Adaption

Quick post and a test of creating a post from my Google Nexus 7 WordPress app.

Was working the bench press last night with my friend and probably tried to push out one too many reps. Form went south and was arching my back a little too much, cheating to get the last ones up. I knew I was going to pay for it.

This morning I was sore but didn’t think anything of it. I’ve been sore before. So i went of to play some hardcore Olympic level table tennis with the Zen master.. A man twice my age and impossibly full of energy reserves mere mortals don’t have. He’s a terminator.. I’m positive of this.

He’s mentoring a young kid into ping pong, and today he and his father were there to watch the two of us have an epic battle.

2nd game in, my back had other ideas. I felt it, that split second where you know if you finished the motion, you’d be on the ground and need to be carried home. I stopped just short. I wasn’t down for the count but I knew I was fucked. I couldn’t stand tall, I couldn’t run from left to right, I couldn’t put any pressure on my back.

2 games in. Fuck. This would be a huge letdown for the father and son. I looked at Zen master and meekly grimaced, stood up slowly and said I had pulled something, but wasn’t going to use it as an excuse, to hit me with all he had. The kid came to see a war, wasn’t about to give him less.

The first few matches were a joke as I tried to figure a way to counter his shots and go for kill shots of my own. Without my prior range or mobility he was tearing me apart. But with each game I was forced to examine patterns, rely more on spin and accuracy, and most importantly, just get the ball to his side of the table and force him to make an error.

While he kept beating me, they weren’t resounding victories. I kept pace. I stated returning shots to the corners forcing him to bounce from end to end, thus keeping me in the center. I stopped using crazy spins on the serve and lobed them to just barely clear the net, forcing him to lob the returns high into the air giving me the advantage to make him start running left to right or just to smash it back down with a killer backhand which does not require back strength.

By the end I still only ended up winning about 4 games of 20… And lost our best of nine series ender 5 to 3. But they were all close games, half going into overtime where you need to win by 2 points.

Adapt. It’s what we do when we encounter change. The world is always changing, always evolving, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. It helps us overcome obstacles and be resilient. Ask a paraplegic or someone wearing a prosthetic limb. It’s what you do when faced with a choice of doing something you don’t want to do to proceed forward or do nothing and be left behind.

The kid wanted an Olympic war, and I couldn’t give it to him by doing what worked in the past, so I had to adapt quickly, learn, experiment, grow. And for it we gave him a great show that will encourage him to continue learning the game under Zen master and put a smile on both dad and sons face.

The alternative was doing nothing and driving home.

To anyone who tells you game is smoke and mirrors, what they’re telling you is to go home. Learn game. Adapt. The goalposts have moved and there’s nothing you can do to change that. Learn how to rid yourself of traits that get you disqualified from playing.

You have a choice. Adapt or quit.

Now if you excuse me.. I need to go hobble off to my bed like the hunchback of Notre Dame now and wait for the Advil 500’s to kick in. Nobody said adapting was painless. Nothing worthwhile ever is.

..
Sent from my tablet. You see a spelling mistake, its the tablets fault.

The Revenge of the Few Extra Pounders

Regular reader ‘Stormy’ sent me one of those ‘funny’ ecards that float around the interwebz every now and again along with a stirring question.

“WTF all the fat chicks keep reposting this.”

Good question Stormy. I already answered for you but i’ll delve in deeper as to the why.. and also why it’s so horribly ineffective as ‘a joke’.

Firstly, it’s important to understand possible motive. It boils itself down to a self defense mechanism. The angry victim wants to strike back. There was a time many moons ago when i was not in shape, or popular. I had my own cohort of tormenters ready to pick on me. If you’re being constantly harassed, it’s easier to create a fault in your tormenter and focus on it, rather than look inward and see whether your harasser has a valid point, albeit presenting that point very poorly. And even then, your harasser is just that.. and individual, not a society or class of people. Sometimes people forget this.

Why?

