Human meat accident!

So. Pavement is stronger than human mean and bone. Now we know for sure.

*Someone* might have fallen off his bike and turned his wrist to mush and bone dust.

This guy took a flip over the handlebars when confronted with a streetcar track on his way to work. I was unaware for hours and hours he was at the hospital!!

After his trip to a few emergency rooms, and surgery to fix him up, he is new and improved with metal parts.

Hospitals are scary and weird. I wasn't too helpful as the unhurt party, as I am a hardcore fainter, who can't seem to keep conscious in the same building as a band-aid. I actually had to sit n the floor with my head between my knees at times. SIGH. Been that way my whole life, gotta deal.

So now the surgery is done, he is on the mend, and I am playing nurse. It doesn't come easy to me, I am kind of a mean nurse actually. So my shop and creations are on hold for just a little while. But I am sure once the arm heals a bit it will be back to business as usual.

He is doing well and I am doing well and even though I have to do the dishes for 6 weeks, its still kind of fun to have a cyborg around. Yay for science!

P.S. We are both buying bike helmets. :-) Lesson learned!

You Can Gain Weight Without Looking Like a Fat Fuck #2

Bruce Lee was famous for telling to "be like water", and his theory is as applicable to training and dieting as it is to fighting. The quote actually comes from the Dao de Ching, and is even better when looked at in its entirety: "Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves…"  That is exactly the way you must approach dieting and training if you want to have success.  In most people's minds, dieting is a very cut and dry thing- cut calories to lose weight, and increase calories to gain weight.  The key, however, is to lose and gain the right kinds of weight, and not to do so to the detriment of your strength training goals.  At that point, it becomes far more art than science, and anyone who tells you differently is a lying sack of shit whose children will hopefully be born blind and crippled as punishment for their forebear's stupidity and general dishonor.

Dieting FTW.

With that in mind, clean bulking isn't easy.  Boiled down to its essence, it looks deceptively so, however:

1. Eat more.
2. Lift more.

Seems simple, right?  Couldn't be simpler.  Well, let's just look at the second part of that to illustrate the difficulty of this.

Lift more.  This could mean any number of things, especially coming from me.  My meaning's actually no more obtuse than the actual statement itself, as it means: lift more in terms of poundage, but not necessarily in terms of volume, while at the same time adding extra sessions if at all possible.

Seems a bit contradictory, right?  It's actually not.  If you're of the mind to, say, train 5x5 on squats with 405 lbs 3 times a week, your total volume for that week would be 30,375 lbs on the squat.  I would recommend, if you want to bulk cleanly, that you try to train heavier when you're lifting heavy, but add extra sessions of light work as well.  Thus, your workouts could become 2 days of 12x1x500 and 2 sessions of 2x30x135, which means that your total volume would be 28,200.  While the training volume's not quite as high in terms of total poundage, it's likely that you're doing far more work per minute, which means that your workout density is improved. Additionally, you'll be facilitating active recovery with your light sessions, which will transport more nutrients (of which you'll be eating more) to the afflicted areas, and will take advantage of the increased protein synthesis you'll be getting from your increased training frequency. (Zatsiorsky, p. 12)  As you try to ramp up the number of sessions per week, you'll find that some weeks you can handle more training, and some you can't.  As such, you'll autoregulate your growth and recovery by listening to your muscles.  If they're cramping so badly during your warmups that your form is absolute shit and you want to die, move on to a different lift.  Half of the wacky exercises I've adopted by reading old strongman texts have been to give me something to do when everything hurts (the other half for  when I'm bored with what I've been doing, which occurs rather frequently when you're training 10-11 times a week), and they work, as they keep me in the gym and typically stress my body in ways to which it is unused.  This theory's in no way new- prior to the adoption of static training programs as a method to sell magazines and books, this is the way people trained.  It's far more natural than the mechanical methodology of linear progression, and it's clinically proven to produce better results in trained athletes. (Mann et al) Think of yourself as a banzai tree- you're not going to grow in straight lines, no matter how much you Mister Miyagi your training.  You can, however, make tiny adjustments constantly to guide your growth so that it progresses in an manner that is in accordance with your goals.  Bear in mind, with autoregulatory goodness filling up your body, that bilateral training produces far greater increases in growth hormone than does unilateral training.  As such, focus more on barbell exercises than dumbbell ones, and if you find yourself doing unilateral movements, make them BIG.  The amount of muscle mass activated during training is as important to creating anabolic hormone response as Tera Patrick's angry screaming while getting fucked is essential to her popularity.(Kraemer et al.)  For those of you who are sadly unaware of Tera's vocal skills, it's essential.

