Achieving Greatness (on a Budget)

Since I've started this blog, I have friends on Facebook asking me for fitness advice. What to do if I'm a beginner, which exercise is best for weight loss, etc. I also have friends that tell me that they want to be stronger, faster, and better than they were before, but they have either financial issues, or time constraints that cause them to be unable to join a gym. This post is for you guys.

It's harder to have fitness goals when you don't have a lot of money. Even if you can scrape together a few dollars on a gym membership every month, life and work commitments can make it hard to get to that gym. So this is my post on how to improve yourself physically at home without spending a shit ton of money that you don't have. I've broken this down into three parts: The people that are really flat-ass broke, the people that are pretty broke but have a little bit of cash, and cheap nutritious food. Here we go!

1. For the people that are flat-ass broke.

You're flat ass broke. You don't have enough money to join a gym, but you want to be more physically fit. That's where calisthenics come in.

The literal, dictionary definition of calisthenics is, "gymnastic exercises to achieve bodily fitness and grace of movement". In layman's terms, it means body weight exercises.

Thankfully, the internet (and for all intents and purposes, I'm assuming that you have enough money for an internet connection, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this) has a shitload of body weight workouts that you can find just by hitting the Google and typing in "body weight workout".

You'll find a whole slew of images, articles, and such showing you how you can do strength training without leaving your home.

But let's say that you've done those. You're no longer a beginner, but you're still flat ass broke and needing a challenge.

This is where HIIT comes in.

HIIT is High Intensity Interval Training, and it's the fucking Beast Mode of body weight exercise training.

If I had to sum up HIIT in a sentence, it would be, "Do fifty pushups; take a break for ten seconds, then do fifty more."

Fortunately, the internet gods have blessed us in 2017 with YouTube videos. YouTube has an INSANE amount of HIIT workout plans that you can do in the comfort of your living room. Just as an example, the following video is the first one of many that I found just by going to YouTube, and typing "HIIT workout" into the search engine. I didn't view this video, but it's the first of 1,700,000 results:

The pros of HIIT training:

It greatly improves your "mental toughness". In the military, they called mental toughness "muscular strength endurance". It's the ability to drive on even when you're completely maxed both mentally and physically. When we know that we've been several days awake on limited rations and water, but still have to charge a machine gun. For my Facebook friends that read this (you know who you are), it's the ability to stand at the ready against a fascist when you're armed with nothing more than a baseball bat even when some white supremacist shitbag tries to do harm to you and your child. Doing HIIT training makes you mentally tough enough to clock that son of a bitch and still have enough breath in your lungs to fuck up any of his friends that show up.

The cons of HIIT training:

Body weight exercises, no matter how hard trained, have their limits. While you will gain muscular strength endurance, you need actual weights to increase your strength in the long run.

That brings me to the importance of parks.

There's some parks out there that have exercise stations. There's a trail around my township hall that does that. You go to one station, do the exercise that their sign says to do at that station, then run your ass off to the next one until you reach the end. Even if your nearby park doesn't have that, they probably have some pull up bars. Pull ups and chin ups are the be all, end all, of upper back exercises.

If you're like me and still have yet to be able to do a single chin up, do what's called a "reverse chin up".

A reverse chin up is where you go to a pull-up bar and grip it underhand, jump up so that you're at the end of a chin up position, and lower yourself down slowly. It's the best exercise for the upper back that you can do when you're flat ass broke and can't do a chin up. Eventually, you should be able to become strong enough to do chin ups, and after that, pull ups. When you can get to where you can do a bunch of pull ups, it's safe to say that your upper back and bicep muscles are in full-on beast mode. No other equipment for that muscle group is needed.

2. For the people that are pretty broke but have a little bit of cash

So you're pretty broke. You want to improve on your fitness, but you work a lot of hours and have responsibilities with the family that keep you from being able to join a gym. You have a little bit of cash to spare, but not much.

For you, you need to build a home gym so you can work out on your off time. You also need to do this cheaply.

You might need some new home workout equipment. If that's the case, it's important to know which brands you can buy on the cheap, as opposed to the brands that are insanely expensive.

I'm not kidding when I say this. Plenty of home gym equipment is the same, but the brand of said equipment can be the difference between spending a couple of hundred dollars on equipment, and spending nearly a thousand on building your home gym. For example, Weider makes great home gym machines for a few hundred dollars, while Marcy sells similar equipment for more than double or triple the price.

