Obsessed With Squats

Posted on July 9, 2014 by tosabarbell

Any day that starts with Pisarenko is a good day. True Story.

I am completely OCD about the tshirts I wear. I have about 3 that I’ll wear on a usual basis and a handful of others that I’ll wear here and there. In the summer, it’s tank tops. Cuz they don’t try to choke me to death. True story.

No matter the shirt, the first thing I do is cut a V in the front so it doesn’t rub on my throat. Ya, I know. OCD. Further cutting will come in various forms depending on the situation. When I need to wear a Games shirt (which isn’t common since I usually grab a 2x shirt and pass it off to the Oz man) the neck gets cut first and then usually the sleeves. I’m checking the YouTube to practice prettier styles but usually I just cut the sleeves and tie the back together with one of the sleeve parts. Kate Burton is a master of the T-shirt cut. She cuts and weaves and turns out something that should be in a shop. SRSLY. That’s beyond my talents, kinda like french braiding my own hair. Not happening.

The T’s I DO wear are standard. Gym T’s, older gym T’s. Faded; writing is wearing thin; actually each t-shirt is wearing thin. To be on the acceptable daily wear list a few requirements need to be met. It must be a soft cotton. I can’t wear thick cotton T’s. I feel like I’m in a coffin. FoShizzle. The shoulders need to be cut generously (which immediately takes women’s T’s out of the running.) The length needs to be perfect. Not too long or it all bunches up around my short waist and believe me, I don’t need things bunching up around my waist. I’ve got plenty there to begin with. I need to be able to stretch out the chest (boobies) without stretching out the tummy cuz thankfully, for now, the boobs are bigger than the gut.

My three favs, listed in order are: a T from my pals down at CrossFit Retribution that has the word SQUAT across the front in bright orange. Underneath the Squat it says, ’till your eyes bleed’ which is a bit dramatic but whatev. Their artwork on the back is solid and even though folks sometimes think I’m a CFr, it’s worth it to be comfortable. It’s my everyday go to. My other two are from my BFF’s over in Brooklyn, Paulie and AoD of South Brooklyn Weightlifting Club. One is a very nice black T with their logo, that’s my dressy T-shirt and the other is their top seller RUNNING makes me tired T. That’s a fun one. People look at think ‘OH, a runner’ but then say, ‘OH, not so much.’ I have a couple of those but the other ones are used for throwing. I have one long sleeved black T shirt that I got at Target about 8 years ago that I still wear with the long underwear shirt when throwing in the cold. It has so many holes now I’ve almost thrown it away at least three times but just can’t do it. I love that shirt. (Memo to me, when finding a shirt that I love, buy four.) The T I wear for training when not tank weather is a Brooklyn Barbell shirt I got years ago from Keith Wittenstein who I used to coach with. It’s a bit big so I wear a tank top underneath but it’s nice and thin and doesn’t get in the way. I honestly have no idea why I have two T-shirt drawers when I only use 5 of them consistently. Hoarder.

Anyways. Back to my SQUAT shirt. As I said, it’s my go to when it’s too chilly for tank tops. This morning was one of those times.  The Oz man and I got up a bit early (for him anyway) and ran some Birthday errands for my Fav Gal Pal. We started at the local Starfux where I got two dirty Chi’s (one with soy, my bday gift to her was actually saying “soy” when ordering a drink;), went to a grocery where we got a balloon and a donut each to pre-game our drive to the actual donut shop to get a donut bouquet for her birthday breakfast.

At the Starfux, the nice woman taking my order said, “I love your shirt.” I say, heyyyy thanx man. Actually I just said thank you. She then went on to say, “My husband would love that shirt, he’s obsessed with squats.” Uhhhhh, huh? I had to investigate that further so I asked what does it look like when someone is obsessed with squats. What I got was, “Oh you know, he has to squat every day or he get’s crabby. He’ll squat anytime anywhere even if we’re in the grocery store or out for the night to loosen up.” My inner angel/devil voices were battling with each other where the Angel’s MUST!NOT!SAY!ANYTHING!ABOUT!DOUCHE-Y!CFr! won out. So when she finished with, ‘he just really loves CF’ I could just smile and walk away. Funny enough, when I was waiting for my Dirty Chi’s (I kinda like saying the word ‘dirty’) another 170 pounder dude says, kinda side like, ‘Nice shirt.’ When I mumbled thanks he gave me a head nod as if to infer that we had some squat kinship going on. There’s a reason why I usually drive through these places.

