OK this post will be blunt (no pun)

I grew up in a small town called Kaikohe in the north of New Zealand. A small farming community with a population of around 4000. Not far from one of the most beautiful tourist resorts in New Zealand, the Bay Of Islands.

My town was rough, a town with high unemployment, domestic violence & drug use.

When I was 12 I was abducted off the street & nearly murdered by a paedophile. My family busted up a year later after years of turmoil & domestic violence. Not perpetrated by my father I might add.

So around the age of 14 I began to drink regularly & heavily. I would drink until paralytic at least once a week & pop packets of painkillers. I was having nightmares every night & in a great deal of emotional pain.

I made friends with some oddball bad characters. One was an old irishman who used to give me and all my mates free grog.

Essentially I became a part time street kid at 14. All my older siblings left after my parents divorce & I was left with my younger sister and abusive mother. It was sheer hell. At around 15 after a year of serious drinking I added cannabis to the mix and began hanging out with a bunch of hard core dope smokers.

These guys were 10 years my senior. They were my best mates. Made me feel safe & we had a lot of fun.

One of them was a convicted rapist. He and 3 others had raped a woman in a car. He used to tell us all about it, how he ripped her pubic hair out, punched her repeatedly in the vagina while they held her down etc. He did time for that. He was as mad as a shit and it paid not to piss him off.

Another one was a nice guy, very shy & soft spoken. But he had schizophrenia and when he had a psychotic break he would become violent and try to stab people. One time his parents left him to look after the house while on holiday. He burned the family home to the ground.

Another had been inside and had “Hang Loose” tattooed across his forehead and chin. A friendly nice guy who enjoyed having punch ups while drunk.

So there were a bunch of these guys, heavies & dope growers that became my best friends when I was 15 years old. Trust me I was every bit as bitter & crazy as them at the time.

At this stage I became in love both with a girl that I couldn’t get & with a drug that I could get.

I was given an ounce of weed per day to smoke – that’s a very large amount of Cannabis – about the same as a tobacco pouch.

Some time it was just leaf, often head – often extremely potent weed.

At first I was obsessed with Cannabis. I loved it. I would smoke my ounce, get pissed on whiskey and tequila, my mates & I would go to parties, beat people up etc.

All my mates were doing the same. This was our world.

Once they robbed the liquor store and we had free flagons of gin & rum for weeks.

I was totally stoned & drunk for an entire year.

I smoked more Cannabis at the time than any of them & I was only 15. Marlies, Pipes, Numbers, Doobies.

I became insane.

After 2 months of smoking I needed more and more to get high. What once took a joint now took a bag.

I was on a roller coaster. I would awake in the morning deeply depressed, often cry, I was so lonely with all my great friends, no family.

My memory was gone, hell after a few months I didn’t know the month or the season – all I know was there was a session tonight, and a party.

But it wasn’t fun anymore. I had loud tinnitus 24/7. I also had kind of visual tinnitus – blobs of psychedelic aura’s floating around before my eyes 24/7. My eyes were extremely light sensitive.

My weight dropped to 6 stone. That’s about 80lbs & I used to wear 4 shirts & jeans all the time to hide my skeletal appearance.

I also used to hallucinate. The voices, yep I dont wanna talk about that but Cannabis does cause hallucinations when you smoke enough and combine it with alcohol & painkillers.

About the voices I can tell you this. I had real loud tinnitus & real loud voices in my head for a very long time. I knew if I told the doctor or anybody I would be off to the nut bin. So I told nobody – that was my little secret.

Essentially after living like this for a year I was near the end. Either death, the nut bin or go straight were my only options.

I decided to go straight.

Well at first I ditched my friends which was very difficult. I went back to school and after a year I actually passed university entrance. I doubled my body weight in the first six months.

I think I probably doubled my IQ in this time also.

It was extremely, extremely difficult. Like a paraplegic learning to walk again.

But I was still topping up in the piss & drugs once a month I would get totally smashed which kept me from withdrawal.

Finally after this tough but amazing year of recovery – with zero intervention or support – it was time to go totally clean forever.

I did it in an isolated shack on a farm out in the sticks. The old booze doesn’t like to let go of a man. It makes you pay a price, same for the codeine & opiate pain killers and of course the THC.

I had a psychotic break big time.

I kept it secret from everybody but it was pretty obvious things had been up for some time.

