Patreon Extra: The Art of Lifting (or Lifting as Art- I’m as yet undecided)

Jamie Chaos

July 24, 2020

The following is simply free writing I am dong in an effort to explain why my methods differ so greatly from the norm, and why I genuinely cannot understand why most people lift weights in the first place. It came out of two realizations- after having a bunch of old heads compare me very favorably with Benny Podda, I’ve finally accepted that I am an anthropologist writing about my kind of lifter, and that type of lifter is at their core an artist. Not to be trite, but Arnold’s characterization in Pumping Iron of the bodybuilder as a sculptor wasn’t too far off from my own experience.

I’ve no idea if any of this appeals to any of you. Should it, please comment and let me know what you think, what questions you might have, or anything else pertinent to the discussion at hand (i.e. not another fucking block of random text about the myriad supposed benefits of Marxism). If this idea has legs or is an interesting thesis for an article series or book, lemme know.

This thesis really has no beginning or end, so I’ll start in the middle. Given that this is a very newfound realization my thoughts are likely not as organized on the topic as one might guess, but I might as well start at the basis of my training- high volume with very short rests and very heavy weight. I’d always enjoyed it, but Chad Waterbury’s work regarding 10 x 3 systems for lifting appealed to me because they were more or less what I’ve always done, though without percentages and counting. Instead, I’ve always had a knack for finding weights I can move violently and consistently over long periods of time in short bursts. It’s actually how I do anything physical, from long distance running (I prefer Fartleks and other intervals to a steady pace) to pushing big stacks of totes at Amazon to lifting weights.

This sort of pacing is how I win at almost everything physical I wish to contest, because I am not naturally gifted as an athlete. I don’t have great hand-eye coordination, I’m terrifically un-agile for a short person, and although I am fast, I am not particularly quick- it’s rare that I ever beat someone off the start. What I am is tenacious and indefatigable, which goes a long way in sports and lifting. So, although I never, ever count sets (and I mean fucking NEVER), I will just use the clock to gauge if I’ve worked enough, since my body will show no indication of hard work until the next day (or in extreme cases, an hour or two later). Thus, I will train doubles, triples, and singles (usually using the same weight until a single is impossible or nearly with rests that generally don’t exceed beyond 60 seconds, and rarely if ever beyond 90.

My reasoning? I’m fucking hyped up. Unlike most people, I happily make a spectacle of myself in the gym. Not with grunting and yelling and all that, but with my utter intensity, pacing, and my endless growling along with my music, which usually isn’t terribly loud but is from what I’ve been told both terrifying and cool. I’ve never really given a shit beyond attempting to disarm the people around me with pleasantries so they don’t have me ejected from the gym by management, something I attempt to avoid by being nice to old ladies and whatnot- I don’t befriend a lot of people in the gym. I end up hearing this shit second hand through friends or my wife, and for whatever reason I continue to be surprised that I’m somewhat of a local celebrity for my gym shenanigans.

The science behind training this way is immaterial, because it obviously works. I can walk into any local strength competition and dominate the field utterly, and unless some ringer happens to show up out of the blue and outweighs me considerably, I’d end up in the finals of whatever I was contesting anyway. I require almost no rest to repeat near-maximal performances, and usually go to the effort of making shit look effortless when I know people are watching just to add to my mystique. That, in turn, adds to the level of intensity I’ve expended and to the results I reap, all from just trying to make the impossible look like the easiest thing in the world.

As to weight selection? I’ve never used a formula in my life- I find a weight I can maybe do five or six times if someone had a gun to my head (which is maybe a rep more than your generally accepted RM) and start doing doubles and triples with it. I continue either until they’re super difficult singles, or until I’ve done about a half hour of heavy shit, then either wave load it for another 15 minutes or move onto something else, related or unrelated to that. When I say there is no plan I mean that from day to day I know what I need to train and what I would like to train, then what I have time to train. I make a decision based on that.

Programming and all of that other stupid horseshit looks to me like nothing more than someone trying to break down a Rembrandt into its component parts and then sell that deconstructed painting as paint-by-numbers bullshit for people too lazy to do the work themselves. It’s the slow kids in the back of the class copying directly from the Cliff’s Notes on a term paper, the bad Chinese knockoffs of designer handbags. Rather than learning to paint and doing so oneself, most lifters today just want to be Luke Goss rather than Jason Statham- the less cool version that is good enough for the B-team and not terrifically upsetting to watch, but still not Jason Statham no matter how hard he tries.

