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Baddest Motherfuckers Ever- Eric Pedersen, the Mob Leg Breaker Who “Invented” the Bodypart Split, Part 1: The TLDR and Historical Background of His Insane Life
One of the questions I’ve never thought to ask in my pursuit of training knowledge was “who invented the bodypart workout?” as I natually assumed that to be as genuinely unknowable as the first time a human created fire for cooking. It’s as unknowable as the logic that supports being pro-life at the same time as pro-death penalty and anti-mask, or what sort of universe a white hole would deposit the USS Enterprise into, and as such I never gave it a single thought. That said, I would hardly say that I wasn’t curious, as there seemed to be no real watershed moment in bodybuilding that hearkened the change, but I just figured the progenitor of that iconic workout was forever lost to history.
You might imagine my surprise, then, when I randomly saw a pic of an adonis named Eric Pedersen so Germanically beautiful I’m sure his existence caused some messy underpants in Nazis the world over and discovered multiple claims that his workout was the first bodypart workout ever published in a magazine. And yet, I’ve never heard his name and I almost guarantee you haven’t either, because this strapping young blond Hercules once had a pimple on his ass. That, and he was far too interesting to find himself mired in the banality of conformity or to wrap himself in the American flag like it was a blanket that dispensed money and handjobs, so after his pimple sent him packing, Eric Pedersen went on about living the life basically every single high school bro with a love for the iron.
Meet Eric Pedersen, the ultimate bro.
The United States of 1947 was a considerably different place than it is today. The fastest car on the road would get outrun by your grandma’s Prius, as it topped out at 110 miles an hour and had a zero to sixty of eleven of the longest seconds of anyone’s life (at least if you were trying to merge onto a highway with actual cars on it, rather than livestock and horses or whatever the hell has the gall to move that slowly. The hottest broad in the country was Mae West, a combination of Nikki Glaser, Lady Gaga, and Pink, who travelled the country with her Revue in the company of a stable of bodybuilder “bodyguards” who protected her from the right wing psychopaths who threatened her every action with bullets and hellfire. Well, at least the part with the gaggle of illiterates with extra floppy cocks trying to tell useful people how to live their lives is relatable, but the rest of America was indistinguishable from a developing European nation like Moldova- crime was out of control, people claimed that they were noble but were mostly amphetamine-addicted shitbags with brain damage and mental illness from the lead in their gasoline, air, and paint. It was not, as idiots like to assert, when “America was great” or any such anti-historical, rosy-glasses nonsense.
Mae West was also where Rodney Dangerfield obviously drew most or all of his inspiration, because every line he delivered in Caddyshack sounded suspiciously like lines I’ve seen West deliver in documentaries, just as a short, sexy, platinum blonde thick chick in 10″ platform heels rather than what I’d imagine Joe Biden is like when he’s coked up. Not only that, the chick balled out harder than Puffy- she was the highest paid person at Paramount Pictures and the second highest paid person in the United States (to publishing magnate William Hearst) in 1935; went to jail for ten days for obscenity (which gave her Martha Stewart-esque street cred) and was such a beloved star the warden and his wife took her out to dinner nightly; and was the first seriously badass broad/ sexpot in modern pop culture in spite of the fact she really wasn’t all that hot from a purely physical perspective and she could have easily fit into an airplane’s overhead compartment.
And because rustling the jimmies of social conservatives has always been the favorite pastime of the awesome, Mae West was a big LGTB rights activist before there was even such a thing, and she dated the world colored middleweight title holder “Gorilla” Jones, in what is the most oddly progressive thing that could be said in an otherwise racist-looking sentence. And when her apartment building refused to let him enter because it was a “white only” building, she bought the building and changed the rule, because she was a boss like that.
As for America, we’d dropped two nukes on Japan two years earlier and ended the “war to end all wars,” but the world was still a pretty messy place. Europe and much of Eastern Europe were in ruins, but life in the US was humming right along. It was that year that a blond-haired 19 year old named Charles Putnam who’d just won the Mr. California title got it into his head to win the prestigeous AAU Mr. America. The sole problem? The event was in Chicago, Pedersen lived in LA, and he had no car to travel the sole highway that would get him here- historic route 66, the first ever paved highway in the United States, had only existed as a means for America’s impoverished to reach the shores of California within the last decade. So, that teenager did was any other red-blooded American would do- he stole a car so slow it’s almost certain you could outrun it so he could take the only highway in America to Chicago.
