  5(6) 613–618.
Lidz, Franz.  From Soup to Guts.  Slate.  30 Nov 2004.  Web.  4 Aug 2013.  http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/left_field/2004/11/from_soup_to_guts.html
Pendlay, Glenn.  Weightlifter's Kitchen w/ Glenn Pendlay - Crock Pot Stew.  Youtube.  24 Feb 2013.  Web.  6 Aug 2013.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD_V3urp1eg

Quite frankly, the popularity of my stew idea has me taken a bit aback- I honestly believed the world at large would accuse me of having holed up in my house, collecting my own urine and fecal samples, and basically writing nonsense while living full-on Howard Hughes style.  It appears, however, that I'm onto something, so I believe it behooves me to continue with my stew series- the more I research, the more I discover that the correlation between stew and gigantic, badass motherfuckers is 1:1, no matter where you are in the world.  As it happens, my initial idea for eating stew didn't come from my research, but rather arose out of my inquiry into the ideal bulking diet, as I've grown unbelievably weary of constant dieting and have been looking around for a method by which I can alter my diet and increase muscular mass without becoming one of the giant, fat pieces of shit you see waddling around most gyms in sweatshirts with cutoff sleeves and sweatpants that appear to have been new when Flashdance was initially released on Laserdisc.  Putting on a bit of fat in the pursuit of huge numbers is no issue- losing the appearance that I actually lift weights is.


As such, the traditional "see food" diet was not an option, nor was the hideous nonsense I reposted from Dave Tate about eating pizza drenched in olive oil.  Instead, I thought to look to how people have done it around the world in a logical, sensible, sane manner, though with a mode of execution extreme enough to justify its use with my training methodology.  That thought then sat on a dusty shelf in the back of my mind as I rummaged through it looking for odd bits and pieces for the new nutrition ebook, and I'd occasionally catch a glimmer from that abandoned shelf that'd draw my attention whenever the word "stew" popped up in a book or article.  I then recalled Ori Hofmekler's bit on stew, which I posted in the last installment of this series, and the entire concept began to congeal in my head.  I'd already thought in the past that chili could be made into the ultimate food, and then it dawned upon me- there is no need to make it into the ultimate food, because it already is the ultimate food.  I did a bit of maths to confirm this, and this is what I found:



Depending on how you look at it, you're hitting a split of 50% carbs, 37% protein, 13% fat without deducting the fiber, or 42% carbs, 43% protein, 15% fat with the fiber removed from the equation (which I do, because fuck fiber).  Either way, if you can't grow on that shit, you're not going to grow on anything.  Additionally, all of the health concerns constantly issuing forth from the mouths of your wives/girlfriends/parents/coworkers are obviated by the fact that you're getting an insanely balanced diet jam-packed with more fucking nutrition than you'd get just about any other way.
For those of you who are curious about my chili recipe, here it is:


Though my first love insofar as stew goes is chili, that's not my first thought with stew.  When I think of stew, as a general rule, I think of the stew one sees in every medieval movie, ever.  There's invariably an iron kettle brimming with meat and potatoes simmering in the backdrop of any medieval period piece, and that or roast meat are usually the only things you see eaten, along with bread.  That, I've learned, is known as hunter's stew, perpetual stew, and hobo stew, and it sounds like it's a gigantic Santa Claus bag of awesome.  Basically, this type of stew, which was extremely common even through the early part of the 20th Century in a lot of places, is whatever one can find thrown into a pot and slow cooked over a fire.  The cool thing about the perpetual stew is that the pot never got emptied- as it was consumed, more random shit was thrown in- whatever meats, veggies, or tubers they had lying around got chopped up and used.  This is why stews are so fucking cool- you can use endless variations, and the quality of the meat is inconsequential because even the toughest, stringiest cuts of meat are rendered tender by the slow-cooking process.


Though that description likely conjures up images of hulking, brutish, unwashed and bloody men slamming their forearms down on the table of a filthy inn and screaming "flagon of ale and meat!" at the top of their lungs, that type of a meal would have been just as common in the medieval era as it was in the Roman, the pre-Roman era of the Scythians, the early 20th century, and even in modern Iceland, Japan, Hungary, and elsewhere in non-Americanized countries.  In fact, the stew-grain-alcohol combination of the medieval era was used with great success by the Saxon Trio of the early 20th Century and is the mainstay of the sumos and Russian strongmen- a healthy reikishi may drink up to six pints of beer at a midday meal (Scott), Saxon was apparently "weaned on beer" (he once drank 50 beers pre-performance) and ate a tremendous amount of stew and soup (Inch) and still perform, and everyone who's ever lifted in Russia has some tale of drunken debauchery and sour cream-filled beef stew.  The amalgamation of alcohol, stewed meat, and grains seems to have arisen right out of the Middle Ages, as stew was referred to as "companaticum"('that which goes with the bread') and was thus nearly invariably served with booze and bread (Wiki).

If you're curious, I managed to rustle up a medieval stew recipe to give you an idea of what it was those fuckers had bubbling away in a cauldron awaiting the return of King Arthur and his men.  The following recipe comes from a book that might be more aptly titled 700 Years of Culinary Failure, but the author instead went with 700 Years of English Cooking, which while accurate lacks the descriptive terms necessary to warn the reader of the culinary disasters bound within the pages of the book.