With that out of the way, let's move onto the even harder side of the issue- eat more.  For those of you familiar with my blog, you know that I'm a fan of paleolithic dieting, although many of you seem to have a slightly skewed notion of what role paleo dieting actually plays for me.  Paleo dieting is a great way to get really lean, really quickly, while sparing muscle.  It might also be a good way to clean bulk, but I've never tried, as it requires you to eat cleanly, and it's pretty difficult to get enough calories to gain an appreciable amount of weight in a year without spending your entire day eating and cooking.  As such, deviation in necessary.  It is useful, however, to bear in mind that consumption of non-paleo foods in great quantities will lead to fat gains, even if they facilitate muscular bodyweight gains as well.  I've found the best way to bulk cleanly is to rotate my calories and macronutrients.  I don't bother with utilizing a percentage of my BMR, however, in setting my calories, due to the near impossibility of making that calculation.  Even were you to determine your bmr for a given day, it will change as you get leaner, or bigger, or fatter, or smaller, or any permutation thereof.  It'll deviate further as your daily activities change, ranging from the amount and quality of your sleep to water consumption (and the temperature of that water), your lifestyle activities (do you work sitting or standing?  How much did you walk in a given day?), and finally your training style, loading protocols, TUT, and any number of other factors too numerous to mention.

Side note- fucking regularly will keep you lean, and give you a shitload of leniency in your diet.  I'm talking 2+ times a day, not the ~3x a week that I've heard various idiots bragging about. Masturbation does not seem to be a suitable substitute, either- it seems that the caloric expenditure during sex plays a part, as does the fact that testosterone levels are more heavily impacted by sex than masturbation also plays a part.

Back to rotating your macros and calories.  Start by doubling your bodyweight in lbs, and making that your baseline for grams of protein, daily.  As you grow, up your protein.  Thereafter, you're going to have high, medium, and low carb days, which will be inversely proportional to your fat intake (unless you choose a paleo day instead of a keto day).  Thus, protein remains static, while you'll have high carb/low fat, medium carb/medium fat, and low carb/low fat or low carb/high fat days.  Into the mix, you'll throw two cheat windows- and don't throw them in on your low/low days.  The low/low days are important, in my mind, as they serve to give a sort of protein fasting day- they're for all intents and purposes a paleo day.  That's the day where you're kicking up fat metabolism, forcing your body to change your output of leptin on a daily basis, and prevent your body from settling into homeostasis of any kind.  Since leptin is the hormone responsible for controlling your appetite and plays a role in fat deposition and utilization, fucking with it by doing the metabolic equivalent of poking it in the eye with a sharp stick is key.  Should you find that you're staying lean with no problem, you're incredibly hungry, or you simply want a keto day, take one.  Bear in mind that those days are high calorie days, so they're tricky to fit into this system if you are really trying to rotate your calories.  You could, however, cheat on these days by simply eating a massive amount of fatty meat for the three hours- hitting an all you can eat steak house or rib place (and only eating ribs coated in a dry rub).  Experimentation is the word of the day here, and you're going to be like a mad scientist, tinkering with your diet until you've turned yourself into a massive, world-destroying robot bent on nothing short of the subjugation and destruction of the entire human race.

