Drugs are bad, mmmkay

It’s been a quiet couple of months as far as daygame is concerned. I approached 6 girls in 9 weeks. I approach when a girl isn’t wearing a mask, gives me a strong IOI or gets my blood boiling. The days are cold, news of the virus still runs amok and the sun sets early in the evening, leaving behind a dearth of girls to approach.

Hence, there’s just not much to write about.

Of course, I stay busy. Without daygame, my priorities are to work, train jiu jitsu and read books. All are generally going well. I’ve got a good relationship with my manager, my colleagues are good, the work is somewhat interesting and it’s not too busy (only half my time is spent on paperwork and record keeping). Everything work related is just good, and I’ve learned not to expect more unless I’m willing to give up security. At the moment, I’m not. I’m working on things to ensure my long-term freedom and part of that means to conservatively trade my present time for security.

Even better than work, though, is jiu jitsu training. The gyms opened back up a few months ago, and after taking an 18 month break due to injury and COVID, I finally returned to the mats. I found a good gym with a mix of belts. My old gym was filled with white and blue belts. I didn’t realize it then, but that limited my ability to learn quickly and safely. Working with a range of higher-level belts has, in just 10 weeks, shown me the progression of the 10-15 year journey to a black belt. I can feel the difference between the calm rock that is a black/brown belt in contrast to the spasmodic white belt. I myself have shed the spaz and replaced it with paralytic confusion, an upgrade when you find any use of strength is turned against you when rolling with an experienced grappler. Fortunately there are ton of legit YouTube videos demonstrating various escapes, passes, retention tips and of course, submissions. I don’t mean to brag¹, but I did pull off a head-and-arm choke exactly as The American Gangster explained the set up from side control in a video. Nowadays I’m watching clips on escaping back mount and passing the knee shield, and anxiously waiting to try them out. In fact, I would be in the gym right now attempting those techniques had I not thrown out my back yesterday folding laundry². It’s frustrating being unable to train.

As far as reading goes, I’ve knocked out a number of books since my last post. As much as I fancy novels, my attention for the time being is directed towards general knowledge in the fields of economics (The Great Stagnation), health (The Case Against Sugar), wealth (How to Fail at Almost Everything), technology–and its relationship to economics (Apocalypse Never) and game (Krauser’s memoirs volume 3 and 4). I recommend all of them. Next on my list are the Vox Day books on SJWs. I don’t care for politics, but I do for economics and psychology, both of which are influenced by politics.

I must say, the last couple of months combined with the roll out of the vaccine scaling up, 2021 is off to a good start. Not to mention that when daygame finally does come around, I’ve got fifteen additional pounds on my body to put on display.

It can all be traced right back to jiu jitsu. Actually, to kickboxing. I joined a combat sports gym in 2018 and trained kickboxing for 8 months before my wrist was too hurt to effectively hit pads. Between the injury, and the headaches I would get from (light) sparring, I decided to try something else. That something else was heavily-clothed submission grappling. Just a short 5 months of training jiu jitsu led to a shoulder injury, probably because I had too much ego to tap early to kimuras, which put strain on the rotator cuff. I went to physical therapy where they had me lift light weights, and only weeks later I felt improvements. Around the same time I joined our little corner of Twitter and was exposed to the black pill, the idea that a man’s looks is all that matters for attraction. In reality, looks and game go hand-in-hand as they feed off of one another. Good looks give you more opportunities. Good game lets you seize upon them. To optimize my results then, I bought a couple of dumbbells and developed a workout routine and diet that emphasized strength while conferring with some of the guys in this space for guidance. The motivation was two-fold, improve girl’s attraction towards me and prepare myself for a return to the mats. The workout I came up with is:

Day 1
• 4×12-14 curls
• 3×20 shoulder press
• 3×20 bent-over dumbbell rows
• 3×20 skull crushers

Day 4
• 4×12-14 curls
• 3×20 clap pushups ups
• 3×20 leg raises with crunch
• 3×50 no-weight squats