As the picture indicates, Pedersen and his buddy didn’t make it out of LA in their stolen car, but Pedersen did make it to the Mr. America stage in time to win the Most Muscular, making him the youngest bodybuilder to ever win a major title at that time (the winner of the most muscular was the best bodybuilder- the winner of the overall was essentially the winner of a beauty pageant of which bodybuilding was a part). Pedersen lost the overall in that contest by a half point to Steve Reeves, who went on to become Hercules in the movies, due to a single zit on his leg (Fair 207), but he was crowned the most muscular man in America (and likely the person with the most serious criminal record to ever cross the Mr America stage). While Reeves wowed crowds onscreen with his flexing and wooden acting, Eric Pedersen went on to become a prolific professional wrestlers and then a collector for the mob in Las Vegas, all before succumbing to throat cancer (which was slaughtering people in that era because of the horrific air pollution when they were growing up- Sammy Davis Jr died of it that year, my dad nearly died the previous year of it, and bombshell Lana Turner, Beatle George Harrison, and a few other famous people all croaked of the same shit within a decade of each other).
You might think that none of this historical shit matters, but when you consider how hard it is to build a 19″ lean arm with all of the steroids, supplements, convenience, gyms, medical care, and amazing food choices we have, imagine how goddamn hard it was to do when a simple trip to get groceries meant in 1947:
in a best case scenario, you were taking a car so slow it’s hard to conceive of its lack of forward progress, inhaling the horrendously noxious, lead-bearing CO2 it belched from every orifice, banging your spine to pieces over mostly dirt roads to three separate non-airconditioned stores (butcher, green grocer, and wherever you’d buy your dry goods) before returning to your dingy, un-air-conditioned abode to get drunk and beat your kids while listening to the radio, because there were only twenty television stations in the entire United States.
We’re not just talking about someone who built a bunch of muscle using less than a tenth of the untold bounty of financial, transportation, food, supplement, and drug choices you have at your disposal, but a man who did so to the point that at nineteen he was the single most muscular person on the planet, and as such he is a man to whom you should pay attention.
Bear in mind that at this point, there was no Mr. Universe (it wasn’t created until the following year) or Mr. Olympia, and bodybuilding was still in its infancy. The Mr. America title was for all intents and purposes the biggest bodybuilding title in the world, with the Mr Britain contest held by the Health and Strength League (which became NABBA, the guys who held the Mr Universe for years) in a rather distant second, as you can see from the pic above of 6’1″ and 195lb 1947 Mr America overall winner Steve Reeves, who dwarfs the Mr Britain winner of that year, Jim Elliot. So it’s understandable why Eric Pedersen, who was walking around at around 200 pounds at only 5’10”, might think it would be worth stealing a car to take a crack at the title, because he had the mass and the cuts to overpower just about anybody on the planet.
That’s not to say, however, that everyone was going after the overall title in the Mr. America- in fact, it was quite the opposite. Although Pedersen’s first crack at the Mr America occurred when he was 16 (he didn’t place), the intervening year saw a watershed change in the Mr. America contest. In that year, a 5’7″ 160lb bodybuilder named Sam Loprinzi took second in the overall to the dude who introduced box squats to powerlifting, Alan Stephen. Stephen was thought to be the greatest thing since sliced bread (he was a highly accomplished Olympic lifter, cleaned up in odd lifting as a proto-powerlifter, had a squeaky-clean image, and he was pursuing a bachelors in something- he was the consummate “Renaissance Man”), and no one thought Reeves had a chance in hell of ever unseating him- that’s how fucking good he was. And yet lean-as-hell Sam Loprinzi flashed his carved-from-marble 17″ arms at the judges and they lost their goddamn minds, in spite of the fact that Stephen’s arms were an inch and a half bigger, if somewhat less lean.
