If you just want to skip to my favorite workouts, just scroll on down to that heading. The foregoing part is ] more contextual background for how and why I train the way I do beforehand.
As I continue this stream of consciousness I hope that the previous installment at least sort of fit the bill for explaining how I train, because unless you follow me through my workouts asking questions they would likely not make sense to the casual observer, and I don’t allow people to follow me around and ask me questions because that is antithetical to training. When I am at home, I generally place the needs and desires of the cats and the wife ahead of my own, because that is what good people do. In the gym, however, I am as solipsistic a person as could exist, and the gravity of my ego can crush the fragile bones of anyone dumb enough to wear Gymshark in my presence to mere powder. My universe shrinks to myself, the music to which I am listening, the occasional PAWG, and whatever I want to lift.
If I had to describe my training style in two words, they would be “SEGA SCREAM.”
Loud, fast, and probably annoying to most people, but I still wake up in the morning and piss awesome like a motherfucker.
There is no grand proclamation of war or mention of sacrifices at the altars of some dumbass Norse god bullshit- I don’t wear lifting clothing, own no clothing by fitness manufacturers, and have never in my life brought a shaker cup into the gym. I have no rituals around lifting- unless I am in the gym in which I occasionally work I never use a roller or a massager in the gym (I’ve broken every single massager I’ve purchased but treat theirs with kid gloves), and even then I typically go into another room to do it because that shit isn’t lifting and destroys any vibe people in the gym might be building. I don’t go in for the look-at-me warmups and abhorrent setups for lifts people use- getting into the zone consists of turning on music, shutting out the world entirely, and having a shitload of feral, aggressive fun throwing weights around. I sing, I dance around, I yell random lyrics, and I am certain am a spectacle unto myself, but outside of hearing about gym owners calling around to ask if I’ll destroy the place, as a general rule no one ever really comes near me or speaks to me, so I guess all of my various ministrations serve a purpose beyond my own enjoyment.
And before you begin with edgelord this and contrarian that, I genuinely don’t put any thought into people or their behavior beyond how it disgusts or disappoints me- I expect people to return my level of general politeness and erudition and am almost universally disappointed by people. Not because they’re not “this” level of intelligent or polite, but because they’re lazy, stupid, unremarkable people who almost invariably choose to do the shittiest thing of which they could think.
Fun fact about me: I genuinely thought rape numbers seemed overblown… not because “all women are liars” or whatever dumbass shit idiots with limp dicks say, but because the idea of having sex with anyone or thing against their will seems so incredibly fucking stupid and pointless to me that I genuinely could not believe it was happening. The power argument seemed like the most illogical thing in the world to me because rapists are obviously unfuckable weaklings- jumping out of the bushes and ambushing someone or drugging them ranks among the least powerful actions one could take. Also, why hurt a person when it’s far easier to just jerk off anyway?
Having been roofied at a party in Hollywood, I’ve become aware my initial understand of humanity was wildly incorrect. And it’s not just that my personal convictions aren’t just not shared- they seem to be wholly incomprehensible to most people, just as it was incomprehensible that I could have been entirely unsore after whatever transpired. A sad fact for that dude, but that and a lack of STDs was a silver lining. In the end, I resolved never to take a handful of vitamins from someone I knew from the gym ever again, nevermind the fact that it was my custom to hand out Animal Paks to friends at parties so we’d have a reduced hangover. Also, being roofied is perhaps the worst thing in the world you could do to someone you don’t actively hate- it is as bad or worse than detoxing from alcohol, and from what I am told detoxing from alcohol is worse than detoxing from heroin. It certainly feels worse than Covid.
Hopefully that gives more insight into why I seem to have no fucking clue why anyone does anything, and why my motivations and yours likely only align on accident. I’m a very, very frustrated and disgusted yet perpetually cheerful altruisitic optimist rather than the attention-seeking depressive weirdo a lot of people seem to think.