To define high carb and low carb:  low carb means under 75g of carbohydrates for the purposes of this dietary regime.  Thus, you'll be able to eat a handful of nuts, some veggies, and whatever carbs are in your protein shakes.  That 75g does not include your postworkout meal, either, which should include at least 20g of protein and 40-75g of carbs.  Play with the levels and see what works for you.  I found Trio-Plex cookies and the occasional Met-Rx Big 100 brownie to be perfect for this.  Otherwise, I avoid eating carbs in the form of grains or starches on these days.  Medium carb days are usually those where I'll have my cheat window, which I almost invariably had at dinnertime.  I make this a forcefeeding of epic proportions, and eat hard for 3 hours, whatever I want.  At three hours, anything I haven't finished goes into the trash, and I have shakes for the remainder of the evening.  I'll generally follow cheat days with a medium or low carb day, and then go high carb or cheat again.  Never cheat on

consecutive days, if it's in a forcefeeding sort of way.  If you know you're going to cheat multiple days in a row, make it a bit sensible, and don't gorge yourself- your body will absorb the excess without hurting your bodyfat levels.  For the high carb day, I keep the fats low, generally eat 40-60g of carbs at 4 or 5 of my meals, which will give me 200-300g of carbs (1-1.5g of carbs per lb of bodyweight).  Total meals per day will be between 6 and 10, depending on exactly how long I'm awake, how full I am from one meal to the next, etc.  I never go more than 3 hours without eating, and I always leave a shake sitting on the back of the toilet to drink while I piss in the middle of the night.  Obviously, I make my shakes with water- don't make the evening one with milk unless you like your milk sour. 

But I still haven't explained how to fine tune this motherfucker into a steamy sexpot of high octane awesome!  I guess you'll have to wait for the next installment...

1) Mann JB, Thyfault JP, Ivey PA, Sayers SP. "The Effect of Autoregulatory Progressive Resistance Exercise vs. Linear Periodization on Strength Improvement in College Athletes." J Strength Cond Res. 2010 Jun 10. [Epub ahead of print]  http://www.ampedtraining.com/exercise-science/research-review-autoregulatory-training-linear-periodization#more-1476 Posted 6/21/2010.  Accessed 8/19/2010. - "Autoregulatory progressive resistance exercise demonstrated greater improvement in 1RM bench press strength, estimated 1RM squat strength and the
number of repetitions performed at a weight of 225 lb compared with the [Linear Progression] group over the 6-week training period." Their "findings indicate[d] that the APRE was more effective than the LP means of programming in increasing the bench press and squat over a period of 6 weeks."

2) Zatsiorsky, Vladimir.  "Intensity of Strength Training Facts and Theory: Russian and Eastern Approach."  Biomechanics Lab at the Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, and Central Institute of Physical Culture- Moscow, Russia.  - Zatsiorsky shows that the heavier one's training rate, the higher one's rate of protein degradation, which means a corresponding increase in protein synthesis.

3) Migiano, Matthew J; Vingren, Jakob L; Volek, Jeff S; Maresh, Carl M; Fragala, Maren S; Ho, Jen-Yu; Thomas, Gwendolyn A; Hatfield, Disa L; Häkkinen, Keijo; Ahtiainen, Juha; Earp, Jacob E; Kraemer, William J. "Endocrine Response Patterns to Acute Unilateral and Bilateral Resistance Exercise in Men."Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. 24(1):128-134, January 2010.

You Can Gain Weight Without Looking Like a Fat Fuck

There appears to be a great deal of fear, circumspection, incredulity, and general confusion surrounding the concept that lifters can indeed gain muscular bodyweight without getting fat (moreso naturally than without gear than with).  Allow me to allay your fears and put that horseshit to rest- it's not impossible.  Certainly, you're going to have a natural barrier to getting bigger that can be usurped by taking things like OTC gear (like Superdrol) or black-market gear (like the non-methylated versions of the shit that's in Superdrol), but even if you avoid the use of that sort of thing, it's possible to gain muscular bodyweight without getting fat.

