Knowledge doesn’t mean much until you’ve gotten off your ass to go help the sick and suffering newcomer

It’s all fun and gains until you can’t lift your hand above your head 

It’s all fun and games until you can’t sit comfortably

All fun & games until that elbow gets a little crunchy

Everybody’s real confident until they feel a twinge

Nowadays, it’s very easy to get on some kind of hormone replacement therapy from either your doctor or some kind of longevity clinic

If you’re older, then I highly highly recommend it because the benefits almost always outweigh the trade-off to such a significant degree that it’s a no-brainer

But if you’re under 35 I would really strongly advise. You’re not even think about it.
Truthfully, I’d say anything other than under 50 but I also do think that someone on TRT will be much better off getting their life together than someone who is not

It’s just that once you cross that bridge, you may not ever be able to come back across
Not without having to resort to some very strange measures and start taking all kinds of pregnancy medications
And no, that’s not a joke lol

Patience is your best friend if your goal is to build mass
Because then you don’t really need to train too terribly hard
You just need to push the right amount with the right intensity consistently enough
While eating pretty much as much as you can
And if you do that, then you will gain the right kind of body mass

I cannot speak highly enough about the sled
If you have access to a sled, then I recommend you start programming that thing and at least two or three days a week
One light one fast and one heavy session and I promise you it will help every single area of your life and everyone involved in it lol

If you are familiar with the sled, though, then it is important to begin to vary your tempos and techniques
Because your body can adjust to the sled pretty quickly

And then it turns into zone two cardio faster than you would think
Especially if you’re going slow

But on that note, I think that is one of the most overlooked benefits there is
Long duration, slow sled sessions
Because it’s going to recruit your zone one muscles with support from your low fatigue zone two
But it also allows you to get into the right metabolic rhythm to really focus on your breathing
And because of the resistance demand, you can connect your VO2 output quickly to your anaerobic pathways

Push pushing a lead is a lot like going uphill
Pulling a sled is a lot like jogging downhill

Going uphill you’re gonna be using a lot more glutes and hamstrings, and it is a much more movement focused movement if you will
(you’re gonna wanna focus on your energy expenditure due to the likely long duration you’re gonna be hiking for)

Going downhill you’re gonna be using a lot more of your quads and bones due to the impact
Which is it going to be a muscle focused movement
Because your focus will be mostly on managing control so you don’t fall 
and resistance for keeping the impact on low
And because you’re going downhill, it is far more efficient on your metabolic pathways so you’ll almost always default to your faster twitch

There’s a reason why they say don’t run the hills
It’ll recruit your most expensive muscles and burn them out faster proportionately to any relative speed gains

And if you build really strong quads and knees, 
you can fly downhill very easily cause you’re just controlling your fall pretty much

Trail running challenges, appropriate reception just as much as your cardiovascular respiratory system
It just adapts, and it becomes more unconscious

And if you’re on an easy trail, then it’s likely going to use more of your cardio cuz you will be going faster

On a sketchy trail you’ll likely be going slow slower

Proprioception/balance/reaction training is better programmed similar to plyometrics
Because this is mostly about our nervous system and it’s connection with our reaction, fast twitch, muscles, or stabilizing support unconscious ones
They’re not gonna really respond that well to 5 sets of 12 with 60s rest

You can see a drastic aesthetic changes and his little as 36 to 72 hours if you properly manage carbohydrates and water intake

The leaner, you are naturally, the more pronounced the aesthetic changes

If you were over 10% body fat, then you shouldn’t even think about cutting until you cut out water at least three separate times to get an actual honest gauge of what you’re working with

Because the second you try to go below 10% body fat, you’re entering the valley of the shadow of death

To live under 10% body fat without steroids is like living in the dietary wilderness
But it can be done

From a programming perspective
Strength training is almost always better for longevity than hypertrophy training

Mostly because hypertrophy training is misunderstood and not appropriate for those who are not willing to drastically change their dietary lifestyles

Strength training is much more performance focused, and also results in hypertrophy as a nice side effect

Strength adaptations are the simplest and easiest to measure
And also the easiest to cheat

Aesthetic adaptations are the most subjective yet undeniable

Meaning the scale doesn’t lie, but the mirror does all the time

Growth hormone is arguably more important for overall well-being and general frame and functioning

Testosterone is arguably, more impactful on mood motivation, and then performance there’s directly downstream of that

They are both very effective for recovery for obvious reason reasons

There are several peptides that will “naturally“ boost your body’s production of GH

But they’re really are no super affective peptides for testosterone
There are just endless amounts of over-the-counter testosterone boosters and strange African supplements

SARMs are kind of that gray area of supplements
Where you can technically say your natural, even though you’re not anymore
They essentially temporarily enhance your results by tricking your body
But after a few months, your body figures out the trick and starts to adjust
Resulting in negative, unrelated side effects

In the beginning, it is almost always best to take a performance approach
Meaning, if you just complete this amount of exercise exercises with this amount of reps under these circumstances
Within this amount of time
You were guaranteed results

I would be worried if your coach likes to talk about themselves to you more than they like to talk about your programming with you

A good coach will understand how to pick your battles to make fast progress under real world circumstances
Instead of yelling at you to do more and to stop making excuses and being pussy

A good coach will help you alchemize a vice to help build up a character asset

A bad coach will gaslight you for being human and making the same mistake that they made but they just don’t want you to think that they did

The hardest thing to accept when you are overweight is the fact that it is going to take a long period of time before you get down to anything you find aesthetically admirable
This is accounting for the learning curve and the many mistakes and injuries that one finds themselves making

The hardest part about Fitness is the recovery time required to progress

Because everybody wants super fast results & they can’t stand to wait,
 they would rather try all sorts of strange hormones and research chemicals

On the same token, just the other side of the coin
If you’ve been training long enough, and you have maximize your genetic potential within a reasonable parameter
Then it almost becomes an obligation to cross that line between natural and enhance if you actually want to continue improving, your understanding of how the body works

This is the equivalent on the psychiatric side of introducing psychedelics and/or psychotropic drug drugs

Although I still don’t think there are any physical therapies that are as therapeutic and with SU trade-offs as the mental psychedelic side, but that’s a whole Nother column lol

“Sounding fat” is when you’re turn into a mouth breather for a really simple shit

Disciplinary deficits never really work well because of the backdrop of stress and anxiety that is self induced

Training for fun is basically the opposite as training for building

Meaning- building is when we intentionally prioritize areas we don’t like and we don’t want to focus on
While training for fun is the opposite-
Picking the most comprehensive and prioritizing by the enjoyable

if you’re in shape, training for fun can go off script when you start using training for emotional validation
And then that’s when you start playing a dangerous game

Training for emotional health is way different than training for validation

ON THE SPICER SIDE FOR GOOD REASON

SOAPS

LAST EDITED:12-29-25