But if you're pretty broke but have a few dollars to spare AND you've been following my blog for any decent amount of time, you don't want one of those fancy machines that they call "home gyms". You want to start off with a weight set.

Weider is great for new weights, but so is CAP.

My first olympic weight set was a CAP 300 pound set. I bought it when I was 20 years old, having no other gym equipment. One 45 pound barbell, a set of 45s, 35s, 25s, 10s, 2 pairs of-5s, and 2.5s, I bought it at a local Dunhams for $200.

I still use it to this day, sixteen years later. They have more than showed that they can go the distance. These weights are built to last. The best part is, the price on those brand of weights hasn't changed much. A CAP barbell and weight set are still $200 retail price.

But maybe you're still pretty broke and need to buy a bench or some other equipment on the cheap. For this, Craigslist and the Facebook marketplace are your best friends.

Weight equipment, regardless of the brand, is really built to last. That's why second hand gear is the best way to build your home gym slowly on the cheap.

To paraphrase Henry Rollins, prices come and go, but 400 pounds is 400 pounds.

I spent years building my workout room on the cheap. I started out by buying my CAP barbell set. I bought a heavyweight bag on Craigslist so I could practice karate on it. I bought my bench on overstock.com. I bought my squat rack on WalMart's website. My mom (god bless her) bought my extra weights secondhand on the Facebook marketplace.

Yeah, prices may come and go, but 400 pounds is 400 pounds.

The pros of developing your home gym on the cheap:

You have plenty of time to lift.
You save a shitload of money on gym memberships.

The cons:
It takes a very long time to build your gym cheaply.
You probably won't have enough space for any cardio machines.

3. FOOD!

Regardless of whether you're flat ass broke, or kinda broke but can afford a few extra dollars towards fitness, you need food to fuel the machine that is your fitness craving body, and you need to do it for as little dollars as possible at the grocery store. For this section, I've broken it down into two sections: Protein and carbs. I won't discuss fats here (as much as they are needed in any diet), because it's inevitable that you're going to eat fat one war or another.

For protein, chicken breast is the champion food of broke people. At one of the stores in my hometown, boneless skinless chicken breast runs at $1.99 per pound. You can buy it in the tens of pounds for dirt cheap prices.

But maybe you're not a fan of eating meat. Maybe you're a vegetarian or vegan. For that, I offer lentils. They're pound for pound, cheaper than chicken breast and one of the best protein sources for those that don't eat meat. As a meat eater, I don't know of all the recipes you can create with lentils, but I'm sure that you do, and you can use them to build muscle while not having to eat anything that has a face.

For cheap but healthy carbs, rice and noodles are the way to go. One of my favorite meal prep recipes uses both chicken breast and rice. There's also a meal prep recipe that uses really lean hamburger and spaghetti noodles. Go nuts with it if you're tired of eating chicken breasts. Those are just two examples of how you can meal prep cheaply, but keep your diet healthy at the same time. There's multitudes more than this. You just gotta use your good friend, the Google.

So that's all my advice for achieving fitness greatness on a budget. I still have to provide some sort of image here so I can post this on my Facebook feed and attract attention, so here you go:

I'm Not Cut Out For This

Well, after a few political posts, we're going back to fitness. I've been wanting to write this one for a while, but I've been busy with work, taking care of the kids, and life in general.

I also have a few other posts in my head ready to get typed up. Hopefully I'll have them up in a few days. Stay tuned for them, because they're some good ones. :)

A few months ago, I decided to take up distance running again to help to cut weight. I knocked the dust off of the old Hal Higdon Novice 1 Half Marathon plan and set a goal to work myself up to running ten miles. The plan was to literally run my ass off until I dropped about twenty pounds or so.

All was going fine until I ran seven miles. For a week after that, I felt a sharp pain in my hip.

I know I'm getting old, but I am not so old as to be getting hip injuries. That's just some bullshit.

The pain was so bad that I was walking bow legged and limping all over the place. Running was out of the question. I could barely even walk.

