Plague of Strength

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this series, you can catch up on the vitriolic goodness of the past in Part 1 and Part 2. If you want the TLDR from damn near a decade ago, it’s that feral humans were capable of greatness because they embraced their will and ignored the strictures and limitations placed on them by society as a whole. This was due in large part to the fact that they were unaware of the limitations human are “supposed” to have- the mental blocks erected in civilized cultures that limit physical potential. As such, there is a great deal to be learned from the vicious, the uncivilized, and the savage. They can unlock parts of the human potential “civilized” people believe are impossible to reach, and commit acts that so impressive they would seem superhuman, when in reality they are simply what humans could do if they stopped thinking so fucking much.

I came into the world with my legs forward.  And the woman cried, “He was born with teeth!” I had no father. I am my own father.  I have no brother I am my own brother.  This word love, which old farts call blind, be resident in men like you, asshole, but not in me. 

I am my motherfucking self. Alone.

The key, then, is tapping one’s emotional self. Reaching deep within one’s self to draw on the wellspring of hate and disgust, aggression and dominance, that are buried deep within us all, fed daily by the little injustices and various slights we have to endure with a smile because it’s what “civilized” people do. Frankly, these annoyances a boon, because it gives us an emotional reserve upon which we can draw that should we find a way to tap it, we could surpass the actions of feral humans due to what must seem to them a boundless cauldron of simmering rage that can supply us with endless energy for superhuman feats.

Yeah, life in the modern world is comparatively easy when viewed against the rest of the Christian era, but humans aren’t designed for easy. We’re born fighters. Apex predators. We are the collective genetic result of a battle between multiple hominid species, a species that hunted 900lb American lions to extinction, slaughtered the 1,800lb short faced bear with sharp sticks, and conquered the planet and near Earth space. We are born to battle, with an innate desire for strife and struggle, discontented with leisure, and yet we are forced into a lifestyle where enduring countless slights that would have ended in death in bygone eras is not simple a fact of daily life, but of our existence minute-to-minute. And yet, where one would think that world would be one of ease, it’s quite the opposite. Seen from the perspective of a formerly feral human, “civilization” is just as the epic film The Woman aptly identified- it is endlessly cruel, cold, and unpleasant.

“Today, the former wolf boy, who was 19 when he was discovered by the Civil Guard and ripped away from his natural home, struggles with the coldness of the human world. It’s something that didn’t affect him so much when he was running around barefoot and half-naked with the wolves. “I only wrapped my feet up when they hurt because of the snow,” he remembers. “I had such big calluses on my feet that kicking a rock was like kicking a ball.” After he was captured, Rodríguez’s world fell apart and he has never been able to fully recover. He’s been cheated and abused, exploited by bosses in the hospitality and construction industries, and never fully reintegrated to the human tribe. But at least his neighbors in Rante accept him as “one of them.’ And now, the environmental group Amigos das Arbores is raising money to insulate Rodríguez’s house and buy him a small pellet boiler – things that his meager pension cannot cover” (Pontevedra).

So, rather than trying to find a way to “get to get in where you fit in,” which is a fruitless enterprise for anyone reading Plague of Strength anyway, we must find a useful outlet for the rage bubbling under the surface of us all. Clearly, the utilization of that rage can go awry- though Carl Panzram had a prolific career as a serial killing and rapist, he likely would have found a more profitable outlet for his rage in combat sports. In them, he could have channeled his rage in such a way that would not have left him crippled, usually incarcerated, and ultimately executed. Likewise, the leader of the Crips, Tookie Williams, could have parleyed his insane strength and fighting skills into a successful career in combat sports, especially in a time when his love of PCP and steroids would have gone undetected. Rather than ending up on death row, he could have become the most vicious boxer this side of Mike Tyson, or kickboxer this side of Jerome LeBanner, and gone on to fulfill his dream of helping inner city youth and all of the other happy horseshit he was into.

Whether or not either of those two individuals could have been transformed into vicious fighting machines rather than killers is a matter for some debate. Clearly, it worked in the case of Mike Tyson, and other athletes have definitely been able to harness their rage for their own good and our entertainment. Examples of this phenomenon are legion, but perhaps two of the best examples come from football and (amusingly enough) baseball- Lyle Alzedo, and Ty Cobb.

For those of you who are unaware of the man, Ty Cobb was a turn of the 20th century baseball player so filled with rage and malice that he was featured in the the book American Monsters alongside “despicable characters” like cult leader Charles Manson, raging dickhead and junior fascist Charles McCarthy, and union-busting shitbird Alan Pinkerton. Though he retired 91 years ago, Cobb still holds records for the highest career batting average, combined total of runs scored and runs batted in, the career record for stealing home, and for stealing second, third, and home in succession.  He held a shitload of other records for 50 years or more, and is still considered to be one of the ten best, if not the best, baseball player in the history of the game.