1.5kg lean braising steak, chopped into bite-size chunks
3 tbsp plain flour
Oil for frying
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground mace
1/8 tsp (small pinch) ground cloves
4 black peppercorns, crushed
1/2 tsp cardamom pods, crushed and green pods discarded
1 large onion, finely chopped
6 large sprigs parsley, stalks and leaves finely chopped, plus extra to garnish
900ml beef stock
50g stale wholemeal bread, torn into small pieces
3 tbsp cider vinegar
Pinch of saffron threads

Toss the beef with the flour to coat. Cover the base of a large casserole dish with a thin layer of oil and place over a medium high heat. Add the beef in batches and fry, stirring occasionally, until browned.

Return any browned beef to the pan with its juices. Add the spices, onion and parsley with a splash of the stock and fry, stirring frequently and scrapping up the crusty layer from the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon, for about 5 minutes until the onions have started to soften. Add the rest of the stock with a pinch of salt and bring to a gentle boil. Cover, reduce the heat to low and simmer for 2 hours, until the beef is tender.

Meanwhile, soak the bread in the vinegar with the saffron. Stir into the stew and simmer, uncovered, for about 20 minutes until the bread has broken down and the stew is thick. Taste and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Serve with bread and buttered green vegetables, garnished with chopped fresh parsley.

Obviously, that's one stout ass meat soup.  While it's not really fatty enough to be considered fully keto, you could diet for a bodybuilding show on this stew and show up grainier than a cameraphone pic from 2001.  Additionally, cinnamon isn't just a dessert spice- it's used a hell of a lot in good chili recipes, and finds its way into damn near everything Indian.  It's worth noting that cinnamon's inclusion into any meal is usually a good idea, as cinnamon confers a variety of health benefits you don't get with other spices- cinnamon lowers blood sugar and cholesterol and may prevent yeast infections in those sad sacks who've picked up the HIV on a trip to Thailand or their local bathhouse.  As such, this stew is pretty much the ideal thing for anyone to eat from time to time, and eaten with a giant loaf of brown bread and a liquor-filled libation and you've got yourself one hell of a postworkout meal.


Macedonian Stew
Frankly, the Macedonians have done exactly fuckall since conquering much of the known world, but as a former title holder in the World Domination Championships, their food deserves some mention.  As for sporting events since then, they've only been a country since 1996 (they were part of former Yugoslavia, and prior to that part of the Bulgarian Empire), but have pulled down a number of medals in Olympic wrestling in spite of the fact that their country is essentially six people standing around a goat in the ass-end of Bulgaria.  Though I didn't even know there was a such a thing as Macedonian cuisine prior to researching this, a restaurant in Indianapolis is famous for their stew, which is of course Macedonian- John's Famous Stew in Indianapolis.  The stew, which is called Turli Tava, is supposed to be the balls, and you can make it considerably hotter (as the Macedonians are wont to do) by adding a bunch of Hungarian wax peppers.


Quite frankly, I have never had a Hungarian dish I found the least bit spicy and could rinse my contacts with the juice from Hungarian wax peppers, but Macedonians apparently love 'em and think they're capable of rendering stew spicy.  That aside, cranking up the heat on your stew is a damn fine reason, as the capsaicin in hot spices can "burn body fat with minimal potency, fight inflammation with decent potency, and prevent cancer with indeterminate potency" (Examine.com).  If you're more inclined to use horseradish or wasabi, that works as well, as the isothiocyanates that make the brassica family spicy inhibits cancer growth.  As such, you should do as the Macedonians and Hungarians do and spice the fuck out of your food. If you find yourself disinclined to do so, consult the following complete list of people who do not like spicy foods:

• Pregnant women
• Breastfeeding mothers
• Menstruating women
• Women on menopause
• Children
• Old People
• Animals (except fish)

Preheat oven to 400.
You will need:

1 pound of mixed meat – pork and beef  – cut in chunks for stew
Sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 medium onion, peeled and roughly chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 medium potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
1 medium eggplant, stem removed and roughly chopped
2 red or green bell peppers, stems and seeds removed, roughly chopped
1 large tomato, roughly chopped
1 1/2 cups of okra, tops and tails cut off, blanched in salted water for 1 minute, rinsed and drained (if unavailable replace with green beans)
1 tablespoon paprika
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup water
Parsley, roughly chopped to garnish



Directions:

1. Season veal, pork and chicken with salt and pepper and set inside the clay dish.
2. Mix in the vegetables.
3. Season with paprika, salt, and pepper.
4. Add in the olive oil and water; mix well.
5. Put it in the oven and cook it uncovered for 1 hour and 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
6. Garnish with parsley.
7. Let cool for 20 minutes then serve it warm with crusty bread. Utensils not needed- this stuff is chunky enough to eat with your hands or chunks of bread, just the way Conan would have done it.

Bulgarian Stew 
Provided you're an adult human being who lifts weights and does not have their head jammed so far up your own ass that you know what your own duodenum tastes like, the Bulgarians require no introduction.  Given the spate of prolapsed rectum gobbling I've noted (with pleasure) on various porn sites, I suppose I might as well introduce them anyway.  Long known as the swarthy asshole of Eastern Europe, Bulgaria emerged as an Olympic wrestling and weightlifting powerhouse under the benevolent eye of the Soviets.  No country has amassed medals in those respective sports as have the Bulgarians, a people as un-numerous as they are un-hirsute.  Culturally, the Bulgarians are hardly Russian, however- they're a curious blend of Slavic, Celtic, and Greek influences.  The Thracians, one of the only Greek nations to stand with the Spartans at Thermopylae, hailed from what is now Bulgaria, comprise the "Greek" influence, and combined with the Turkic/Hunnic Bulgars and South Slavs (the rest of whom eventually ended up as Yugoslavia) to comprise the population and culture of modern Bulgaria.  Despite their vastly disparate culturally different influences, Bulgarians eventually embodied a literal and figurative melting pot, which then took tangible form on the dinner table as a Bulgarian favorite-Monastery gyuvetch.


