Based on what I've heard/read, this seems overly generous to SBF by multiple orders of magnitude (though I agree Ellison seems mega-lol).

Yeah, this.

Prob my favorite investigative journalist in the world ever. I like this and all of his videos whether they are crypto related or not. I think somebody on here first recommended him to me.

Should be reading fbifemboy for the definitive analysis.

I do find the whole FT thing about his LoL rank to be amusing. Comparing it to never being able to learn to ride a bike is apropos.

The LoL stuff was the FT at its finest; nearly as good as the Wirecard investigation.

What's the deal with stiff-bars in powerlifting? Does every fed use these? I found it utterly impossible to squat on. Extremely uncomfortable for hbbs. I have lost a lot of respect for powerlifting in the last 2 hours squatting on a stiff bar using challenging 90%+ weights for the first time.... like what an obtuse invention. Have these been part of powerlifting for a long time? When did they decide the ole fashion texas power bar wasn't cutting it?

But of course my hypocritical ass will praise deadlift bars lolol. Although I find that DL bar adds less to my DL going from a standard oly/power bar to a DL par compared to the amount going from oly bar to stiff bar deducts from my squat. Bench... lol bench. 11 year old injury prevents me from benching anything appreciable.

Despite Oly's inevitable fall in the future and the fact that I have not practiced the sport for several years (I did a max clean in 2019 at an oly gym in shanghai!11), I am becoming even more of an elitist about it's position as supreme among strength sports. God is oly lifting cool.... wish I could do it all over again from age 21 and hopefully be less of a ******.

BBing... f'kn lol. Inferior pageantry for insecure idiots to gain status among normie masses and impress literal homosexual males and attract a few nubile but neurotic and vapid gym bunnies. But at least I'm self aware about what I'm doing... and I suppose there is something "meaningful" and "deep" about going through a contest diet in terms of generally exercising extreme levels of self control and discipline.

I have to admit that I enjoy watching BB contests from time to time but Rip’s comment was particularly damning

‘Men standing on a stage in their underwear, being judged by other men’

Weightlifting is king of the strength sports. By a mile.

Powerlifting does suck mostly but we're def in the golden age. Does all the credit go to Teschereer for the galaxy brain idea of "hey maybe practicing your sport more will help?" It's just absurd what guys are making look routine now.

Definitely. Looking at some of the old 70-90s routines, I'm kind of amazed how much they relied on accessories even close to comp. While doing a lot of non-competition lifts very far out from competition is important for address weaknesses and imbalances, when you get even 12-16 weeks out, doing competition lifts or close variants only and in "strength" or "peaking' rep ranges exclusively definitely seems to be the best strategy. Some of what they did in the old days seemed like permanent hypertrophy phase. Like wtf are you doing chest supported rows to build your lats for when you're trying to max out your deadlift in a month for?

If I were a pure powerlifter, I'd probably not train pure Mike T style all year round and would make some time for gpp/unilateral work/"bodybuilding" etc, but even in that hypetrophy phase probably ~50% of my daily activity would be comp lifts for sets of 3-6.

Also, I think powerlifters do way too much lat/upper back training in the name of increasing their deadlifts. Deadlift is a lower back, glutes, hamstrings, and quads exercise. The lats do a little bit, but if you can do like ten to twelve bw pullups as a 220-242 your lats are more than strong enough and getting them bigger/stronger is probably not adding to your deadlifts nearly as much as hip thrusts/sldl/deficit dl/hyperextensions/hamstring curls/glute iso exercises.

Lats aren't really important for benching either. The upper back/rhomboid/rear delt/lower trap area and all of those muscles involved in scapular retraction are important, but again I expect the extent to which is massively overblown. Best to focus on strengthening delts/triceps/pecs to get a better bench.

Squats are a different story... powerlifters seem to maybe do too little lower body squat assistance and might benefit from more hbbs/fs/hack squat/leg press and especially unilateral movements.

If somebody already developed a sort of "intemediate" level of lean muscle mass, didn't have any severe technical errors, and had no pains/injuries, a program of almost entirely competition lifts done in the 60-85% SRPE 7-8 range for sets of 2-6 throughout most of the year until peaking time comes would probably be optimal. Assistance/accessories are what you use to fill in the gaps when one of the above pre-requisites isn't met.

Everyone has the autism about addressing "weaknesses" when in reality the weakness is all of them. Dudes with <150 bench doing bands, unless petite woman is just wtf? But literally every gym has some dude with a ~2xBW bench trying every manner of board/shirt/band/etc with 10min between lifts.

I dunno man. Everyone is a moron about their own training. I had to ask anklebreaker why he decided to include leg presses in a program when they were so great he hadn't done one in nearly a decade.

I'm sure I'm not the only one following the completely shocking news that Liver King has now been confirmed non-natural, but in further shocking news, it seems like his claims that the PEDs "didn't do that much" might not be totally accurate either:

never heard of him.

You don't follow the 9 Ancestral Tenants and eat bull testicles on the reg? I assumed that was just how things worked over there.

Some context:

When the Liver King story broke, I was hearing in my mind a loco rant about how that dude was so obviously not natty. It was great, but I'm sure not as great as the real thing would have been.

I have a vague suspicion of shenanigans from the participants. I wonder if Derek has gone into a partnership with Paul Saladino (Liver King's former business partner.) Derek seems to have said some nice things about Saladino recently, and seems not averse to a carnivore diet.

I have no evidence, I just mis-trust all the participants in the saga.

I saw that story break out on Twitter. Ridiculous. I was planning on posting about it but been busy.

Can't believe the jealous haters jumping on the King. Body obviously sculpted by natty sunlight. Been enjoying the spectacle.

Sorry been too busy shaming Alan Aragon. Can someone gimme a tl;dr on Liver King.

Here are my priors:
1) On roids
2) Scammer
3) Selling ****

Please blackpill me so I can post like Monte.

So... is he gonna die of improbable suicide Epstein style? My money is on "no". That one is what happens to people associated with Bill and Hillary, but Gary Gensler is probably not powerful or corrupt enough to get him suicided in prison and it's less clear that our ole SEC chief did anything seriously wrong that SBF would come forward with in the first place. I think he'll face "justice" and end up in a kushy federal prison that is much nicer than how everyday Americans live.

Curious to see what happens to the inflated ego amphetamine addict troll-girl.

Dafuq did he do to deserve this?

It's been years since I've read anything of his (or even thought of him really), but as I recall, he more or less gave good recommendations.

I'm joking. He got MeToo'd, but I obviously don't care about that.

So you're doing a 5 x 5 on bench. 4th rep of 5th set is an epic grind. As close to failing as possible, but you get it. Do you even attempt the 5th rep, knowing you're going to fail or do you just stop.

Do you have a spotter? If not, not even trying. If so, maybe depending how I feel in that moment.

I probably should have addressed that issue in the question. No spotter, but I'm benching in a cage with safeties at home. Injury risk is zero as is shame risk.