The secret to Cobb’s success was no secret to anyone who ever happened to cross his path- rage. Cobb dripped with malice and seethed with hate from the time he opened his eyes to the time he finally succumbed to the exhaustion of being so hate-filled that Hitler would have told the man to take a Valium. Cobb said of his hatred for losing, “I often gritted my teeth and declared to myself I would get a base hit next time up or die in the attempt,” and he fucking meant it. He freely admitted that anger made him a far better player than he would have been otherwise, and he even went so far as to deliberately piss off his own teammates to foment more rage by doing shit like going off to the Library of Congress in off hours to read, when they played in Washington.

Though that likely seems completely innocuous, in the bro culture of early 20th Century baseball, that type of behavior was an anathema to his teammates. He did the same to opposing teams, finding ways to steal home even when the entire opposing team was crowded around home plate to protest an umpire’s call. Cobb’s ultimate fuck you to humanity, however, was far more epic than staling home or reading, or laying a bunt down the first base line so he could bulldoze the pitcher who’d thrown at him earlier in the game, or fighting literally any human being who pissed him off.

After enduring heckling by the same dickhead for innings at a time over the course of multiple games, Ty Cobb was red fucking hot.

“The man, a Tammany Hall page named Claude Lucker (or Lueker, in some accounts), who had lost all but two of his fingers while operating a printing press, continued taunting Cobb.

The Tigers’ Sam Crawford asked Cobb what he intended to do. And with that, Cobb suddenly vaulted into the stands toward Lucker, seated about 12 rows up in the grandstand. Knocking Lucker down, Cobb began kicking and stamping him.

“Cobb,” someone cried, “that man has no hands!”

“I don’t care if he has no feet!” he yelled, continuing the attack with his cleats. Some fans tried to intervene, but several teammates who had followed Cobb into the grandstand held them off with bats. An umpire and a police officer finally pulled Cobb away.

You read that right- Ty Cobb was not a man to take shit from any human being, and as arguably the greatest player in the game, beat the fucking brakes off of a crippled man in the middle of a professional sporting event. And I love him for it.

Next up, we have one of the meanest motherfuckers ever to play professional football, Lyle Alzado. Though his legacy is basically “don’t do GH,” having died of brain cancer at 43 (steroids are actually a potent cancer-fighting substance, but GH accelerates the growth of tumors insanely), Lyle Alzado is without question one of the greatest defensive players of all time. A member of the Oakland Raiders in the early 1980s, Alzado scared the shit out of his own team members, on a team that was described by one author as “looking like rejects from a Hells Angels Chapter” (Wilson).

Standing 6’3″ and 255 pounds, Alzado intimidated offensive players around the league with a combination of utter insanity, fearlessness, a jacked physique, and a genuine desire to hurt any motherfucker standing in his way. Nickname “Three Mile Lyle” by his fellow defensive players, no one ever knew when Alzado was going to blow or at whom, but they knew at some point, Alzado was fighting someone. Or everyone.

“Lyle used football as a way of expressing his anger at the world and the way we grew up.’’

If anyone ever had a question about who they didn’t want to fight, Alzado was more than happy to answer it. Famous for saying shit like, “if me and King Kong went into an alley, only one of us would come out … and it wouldn’t be the monkey,’’ “I’ll kill you and everything you love,” and “I never met a person I didn’t want to fight,’’ Alzado proved it in spades- in 1979 Alzado even fought then champion Muhammad Ali in an exhibition match. He got his ass whipped, but his point stood- it didn’t matter if you were arguably the best pugilist in history, Alzado wanted a fucking piece of you.

“Moody? I mean, he makes Sybil look like a common individual in society.” -Howie Long

Alzado wasn’t a born athlete, either- he forged his physique in the gym and married it to a love of violence developed as a poor kid in the Midwest, Alzado learned early on how to fight. Though he didn’t win it, Alzado fought in the Golden Gloves in 1969, and hammered his opponenets on the field as hard as those in the ring and the weights in the gym. Alzado was the consummate roid-filled 1980’s Gold’s gym member, training at the Gold’s in Venice whenever he could to show off his 500lb bench press. No matter what people think of his gear use, his constant fighting, his dirty play, or any of the rest of that shit, they have to recognize the fact that the “poet laureate of rage” proved without a doubt that the dedicated application of weights to rage equals professional sporting success.

Clearly, not everyone has their cup of rage perpetually running over as I do- frankly, it’s exhausting to be pissed off all the time. I’ve written in the past about the utilization of somafera to reach berserker mode here and here, but another method you could use is a haka. The haka is a a ceremonial war dance done by Polynesians throughout the Pacific as an invitation to catch a fucking ass whupping. The intention of the haka is to demonstrate fearsomeness, fearlessness, and physical prowess, and involves rhythmic slapping of the body, sticking out the tongue (to demonstrate you intend to eat the motherfucker at the end of the fight), chanting, and stomping. It’s a super badass version of the Thai boxers’ goofy little performance prior to fights, and for anyone who’s seen one live, it’s about the only thing guaranteed to get your hair standing on end and your CNS fully engaged just from watching (and if you like Thai boxing, even you can admit that the only people intimidated by a 125lb man doing a weird dance to music that sounds like whales raping each other are other small Southeastern Asian people).