Loprinzi had known going into the Mr. America that a short man stood absolutely no chance of winning that beauty pageant, because he’d seen Dan Lurie, the man who essentially invented the crab pose, take second and most muscular four years in a row because he was only 5’6″ and 168lbs. Lurie had spent his career going up against dudes who were much taller, and were thus more aesthetic and graded better for the overall, and when he’d attempted to prove he was the best on the planet the AAU circled their wagons and deemed Lurie a professional (and thus ineligible to compete) to prevent him competing against Grimek.
So after winning his class in the other big bodybuilding contest in 1946, Bob Hoffman’s Most Muscular Man in America (the contest inspired by the Lurie-Grimek beef), Loprinzi entered the Mr. America simply to win the title of Most Muscular Man in America (and basically the world), and was public in his announcement that the Most Muscular was the title that really proved who the real bodybuilders were. And that was the environment that the gorgeous and jacked thug (at that point he had at least one assault conviction under his belt as a juvenile, plus the car theft at a bare minimum) named Eric Pedersen entered the fray for the best built man on the planet.
“I firmly believe in individual muscle work besides group movements, for it again reaches the state of concentration – watching that biceps move and contract with all the force the weight, the thought, and the eye can furnish during each movement.”
Eric Pedersen Essential Facts
Born: 17 Aug 1928 (born Charles Roland Putnam in Newport Beach, CA)
Died: October 13, 1990 aged 62 (Bacliff, TX, United States of throat cancer)
Height: 5’10
Weight: 200-225lbs
Arms: the measurements are mostly immaterial because his arms were so damn pretty. at 19 years old, they were 18″ (cold) and 18.5″ (pumped); as he grew older he stretched them to 20″+ (which matched his calf measurements)
Best Lifts: interestingly, I could find almost nothing about his strength beyond the fact that he was seriously strong. By one account, he once tied a rope to a boat motor and swam across a bay towing the motor (Flammannelli), which sounds preposterous, but I am not a buoyant man and thus am no authority on towing boat motors even across a kiddie pool.
[I attempted to interview Flammannelli about Pedersen, but the man is a fossil and had his Boomer turned all the way up, so he wasn’t rational enough for me to get anything useful out of him. He insisted, for instance, that Pedersen never had kids, which he did and with whom I’ve been in touch. The man was a dickhead to boot, and I don’t need beefs with the nearly dead, so I abandoned him as a source of information lest I kill him for his insolence.]
Reasons to Know His Name
- either invented or popularized bodypart workouts. If nothing else, he was the first person to push them in the magazines
- was voted most muscular man in America over Steve Reeves (and essentially the world, because at that time the United States (and by extension our little bronation Canada) was essentially the only developed nation untouched by war
- won the NWA tag team title with Classy Freddie Blassie
- spent his retirement in Las Vegas, where he was an enforcer for the mob. As his son Eric Putnam stated, “legs broke quick around dad.”
- was considered the youngest bodybuilder to win a major bodybuilding contest when he was competing in 1955, and should still stand among guys like Harold Poole, Casey Viator, Lee Haney, and Branch Warren as one of the best teenage bodybuilders of all time
- was considered the most popular wrestler in the Pacific Northwest in 1953. Regionally, he was Roman Reigns for a year, but the wrestling scene was way too fractured for there to be a better direct comparison with the modern industry
- had a speaking role in a movie designed by the Coast Guard to make it look cool to the populace called Fighting Coast Guard. It didn’t work worth a shit, as the film wasn’t well reviewed, but the man had a speaking role in a wide release film.
Part 3 for Pederson’s OG Bodypart Split and HIT workout routines.
This shit is entirely DIY and mostly self supported. If you’ve got it like that and would like to throw me something for the effort, I’d be much obliged. Every penny you spend goes towards physically and metaphorically crushing the goddanmned weakness out of every single person who comes into contact with anything having to do with me.
Join the fight against mental and physical weakness- mash the fuck out of that button, and let’s verbally lump some limp-dicked simpletons the hell up.