I gave up Nicotine, caffeine, codeine, cannabis & alcohol all at once so I guess it was to be expected.

I can tell you that I was not rational, I was paranoid & obsessed with a crazy notion which I totally believed in. Like a huge conspiracy that I rationalized. You dont need to know the details because none of them were real.

After two months of drug and alcohol withdrawal, extreme rage, anxiety and stress, I came to an epiphany.

I had actually been insane for two months. It was all wrong – a delusion caused by the drug dependency wearing off & my neurotransmitters returning to a normal balance.

Quite a profound personal experience but that was the turning point & in the months that followed I remained abstinent and eventually by the age of 19 I was fine.

So that’s what Cannabis did for me. Everybody that I smoked it with was mad.

Many of them went on to become some of the worst drug dealers in New Zealand. Some died violently.

Most are still mates with rapists and convicts. They are scum still & I am not.

If you choose to smoke cannabis I am better than you.

I and those like me are better human beings. As I did these things as a child my respect for adult drug users & proponents is zero.

Your word is worthless. Your opinion meaningless.

Isometrics should not be revisited – Its should be done everyday.

Way back at the age of 16 I was actually anorexic at six stone & close to my current height of 5ft 11in. I had a bad drug & booze problem so when I cleaned my act up I took up bodybuilding.

My first ever course was – You guessed it “Charles Atlas” Dynamic tension isometrics. I followed that up with the Dan Lurie course & barbells but kept up with the isometrics.

Well it’s not hard to double in body weight when you are that skinny & that is exactly what I did from six to twelve stone in six months.

Those were tough times for me but by the time I was 19 my head was straight & I was on the right path in life.

However at some point I ditched the Isometrics. Bummer.

It’s a bummer because Isometrics are just as important as Isotonics and back in the sixties they were probably considered more important.

You see the initial research revealed a 5% weekly gain in strength from isometric exercise. That’s compounding so just google up a compounding interest calculator & you can see what it will do for you.

Say for me one arm pressing my 70lb kettlebell – I should be able to press 114lb after a ten week cycle.

Heres a good calculator http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/compound_interest_calculator.htm

Now that’s respectable but if I do another ten week cycle & get the same progress it calculates to 185lbs and that is phenomenal.

A 5% compounding weekly gain is the absolute max you could wish for but even 2% per week non compounding is a decent gain over 10 weeks. I’m sure that if you have never trained isometrics or have not done so seriously in a long time, and you put super effort into it, you will get the top results on your first cycle.

Isometrics are best done daily – every day of the week. Keep them within the hormonal window 40 – 90 minutes.

Now you wont continue to get a 5% increase for eternity. You can expect that for 6-10 weeks only.

You need to use periodization with your isometrics. Should you just do isometrics on a 2 months on 2 months off cycle? Or can you cycle static & dynamic isometrics?

The static isometric cycle would be low duration high intensity – dynamic long duration lower intensity, I am referring to the actual isometric contractions.

The static isometric cycle would coincide with a strength or power focussed isotonic cycle.

In this way you should be able to do isometric training every day of the year. Isometrics also compliments & accelerates flexibility – just study the Thomas Kurz material for full programs.

Your dynamic isometrics can include Harry Wang’s Dynamic Strength style training & Sanchin, even bodybuilding posing routines. You would do this stuff while cutting and doing more muscular endurance type isotonics.

So it seems to be a two month cycle can be introduced give or take.

During those dynamic periods cardiovascular and muscular endurance can be enhanced and fat can be burned off. During the static phase massive strength gains can be made.

I’m going to give it a serious shot.

Old Steve Justa is a real character as we all know. I have his book “Rock Iron Steel” which is great. I love training with my weight vest and doing isometrics and other stuff.

I never looked Steve up on youtube before and seen as his stuff didn’t seem to be available on Bud Jeffries site any more I took a look.

Well what I came across was his crack head best buddy singing about him raping:

A kind of catchy tune but I’m sure it was a one off performance.

This is his crazy buddy ranting about smashing over Bud Jeffries:

Well its all a bit crazy the bummer is that none of Steve’s stuff is available off his site any more & I wanted the isometrics videos

In a Facebook post, Bjornsson shared his daily diet ahead of the 2016 World’s Strongest Man event.

In total he eats 900 grams of beef, more than 1.5kg of sweet potatoes or potatoes and up to 14 eggs.

