FUCK NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS- I PORTEND DOOM

Maybe a year ago there was a commercial I witnessed on Youtube while waiting to check out some metal video that literally took my breath away with the horror it represented.  The commercial, which I cannot find now, was a Dell commercial in which some vapid label whore was watching a rave on her laptop, happy as a pig in shit that she didn’t have to brave the dangers of the big wide world to enjoy some shitty electronic music and perhaps actually interact with another human being.  The tagline, however, said it all- “Being There, Redefined”, a phrase representing a mindset so prevalent, and yet so incredibly repellent to me that it took over a year for me to actually bring myself to write on the subject.

What follows is not simply an outgrowth of that commercial and the concomitant reinforcement of that mentality on a daily basis on the internet, wherein people talk incessantly about a subject until it appears they believe they have actually performed the activity about which they are discussing, but also a series of discussions I’ve had with friends in regards to the myriad, and trust me they are legion, problems with the modern sport of powerlifting.

To kick this motherfucker off, I might as well address the elephant in the room, which will come off as rather hypocritical given my internet fame, but the internet is fucking ruining powerlifting.  Gone are the days when a kid would just decide he wanted to be big and strong and start lifting, with no conception of what might be the best method of doing so and generally no more knowledge about the lifts he should perform than a person might glean from looking at the side of a machine to see what muscles are worked.  That guy, the go-getter, just rolled out of bed one day and said, “fuck it, it’s time to get fucking brutal”, threw on some shorts and a tshirt and headed into the fucking gym.  After a few weeks of aping the biggest guys in the gym with the idea that they know what they’re doing (and they often do), the kid would start doing a little research in bodybuilding magazines and the like for a bit more information.  He might pick the brain of a lifter or two, and he might discuss lifting with his friends a bit.  All in all, that kid might spend a grand total of 5% of his “lifting” time talking, and the other 95% of it ACTUALLY LIFTING WEIGHTS.  Not foam rolling, not prehabbing and rehabbing injuries that only exist in the empty mind of the Chucks and Elite FTS clad morons waltzing around the gym like they know what the fuck is up, but actually lifting weights.

Now, we’re inundated with assholes all over the internet, meticulously researching and picking apart various lifting styles, debating the legality of techniques, gear, steroids, and sundry other issues about which they’re not, and likely will never, earn the right to have a fucking opinion about, shopping for exactly the right shoes, shorts, wraps, and other assorted accouterments of lifters, foam rolling, stretching, researching programs, debating programs, researching exercises, debating those exercises, and possibly eventually getting around to embarrassing the fuck out of themselves in the gym because in spite of all of their gear, they’re piss fucking weak.  TALKING ABOUT LIFTING DOES NOT MAKE YOU A LIFTER.  INTERNET MESSAGE BOARDS ARE NOT A FUCKING PROXY FOR GOING TO THE GYM.  REDDIT IS NOT “BEING THERE, REDEFINED.”  If you’re a male and don’t bench considerably more than body weight, squat double body weight, and deadlift the same, you should not even have it in your head you’re a fucking lifter, much less defining yourself as such with your fucking clothing.  Anyone who does is a fucking poser- they’re a posturing bitch with no respect for the sport they’re besmirching by claiming to be a part of it and are thus beneath contempt, in addition to being huge pain in the ass to work around while real lifters are actually getting shit fucking done in the gym.  Kill yourselves and save the real human people the trouble of having to wash your tainted, stomach-churningly weak blood off our calloused hands.

And holy fucking shit, could you phaggots stop with the gym etiquitte posts?  Anyone who is reading them already knows about them, and anyone who is not reading them is not going to fucking care anyway.  Holy fuck, what a pompous bunch of brainless fucktards… posting rules for your fellow gymgoers.  NO ONE CARES WHAT YOU THINK, AND YOUR INCESSANT WHINING ABOUT CURLS IN THE SQUAT RACK MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE THE DICKLESS BITCH YOU ARE.  

Holy fucking christ- if someone wants to do curls in the squat rack, they might as well- at least they’re using the fucking thing.  Squat racks are generally used to hang laundry and preserve space for people to do lunges with preloaded barbells in most gyms, and half the people whining about curling in the squat rack have squat numbers so pathetic they shouldn’t even be discussing lifting in public anyway.  Your invective to the contrary notwithstanding, the shit is going to continue.  Shut the fuck up already, you whiny, inconsequential, useless, self important dickbags.  Real people are busy waiting to lift in those racks, not posting passive aggressive phaggotry on the internet.  Goddamn, people suck.

That brings us to our next issue- the incredible disparity between the elite in the sport and everyone else.  As I’ve mentioned before, I simply started competing in this sport to prove a point.  I had no interest in making it my life, nor did I have any interest in becoming a powerlifter.  I simply wanted to prove the efficacy of my methods.  As it turns out, this sport is ridiculously easy to be competitive in.  RIDICULOUSLY.  We’re talking about a guy who barely benched for ten years because he sucked shit at it, never squatted to depth, and basically made shit up as he went along triumphing over legions of people who devoted their existence to the performance of three simple lifts.  

Not only am I better at the vast majority of the people at my bodyweight at those three lifts, but I’m better at just about any lift at which you can throw at me, because I train to be brutally fucking Viking strong.  That’s what Chaos and Pain is all about- being so fucking strong that the only time you find yourself incapable of wrecking shit is when you’re sleeping.  Fuck consigning yourself to a single strength sport, especially when barely anyone could give a fuck about strength sports and even the people who do spend the vast majority of their time talking shit about other competitors rather than actually lifting weights.  

