Plague of Strength

“Vexation is the attitude of the individual as intelligence towards the check imposed upon repressing the violence of will- in other words, by virtue; or by keeping the intelligence from dwelling upon the check- in other words, by stoicism.”

-Arthur Schopenhauer

Given the fact I coined the phrase “Violence over Virtue” and printed it on t-shirts long before reading Schopenhauer’s “Essay on Controversy,” and the fact I have long considered the Stoics to be the most chickenshit bunch of faux tough guys this side of Redditors, I find myself invariably and unceasingly vexed.  Nowhere do I find myself more often vexed than when faced with the prospect of slapping down some pseudointellectual, pseudostrength athlete on the subject of science-based strength training and nutrition because it is akin to challenging a Young Earther who insists dinosaurs and humans coexisted on Earth in the last ten thousand years.  Both belief systems are so inherently and irrevocably flawed, yet so violently, ignorantly, and dogmatically defended that rational discussion is impossible.  Hilariously, both groups cite logic, reason, and “fact” as the basis for their belief systems, yet neither group possesses a modicum of the intellect or knowledge necessary to understand the idiocy of their arguments, and furthermore lack the requisite grasp of rhetoric to either win a debate on the subject or realize how utterly specious their claims are.

How lucky, then, that I’d reread Aristotle and Schopenhauer recently, and love handing out verbal curb stomps more than Proud Boys and Trump supporters love to fantasize about having penises, the physiques of adult male humans, and handing out real curb stomps at Antifa protests!

Behold the Great Leveller.  I live my life as an outcast, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’ve always been an outsider in my own proverbial country- my writing style is considered (bizarrely to myself and anyone who knows me personally) as satirical, my diet hyper-extreme, my workout volume nigh on impossible, and in an industry where success is almost always measured by one’s social circle I have none, yet I have success.   Given the fact that I have been an inveterate meathead since the mid-Nineties, I have a unique perspective- I am now so deep inside lifting culture that I’ve tunnelled my way under and out of it, and I am now so disassociated with a community in which I should be steeped like an abattoir in blood that my life’s work seems slightly gross from the taint the current incarnation of the lifting community has brought upon it.  So, without going off on strength coaches in general, who hold their jumped-up Phys Ed degrees overhead while screaming overly complex jargon that belies their total lack of understanding of strength science (because if you cannot explain it easily to a child, you don’t fucking understand it), I’ll simply put the “evidence based” coaches on blast.  Fuck it- if I cannot put them before an actual firing squad for the potentially irrevocable damage they have done to the lifting community as a whole, I might as well metaphorically gun them down in an effort to take back our fucking scene from the pussies currently flooding it.

Actually, fuck that- a firing squad is too good for these self-righteous, lying shitslugs.  If we’re going to take back our scene, we need to make examples, not corpses.

Extreme?  Perhaps, unless you consider the fact that lifters are by and large getting weaker as they get more closeminded, all while professing to be enlightened and correct.  Part of the problem lies in the fact that the people promulgating evidence-or-science based training have degrees that seem to legitimize their opinions on strength training and nutrition, but in reality they are simply posers hiding behind obtuse verbiage intended to mystify the laymen to the point that they appear as authorities.  This trick is nothing new- it explains the rituals and mystique of witch doctors and shamans, and the reason Catholic priests held services in a long dead language.  It’s also why channers and the dickless retards who ape them vomit idiot-speak non-words all over the internet- the utilization of their “in crowd” lexicon gives them a sense of belonging and superiority so spurious and hollow that it shatters like Anderson Silva’s shinbone the moment they step away from their computer into the real world.

Renowned German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer aptly described the aforementioned style of controversial dialectic (the art of disputation that allows one to hold their own in a debate over an assertion for which there may be many proofs) as sophistic.  The fact that Sophists basically run our scene is more than enough justification for a widespread purge, because their method is the method to use when the person defending it knows their conclusion is false, although it seems correct at a cursory glance.  A Sophist disgustingly looks to the reputation and money they’ll gain by promoting a falsehood rather than using a priori or a postiori logic to arrive at the correct answer and promote that.  Not unlike the progenitor of the Flat Earth Theory, Samuel Rowbotham (who did not actually believe the world was flat- he just needed the money his lectures brought in to support his ridiculous number of children), science-based exercise “scientists” sell their souls for money and lead people to an easy untruth to provide a salve to their bruised egos.  “Science-based” training is nothing more than shitty training methodologies rooted in a conspiracy theory, only rather than blaming the Rosicrucians or shapeshifting alien lizards, the science-based community blames steroids for all super-strength and all fantastic physiques.

Think I’m off base?

“Though imagining shadowy cabals behind every corner might seem scary, conspiracy theories also seem to offer believers the promise of control in the form of knowledge and insight that others lack, Douglas said.

‘You have a need for security and control, and you don’t have it, she said, ‘so you try to compensate for it.

Finally, conspiracy theories can give believers a self-esteem boost and allow them to feel good about the groups they belong to. Some studies suggest narcissism and conspiracy belief are linked, Douglas said, and many conspiracies divide the world into “good guys” (e.g., the moral YouTube star setting out to find the truth) and “bad guys” (e.g., the government, or a given ethnic group)” (Pappas).

