Oh yeah, full gear workouts can take a while. Thats why I was curious with Westside, as they hardly ever wore gear during the era Dave trained. You can see it in a lot of the videos. Totally raw for ME, suit bottoms or briefs for DE.
I knew a record holding powerlifter, and trained a bench workout with him.
It took him 2 hours to do 7 reps.
It is the fact that it can take a while ( 90+ minutes) to get through a proper training session
that these small exclusive facilities exist. ( Westside, Monster Garage, Super Training, et al).
Places like 24HRs of L.a. Planet Crapness are there for the general population, not the very
small niche powerlifters / olympic weightlifters / strongmen.
Westside, Monster, SuperTraining et al are places for the dedicated few who understand that proper rest periods between sets of maximum intensity can take between 3-5 minutes. Each.
I would rather follow the STaff Sargent into battle (Dave Tate , Dan Green, Chad Wesley Smith, Chris Duffin) into battle , then some white coat science geek who has never had a weight on his back.
That said, none of the afformentioned are particularily charismatic. And, they are not part of the "fitness’ industry as a whole. They account for a small niche, which we here love.
Perky sells, Hard , Strong(er) and Ugly does not.
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If I knew how I would -lol.
Although I guess at this point, we all know it’s Jason Blaha and Devin Physique (Shredz Supplements) at the center of the fall out.
S
IMO, quite possibly the most universally disrespected among actual knowledgeable people in the fitness industry. Still, all most people hear is “she trains Gwenith!” and everything else falls on deaf ears.
S
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Yep. Get 6 people training together and it starts to push the training session out pretty easily - especially if there is something silly like a circus db involved and you need to do 5 sets each.
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Yep. She deserves getting called out by name, and Dirk certainly isn’t the first on that score!
BUT she still does appearances on mainstream TV, morning shows, is featured in health related articles in big magazines like People or Shape. It’s sort of a testament about how a pretty woman who looks good on TV and has associations with celebrities, can still experience a lot of success, despite saying a lot of kooky things. All the crazy, or harmful stuff doesn’t seem to matter. Compared to people like this Blaha guy, she’s absolutely HUGE (figuratively speaking here. She weighs 95 pounds.)
Nutrition professionals have looked at her diet plans and detailed serious nutritional deficiencies. People do loose weight on 700 or 800 calories a day though.
All geared toward women but -
Anyone can look like her (be a size zero or two).
She can help make you super tiny.
Women should never lift more than three pounds.
Avoid using large muscle groups but somehow activate all your smaller muscles.
Magical dance cardio sequence that somehow selectively does that.
Spinning will give you “man butt.”
Running will bulk your thighs. I think the goal is to not have any visible curve to your quads.
Just for a couple of laughs. GAH!!!
“ You have to reengineer the muscular structure and then make sure that your cardio is not counterproductive,” she says. “I don’t believe in running. I can’t be pulling your muscles in teeny-tiny and then you go bulk it up with your cardio.”
“If you want to be longer and leaner you’ve got to stay away from 10-pound, 15-pound [weights] and calling to action the bicep, the quad, the glute — the very direct large muscles that know exactly how to work in very specific ways.”
makes me feel like kind of a pussy for taking the week off because I hurt my wrist stealing pallets and my knee feels a little funny…
Makes me feel sane because I don’t wish to cripple my body for lifting weights and that I actually have some sense. 
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Crazy stuff. Seen some of it myself.
I like to throw the word ‘Perspective’ around a lot when discussing this pursuit. At the end of the day, depending on how reasonable you are, how hard you push, how much you let it interfere with the other parts of your life, it can either benefit you, or damage you.
Most of the other competitors I know have a pretty realistic understanding of what they can get out of this pursuit. That doesn’t mean they half ass it in the gym, or with their diet, but it does mean that they understand that looking good in a speedo (or perhaps moving a ridiculous amount of weight, just once, with a variety of added apparel specifically designed to help in the task) has very little effect on the rest of their life. Sure, there can be money to be made for some select few, BUT, at what cost? It’s been brought up whenever someone in the sport of BBing passes, that “dying doing what you loved” may not be worth missing out on years with your loved ones.
Back to the topic of social media though,… has anyone else been keeping up with all the nonsense lately? It’s gotten pretty insane.
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This will sound snobbish and severely judgmental to many. However, it’s how I feel. I believe repeatedly tearing muscles, destroying tendons and ligaments, meeting clinical death, breaking bones, being made unable to sleep adequately, and eating and drugging oneself to diseases, all for a passion or hobby (or whatever term one prefers) is damn shameful! I don’t look up to people who do this at all!