While I was injured, I remembered back to when I was training to run a half marathon and I got injured right around the same time. Right around when I worked my way towards mile eight. That was a nasty sprain to my lower abdominal muscle that kept me out of running for two weeks. I still managed to run the half marathon in Detroit a few months later, but the injury really hurt my progress. Instead of running confidently across the finish line, I was dragging ass and praying for a merciful death.

I'm just not cut out for distance running. It sucks to admit that, but that's just the way it is. My body type just isn't made for that.

I was never much of a runner. In the Army, my best run time for a two mile run was 14:57. While that's fast by civilian standards, in the Army, it's less than one minute above passing time.

But in between the half marathon and now, I took up powerlifting, and that's where the new phase of my fitness journey comes in.

I have never injured myself lifting weights. I've never injured myself at all during any type of strength training. Ever. That's my body type. That's what I'm cut out for, and it's where I set my new fitness goal.

There's this thing called the Thousand Pound Club. For those of you that don't want to click the link, it's where your combined lifting weights of the squat, bench press, and deadlift all exceed one thousand pounds.

I crunched the numbers into this fitness calculator of each of those lifts that I have used at peak strength to determine my one rep max. At my absolute best so far, my squat is 295 pounds. My bench press is 240 pounds. My deadlift is 340 pounds.

When you add them all together, my combined peak strength is 875 pounds.

I only need to add 125 pounds to each of those three lifts to join that prestige club.  That's only about forty pounds per lift and some change!

This is very much attainable. It's very much attainable given the time frame that I'm setting for myself.

I will obtain this goal by the end of next year. December 31st, 2018. I have 14 months to achieve it. And I will!

I have to add a photo at this point for my Facebook friends (as they are the majority of the readers of this blog) so here you go:

The Best and Worst Advice I got as a Child

I wrote in past posts about this story, but in light of current events, it bares repeating.

I am a warrior, and not by choice.

When I was seven, I started getting bullied by older kids. Being that I was tall for my age, bullies saw me as a soft target. They would beat me up and call me names.

I didn't fight back because I was told through teachers, numerous PSA commercials, and a whole slew of school materials that fighting was wrong, and I should always avoid it. I was told to tell a teacher, or an adult, about a bully so that they could deal with the bully themselves.

Boy, was I naïve.

There were a few times I didn't listen to all of the adults, because they had refused to control the bullies. Of all those times, I can tell you about a bully named Dan. He was my babysitter's kid.

Dan would beat me up all the time because he knew I wouldn't fight back. His parents knew about it, but they didn't do anything to him. He would call me names and I'd tell on him, only to be told, "Don't be a tattle tale". Yet if he told his parents on me for saying something back, I'd be scolded. Dan was probably aware that the double standard existed, because before long, words turned into physical violence.

Dan beat me up all the time, and his parents did nothing. I would constantly be crying over the abuse he gave me and they didn't say anything. So finally, I had enough.

One day, I got into an argument with Dan and I knew he was going to come at me, like he always does. Except this time, I wasn't going to let him beat me. I was ready.

Sure enough, after the argument got heated, he came charging at me, ready for battle. I put my right foot back, and hit him in the face with a hard right fist in the mouth.

That son of a bitch dropped like a sack of potatoes. One fucking punch to the face, and he was screaming, crying to his mom.

I chipped the shitbag's tooth, or so his mom told me.

The mom, who had long allowed for her kid to bully me, went apeshit on me. It didn't matter that for well over a year, he had bullied me. He beat me into dust. She did nothing then. Now, she was yelling and spanking (yes, spanking) me.

If I had known then what I know now as an adult, I would have called her out on her bullshit and hypocrisy. I would have told her that she deserved an ass beating too, and I was ready to deliver. Yet as an eight year old child, all I knew was that I was in trouble.

I stood up to my bully, and I was paying the price.

In my subconscious mind, I learned that you will be punished for defending yourself. People are coming to hurt you, nobody is going to help you, and you will be punished for defending yourself. That was just one of many bullies that I had similar experiences with until I was twelve.

Another one was with a different Dan. That Dan would beat me up after school in the sixth grade routinely. After I finally took enough abuse from him, I went to the assistant principal.

I told her the whole story about how Dan would bully me as soon as I got off the bus. That he would hit me. That he would hurt me and knock the wind out of my stomach for no reason. When I asked her what she would do about it, she very pointedly told me that she would do nothing.