When I was a kid, long before I knew what “mirroring” was, I would find myself crossing my arms in a group full of people with their arms crossed or whatever, and would immediately adopt a totally different stance. It always struck me as unpleasant, bizarre, and zombie-like to mirror, so I’ve made a conscious decision not to do it for the entirety of my life, even though I know it makes other people distrust me. As that in and of itself disgusts me (and it is a scientific fact, though I have a theory that it is a vestigial trait people “on the spectrum” lack. I’ll flesh out that theory in a pop culture psychology book at some point, if I can get a goddamned publisher), I am happy to allow the people who react unthinkingly and rely on group decision making to hate and distrust the living shit out of me, because those people cannot be trusted- they clearly don’t think about anything at all.
According to Wiki:
“Mirroring is the behavior in which one person unconsciously imitates the gesture, speech pattern, or attitude of another. Mirroring often occurs in social situations, particularly in the company of close friends or family. The concept often affects other individuals’ notions about the individual that is exhibiting mirroring behaviors, which can lead to the individual building rapport with others. Mirroring is the subconscious replication of another person’s nonverbal signals. This concept takes place in everyday interactions and often goes unnoticed by both the person enacting the mirroring behaviors as well as the individual who is being mirrored. The activation of mirror neurons takes place within the individual who begins to mirror another’s movements and allows them a greater connection and understanding with the individual who they are mirroring, as well as allowing the individual who is being mirrored to feel a stronger connection with the other individual. Mirroring is distinct from conscious imitation under the premise that while the latter is a conscious, typically overt effort to copy another person, mirroring is unconsciously done during the act and often goes unnoticed.
I can’t tell you why my brain hates mirroring any more than I can explain why I seem to know more about interacting with cats than people who have devoted their entire lives to them. It just does. And I dislike people who deliberately do and wear weird shit just to be noticed even more than I hate the people who just follow their friends’ suggestions, consciously or unconsciously, so don’t fall into the trap of thinking I’m some goof who rides a unicycle or juggles or any of that shit. I just do my own thing, occasionally envious of people who are able to go with the flow and all that, but always critical of people doing things that strike me as disingenuous.
Which is a long way of saying I’m not much for copying the methods of others and never have been.
All of that said, growing up, we never considered using set programs the way you guys do, nor did anyone I know hang on the every word of any lifter or writer at the time. Everything was pretty much bodyweight splits or upper/lower, so you just ripped some pro’s bodypart routine from a magazine, or you just went back and forth with your training partner taking turns picking the exercise, sets, and reps. Planning the shit all happened at or around the time you entered the gym, which is in my opinion exactly how it is supposed to be, because thinking about lifting rather than lifting almost certainly drains your energy for lifting. there is only so much mental effort you can put into something, and by the looks of it many people out there are not up to the sort of intellectual athletics they seem to think.
Now that you know that I have absolutely zero standardization to my training, here’s my best approximation of some of my favorite all time workouts.
My Most Kickass Workouts
Competition Prep Back Day 1
Whatever I compete in, this will be one of the back days, more or less, as will the following workout. They work across all disciplines, even Oly. And to anyone who’s ever suggested Oly or CrossFit to me, know that I would laugh in your face like an insane person if you suggested it in person. That’s like seeing a drunken bear who’s managed to win the world title in mma somehow and suggesting he enter the Olympics in rhythmic gymnastics. I would be a far better drunken Russian bear or rhythmic gymnast than I would be an Olympic weightlifter, because I’d at least kind of like the other two options, and the people with whom I would be working.
And I’ve no idea on Earth why anyone would ever do a clean when they could do a far more fun and effective high pull.
Stiff Legged High Pulls– 10-15×2-3. Doubles and triples with 2 min rests for a half hour to 45 mins. The weight should be enough to barely get four if you were to do it for AMRAP. Pull to nipple height or higher. If I can’t get good doubles I’ll drop the weight to get doubles, but as a general rule I drop reps rather than weight.
Hammer Strength Rows– 8-10×4-6. I do warmup sets that involve adding a plate each set, doing 10-12 reps per warmup, and then 8-10 sets with the same weight and 2-3 minute rests. Again, it’s around a half hour.