Sources:
Alvarez, Pablo. Eric Pederson. Pro Wrestling Historical Society. Jul 2014. Web. 15 Sep 2020. https://www.prowrestlinghistoricalsociety.com/bio-0113.html
Fair, John D. Mr. America: The Tragic History of a Bodybuilding Icon. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015.
Flammini, Vincent. Facebook comment. Facebook. 13 Apr 2020. Web. 18 Oct 2020. https://www.facebook.com/116733248412758/photos/eric-pedersen-lost-the-1947-aau-mr-american-contest-by-12-point-to-steve-reeves-/1672795086139892/
Jailhouse rock. Pulp International. 19 Oct 2019. Web. 15 Sep 2020. https://www.pulpinternational.com/pulp/entry/Photo-of-bodybuilder-Eric-Pederson-in-Los-Angeles-jail.html
Pederson, Eric. Arm Development. Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban. 8 Nov 2018. Web. 19 Oct 2020. http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2018/11/arm-development-eric-pederson.html
Weider, Joe. “The great 1963 IFBB MR. UNIVERSE – MR. AMERICA – MISS AMERICANA SHOW.” Reprinted from Muscle Builder, Vol 14, Num 2, Page 12, www.musclememory.com/showArticle.php?mb640312
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34 responses to “Baddest Motherfuckers Ever- Eric Pedersen, the Mob Leg Breaker Who “Invented” the Bodypart Split, Part 1: The TLDR and Historical Background of His Insane Life”
That’s the wrong Gorrila Jones, I don’t think they had Coloured titles in the 40s.
He won the title in the 20s. He and Mae West met in 1928 and were friends for half a century and it’s well documented he worked for a time as her bodyguard and chauffeur as well. Here’s a quick writeup on him: http://www.boxing360.com/willliam-gorilla-jones-wins-vacant-world-middleweight-title/
Yeah, but that guy wasn’t coloured welterweight champ.
He was the other colored champ who walked big cats on leashes then, according to every historical source I could find. The fact you’re just making baseless claims in one sentence statements that do nothing to refute anything is tiresome as fuck.
Just for funsies, here is one of the entirely valid sources one could use for a source: in Naturally I Disagree, by Jill Watts (published, I might add, by Oxford University Press, so it is not as though this book wasn’t fact-checked), Watts dated Edward “Gorilla” Jones and employed his parents after buying the Ravenswood apartment building. It’s on page 207. She even lists his parents names. And William “Gorilla” Jones (1906–1982) was a two-time NBA champ according to this boxing website, among many others: http://www.boxing360.com/willliam-gorilla-jones-wins-vacant-world-middleweight-title/
It’s literally the second sentence in Jones’ Wikipedia page, there were two guys called Gorilla Jones and one became Coloured welterweight champion in 1915 and one became middleweight champion in 1932.
Oh god, now you’ve done it. Jamie is going to log into wikipedia and change that entry. hahahahahah
The ”good” old days for the US were when wages went up year after year, post war boom created the illusion of perpetual progress under a crisis free capitalism, while the misery of USSR state capitalism was depicted as “socialism”, an unattractive alternative. Of course history smashed the dream.
No- all of that shit is an entirely fanciful vision of history. Literally everything now is better than it was then. Who gives a fuck about wages in an era where everyone has lead poisoning, is so drunk they can barely function, were racist, misogynist, and anti-semetic for no fucking reason whatsoever AND THERE IS NO AIR CONDITIONING. Your version is just as uninformed as theirs, if not moreso, because whereas Republicans simply fear and revile intellectualism, you people exterminate intellectuals and burn books.
This also has nothing whatsoever to do with Eric Pederson, and I tire of your ineffectual, unceasing, and incorrect socialist nonsense. It’s dumb shit like this that leads to Red Scares, but as you have genuinely no interest in improving the world, I suppose you look forward to watching people get put on trial for having done nothing but read books you refuse to. This is the last stupid socialist comment you will leave- I don’t fully support this idiotic charity myself so you can talk shit.
Dude, do you really know how ignorant you are, yet you talk as if you know everything. It is THE LEFT that wishes to censor speech that they don’t agree with. Speaking of racism and “anti-Semitic” horseshit, I always notice that people like you NEVER denounce Jewish control of the media, and much of Wall Street nor will you ever acknowledge Black racism or Black on White violence in America.
