Dose of Testosterone Part 5: Martial Arts

     

Impressive flexibility.

Remember kids, keep your hands up.

That was cool.

Aright gents, that's it for this post. Til next time.

Causes of Collapse

     The West is in decline.  There are probably many causes and they're probably somewhat complex. But I think you can point to some things and say, "That! That right there is part of the problem!"

     The legal system is one of those things.

     Once at a party a cop explained to me that if he gets called to a scene for a fist fight he arrests everybody involved. Even if 100 witnesses say that 1 person attacked another with no provocation, he doesn't care. "Arrest them both and let the D.A. and judge sort it out." were his exact words.

     I have a fear that this is pretty much the modus operandi for most police. How terrifying would that be? Imagine it; some drunk thinks that getting in a fight is the perfect end to an evening after striking out with the ladies. And despite doing everything in your power to avoid a fight, even after taking a few punches without retaliation, you may still end up standing before a judge simply for defending yourself.

     And seriously, where do people in government get off ?!?!? Of course the police have the authority to arrest an aggressor, but arresting someone defending their self is just another example of government overstepping its rightful boundaries. Honestly, I don't even think that the cops should interject in a situation if it simply involved a fistfight, unless someone involved wants to press charges.

     I think violence should be legalized. If two people want to beat the piss out of each other, fine. Go ahead. As long as they are consenting adults, then its nobody's business, not even the governments. I think that the prohibition on violence where all parties' consent is destroying this country.

     Prohibition on violence creates a moral hazard for douche bag behavior. People are incentivised to be mouthy wankers. And every man knows there comes a point where said wanker says too much, has crossed the line and needs his guts stomped out. At which point a challenge could be made and both men step outside to handle the issue like men.

     Women don't understand this. Many women are of the opinion that fighting is almost never justified. They constantly try to calm their men down and keep the from fighting. In fact I think that the prohibition on violence probably started with women. Women who thought that they should treat adults as though they were their children. But honestly if the prohibition on violence were lifted, fewer women would try to dissuade their men from violence.

     Certain weak men like to hide behind these laws. They know that they can say anything, and they will never be held accountable.

     Under my ideal legal system, you wouldn't even need the consent of the other person if they said certain things. For instance, if a man calls your wife a whore, he's consenting to have the crap kicked out of him. Maybe your wife is a whore, maybe she's not, but its none of his business.

     I'm not just for bringing back fist fights. I think we need to bring back the duel. Not only should adults have the beat the crap out of each other, they should also be allowed to kill each other so long as both parties consent.

This country would be much better off had someone killed Hamilton earlier.

     Under no circumstances should you be able to just go up and kill someone. But it would be nice if we had a system like what used to exist. If someone gives an offense so extreme that it would justify killing the bastard, a challenge could be made. If accepted, the participants would have to agree on terms. They would have to agree on time, date, location and weapons to be used. Because we're talking about killing someone, contracts would probably be neccissary so that grieving family members couldn't claim that this was an act of murder. These would need to be notarized and maybe filed with the city or county. The participants would also have to agree on an arbitrary third party to officiate & hold each party to the terms. Also each participant would need to bring witnesses.

     Some people will say that this is barbaric. I think just the opposite. I think civilization is only possible when people are held accountable for their actions.


    Til next time, gentlemen.

3 Things Every Beginner Should Know

     I love lifting. I've loved it ever since my dad bought me my first weight set when I was 17. I would train 3-4 hours per day 5-6 days per week. I didn't get very good results for the first few months. In the first 9 months I only gained 5 pounds. That's what happens when you get all your training info out of a magazine.

     After 9 months of fruitless training I decided to try a powerlifting routine I found on the internet. I gained 10 pounds in 3 months. Not great, but not bad either.

     After that I joined an Olympic lifting team, and that's when things really started to come together for me. Within the first 3 months training with the team, I gained 30 pounds. Now that's good gains. As an OL'er, my coach and I weren't really concerned about adding size to my pecs or arms or any of the typical things that most people in the gym worry about. No, most of that weight went on my thighs with a little left over for my spinal erectors, traps and shoulders. Because those are the muscles that help you Snatch and Clean & Jerk more.

     I still look back at my 18 year old self and think, "How much could I have gained if I had really tried to maximize hypertrophy?" Guess I'll never know.

     I don't look like a bodybuilder, but I do know how to put on muscle.  I've done it. I also got pretty strong while Olympic lifting. I made some mistakes though. I learned, more from those mistakes than I did from successes. But I don't want my successes or my failures to go to waste so here are 3 things that I feel every beginner should know.

Rigert is a freak.