Because it’s simply an easier way of dehumanizing their real or perceived abusers. The only way you feel better is by finding or creating out of thin air, something wrong about who you think is holding you down, projecting it over everyone who fits that type per-emptively and making fun of them to build yourself up as being morally, ethically or genuinely superior, especially by adding in the God bit at the end of it. I mean, if God is on your side, how could you possibly be in the wrong? God had to divvy between awesome looks and awesome personality, so it must suck to be a hottie when the big girls have all that awesomeness unto themselves.

But where this one fails horribly is this… i have never found a girl to be hysterical. Funny yes, but not hysterical. If they laughed at my jokes, then they were awesome. Brilliant? I’ve met girls much smarter than me. I like smart girls. I think it’s a great bonus if i could talk about philosophy or current events and not worry about them forgetting to change the oil in the car or put a peanut butter sandwich in the Bluray player. Smarts are great, oversmart not so much. Brilliance is in the eye of the beholder and if played poorly, it becomes a negative trait in the blink of an eye. BUT it was never was my primary interest for wanting to hookup with a woman. I’m a LOOKS first, ask questions late type of guy.

So that slogan really doesn’t do anything, ANYTHING to help their cause and only reaffirms that size 2 women are the type to be around. The careful wordplay tries to make it sound like an insult, like size 2 women are stupid and unsociable. If only the land whales posting these slogan cards actually understood gender properly. This is intrasexual competition at it’s finest. They know that in the looks department they are woefully handicapped in the mate selection department. They’re basically holding the door while the pretty ones get first dibs. They’re pissed. So instead of either:

Fat Acceptance. I didn’t get it.. so why should you?

Funny how it goes.

When i was fat and out of shape.. all the girls didn’t pay any attention to me, nor did they care. It wasn’t acceptable then. (Nor did it matter when i was skinny with no muscles, or when i was too beta.. but those are for another day)

Now that Game has flipped the script, and MGTOW won’t tolerate women who don’t bother to keep a healthy weight or appearance… we have the fad of ‘Fat Acceptance’ springing up like Krispy Kreme outlets in the early 2000’s.

Where was the love from my fellow womenfolk when i had a gut? Where was NAAFA?

I’m one of the last people to harp on others for the way they look. My motto is ‘do no harm’. People go through enough crap in their lives.. i don’t need to pile on to it. But i do preach to people to change what they can, fuck the rest. I don’t ask people to get cosmetic surgery to look beautiful. But controlling your weight isn’t rocket science. It’s simple discipline and self control, and a little movement here and there.

Yet.. you are asking me to ACCEPT a very backwards idea.

You are asking me to accept that you simply do not want to put in the effort to get healthy and shed weight. And by effort i don’t mean choosing a low-fat dressing to go on your KFC chicken salad or chewing on ‘flax seed’ bars or having a diet cola with your Big Mac.

You’re asking me to accept that you wish to remain in an unhealthy state that will cost everyone else down the road.

If you want to remain that way and then by all means eat another McDonald’s OREO pie, be my guest. I won’t make fun of you for being obese. I was there once, and ridiculed for it mercilessly (by women i might add) so my humility becomes me.

Yes folks.. that’s not a type-o. OREO baked pies.

But i won’t be attracted to you either. Most other folk wont too. And you can’t expect them to get over that. Attraction goes beyond ‘what’s on the inside’. Initial attraction is SKIN DEEP. Don’t tell me i’m shallow for not wanting to to be intimate with an overweight woman.

And while we’re at it, if you’re not willing to put in the effort required to get healthy then:
[updated list with links]

• do not be incensed if we ask that you pay more for insurance premiums. you will sack our health care reserves quicker than most
• do not be insulted if the airline makes you buy 2 tickets or adds a ‘fat’ surcharge because you are making the plane burn more fuel and removing one extra customer off that flight
• do not be flippant when you are turned down for a job where presentable appearance is required, or productivity is hampered by your inability to move quickly and efficiently
• do not get angry when people give you dirty looks for getting to park in a handicap spot for physically disabled people when you have the means and ability to overcome it. Spinal cord injuries not so much.
• etc.