Ingredients
2 lbs beef
4 tomatoes, chopped
1/2 lbs mushrooms
1 cup rice
1 onion, chopped
15 olives, whole
a bunch of parsley
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp sugar
2 1/2 cups beef stock
black pepper, paprika and salt



Preparation
Cut the beef into cubes or small pieces and fry in a pan with a little oil for about 5 minutes or until brown. Add the onions, beef stock and paprika, 5 minutes later add the mushrooms and rice and simmer for about 15 minutes. Add the tomatoes, salt to taste, butter, sugar and olives, and cook for another 5 minutes. Preheat oven to 400F. Transfer the content of the pan into a baking dish and cook for about 30 minutes. Sprinkle with parsley and pepper before serving.


Maori Stew
When one thinks of the Maori, stew is likely not the first thing to come to their minds.  For those of you who are unaware, the Maori are some of the hardest motherfuckers to ever walk the Earth, and earned their massive statures from a diet so meat-heavy that they eventually turned to cannibalism to supplement their diets after hunting most of the animals in New Zealand to extinction.  When I say "massive" this is of course relative- the average Maori male was about 5'8" prior to colonization, which was considerably taller than Europeans of the time, and were much more heavily muscled, as the average Maori was generally between 170 and 200 lbs.  Replete with a shitload of badass tattoos and more bludgeoning weapons than one would like to see in hulking, heavily muscled natives in a tropical paradise they wish to conquer, the Maori were the last major indigenous group to fall to European colonization, holding out until the mid 19th Century after eating more Europeans than a French cunnilingus specialist.  As it is everywhere else I've mentioned, the mainstay of the Maori diet was stew- in this case, the Maori Boil-Up.  Unlike many of the other stews I've thus far outlined, the Maori Boil up is interestingly Zone-ish- it's almost exactly 33% protein, 33% fat, and 33% carbohydrates.  Given that it's still the mainstay of Maori cuisine and the fact that the All Blacks
dominate rugby harder than Max hardcore dominates skinny chicks' tonsils, it stands to reason we could all stand to get a little Zone in our lives and rock this stew like it's Infant Annihilator's full length- all the live long day.


4 cups chicken broth
2 cups water
1 lb pork tenderloin
2 bunches watercress
1 large kumara, peeled and chopped (sweet potato)
1/2 large onion, peeled and chopped
3 green onions, sliced
6 cherry tomatoes
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon fresh cilantro, chopped (optional)

Doughboys
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, in pea sized pieces
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 pinch salt
1 pinch sugar
1/4-1/2 cup milk

Directions:

1. Add stock, water and pork to pot, bring to a boil then cover and simmer for an hour.
2. Soak watercress in cold water for 10 minutes. (This removes bitterness) Squeeze out moisture and break into pieces. Set aside.
3. Add kumara, onion, green onion and tomatoes to stock and simmer for 15 minutes.
4. Remove pork and chop into pieces. Return meat to stock and boil for 5 minutes. Add salt and watercress and simmer for 15 minutes.
5. Meanwhile make the doughboys. Cut butter into dry ingredients until it resembles coarse cornmeal. Stir in enough milk to make a stiff, slightly sticky dough.
6. Drop either teaspoon or tablespoon sized amounts of the doughboy mixture into the the boiling pot, cover and cook for about 10-15 minutes. Don't lift lid while cooking. Larger doughboys will take a bit longer.
7. Serve with a garnish of chopped cilantro.

Welsh Stew
When one thinks of Wales, they likely think of an incomprehensible language spoken by hill people who spend their time fucking sheep, if they think of them at all.  While that is, I'm told, unequivocally true, the Welsh do have a long history of badassery spanning back to prehistory.  According to a 15th century historian, "The ancient Britons being naturally a warlike nation did no doubt for the exercise of their youth in time of peace and to avoid idleness devise games of activity where each man might show his natural prowess and agility, as some for strength of the body by wrestling, lifting of heavy burdens, others for the arm as in casting the bar, sledge, stone, or hurling the bawl or ball, others that excelled in swiftness of foot, to win the praise therein by running, and surely for the exercise of the parts aforesaid this cnapan was prudently invented, had the same continued without abuse thereof" (Wiki)  Cnapan, as it happens, is the forerunner to rugby union, the game at which the Maoris excel.  When the Welsh played it, it had few rules, was played by teams numbering over a thousand a side, and often resulted in serious injuries and death.  As such, it's not played anymore, as no insurance company will cover the players.  Thus, the Welsh are left with shit like strongman, stone lifting, and Highland games, at all of which they excel.  Of the former perhaps Gary Taylor is the most well-known contestant, a six foot, 300 lb behemoth who won the 1993 World's Strongest Man and who boasts a positively fucking ridiculous behind the neck push press of 600 lbs.  The rest of the Welsh are hardly pussies, as they boast some of the toughest manhood stones in the British Isles- the Criccieth [390.5lb] and Ysbyty Ifan [300lb] stones.  As I understand it, stew is traditionally the most-consumed food in Wales, and the most popular of the stews is Cawl, so again, we've got some bad motherfuckers sucking down stew like it's cum in a bukkake party.