Obsessed with squats? Pleaze. In all honesty, squatting and attention whoring are two completely different things. For one, you actually need a barbell and some weights to do it so if you think you’re doing it in a grocery store or at the pub? No,not a squat. Attention whoring. Poor girl. By the way, when I order a dirty chi (heeehee) I always have to ask them to put only 1/2 the amount of chi syrup in there or it’s too sweet and yucky. I forgot to do that this morning so just pressed some coffee of my own. I struggle.

SO. To recap. Pisarenko? Good squatter. He used squats to get strong. Strongest. Someone “obsessed” with air squats where they need to do them in public constantly? Well, sure, they’re obsessed. Just not with squats.

True Story

And then I heard that some bloke from Australia won the gold with 60 kilos less than I did in the National Championships.

Anatoly Pisarenko

Training Log

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Implements+Creativity=Stupidity

Posted on July 8, 2014 by tosabarbell

gymfail

A beefy powerlifter/bodybuilder told me a story once. He said while training in a globo-gym, he and a pal found a couple of those little square wood pieces with wheels. Ya know, the things we used in elementary school when kids could still play hard in elementary school. We called them Dolly’s and they looked kinda like this…

gymdolly

Those things were fun. Anyways, big guy and big pal decided to have some fun with them and started doing a whole bunch of stupid exercises on them. They may be on some gym fail somewhere but in this case, they were just being silly boys. Well, lo and behold, the next time my friend got to the gym, there were some little silly boys with the dolly’s out doing the same thing. AwwwwSHIT.

That’s ONE of the ways stupid gym shit is passed down. Monkey see, monkey do. But what about the other way? Ya know, someone with not too much experience walks in the gym and says, “Hey! I have X piece of equipment and I’ve never seen anyone do Y with it so we’re gonna! I’m foking brilliant!” 

Hey! Ya know why you haven’t seen anyone else do it? Especially the people who are on top of whatever game we’re watching? Cuz it’s stoopid. Not brilliant. Stupid. How does Bigg put it? Too much risk for too little gain. That should be painted on most gym’s walls of silly people who post videos on the youtube.

TOO MUCH RISK FOR TOO LITTLE GAIN! 

And then promise your patrons that you will NEVER put their strength or health in danger by doing stupid shit. EVER.

Look, gyms these days are full of fun toys. In the good gyms, machines have been replaced by barbells, and kettlebells, and strongman equipment. But that doesn’t mean we need to get away from their intended uses. The reason the strongest and best use this stuff in the ways they do, is cuzz it works. The best pressers in the world press heavy barbells. They understand that to be the best, they need to keep their shoulders heavy so they don’t do tricks with other things. Even Bigg is careful when drunk girls want him to lift them overhead (happens a lot actually, either that or he get’s a nice boob rub by waitresses when they serve us food. Pretty lulz.)  His usual response is no thanks, not today. The last thing we need to deal with is some tweak or pull from doing silly things. So we don’t.

Ever.

Now, when the guys get together and some strength/grip challenge thingy is on the line, sure. That happens. But it happens with professional athletes who know exactly what they’re doing and what THE RISK IS. Do the clients of stupid coaches? Nope. So do your good deed of the day, if you see it, stop it. If you want to do it, stop yourself.

Pleaze.

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has it’s limits.

Albert Einstein

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Monday Bacon: R&R

Posted on July 7, 2014 by tosabarbell

repetitive

First off, this is not new. It is not groundbreaking nor is it earth shattering. I did not wake up in the middle of the night to the Epiphany that will turn the strength world inside out (I actually woke up to the Bigg man’s snoring.) It is old news. One could even dare say it’s repetitive and redundant. But it’s still all over the interwebz with other ‘miracle’ coaches selling their snake oil. They have the answer to the age old question, ‘How do I get better at throwing/strongman/weightlifting/hula dance/fill in the blank ?????’

Or rather, should I squat a certain way to “mimic” the stance in a WOB? Should I sumo deadlift to “mimic” the stance of a lineman? And this question came up last week with some of our new Highland Games friends, why would holding our arms straight out in an air squat “prepare” us for holding the bar in a front squat? (By the way, I disagree on that one. If someone believes they’ll fall over because their arms aren’t thrown forward and up then they just need a better coach who can have enough foresight to ask them to pull their weight off their heels. This has worked for all shapes and sizes and weights. Add to the fact that when we front squat, our arms are not thrown up and forward. The bar rests on our Deltoids and does just fine with our elbows up.)

But the bigger picture here is that, if you wish to play and even excel in a sport, guess what? You’ve gotta practice it. It’s why the top players in sport train AND practice the mechanics of whatever you’re doing. There is no “WOB” squat. There is only a strong squat. Then we take our implement out in the field (or yard) and tear it up trying to perfect our TECHNIQUE for a  higher WOB. If you want to skip even ONE part of the dual, then your game day will suffer. True Story.

