Showing posts with label pavel tsatsouline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pavel tsatsouline. Show all posts

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Why buying fitness books is a waste of money and time


 There is a new fitness book. After about a year the same book has a new version – extended and revised. It all seems great and sexy but as always there is a little story behind the scenes, a little something that makes it all work, a little secret that starts the engine, a little hidden truth that nobody wants you to know because if you know it problems occur and nobody likes problems - we all want to just collect our paychecks, as fast as possible. The Bigger. The Better.

It's true, fitness books contain useful information. You can learn a lot regarding training and you can definitely improve thanks to a fitness or strength book. While all of that is true every training manual out there fails miserably in the long run because it is incomplete, misleading and unnecessary over-complicated just to cause paralysis by analysis.

Sure, you can learn the fine points of squatting and deadlifting from a book and later apply them in your training but in the end of the day you still won't have the results of the glorified athletes those reading materials usually use as front cover. To this day there isn't a single book covering all the aspect of the iron game and there is always something missing and that little something is the base of the house. What is it?

The majority of the income generated by fitness and strength books comes from the newbies. They are willing to do whatever it takes to get that sexy body advertised by fitness models in movies magazines and homo sexual bars. Since we are used to learn everything from books it makes sense to buy one for that too. Despite all the reading, however, fitness books never produce results even close to the advertisements. How so? I thought knowledge was power.

The reason for that failure is of course the fact that fitness books, just like magazines, never discuss the issue of anabolic steroids. On the contrary, their authors want you to believe that training methods have evolved so much that you don't need needles in your ass in order to get as big as the men praised in those overrated materials. Nothing could be further from the truth since anabolic steroids have been the base of all strength sports and bodybuilding since the 1940s. Writers on strength and conditionning such as Mr. Mark Rippetoe, Mr. Pavel Tsatouline and, Mr. Dr. Layne Norton, Mr. Marty Gallagher can all continue to sell their books and come up with new and improved versions, IronGangsta.com couldn't care less. We want you, however, to know that it's all the same old recycled material that exploits the general low intellect and ignorance of beginners through cheap marketing tricks such as “milk & squats are better than steroids”, “mysterious Soviet muscle building tactics”, “Primitive training”...etc. You have to understand that the goal of those authors is to make money, FIRST. It has never been STRONG FIRST, it has always been MONEY FIRST.

Image via: http://www.careerattraction.com/

IronGangsta.com has no problem with people trying to make money. We all need it and we all work for it. However, remembering how it feels to try and try and try with little or usually no results at all, despite all the reading and secrets methods, is something that is hard to forgive and poor sources of "knowledge" are the ones to blame. Who is going to get me back all that wasted time and effort?

Like already said – fitness books could be useful if they were written in an honest way without the usual propaganda and lies. But this is never going to happen since there are plenty of suckers to cover for the ones that know how it all works. {you don't have to be very smart to know}

How many books can one write on squats, kettlebells, barbells...etc? By the looks of it - as many as the fanatics are willing to buy for Christmas.


Make sure that your fitness book and protein powder are the same color and don't forget to get your certification. {for ignorance}.


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Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Pavel Tsatsouline and John Du Cane - It's All About Marketing


I've written a lot of posts on Pavel Tsatsouline. He was a great part of my lifting career because of his large Internet presence. I have some sort of love hate online relationship with him. It's mostly switching to hate because of a large disappointment caused by my ignorance rather than by Pavel himself.

One of the reasons I kinda feel cheated is the fact that I used to believe most of the crap he writes in his books just like a teenage boy believes in bullshit muscle magazines. 


For newbies: The secrets of professional bodybuilders are not reps and sets. It's all about steroids, growth hormone, IGF-1, insulin, dieuretics, recreational drugs and gay 4 pay. (Thank me later)

The whole career of Pavel Tsatsouline is based on "The Russian Training Secrets". However the funny thing is that the guy is not even from Russia. He grew up in Latvia. I guess "Latvian Training Secrets" does not sound as gangsta as "Russian Training System".

There are a lot of misleading information in most of his book. Some books like Beyond Bodybuilding seem to be like the ultimate way to confuse someone - the book is like a collection of articles some of which even repeat. On top of that there isn't a single article on steroids which are a must if you ever want to be a "real" bodybuilder. But let's forget about all that and go to the sexy part - DragonDoor's marketing.

Pavel and the whole Dragondoor crew are millionaires for one simple reason - insane marketing and digging into the minds of easily brainwashed people. Steve Maxwell (another fitness guru) even indirectly accused the kettlebell crew of creating fake biographies in order to promote kettlebells. Whether Pavel did it is hard to tell and I am not motivated enough to search the biographies of the old timers presented in his books. One thing is certain however - many of the subjects in the books of Pavel are product of his imagination. For example in Power To The People he presents "a routine for mass" called The Russian Bear. He talks about a Russian commando who got huge using the program. However how can you really tell if that person existed ? I seriously doubt it. But wait there's more...

