- Oh hi, we sort of neglected to give you part two of the Bearded Bear workout. It’s included below, because misery likes company. The exact mode is more reps at slightly less weight, because as Coach Nap put it, we need to put on muscle and “get ripped for summer.” As someone who once was 30 pounds underweight and still devoid of muscle definition, I appreciated this in sentiment, if not in accurate description.
- This has to refer to boat muscles, a term we learned at Pete’s Gym in Gainesville when a guy said “hey, I’m going to the lake this weekend, but only working out boat muscles.” His workout buddy paused. “What’s that mean?” Answer: “Only the muscles you can see looking from another boat, dumbass.” The two both then said “fuck you” to each other and continued lifting, because that’s what friends do.
- Yes, “boat muscles” is about as Floridian a term as you can invent—but only if you ignore the existence of Kenneth Michael Stabler.
- This should be week ten, but we blew a week or so with travel, and took a deload week because we were sore and in need of a deload because we might have overdone it on phase one, and wanted to get into phase two without hating life too much. Let’s call it week thirteen? We’re not going to be perfectionist about it, and just get through it and reset if travel comes along and blows everything else out of the water. That’s kind of an important thing if you’re a busy person trying to pull this off with a full adult workload and travel and two children who start the day literally assaulting you for food.
- Did we start doing this workout just to be strong enough to fend them off, if only for a little while? Yes, that is exactly the point. They will kill me, and nothing changes that, but I want to delay it for as long as possible. Remember: working out doesn’t make you good at fighting, but it does make your neck thicker, and thus makes the general you harder to decapitate/knockout/otherwise damage. YOU MIGHT WIN BUT YOU’LL BLEED.
- Still, we repeated a week because OCD never dies. If anything we’ve done more than this demands, because we did three workout in a week and missed one and didn’t count it, because....well fuck us for missing one, that’s why. We used to be very weird about missing a workout, and then realized that getting something is better than nothing—particularly if you’re traveling, working out of weird gyms you grab as you can, and running on fumes most of the time anyway. Just get the work in, and if you have to be a little OCD like we are and repeat a week because you missed a workout, well, do that if it helps.
- ARE WE RIPPED THO? No, but we are definitely more bearlike, and that’s what the workout’s called. It’s living up to its billing. I swear my wrists are thicker. My traps are there 24/7 whether I want them to be or not; I have a lat now, a good batwing I can stick out if I want to, even if it’s still anchored in a solid dad handle. I sort of have biceps now? They’re no longer Schrodinger’s biceps, at least, which is definitely new after years of having trash biceps via Crossfit and powerlifting deciding that beach muscles weren’t functional or something, or that “other lifts would get them.” It’s very vain and silly to work out your biceps specifically, and it’s definitely something you should do. General results physically are definitely bearish, bigger, and visible from great distances like...well, like a bear stomping through some blueberry bushes.
- Are we ever going to post pics of this? NO. No one wants to see a shirtless blogger.
- That bearishness all means shirts are an issue now—they’re certainly not made for dudes with long torsos anyway, and with traps it gets worse and creates a definite toddler-belly situation. We found an American Apparel going out of business and god help us, the world’s most pretentious mass-market t-shirt is actually one of the few that can work with long torsos and big shoulders. We bought 15 for $140 and never need clothes again, he said, like someone who only buys new clothes every ten years or so.
- The rest is the same as it’s ever been: Sleep, eat way, way more protein than you think possible, and get cardio of some sort so you don’t become a giant slug in a weight belt. Generally we feel really good, look better, and are stronger than before. If we tightened up on diet it might be even better! (I’m not tightening up on diet, ever.) For the first time in a long time I did ten pull-ups in a row the other day. Ugly, struggling pull-ups, but still, that’s the point. If ugly is the only way you can do it, then ugly is how you’re going to have to get through it.
Filed under:
BEARDED BEAR PART TWO: INCREASINGLY SWOLE PROBLEMS
YOU’LL HAVE TO BUY SOME NEW SHIRTS