I know people who don’t like to practice. They like to do all their work in the gym. Because for them, it’s the easy part. In large part, it was me last year. Now, I whill say that while I practiced what I could, I didn’t have NEAR the understanding of what I’m trying to accomplish like I did this year and that has helped immensely. My body still isn’t doing exactly what I want, but at least I have a picture in mind. And I practice every day. Every. Day. Even to the point where my gym time is decreasing and will be even less in about a month as I prepare for the World Championships. BUT, it will still be there. Because I can’t do one and skip the other.

If I don’t squat or pull, I hurt. I don’t recover as well as I should after events. If I don’t press or go overhead in some way, my shoulders get tight and they hurt after throwing. Unacceptable. It is impossible for me to do one without the other. I know, I tried it this spring. I switched up my training enough that A) I hurt and B) my throwing suffered and 3. I gained weight. Not good.

Anyways.

The gym is for strong time. The field is for sport time. See how that works? It’s really not magic. If there’s an on-line (or otherwise) coach who tells you he/she has the perfect programming and technique tips to be a champion and his name isn’t Matt Vincent, don’t buy it. Cuz I’ve seen Matt Vincent’s training and throwing video’s and read his books. Guess what he does? He get’s strongest in the gym, and throws out in the field. See how that’s not magic? It’s just lots of hard work.

Hard work. Hmmmm, maybe that’s where the breakdown is. See, ONLY practicing or ONLY training is a little less work than doing both. Taking the time to do footwork drills (srsly, who likes footwork drills? They’re tedious and you like like a crazy person spinning down the track on one line until you get dizzy enough to look like a drunken crazy person. Or maybe that’s just me) is like cutting into real throwing or real training time. But ya know what, at some point in time the top throwers have done footwork drills. Cuz they had to. Maybe not anymore, but I don’t “practice” my squat anymore. I just do it. I’ve honed the technique enough to know when I need to adjust and just do it. But that took time. Time I was willing to spend which leads to another problem with noobs these days. But I do know people who only practice and it makes me want to drop kick them across the field when they complain that their throws aren’t getting any better immediately after bragging that they don’t go to the gym. Choose. Either be a strong thrower or STFU and deal with what you’ve prepared your body to do. Which is? Not much.

Anyhoo, back to the folks who have done this for a short time but they want to know right meow. How do I do this perfect RIGHT NOW without putting in too much time? And again we say, it takes time and strength and practice. Repetitive and redundant. Not sexy. Not magic. I won’t make a million selling the “get’cher WOB over 20′ by August” product. Damn. That really sucks cuz I was hoping to use that money in Scotland. Oh well, guess we do it the old fashioned way. We’ll earn it.

Repetitive and Redundant. Train. Practice. Fuel your body. When you have experts around, pick their brain as much as you can while remaining respectful that they also are competing. Then go home and train and practice some more. But stop looking for the carryover technique in the gym. The gym is there to make you strong. Strongest. Then you grab your implements and go practice to make your throwing further. Day after day, all season long. Boring eh? I hope my competition thinks so. Heeehee (But I know they don’t. Sad face.)

To give any less than your best is to sacrifice a gift.

Steve Prefontaine

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Common Sense

Posted on July 4, 2014 by tosabarbell

paine

…Wherefore, instead of gazing at each other with suspicious or doubtful curiosity, let each of us, hold out to his neighbour the hearty hand of friendship, and unite in drawing a line, which, like an act of oblivion shall bury in forgetfulness every former dissension. Let the names of Whig and Tory be extinct; and let none other be heard among us, than those of a good citizen, an open and resolute friend, and a virtuous supporter of the RIGHTS of MANKIND and of the FREE AND INDEPENDANT STATES OF AMERICA.

Our country is more divided than I have ever seen. Social media, a divisive news media and politicians have shaped our country to be neighbor against neighbor. It is unacceptable. We rail on each other on the Facebook about politics; lifting; ANYTHING we disagree with. We are willing to say horrible things that will exist forever on the internet. We take MEME’s and perceive them to be fact.

We are rediculous. We are playing into the hands of power hungry politicians whose only goal in life is to STAY IN POWER.

Stop it. Now. No one in Washington is going to ‘reach across the aisle.’ We need to do it. Little by little. Before we have so much hatred for each other we can’t turn back. What do you contribute? Even funny little George Takei has caused so much inflammatory overreaction that he is actually being taken seriously.

Stop it. Now. There is no happy ending for a country who allows others to make us hate each other.

I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of  the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

Thomas Jefferson

There, I guess King George will be able to read that.

John Hancock

We must all hang together, or assuredly we will all hang separately. 

Benjamin Franklin 

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