Tortuga Fitness Challenge
The difference between "Chud" and "Chad" is U
As some of you are no doubt aware, our beloved Tortuga Society has been going through some growing pains in the last month or two. Gaining members is a good thing, but that doesn’t mean we should rest on our laurels. Fortunately, your intrepid officer class has been hard at work expanding the Tortuga mission to both support our members’ personal improvement endeavors, as well as bind our buccaneer bros more tightly as a community.
One of our new initiatives will be the introduction of the Tortuga Society Fitness Standards. We want every self-respecting rightoid to be in shape - especially our guys. There are multiple reasons for this: on a personal level, you will feel better, you will have more energy, and you will probably live longer! And let’s not pretend your attractiveness to the opposite sex isn’t a factor here, especially for our young single bucaroos. I don’t know that you need to be hitting yourself in the face with a hammer, but hitting the gym a few times a week will surely improve your luck with the ladies.
There’s also a strategic factor to physical fitness. Everybody knows that attractive people have a natural advantage. Being in shape will help you nail job interviews. It will help you get a promotion. It will definitely help you make sales. This is true even when you are dealing with a heterosexual man who doesn’t want to fuck you. People simply react more positively to attractive looking people.
That’s why this New Yorker article was such a self-own:
This cover makes being right-wing look awesome. Which it is.
As I alluded to above, I think the “looksmaxxers” take it too far. I don’t think you should be getting leg extensions or plastic surgery, or anything, but being in shape, being well groomed, and being well dressed are signifiers of a confident, successful man. So your aesthetics matter - you are a brand ambassador for a social movement.
That’s why we will be introducing Fitness Standards to the Tortuga Society. Don’t worry if the word “standards” gave you a fright just now. We’re not going to kick you out if you don’t currently meet them. You should be looking at these standards as metrics - a way for you to identify weak areas where you should focus your efforts.
The Competition
We’ll kick off this new initiative with our first ever Tortuga Fitness Challenge. This challenge will run to the end of the summer (August 31st) and will focus on the Big Three compound lifts: Barbell Squat, Bench Press, and Deadlift.
I will freely admit that the compound lifts are often overly focused on in some right-leaning communities, to the exclusion of all else. This is wrong. If you are benching 400 lbs but you can’t run a mile, you have some major deficiencies in your training regimen. That being said, basic strength training is the core building block of an overall fitness program, and the compound lifts have multiple benefits that can’t be replicated with isolation machines, dumbbells, and other shit like that.
To motivate those of us who may be *ahem* slacking on our fitness activities, the introductory Fitness Challenge will consist of core strength training lifts. The contest will not be a competition of who has the strongest lifts, but rather who is most improved. In fact, it will probably be difficult for our more experienced lifters to win this competition, as two months isn’t a lot of time to make progress unless you are picking up those beginner gains.
But don’t worry, gymcels. We will also have a leaderboard with our absolute strongest Tortugans, so your efforts will not be in vain.
Now, without further ado, the plan:
We will be judging the winner of the competition by comparing Wilks Scores. The Wilks Score is a bit of arcane powerlifting lore which was developed to easily and fairly compare lifters across weight classes and genders. In order to compete in the competition, you will need to enter your bodyweight and 1 rep max into the above linked Wilks Score calculator. If you do not know your 1 rep max, you will need to find out by trying to lift some heavy weights. If you are a brand new lifter though, you probably shouldn’t be trying to hit maxes just yet because you don’t want to hurt yourself. It’s possible to use the calculator on a set with more reps. I might suggest shooting for a 4-rep max, and using that instead.
And that’s really it. At the end of the summer, we will retest maxes and re-calculate our Wilks scores. Whoever has the biggest difference between their starting score and their ending score is the “most improved.” If there is a tie, the tiebreakers will enter a fight to the death (sorry I don’t make the rules).
Tips For Noobs
If you are absolutely new to lifting, you probably feel like the South Park kids after the Underpants Gnomes explained their business model to them: Phase 1: Calculate Wilks Score, Phase 2: ???, Phase 3: Be Stronger. So here I will provide some guidelines for new lifters, to try and fill in that all-important Phase 2.
First, this should go without saying, but you are going to need access to a squat rack. Almost all gyms will have one of these, so you just need to find a gym close to you and join it. Maybe you live in an apartment complex with a free gym in the basement or something. Perfect. The only thing is, you can’t go to Planet Fitness. This isn’t necessarily because you can’t get jacked at a Planet Fitness, but Planet Fitness does not have squat racks. They have Smith Machines, which are for isolation exercises, not squats. Nobody cares what your Smith max is.
So find a squat rack (and a bench press, obviously - but you can drag a bench under a squat rack to make a bench press). Then, you need a program. This is another place where people get hung up on the “analysis paralysis” of figuring out which program is the best. The answer is just pick one. Especially at the beginner level, if you just pick a program and stick to it, you will make gains. That being said, there are a few widely circulated programs out there that are targeted specifically for beginners, and those will probably be your best bet. I’ll give you two options:
Starting Strength by the infinitely memeable Mark Rippetoe was the gold standard when I started lifting. This is what I started with, and it still holds up. The one critique I would make is that Starting Strength incorporates cleans into the programming, which I don’t think is strictly necessary for a beginner program. Cleans train explosive power rather than just raw strength. This is a more advanced training tool that shouldn’t be incorporated until you’ve built that foundational level of strength. Plus, it’s very easy to hurt yourself doing cleans wrongly.
You also don’t need to read that whole ass book before you get in the gym. There is a lot of technical explanation and physiology contained within this epic tome that may be interesting, but isn’t strictly necessary for you to get in the gym and start moving weights around. Ideally, you should just watch a few videos on:
Don’t overanalyze. It’s okay to go down the YouTube rabbit-hole on lifting videos if you find that kind of thing interesting, but not at the expense of going to the gym. You aren’t going to get stronger by watching YouTube. You will get stronger by going to the gym.
If you are a paid subscriber to Tortuga Media, you’ll get my modified version of Starting Strength, which includes cleans.
Another great option is Stronglifts 5x5. I haven’t personally done this program, but many people swear by it. It has the advantage of being completely free (they try to upsell you on the app on the site linked above, but the programming itself is not paywalled). Just from looking at it, Stronglifts seems basically the same as Starting Strength, except with 5x5 instead of 3x5, so you will be doing more volume with Stronglifts. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though it might mean you end up doing slightly less weight. The Stronglifts site also has some good advice on breaking through plateaus, which can be helpful after you’ve finished the newbie training regime.
That’s it. Get a squat rack, get a program, go to the gym. Stay motivated by checking in with the competition in the chat, bragging about your gainz, etc. At the end of the summer, we will declare a winner!
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