Cable Rows– 5×10-25. For these, I am going for a massive pump
Face Pulls– 3×20. I pull the ropes as far apart as they’ll go when they’re pulled as far back as I can pull them. I’ve no fucking idea why most people do these, because they don’t seem to be flexing shit- I am forcing blood into my rear delts and traps by focusing on them and squeezing the shit out of the contractions.
Competition Prep Back Day 2
Done a couple of days after the first
Shrugs (with straps)- 8×6-8. I will occasionally go down to doubles and triples, but as a general rule I warm up with 5 plates for 20, then 6 plates for maybe 12, then 7 for 10-12, then bang out sets with 8 plates and occasionally 9. On a side. I do a rack pull off the pins from above, at, and below the knee, shimmying it around along with my grip width, which is typically deadlift width but I train my shrugs up to a sorta-snatch grip. Based on past performance, I know that if I can do 8×8 with 8 plates out of a just-below-kneecap rack pull, I can hit 700 on the deadlift.
Pendlay Rows– 10-15×2-3. Glenn heartily approved of the way I do shrugs, so I could give a fuck less what your interpretation of it is. I row explosively from the floor, trying to keep my back as parallel to the ground as possible, and ripping the bar hard enough to bruise my solar plexus every workout. I then just let the bar fall to the floor, because fuck that eccentric motion anyway. When I was doing 405 for doubles on that, I pulled 585 cold and in jeans just to move it out of the way. No one ever had that much weight on the bar, so it didn’t occur to me to check the dumbass bumpers for the weight (you goofs love using those tens that look like 45s). Nevertheless, it went up just fine even if I lost two calluses, and I hadn’t shrugged in six months at that point (and I haven’t deadlifted outside of competition since 2011 or something).
Close-Grip Behind the Neck Pulldowns– 5×15. This is another exercise I do for the squeeze, and I use a cadence of 2 up and 2 down with a second pause or so- it’s very controlled. No idea why I love these so much, but I started doing them in 97 with my ex-wife and have loved them since. I use a shoulder width grip.
Face Pulls– Same as day one.
Occasionally I’ll do forearms after that as well , which consists of reverse curls supersetted with standing wrist curls and a lot of kettlebell hammer curls, which I do one arm at a time so I can actually focus on my brachialis and biceps rather than just flinging the weights around carelessly like an animal doing them two at a time. It never ceases to shock me that people could fuck up a wet dream, and doing that exercise with both hands at the same time is just that.
Legs
As for legs, I have genuinely never enjoyed training them beyond the fact that I am very good at them and like further cement my dominance in a gym by doing shit like frequently front squatting 500 pounds. Up until my competition years I’d never done them more than once a week, and it was pretty perfunctory, though I moved weight because that’s what I do. It was nothing but squats, leg curls, occasionally leg extensions, and calf raises- never leg presses, because loading the machine is a stupid fucking waste of time when you train with other people or are reasonably strong. I’d occasionally do angled leg press or squat machines when they were decent and available, but by and large it was just *gasp* high squats (because who cares anyway? If you do, I couldn’t give a fuck less- it’s not like I’ve ever had anyone stronger than me say a word)
At this point I basically just work up to a few singles and then go fuck around on machines. And by fuck around I mean train really hard, but there’s no unnecessary chance of death or insuranceless injury. As to why I don’t go heavier, it’s because I train legs as infrequently as I can to maintain that front squat, because training legs isn’t nearly as fun or flashy as training shoulders or arms. And if you can’t figure out why that is, you can ask the chicks in any gym in which I train- given the amount of clandestine observation my always bare arms and shoulders get, I think those chicks could fill you in on my logic. Here’s a hint- it’s rad when you catch people you think are wildly out of your league checking you out. Or overhear their boyfriends bitching about it. And that’s why you don’t plan your workouts until you get to the gym, because the next time they’re in, you can front squat the dude’s back squat with three warmup singles JUST TO DEMONSTRATE YOUR GODLIKE SUPERIORITY OVER EVERY SINGLE MOTHERFUCKER WITHIN A DAY’S DRIVE, wink at the hottie, strip the bar, and go train shoulders again.
