Hail to the Dinosaurs!
There's a combination coffee shop and
book store not too far from the house,
and I went up there the other day to
grab some java.
After I grabbed my coffee, I stepped into
the bookstore.
Big mistake.
There were two skinny guys standing in
front of the section where they keep the
"fitness" books. I sometimes check the
fitness and exercise books out just for
laughs. But this time, the laugh was on
me.
The two guys were waving their arms and
jumping up and down and arguing about "core
training."
"No, no, no, that's all wrong!" screamed
the one guy. "You gotta reverse contract the
hyperbolic hyperbole chain. The only way to
do that is to flex-contract at seven second
intervals for a minimum of thirty-seven reps.
If you do less than that, you work the rectus
flexus and the patella accelerators."
The other guy sneered in scorn.
"That's BULL!" he said. "Professor Munchkin
says you need to decompress the retractor magnus
by enervating the facilitators with barium blast
bunch reps. You follow a strict 7/9/4 protocol.
Nothing else will work!"
I'm not sure what it was, but his words seemed to
make the other guy go stark raving mad. He actually
began to foam at the mouth.
I thought it was going to end up in an ugly brawl
right there in the middle of the store. I wondered
if I should leave. If there was an ugly brawl,
they'd call the cops, and I'd be a witness, and I'd
have to give a statement, and it would be forever
before I got back to the house and was able to brew
a cup of coffee and sit down and work on some Dino
projects.
Then I spotted a book that looked interesting.
"Excuse me," I said. "May I see that book?"
They turned to me in shock. They hadn't realized
that I was standing right next to them. Too much
yelling and shouting, I suppose.
"Who are you?" asked one of them.
"No one," I said. "But I'd just like to see that
book."
Now, the mistake of the day was going to the
bookstore. The second mistake was talking to the
two lunatics. The third mistake was wearing a t-shirt
that said DINOSAUR TRAINING.
One of the guys stared at the t-shirt.
"Dinosaur Training?" he said. "What's that? Do you
train dinosaurs?"
"No. it's strength training," I said.
"Great! You can settle it for us," he said. "We
were arguing about core training. He follows the
X-15-7W Core Train System. I follow Prof. M's
Munchkin Mass Method. What do YOU do to train
your core?"
Each looked at the other smugly, waiting for me
to affirm HIS particular core training system.
"Well, the other day I did power cleans and power
jerks -- snatch grip high pulls -- and front squats,"
I said. "Those all work the core pretty hard."
They stared at me in confusion.
"Never heard of those," said the first guy.
"Do you do them on stability balls?" asked the second
guy.
"Well, the day before that I did power snatches, power
cleans, clean grip high pulls and more front squats,"
I offered. "Those seem to be okay for core work."
They shook their heads, ignored me, and wandered off
to the magazine section, where they picked up some
muscle glossies and began reading them avidly. It was
very clear they thought I was crazy.
I nodded to the girl who works at the checkout counter,
waved to the guy stocking new books in the fiction
section, and headed out the door.
I apparently don't know squat about core training --
but I'm twice as old as either of those guys, and I
guarantee I can out-lift both of them together. And
I don't care what Prof. Munchkin says about it.
Yours in strength,
Brooks Kubik
P.S. For silly stuff, read the muscle comics. For
serious training, grab any of the books and courses
at the Dinosaur Training Bookstore:
http://www.brookskubik.com/products.html