Oh, and how about sticking to bodybuilding, weightlifting, etc., every other article we have to read your political views and/or how much you hate red hats, White racism, blah, blah, blah.
Not sure if that was aimed at me or Jamie. I guess it matters little because I can read that you are essentially a racist bigot who is trying to palm off their extremism as normal.
My guess is you are a lonely misfit as well as a “racist bigot.” Can you think of any more leftoid buzz words to call someone who calls you on your bullshit, loser. Seeing as how you post multiple whiny posts and NO I wasn’t addressing you, lonely boy. You might want to find a friend, and guess what snowflake, no one really cares what you think. smdh and lol.
What I hate is illiterate halfwits who don’t know their fucking place. People who speak with authority when they in fact have none. And I don’t write this shit for you people. Hell, as a general rule I despise lifters, and I sure as shit ain’t like most of you. I write this shit because it needs to be written so that people remember the lost but cool figures in the lifting community. And if it wasn’t for the fact that I possess myriad academic talents, I would never find or acknowledge these people- I am the only who who is capable of doing so. I’d rather they’re not forgotten.
What the fuck has the lifting community done for anyone, nevermind me, worthy of any interest in your fucking desires? I do this shit against you. I dominated a strength sport everyone thinks is difficult without training for I wanted to show how fucking weak you all are. I am the single greatest strength historian to ever live, and it’s half out of spite because you people are so fucking small minded and dull that you carry idiotic prejudices that defy logic (like your archaic anti-semitism. you might as well fear the Boogeyman while you’re at it) prevent you from appreciating cool shit when you see it, or even fucking understanding it. I spend all day friday cooking and handing out food to the needy half because I feel awesome for having done so, they really appreciate the conversation, and because IT IS ONE MORE FUCKING WAY I AM BETTER THAN ALL OF YOU.
As to the silly shit you brought up:
– Black on white violence is rare as shit- most black on something violence is black on black, which is clearly born out by the statistics. This is something you could discover for yourself by opening your fucking eyes and looking at the statistics. Guess what? People shouldn’t commit violence against each other no matter what. I don’t condone black on white violence or any similar nonsense, and don’t put those stupid fucking words in my proverbial mouth.
– Black racism? Of course it exists. I don’t quibble about the practical definition of prejudice versus racism in that regard. You people are incapable of making that sort of subtle distinction, which is how you arrive at the dumbass conclusion that black racism doesn’t exist. It is a misunderstood statement based on the distinction in anthropology between the words “racism” and “prejudice”- according to anthropologists and sociologists, racism is a type of prejudice that can only be expressed by an ethnicity in power against the disempowered, or something to that effect. I don’t spend a lot of time reading that sort of shit because it is obvious to anyone with half a fucking brain, and because I don’t want to argue semantics with a leftist halfwit screaming the same shit at me from the other side. You’re both fucking idiots and you’re fighting over a semantic argument you are biologically unfit to comprehend- it’d be like trying to run an OG iphone on a 5G network, bruh.
– why should I “denounce Jewish control of Wall Street”? Everyone in Wall Street is a money hungry fuck. Their sole goal is making as much money for no reason, at the expense of as many people as possible, regardless of their fucking religion. You’re speaking literal nonsense- the god of every fucking person on Wall Street is money. How in the hell do you think any of that affects you? And what the fuck has a Jewish person ever done to you? Furthermore, my dad was the senior VP of GE Finance for years, and there wasn’t a single person in a yarmulke at one of my dad’s business events ever. After that he was in factoring, which was a traditionally Jewish industry, as was I. None of the clients my company served were Jewish, to my knowledge, and it was the biggest financial accounting software company in that industry. No Goldfarb and Sons for clients. As childhood friends we often had VPs from banks to the house, and you know who were WASPy as fuck? Them. you are speaking fucking nonsense, from a position of neither authority nor knowledge, nor experience.