To get to that point, obviously I squatted a lot, and I’ve written about my previous competition methods ad nauseam. As my hatred for my fellow man compels me to again perhaps demonstrate my superiority on the platform, here is what seems to be coalescing for a weekly leg workout (I am going to be mega bench bro as soon as I finish up sorting out this shoulder). I gave my lever belt away a couple of years ago, so it’s entirely likely I’ll show up to compete beltless- the number of fuck yous I intend to hand out in competition should cement me as the all time most hated powerlifting record holder of all time, which is a far greater distinction than a simple world record.
Jump Squat– 5×2. Four or five all out doubles, dropping fully into depth before firing out of the hole to get off the ground far enough for someone to slide a paper under my feet if they’re fucking quick. I’m not trying to be the highest jumper on Earth, after all. A word of caution to the strong- you can definitily over-jump on your warmups with 135. As in jump too hard and too high. I’ve done so and both times hurt myself simply because I lost concentration in shock when I saw saw high I’d jumped. Stupid, embarrassing, and painful, but I learned to rein it in a bit on the warmups. When I’m strong strong I’m doing 505-525 for doubles and singles.
Bottom Position Back Squat / Bottom Position Front Squat– 5×2-3. I start at just above competition depth and throw myself into the bar on each rep. Wear a longsleeve for front squats so you have more sleeve for friction- sleeveless doesn’t work worth a shit.
Shoulders
Obviously, I get a lot of questions about them, and I’ll say that everything works provided you do enough of if. Currently, I spend most of my time on the Hammer Strength, but I fuck around with other stuff. Here’s basically what I did the other day.
Strict Military Press– warm up with 135×5 and 185×5, 3x5x205 (still dealing with my ab cramping issue, so I packed it in and moved on)
Hammer Strength Shoulder Press– 1x25x1 plate a side; 1x15x2; 3xAMRAP(10-12ish)x3; 5xAMRAPx3 and a 25; 1xAMRAPx4; 3xAMRAPx 3 and a 35; 1xAMRAPx2; 1xAMRAPx2
Cable Upright Row– 4×12
Machine Rear Laterals– 5×10
And there you have it. This is how I train and why I train. And as for competing? As I’ve said forever, I guarantee you that the strongest people in the world aren’t competing because they just don’t fucking care about the very minor validation that comes with winning something, especially when the best of us can name likely think of two or three examples to prove my point. If and when I compete again it’ll just be to mock and harass the people in the scene whom I find particularly distasteful and I’ll be beating them in the most humiliating ways of which I can conceive, simply to lord my supremacy over them and to disabuse them of the notion they should do anything I enjoy.
I elected myself gatekeeper while every “lifter” jackass on the internet was trying convince the other idiots they know anything at all about epidemiology, by the way.
I am one man fighting an entire universe of sloth and stupidity, and I’m not above asking for a bit of help. This is DIY as fuck, so if you can throw me some loot to aid in my efforts, I’ll definitely put it to vitriolic good use.
Nice. Saved all these in my notes for future use and as examples to build off of(obviously like you intended). We’ll see if I can do it without passing out in a puddle of puke halfway in. Haha
Hahaha. Sweet, bro! Lemme know what you think!
Sure thing dude. I loved the issuance of insanity stuff so this should be fun.
What about btn presses, you used to swear for them.
With sandbags/rockbags they are brutard.
Handstand pushups and variations?
I don’t do either- I don’t have the wrist flexibility for handstand pushups and have never cared enough to get some of those handles, and push pressing 315+ off your back out of the rack fucking sucks. Half the time I drop it wrong on my neck or have to ditch it onto the floor, which means I waste a shitload of time setting it back up. And once I got to a 405 press, 315+ was my work weight- it was just completely unfeasible at that weight.
I trained with a sandbag when I lived in Cleveland and was super into Brooks’ stuff, but I can’t say I really enjoyed it or noticed it help my physique or my other lifts, so I ambandoned it. I have tiny, tiny hands, and they’re definitely not built for sandbags- all of the old time guys who loved them were men with bigass hands.
