Bodybuilding Classic Physique Division Offseason log

Stainless steel pan for chicken tenderloin/chicken breast meal prep is the GOAT. Cast irons are much smaller, annoying and hard to clean, less predictable heat you can't adjust midway through, hard to scrape off the oil and residue between batches. a $12 stainless steel pan has changed my life.

Nelk boys are interviewing Benjamin Nosferatu and Nick J Fuentes. I'm sure there are many boomers, including here on 2p2, who have no idea who Nick Fuentes even is. What a world we live in... giant generational gap in media consumption. I would not be surprised if many readers have never even heard of Nelk boys or appreciate their cultural significance.

one guy has killed 10s or hundreds of thousands of people in the context of an ethno-religious genocide. One hosts a highly censored internet talk show. And I'll let you guess which one is considered more dangerous/controversial/"harmful" by most Americans. The brainwashing is insane...

You reference so many people that most readers in here have never heard of that it’s prolly a stretch to assume they are gonna get the joke with Nosferatu

Meh. I think there is a selection mechanism at play where anyone that has the interest/intestinal fortitude to actually read these kind of posts is going to be able to get it.

very possibly. I got it so you're probably right....and tbh I've never heard of any of the others he referenced

Well, there are trade offs. Zero sum tribalism is mostly something that attracts low value losers. I doubt you are going to find any future CEOs or captains of industry in a Nick Fuentes fan club.

Embrace this kind of worldview too hard and you wake up one day and you are Yemen, and no one wants to be Yemen.

But full on left wing multiculturalism, which tends to attract more liberal, intelligent, open minded high value people has its own faults if taken too far too long.

The height of what you would call Zionist influence on America coincided with the pinnacle of what you would call neoliberal Pax Americana; arguably the greatest empire in humankind. So arguably, whatever was going on worked well for a time.

But it does appear things arenÂ’t really working in the current social milieu.

That being said, count me skeptical that a country run by Gen Z Tik Tok Stormfronters is going to be anything more than a giant pile of incompetent suckiness.

I mean letÂ’s be honest. When it comes to IQ, 1930s Nazis would wipe the floor with the current generation of low IQ antisemites. And we saw how long their 1000 year Reich lasted. That being said, we have had dark ages before. Maybe the Tik Tok Nazis will win out and usher in another one.

Agree strongly with this. Something in the middle of these two extremes would be best. Nick Fuentes is literally going to be a 30 year old virgin because he's so hardcore into Christian white nationalism and still saving himself for marriage. He would literally outlaw interracial marriage. You don't have to go that far; but keeping demographics and IQ in mind when formulating immigration policy is not Nazism. It's just sane. However, even just suggesting that IQ is important and refusing to condemn The Bell Curve is equated to being a Nazi in 2025.

I view their lack of familiarity as their failing to keep up with modernity. I'm rapidly entering middle age still very much aware of most parts of both Chinese and western youth culture. Age is not an excuse; just willful ignorance.

The main thing I always take away from this stuff is:

1. I'm glad I don't follow the news
2. Politics is kind of just the nut low almost all of the time

I know what aura farming is at least. And that meme of the kid dancing on the boat. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

Fair enough. But I don’t get the impression Gen Z Tik Tok osphere is leading us towards this happy medium.

My impression is it is intentionally leading people way too far in self destructive directions.

It's fascinating how much libs hate The Bell Curve and invent all sorts of really fake mythology trying to disprove it so they can continue clinging to their purely environmental explanations of human behaviouoral psychology and cognition. If anything, my reaction to it is to double down on redistribution/safety need/socialist policies. Knowing that it's not a matter of working harder nor solely the result of institutional discrimination against marginalized groups (though this plays a role, even if massively overstated by the modern left) but rather factors outside of individuals' control to me points in the direction of something like UBI. These people *can't* help themselves, but they're still human beings worthy of dignity, respect, and having basic physical and psychological needs met. Their meaningful participation in an increasingly complex and technologically advanced economy becomes increasingly less possible, but we're reaping undeniable levels of abundance from the said technical complexity in a way that could be redistributed without meaningfully slowing the pace of innovation. A capitalistic system worked great when 87 IQ workers had meaningful work to do that could both give them purpose/status/meaning while materially enriching the broader macroeconomy. But technological change has upended that and we need something new that guarantees a minimum level of status/material well being, even for those who are economically unproductive through no fault of their own. The economic systems of agrarian times weren't appropriate for the industrial revolution, so the system adapted. A similar adaptation needs to occur at our inflection point of the advanced information age.

