Swedes Quote of the Day Thread

[BendtheBar]

"That's a good weight...for a small woman"

Dorian Yates

[BendtheBar]

Holly Blumenberg, 59 year old CrossFitting fitness fanatic:

When is the right time to start a healthy eating and exercise plan? With the millions of dollars spent on diet books, drinks, pills and other diet aids you would think that anytime is the right time. Well, from what I hear from potential clients there is no right time.

They can always find an excuse. Some of the excuses I hear are “school is getting out for the summer, my kids have ball games, we have to go on vacation, it’s Bible School week, it’s State Fair week, school is starting, my kids play sports, it is the Holidays and I know I will overeat, the weather is bad and I can’t get out, I’m just too busy”.

The real truth is that no one wants to be accountable for their own actions. No one wants to do the work. No one can say no, to themselves or others. All I hear are weak excuses.

How many times have you ate poorly and then promised yourself to do better tomorrow? You are only one person, who are you making the bargain with? It’s a child’s game that we play with ourselves. We all do it and we need to stop.

[big_swede]

Eat big, train heavy for high reps = growth. You can go to some board and have mental masturbation arguments about this all day, but it's just a fact of training life. No "easy" style of training is going to change your physical make up. Shit that is hard to do will. If it were easy, everyone would look awesome and be swole and jacked. They aren't. It's not easy. If your training methodology for mass gaining isn't difficult, then it sucks. Strength training and mass training aren't the same animals really. There is a completely different mind set in the two. Yes, there is some crossover. However, when I'm training to get maximally strong I leave a lot in the tank, and peak. When I am training for mass, I train my balls off in the medium rep range and eat a lot of food. Why? Because it works. It's not rocket surgery.

--Paul Carter

[big_swede]

If you want to be brutally strong raw, quads, back, lats, chest, and shoulders are where it's at, bodypart wise. Lifting wise, you need to build bottom position strength. To quote Dan in our convo "the bottom part is the hardest position to build so you might as well quit avoiding it". I still haven't figured out why I see so many raw lifters doing equipped lifters shit. Reverse banded this and banded that. Why? You need to work the BOTTOM of the ****ing lift. Not make it easier.

I really blame the internet and bad information. For years, powerlifting articles and shit were suited and written for and by geared lifters. Yet you had all of these guys that did not train in gear, reading and spouting off geared lifting methodologies. Guess what? It didn't work. For the one or two guys it did, the other 99% of us were left spinning our ****ing wheels wondering "why doesn't this bullshit work? I'm not strong!" It's the same reason you still hear guys talking about lats in benching. LATS IN BENCHING?!?! PULL THE BAR DOWN TO ME? WTF?!?!? The bar will fall right into you, why do I need to pull it into me? Ohhhh it's because that asswipe can't get 600 to touch his chest. Ahhhhh makes sense now.

Basically, this is all about using the right tool from the toolbox. You wanna get stronger?

Get strong off the bottom - If a movement is harder in the bottom USE THAT. The one movement that kind of differs here is the deadlift. I find that mid-shin pulls make the deadlift the hardest. Your mileage may vary in that regard, but if I pull something from mid-shin I can pull more from the floor. Stop worrying about shit like board presses, bands, chains, and reverse band non-sense.

Build your quads - this is for squatting and for speed off of the floor in the deadlift. So guess what? Do ****ing leg press and front squats. I don't care what you read about not needing quads for powerlifting, that stuff is idiotic bullshit. This means getting off the box, and stop listening to people who tell you that box squatting is full of awesome. It is not. If you want a bigger squat and pull, quads will be a great friend to you.

Build your back - The deadlift is a back movement. The legs initiate the drive off of the floor, however from there your back does the brunt of the work. The lats, especially the lower lats fire hard from the bottom as well. So train your lats and rhomboids like your life depends on it.

Build your chest and shoulders - This shit about triceps for benching.....what? Shoulders and pecs dude. Even if you're close grip. Doing a shit ton of tricep work is for guys who bench with shirts that need lockout power. Most guys don't miss a bench at lockout. They miss it at the transition point. So guess what? Just get stronger.

Build everything else with your support work - Biceps, triceps, calves, hams, abs, etc all should be what you use your support work to build. You don't need to kill yourself here, unless those areas are REALLY that far behind. If that's the case, make them a priority for a while.

--Another one from Paul, I think he is spot on on some off the things he writes about in his blog. LIFT-RUN-BANG

[SCStrong]

Another fine pearl of wisdom - Thanks, Swede

[BendtheBar]

From Miked96:

I asked Dave Tate what was a good total to start competing and he told me zero. Great advice. I ignored it to my detriment.

[ONpump17]

Originally Posted by big_swede

--Another one from Paul, I think he is spot on on some off the things he writes about in his blog. LIFT-RUN-BANG

One of my favourite blogs, right behind Chaos and Pain

[BendtheBar]

From a British strongman, 800+ Dead, 400+ bench, 400+ overhead at 220lbs bodyweight:

"If you think I've time to crack 20 egg whites into a bowl you can f*ck that!"

[BendtheBar]

Quoting myself, don't hate. I made myself laugh:

I want clean sheets and toilet paper, dirty sex and dirty bulks.

[big_swede]

The longer I train, the less and less shit I do. The less shit I do, the stronger I get. The more I emphasize recovery, the stronger I get.

--LRB