6 x small Welsh lamb shanks
1.2L/2pts water
225g/8oz potatoes, peeled and diced
225g/8oz swede, peeled and diced
225g/8oz onion, peeled and chopped
225g/8oz carrots, peeled and diced
225g/8oz leek, cleaned and sliced thin
A bunch of herbs: Bay, thyme, rosemary and parsley
½ a small Savoy cabbage
2tbsp vegetable oil
Salt and pepper


Heat the vegetable oil in a large pan, season the lamb shanks add to the pan together with the onion and brown all over (you may have to do this in batches if your pan is not large enough. Pour over the water and add the bunch of herbs. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat to a simmer. Cover and cook for 40 minutes. Add all the vegetables except for the cabbage, bring up to the boil again, reduce to a simmer and cook for a further 40 minutes. Shred the cabbage and add to the cawl, cook for about 5 minutes, then serve.

Cawl can be made throughout the year, just adjust the vegetables according to the season. Chopped runner bean, broad beans and peas are wonderful during early summer, add a little chopped mint at the end of cooking.

During cooking the stock will reduce somewhat, so top up with more water, or some wine. You may also wish to add pulses such as lentils, or beans, pearl barley is also good during the winter months.

Substitute lamb with a piece of gammon, just make sure you soak it before cooking. The broth will make an excellent soup, add peas and fresh mint.

Serve the gammon with creamed potatoes, broad beans and parsley sauce.

Next time, we'll close this one out when we hit up the Senegalese, Croats, Dutch/Belgians/South Africans, and Indians for the stew recipes that made them some of the meanest, baddest, most unforgiving motherfuckers in the gods' cruel kingdom, and prove once and for all that there's no food on the fucking planet that confers more badass, muscle building, face melting, cervix displacing nutrition than does a good old-fashioned stew.

Sources:
Hiroa TR.  Maori Somatology. Racial Averages.  1922.  J Polynesian Society.  31(121)37-44.  Web.  13 Aug 2013.  http://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/document/Volume_31_1922/Volume_31,_No._121/Maori_somatology._Racial_averages,_by_Te_Rangi_Hiroa_(P._H._Buck),_p_37-44/p1

Hunter's Stew.  Wikipedia.  Web.  7 Aug 2013.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter%27s_stew

Inch, Thomas.  My friendship with Arthur Saxon.  Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban.  7 Jan 2009.  Web.  8 Aug 2013.  http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2009/01/my-friendship-with-arthur-saxon-thomas.html

Inwood K, Oxley L, Roberts E.  “Tall, active and well made”- Stature of the New Zealand M ori population, c.1700 - 1976.  Paper for presentation at 34th Social Science History Conference.  12 Nov 2009.  Web. 13 Aug 2013.  https://www2.dti.ufv.br/noticia/files/anexos/php8rp64d_4262.pdf

Scott, Greg.  What Sumo eat.  Lingualift.  Oct 2011.  Web.  8 Aug 2013.  http://japanese.lingualift.com/blog/what-sumo-eat-wrestlers-diet/

Before I kick this one off, I'm going to post what I thought was a remarkably succinct observation on the popularity of this series, which I admit still has me rather flummoxed.

"I can't explain why your stew articles have been well received by everyone, but I can explain why I thought they were awesome. I liked the stew articles because they were a rallying cry for a return to simplicity. Many things, I think, have been overcomplicated in recent years, lifting and eating foremost among them. For several decades now we have endured a barrage of conflicting information: low carb/high protein, high carb/moderate protein, high fat/high protein, "see food," paleo, keto, blah blah blah. I found some of this interesting, but at the end of the day, I can't be bothered to actually follow it. For one, I'm not a strength or muscular development level yet that would make any of those things make sense (and some of them don't make sense to begin with). For another, did any of the strongmen of the past follow diets this restrictive? I would imagine that most of them didn't. The most common point among all of them, aside from the regular consumption of stew and beer, is the heavy consumption of meat. It seems to me that we would do better to look to the past (or in this case, to more sensible countries) when it comes to figuring out how best to eat if you want to get as big and strong as possible. And besides, while I am certainly aware that too much of them isn't good for me and while I know others will think differently, personally I am rather fond of some starch and vegetables in my diet.



Also, the use of stews as you have described them is appealing on a mental level, and you have talked about the importance of the mental side of lifting many times. These kind of traditional stews connect us to the past. When we devour a bowl of chankonabe we can imagine in ourselves a kinship with the massive sumo; when eating kjotsupa for or medieval spiced beef stew, we can imagine ourselves as the kin of burly, stone-lifting, sword-swinging barbarian warriors; when eating borscht we can imagine a connection to gigantic Russian and Ukrainian badasses who are as strong as the ox that went into that borscht; when eating monastery gyuvetch we can recall Bulgaria's impressive accomplishments in weightlifting; when we eat Hungarian goulash, we can recall the history of Hungarian badassery, starting from Attila through the Magyars down all the way to their success at wrestling and weightlifting that seems out of proportion to their population and their national wealth; when we feast on a bowl of khoresht, we can do so thinking that the legendary Rostam e Dastan ate the same thing before striding forth to do something epic. By recalling the past, whether it is our own or someone else's, we can better imagine what kind of future we will build. A man with no past does not know who he is. If he does not know who he is, how can he be expected to act intelligently? Western lifters are like that. We don't know who we are anymore. Our ties with our past is frayed. We do not have a very strong national lifting culture. There are localized instances of strength culture, but even these are not thriving as well as we might wish. We must build up a culture that celebrates strength, for its own sake and for use, while at the same time recalling to mind the strength cultures of the past; indeed, we cannot build new ones without remembering the old ones."


