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3 Quick Workouts to Keep You In The Game

March 8, 2018 By admin

The time isn’t always there. Life happens and ruins even the best laid plans. Below you’ll find 3 workouts that I use to keep me in the game when I can’t devote time to training. I do al 3 workouts at home.

3 Quick Workouts to Keep You In The Game

1. Legs and Traps

5×10 of:

DB Stiff Legged Deadlift + Shrug at top of rep
Goblet Squat, supersetted

All you need is a pair of dumbbells. I bought 200lbs worth of adjustable dbs on eBay a few years back for $200. Always Shrug at the top of your SLDL. The range of motion of the SLDL with that Shrug does wonders for trap development.

2. Chest and Back

5×10 of:

Pull Ups
Dips, supersetted

If you can’t do sets of 10, do 5 sets of as many as you can. At home I use a doorway pull up bar and a pair of rings. Feel free to change grips on your pull ups. Do them wide, short, underhand, and neutral.

3. Shoulders

5xAMRAP

Standing Shoulder Press
Lateral Raise

These I don’t superset if I’m doing them at home because I only have a single pair of dbs. As such I up the reps and cut the rest time when going through.

These 3 workouts will keep you in the game when you need to do something, but just don’t have the time. Sprinkle them in where necessary and be smart about it. Don’t do chest and shoulders before a bench day and goblet squats before a leg day.

These are also good ways of getting in that second workout if you’re a go-getter. If you have more time add in reverse flys for shoulders and push ups for chest.

The workouts can be done at home if you have the equipment. If not, they’re available at most gyms. These workouts won’t transform you, but they will keep you in the game so your body stays primed to do work.

Become Who You Think You Are

March 8, 2018 By admin

We all have a mental image of ourselves.
I do. You do. It’s different for everyone, but for most of us the mental image is different from the reality.

You aren’t who you think you are. I’m not who I thought I was. That’s what led me to the path. That’s what made me want to CHANGE.

Who do you want to be?

How are you going to get there?

What are you doing today that gets you closer?

These are the questions you should be asking yourself.

Follow everyone else and you head to the SLAUGHTERHOUSE. Look around you, take a step back and disconnect.

DISCONNECT.

Disconnect from the 9-5 grind. Recognize all the people in your life and do a headcount.

How many have goals that are different from their reality? How many are striving after their goals?

How many have told you their goals, but have made no steps to make them reality? How many have abandoned their dreams?

The grind pounds the human soul into submission. It takes from you the hopes and dreams that keep you going as you help someone else realize their hopes and dreams.

The grinders have a difficult time articulating this, but the stats don’t lie. Poverty is booming. Depression is at all time highs. Obesity, disease, you name it and it’s getting higher.

So this is to all you GRINDERS like me, don’t let go of that MENTAL IMAGE.

Do something everyday to get closer.

Write it down, visualize it, affirm it.

Don’t let the machine take it from you.

Recognize the tools of distraction that the empire employs to keep you down.

COMFORT.

Comfort is the enemy. Comfort keeps you from taking risks and making moves. Comfort is contentment.

Why do more when you’re comfortable?

Make yourself UNCOMFORTABLE. Train your body. Take risks. Make moves.

Fortune doesn’t favor the comfortable.

SECURITY.

Security is the absence of FREEDOM. Trust your security to no one.

A job is security. You are paid pennies for your most precious commodity: TIME.

You have one life to live. The time you waste, you don’t get back.

Make the right choice and be DISCIPLINED.

Make that mental image of yourself a REALITY.

Never settle for less. Never settle for comfort and secure.

Make becoming YOU as you see yourself an OBSESSION.

It’s your primary objective because if you aren’t who you believe you are, your mind will know and it will manifest that knowledge with disappointment and depression.

Your mission is everything. Be true to who you are.

Deadlift Primer

March 3, 2018 By admin

The deadlift should be called the healthlift. The world just doesn’t feel right if you’re not deadlifting. Picking things up get easier, that whole bad back thing doesn’t rear its ugly head anymore. But make no mistake, it is a technical lift that will hurt you if done improperly.

Treat the deadlift with respect.