6:50am Morning workout! Cardio + CORE for 30min Bcaa (branched-chain amino acids), Glutamine + handful of almonds
7:30am 8 eggs + 200gr Oats + blueberries & strawberries + avocado
9:30am 400gr Beef, 400gr Sweet potatoes, handful of spinach & greens
11:50am Bcaa, glutamine,
12:00pm 400gr Chicken + 400gr potatoes, greens + some fruits
2:00pm Blender = 150gr oats or sweet potatoes, 2 bananas 150gr kellogg’s rice krispies, frozen berries, handful almonds, peanut butter and glutamine
2:30pm Training strongman, Bcaa, glutamine, Vitargo
5:30pm 60gr protein + 2 bananas
6:00pm 500gr beef + potatoes, greens
8:30pm 500gr salmon + 500gr sweet potatoes
10:30pm 50gr casein protein or 6 eggs + avocado + 30gr almonds + 50gr peanut butter
Drink a lot of water throughout the day + Juices to get more calories!!
middle of the night 50gr casein protein or raw eggs

I grew up in the north of New Zealand. Many area’s in New Zealand are covered in large commercial pine forests. Pinus Radiata that soft timbered lovely smelling stuff. Up north work was thin on the ground so many teen agers and young men went to work in the forest. In New Zealand its simply known as forestry work, not being a lumberjack – nobody is referred to as a lumberjack.

The fact is that my mates working the forest were the fittest individuals I ever knew. Most of them had resting pulse rates around 40 bpm. Some of these guys were small and nimble but others were big like 300lbs and lean.

Seldom did they ever set hands upon an axe, that kind of work was done with a chainsaw.

So how did they get fit?

1. High Pruning

In this video the guy is doing it with a chain saw:

But everybody I knew normally did it only with the loppers because its too dangerous to do with a chain saw. Let me explain the procedure. You have an 8 or 12 foot ladder that hooks around the tree at the top. You take the bottom feet of the ladder & military press the whole thing above your head full stretch. You then haul your self up onto the ladder and climb to the top, standing on the top rung.

You then reach up as high as you can and begin cutting off branches with the loppers. If you drop the loppers you must climb back down & get them.

OK now these are not sticks & twigs, you are cutting off solid damn branches all day long with brute force & technique.

I tried it one summer’s day & my heart red lined all day long while the sweat came from every pore just like a sauna. I managed to prune 40 tree’s & quit never to try the job again.

The other guys were doing 80 trees in a day, some could do over 100.

That’s climbing from 20-30 feet up a tree then cutting off every branch by hand and they were able to do 100 in a day then come back the next day, and the next for a 40 hour week. Week after week.

These useless no hopers and bums were super athletes.

Another job was planting the seedlings & fertilizing them. How do you think that is done?

Well with a 40lb box of seedling or fertilizer is how, then you proceed in a dead straight line over hills gullies, dead fallen trees, whatever and you plant until empty. Then go back get more and continue, bending over, hauling and walking all day long.

I never tried it but some of them reckoned this was harder than the high pruning.

Now you can not get fitter than these guys. This is their job five days of the week.

Two of my favourite fitness blogs are http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/ and https://www.foundmyfitness.com/

Ben is an ex-bodybuilder & an ironman style multi athlete. Rhonda Patrick is a nerdy scientist into fitness.

Both of them invest the focus of time & energy into their blogs as the cornerstone of business operations so they are up to date with podcasts, articles etc.

Rhonda has a big pile of videos and some awesome info. Ben does more podcasts. Now if these two got together & released an info product it would be dynamite.

This is an update on my last post

First two super cheap places to get PEMF equipment:

https://www.amazing1.com/health.html

https://www.magnetronmagneticpulsers.com/products.html

Second another firm is now crowdfunding a thermoregulation device:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-quantlet-your-workout-wellness-optimized#/

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/rtx-the-pro-s-secret-to-staying-cool#/

I want to tell you folks about a couple of devices that can blast your training in a similar way to roids without the side effects.

Now these are not anabolic in the way that steroids are & do not replace testosterone. Rather they can do for your training & recuperation what steroids do.

If you use steroids & these devices together then even better results for you (except for the side effects).

OK now a few summers back I was doing military rucking programs with my weight vest. The summers get hot here in New Zealand and walking with 20-80lbs soon becomes a true test.

The main problem apart from arm occlusion & shoulder/foot pain is over heating.