Whether or not it's correct, it's certainly one of the more well-written and thoughtful emails I've ever received.  Had I known initially how popular this series would be, I'd have been writing about stews since I started this blog.  Apparently, people could not love a human baby as much as they love stew, even in the middle of the summer.  I live in Satan's Taint, South Carolina, for instance, and eat stew daily in spite of the fact that it's so hot that my dog appears to just be looking for a place to lay down and die when we go for walks and the air is so thick with humidity you can ball it up and eat the shit.  When wintertime rolls around, I doubt there'll be anything better than stew to stave off catabolism in the cold, but even in the summer it's definitely worth eating at least once a day for the ridiculous nutritional content.  Additionally, I'm finding that stew's pretty fucking good cold, and have thus given up on reheating it while it's hot so as not to drop dead of heat exhaustion while eating.


As we've seen thus far, pretty much ever corner of the Earth has a stew dish that's immensely popular, and as I mentioned in the last installment, the best thing of all about stew is that you can make it out of just about anything.  Thus, I've been experimenting a bit with some simple stews one can make without going to much, if any effort.  One such stew (which is delicious cold, I might add) is one I made in about five minutes, having only to brown the stew meat I added and then dump all of the ingredients.


1 lb browned stew meat
1/6 bag Beef Flavored 15 Bean Soup
1 can Progresso Beef Barley Soup
1 can Progresso Lentil and Andoulle Soup

1. Soak beans overnight in water.  Drain the water after soaking (this gets rid of the lectins and other nasty shit in beans).
2. Brown the meat in a pan with a bit of oil, seasoning liberally with mojo, chipotle, curry, and adobo.
3. Dump meat and drippings into crock put with everything else.
4. Simmer for a few hours

Clearly, it gets no fucking easier than that, and given that it tastes badass cold, there's no reason not to just bring this shit everywhere you go.  I've more or less abandoned shakes of late out of boredom with them and love of eating real food, and the simplicity of stew's prep and ease of its transport makes my life immeasurably better.  One more day of 6 protein shakes and I was going to have to ram my fist down someone's throat and strangle their soul out of misplaced rage.  Well, not that misplaced- in the last 6 months I've discovered that there is a considerable portion of the population who cannot even address a fucking envelope, which makes me feel like we need a few more Chechens motivated enough to fling bombs at random passers by.  In any event, we'll take one more pass through the world's stews before I lay this series to rest like the super-flogged dead horse it is.  If there's anyone out there who remains unconvinced that stew's fucking magical, nothing on Earth will do so at this point.



Croatian Stew
For the unaware or uninitiated, one might think that the Croats have about as much to do with awesome as a dairy cow has to do with Hubble Telescope repair.  Though they've had some unseemly anger management issues in recent years, the Croats have been hard motherfuckers since time immemorial.  Beginning as the Alans, one of the Sarmatian tribes that drove the man-eating, scalp-taking Scythians out of existence and dominated all of southern Russia from China to the Ukraine.  In the early part of the 1st century AD, the Alans controlled the Sarmatian confederation and fucked every group of sword-waving lunatics the ancient world had to offer in the ear on a daily basis, wrecking the Parthians for fun and annoying the Romans as a matter of course.  Later, they moved into what's now known as Croatia and managed to impress everyone around them enough to get the massive empires between whom they were wedged to leave them alone just by baring their fucking teeth and flexing a bicep or two.


Having established the Croats come from a long line of hard people, you need only look to three modern Croats for proof of the power of their stew- Joseph Tito, tho only man to tell Stalin to go fuck himself and live, Mirko Crocop, the only professional fighter of whom I know to hold political office while knocking motherfuckers out with high kicks on the weekend, and the Great Antonio, one of the coolest and most insane strongmen of whom you've never heard but who you should definitely check out here.  Having hung out with a Croat mercenary in Vienna quite a bit (and having done a lot of Brazilian jiujitsu on the floors of bars with him), I can personally attest to their awesome, and of their love for "Jota", the stewroids source of Croatian physical prowess.


200g beans
500g sauerkraut
300g potatoes
500g dried ribs
200g dried bacon
few chopped home made pork sausages
3 heads of garlic
salt
Whole peppercorn
2 fresh bay leaves (which apparently prevents bean farts)



Directions:

1. Cook the beans shortly, dry them, and let them cook again.
2. Cook cabbage and ribs separately.
3. When beans are half soft, add them (witht he water) to cabbage and ribs.
4. Add Laurel leaves, pepper, salt, and chopped bacon,sausages, and garlic.
5. Slice the potato to little cubes and cook it until it all softens.
6. Take out the ribs and serve them on side with the stew.

This is a 4 person serving, but women apparently rarely eat meat and ribs and most often leave it for men to grab, which sucks for the broads but is awesome for the guys hanging out with them.  On second thought, given that this is what Croatian broads look like, they can keep passing us the meat:


Indian Stew
Anyone familiar with my stuff should already be acquainted with the badassery of the Indian athletes of yore.  Indian wrestlers were renown for being unbeatable in the last century, and their strongmen in the 19th and early 20th Centuries were some of the best in the world.  Though it's not frequently discussed, a quick watch of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations Indian episodes or my blog on Indian diet shows that meat has been a mainstay of the Indian diet right up until the modern era (not surprisingly, this coincides exactly with the period when they started getting their shit pushed in by colonialists), and continues to be so for the biggest and the baddest motherfuckers in India.  Thus, I give you the most popular of India's meat stews (at least insofar as I understand it)- vindaloo.