That said, there’s nothing wrong with Luke Goss- he does a great job of filling in for Statham when the pay isn’t enough, and I frankly enjoy most of his movies. I highly doubt, however, that Luke Goss had any intention of being Jason Statham’s B-team any more than I would have intended to be Seanbaby’s B-team if he decided to start writing about strength sports history, and planning to be on the B-team is both gross and sad. Life’s about maximizing your potential, not about slumping into the finish with a half-hearted attempt you copied from some other nobody, and it’s for that reason I hate rigid with the same white hot rage that statistics show half of you reserve for wearing a mouth covering while shopping or for having to call someone “one of the First Peoples” rather than “uh Indian,” since the teaching of the word “an” seems to have ceased altogether.

The point is that Luke Goss didn’t set out to be the poor man’s Jason Statham- he was probably hoping to BE Jason Statham. When someone studies art, they study multiple mediums, experiment with different styles, and attempt to recreate the works of their favorites. Occasionally, like with Luke Goss, Greg Capullo (who’s been aping the styles of the most popular comic book artists of the day for three decades), and Dean Koontz (who remains a terrible Stephen King ripoff), they get stuck playing the role of the knockoff artist and have great success with it, but most artists develop their own style to become successful. This is what most people fail to do when they lift, and they do it to their ultimate detriment.

I realize not everyone is an artist and most people have no interest in the actual activity of lifting- that’s the part they have to get through so they can brag about the fact that they lifted online. That said, there is no reason why they have to just slap up a half-assed, tornado-bait, cheap-looking prefab home of a body rather than taking the time to experiment with some different building techniques and styles until they can build an entirely unique structure, tailored precisely to its environment and capable of prevailing in nearly any challenge.

I realize that meandered quite a bit, so I will be interested to discover if this topic is worth exploring further. If so, I might just make it a serial on the Patreon side and see if it needs to become a full-fledged book at some point.

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Jamie Chaos

I am a former all-time, all federation world record holder in raw powerlifting at 181lbs, a record I broke just to say fuck you to the internet’s “lifting” community and the powerlifting community at large. Over the last ten years I’ve written over 500 articles on strength training, nutrition, and supplementation, and continue to do so simply to fight the tide of weakness and sadness that currently pervades the scene I’ve called home for the better part of three decades. I’ve got personal trainin certs, BodyPump and BodyCombat certs, a BA in History and East Asian Studies from the University of Arizona, and MBAs from the Vienna University and University of South Carolina on my side, in addition to some sick lifts and a hell of a lot of rage. What the fuck have you got?

13 responses to “Patreon Extra: The Art of Lifting (or Lifting as Art- I’m as yet undecided)”

Allan

July 24, 2020

Good stuff.
Stephen

July 24, 2020

Yes, more of this
Gino

July 25, 2020

I loved this. The original Chaos And Pain style of training, which is the aforementioned short rests with high volume and heavy weight, drew the majority of us in back in the late 2000’s and early 2010’s precisely because it was different. The fact that we can learn about the personal philosophies behind your training modalities is another welcome, and essential, layer.
Gerard

July 25, 2020

I would definitely dig more of this as a series.
I think there is value in taking others programs to experiment in the art of lifting. Similar to how a new painter studies those who came before you develop their own style, you could do worse that picking a random program to hammer away every six weeks.
Do you think the aptitude for art versus ‘science’ lifting comes down to temperament? Similar to the bezerker versus zen monk article.
1. Jamie Chaos
  
  July 25, 2020
  
  That’s an interesting question, honestly. And aping the styles of others does occasionally yield great results (like with Greg Capullo, who has successively copied at least three artists I can name off the top of my head), I think it’s a better way to get a sort of survey class on lifting- you try out a bunch of different programs, styles, and methods, and see which you enjoyed. Then you can proceed from there.
  
  Holy shit, that should be the start of every book about lifting I ever write from here on in- a brief machines-based intensive strength building period to just build up the basics of strength, and then a survey of a bunch of different types of lifting. I could curate some shit, and that would be a cool sort of chapbook version of a beginner’s guide to 365… thanks for that idea!
  
  I think the art versus science thing is really just about who enjoys lifting versus who enjoys discussing lifting. They’re rarely the same person, because I am certain one only has so much mental energy to devote to lifting. That’s not an infinite well, and if people are pissing away interest and effort on a bunch of bullshit discussion that would be far better resolved with rigorous testing between the people engaging in the argument. They have no balls and no love for the iron, though, so they do what most people do and just fucking talk.
  