The book Convict Conditioning by Paul "Coach" Wade is like a Hollywood movie. Paul Wade is supposedly a convict who got mad strong using the exercises in the book. The funny thing is that Paul Wade actually does not exist. The publishers decided increase the popularity of the book by using an old trick - mystery. People like mysteries and since we have all seen prison movies where tough motherfuckers do push-ups we are attracted to the idea of training that way, sometimes it's even in our subconscious minds. We all started training because we wanted to be tough. Life is scary and hard so I guess becoming tough helps. Training like a convict (who in movies are often presented as good bad boys who get the girl ) becomes cool. That's how the legend of Paul Wade was born. Oh wait !!! It gets better there's even an interview with Paul Wade: http://zacheven-esh.com/convict-conditioning-interview-with-coach-paul-wade/

Reading the interview just makes me: 


The guy in the pictures of Convict Conditioning was actually the man behind BeastSkills.com. He said all he did was send pictures to DragonDoor.com and he never actually met Paul Wade. Maybe because you cannot meet someone who does not exist ? Also another interesting question is why such bad ass like Paul Wade was not used as model for the pictures ? I guess FBI was after his ass for spreading information about super secret bodyweight exercise more effective than nuclear weapon.


The answer could be found once more in the disclaimer of the book which goes like this:

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This book is intended for entertainment purposes only. This book is not biography. The names, histories and circumstances of the individuals featured in this book have accordingly been changed either partially or completely.

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I guess it's ok to invent a person that never existed if you write a disclaimer.

Here's cool comment I found on Dragondoor.com while digging for dirt:


Click On Image For Larger View


Obviously there are a lot of diverse stories about the magical skills of this gangsta convict but believe me - it's all about the hype. In case you fail to see the obvious fraud I would be glad to see a video of you doing 100 single arm push-ups done the way your idol Paul Wade describes them. You should be able to do this by the time Dr. Dre is ready with Detox. 



See you in next life. 



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Friday, May 31, 2013

My Experience With Pavel Tsatsouline


Back in the day Pavel Tsatsouline and his books were the bomb. They still are to be honest. I found about him when I was reading the blog of a fitness girl who got really strong at pull-ups and dips using "his" programs. Anyway I will admit that I downloaded one of his books from the Internet through the use of torrents. I am not proud but not ashamed either. Why? Because I am not a millionaire and like Barry Bonds says:  "You all have dirt, too. All of you."

Anyway after reading Power To The People, Beyond Bodybuilding and Beyond Stretching I learnt a lot of things but at the same time I got mind fucked really hard by the "Russian ultra-secret bad ass beyond hardcore secrets." In other words - good information but all over the place. For example some chapters in Beyond Bodyduilding repeat a few times and many books have a lot of pages containing advertisement to other books.

So hardcore ! Marketing....
As far as strength is concerned I like to believe that Pavel really has good info but his size programs are beyond funny. For example the so called Bear Protocol which basically makes you do shitload of deadlifts sets is a disaster waiting to happen. The deadlift is one of those exercise you cannot fuck with and you have to respect - doing 20-30 sets as recommended by Pavel is like putting sugar in your car - stupid. The spine will get fatigued really fast and you will get hurt. Not to mention that the deadlift builds mass only in the back while the legs are not as involved - most deadlifters have skinny legs unless they perform other exercises with larger range of motion. In other words it would be wise to use that so-called Bear Protocol with exercise like rows, pull-ups, squat...etc.

Another thing that Pavel never talks about are steroids. He never even touches the subject. Want to get big? Just do more sets and eat more. That's what the Russians did. Maybe I would believe that 10 years ago but not today Pavel. Truth be told as a natural it does not matter what you do for muscle mass - every road will bring you to your genetic potential as long as you put a little effort. In some cases faster in some cases longer but in the end of the day you will not be satisfied by the way you look naturally since your mind has been brainwashed by bodybuilders and athletes on steroids. No, there are no secret Soviet training methods that will make you a swollen motherfucker. Well, there are but they are not exactly training methods.

Of course while I was educating myself reading copies of Pavel's hard work I wanted to try some kettlebells. At that point kettlebells were non-existent where I lived. None. Ok, maybe, there was 1 in the town. This problem was not so hard to overcome as I quickly realized you can do the same shit with dumbbells. Yes, the mechanics are different and kettlebells are really good for presses, front squats but in the end of the day they remain overpriced and not very practical since you cannot change the weight.

I have learnt a lot from Pavel and that's why I bough one of his books - the Naked Warrior. To be honest the book sucked because the images were too big and the main riff (tension) was repeating for the whole concert. Truth be told Pavel has caused quite a lot of paralysis by analysis due to creating fake expectations in books like Beyond Bodybuilding. Why would you want to learn about bodybuilding from someone who is not big? Seriously. People say that IFBB Pros know nothing but reality is if you want to get as big as them you will have to learn their drug protocols in order to achieve that and guys like Pavel don't know it. Want to be IFBB Pro - don't ask me how to get there ! Ask an IFBB Pro.

A lot of the information in the books of Pavel is misleading people into buying kettlebells. Want to get big? Buy kettlebells. Want to get small? Buy kettlebells. Want to get ripped? Buy kettlebells. Want to get strong ? Buy kettlebells. 

Well, no thanks.

Pavel has some really impressive collections of training knowledge coming  from other people but in the end of the day he is a marketer first, trainer second. Be careful. Comrade !
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