Plague of Strength

We have been conditioned by the powers that be to root for the dispassionate and emotionally aloof, the sensitive and the stoic, but rarely the unhinged maniac laying waste to armies . Even in the film Logan, where the titular character was little more than 200lbs of unbridaled rage named the single most ferocious woodland creature this side of the Native Americans’ legendary wendigo, his temperament paled in comparison to that of the Reavers and his ward. As humanity has earned the very dubious distinction of becoming “civilized,” we have been conditioned to root for the dispassionate. We’re told to look to Jedi and forced-calm voiced life coaches for direction, robotic autists like that douche on the horrifically unfunny sitcom starring the little brother from Roseanne and Blossom, Spock, are seen as the rocks of their social circles and often the saviors in crisis situations, when in reality those people are rarely included in anything worth mentioning and the only crisis autists solve is one they’ve imagined wherein there are just far too many little motherfuckers running around a school or movie theater. The firebrands in those same situations, though, are considered to be dangerous loose cannons who usually succeed only with the helping hand of one of the aforementioned boring or mentally handicapped people. This just in: while Isaac Newton and Steve Jobs might have contributed to technological progress, neither of them had a physique worth discussing and were so unlikable that Steve Jobs managed to get fired from Atari, which was literally the coolest fucking place to work, ever.

If you’re on the spectrum, love the color beige, or are otherwise singularly unlikable, you might take umbrage with this intro and assert that emotionlessness is the key to steady progress. Teddy Roosevelt, on the other hand, would call bullshit, slap you with his dick, and then would beat you with cardboard cutouts of guys like Genghis Khan and Patrick Henry.  I would follow that screaming the names from the lifting world like Bill Kazmeier and Vassily Alekseyev, both of whom were fucking madmen, and Benny Podda and Mike Quinn. Guys who attacked the weights like they were gypsies in the Romanian capitol building, rather than dudes who are about to slump their way through an afternoon shuffling papers at the local IRS office.

As I mentioned in the last article, not everyone thrives off acting like a maniac. No one, however, thrives off acting pretending like they’re fucking Data from Star Trek, however, so toss that whole “placid mind is a happy mind” bullshit out the window. Certainly, there are a lot of people who could stand to calm themselves in the gym, like people who suffer from anxiety, depression, and low self esteem, but zen-like calm for them seems to lead to psychosis in many cases, so they should keep their efforts to act like Sheldon to a minimum (Holden). And incidentally, if you’re one of those people, I’ve no idea what you should do, beyond supplementing with exogenous testosterone to treat your depression and letting the rest of it work itself out (Celec, Smith).

Luckily for you guys, this isn’t the movie Serenity and it’s not just a choice between laying down and dying out of apathy and becoming a face-eating Reaver (though I am obviously going to fall into the latter category anyway). If you want the science behind picking between your two options, see the above link for the first article- this is just going to be assorted examples from the real world. You know- the place in which we live.

Invoking the Black Rage

Obviously, there are a lot of ways to get yourself fired the fuck up to hit the weights, fight, or fuck. We’ve all seen people get the shit slapped out of them prior to a lift, and in some people that triggers a massive dump of adrenaline and norepinephrine that throws them firmly into “fight.” Frankly, the only person I want to fight when I’m slapped before a lift is the person who touched me, but that’s just because by the time I’m that close to the bar my fight response is already singing a song of blood in my brain. I’ve used everything from reading books like Gates of Fire and the First Law Trilogy on my way to the gym to set the right mood to watching movies like Crank and the Raid to my ubiquitous use of music before and during a lift to set the tone. There are, however, far many more ways than that to get your blood up before you assault the iron.

Be a Bit of a Spazz

One such trick is the use of ballistic movements to prime the CNS. When I began doing jump squats prior to heavy lockouts years ago I had no idea that what I was doing was priming my CNS for heavy supports- I was just doing what seemed to me to be a logical progression of movements. As it happens, however, I was onto something.

