Just Settle The Fuck Down And Bodybuild, Bro- Probably The Last “Ask The Asshole”, Ever

In the past I would publish articles in a series called “Ask The Asshole” but as the questions began to resemble each other more and more, and my answers became basically rote repetitions of one another, I abandoned the series.  You might think that I would enjoy posting my hilarious repartee with people who should never publicly utter these questions, but frankly I’ve grown so weary of answering stupid questions that most days I’ve got less funny in me than a dialogue between Howie Mandel and Jeff Foxworthy scripted by that hideously uncomedic fucktard with the puppets.  Until now, that is, because if I can’t laugh in the face of a coming apocalypse fueled by gun-toting, unfuckable autists, idiotic partisan politics, hyper-emotional responses to trivial events, and the fact that “e-sports” are likely going to be in the next Winter Olympics, I might as well just eat a fucking frisbee and get it over with.

That’s not to say I don’t like helping people out- I give out more free training advice than all of the dudes in Rogue gear scamming on hot chicks at the gym combined, only the advice I give is actually sought out and appreciated.  It’s frustrating, however, when the answer is so often the same.  As such, I’m just going to post this in hopes that people will actually read it and take it to heart.

Let’s start with competing- most people probably shouldn’t bother.  If you’re an adult male over 170 lbs and you’re not in the 300-400-500 (bench-squat-deadlift) club, DON’T EVEN FUCKING THINK ABOUT COMPETING IN POWERLIFTING.  I don’t know what the equivalent is in oly, but I’m sure such a standard is available online.  There are too many of you goofballs running around with truly mediocre lifts asking for advice like “should I cut to 181?  I’m SIX FUCKING FEET TALL and bench well under 300.”  I’m not going to use the word manlet, but if you’re over 5’6″, you should be in the 198s or higher.  And you should be far stronger than you are before you compete, anyway- the definition of the word compete is to “strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others who are trying to do the same,” so if your lifts such, you’re not competing.  Instead, you’re putting your weakness on public display for no apparent reason.   

That brings us to my next point- I highly doubt any of you are eating enough.  Before you start protesting about how you get fat if you eat too much, you’re eating too little and training too little.  I’ve written pretty much endlessly on weight gain diets, and yet I still get absurd questions about cutting when people are tall and skinny.  Or short and skinny.  Either way, it’s fucking stupid- if you want to be strong, eat to get strong.  Leaning out is the easy part.  Getting obscenely strong and jacked is by far and away the hard part- if it wasn’t, you would see far more guys in the gym benching over 500 with guts, rather than a bunch of pussies in spandex struggling with 225.

I’ll repeat that one more time- if getting lean was the hard part and getting strong and huge was the easy part, there’d be a lot less Zyzz and a lot more Eddie Hall in every gym in the country.  Any pussy who loves the stairmill and hates rare steak can get a six-pack.  Hell, asceticism of every stupid fucking variety is in vogue now with the alt-right, bitch-made neo-stoics, and whatever other variety of pussy who cannot control the extent of his or her indulgences is running around.  Not doing shit is easy- it’s the lazy fucker’s way of attempting to be interesting.

Name a single awesome lifter or generally bad motherfucker who was an ascetic.  You can’t.  Big personalities have big appetites and do great things.  Case in point: the first man to bench press 600 lbs, squat 800 lbs, and total 2000 lbs in a powerlifting meet was Pat Casey.  Pat Casey trained more in a day than most people train in a week, and he ate enough food to feed a sub-Saharan African family for a month.  Think you eat enough?  Pat Casey ate gargantuan amounts of food and then chugged 4-6 quarts of whole milk every day just to round out his calories.  That’s 2400 to 3600 calories and 128 to 196 grams of protein a day just from his milk, and it was nothing for bodybuilders of the day to eat 6000 to 9000 calories a day to pack on mass (Roach).  Are any of us consuming a full day’s worth of calories as an afterthought, on top of massive meals?  I highly doubt it, because if we were, there’d be far more XXL shirt in our gyms rather than mediums.

“Casey’s early ambition was simple: hoist ever heavier poundage, grow larger and ever more muscular. His continual training and his copious consumption of calories had an incredible effect on his physique. The more he ate, the larger he grew; the larger he grew, the stronger he became; the stronger he became, the hotter his young male metabolism raged. Pat drank six quarts of whole milk each day in addition to eating everything he could lay his hands on. It was reported in Muscle Builder magazine that Casey used to stop and eat a packed lunch (“meatloaf sandwiches smothered in mayonnaise”) during his day-long iron sessions.'”

“He mimicked what he saw [the gym rats] perform: lots of exercises, lots of sets, marathon training sessions, training the same muscles three times a week. Those endurance weight training sessions beat the chubby Irish boy into shape. Pat thought nothing of spending all day in the gym, doing whatever suited his fancy, taking as long as he needed between sets to rest and fully recover” (Gallagher). 

After Casey hit a 615 bench in competition with a two-second pause, broke the 800 lb squat barrier and the 2000 total barrier in the same meet, he retired from competition.  Know what he did then?  He cut bodyweight and was a non-competitive bodybuilder for the remainder of his life.  Training just two days a week he was able to maintain most of his muscle and rock a physique most lifters would sell their sister into sexual slavery for because he’d already put in the hard work of getting huge.  See where I’m going with this?  Get big as fuck- leaning out is the easy part, and you and your bullshit about how hard it is to shed weight can go fuck yourself because he only person who believes that bullshit is your bitch ass.