Stan Efferding *might* have used gear while clean bulking.

First off, I'd like to touch on something that clearly irks the shit out of some people- my total unwillingness to prescribe detailed dieting or programming recommendations.  The loose guidelines I give people apparently drive a lot of you fucking bananas, which I've always found odd.  John Romaniello elucidated the reason behind this, however, in an article on T-Muscle.  In that article, he described disparity between the mental approach of dieters, segmenting them into two distinct categories- freedom dieters and rule dieters.  Freedom dieters are like myself- we thrive on loose outlines like macronutrient ratios and chafe at specific instructions on exactly what to eat, when.  Rule dieters, by comparison, are totally fucking lost without a timetables by which they need to eat very specific amounts of very specific foods.  They apparently make the best bodybuilders, but to me that sort of mindlessness is bizarre.  

The freaks and super sci-fi nerds amongst you will recall the Gor series by John Norman, which outlined a very specific lifestyle dynamic (now referred to as Gorean) wherein one person is completely in control of the other.  People have adopted this lifestyle in real life, to the point where some have actually gone to jail for playing master-slave.  This isn't some normal, "I'm gonna make you prance around naked while everyone has a go at you and we scrawl 'whore' on your chest and then use you as a coffee table" sort of deal- I'm talking, they can force their slave to give up custody of their children, are forced to wait in one spot without speaking or moving a muscle until told to move, etc.  Frankly, either end of that sort of relationship seems fucking insane to me- if I have to take a piss, I'll do so when and where I want, and anyone who says otherwise can eat shit.  Conversely, I cannot imagine the inanity of having to tell someone when to do everything they're going to do, and how- it'd be worse than having a baby, which would in turn be worse than having AIDS.  I mean, I get distracted in the middle of a sentence... there's no way I'd remember to tell some silly broad to get the fuck up and go take a shit before she stains the carpet, and she'd likely starve to death before I remembered to instruct her to eat. 

That's the dude-in-jail linked above, with some broad who doesn't know when to eat.

Thus, when people ask me for specific dietary recommendations, I would rather have AIDS than give them.  I've no fucking clue what people like to eat, whether they can cook, what's available at their grocery store, etc.  Additionally, I'd expect people to exercise a modicum of free thought and initiative in attempting to get lean or build muscle, or both.  On that note, I'm not going to tell you what to eat, or when, in the precise terms some of you so longingly desire.  Instead, I'm going to give you some rather broad recommendations you can use to guide your experimentation.


Now, the very first thing to do is to throw out everything you think you know about gaining weight scientifically.  There's no science in the horseshit recommendations you'll find being made on websites like Bodybuilding.com- they're there people people want to be spoon-fed easy bullshit that they're going to debate endlessly and never actually fucking try.  Lean bulking's not easy and it's not a static process.  The very idea that it might be is about as logical as the thought that tripling the deficit is going to improve our nation's economy in either the short or long term... and we've all seen enough news to see how that happy horseshit is working out.  Common methodologies for weight gain, hackneyed and vapid as they are, are shit like adding 500 calories of anything to one's diet every day, or GOMAD (gallon of milk a day).  Adopting one of those methodologies without employing any critical thinking or utilizing a modicum of analysis in the process of their utilization is as preposterous as going into a Thai whorehouse where the prostitutes regularly fuck sub-Saharan African monkeys, and then fucking every broad in there six times on the recommendation of a friend who told you that you'd have a great time, and you wouldn't get AIDS.  We'll, he'd be half right, just like anyone who recommended GOMAD as the ultimate way to cleanly bulk you be half right- you're going to get the positive aspects of each endeavor, but the the downside is that you might die early from your inability to critically assess your actions as you performed them.

With GOMAD, you too can look like this.

Yep, I'm shot right out of a fucking cannon on this one.  Tomorrow, I'll explain how to bulk while you avoid looking like you spent the last month eating mayonnaise straight out of the jar with a soup ladle.