“Now what little trick did I employ just prior to sliding under the bar for each set of floor presses?  Ballistic push ups.  Just 3 or so; not enough to tire me out, just enough to fully wake up and prime my CNS for the movement to come, and give those fast twitch fibers the signal that, hey guys, it’s time to wake up and get in the game.  Then I slid under the bar and proceeded to punch out my 5 (or so) reps, attempting maximum bar acceleration with each rep.  I increased weight on each set until I reached the point where, on the 5th rep of the 4th cycle, I hit a “grind it out rep”, and at that point, I pulled the plug on that exercise.  And, having done this for quite some time (30+ years, can you believe it?), I can pretty well approximate loading, reps schemes, and sets — even when exercises are paired within a circuit (like the floor press was in this example) with a good deal of accuracy.  Sometimes I’ll exceed expectations and other times I’ll fall short.  And the scary thing is that I usually know how just how I’ll perform in the workout about midway through the warm up, and it all depends upon how my CNS is responding to that warm-up.  Stuff of urban legend, I know — but hey, it’s true.   Just a tad sluggish?  Not today, bud; still, though, you’ve got to “endeavor to persevere”.  Feel like someone just tagged you with a set of crash paddles?  Here comes one for the record books, guaranteed.

And note that the preliminary ballistic movement need not be the exact same movement as the main course — an approximation is fine.  For example, in the workout above, my pre-RDL/SLDL ballistic movement  was an explosive knees-to-chest jump with a “stuck” landing in the full squat position.  I popped-off just 2 or 3 immediately prior to beginning the set.   The same ballistic movement precedes all of my pulling movements; deadlifts, low pulls, clean variations, you name it” (Norris).

All of that shit is likely shit we all knew to do, though, right? As such, relaying that information isn’t what Plague of Strength is all about- I didn’t create this to relay information you would get on every milquetoast lifting site on the planet. Lifting used to be a bastion of weirdness. A home to the outcast who didn’t want to shy from the spotlight in some darkened basement surrounded by D&D bullshit and the scent of virginity. We’re the weirdos who like to jam our outcast status in people’s faces while proclaiming our ultimate fucking superiority over the average person. And as such, we should examine the much weirder methods of our forebears like somafera, vocalizations, and their appearance for getting in the mood to fuck shit up. you’ll note that the following are all methods used prior to battle, and that I am neither likening lifting to war or lifters to warriors, but rather that it takes the same extreme sense of self to be successful in both, and thus what works in one should work in the other… and if you disagree, you can tell that story walking because I give exactly zero fucks.

Look The Fucking Badass

Ancient warriors spent more time the right look than your average sloot on the Gram does these days. Just as those vapid, useless asshats spend hours making themselves look as blurry, featureless, shallow, and unlike whatever golem-esque creature they actually are (which assumes they even have souls, which I’ll go ahead and vote no on), the warriors of yore did the same- they aimed to reflect their inner fierceness with their exterior. Fighting either with as little armor as possible or completely naked, Celto-Germanic and Scythian warriors bleached and spiked their hair, covered themselves with tattoos, and showed off the heavy musculature borne of their fighting and meat-heavy diets to show their brethren that they were the baddest motherfuckers around to have their soft, bread munching neighbors shitting their pants on the field of battle.

They didn’t just stop there, however. The Celts added to their fearsome appearance by festooning their horses and buildings with severed heads, while the Scythians chugged undiluted wine and kumis (fermented mare’s milk) out of gilded human skullcaps and made coats and horse blankets out of enemy scalps. No matter which tribe they came from, they all made a hell of a lot of noise entering battle, screaming war cries and beating their weapons on their shields as a challenge to the emperor-worshipping, freedom-hating, proto-Trump-supporting shitslugs they were facing.

The application of these methods to the gym hardly takes much imagination- every hardass lifter I’ve known pounds on the bar prior to ducking it to squat, and I spend a hell of a lot of time pacing, glaring, and growling at the bar before a big lift. Not the I-am-being-anally-probed style whiny moan you often hear inexplicably emanating from the leg press, but rather the blissful resonance one hears in the beatdown hardcore and slam that I have blaring in my headphones. And as to dressing to impress, lets just say there’s a reason that Athlean-X pussy and his fans all weigh less than 180 lbs- there’s no way you’re going to move weights dressed like a skinny Easter egg. I am not suggesting everyone rock my aesthetic, however- though I realize it is in vogue to ape my writing style and content, I am hardly a fan of the fact this has happened. I’d rather my shit be mine and mine only, and fondly wish the rest of you would look into the blackness of your own souls and see what the face of your evil looks like, then use that look.