But the more cynical part of me believes that modern libs aren't actually interested in equalizing status and material well being in the most efficient and humane way possible; they're just interested in creating a new status hierarchy that puts them at the top and their perceived enemies lower down.

Lotta interesting stuff in here. I don't think a vampire reference is beyond the average reference here, but I may be overstating the casual reader.

The Nazi stuff is pretty funny. Esp considering I'm literally listening to a "Maybe the Nazis weren't so bad" casual convo from a normie every few weeks. I find this especially amusing in the context of the Ukraine conflict and the literal entire history of Israel where you're essentially going down the same path of Nazi or Soviet cheerleading without realizing both sides are pretty shitty.

I agree with all this. A useful thought problem to convey this to people is how should wealth be divided in a future tech utopia where the only meaningful contributors to society are people with IQs 2 SD+, essentially your average person would be as productive as an actual ****** in this future world. Do we think that everyone should have an equal slice of the pie? (Pointing out that "poor" people in the US are in the global 10% makes folks very upset here.) Should we provide "basic" (whatever that means) support for everyone and let the people actually doing stuff decide how to slice up the rest of the pie? Society is already well on the path to this outcome. Essentially what you'll end up taking away from this is that everyone who wants a better life for poor people has no interest in losing anything from their own life and are a bunch of entitled whiny ass hypocrites who immediately feel justified enjoying the fruits of their labor while ranting about how the "rich" (which is always some arbitrary level of wealth above theirs) keep suppressing the poors.

In an amusing anecdote, I remarked to someone that they already had a summer house and keeping two dwellings is certainly a luxury. Obviously this was met with a confused look and weird justifications on why having a summer house was not a luxury and somehow a very normal thing that everyone should have.

along these lines, I had a fun conversation with one of my very good lifelong friends who has always been strongly left leaning. He does well himself and owns two houses outright plus son in private school and a business that goes pretty well.

he was talking about how the rich should pay more tax because they could afford more. He didn't have a great answer when it was pointed out that he could also afford to pay more too but didn't. You are actually allowed to pay more tax if you choose, but not only does he not do this, he employs an accountant to minimise his tax contribution.

oh, so you want other people to pay more tax?

Buffett is prob the worst at this level of hypocrisy.

I would also be fine with someone who wants higher taxes and simply donates the difference to charity each year. But this has never happened in the history of humanity. Always nice to make your bank, and then make a plan to donate money that may never happen. (WEB has donated about a quarter of his planned donation for reference. He is also 94.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge

en

The Giving Pledge - Wikipedia

I am going to push back on this a little bit. And I am not attacking you personally, but this is kind of emblematic of a lot of the discourse lately; that "Zionism" is some pernicious evil in the history of world affairs.

I am not making any defense of Israel or Netanyahu's actions. But other than geopolitical context, what makes Zionism so much an 'evil' outlier compared to Han Chinese history, Turkish nationalism, or 100 other "ethno nationalist" type movements?

Where would a small regional war that killed 50,000 (or whatever) people land on a casualty list in Han history in their march towards creating their ethno nation state, especially if we normalize for population size at the time. I feel it would be very very far down the list.

On this topic, given the type of rhetoric you engage in it seems you are getting caught up in a type of "woke right" discourse that is high on sensationalism and moral outrage, and low on well thought out reasoning or perspective.

I get why geopolitical context, clash of civilizations and political polarization make this such a hot button issue. But remove all that, and this is kind of a nothing burger in human history. And I am not saying this to minimize the conflict, as much as to point out human history it is very far from an episode of Star Trek where everyone just gets along.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mefo_bills

The Nazis did try some innovative ponzi-esque (as much as any Keynesian system is a ponzi) ideas.