… by harnessing the full magical power of steroids.

The natty and evidence-based movements go hand in hand, and they vilify users of various performance enhancing drugs as “cheats,” then claim that anyone who falls outside of the acceptable range of performance must be a user of those drugs (the list of which changes daily).  This, then, justifies the lack of progress that the adherents to these belief systems have had, and provides them which their desired self esteem boost.  Rather than blaming their methods and efforts for average gains and performance, evidence-based natty bros blame the raw material of their biology and genetics- their insertion placement and physical structure, their metabolism, their fat deposition, or anything other than themselves and their shitty coaches.

“Unfortunately, once a conspiracy belief is established, it’s hard to change, said Swami; people tend to hold on to their beliefs. Arguments and discussions only tend to entrench those beliefs, as people tend to engage in what’s called “psychological reactance,” Swami said, spending time honing their own arguments and convincing themselves even further of their own rightness” (Pappas).

Frankly, we don’t have to stop the conspiracy- we can just watch that fad die and hope the people promoting it die with them, in a vast conflagration that engulfs the weak of mind, body, and spirit.  Or we can just crash one of their conferences and beat them to death with weights they could never hope to lift.  Whichever works.  Frankly, we should start with Lyle McDonald and his fans, as that lazy former dickrider of Dan Duchaine, who came on the scene completing that man’s work after his death, has now turned his back on all of his former research and position (and in doing so fully spitting in the face of the man who put him on the map in the first place) in the quest for the almighty dollar.  Being that McDonald has done nothing and coached no one, he realized his utter lack of credentials place him in the perfect position to coach the uncoachable natty shitbirds of the internet, since the fact that they grew up without Choose Your Own Adventure books left them wholly incapable of separating fact from fiction and choosing between similar options and they want to be told they’re special and everything is going to be alright because everyone who outperforms them is a “cheater.”  Yeah, well, that dog just won’t fucking hunt… but these idiots are so weak, slow, and stupid that hunting them is easier than hunting the dodo, and given that McDonald is an apparently violent autist, starting with him is simply doing the world a service before he angrily drives his parents’ car into a crowd of people because he can’t get laid.

Dan Duchaine would likely be thinking this is a fitting end for little Lyle, because that pussy motherfucker stabbed a far better man’s corpse in the fucking back.

If you’re shocked, don’t be- this shit should have happened a long time ago.  I’m not just some dark-souled avenger who’s decided to descend upon a community of hapless, pious hypocrites in a random feat of rage- I’m a pure, ferocious product of a culture that has been usurped by know-nothing, bitch-made pussies in capri pants who have every fucking bit of this vitriol coming to them.  And the reason for this vitriol is simple- anyone who started training prior to the advent of the internet is very well aware that sports science is decades behind the bro knowledge you’ll find in the gym, and anyone with a modicum of sense and the ability to look impartially at the two will note that this is obvious.  Immediately obvious.  Even beyond that, for millennia gym bros have been doing what sport scientists claim is impossible for drug free athletes- for instance, Greek trireme rowers routinely outperformed the efforts of our most elite modern rowers (our elite can only row 70% as fast), and both sumo and Indian pehwani easily exceed and have exceeded for hundreds of years the lean body mass of modern drug free bodybuilders, and how it seems from my observation that practically everyone who has ever lifted weights seriously has outperformed the skinny dipshits in their fancy workout gear following “evidence-based” programs (Pain)…

Ah, how I love fisting these motherfuckers with the long arm of truth.

Which leads me to wonder how they expect to save anyone from weakness if they cannot save themselves?  Shit, they can’t even save themselves from the logical fallacy that their systems are based on studies so limited in scope that they’re statistically insignificant, whereas “bro-science” is based on literally hundreds of years of observational evidence.  As such, the statements made by “eminent” authors who should be teaching fucking kickball to snot covered toddlers rather than bloviating about their bullshit, “science-based” training theories are ad rem false- their propositions are not in accordance with the nature of things.  They claim that the innumerable examples one might provide are either outliers, the produce of science experiments of ancient aliens, pure fiction, evil, nefarious drug users, or other assorted poppycock, simply because the existence of those things doesn’t fit their belief system.

If Brando had lived to see the evidence-based training bullshit of the internet, he would have laughed his fucking ass off rereading his own quote, because it was incredibly apt.

Funny how that is in no way scientific, eh?  And I have just begun, people- more reasons to pelt those evidence-based faux coaches with brickbats coming soon.  The exception again is Greg Nuckols, who if not a captivating writer can actually move weight and read- if I had to guess, his methodology just suits his Spock-like temperament, which allows him to succeed in ways few can.

Sources:
Pain, Stephanie.  When men were gods.  The New Scientist.  7 Feb 2007.  Web.  6 Dec 2018.  https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19325902-200-histories-when-men-were-gods/

Pappas, Stephanie.  Flat Earth: What fuels the internet’s strangest conspiracy theory?  LiveScience.  5 Feb 2018.  Web.  30 Nov 2018.  https://www.livescience.com/61655-flat-earth-conspiracy-theory.html