Why? Because Dan worked in the school office. He was the "teacher's pet". Aside from whooping my ass on a daily basis, he was a model student. Because of that, the assistant principal didn't give a shit that he was a bully. He had a free license to beat me up, and there was nothing that the authority figures would do about it.

In those years, I had many bullies. Adults did nothing to defend me from them, but they always told me the same lie: If you fight the bully, you're just as bad as they are.

I was stupid enough to believe it.

"Don't fight the bully, or you're as bad as he is", is the worst fucking piece of advice I had ever received as a child.

Then seventh grade happened.

I was in an office meeting with my school counselor for the third time, dealing with bullies. I don't remember the name of my counselor, but he was a good man. The past two times, he pulled the bullies into his office and scared them enough to not physically bully me anymore (emotionally, he had no control over). But by the third time, he was exasperated.

It was at that moment, he gave me the best advice I had ever received from an adult:

"You're going to get in trouble for it, but you have to HIT BACK."

That was his advice. I might get in trouble for it. The adults won't protect me from the bullies when they try to beat me, but I have to fight, and be ready for the punishment that comes from defending myself.

As an adult now, I really, really wish that it hadn't taken me his permission to do so, but as a kid, it was all it took to truly wake my ass up. He put a real truth in my brain that has always been in my mind since:

People are coming to hurt you. Nobody is going to help you, and you will be punished for defending yourself. Fight anyway.

I had a strange confidence after that. If anyone had decided to talk shit to me, I'd tell them to fight me. Most refused because I was a giant. No longer a gentle, pacifist giant. A giant ready to tear their limbs off.

Eighth grade was another story. I spent half of my time in In School Suspension because I was taking shit from nobody. Bullies didn't touch me because I was ready to fight. Most of my time in In School Suspension was because some bully decided to verbally abuse me, and I responded by knocking his head off.

In high school, I started doing karate. I was no longer just the guy you didn't want to fuck with, but I was protecting other bullied kids. Sure, there were some bullies that tried to mess with me emotionally, but once I said, "YOU WANT TO SING IT, OR BRING IT?!", they would back down real quick. Real fucking quick.

To this day, I remember the worst advice that was given to me by adults: Don't fight the bullies, or you're as bad as they are.

I always keep in the back of my mind the best advice that I got from my seventh grade counselor:

People are coming to hurt you. Nobody is going to help you, and you'll be punished for defending yourself. Fight anyway.

Yeah, I became a warrior. Not by choice, but because my options were either to fight, or be crushed.

I kept that advice from the counselor in the back of my mind long after high school, when I joined the Army as a result of another group of bullies attacking us on 9/11.

That bring us to today.

Last week, there were bullies gathered by the hundreds that marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. Those disgusting bullies, that screamed evil things like, "Jews will not replace us", "Blood and soil", and eventually rammed a car into a crowd of people that were protesting such bullying.

As it was in my childhood, the "authority figure" that was supposed to denounce such bullying instead blamed "many sides", except there isn't many sides. There's only three sides; the bullies, those that they're bulling, and those that aren't bullied but fight on behalf of the bullied. I've been on the both of the latter parts. The "adult" that's supposed to condemn the bullies instead enabled them.

He gave the same bullshit speech that I heard many times in my youth. That speech is a lie.

"If you fight the bully, you're as bad as he is."

"If you fight the Nazi, you're the real Nazi."

Yeah, I've heard that speech before. That same, lying speech that adults told me to keep me from defending myself as a kid is now being spewed forth by the supposed president of the United States. The same bullshit that I was told by adults when I was defending my friends from bullies.

If politics is like high school, our "president" is the new assistant principal. The one that won't attack the real bullies because they're the teacher's pet. They're the ones that got him elected. He doesn't want to punish them.

"If you fight the bully, you're as bad as he is" is a lie. Bullies don't respond to kind pleas for you to stop hurting them. They don't respond to reason. They don't respond to acts of kindness. They only will stop bullying you when punch them into the face so hard that they have a chipped tooth and go crying to their mom. And then, and only then, they'll stop when you tell their mom, "WHAT?! YOU WANT SOME OF THIS? COME AT ME! I'LL BREAK YOUR TOOTH, TOO!"

So as it went then, so it goes now. The fascists are coming to hurt America, nobody is coming to protect us, and we will be punished for defending ourselves. Fight anyway.