1. Fitness is a business.

     Magazines, DVD's,websites, equipment, books, training programs, consultations. All of them designed to make money. The problem is...well, let's take magazines for example. Every month that company has to come up with new content. The problem is though, training isn't that complicated. Thus the company has an incentive to break training into as many variables as possible and every month publish programs with inane, meaningless differences from previous issues. Same with those infomercial fitness products. How different do you think "Super Muscle Blaster Xtreme Fitness" is from its sequel "Super Muscle Blaster 2 Xtreme"? Not much different.

     Now does that mean that all these products suck? No. Some are good, others not so good. But after you've read a few books and a few magazines, you start noticing that creators are just reusing the same material in different packaging. 

2. Consistency is the most important factor.

     Some exercises are better than others. Some programs are better than others. What matters most is getting in the gym and doing the work. There is a type of training called "instinctive training". Basically it means that you just decide what you're going to do when you get to the gym. I don't like it. The only people that I've seen successfully use this type of training were clearly on steroids. That said, a person who trains instinctively but is in the gym at least 3 days a week will get better results than the person isn't consistent.

3. Progress matters.

     I don't care if you use 5x5, Bulgarian training. Russian training, high frequency, low frequency, Max OT or even HIT. What matter more than any of that is progression. Are you putting more weight on the bar? Are you adding more sets? More reps? You have to make some kind of progress.

You think Franco would be such a beast had he not tried to add weight to the bar?

     Don't misunderstand me and think that I'm saying that you must do more every workout. Quite frankly you can't do that. Don't try, you'll just burn out. Add reps, weight or sets when you can. You will have some periods of training where your lifts go up almost every session. Then you'll go months at a time with no progress. The important thing is staying consistent and making increases over the long haul.

Well, that's it for this post. I know haven't posted anything for a few weeks. Sorry about that. I'll try to do better. Check back in a few days for a new post. See you guys next time. 

Pre Debate Analysis

     Next Thursday, January 14, 2016 Fox Business will host a debate of the GOP Presidential Candidates. As of this writing, Fox Business has yet to announce the candidates who will be on the main stage. It doesn't really matter. Most of the candidates never really had a chance anyway.

     Let me first start by saying that nothing in this article is an endorsemet of either party, any political affiliation, political belief, or any candidate. I don't have a political science degree, or anyother degree for that matter. Also this post is largely inspired by Scott Adams's (the guy who writes Dilbert) writings on this election cycle on his blog (http://blog.dilbert.com/).  He has mostly focused on Trump's superior pursuasion tactics. Robert Greene's now defunct blog (http://powerseductionandwar.com/), has also been very influential.

The Non-Contenders

     First I want to discus the field of non-contenders. Guys like Gilmore, Huckabee, Walker, Jindal, Graham. On the DNC side, Webb, Chafee & O'Malley. Every Presidential election, non-contenders throw their hat in the ring. And I don't mean obscure nobodies complaining about rent being too high. I mean political insiders who should be aware of their non-contender status. If you are like me you probably dismissed them as vain and detached from reality. But now I wonder if that is really why they run. Just humor me.

He had to know that he never had a chance.

     Currently we live in a 24/7 news cycle. The nesw media has over a year's worth of programming that needs to be filled. And the time that the stations will dedicate to the election is largely inelastic. No matter what happens, election coverage is #1. Floods in Texas, "How will this effect Rubio's stance on global warming?" Terrorist Shootings, "What is Hillary's plan for gun control?" In this environment, a candidates biggest enemy is time. More time means increased chances for something to go wrong.

     So could the entrance of these non-contenders into a race that they can't hope to win have an alternate strategy? I wonder if maybe the non-contenders are there to act as blockers for the real contenders until just before or after the early primaries. To spread the election coverage across as many candidates as possible. Under this theory, Jindal and Graham never were suppose to win the primary, they were there to abosrb bad press. Every minute the media spent talking about Graham, meant they weren't giving negative press to the Party's real contenders. Maybe the non-contenders were aware of the role they were to play, maybe not. From a strategic perspective, I'm not sure it matters. What matters is that every time the press makes fun of O'Malley for trying to rap, means they aren't hanging a stone around Hillary's neck by talking about Benghazi.

The Trump Problem

     The GOP insiders may or may not have problem with Trump. I suspect that they do. I think they see him as a threat to business as usual. But Trump is his own nuclear deterrent. He doesn't need the GOP. If they piss him off he can run third party, split the GOP vote and thereby hand the election to the Democrats. Internet writers tend to think that candidates are affraid of crossing Trump because he will crush their campaign. I don't think so. Some of the candidates at the bottom of the polls would most likely be willing to jump on that grenade for the good of the party if it would guarantee success for the establishment. But with the aforementioned nuclear deterrent, such actions would only make matters worse.