Now, if some guy sacrifices his body, knowing full well that he will be a cripple for the rest of his life when the dust settles, but earned a fortune in the process of playing a dangerous sport or being a daredevil in some other endeavor, and then left this subsequent fortune of his recklessness to those he care about, then I consider that a professional endeavor, not simply a passion or hobby.
If one wrecks oneself to the point in which other human beings can’t depend on him for anything or he drives those around him up a freaking wall because of his stupid ways, then I believe he should keep to himself.
No to continue to stay off the subject of all the “fitness” bullshit out there being
promoted by bleached blonde bobble headed brain damamged perky bitches but :
Dave Tate once said “that there are only Three possible outcomes when lifting (or my take: in life in general) : You Make it, You Miss it, or you get injured. Two of the three Suck, but the One is
Awesome !”
Does that mean you should always push it ? Probably not.
Clint Darden reminds us in this video that Life is like a marathon… so be the tortise not the hare.
and Daves talk:
Do you think most Beverly Hills Housewives are going to listen to these guys (getting back on topic) ? No, even though they know more that the perky bitches ever will.
You have reasonable points, but these guys are looked at as weirdos and I think some, certainly not all, would not be suitable for giving nutrition and fitness advice for ordinary people.
Also, most housewives want to look good and feel good, which can be accomplished ordinary eating habits and good food choices and some simple weight training and cardio exercise.
Whacked out, obsessed powerlifters striving for goals that don’t even reflect well-being or attractiveness are not exactly the people housewives would think of going to. Besides the benefits of resistance training can be met with two or three simple sessions per week and no one even needs a 300-plus pound bench press to be perfectly healthy. If I were some ordinary dude looking to get fit, I’d stay away from men suffering from health problems because of their physical pursuits.
I bought into all those crazy sayings, mantras, and articles when I was younger. I too held those adolescent dreams of being a conquering hero, slaying dragons and all that alpha-male nonsense, when at the end of the day, the best thing I learned was that in order to build a quality physique, you’d fare far better being smart and methodical than simply being some testosterone fueled, ego driven meat-head.
S
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Could not agree with you more.
I want to live a long, healthy and productive life.
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Not a whole lot of Kierkegaard or Camus fans here it seems, haha.
I identify far too much with Meursault for my liking
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Also, a lot of these powerlifter and strength-and-conditioning badasses talk loads of shit. Some of them speak of their passion as life-or-death endeavors and some nonsensical stuff.
As I posted elsewhere, I In a video feating Dave Tate and JL Holdsworth I recently watched with a friend, Dave spoke of Louie and him wanting to put each other into the hospital. JL chimed in on his experience at Westside and told of a story in which he switched to lifting with the morning crew at Westside instead of the night crew because someone from the night crew wouldn’t fight him and he refused to train with someone that won’t fight him.
These are middle aged men speaking of hospitalizing and assaulting other men over lifting weights and if I did not know of their knowledge base and was a newcomer to fitness or just wanted to build some muscle and strength at my age of 36 years old, I’d likely ignore whatever else they have to say. They’d likely strike me as trashy or in layman’s terms, “f—g retarded”. But because I already know who they are, despite not being interested in powerlifting, I find them somewhat informative and entertaining.
Then I remember a very famous powerlifter, one of the best in all time, once speaking about chucking 25-pound plates to yo-yo’s in the gym, as well as booting them out of squat racks on Monday mornings, as if the squat racks belonged to him because he is a competitive powerlifter. Is this believable?
Anyway, I am not a tough guy or an experienced fighter and have had only a couple of violent experiences in life, but if some guy thinks because he has some muscle that he is going to act as he pleases with me, in a violent manner, all while I am minding my business and would rather have no fight, then I am using whatever emergency weapons at my disposable to disable him, as well as dirty tactics to have him get the hell away or off of me (e.g., gouging, biting, pulling hair, whatever). Perhaps this is why I don’t buy into all this wannabe badass intimidation and theatrics from afar on a camera or in print.
There’s also another former powerlifter-online coach sort of guy, who actually now writes great articles and posts on bodybuilding, as basic as they may be, but on social media, consistently plays the badass role and liberally using the F word. I curse myself a bit, but you get the drift. What’s a bit surprising is the guy is lucid and level headed in much of his writing but then goes back and forth between that and acting like a badass. Again, I love the guy’s information and take on many things not even related to fitness, and I think he is sincere much of the time, but there’s a reason why many “hardcore” guys are ignored by the masses.