To round out this post, i just want to link to a comment from over at HUS that the great Obsidian pointed to in regards to hard truths women have been denied because no one will discuss it to them. The lies of feminism telling both boys and girls to ‘be yourself, accept your body, love who you are and someone will love you too’ was immolated by this comment from a female who sees the lies for what they were. You can read the comment here.

Fat doesn’t have to be mocked, there’s no reason to make a persons life harder. But it doesn’t have to be accepted either. I don’t have to make fun of you, but don’t sit there and expect me be attracted to something i can’t get it up for. That’s not a design flaw in me.

Shit like this doesn’t help:

Why you should work out, Part Deux

So here i am sitting in a puddle of my own sweat drinking a cool down drink to recapture some of my fluids i’ve released all over the floor like a drunken slug.

I can’t stop dripping. It’s unsightly.. think of the senator from X-Men, the one who Magneto irradiates and his genes get messed up. Just before he dies he turns into a big body sack of water before he simply pops and drains away.

Just keep pushing play!

That’s me, right now.

The city is in a record heat wave. I picked the worst day in the world to do Plyometrics, or PlyoX as it’s affectionately known as.

“PLYO X…  I HATE IT, BUT I LOVE IT!”
-Tony Horton

Not too long ago i wrote about why you should start working out, at least from my own perspective and life’s experience, yours may differ. But something happened today that i thought i’d share which is another reason to start working out.

At work today, a coworker bought a 4 pack of some delicious looking ‘Drumstick‘ ice cream cones. Strawberry Cheesecake flavor with ‘Extra fudge‘ in the cone. Man it looked sweet, specially on a putrid 35 C degree day. Since i swore off sugar and excess fat this should have been easy.. but even i turned the box over to read it’s (and i use the term loosely) ‘nutritional‘ contents. Even my mind was starting to rationalize letting me eat one.

Per Drumstick
Calories: 210
Fat: 8 grams
Sugar: 23 grams

On the surface, this isn’t the worst possible snack. And considering the heat, and the overall super low volume of junk i consume, i could very well have justified it. Even all my colleagues were egging me on saying one wouldn’t kill me or stop my progress. And they’re right. One won’t.

But one can so easily and quickly devolve into two, then four, then a few, and so on. Every slippery slope starts with one, especially when there’s peer pressure involved.

I politely declined and that was the end of it. Then my one colleague who is also working hard to lose weight, who also turned down the drumstick looked at me and said:

Why you should start working out

So you never get any doubts in your head that you are being passed over because you look like a slob.

That’s why i did it. You might agree or disagree but in the end it did the trick.

I got tired of looking at other guys around me, all seemingly fit and muscled up. All things being equal, i was at a disadvantage in the body shape department.

I was 190lbs when i left my former life. A tight belt size 38 waist. I wasn’t morbidly obese, but i did roll over my belt. Even tho i usually dressed well enough to conceal it, i certainly didn’t feel so hot with my shirt off and if i didn’t like it, i knew women wouldn’t lust after it either. I smoked, i was weazy and out of breath, hurt my lower back often, and really lazy.

My body image was my mental handicap. Without changing it, nothing else was going to help.

Shameless plug, but so worth it!

I started on p90x shortly after my marriage kerplunkt. I was determined. I nailed my wedding ring to the wall and made a vow that anytime i felt like quitting, i would look at that fucking ring and draw strength to continue. I was determined to get to Jason Stackhouse levels of Vampire Diaries fame. I’d like to think i’m getting close (those damn abs are elusive). I’m 160lbs, size 32 waist (i almost cried when i got there) clothes fit nice, snug and tight to the body, shadows produce great muscle tone, bumps and divets, i have so much more energy and stamina and strength. And i know i fucking look good to myself. You may differ in opinion but fuck you, mine’s the only one that matters right now.