Say what you will, this man knows how to fight.

     David Horowitz has said "Politics is war with different weapons." The GOP doesn't get this. They are the stupid party. The first thing that I think the GOP candidates should do is stay in the race. Second they should steal Trump's stategies, henceforth referred to as weapons. Third the weapons should be employed in any and every way except against direct attacks on Trump. The goal is not to directly take down Trump which would result in him claiming that he wasn't treated fairly and use the treatment as justification for running third party. Instead the goal is to increase each candidates' appeal to the voters. They should try to out-do Trump at his own game. Those at the bottom should say things that are at least as outlandish as things Trump has said. Those outlandish comments would then get coverage that would have otherwise went to Trump. The goal is to drown Trump out.

Undecended Testicles

     As for the serious contenders (Rubio and Cruz) and could have beens (Bush and Paul), they have made a major miscalculation. I wonder if this is due to influence from political consultants. Or if they are really detached from the body politic and too blue blooded. Or because of a lack of real understanding of the American psyche. They are all too good, too perfect. Americans don't like this. Least of all conservatives in fly-over country. G.W. Bush, B. Clinton, G.H.W. Bush, R. Reagan and J. Carter all had an unpolished "man of the people" image. All had hick accents. And they didn't try to be too clean or too polished.

See that rounding in his upper back? It's because he doesn't have spine.

     Not only do these candidates try to be too perfect, they also lack what Trump has in spades...thumos...spiritedness. They could get by with their other failures if they had fire in their belly. Not raging like a madman. But a determined and focused intensity. With that they could inspire more confidence from voters. Paul and Bush are particularly bad about this. Paul needs to turn up the passion and spend less time making long drawn out arguments and more time working developing
short emotionally charged statements. He should attempt to stir up voters' emotions first and then give them arguments to rationalize their emotions. But stirring up emotions is the more important part of the equation.

I'm not sure there is any hope for Bush.

The President Who Could Have Been

     When I look at his politics, Rand Paul, could be winning this election easily. His stance on the issues should give him appeal to grass roots concervatives in the primaries and he could even have significant appeal to Democratic voters in November. But as the old song goes, "it ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it." His political beliefs could appeal to a broad range of Americans...if he had framed them the right way. But he didn't and left the door open for his opponents to frame them for him. He framed military cuts as "real financial concervatism". The problem is that to the hard right, no number is too high for military spending. This argument should have been framed more like this:

      "Our men and women in uniform deserve better than the rampant misuse of funds that has been the norm in this monsterous buearacy known as the Department of Defence. The DOD hasn't passed one audit as mandated by law in the last 20 years. Every dollar that is misused or mispent is a dollar that can't be used to develop new technologies, upgrade old equipment, provide additional training or fund VA hospitals."

So close, yet so far, Senator.

     This way he frames himself in favor of the troops and against waste. This would make it hard for them to paint him as against the troops or soft on defense.

     He has also brought out his anti-interventionist leanings too early. Saying that he wouldn't have toppled the regimes that Hillary and Obama had. He needs to back off. Its too early for him to try to fight Hillary. He needs to defeat the other Republicans before he starts worrying about Hillary. And even if he did manange to damage Hillary's reputation who's going to remember it come November? He needs to focus on differetiating himself from the rest of the GOP. He can do that by being more consice in how he would handle ISIS compared to how other candidates have been. When other candidates blather on with vague notions of "desimating ISIS", "destroying ISIS" or "carpet bombing ISIS", Paul could be a little more precise. He could try to frame it like this:

        "I see the war with ISIS as an just a small isolated part of the broader War on Terror. The war on terror isn't a conventional war. It isn't like going to war with another Nation. We should not treat this like WWII, The Gulf War or the wars after 9/11. It is a long protracted, unconventional war against small groups spread all over the globe, that may not even have connections to one another. As such I am very concerned about candidtates who fall back on conventional tactics just so they can appear   to be strong on defense. This war, in my estimation, is best fought by using the men from our Special Operations and Intelligence Communities. We can't afford to get into long, protracted and expensive conventional wars. We should get in, get the job done, get out and start preparing for the next engagemet. No occupying territory. No nation building. No prolonged boots on the ground. Get in. Get the job done. Get out."

     I also think that Paul thinks that by setting himself up as a non-interventionist as opposed to Hillary's hawkishness he will gain votes from the anti-war left. Which I agree, he will. But by the same logic wouldn't he risk loosing some votes from hawkish Republicans who are soft on other issues. I'm not sure that this play of his will be a net gain, even if makes it past the primary.

Well that's it for this post. I may have an analysis of the debate if there is anything worth analyzing.

See ya next time.