The Death Threats Made Me Laugh

I was going to call this, "Absurdism in Dangerous Times", but the title above is a bit more catchy.

It's been over three months since I've written anything, and it's not without reason. I've been working constantly, and when I've been home I've been helping to raise my kids. It's given me very little time for writing, but I've been wanting to write this story for a while.

A few months ago, a very outspoken friend of mine on Facebook was being targeted by some Neo-Nazis. She found that a Facebook page called, "You Can't Run or Hide Antifa Scum" had put up a picture of her after she, in no uncertain terms, told some white supremacists to go fuck themselves.

The page was created with the supposed intention of exposing anyone that's a part of the Antifas movement in the hopes of getting them to be too scared to do a little Nazi punching. In reality, they were posting a lot of pictures of elderly women, dads holding their kids, and other people that aren't connected to the Antifas movement in any way, but were also outspoken against white supremacists online.

My friend isn't a part of the Antifas movement, nor am I. It's not that we're not sympathetic to the cause; both of us believe that white supremacists need nothing short of a good ass kicking. It's just that we're both parents with full time jobs, so beating the shit from skinheads and klansmen isn't something we can fit into our busy schedules. We may tell some racist shitbags off online from time to time, but actually finding the time to beat the shit from one is a luxury that neither of us have. But she told some white supremacist somewhere online to go drink bleach or whatever, and that was enough to get their attention.

So when that Facebook page attempted to dox her, I very calmly said to myself, "This cannot stand. These people must be dealt with. It's time for to unleash some trollfuckery."

Maybe it's the new anti-anxiety meds that I'm on (more on that in another post), but despite having a history of internet stalkers that drove my political blogging ass into anonymity, I decided to hit them up on Facebook using my real name and identity.

The plan was very simple and was meant to be run with precision. The first part of my plan involved me taking a selfie of myself wearing my "Fuck Racism Punch Nazis" t-shirt, and post it on Facebook under the line: This Machine Trolls Fascists. That went off without a hitch.

The second part got a little more complicated, as I'll tell below. The second part was to go on their page, spew just enough trollery to get noticed, and let my photo get shared on their page.

After it got published, I was going to respond with a whole shit-ton of laughs, and this video:

I called it, Operation: Trolling Phonebook. The purpose of it was twofold:

1. Show that they weren't really exposing anyone in the Antifas movement, and
2. Let them know that nobody was afraid of them. After all, if I, a man not a part of the movement with a full time job and kids was willing to troll them, they really aren't that scary.

It was meant to be a two-fold operation that discredited the page.

So after posting my photo, I went on their page, and spewed just enough shit to get their attention. But the day I did that, I noticed that posting on their page ground to a halt. No new names were being published. All the activity was being done in their comment section by strangers.

I realized that I had been too late to the party.

Some real, online members of the Antifas movement had been on to the owner of the page for quite a while and managed to get him banned from Facebook the day I began my operation. Those magnificent BASTARDS managed to disrupt a perfectly planned plan!

A few days later, the page was shut down, but not before some other white supremacists saw my work on the page.

And that, as John Mulaney said in his bit about the Salt and Pepper Diner, did things go from good to great!

Remember how I told you about my public photo of the T-shirt that says "Fuck Racism Punch Nazis"? Well, holy shit. Did they respond! I literally said "This Machine Trolls Fascists" to tell them why I posted it, and they took the trollbait, anyway.

They responded with trolling. They responded with threats to be me. They responded with death threats. And I just laughed.

Like this guy, Mr. Rich Hickman (find him on Facebook if you want):




"I'll talk to you very very soon". Bwahahahaha!

It's been well over two months, and despite his promises, Mr. Hickman has yet to buy a plane ticket to Detroit International Airport  Neither did the dozen or so white supremacist shitbags that trolled my Facebook photo in the months since.

I told you earlier that I was planning on titling this "Absurdism in Dangerous Times". Well that's for a reason.

I posted a long time ago that it was, of all things, a cartoon show that showed me the philosophy of absurdism. After that, I started reading about it a lot. I delved into the works of Alfred Camus.

Absurdism is the idea that life is meaningless. You accept that. You don't try to find some meaning in the meaningless, but instead enjoy that it has no meaning. You are Sisyphus rolling that stone on the hill. The only way to rebel against the gods is to smile at the meaningless of doing so. To take joy in it. You smile as you know that your existence is without meaning or purpose.