Chicken Vindaloo Ingredients:

Vindaloo Paste
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 or 2 tsp Garam Masala
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon (you can add more cinnamon, but if can be over-powering, so be careful!)
2 tsp mustard powder
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp cayenne pepper
2cm cube of peeled ginger
3 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp sugar

Vindaloo Base
150ml vegetable oil
4-8 garlic cloves, crushed or blended
3 red onions, sliced finely or preferably blended

Other Ingredients
4+ red chillies, chopped finely. This is what gives the heat, so you can use less if you like and also de-seed before chopping if you want to make a milder vindaloo (but why?)
4 skinless chicken breasts cut into bite size pieces
500g good quality chopped tomatoes or chopped tinned tomatoes
1-2 tbsp of tomato puree to taste
1-4 tsp Hot Chili Powder to taste – This is optional and if you do want to make it hotter, I’d suggest adding a bit at a time
Salt and pepper to taste

Chicken Vindaloo Recipe – The Method:

1. Grate or slice the ginger finely and add the cumin, cinnamon, mustard, coriander turmeric, garam masala and cayenne pepper into a bowl and add the vinegar and sugar and mix thoroughly.
2. Heat the oil in a wok or large frying pan. Add the garlic and the onion and cook over a medium heat until they have softened for approx 5-7 mins, but take care not to let them burn or brown too much.
3. Once the onion and garlic have softened, add the chicken pieces and cook for approx 2-3 minutes until the chicken starts to colour.
4. Now add the chillies, tomatoes, tomato purée, and begin to stir in the pre-prepared Vindaloo paste.
5. Add salt and pepper to taste, and bring to the boil. Once boiling, lower the heat and simmer whilst stirring occasionally for approx 1 hour. during this period, it’s important not to let the chicken vindaloo dry out, so add a 1/2 cup of water as necessary.  If you do want to make it hotter than the recipe, then during the simmering time is the right time to gradually add the chilli powder to taste.
6. If you wanted to be traditional, you would ideally serve this Chicken Vindaloo with pilau rice, chapattis, or Naan bread – I especially like some of the Garlic and Coriander Naan’s that are available from most supermarkets, although if you were a bit more adventurous, you could try to make your own.

Dutch/South African/Belgian Stew
Before the Dutch just decided to throw down their weapons and surrender to anyone with a water gun (as they have been wont to do of late), they actually rolled fairly hard.  Not hard in a Cossack sort of way, but hard in a lording-intelligence-over-everyone-while-pointing-a-.44 Magnum-at-their-faces-and-telling-some-broad-to-get-her-tongue-further-up-their-ass-or-everyone-dies sort of way.  The Belgians and Dutch have long had good bodybuilders and strongmen, and the South Africans have rolled hard at everything they've ever done, ever.  Dutchmen Ab Wolders, for instance, was a perennial runner up at the World's Strongest Man in the 1980s, and Pierre Van Den Steen blew everyone around the same time away with his ridiculous leanness.  South Africa boasts Gerrit Badenhorst, frequent WSM competitor and former champion powerlifter, in addition to Arnold Schwarzennegger's idol- former champion bodybuilder and all around badass Reg Park.  Clearly, anyone speaking Dutch or an offshoot thereof has a reasonable chance of being a hard motherfucker, especially when one factors in such badasses as the Rhodesian Seleous Scouts and SAS.  Their stewroid of choice was Waterzooi, which might be the oddest of all of the stews thus detailed due to the fact that it's pretty much a meat-heavy cream soup.

Ingredients
1 whole large chicken
4 carrots
3 celery stalks
4 shallots or small onions
Parsley
1 sprig fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 leeks
400 grams mushrooms (about 14 ounces)
4 egg yolks
1 cup cream
1 lemon, juiced
2 tablespoon butter
Pinch nutmeg



Directions
Preparation for the stock: Place the chicken in a pot of water, covering the chicken entirely. Add 2 carrots, 2 celery stalks, and 1 onion, cut into approximately 1-inch pieces. Add parsley, thyme and a bay leaf and poach until chicken is cooked. Add salt and pepper, to taste.

Cut the remaining carrots, celery, onions into 1-inch sticks and place them in a saucepan with water to cover. Cut the leeks into 1-inch sticks, slice the mushrooms and add to saucepan. Parboil vegetables in salted water. Take out the chicken when poached (no red color must be seen under the skin) and discard vegetables from stock. Strain the chicken stock through a fine sieve. Take the skin off of the chicken and cut chicken into 8 pieces. Put the chicken and the parboiled vegetables into the stock. Mix the egg yolks with the cream and add to the stock. Add the lemon juice and butter. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Serve in soup plates with boiled potatoes or white steamed rice.



Senegalese Stew
When most of us think of Africa, we definitely don't imagine a bunch of jacked dudes beating the brakes off each other in a dirt pit like they're in a paleolithic fight club.  Instead, it's much more likely we imagine two half-starved thirteen year-olds blabbering bullshit about Allah while committing numerous atrocities as part of a daily ritual to lay hands on a bag of moldy rice.  Though neither the introduction of Islam or Western colonization has done a motherfucking thing other than make the lives of Africans immeasurably worse, they've managed to hold on to some of the tribal shit they did prior to the invasions of the aforementioned flaming assholes that made them so fucking cool back in the day.  One such tradition is Senegalese wrestling, known in Senegal as laamb, which is by far and away the most popular sport in the country and has recently drawn the attention of the West.  As you can see above, the lack of modern training facilities isn't hurting the physiques of the Senegalese, and their strength is attributed to brutal basic training and the dish considered to be the Senegalese national flag, Ceebu Jenn.  Ceebu Jenn is, of course, a stew, and is the most commonly consumed dish in Senegal and is the preferred fuel for the hours-daily training for laamb.