Now, as to the emanation of sound while I am aware it is considered heresy in today’s modern, antiseptic, lift-by-the-numbers, grey, dystopic, drab, unfeeling, banal world wherein everyone’s a coach and everyone’s a fucking expert but hardly anyone seems to know anything about getting big and fucking strong, it’s not just ok to make noise in the gym while lifting- it’s advisable. Grunting, roaring, bellowing, death growling, kiaing- all of that shit leads to greater power output when exerting force, as well as distracting opponents (Sinett). And our ancestors knew this as well- basically every bunch of maniacal badasses in history were known for their fearsome sound on the battlefield.

“In The Iliad, Homer often describes the story’s heroes in terms of their ability to let out a howl that could weaken the knees of their enemies. Diomedes is called “Diomedes of the loud war cry,” and both Menelaus and Odysseus are described as “utter[ing] a piercing shout.”

The mighty warriors that populate the Shahnameh, an epic Persian epic poem from the tenth century, are all described as arming themselves with a virile war cry: Koshan rumbled “in a voice like a drumbeat”; Rahham “roared out and began to boil like the sea”; and the thick-bodied Rostam thundered “like an elephant enraged.”

Cú Chulainn, a hero from Celtic mythology, used the “hero’s scream” to scare off devils and goblins.

The Georgian hero Tariel was able to drop opposing warriors using only the force of his mighty war cry.

And in Welsh mythology, the hero Culhwch was said to be able to give a battle cry so loud and violent that “all the women in the court that [were] pregnant [would] abort” and those women who were not pregnant would become sterile” (McKay).

If you think screaming in the gym isn’t going to have some sort of physiological and psychological effect, you’re a goddamned retard. Clearly it does, or no one in history would have done it- they’d just have silently trudged towards their opponent and lazily battered them to “submission” at a ~7RPE to avoid self-injury and disapproving looks from others. That said, no one was doing a fucking battle cry or a haka before putting on their goddamned pants or hefting a load of firewood, so save the bestial roars for when they’re needed. Festooning your rack with severed heads and dressing in human skin, however, is a good idea at any time.

The same goes for music- I’ve given the science about it in the past, but it should be obvious to anyone with a fucking brain that humans have been using music to get hyped up for any activity requiring an overabundance of testosterone since humans had the ability to make it. Central Asians, for instance, used a war horn called the zurna, which was incidentally also the legendary sonic weapon played by the Judeo-Chrstian demon of mass destruction named Gabriel. Similarly, the Irish had their warpipes, which were described in the 16th century as “among the Irish to be a whetstone for martial courage: for just as other soldiers are stirred by the sound of trumpets, so they are hotly stimulated to battle by the noise of this affair” (Stanihurst).

You Only Live Once, So Just Go Fucking Nuts

Somafera, the mystical practice that resulted in the Viking berserkers, is a practice I covered a bit here and is an incredibly useful method for getting into the right mindset and physiological state for lifting. This practice, though associated in most people’s minds with Germanic and Scandinavian cultures actually spans the entire globe. The first recorded instance is likely the Dacian wolf warriors of around 1000BC, who used shamanistic practices that made them feel as though they had transformed into wolves in the heat of battle (Skallagrimsson). Other examples span the world, from the Fists of Harmony and Justice in the Chinese Boxer rebellion to the Lakota Ghost Dancers of the American plains to the bloodlust-driven, all-female, Last House on the Left-style Greek maenads to the Celts performing Heroic Feats to the “whirling dervishes” of Turkey to the slaughter-tastic Leopard, Baboon, and Crocodile Cults of Africa, somafera practitioners have spanned pretty much every continent, and they’ve all been badasses.

If you think all that somafera (and the berserkergang state it induces) consists of is throwing on an animal pelt and LARPing as Teen Wolf, you’re wrong- “to put it scientifically, the berserkergang is an altered state of physiology that confers certain benefits and results from ecstatic and/or hysterical states” (Skallagrimsson 24). The hackneyed trope of the mother lifting a car off her infant is tired as fuck but is what should spring to mind when you think of the berserkergang- it is a state of mind that allows you to overcome the built in mental blocks humans have against the overutilization of massive muscle contractions, blocks in place to prevent injury from overuse. Humans are a rage-filled species, and as a result need inborn blocks against using massive amounts of muscle to deal with minor inconveniences like the idiot barista fucking up your coffee order at Starbucks. Though it would seem appropriate at the time to pull the place down on her head and every hipster shitbird in the place, doing so would likely leave you gravely injured and unable to defend yourself from future threats, like the rabble of cops who will quickly show up to beat your ass and incarcerate you indefinitely.

