Dear scrawny, form-nazi, social media trolls who can’t lift anything and will never achieve anything of consequence in the gym. I need your help.
I’m doing the thing I used to call “military press”. But thanks to you I know it’s not really, technically a proper “military press”. And thanks to you I know that if I incorrectly name my exercise it won’t ‘count’.
I understand that when an exercise doesn’t ‘count’ my body will biologically and metaphysically ignore the fact that I’m lifting overhead more than 10 of you could push along the ground. My body will recognise the mismatch between what I’m doing and what is pictured in your textbook and, in a marvel of Quantum Physics mysteriousness, it will reassemble any ATP, CP and glycogen used, my synapses will draw all calcium ions back, all actin and myosin filaments will be un-traumatised and even all heat energy produced will be un-transferred from all atoms affected. It will be as though nothing ever happened. All because I silently gave the exercise the wrong title in my head.
Please understand, I do comprehend just how serious it is to give an exercise an inappropriate name or insufficient description, forcing it to not ‘count’! As such, I completely respect how aggressively you need to attack those of us who offend the correct exercise naming conventions and blaspheme the almighty bodybuilding bible! You are Missionaries of the Iron! You are doing God’s work.
The thing is, I’m not sure your light-weight, tai-chi-weight-lifting thing is for me? I mean, it is undoubtedly very beautiful; like ballet. You really are a lot like ballerinas. And those faces you pull when you artificially squeeeeeeeeze your muscles are very ferocious; in a ’scared-cat’ kind of way. And I know you develop form so beguiling it can make Angels weep. But I can’t help but notice that none of you have any more muscle than a rotted cadaver. And, to be honest, I’m just not sure whether the angels are weeping with laughter at your pathetic-ness? Or weeping from the waste of time and energy lost from the universe that your training represents? I mean, it’s a law of physics that energy cannot be created or destroyed; but what you do in the gym is such a waste of energy that the entire universe somehow manages to be a little bit worse off after your every workout!
So to avoid training so inefficiently that it causes damage to fundamental structure of matter, I want to keep doing what I’m doing. And, if it is OK among the members of your ballerinas clergy, I’d like to make it ‘count’ by giving it the appropriate name. Because it seems that the name of the exercise is always the contentious issue for you?
I like lifting heavy weights as explosively as possible because it works really well for other superficial things such as building muscle and dramatically improving body composition. I realise that an awesome looking physique is not something you form-Nazi’s care about as much as awesome looking technique on your exercises. But, secretly, that is what I do it for.
So what should I call the exercise where I sit in a seat and push a barbell above my head with my arms? And what muscle should I claim to be using to move my arms above my head? According to you, zero contribution is being made by my deltoids which, under any other circumstance, could not avoid being the primary muscle involved? Please tell me what I should call the thing I do which has grown my clients and I bigger, stronger shoulders than any of you will ever have?