Ingredients
3 Tilapia cleaned and cut into 4 pieces each
3 branches of parsley finely chopped
3 branches of cilantro finely chopped
3 bay leaves
1 tablespoon of thyme
3 green onions finely chopped,
2 tablespoon of Afro Fusion Cuisines’ All Purpose Seasoning
4 ounces of tomato paste
2 plum tomatoes finely chopped
3 medium onions finely chopped
3 lb broken rice (broken one once or twice)
1 cup of oil
salt , black pepper
Vegetables of your choices
2 large carrots root cut into 4 inches pieces
1 eggplant root cut into 4 inches pieces
1 cassava or yucca root cut into 4 inches pieces
3 okra



Instructions

1. Clean the fish very well and set aside
2. Prepare the special marinade called “Nokoss” by mixing in a blender all your spices and herbs
3. With a sharp small knife make small cut on the fish. Using ½ of your marinade in step 2 stuffed the fish and immediately broil or fry then set aside
4. Parboil or steam your rice and set aside
5. In a heated pot, using 4 tablespoon of the oil used to fry your fish, put a dash of salt , add onion, tomato paste and plum tomatoes (cook for 5-7mn stirring) .
6. Add 6 cups of water to the pot, add the cut veggies, add the fish already fried and lastly add
7. The remaining half of the marinade Let simmer for 15 minutes for the fish and Juices to blend
8. Remove the fish roe from the pot and start plating
9. Then remove from the sauce the cooked veggies and add it to the plate.
10. Add the pre-cooked or steamed broken rice to the boiling sauce
11. Put the fire on low and let it reduce…should take about 15-30 mins depending on the nature of your rice. Your Thieboudienne is ready!

Nigerian Stew
Like Senegal, Nigeria's got a tribal sport that make the violent games we grew up with, like Kill the Cow, for instance, look as violent as a no-touch game of pattycake- dambe.  Dudes who compete in dambe throw more haymakers than drunken hillbillies at a Kenny Chesney concert, and just like those hillbillies throw them with just one hand.  In fact, a quick google search appears to show that the haymaker is the sole strike employed in dambe fighting, which apparently only ends when you remove someone's head Mortal Kombat-style with a punch telegraphed from 1880's London.  After watching a couple of videos, the parallels between hillbillies and dambe end, because while hillbillies hurt each other as infrequently in fights as do dambe fighters, hillbillies lack both the intellect and the flexibility necessary to throw the occasional kick you're likely to see in dambe.  Nevertheless, any sport in which the participants rock out Art "One Glove" Jimmerson style as if they're in the first UFC is all right by me.  The food of choice for these hilarious tribal combatants?  You guessed it- motherfucking stew.


Fresh Plum Tomatoes (referred to as Jos Tomatoes in Nigeria) – 1.5kg
Tinned tomato paste: 600g (or watery tinned Tomato Puree: 1.2kg)
Vegetable Oil: a generous amount (see this video)
Whole Chicken (hen) – 1.2kg
Beef: 15 pieces of medium cuts
Onions: 2-3 medium bulbs
Habanero Pepper & Salt (to taste)
Seasoning: 3 large stock cubes & Thyme (2 teaspoons)

Important notes on the ingredients

Chicken: Hen (female chicken) is tastier than the cockerel or rooster so it is the preferred chicken when cooking all Nigerian recipes.  Each of the different parts of the chicken (wings, drumsticks, hips etc) has its own unique taste and all these together makes the stew (and in fact all your cooking) taste better than if you use only one part of a chicken.

Tomato Stew is fresh puree tomato and the tinned tomato paste that has been boiled and fried to remove all traces of water and the sour taste of tomatoes. It is the base for the Nigerian Beef & Chicken Stew.

1. Grind / Blend the chilli pepper and cut the onions into small pieces before you cook Tomato Stew
2. Wash and blend the fresh plum tomatoes. Remember to remove the seeds unless you are sure your blender can grind them very well.
3. If using the thick tinned tomato paste that is common in Nigeria, mix it with cold water to get a softer consistency. See the video below for how I did this.
4. If you are using the watery tinned tomato puree that is common in Europe and other parts of the world, open the tins or packets and set these aside, you'll need them soon.
5. Cut the onions into small pieces.