“This fury, which was called berserkergang, occurred not only in the heat of battle, but also during laborious work. Men who were thus seized performed things which otherwise seemed impossible for human power. This condition is said to have begun with shivering, chattering of the teeth, and chill in the body… With this was connected a great hot-headedness, which at last gave over into a great rage, under which they howled as wild animals, bit the edge of their shields, and cut down everything they met without discriminating between friend or foe. When this condition ceased, a great dulling of the mind and feeble- ness followed, which could last for one or several days” (Skallagrimsson).

It should painfully obvious to even the most unenlightened weightlifting psychopath that this state is immediately applicable to, and basically indispensable for elite competition in strength and combat sports. Author Stephen McCoy illustrates this reasoning further with this:

“In the biting or casting away of their shields, we see a reminder that their ultimate identity is no longer their social persona, but rather their ‘unity with the animal world’ that they have achieved through ‘self-dehumanization.’ A warrior’s shield and weapons were the very emblems of his social persona and status; they were given to a young man who had come of age by his father or closest male relative to mark his newfound arrival into the sphere of the rights and responsibilities of his society’s adult men. In biting or discarding the shield, the mythical beast triumphed over the petty man, and ‘Odin’s men’ tore through the battle, psychologically impervious to pain by virtue of their predatory trance” (McCoy).

In essence, berserking basically just puts you into a mindframe that activates your fight or flight response, which Skallagrimsson calls “madspace” For the people in the first article I mentioned with anxiety or depression issues, this would likely turn them into a gibbering mess- everything is not for everybody, and I’ll cover palliative methods in my next article in this series. If you’re a bit of a hothead, though, the deliberate induction of the stress response provides added strength, quicker reaction times, and reduced sensations of pain. “Odin’s men [berserkers and úlfheðnar] went armor-less into battle and were as crazed as dogs or wolves and as strong as bears or bulls. They bit their shields and slew men, while they themselves were harmed by neither fire nor iron” (McCoy).

The methods used to induce madspace vary from culture to culture, and within that culture from person to person.

1. Intoxicants– The Maenads of Dionysis and some Germanic and Celtic berserks were said to use alcohol, the Scythians, Hashashin, and possibly the Germanic and Scandinavians used cannabis, the consumption of poisonous animals like the toad and scorpion by the Aissawaand the Leopard Men used “an elixir called borfima, which was made by brewing the blood and internal organs of their victims” (Swancer). There is also some speculation that amanita muscaria was used, but that seems to be just hippies wishing they were cool enough to be Vikings and unrelated to fact. Projected to modern times, Tookie Williams’ use of PCP could fall into this category, as could the use of cheque drops, or heavy dosages of stimulants.
2. Self-induced– according to Wayland Skallagrimsson, who seems to be the foremost authority on the subject, “the theory which states that the state of mind achieved in berserking (often called gangr) was self-induced ecstasy that prompted temporary change…. and could overcome a person unexpectedly.” As a general rule, however, self-induced berserking was achieved using repetitive motion like pacing, convulsing, and violent dancing to cause a massive adrenaline dump, various forms of cutting-yourself-to-The-Cure-and-This-Mortal-Coil-style self-harm that included burning, beating their heads on the ground, starvation and dehydration, and shield-biting that would also induce an adrenaline response.

Getting Your Motherfucking Game Face On

If you hadn’t noticed, there were a wide array of totem animals that practitioners of somafera would channel while berserking. In Europe, it was common to mimic the boar, bear, and wolf, while people around the world invoked possession by spirits and other demons, or the spirit of the leopard, crow, lion, baboon, or crocodile. Whatever spirit was invoked, however, the result ranged from a pacifist state of ecstatic trance to literally “running amok,” as was common in Malaysia, where people gained notoriety and fame by going on mass killing sprees. According to Wayland Skallagrimsson, the steps for entering madspace are as followed:

1. Clear the mind and reach a meditative state.
2. Prayers and invocations to whatever god/spirit is responsible for berserking in one’s given belief system.
3. Utilize the aforementioned physical adrenaline triggers.
4. Use secondary adrenaline triggers like pain infliction or wearing animal skin.
5. Utilize steps three and four until enough energy is created to enter the berserk state.