Lol, in one of the ancient blog posts on here, from the 2009/2010 era, you said that, if you ever did a bodybuilding show, your posing routine would exist of naught but most musculars in a pink banana hammock set to “Bye, Bye, Bye” by NSYNC. I still believe, after over a decade, that that’s an incredible idea.
Hahahaha. Nah- now it would be You Will Never Be One of Us by Nails wearing a Slaughter to Prevail mask.
Was sad to see no pull ups mentioned. The Pull up gods are looking down with a tear in their eye
I do tons of pullups, but they’re not part of a workout. They’re just part of being alive and having two working arms. I posted a new pullup vid on the gram recently- I’ll see if I can embed it in this article for you.
It would be great if you put videos and photographs here, I don’t have instagram and can only watch 2 or 3 things before it forces a login.
I’ll do what I can. I hate doing the same thing multiple times, so I really struggle with starting and completing that kind of a process. That said, I just remembered that I forgot to embed that video, so I’ll get it up now. To be fair, I rarely take pics and vids due to a combination of a shitty phone and not liking to look at myself, haha. But i threw two vids in here for you bro, filmed in the last 10 days or so, I think. Last two weeks, if nothing else. They’re recent as shit.
Jamie I think the “fascination” with wanting to see your workouts is precisely because you dont do what everyone else does… How many other people have stiff leg high pulls in their workout? Legend Pullups? And the vids you used to post were ridiculous and fun to watch.
As obsessed as I was with lifting in my 20’s how many fucking times can you read a 3-4 exercises for 8-10 reps body part split program before its so boring you dont even want to lift? Wow… Mr Olympis is doing Cable Rows and pulldowns, how exciting.
Not only that, but you set world records with your style, so while you have preached many times that we all have to find our own way it is quite interesting seeing what the lone-wolf-against-the-grain-record-holder is doing in the gym.
Hahahaha. Alright, I am an idiot. If I am honest, a lot of my consternation really just comes from the fact I have to essentially make up what I did, because I really don’t pay attention to what I am doing or how much of it. And I forgot to try to embed that new legend pullup vid (which Duffin is now going to do), so I’ll do that now.
Thanks for reminding me why it’s worth doing, haha- I know it seems stupid, but these really seem like total throwaway article when I’m in the midst of writing them.
My thoughts on your statements about mirroring. They also go in the direction of your articles about conservatives and conspiracy theorists. First, however, a short passage from Hartmut Rosa’s book “Resonance”:
[…] Such forms of bodily social resonances, which cross the threshold of consciousness only in exceptional cases, can be observed especially in situations of discursive interaction, for instance where two persons sit opposite each other in a fierce argumentative dispute. Here, the person who believes he or she is leading a central argumentative blow usually leans forward, while the other leans back – if the word changes, the body posture changes as well. Another example of social body resonance can be observed in any well-filled lecture hall during a lecture. The audience usually sits either leaning back or leaning forward with their arms resting on the table. As soon as one of the listeners changes his position from one to the other, the tendency of those sitting next to him to do the same is great, without thinking about it in any way. Whoever may try this once will find that in this way he can gain an amazing ‘power of movement’ over a row of seats – but not if he or she is at odds with the seat neighbors. (Hartmut Rosa, Resonanz S. 133)
My (yet to prove) hypotheses about mirroring, herd animals and swarm intelligence (better swarm idiocy) etc.:
– (even if science is not unanimous about mirror neurons) I think its safe to say that mirror neurons in our brains are responsible for the mirroring of the other person.
– Through mirror neurons, we learn in childhood to adapt and apply the behavior of others. This is how we find our way in the world.
– With age, the mirror neurons normally decrease again. Thus, in adult and educated people, the urge to imitate things “blindly” decreases again.
=> Are people who have many mirror neurons to imitate things in groups, adapt and fit in seamlessly, only half matured to adults? (I definetly think so!)
– If so, why aren’t they proper adults?
=> Do they lack moments of, for example, ritual initialization (as is common in anarchic civilizations) to take responsibility for themselves and their environment, and to form their own opinions through learning, critical thinking and reflection? (In general I belief most people are, what I call in german, a FSS (Faules Stück Scheiße))
– Do swarms of animals move like a single organism because of mirror neurons?