Cooking Directions

1. Pour the fresh tomato blend into a pot and cook at high heat till almost all the water has dried. If you have the watery tinned/boxed tomato puree, add these to the pot and reduce the heat to low. Cook till the water in the tomato puree have dried as much as possible.
2. Add the vegetable oil, the chopped onions and the thick tomato puree that you mixed in step 2 above (if it's the puree you are using). Stir very well.
3. Fry at very low heat and stir at short intervals till the oil has completely separated from the tomato puree. A well fried tomato puree will also have streaks of oil, unlike when you first added the oil and it was a smooth mix of the tomato puree and oil. Taste the fried tomato puree to make sure that the raw tomato taste is gone. With time and experience, you can even tell that the tomato puree is well fried from the aroma alone.
4. If you are happy with the taste and you are sure that all the water has dried as much as possible, pour out the excess vegetable oil like I did in this video, then use it in your cooking.
5. If you are not using it immediately, leave to cool down, dish in containers and store in the freezer.
6. - See more at: http://www.allnigerianrecipes.com/stews/tomato-stew.html#sthash.Qe46H92G.dpuf
7. Cut up the chicken and cook with half of the chopped onions, stock cubes and thyme. When the chicken is almost done, add the beef and cook till well done. Then add salt, allow to simmer for about 5 minutes, transfer to a sieve to drain. Grill or fry the chicken and beef. This is optional but it gives them a rich golden look.
8. Notes about cooking the chicken:
9. Add water up to the level of the contents of the pot when cooking the chicken.
10. When cooking chicken, I do not add salt to the raw chicken. This is because salt closes the pores of the chicken (and infact anything you are cooking), this prevents the natural flavour of the chicken from coming out into the surrounding water and prevents the seasoning from entering the chicken to improve the taste. The result is that your chicken stock will not have a rich natural taste. It will only have an artifical taste of seasoning.  

Note:  Only add salt when the chicken is done. A lot of people think that adding salt early makes the chicken taste better but there's a big difference between a salty taste and a rich taste. What gives food a rich taste is not salt but the natural flavor of the food so allow this natural flavor to come out into your stock by NOT adding salt too early. And remember, stock cubes already contain salt so you really don't need more salt.
Cooking Directions Continued

1. When you are happy that the tomatoes in your tomato stew are well-fried, pour out the excess oil as I did in the video below.
2. Place the pot of tomato stew back on the stove and add the chicken stock (water from cooking the chicken). There may be tiny pieces of bones at the bottom so be careful not to add those.
3. Add the chilli pepper and the grilled chicken and beef. Stir very well and add salt if necessary. You can also add some water at this point if the stew is too thick.
4. Cover the pot and cook at medium heat till the contents of the pot is well steamed. Stir again and you are done.

Korean Stew
Though they're not all that well known for being jacked or strong, Koreans eat burn-your-asshole-spicy soups and stews for almost every single meal.  Given that they're chugging stewroids all the live-long day, it won't surprise you that Koreans are not the tiny yellow pussies they're generally credited with being.  Instead, Koreans have a long lineage of being hard motherfuckers, as Korea is essentially the Poland of Asia- jammed between China and Japan, they've had to fight constantly for their entire existence to ensure that neither country was able to force them into a massive gimp suit and rape them with a horse dick-sized dildo until they're bleeding out of their eyes.  To that end, the Koreans have focused more on martial prowess than strength, and have become some of the hardest hand-to-hand fighters in the world.  Currently Koreans are representing hard in K-1 and the UFC, boast the unbelievably badass Mas Oyama as one of their own, and have pulled down a shitload of medals in judo (40), taekwondo (14), boxing (20), wrestling (35), and weightlifting (11), in spite of the fact their country has only 49 million inhabitants and has only existed as a country since 1948 (which means they've basically got twice as many medals in those sports as the US when you account for longevity and population).  Stew appears, once more, to be the nutritional formula for success if you want to be a fucking badass.  Given the frequency with which they eat stew, it's hard to pick a single recipe for their stewroid of choice.  As such, I'm picking my favorite, as I could not love a human baby as much as I love bulgogi.  In fact, I will only consider myself wealthy when and if I can hire a Korean man to follow me everywhere i go with a hibachi, constantly grilling bulgogi for my consumption.


Ingredients
2 cups marinated bulgogi
1 onion, cut into strips
2 scallions, chopped
Carrots, cut into strips
1/2 cup bean sprouts
Other bite-sized vegetables (preferable colorful) like peppers and broccoli
1 cup water
1 cup mushrooms of your choice (enoki, shiitake, button or a combination)
1 block tofu
Salt or soy sauce to taste
Noodles, cellophane/dangmyun/sweet potato (optional)



Preparation

1. In a soup pot or a large wok, stir fry marinated bulgogi and onion(s) for a couple minutes. Put ALL the marinade into the pot, do not discard any liquid.
2. Add vegetables (except for mushrooms) and cover with water.
3. Bring to a boil.
4. Reduce to a low simmer.
5. After 5 minutes, add mushrooms, tofu, and scallions.
6. Turn off after 3-4 minutes.
7. Season to taste with salt and soy sauce.
8. If adding noodles, add cellphane (dangmyun) with the mushrooms or add pre-cooked noodles at the end.

And there you have it- stew is the fucking balls.  It's easy to make, easy to transport, and generally the shit.  Like the guy who emailed me stated above, most people make diet and training way too fucking complicated.  You don't need a calculator or an Excel spreadsheet to get jacked.  You don't need gurus telling you what to do, how to eat, or what to think- this shit is too fucking simple.  If you're a person who really needs guidelines because you're nearly retarded, eat twice your bodyweight in protein, make those calories half your daily intake, and if you want to lean out, keep your carbs low and fats high.  If you want to gain weight, split your calories between carbs and fats for the second half of your caloric intake and eat more total calories.  It's not as though Arthur Saxon or Earle Liederman delved deep into programming and diet- they trained heavy, ate a metric fuckton of food (including a lot of stew), and drank their faces off, just like the Russians, Finns, sumo, and Icelanders do now.  Moreover, if the Indians and Senegalese can get jacked in third world environments with this type of diet, so can you. Stop thinking about it and just do it- this shit is too simple to fuck up.