I built up to the counts depending on the weights I was using. I hope it’s obvious I didn’t go from 0 to 100 with the above. I started with whatever weight would let me get to 10 repetitions. Once I could lift 20 repetitions per set, I would increase the weight. I lifted to failure, as per The 4-Hour Body, except when I ran out of weight and hit the 20 repetition limit. By the time I stopped lifting, in favor of rejoining the jiu jitsu gym 10 weeks ago, I was lifting 35 pounds for all exercises except the skull crushers, in which case I was nearly ready to increase the weight from 25 to 30 pounds. Had I more time in my daily schedule, I would continue lifting in addition to grappling. Instead I do grip exercises every couple of weeks so I can sink in tighter holds on my training partners.

Note how infrequent I was exercising. I would give my muscles three days to recover, and only trained my biceps in both rounds. And to maximize the number of reps before failure, I gave myself about an hour rest before each set. The method was greatly aided by the fact that I work from home as COVID restrictions were, and still are, in place.

I hadn’t lifted much throughout my life because I never experienced gains when I did. Only last year year did I learn that muscle growth is contingent upon protein consumption (0.8-1.2 g/pound). Lifting by itself doesn’t give your body the ingredients it needs to build muscle, so in addition I revamped my diet. For more than a year, my typical daily diet has been:

Breakfast
• black, unadulterated coffee

Lunch
• can of tuna with some mayo
• boiled egg
• stick of cheese
• peanuts
• carrot sticks
• washed down with cold decaf green tea

Snack
• more peanuts
• more pure, uncontaminated black coffee
• whey protein mixed with milk and water

Dinner
• a handful of spinach leaves
• meatloaf (thanks to Midwest for the recipe)
• tortilla (recently added)
• guacamole (recently added)
• mix of La Croix and Sprite Zero (or their substitutes)

Late-night snack (to help me sleep)
• milk
• peanuts
• something with a bit of with carbs and fat, like graham crackers dipped in cream cheese (unwittingly, thanks to Thomas Crown for the inspiration)

In addition to increasing protein consumption with the above, I supplemented my meals with fish oil, a multi-vitamin tablet, vitamin D and ZMA; a regiment similar to Magnum’s. After I made those changes to my diet, I found myself putting on 5 pounds in the first 6 months of lifting.

Walking around at 170 pounds, though, wasn’t enough. I was greedy.

In combat sports, every so often news comes around about a fighter getting popped for performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). The most common of which I’ve seen, is ostarine. I did a bit of research, reading various posts like this one by Derek and concluded that the risks of taking a relatively mild SARM (selective androgen receptor modulator) can be managed and consumed safely. The primary tradeoff is a drop in testosterone levels while the SARMs selectively activate androgen receptors on your muscles to promote growth during the 10-week cycle. With aggressive SARMs, it is recommended to take testosterone boosting substances for a few weeks in what is known as the post-cycle therapy (PCT). As Derek recommended, I took Testogen for the PCT, a mild booster.

My weight jumped from 170 to 176 pounds over the 10-week cycle.

I continued the diet and workout routine beyond my last ostarine dose, and ended up at 183 pounds just before Christmas 2020. At no point did I get rid of the belly fat protecting my abs. If the figure below is anywhere close to true, I stand around 23% body fat.

With a bottle of ostarine running for less than $100, it was a cheap enough experiment to run. Of larger concern was the effect on my testosterone. Before taking a swig of that sweetly bitter magic juice, I got my testosterone levels checked at the end of June. Now months since my last dose in September, it pains me to report that my testosterone levels are indeed less then before. Fortunately though, my body doesn’t feel any worse. I’ll run more blood work later this year and see what happens, though I’ve no plans to risk any further drops.

From here on out, I just say no.

I will not render myself a breuken mahn³.

1. That is a lie. I fully intend to brag.
2. True story. I assume I hurt my back during the last class, but for some reason it didn’t collapse until a few days later while lightly contracting the stressed muscles.
3. The 26 points I scored confirm my relative virtuosity above my compatriots.