Are escape animals equipped with an increased number of mirror neurons to respond more quickly to the behavior of conspecifics?
Do mirror neurons provide a kind of survival instinct in flight / swarm and herd animals? [Sharks (blacktip sharks), for example, exploit this swarming behavior of sardines to work in groups, eating an entire school and leaving nothing but a blizzard of fish scales in the water].
This at least would fit well with your saying about conservatives equal idiotic, peer herd animals!
However, as usual very nice articles Jamie! Stand strong and keep the fight against stupidity and lazy confirmation-in-peer-groupd-seeking-troglodyts up. I’ll do the same here in Germany!
Man, you definitely went deep on that. I have a theory regarding speciation within humanity that we’ve incorrectly identified as autism, but I think autism is just an identification of people who got too much of whatever the genetic code is that speciated us from strictly social humans. And I think it’s the strictly social humans (they’re anti-intellectuals, but I’ll go with “strictly social”) lack the necessary evolution to engage us on a level ground in topical conversation. As I mentioned in the conservatives thing, they do appear to lack our evolutionary traits for intelligence and problem solving and we lack their gene for social belonging. I could be entirely wrong, but it does explain the gulf between us in terms of reaching an understanding about the world as it exists.
Thanks for the videos,the pullups one is unreal.
Even if you were 170 pounds…but 210, it is my proof from now on when anyone argues with me that
– small bone structure (particularly wrists) cannot become big and/or strong
– age blah blah…
– weightlifters cannot blah blah…
Used to show the old one, but this one is even better.
Yes, it is interesting seeing different lifts and approaches. It is not that I need it for my training, but I love getting new ideas and finding strange gems, for example. That is why I come to this site, unique one I must add.
You mix:
– the old golden age strongmen
– bodybuilding maniacs
– lifters who do not fit in general categories
You’ll be psyched to know that I am writing a Weirdo’s Guide to the History and Practice of Lifting Weights, haha. It’s still being researched, but I’ve gotten a pretty good way into it. Part of my research actually spawned today’s article on Bill Smith.
And I’m psyched you liked the vid! I haven’t done those in years, so I am going to try to start doing them regularly so I can do some crazy vids for you guys. Nothing to lose but weakness and boredom, right? 🤘
Unrelated, but I’ve just been marking all of Steve’s shit as spam. As much as I despise doing it, I was as patient as a human being could have been with that dude.
The Weirdo’s Guide sounds amazing!
Will it be a pdf/epub/physical or a series of articles?
Even if it is small regarding the number of pages, put it out at least as a digital copy and we will buy it.
Wow! more than expected, hahaha.
The vids would be a very welcome addition
100% agree, many times I have put your old videos, Bugenhagen’s, Enamait and golden age strongmen videos/photos to fire me up or simply do something different and beat staleness.
In my own place I would not have been patient at all with people like Sally and the likes, calling you names and shit for years. Don’t they have anything interesting to do?
Oh, it’s not anywhere near completion, but I am going to shop it to publishers to see if I can get it legitimately published. I can’t see any legitimate reason my shit shouldn’t be in Barnes and Noble- the dude from badass of the Week found a publisher, after all. The book is gong to be huge, though- I am rewriting the history of lifting from the perspective of the people who actually put it on the map, not the people that marketed it most adroitly or manipulated the industry the most. It’s about the people who actually advanced the culture of strength, rather than simply having participated well in them. I’m doing it because although the timeline for the culture is right, the spotlight is on the wrong events and people. It’s about the mainstream rather than the perverts and weirdos and murderers and god-tier neurologists and teachers and vaudeville entertainers.
I let them go because none of their criticisms ever bothered me- Howard Stern had plenty of people who hate-listened to his show, so it makes sense I should have hate readers, haha. If he was just talking shit, I’d let it ride, but proselytizing a kinda-cool philosophical belief system from the 19th century like it’s a fucking doomsday cult is idiotic, and I’ve been telling him to cut it the fuck out for year. If he’s not going to show me any fucking respect, I have no reason to show that mental dwarf any in return.