But most of the Jew hate is rooted back in the whole Jesus debacle and then getting gifted the wealthiest industry in the history of humanity, because, again, dirty Jooz. And then not being a complete clown car of incompetence.

You aren't wrong, big dawg. I am not assinging good or evil to any of it, I guess. And one key difference is that the Zionists don't seem to hate all outgroups as universally as the Nazis did. Their rage and violence is more targetted and directed.

On a related topic, I am paraphrasing from memory and unable to frame the thought as good as the original tweet.

But I remember reading a tweet that went something along the lines of: if you had told a German circa 1700 (or whenever) that in 300 years they would be a nation state of peaceniks and highly critical of the Jews for being too warlike; he probably would have been incredulous at the thought.

I mean, lets be honest; for most of human history if a weaker tribe pulled something equivalent to 10/7 on a much stronger tribe; the response would have been something along the lines of kill all the men and take all the woman and children as slaves.

Even in contemporary Middle Eastern history, neither 10/7 itself or the response are really outside the Overton Window of "business as usual." I mean, HTS and allies since taking over have probably killed more civilians from Alewite, Christian and Druze communities than Hamas killed on 10/7. Without all the press and propaganda of course, because no one, especially other sand people, actually cares about sand people killing each other when no Europeans or Jews are involved.

okay... I'm ready now. There's a bit more quad seperation and glute/ham definition that will probably come in just from carb loading, but my bodyweight is pretty much stuck at 86.9 and I can neither lower food nor increase activity without running into crippling fatigue, though appetite/hunger are not issues at all. Even without retatrutide when you get this deep into the diet appetite/hunger stop being issues and it's all just energy levels. But retatrutide made the beginning up to 70% of the way through the diet when hunger was still high much much easier. And where it's going to have the greatest benefit is in the reverse diet when hunger relative to caloric intake is at its absolute worst. I frankly ****ing blew it last year and gained tons of fat in the 2 week window post cut.18 weeks and 14kg of bodyweight between photos. Visibly there just isn't much fat left to lose and any more definition I gain is going to be from filling glycogen stores and fluid/mineral/hydration changes.

Now I just sorta maintain/recomp into the show. I doubt my scale weight will go down much if at all from here due to anything but hydration. It will likely be higher than it is now on show day as I take the last full week to fill out. 280p/220c/70f, 20k steps, clen/t3/caffeine/yohimbine all stay in just for me to maintain/very marginally lower from here then 7 days out we swap to around 175/400/70 and gradually up that to around 150/600/70 until show day. In terms of actual fat mass lost from now until 5 weeks from now I'm sure it'll be less than 1500-2000 grams.

I went to a bodybuilding show yesterday to spectate. I was the one-man-hype squad because the ****ing audience was a bunch of dead fish. Women are more biologically valuable, popular, and cherished by society than men, as any readers know, and the entire audience was just friends and family of the "goddess model" division """"ATHLETES"""". This "goddess model" is not even a real division in the IFBB. The show I was at was just a small local fed unafilliated with the ifbb/npc. The real bodybuilders/men's physique guys had mostly coaches and disinterested family there refusing to make any noise or cheer from the audience, so the show was around 50 athletes, 200 audience members, and one very loud foreigner. Yes, I was the only foreigner in attendance.

People value women more than men, so when a woman does something even moderately impressive people react more strongly than when a man does something several fold more impressive. Unless the women are unattractive (wnba), then they get it even worse than the men. Such is life, no use complaining about it or trying to start some useless political movement around this "injustice". Just be the guy celebrating your brothers in iron.

The guy who won classic physique overall said "take your shirt off... let's get a photo. You literally have a lower bodyfat % than anyone who actually competed today..." and he was actually right. It's unlikely I win the show next month but very real possibility I accomplish my original goal of being the most shredded guy on stage.

I got 7k steps today and took the day off, didn't train yesterday because I was at the show all day but activity was high.