It was at the moment that I saw my friend's photo posted on that page that I accepted it as a part of political activism. I used to be afraid to show myself online or in person because of cyberstalkers of years' past. I was afraid of what they could do to me if I allowed myself to be exposed. But at that moment, I took the advice of Morty to full heart:

Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's gonna die. Come watch T.V.

That's why I had the courage to allow strangers on the internet to try to find me. It's why I laughed as they threatened me. I accepted that my life has no meaning, so fuck any white supremacist that would dare come at me.

For the first time in what felt like forever, I was living without fear. Without that fear, I was having the time of my life fighting fascist idiots online. I found what those in addict counseling call, "your higher power". That cause that is bigger than myself.

I recently read the book "The Power of Habit", and it discussed the role that religion has in helping addicts deal with their addiction. In the twelve step programs, it was shown that believing in a faith helped those deal with addiction not necessarily because of the supposed powers of their newfound deity, but because that faith had helped them believe in a cause bigger than themselves. I found mine in fighting fascists on the internet. It was through that that I discovered how absurdity can make one fearless.

We do live in very dangerous times. Like I wrote in my widely (at least as far as this little blog is concerned) shared post, we are now under the presidency of a man who thinks that nukes should be used as conventional weapons. That should scare anyone of sound mind. Yet many of us aren't because of faith or discovery of the pointlessness of life. That includes me.

But like I learned defending my friend, we should embrace absurdism so we remember that the fun is in the fight.

Even though I found joy in the meaningless of life, it doesn't mean that I lack empathy. I still feel great anger when a cop shoots a black man that was legally armed just as I was when I got pulled over by a cop and the cop laughed as I pulled my gun from my glove box into my cup holder. I still feel great anger at the idea that millions of people could lose their health insurance if Obamacare is repealed. I still feel great anger at racism, sexism, and the threat of war hanging over our heads. I'm angry that I have to work six days a week and miss out on free time that I need to spend with my kids and my own mental welfare.

Yes, my empathy causes me to feel great anger at the injustices of this world, but it's remembering the philosophy of absurdism that gives me the courage to fight. It's the knowledge that life is meaningless that makes the fight fun. Our lives might be meaningless, but goddamn it, is it fun to fight evil assholes.

Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's gonna die. Go punch a Nazi. Or troll them online. Or write your congressman. Whatever works for you.

If You Want to do Something Right...

It didn't take long for me to get back to my peak strength levels on the Starting Strength program. I even exceeded my previous bests on my squat (235x5 reps). After doing that, I decided that I need to work on becoming faster and have better endurance as well.

Some time last year, I heard about a book called Hybrid Training, which is one of the few books that is dedicated to making someone an all-around superior athlete. Their workouts look great, but they're suited for someone who is in moderately good shape in all areas. My speed and my endurance are lacking.

With that in mind, I decided to start a bodybuilding routine to keep my current strength levels, and be able to run until I can run three miles in under 30 minutes.

I decided to pick the Buff Dudes 12 Week Plan, Third Edition. For those that don't know, Buff Dudes are two fitness models that have their own YouTube channel. There's a thousand different weightlifting channels on YouTube, but their videos are by far the most entertaining.

Here's a playlist of the videos from that plan.

As far as bodybuilding plans go, it's great. If your primary goal is to get a great looking body, I highly recommend it.

And the first phase of the workout was good, too. There were only two days when you worked your legs (and this is only because Buff Dudes are under the mistaken impression that the deadlift is a back exercise and not a leg exercise), so I was able to run on the other days I worked out.

Unfortunately, by the time phase two hit, I was working my legs three times a week. Two actual leg days, and one back day where you're doing deadlifts. I couldn't run with a shit on phase two.

Watching their videos, one of the brothers said that he wasn't even doing cardio anymore because the weight training was too exhausting. And all they do for cardio is fast walking!

Walking is fine if all you want to do is gain cardiovascular endurance. But I feel the need, the need for...

You 80s kids know the rest.

"Well, fuck it", I told myself. "If you want to do something right, you're going to have to do it yourself."

So, I created my own workout plan, mixing all of what I know about lifting and running, and doing a goal assessment.