CnP’s not about training to be a powerlifter.  It’s not to satisfy some stupid fucking goal set by some 150 lb. bitches as the ultimate mark of manhood.  While we’re at it, 300-400-500 is a 1200 lb total.  SWEET JESUS CHRIST ON HIGH THAT’S PATHETIC.  Are a 120 IQ and a 15% bodyfat percentage on your shopping lists as well?  Mediocre much?  Moreover, what’s the point of perfecting your technique if that just means that you perform perfect lifts with paper weights?  They don’t give out medals for perfect form, and no one gives a fuck if you fully engage your transverse abdominus when you’re pulling.  Managing lordosis while lifting should not be a goal- lifting the fucking weight should be.  Motherfuckers are busy being stuck on stupid and weak because they lack the will do get awesome, and it’s fucking pathetic.

While we’re on the subject of lifting more, powerlifters and olympic weightlifters might want to take note of the fact that the strongest people in the world BODYBUILD.  Dear god in heaven, you’d think that getting fucking jacked would not be the anathema to the saddies populating message boards, but the suggestion that they might want to do an exercise that might involve a machine makes most of those tards break out into fucking hives.  Suggest to someone that a few sets of cable crossovers might help them bench more than the paltry 185 with which they’re struggling and they act as though you suggested they masturbate with 600-grit sandpaper and then rub rock salt onto the remaining bloody nub.  They act that way because they’re fucking retarded, of course.  The biggest and strongest people in the world ALL use bodybuilding exercises as accessory movements because, surprise, THEY LIKE LIFTING WEIGHTS AND LOOKING GOOD.  Additionally, getting stronger really helps you get stronger!  How that could come as a shock to someone is a mystery I will never resolve.  Before the word “carryover” bubbles forth from your slack, drool-covered lips, consider the following, courtesy of Olympic weightlifting coach Coach Dan Bell:

“When the Bulgarian training craze swept the sport of weightlifting some years ago, it became dogma almost overnight that you only need to train six exercises to be a successful weightlifter: snatch, clean & jerk, back squat, front squat, power snatch and power clean. The idea was that constant practice of the competitive lifts makes you strong in the lifts, with squats giving you the leg drive for big weights. The idea that areas of the body other than the legs should be targeted for strength gains got lost in the race to emulate the latest breakout foreign program. But even the vaunted Bulgarians of the eighties and nineties did foundational bodybuilding as juniors. Zlaten Vanev did a lot of curls to protect his elbow after blowing it out on a jerk. There is a lesson there for the rest of us.

The Chinese believed that being Asian they started behind other nations in upper body strength, an essential quality for success in a strength sport, they properly reasoned. So they busted their asses at rows, presses, pullups, handstand pushups and even benching. Judging by the stunningly muscular specimens they put on the podium year after year, it’s paying off.

A strong upper body is vital in widening the overhead “groove” for the snatch and jerk. The stronger the lifter’s upper body, the more room for error–front to back displacement of the bar from the ideal doesn’t necessarily mean a missed lift.” 

And holy fucking hell, as if the race to utter public disgrace wasn’t going fast enough, we’ve got the fracture of the sport into 987,329,873,498,734 federations, which are then separated into weight classes, age classes, gear classes, and fuck, we’ve even split raw into two fucking classes.  What better way to ensure that the saddest pack of self important bitches on Earth all get trophies than a system in which there are barely ever three people competing in the same fucking class?  What makes it even more fun is the incessant shit talking, which now even extends to the manner in which people perform the fucking lifts WITHIN THE STRICTURES OF THE RULES.  The next motherfucker I hear whining about sumo gets stabbed.  Same goes for low bar squatting and hard aches in the bench.  Bitch less and lift more, for fuck’s sake.

I suppose it doesn’t really fucking matter if the sport’s fractured, though, as it seems most of the people involved in it are simply doing it because they’re attention whores .  Is it even possible for people to enter a gym without a fucking camera at this point?  Holy fucking hell.  Three years ago that was the sole purview of 140 lb dudes in board shorts doing thrusters with 110 lbs., and the primary driver behind Crossfit mockery.  Now, every asshole on the planet’s filming themselves doing nothing of any interest to anyone except for other attention whores, all in the apparent search for bragging rights over the most Facebook “friends” and Youtube views.  Gone are the days, apparently, when people just fucking lifted weights because they liked lifting weights.  Now, it’s just a pack of sloppy assholes taking fucking pictures of themselves all goddamned day and filming every lackluster set they happen to perform in the gym.  You deadlifted 405 at 180 lbs?  WHO THE FUCK CARES?  Narcisissism should be reserved for pople who actually have something to fucking brag about, goddamnit?  Where are these inflated egos coming from?  Certainly not their physiques or their fucking lifts.  Jesus fuck.

Hey! If any of you are looking for any last-minute gift ideas for me, I have one. I’d like any one of these assholes, an one of the dipshits ruining our sport, right here tonight. I want them brought from his happy holiday slumber and I want them brought right here, with a big ribbon on their head, and I want to look them straight in the eye and I want to tell them what a useless, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shit he is! Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where’s the Tylenol?  Frankly, I don’t give a fuck what you people do, but if you people want the sport of powerlifting to persist beyond the next couple of years, you might want to do something about it.  Get stronger, quit your fucking bitching, and let’s start investing in razor wire and fencing so we can start sending these assholes to the camps and get back to the business of picking up heavy shit.