  The foregoing is my theory, and I realize it’s an unkind one. Those people are far worse for lifting than the fucking Bosu ball crowd was, because at least the Bosu ball crowd was there to enjoy themselves and they generally did so in booty shorts. I have tried to reverse engineer how Nuckols ended up tied into all that and I think the man just painted himself into a corner with research and got stuck. I hold onto that theory because he’s about the only person in the industry I can name whom I fully respect from an intellectual perspective, and I have a hard time believing he’s deliberately misleading a bunch of future incels about the nature of lifting.
  
  I think one’s artistic style is dictated by one’s temperament, as a general rule. The people who are into berzerkergang are probably more like me, as a general rule, than a half-starved recluse in pajamas. The zen artist would be like Frank Zane or Bradley Steiner, I would guess. There are as many kinds of artists as there are people, so people certainly aren’t limited to those. When I write all of this shit, by the way, there is literally no plan at all- the fact that all of the things that I’ve ever written can basically be chapters of one giant book was as surprising to me when I noticed it as it likely has been to the lot of you. And that does lend a lot of credence to my assertion that there are no conspiracies and no master plan, because complicated shit is impossible to plan- you just have some ephemeral goal in mind and grow in that direction, like vines. If it forms a stout tree at some point, that’s fucking rad, but it’s just as likely to wither and die.
  
  Obviously I am high as fuck at the moment, but it’s nice out and I decided to knock out some writing before heading to work. In any event, forgive the rambling nature of that, but it was an interesting intellectual exercise you handed me.
  1. Gerard
    
    July 25, 2020
    
    I appreciate the response,. Definitely in agreement with people who talk excessively about lifting, it kinda ruins the fun.
Dirk

July 25, 2020

Solid stuff man, enjoyed that.
LG

July 25, 2020

I can dig it, please explore further.
Tyler

July 28, 2020

Maybe you could post these on Patreon? Every time Chrome refreshes, I have to log in again
1. Jamie Chaos
  
  July 31, 2020
  
  I didn’t even know that was an option- I’ll see if I can figure that shit out this weekend to make it easier on you guys. I thought this was the sole method.
lonnie

August 10, 2020

Keep at it man, this is always interesting to read for us I think.
John

August 20, 2020

Definitely want more of this. I’ve noticed as life has become more filled with shit the freer method of lifting you’ve promoted doesn’t fit as well with me as it did before–I think it’s because I waste a lot of mental energy thinking about what days i want to lift what, worrying about what I haven’t lifted in a while, etc. That said, when I was in college and only had class to worry about, your shit from I think DTO was my jam and gave me the best gains I’ve ever had. For some reason, and it may be the pressure I put on myself and my execution (i.e., I tend to eschew assistance and higher rep stuff), I have been largely spinning my wheels lately. So I’ve picked up a program that is mildly programmed but I can still be flexible about, Norton’s PHAT. It’s not some autistic shit that requires one do 77.5% of a weight for 3×10 on a certain day, it has rough rep ranges and numbers of sets to hit and I autoregulate within that. I also like that I can split it up–it’s five days a week, but if shit gets in the way or (when stuff reopens) I get back to training BJJ/MT, I can do the power days one week and the hypertrophy days another, and throw in random days of stuff when I feel like it. We’ll see how it goes, but at some point I will definitely get back to doing a bunch of triples, may even incorporate it with PHAT…I’ve never really liked 5s, anyway.

This feels a little more like old Jamie, breaking the mold of what everyone else is doing. That, and it’s nice to not have this article stuffed with politics–I get enough of that garbage everywhere else. And I’m also tired of seeing that Marxist dipshit in the comments, lol
1. Jamie Chaos
  
  August 21, 2020
  
  Hahaha. I’ve just started hitting spam for his shit. I fucking despise censoring people, but enough is enough. And I get it in re politics- the Harold Poole article just became political as I saw more and more dumb shit being said online. That said, I think part 2 was far more even handed, and part 3 is almost exclusively training, since I’ve given all of the historical context the man’s life needs.
  
  I’m glad you liked the article. The next one along those lines is called the Art of Strength and should be up this weekend. I’ve noticed the same thing you have in my own training, and I agree that this sort of thing is something that needs to be discussed more. I figured I’d just use the patreon articles as a way to organize my thoughts on the subject for a book or something.
  
  Anyway, thanks again, both for the support and the feedback man!