My long term goals are:
1. A squat and deadlift of 450 pounds
2. A bench press of 300 pounds
3. Be able to do pullups
4. Run a sub 8:00 mile

My short term goals are:
1. At least maintain my current strength levels, if not increase them
2. Run three miles under 30:00
3. Decrease body fat so I can run faster
4. Do this in as short as workout as possible (I still got kids at home!)

The short term goals are harder than they sound. I've found since having bariatric surgery that the following is true:

1. Gaining strength is easy
2. Losing body fat is easy
3. Doing both is extremely, extremely hard

So this plan isn't intended to gain strength. It's just meant to keep what I have. If my strength increases, great, but it's not necessary.

I'm combining bodybuilding with megsquats' program to get you to do your first pullup, and Higdon's novice 5k plan.

The first exercise is the primary exercise, done in four sets of 10/8/6/4. The exception is back day, where my primary exercise is the reverse pullup from the megsquats routine. The primary exercise is meant to make you worn completely down by the time it's over. The weight you lift is based on your one rep max. There's plenty of apps to download to your phone (and this website) to help calculate your one rep max. Based on that, you figure out how much weight to lift on each set.

For example, if you know that you can lift 205 pounds for five reps, your calculated one rep max would be 236 pounds. Based on that, you would do a set routine of 180x10, 190x8, 205x6, and 215x4. You're rounding up to the nearest five on every one.

By the time you're done with the first exercise, the muscles you worked should be officially done for the day. That's where the rest of the workout comes in.

You have to do at least one more isolation exercise for that muscle group for 3 sets of 10, and then on most days, you'll be doing two accessory exercises for the arms for 3 sets of 10.

The idea is that you work your body past its breaking point. It builds endurance, and you get to spend the rest of the week recovering, so you don't have to worry about muscle strain, either.

So here's the first week of my six week plan to get me ready for Hybrid Training:

Sunday (Chest and Biceps):
1.5 mile run
Reverse Pullups
Bench Press: 10/8/6/4
Cable Crossovers: 3x10
Bicep Curl: 3x10
Zottman Curl: 3x10

Tuesday (Back):
1.5 mile run
Reverse Pullups
T-Bar Row: 3x10
Pull downs: 3x10

Thursday (Shoulders and Triceps):
1.5 mile run
Reverse Pullups
Overhead Dumbbell Press: 12/10/8
Barbell Upright Row: 3x10
Overhead Tricep Extension: 3x10
Overhand Cable Push-Downs: 3x10

Friday:
Squats: 10/8/6/4
Deadlifts: 1x5
30 minute incline walk on treadmill

The running routine falls in line with the Higdon program. The next week would be a 1.75 mile run on the first and third run days, 1.5 miles on the second, and 35 minutes of incline walking on leg day.

There's a lot of people that like to save the cardio for after the weight lifting. When it comes to running, I like to do it first, just because running is always harder for me than lifting.

As the weeks pass, if I find that I'm not able to break my muscles down into mush after the first exercise no matter how much I lift, I'll add another compound exercise (for example, an Incline Bench Press on chest day). The goal is to leave the gym feeling like I've got my ass kicked. The workout is broken down enough to avoid injury, short enough to have a life outside of the gym, and can meet my short term fitness goals.

So far, the workout has been great. I've noticed that my strength is increasing slightly, and even though this isn't my goal, I'm seeing a lot of added muscle on my body. While I can say that it's not my goal to look strong, it feels pretty damn good to see that in the mirror. :)

If you decide to give this routine a go yourself, remember to see a doctor before beginning any new exercise program. That's my legal disclaimer so you can't sue me. Enjoy!

Time

I don't have enough time.

Time for what? Everything.

I'm constantly working. I was promised more money at my new job. I get paid more by the hour, but I also work a lot less hours than I did than at my previous job. This means I'm making less money.

So I beg for overtime. I get what I can, but my new job picks overtime on a seniority based scale. My old job had an overtime policy of, "Just give it to The Grasshopper. He'll take it." That was much more preferable to my current situation.

What little time I have when I'm not working, I either spend at the gym or watching my kids.

I make this complaint because after I posted about my return as a political blogger and activist, I literally have no time to do either.