– Jewish control of the media? The media is basically dead, you fucking goof, but that canard was fucking dumb long before it. Was Hearst Jewish? Is Murdoch? Ted Turner? Wait, is the BBC Jewish? Are you wearing a fucking helmet and bib right now? Do you have to wear diapers on a rollercoaster in case you make a fucking poopy? Jesus fuck.
In closing, I am better than all of you in literally every way. I am stronger, faster, more intelligent, more well educated, kinder, a literal Dr Doolittle to whom the neighborhood brings any injured or orphaned animal they find. I am going to keep educating you against your fucking will as long as you continue to draw breath, because I will forcibly educate enough people that you will have to live in bunker underground with the other racist Luddites incapable of adapting to social and technological change to avoid the deluge of facts I vomit upon the page daily.
And that is the really sad part- you traditionalists think you’re hard as fuck and you’re just so goddamned terrified of change that you will fight everyone on everything. That’s neither scary or impressive- you’re just lashing out like dying animals in a trap. And now you’re literally gnawing your own leg off to get away from learning shit. Be better than that.
hahaha. Looks like I struck a nerve, manlet. You are the only one here claiming to be hard. You are 5 foot nothing who hasn’t accomplished shit. And yes, you are IGNORANT. Someone wrote that you also engaged in gay porn. hahaha.
Black on White violence doesn’t exist? Dude, not only are you ignorant, but you are a liar.
IF you hate lifters and lifting so much, WHY ARE YOU SO OBSESSED WITH IT? What athletic background do you have besides lifting. You damn sure didn’t play any sports like football or basketball because you are 5 foot nothing. All your hard ass act is probably from a small man complex. teehee.
One more time: I said black on white violence does exist. It’s just far less common than black on black crime or white on white crime. And manlet and gay porn? What are you, a fucking channer? you literally cannot concoct a wittier insult, or maybe one that actually cuts deep? I did an entire AMA on my orn, champ- it doesn’t bother me. Nor does my height.
It is weird that you predicate your authority on strawmen, your height, and your inability to get your dick up. You’re a fucking weird guy, Ace. We’ll sure miss you.
Oh and one more thing, little man, the hell with this site. I will get my 411 from other sites like Tight Tan Slacks Of Deszo Ban, hmm, I think I have the name right, but close enuff. Carry on with your weird obsessions with “bad motherfuckers” and sexually degeneracy and other twisted subjects. You are a legend in your own little mind and little body, little man.
ROTFLMMFWAO.
Paper tiger, checking out? Awww. It’s a shame you’ll have to wait a couple of years for Josh Bryant to steal my shit and repackage it for the mentally challenged to learn a bunch of cool shit, but that’s what happens when you’re you.
Before the mid-1970s, economic growth in the United States was associated with falling poverty rates. If that relationship had held, poverty would have been eradicated in the 1980s. The decoupling of rising growth and falling poverty, however, means that Americans are working longer and harder but becoming poorer and less economically secure. http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/fact-sheets/poverty/#:~:text=Poverty.%20Before%20the%20mid-1970s%2C%20economic%20growth%20in%20the,harder%20but%20becoming%20poorer%20and%20less%20economically%20secure.
Poverty is worsening in the USA. Especially amongst the minorities. 45.8 percent of young black children (under age 6) live in poverty, compared to 14.5 percent of white children.
But that is not the main issue. I am not going to write a thesis on US capitalism here, but I will briefly list the main issues:
One – the tendential and real decline in the rate of profit. This is the Achille’s heel of capitalism. It is temporarily offset by the flight to speculation, resort to debt, cutting wages and social programmes etc, but they are all temporary palliatives, leading to greater crisis.
Two – the rise of imperialist competition. always leads to confrontation and the USA is losing the competition to China and her allies.
Three – Environmental catastrophe with no capitalist solution.
Four – the rise of anti-capitalism, awareness of the system’s nature and political support for change which capitalism cannot deliver. Racism, inequality, the inevitable recurring crashes fuel this.
Capitalism is not concerned with better this that or the other. If it can, it produces nothing, (speculation etc) all that matters is rate of return. The more it progresses, the harder it is to progress. Just like powerlifters who easily bench a 100kg, maybe make 200kg, resort to all manner of means to hit 300, but 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000, 10 000kg? Capitalism is finite. We are going to see our argument enacted everywhere.