Deadlifts and squats make everything better. Want bigger arms? Deadlift. Need mass? Deadlift. Bodybuilding is fun and I enjoy it, but I always leave in the squats and deadlifts because without them you put a damper on your gains. And it just doesn’t feel right leaving them out.

How to Deadlift

At its core, the deadlift is simple. Walk up to the bar and pick it up. The problem is when the load becomes heavy. If you don’t know how to deadlift, you’ll try ripping the bar and lifting with the back, both of which will leave you back problems. Deadlift properly and those back problems go away.

Everyone has a deadlift ritual, so we’re going to fast forward past that and get to the actual movement. Your stance should be hip width apart while your grip is just outside hip width.

Your arms are but ropes, keeping the bar close to your body. It should scrape up your shins and legs on the way up. If you don’t want scraping, dress appropriately.

The deadlift starts with a heel drive. Drive your heels into the ground and lift with your hamstrings, NOT your lower back. This means get your ass down! Your thighs will be close to parallel to the ground in the starting position. Start with the heel drive and pull through. Remember the heel drive cue.

Most men after they finish a deadlift just let the bar fall to the ground. If you’re trying to build some muscle, you had better guide it down. The negative rep is where muscle growth happens. This also gives you an opportunity to reverse the rep and hammer good form.

Keep your back rigid. Curling of the back shouldn’t happen. If it is, the weight is too heavy. Build muscle, not your ego.

Deadlift sets shouldn’t be greater then five reps with exceptions. Your heavy sets must be under five. The deadlift is the most taxing lift you will do in the gym. The better you get at it, the longer you’ll take to recover from it.

There are two methods of doing multiple rep sets.

First, you can do what is called touch and go. This is where you let the bumpers touch and then you immediately go after your next rep. This can be done, but be wary of your form because it will degrade. If you have any kind of history of back problems I don’t recommend it.

Second you can reset each rep. Don’t take your hands off the bar, but let it come to a complete stop. This will give you the opportunity to get into a good pulling position with the ass down and the heels ready to drive.

This is only a primer to the deadlift. I’m certain books can be written just on the deadlift. Go get some!

Brutal Truth on Supplements

February 28, 2018 By admin

Strive & Slay won’t spend a lot of time on supplements for two reasons. First, supplements is just what is means, supplementation. Gym rats got this strange idea that the holy grail to gains is whey and creatine. They’ll go up to men in the gym and ask them what brand preworkout they take as if it’s the preworkout that got them swole.

Supplementation if done right might account for 10% of your progression. If you want to look at it another way, it’s like a job offering you $100 if you complete two tasks. One task is $90 and the other is $10. Which one are you going to spend the most time trying to complete?

Obviously the $90 task UNLESS you’re a gym rat. The gains come from nutrition and just straight up consistency. Go to the gym, do more work then you did the last time and keep it up over YEARS. That’s how you make gains. The type of whey you take means nothing. In fact, don’t even take whey. Eat steak and eggs. Far better for muscle gains.

Second reason I won’t go into supplements is because supplements are eyed by natural athletes, “nattys,” who are doing everything they can to avoid steroids. Steroids is this evil, cheating drug that must be avoided at all costs. Unfortunately, the fitness industry is loaded with guys on the juice and it sets unrealistic expectations of what a gym rat can accomplish in the gym.

Most men out there are probably testosterone deficient. What I want every man to get out of this article is this: don’t think you can boost testosterone and muscle growth through supplementation. What you see in magazines and billboards are ploys to steal your hard earned dough. If you’re trying to get swole and hitting walls, do NOT buy supplements that claim to give natural steroid gains. You will be sorely disappointed, best case scenario.

Worst case scenario, the supplements will crash your testosterone.

What every man needs to do.

Go to your doctor, get your blood checked. I’m all about being a toxic masculine barbarian, but if you can’t be humble and with the times, you’ll be just another basic soy boy.

If your total testosterone level comes back with anything under 400, do not let your general care doctor treat you. He or she may want to give you a pill to solve your problem, more then likely they will not give you testosterone replacement therapy. Most if not all general care doctors cannot properly treat testosterone.

This is not what you want to hear, but if you have low T, supplements will not help you at all. Neither will your general care doctor. Do your research and find a clinic that deals specifically with low testosterone. Getting set up there will likely be costly and a pain, but let me tell you it is worth every penny. You will be much better off spending hundreds of dollars on proper TRT treatment then supplements you hope will work.