If you don't write about politics everyday, good luck keeping up with the clusterfuck that our latest presidency has become. Another day, another new heaping pile of bullshit. As of today, Trump is accusing Obama of having tapped his phones during the 2016 campaign, and is doing so because he read an article on a right-wing blog.

Trump has access to literally everything that our government can get its hands on, and he's relying on morning news shows and conspiracy-theory websites instead of our intelligence agencies for information. It's beyond mind-boggling stupid.

And yet tomorrow, there will be some other clusterfuck coming from this administration. What will he do next that will boggle the mind? Start a dog fighting ring? Make a sex tape? Start a war based on his viewing of Killer Clowns from Outer Space? We don't fucking know. We just know that he'll be a bigger idiot than he was the day before, and it'll be equal parts entertaining and horrifying. We'll keep worrying about how low our country has sunk while being mesmerized by the spectacle all at the same time.

I don't have the time to keep up with all of this dumbfuckery. How do you occasionally blog about politics when Trump's dumbfuckery comes at you at a 1,000 miles an hour?

I wanted to be more politically active in the real world as well. I was hoping to attend political meetings, attend some rallies and protests, and otherwise do my part to make some change.

That's hard to do when you have two kids at home, and work 48-56 hours a week.

Every time I see some rally or meetup on Facebook, I look at the day. It's always on a day that I'm working. I tell myself, "Well, maybe I can do it before work...oh, wait. I've got kids. Nevermind."

A few months ago, I watched an incredibly cathartic video of the white supremacist shitbag known as Richard Spencer get punched in the face by an Anarchist.

There's been hundreds of videos, but this one is my personal favorite

I started reading up on Anarchism after that, because I knew that they didn't believe in the concept of a government, but didn't know much else about them. It turns out they don't like any groups at all. No governments, no corporations, nothing. Just all men on their own.

I don't agree with that philosophy, but it is damn nice to see them punching Nazis. I can disagree with their philosophy all I want; if there comes a time for punching Nazis, I'm calling them. You can't count on liberals for that shit.

One of the things I did read on them mentioned that most Anarchists are active either in a) Early adulthood, or b) The years after they turn fifty.

The author explained (sorry for no link, I can't find it right now), that this is because like just about every other activist, they get married, have kids, and have to work to provide and pay bills. Raising a family takes priority over setting the world on fire.

So it's going to be up to the college kids and the grandparents to save the world. Again. As per usual.

I still hope to do what I can when there's time. My wife will stop teaching in the summer, so hopefully I can do something other than call my representatives until they get sick of hearing from me (that's about all I can do right now).

In the meantime, I still wear this around town while I run my errands:

Come at me, wingnuts. Y'all ain't shit

Stronglifts and Starting Strength Suck

You might be looking at the title and thinking, "What the fuck? The Grasshopper has been singing praises of these workouts for the better part of a year. Why is he telling us not to do them?"

Look, despite my many posts talking about how great they are, I was completely wrong. Sure, it made me lift heavier weights than I ever had in my life, but they just aren't going to do the same for you.

I could give you all sorts of reasons for it, but all I can say is that you have to trust me on this one.

It has nothing to do with the fact that every time I've hit the gym as of late, no matter what time of day or night it is, I find that there are lines for the squat racks at my gym.

Nope, nothing to do with that at all.

It has nothing to do with that fact that I go to the gym after work at midnight, MIDNIGHT FOR CRISSAKES, and find that the gym's TWO (not ONE, but TWO) squat racks are already being used!

It has nothing to do with the fact that I see the guy in front of me doing sets of five, and I know he's doing the exact same fucking workout that I'm about to do, and I have to patiently wait as he gets done with all his sets before I can jump in and claim that squat rack as my own.

It has nothing to do with the fact that when I go into the gym I turn into Samuel Jackson, and all I can think is, "I'VE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKING GUYS ON MY MOTHERFUCKING SQUAT RACK!"

What kind of lunatic goes to the gym at midnight, anyway? Except me, of course.

There was a time when I could go into the gym late at night, and there'd be one other guy there running on a treadmill like a hamster on a wheel. Not anymore!

Look, if you want strong legs, there's a leg extension machine with your name on it. Go ahead, give that a whirl.

Squats and deadlifts are just bad for you. Don't worry about all of the scientific data that directly contradicts me on that, just go with me on this one guys!

Pretty please?