Lately, everywhere I look, I’ve noticed that people tend to focus on all the wrong sorts of details, in nearly everything they do.  They obsess about minutiae, but ignore the entirety of whatever it is that they’re doing.  For instance, most people will now go and purchase “the best” materials and tools prior to learning their use, in the belief that the tools themselves, by their quality, will confer success on the endeavor, no matter how ineptly executed.  Kids think that they’re owed degrees by virtue of the fact that they’ve paid for them.  Guys go to Home Depot and purchase levels with lasers on them and ornate, expensive power tools, then bitch when the tools fail to produce a spectacular result- which is due entirely to the fact that the guy was too busy learning about the tools to find out how to build his homosexual bird house, or whatever nonsense he decided to produce.  Though it’s a prevalent issue in our society, brought on by what amounts to the collapse of our civilization, the demise of the human spirit, and the preface to genocide (hopefully).

If Rwandans had maps or books, they’d hate Armenia too.

Supplementation
The focus on random bullshit is different for men and women when it comes to exercise.  Women focus on clothing- few women will embark upon a program of physical fitness without dropping a couple of hundred bucks on shoes and workout clothes, no matter how fat, out of shape, or generally unsuited to spandex they might happen to be.  While few things are more comical than watching a couple of fat broads yammering away at each other while they waddle down the sidewalk or through the mall in their fancy Nike gear, the skinny idiots who walk into a supplement store yelling about how they need NO Explode are even funnier.  These idiots actually believe that their workouts are worthless without supplementation, and the only way they’ll get any results is to spend $100 a month on sport supplements.  Just like the fat broads, no amount of expenditure will compensate for their lack of effort in their stated goal, their lack of education about exercise and nutrition, or just their general utility as a human being.  They’re focusing on all the wrong sorts of details.

I love these ads.

Diet
Just like these people will obsess over supplementation, too many people are overawed by the Joe Weider conception of diet at 85% of muscular gains.  That’s fucking idiocy.  Clearly, I spend a lot of time discussing diet- ways to get leaner and bigger simultaneously.  I’ve read a lot about it.  I’m well educated about it.  I fucking kill myself in the gym, and I require a dietary regimen extreme enough to support my workouts.  That stated, most people don’t- they workout infrequently, at low intensity and volume, and no amount of dieting will resolve the negative situation into which they’ve put themselves with their lack of intestinal fortitude.  Thus, a diet obsession is helping nothing, and is sapping their reserves of discipline and effort that would be far better used in the gym.  You can’t out-diet shit training.  Additionally, too many people focus on dietary minutiae while ignoring important points, like getting excessive amount of protein.  Getting kelp into your diet is fucking ancillary, at best.  Eat more meat, lift more weight, and quit obsessing over details until you have a reason to do so.

 That’s allegedly a deadlift.  It appears he’s focused on every wrong detail.

Form, Setups, and Routines
There are more inane threads on lifting message boards decrying poor form and pontificating endlessly (entirely theoretically) about lifting routines than I care to count.  Anyone who’s been on bodyspace, t-nation, or any other major site knows this- it’s fucking absurd.  They’ll scream about how someone’s out of position here, cheating there, or not hitting depth there, in spite of the fact that they cannot reasonably approximate the weights being lifted with any kind of form.  This, in turn, gets other people into the game, and they’ll all but diagram lifts online, blather on about leverages and the danger of certain positions, and generally fear-monger half the readers and insult the other half.  The result- there are people in gyms right now lifting with nothing but pvc pipe.  Know what you can learn by lifting pvc pipe?  NOT A MOTHERFUCKING THING.  The very assertion that one could is the worst form of intellectual dishonesty and outright fucking stupidity I’ve seen.  These are the same people, who having learned the lifts going very slowly and so light that it cannot be called exercise, that spend a minute and a half setting up for a lift, and then lift ultra-light fucking weights.  They’re focusing on the wrong shit- learn the exercise, get insanely strong, and fine tune your form at the end.  Oly guys bitch that I’m stronger than they are at their lifts, and it’s because I fucking go for it when I lift, and they obsess about making every lift perfect.  They’re not all fucking gems- gut it out, get brutally strong, and get your form right as you go.  Over-reliance on form is as bad as anything else- perfect form’s not getting the weight up… brute fucking strength is.

The weight’s off-center!  His upper body’s out of position!  Mariusz has something to say about that, but not on the internet, because he understands those know-nothing bitches on the boards are too busy whining and typing to lift.

The same goes for routines.  Is it useful to have some guidelines?  Yeah.  Are there a lot of fucking great routines to follow?  Hell yeah- Smolov, Sheiko, the Bulgarian System, Wendler’s 5/3/1… the list goes on and on.  That’s not to say, however, that they’re magical.  You’ll get out of them what you put into them, and if you half-ass it through a badass workout, you’ll continue to suck.  Conversely, if you bust your ass at a shitty program (maybe even HIT?), you’ll get gains.  Intensity, dedication, and enthusiasm are the fucking keys there.  Stop focusing on the wrong shit.

Intensity+awesome genetics+coke-fueled workouts+shit program can still equal good physique

What You Should Be Focused On
Three things:
  1. More weight.  Lift heavier.  Then repeat.
  2. More protein.  How much is too much?  There’s no such fucking thing, unless you shit out a kidney.
  3. More of everything- fucking, reading, fighting, lifting, living.  Stop studying how to live and just fucking do something already.
Worthy of focus, and drive.  With the hips.
Liked it? Take a second to support Jamie Chaos on Patreon!
Become a patron at Patreon!