If you’re still a little skeptical about the utility of this shit for the gym, consider berserking to just be a form of energy manipulation- it’s essentially the hardcore/metal version of the John Legend-style state Buddhist monks to so they can perform all of their crazy feats like lifting weights with their balls and making themselves impervious to stabbing. It is yet another form of achieving a higher level of physical, mental, and spiritual development that will help you transcend the human condition if you’re a transhumanist, the physical plane after death if you’re a Luciferian, or turn you into some kind of a Valkyrie-esque super angel if you tend toward the Jesus-y side of things. Frankly, I can’t think of a reason that a person wouldn’t want to possess “the ability to induce a state of possession by his kindred beast, acquiring its strength, fearlessness, and fury,” because whether you consider it unlocking your intrinsic power or drawing on an outside power, you’re still making yourself more than you could be in a normal state of mind (McCoy). However you want to characterize it, having the ability to make yourself physically stronger and more resistant to pain has more direct applications to strength sports than I care to count, and seems like it would be indispensable for strongman competitions, which seem to be as much about pain tolerance as brute strength in many events.

My Method (Using Skallagrimsson’s Elevation Ritual as a guideline)

As it happens, the method I use to invoke my madspace fall right in line with Skallagrimsson’s “Elevation Ritual,” though as with everything else I basically dispense with all of the pomp and circumstance and just jump right into the deep end. I will say that as a result I don’t always achieve the desired state, but if I can’t be bothered to do one of the stupid fucking setups for the bench or deadlift all of the cool kids are doing right now, I’m clearly not going to meditate or engage in ritual either. I developed this method long before reading about somafera/madspace and have to admit I didn’t even really realize I did it, though other people have given me shit for my weird-ass gym behavior in the past. I’ll list Skallagrimsson’s steps with my methods, just so you guys have the full picture.

1. Enter a light meditative state. If I do this at all, it is by reading or watching a movie that gets me fired up.
2. Prayers are uttered to Odin. I’m not into praying to anything but my idealized version of myself. I skip this.
3. Dancing, or some other physical activity. By the time I need to enter madspace, I’ve already done my warmup sets and am getting onto my max effort shit. As such, I start pacing, a lot. Back and forth in front of the rack, talking shit to the weights, glaring at them, etc. It might sound retarded to you, and if so, eat a dick- I really don’t care about anyone at this point. The world could catch fire and collapse and gunshots could be going off around me, but all I care about is that fucking weight.
4. The berserk begins other actions designed to deepen and increase the process, like hyperventilating and growling. This is me growling, snarling, and shouting along with whatever I’m listening to, much to the hilarious discomfiture of everyone around me. I pound my chest, headbutt the bar, roar, and generally have a good time. And at some point, my brain just starts viewing the people around me as prey and I get a predatory gleam in my eye. When I hit that predator grin stage, I am fucking unstoppable.

Having just reread this for the tenth time, it occurs to me that this will be used as fodder for channers and Redditors to call me a meathead douche and decry everything I’ve ever written, once more, as useless. If there were three of them who actually lifted shit or looked like shit, or who had ever done shit or knew shit, their opinion might mean something. As it stands, however, it looks like I have both history and my own accomplishments on my side. Sure, most people in the strength scene nowadays prefer to shit-talk on the internet and not say shit in public, which means taking this advice might mean you’ll catch some people talking shit on the sly, but those pussies would never say it to your face, or they’d be acting the same way in the gym. Thus, you can feel free to channel your inner self and act like a bit of a maniac, and even ramp up the insanity and go full berserker. Make some fucking noise when you go into the gym, dress a little weird- make a fucking event of it. Life is so fucking dull and safe at this point we might as well shake it up a bit. Worst case scenario is it doesn’t work (or that you’ll have a new gym owner ask around on the internet to find out if you’re actually dangerous, as I’ve had done about me in the past) and you simply managed to piss off a bunch of people who have no business being in your gym anyway.

You only live once, so just go fucking nuts.

Note: I highly recommend Wayland Skallagrimsson’s Putting on the Wolf Skin and Daniel McCoy’s The Viking Spirit (which you might notice Magnus ver Magnussen owns a copy of if you watch Strongland). Pick them up and support these authors- fuck knows someone should be making money at something cool. Speaking of which, the pace of my articles is going to be slowing down, as I’ve gotta go back into working in the real world. Anyway, support these guys- I don’t know either of them, but both books and both of their sites are phenomenal resources.

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Gallagher, Marty. Purposeful Primitive. St. Paul: Dragon Door, 2008.

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