So I did a lot of research on thermoregulation – if you search the blog you will find my post on cooling vests.

Well it turns out that while cooling vests are good they are not the best solution – cooling gloves are.

Not just any cooling glove but the variety that has a vacuum to induce circulation that is normally shut down by the cold. The palms of hands, soles of feet & cheeks are the main thermoregulatory surfaces of the human body.

Check out the details here http://www.avacore.com/

Anyway use of this device can increase your training volume 4x during each workout – great stuff – just like steroids.

OK but wait a minute, this is fantastic but what about over training & recovery?

Obviously if you are not on steroids then training with this device will make you train much harder & longer but it has no recuperative benefit – you will burn out & over train.

I was highly impressed by the device & decided immediately to buy or make one but the recuperation factor was a concern.

Well now I have found the opposite piece of the puzzle.

PEMF – Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy

YES you can have steroid like effects not just in training but also in recovery. PEMF is the perfect compliment to the cooling glove because it turbo charges your recuperation.

Now I am not going to describe all of the benefits of PEMF because a short google will reveal to you thousands of pages on it.

What I will do is give you the link to the best deal device I have been able to find…

http://www.amazing1.com/health.html

Hormone Replacement Therapy is a polite term for steroids. Yep and after 31 years of drug free training I think my andropause is reaching the point where I will have nothing to lose & much to gain by beginning Hormone Replacement Therapy.

I realize fully that once I begin then I will be using steroids for the rest of my days.

But this year I turn 48. I nearly died in 2015 from an industrial accident. So I have nothing to lose. I could be dead in ten years from cancer or heart disease anyway as a middle aged male.

It is time to become an expert on the safe use of steroids, peptides, Hormone Replacement Therapy and genetic strategies.

I dont want to die or grow old but the realization that you are comes swiftly.

Here in New Zealand Hormone Replacement Therapy is legal but steroids are not. I can go to Thailand for steroids if I so wish but for starters I will assume HRT under medical supervision. Some time I hope in 2016.

So to make it clear I intend to undertake HRT & possibly later some legal use of steroids under strict medical supervision.

I do not intend to become a hardcore steroid freak & drug addict. I do not intend to use drugs without medical assistance & I will only use them where I see the possible risks are less than the risks of aging that they will mitigate.

From Steroid.com:
In What Countries are Steroids Legal?

In what countries are steroids legal; not just legal but outright legal. Without question, the prime example is Mexico; in Mexico you can buy or sell anabolic steroids anywhere you want. There is no regulation on manufacturing or purchasing, there is no such thing as a possession violation or anything of this nature. Many in the U.S. often take advantage of Mexican laws due to its close proximity; however, there is a catch. If you are a U.S. citizen, you can legally go to Mexico and buy, possess and use all the anabolic steroids you want and legally so, but you cannot legally bring them back with you. If you do, even though they were legally purchased under Mexican law, brining them across the boarder is once again a violation of the Steroid Control Acts.

Beyond Mexico, there are several countries where you can do pretty much anything you want when it comes to anabolic steroids. Bulgaria, Columbia, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Syria and the Ukraine all carry almost non-existent anabolic steroid laws. It should go without saying, when it comes to the question, where can I buy steroids legally, well, we’ve just given you the open door answer.

If you have trained for many years or are training at an elite level you will be coming up against plateaux & injury. I want to suggest a strategy that can take you to a more advanced level & its one most athletes neglect.

This is incorporating full on medical & athletic rehabilitation strategies.

For example I just underwent an intensive 2 month sauna detox – close to 100 hours with mega vitamin & mineral support.

I wanted to do this for years but didn’t until I had the serious medical issue of chemical poisoning. Now I have done the detox I feel like I will live 10 years longer. Should have done it all along.

I would say detoxification is the initial measure to take. Not a half ass diet or a few measures like improving air quality. I mean all of those minor things plus hardcore sauna for 100 hours. That is a real detox.

Now once that is done you can look at your musculature, joints and internal organ systems.

How do people train that suffer from serious medical issues in the areas?

Cardiac & pulmonary rehabilitation for example. What will happen to you if you apply these same strategies as an athlete?

All of the organ systems have associated rehabilitation programs that can be applied to athletic conditioning.

Muscles & joints – its the same. From the ankles to the neck you can super strengthen every joint system in your body using the medical rehabilitation programs – before any problems arise.

This is a means to leapfrog to a higher level of conditioning.