I'm still literally 5 weeks away from show day, but I've written out my offseason plan already. The main goal will be fixing left/right lat imbalance which is VERY noticeable in the front double bicep when i"m lean and the strength metrics reflect this where my left lat is just way way stronger than my right. I need to drop the pullups and do unilateral only for the full 6-7 month offseason and do about 1-3 more reps on the right side compared to the left and it might even take another offseason after that to fix this imbalance. It's not noticeable at higher bodyfat but very noticeable whern lean. Beyond that, a much easier goal of just hammering glutes and hams which came up massively from last year. Continue with very low volume of chest/quads as these don't need much work. I'm at a level where i actually need to be strategic about where i add mass to improve my placings now; just adding more mass indiscriminately will not get me in the first callout of a pro show in 2028 which is my goal now.

Chinese "goddess sports model" division in case you are curious. Literally a cross between IFBB women's bikini and a ****ing 1990s beauty pageant on network ****ing TV. Great, but keep it off my bodybuilding stage please. I got nothing but respect for the bikini girls, they are still jacked and train and diet hard. But this is just silly.

This was the big story in competitive pro bodybuilding classic physique this weekend. It was literally more exciting than the Olympia last year. Niall Darwen from the UK vs Matheus Menegate from Brazil. Niall (left) is a black/white mixed working class dude who is incredibly humble and genuine, but also freakishly genetically gifted. In my opinion, even more so than Chris Bumstead who won 6 times and probably would have won more if he hadn't retired at 30. Menegate is a white/euro descended Brazilian who came into the sport actually fairly late and just made explosive progress by getting started with doing things optimally more or less from his first show onward and pushing the envelope on drugs very hard. He's also got a very good aesthetic skeletal structure. Niall's coach generally uses very low doses of PEDs and I have no doubt that Niall himself uses a similar approach of something like 500-750 test and then around 1-1.5g of combined masteron and primo. These aren't low in terms of miligram amounts, but in terms of toxicity this is nothing.

Niall is definitely going to win multiple Mr. Olympias and possibly even break Cbum's record of 6 victories. Brazilian fans are psychotically nationalistic and it was literally every non-brazilian bodybuilding fan saying "Yeah, Niall is unbeatable" and every Brazilian fan saying "No, Matheus is unbeatable!"

I don't really watch or follow men's open bodybuilding beyond just watching a replay of the Mr Olympia every year. It's cool but I'm less into it.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eWrYsx8K9...

He doesn't look like a video game character, he looks AI generated. Like everything is too mathematically idealy proportioned to even be real. 7-8x Mr. Olympia in the making. He's 27 or 28 right now so it can definitely happen.

I can come back to this post in October after the Olympia to lol at myself when he places 9th. Or to congratulate myself when he wins the whole damn thing leapfrogging up 10 places.

oh yeah, I actually don't think my starting bodyfat this year was "unhealthy" this time like it was in November 2023. I was sort of at the upper limit of acceptable offseason bodyfat. If I'd been at the same job I'd been at in Chengdu, this could have been a 16 week prep. But unfortunately having my day filled with useless meetings, assemblies, trainings, and things that required me to be seated along with being unable to walk to the gym and back each training day made getting sufficient NEAT in impossible. I'd say my starting photo bodyfat % is around 16-18. Next year I fully plan on that being 11-13, which is probably around where I was ~7 weeks ago. My sort of "dietary macrocycle" will be to bulk from Sept 6 until "some time in early to mid march". Something like 24-27 weeks of bulking, no minicuts, small surplus, clean satiating nutrient dense bodybuilding food, 1 cheat meal per week after the first 6 weeks of reverse dieting (I'll have a cheat meal on the Saturday night and Sunday night after the show) but no cheat meals in the first 6 weeks of reverse dieting, and basically being allin on this.

I really like this lifestyle. It gives me structure, meaning, purpose, fulfillment, goals, and community/friends which are pretty close to a summary of the basic necessities for a happy human being. I don't really get much fulfillment out of being able to eat cheesecake freely and I frankly love eating my chicken tenderloin, air fryer potatoes, guacamole, broccolini, and raspberries/blueberries day in day out. this does not feel like "sacrifice" to me, even though it might to a reader.