On a lighter note (man, you keep making the politically charged comments, I cant resist replying) there is a decent Netflix series set in 1950s USA called The Queen’s Gambit – “Orphaned at 9, prodigious introvert Beth Harmon discovers and masters the game of chess in 1960s USA. But, child stardom comes at a price.”
Thank you for stopping. You were killing me and everyone else. I genuinely don’t like that time period for period pieces, although I will say Bad times at the El Royale was fucking rad (was 60s though). I’ll give it a look just so you continue to keep yourself together, haha.
The writer is an excellent writer and really must do some research to come up with great stories like this one. Never heard of this guy but he had a great physique. Can we please do without the political horseshit and the political opinions of the writer and comments? At least conserve the political views to a quarter of the stories instead of every other article. I mean everywhere you go, someone brings up politics. My gawd, even on a blog about bodybuilding, weightlifting, powerlifting, etc???? I’ll end with this, “White Privilege” in America is as real as the Tooth Fairy and “White Fragility” is as real as Santa Claus. We all know which groups you don’t dare criticize in public and it isn’t Whites, so don’t talk about Whites being “fragile.” The only groups out there who get butt hurt over criticism are ? Fill in the blank.
If anything white privilege means that of all the shit that goes on in your life, it isn’t because of your skin colour. For me, the root of all the crap is capitalism, the class system. Racism serves it. As does sexism and many other discriminations, but the prime issue is CLASS. The reality is that everything is political. Everything. You only see oppositional thinking as political.
Yeah man, please just write about lifting. Fuck. Not that I entirely disagree with anything you said, but this ain’t the CnP type of shit that brought us here in the first place. Can’t get away from politics now, not even with my favorite lifting blog. But by all means do as you wish. It’s your site.
I’ve no idea why anyone reads this site or what you guys want to read. Half of my readership is closeted homosexuals in the manosphere movement, it seems. What, specifically has gone wrong with the site and how can I get service that costs me a lot of money to provide back on track to serve the needs of you and a a community with which I genuinely have no fucking contact whatsoever like me to do? I hate lifters more than any group of people on the planet at this point, and my efforts to teach a bit of history, which is what I went to school for, amidst the lifting is apparently far too academic for you guys.
The point of this entry in particular was to drive home how fucking hard he must have had to work to build natty 19″ arms. Literally everything was harder in the 1940s, and the country was a mess. As such, he had to work twice as hard as anyone in 2020 to get arms that size even before gear enters into the picture. That should have been pretty fucking obvious from reading the article and the fact that it was part one.
So what would you have me do? Delete everything after 2015? Only write the word fuck? No more black people or women? No more history. I get that, because there are political things. So no history and no politics and what else would make it SUPER HARDCORE for you again? My tone belies my incredible aggravation, but I am genuinely curious at to what the people who hilariously think I’ve gone soft (which clearly I haven’t) or sold out (you’d have to make money for that) think this site should be.
I don’t think you’ve sold out, I think you’ve lowered the quality of your articles because you’re injecting your own political beliefs into them. I care about interesting lifters and how they trained/ate, because it might inform my own training and result in some progress on my part. History and politics has little value in that regard. Additionally, I think the BME style articles are getting weaker. Your articles on your own ideas about lifting are some of the best in my opinion. For example, the articles in which you pick apart evidence based approaches to lifting are some of my favorite. You’ve written some amazing shit man. I rarely run into anyone who is in better shape than me, and I owe that at least in part to the things I’ve learned from your articles. That’s just my two cents. By all means ignore it, I don’t give much of a fuck either way.
Interesting. I haven’t actually changed the level of my political commentary at all. if anything, there is far less of it. I know because I edited the first two Issuances in the last year, and I was fairly surprised at the amount of political shit I had to say. Either way, I suppose I’ll just let the Patrons work it out.
Fair enough man, you know your shit better than anyone.