Getting your testosterone back to the proper levels takes some experimentation and patience.

That said, I do take supplements. Just the basics. But I don’t have a seat at the natty table because I am on TRT.

If you’re testosterone is fine, stop being a bitch and work harder. Eat steak and eggs. Kill it in the weight room.

Divide and Conquer: The Story of the American People

February 27, 2018 By admin

This post was inspired by Anthony Napoleon’s Shadow Men. If you haven’t read it, bump it up to the top of your reading list.

The story of the American people can best be described as divide and conquer. Like it or not, there are powerful people our there who control our world. You’re not as free as you think you are. The laws of the land are determined by those with the most wealth and power. Media is used to cultivate public opinion in the right direction.

What you’re seeing in America is the mastering of persuasion and psychological warfare. People are given enough freedom to believe they are free when really, they merely get to choose which slave master they serve. Comfort and security are used to divide and conquer a once strong people.

Divide & Conquer

When you face mighty enemies, it’s foolish to take them on all on at once. This is what the shadow men in power faced as America started to mature. Opportunity for wealth, power, and land was ripe. The American family was also strong.

For the most part, only the man had to work. They held much land. They could do what they wanted.

For shadow men to take control, what had to be done was to divide the enemy. Napoleon, in Shadow Men described how it started. Commercialism and the breaking of family. The farms were starved out, forcing families to move to the cities. But it’s gone much deeper since then.

Feminism added half the population to the workforce, bringing down pay because of the increased laborforce. Quality of child care went down because both parents now worked. This was only the beginning.

The powers that be implemented strategies like consumer credit to help enslave Americans. Diversity while a strong morally, brings more competition to the workforce. If you fast forward to today, the division is that much worse.

The American Conquered

How much can you divide the American people until there is nothing left? We’re not there yet, but you’re beginning to see how far it can go.

The middle class is all but gone. There’s so many people in America that opportunity is getting harder and harder to find. First, the rural communities were broken down. Then the woman’s rights movement doubled the workforce in the 60s and 70s.

I’m not anti-woman by any means, women and men are compliments of each other. Men do some things better, women do other things better.

The peace and love movement dismantled the traditional nuclear family. Broken homes started becoming the norm. Shadow men are far from done. Competition for jobs caused higher education to become important. This caused another division between the experienced and the higher educated.

Racial tension was brought to the forefront to encourage more division between Us. And when that wasn’t enough, the LGBT community was used to divide further. Left vs right, man vs woman, gay vs straight, transgender vs gender, black vs white, pro vs anti-immigration, rich vs poor, black vs police. Divide and conquer until the people are fighting themselves.

These shadow men must be rolling in wealth and power. They have conquered the American people.

Napoleon is very pro “the West.” I don’t know whether he thinks the west could be saved, but he’s trying to enlighten the helpless masses.

I don’t think it can be saved.

Waiting for the Fall

There are too many people, too many backgrounds, too many mobs. Mobs are far from smart. Nietzche said this about the mob:

“When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.”

Let’a face facts, we as humans have the ability to know around 150 people. The American Conquered number over 300 million. You can’t know or care about all those people. On the flip side, shadow men want you isolated and divided.

In the past, people just migrated away from what they didn’t like. Go to the unexplored territories, but today, the world is known. There’s no where to run to.

All you can do is embrace what you stand for and find the people that believe what you do. Establish a new tribe with new traditions and rituals. Become barbarians, wolves at the gate, waiting for the fall.

One thing you can count on is America falling because every great empire has.

Find your people and create your own worlds. Do your best to become self-sufficient. Don’t depend on the shadow men to live. Find your own way.

It’s not easy. Shadow men have done their job well. We’re more isolated then ever. Kids don’t go outside to make friends and play anymore. Adults hardly get together to bond. It’s just one long grind. Go to work 40 hours a week and try to distract yourself from the misery the rest of the time.

We are now a conquered people. The only way to freedom is to find some brothers and make a living outside of the empire. Destroy, dominate, and conquer your way to freedom. Live like the guerrilla behind enemy lines. Strike at the moral of the enemy. If you can demoralize your enemies, you can crush them.