The Jimbo Slice memorial thread, feat Nate Dogg - The new Off Topic thread

John Meadows dying is a real shame, he seems to have been one of those guys who was becoming iconic as a coach. A big part of it was his friendly personality.

I've been dithering about really going all in on a pure bodybuilding programme for a few months. Before this I've always gone no further that what people would consider powerbuilding i.e My training was powerlifting but with lots of hypertrophy focused accessories. A few weeks ago I decided I would stop trying to ride two horses at once and go all-in on a bodypart split, high intensity approach. Not a John Meadows but with Paul Carter who, funnily enough, was a close friend of Meadows'.

So anyway, I've just finished a neural phase of a few weeks where I've deliberately de-trained to a degree. Next week moving on to do some work.

Still very conflicted about the whole thing, I think at this point I could programme the conjugate powerbuilding I was doing in my sleep, and I knew exactly what was going on, and I was getting results. The question now is will the next few months be a bust and I'll move back to what I was doing. I guess it's having the confidence to be prepared to waste that time to see if this works out for me.

If I retained or improved aesthetics... Hard shorter workouts (On average down from 80 minutes to 50 minutes so far) and put less pressure on passive structures / reduced likelihood of injuries it would be worthwhile even if my top end strength tanked.

I'm starting to think that one of the next trends to hit the training community is going to be the rediscovery of how to effectively train the quads, or just teaching people how to tell when a movement is quad dominant and when it is glute / hamstring / hips.

Conventional wisdom for years has been that it's the posterior chain which is weak, relative to the quads and other muscles on the front of the body, but I'm just not sure that's the case any more. If the quads are still up there then it's certainly not because they're being trained effectively in gyms on a regular basis...

Even when people are trying to bias their quads, or performing a movement they believe is quad dominant, they appear to often end up altering the movement pattern to get as much posterior chain involved as possible, because it feels more comfortable to them or they move more weight that way. I think a lot of the time they don't even realise they're doing it, and I'll put my hand up and say for many years I would put myself in that camp.

If your shins are remaining vertical on any movement, whether it's something involving free weights or a machine like a leg press, and there's no significant knee flexion going on, then what you're doing isn't quad dominant.

Sometimes it doesn't matter, but in the long term, for most people, it's going to be worth figuring out.

I’m not sure safety concerns by themselves have that much explanatory power when it comes to this. It’s not that people know and choose not to, I think there is a prevailing lack of awareness about what’s a quad dominant lower body movement and why.

Some people might say certain movements are dangerous, another line of argument will be that “it doesn’t really matter” (It depends, sometimes it doesn’t).

Step ups I never really liked. If you’re looking for something unilateral and quad dominant they’re not an obvious choice. Typically performed as glutes and hamstring dominant. Alternatives: Walking lunges where you really push off the front knee and up… or split squats with front heel elevated, probably most idiot proof. Those and leg extensions are probably the simplest way to train the average punter’s quads.

I do sissy squats but I don’t think everyone needs to, although they’re no riskier than the fads for pistols or muscle-ups that have come and gone.

Very off-topic, but I've been a fan of Dorian Yates for years. His achievements, his training methods, the backstory...

I knew that he had gone a little bit new age and "out there" a few years ago, and gotten into psychedelics and ayahuasca, but I don't think I quite appreciated how full-on into conspiracy theory stuff he is now.

Just listened to a podcast he did with True Geordie (Themselves not averse to a bit of conspiracy theory stuff, it must be said), and he seems to be a follower of David Icke for the past number of years. Secret families controlling the world, COVID is obviously a fake, plans for a New World Order, population replacement, believes there is something in tap water than encrusts the pineal gland, believes there is a cure for cancer that is being suppressed etc. etc. He even went into things like young adult movies like 'The Hunger Games', he argues dystopian SF is a way of preparing people for the totalitarian superstate that is coming, that they'll be a part of. He finished by saying that we're in the middle of a war, basically, and that he was on the side of god / a cosmic force for good.

I'm not mentioning all of this to make fun of him or whatever, just still surprises me when someone I respect in one aspect (his approach to training) turns out to hold these "out there" beliefs in other areas.

It's an interesting one.

Some of Dorian's personality traits, and the analytical streak you mention, would make me wonder if he wouldn't get an autism diagnosis if he was going to school these days, and got an assessment.

If you look at his life, although he enjoyed major successes in bodybuilding he also had a few notable traumas: Kicked out of his family home, imprisoned in borstal .... Then a period of stability and success in bodybuilding ... And then an unplanned exit from the sport due to injury, some other issues he doesn't talk about, divorce from his wife...

I do think a lot of people who really go deep into some conspiracy theories, and maybe some kinds of outright extreme ideology, end up there not because they're stupid, but because they went through a trauma or particular event that makes the explanatory power of conspiracy theories and similar systems of thought very appealing...

They offer you an explanation for almost everything that goes wrong in your life or that of the people around you. That can be appealing, there's always a straightforward place to direct your anger, and you can paint yourself as a victim when it suits, or a staunch hero in other circumstances etc.

I don't think he's a bad guy, but it seems like he has replaced his pro bodybuilder persona with a new persona that is based around this idea that he is a kind of new agey truth-seeker. It could be worse, at least he's not a nazi!