Fight Club - The First Rule Is...

my first real haircut in years- I loss weight, see!

I'm not going to definitively tell you what it would take for you to build muscle because so many people are going to react differently. However, I am going to tell you that if you do any level of cardio, you'll be burning that fat, but also muscle. I reached my goal of 150 lbs. Probably should lose more, but I feel pretty solid. When I stopped with the drinking, it just sorta' made my gut less queasy. Now if I can shake my chili cheese Fritos habit, I'm going to be in business. Kinda brings me up to my next goal...


...I remember watching that movie "Fight Club" when I first came to Los Angeles in 1999. It was a defining movie for me because the movie takes place in L.A. but doesn't necessarily say it. It actually is suppose to be Delaware. That's where all the credit card companies were, so what better way to destroy American infrastructure than at its debt. We're all back to square one. Many people in my generation salivated at that thought. But they also stayed away from this movie in droves because...well...that was also a generation that saw the irony of paying to see a Hollywood actor play poor but in reality was richer than Jesus. If Jesus would've pulled his resources. Blessed are the poor or something like that.


For me, I was just enthralled with director David Fincher's style. The guy is a graphic designer. His movies are so precise. You can't imagine his films shot any other way. A meticulous mind with a chaotic movie. Saw his name as a matte painter in the credits for "Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade" so you know he learned from the school of hard knocks. Another thing was Brad Pitt. Now, I wasn't all that into physical fitness at the time. I had my routine. I was trying to get stacked. But a lot was made of his physique. A lot of fitness folk call this shrink wrap muscle. The type that just slinks around the hardened solid muscle. You see bodybuilders have a gut and they all look kinda spongy. Not Pitt. He was ripped. Me? I was there as a senior in high school. Simple solution for me was that I didn't eat much and I did sit-ups until I was sick and pushups until my sit-up sickness went away.


I stacked on muscle weight. Mostly fat buffet eating girth. To me weight was weight. But that's so really not true. And the Ludus training taught me endurance, stamina, determination and some hate...you can watch a teaser of the torture we go thru here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jO3ofto2yPI


Well, now it's been years since I saw that movie. And my new goal is to get to Tyler Durden. One thing that I have to come to grips with is that Brad Pitt has an entourage and personal chef who makes this much more accessible.  I'm not six feet tall. So, if I get shredded, I will have to prepare myself to look scrawny again. Because, the type of muscle Pitt had was mostly cosmetic. He was built to fight raw. To give that illusion that he fought in some underground den while living off a can of pork and beans a day. I searched and came across his workout too.


Basically, HIGH reps ending with shorter reps but with heavier weights. For instance...3 sets of pushups - 75 reps each with 60 second rest period in between. This will make you ill. Then you do 3 sets of benching. Each one growing larger in weight but less in reps. So your first set is a lighter weight...but you do it 25 reps. The 2nd set you do roughly 20 lbs. heavier but 15 reps and the last is your max done with only 8 reps. He targets only one body area a day. Two days of cardio.


Now, for a lot of bodybuilders this is clearly against everything they believe. And I tend to agree. This isn't more about muscle building as muscle showing. Shred all that fat to show your muscles. That's the new goal.