My two cents for what it’s worth (not touching the political shit either way), I agree that I’m getting tired of BMEs, but I also respect that you’re putting some publicity on people who should be remembered but aren’t. But my favorite old CnP articles were definitely the ones talking about your lifting/dieting strategies and experiences. I know you’re not competing now but I still find it valuable to see someone else talk about the ups and downs of lifting throughout the years, as I’ve definitely been there myself.
I had a rather lengthy reply to this that my kitten just deleted, but I’ve got something in the works that addresses those questions in sort of a roundabout way. At this point, what I do is so intuitive i cannot explain it beyond broad strokes. That said, I have a couple of things I can write about. The BMEs won’t be continuing like they were- I was just in an early 20th century research streak surrounding Mae West for a podcast episode that vanished with my producer a couple of weeks ago that grew out of the Harold Poole series. Those broke me out of a martial arts research phase I couldn’t get out of, and now I have over a hundred partially written articles that in no way interest me. In any event, I’ll get another Falling On My Sword up for you next, in spite of the fact that I truly despise writing about myself. And I mean with every fucking fiber of my being I hate it.
And no worries on the politics- since I am no longer writing against the majority of my audience, there’s no reason to throw it in there if I can come up with a better analogy for something. Well… and because dumbshits come in every political flavor- now that my side seems to be sliding into the science-denying realm of the red hats as vaccines start dropping, my disgust with the stupidity of humanity as a whole has overflowed my levees.
For me in the UK, the site gives a glimpse of the USA through a different lens. Maybe this is not something you consider. It is an extra layer, on top of the more specific world of sets reps routines and records which is alsp fascinating to some. Anyway – “Why this country’s economic “miracle” has created such a negative feeling in so many Americans? While this economy has been harsh to many individuals of all colors, races and ethnicities, the data in a study just put out by the Sentier Research highlight just how screwed over working-class white males with a high school education have been.
Over an 18-year period, from 1996 to 2014, white males in the working class have seen their pay fall by 9 percent, according to the study, which looked exclusively at white males. That’s hard to accept for virtually anyone. Take, for example, those in the 40- to 44-year-old age group, commonly a parenting age. The average pay of the working-class white male high school graduate in 1996 was $60,126; in 2014, it was $52,512. Eighteen years later, he’s making 12.7 percent less. In the 45- to 49-year-old group, it’s even worse. Their earnings fell from $62,767 to $54,303, a 13.7 percent loss in income.
To add insult to injury, this population group has been shrinking significantly over the years, therefore there is less competition for jobs, something that traditionally has elevated pay.”
Now you or I may say, it’s not just about the money, for millions, it is.
This is hilarious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnmD0QQxycM&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR35FzFwiXqY4XAebjSm_ZPFGSXqxlxRN86CF3yxpxKGRJq7KAd8jSSXg4g&ab_channel=ComedyCentralStand-Up
USA – you want the truth or the happy fantasy?
The nationalist propaganda pump has primed them in advance to support a future inevitable conflict between great powers, and it will be American capitalism that must make the first move.
http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2020-11-12/the-election-is-over-the-capitalist-class-has-won
“It’ll cost Republicans $100 a head, and we’ll say 10 of them a month, to keep me from mocking them for having dug up the corpse of their beloved Ronald Reagan and shit all over it over the course of the last couple of years.”
See, this is where I think you are going wrong. the Republicans are no worse than the democrats, Its like two butt cheeks surrounding the same river of shit.
at this moment in time, however unlikely, we cannot rule out imminent civil war in the USA. Now as I say, I highly doubt it, but I wont be picking sides or joining any International Brigades…
I was referring to the last two months of the election, when Trump and his fans lost their fucking minds and just shit all over any good that anyone might have found in Trump’s presidency. I found that to be extra objectionable, especially in light of the shit they talk about being true blue patriots.
There will be absolutely no civil war. No one is willing to trade civilization for a few extra bucks in their pocket. It’d be asinine to do so.
Now I really doubt civil war is coming any time soon, but it would be simply an inter ruling class split over some major issue. Like what to do about China. This bloke is worth listening to, very well educated, he is pretty good at pointing out the depth of the problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUQq4Hx26qg&ab_channel=RichardDWolff