“‘Unlike stretching, the haka wakes up the muscles, connects the proprioceptors on the skins surface to the tissue underneath. The slapping and striking moves of the haka stimulate the body and mind into a full alert challenged state, while the verbal challenge itself opens up the airways and helps get the heart ready for combat.’

Here’s the science.

‘The haka’s crouched stance loads muscles called the psoas which are a primary stimulator of the fight and flight response. This is because as they engage they compress and activate the adrenal gland. At the same time the amygdala, and the hypothalamus in the brain plus pituitary gland are all stimulated and the hormone ACTH is released as well as the neurotransmitter epinephrine and cortisol. All of this increases blood pressure, blood sugar, suppresses the immune system and creates a burst of energy as cortisol helps to turn fatty acids into energy.’

In a nutshell, Toal said performing the haka provides a whole body wake-up, preparing for immediate physical action.

‘When used as part of a dynamic warm-up the haka is one, if not the, most effective way for any athlete to be at their peak right at the moment of joining the battle of competition’” (Bathgate).

If you’re thinking you’re not Polynesian, weigh 150, can’t dance, and there is no fucking way in hell you could pull a haka off, you’re missing the point. The haka is just a type of somafera– it charges your CNS and prepares you to fuck shit up. It flips that murder switch in your mind, turning you from a mild-mannered salaryman into a merchant of doom, and prepares your body to perform feats of violence and strength about which your descendants will be talking in hushed tones for generations. Thus, it might stand to reason that you develop some kind of ritual that achieves the same effect.

OBLITERATE YOUR FRAGILE FUCKING MIND STATE.

Mine generally involves a great deal of pacing and chest-thumping, screaming along with my music. Some lifters get slapped by other lifters, screamed at and the like- that just makes me homicidal and actually has the opposite effect of a haka, because I get so fucking pissed at the person hitting and screaming at me I lose focus. As with everything else, it is up to you to forge your own path to victory, aggression, and greatness. If you want ideas, check those somafera articles for methods for altering your mindstate, or go to Uppsala Online or that dude’s book Putting on the Wolf Skin for more ideas. As I’ve said before, I don’t know that author, but his writing is pretty damn good, and he manages not to be the type of D&D playing Nazi than most of the Viking reenactors seem to be.

So if you’ve hit a wall, you’re not making the progress you’d like, or you don’t like the way you look with your shirt off, bear in mind the fact that it’s almost certainly not a need for better programming- every single jail lifter stands as a counterpoint to that idea. Rather than taking time off or doing a fucking deload, it’s far more likely you need to get pissed off and go harder. To genuinely attack the weights, rather than just go through the motions with the belief that some arcane mathematics will spur incremental growth. In short- stop being a fucking bitch and go hard.

“If you have fear, you will fall.”

Yo- did you know my new book is out in paperback? Grab it in the store here:

Want me to throw a dedication into the thing? I don’t charge shit for that- I appreciate the support. You can get a signed copy here, or if you prefer an ebook, get that here:

Sources:

Bathgate, Benn. Haka gives ABs more than a psychological lift.  Stuff.  23 Sep 2015.  Web.  18 Aug 2019.  https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/72080175/

Borges, Ron.  State Your Case: Lyle Alzado was more than a mad man. He was a defensive force.  Maven Sports.  12 Mar 209.  Web.  12 Aug 2019.  https://mavensports.io/talkoffame/state-your-case/state-your-case-lyle-alzado-was-more-than-a-mad-man-he-was-a-defensive-force-4pOdR9m9f02MLpWzIdIpiw/

Heisler, Mark.  Poet laureate of rage: Lyle Alzado builds a better life than he was born to live.  LA Times.  26 Aug 1985.  Web.  12 Aug 2019.  https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-08-26-sp-26485-story.html

Mueller, Bobby.  The truth about Ty Cobb. Call to the Pen.  2016.  Web.  15 Aug 2019.  https://calltothepen.com/2017/02/26/the-truth-about-ty-cobb/

Pontevedra, Silva R, and Melissa Kitson.  Spaniard raised by wolves disappointed with human life.  El Pais.  29 Mar 2018.  Web.  12 Aug 2019.  https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/03/28/inenglish/1522237746_629465.html

Wilson, David.  Remembering Lyle Alzado.  Bleacher Report.  16 May 2010.  Web.  12 Aug 2019.  https://bleacherreport.com/articles/392964-remembering-lyle-alzado

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