“Take action before Lack of Taking Action takes Care of You…” – The Final Chapter

Have you taken any of the action we’ve told you too? There’s always a lot of tough talk but not a lot of follow through. Do you think you’re ready to survive the chaos that will be the Z-Day? Have you buried weapons in the backyard? What about gold? In the Zombie apocalypse, everything will fall apart and gold will be our currency (well, that and scalps, but I won’t get into that). Have you stock piled food? Water? Uninfected blood? Well you better damn well start.

And while on the topic of stock piling food, let’s get one thing straight. Ain’t no paleo in the new world my friend. Be clean and live long now, but in Z-day if your ass practically goes dysentery living off of spam and canned beans, you become a liability. I’m not gonna drag your stinkin’ mud butt through the mountains when the runs make you feeble.  If splurging on food is having a piece of fruit, then I suggest you do some diet training. Get one meal from the salad bar at a strip club and you’ll see what your intestinal fortitude is.

That’s what this really comes down to. Are you ready? I think a lot of you haven’t taken proper action. Z-Day could be tomorrow my friends, but it could be next year. Lucky for you it might be next year! Start training tomorrow and pray this Halloween goes the way of the Y2K Millennium scare.

I promised you guys a week’s worth of programming. Well now you can have it. I’ll try and keep this as simple as possible for all of you. This isn’t for the faint of heart though, you gotta be one cock sure Pipehitter to go this route…

STRENGTH AND CONDITIONING FOR THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

Monday –

“The Wheel”
Your workout will begin at 3:37AM. Your alarm will sound at 3:34 AM. You have exactly three minutes to get your survival pack on, put on boots, grab your weapons, and burn four pieces of paper. These pieces of paper should represent any documents and or IDs/passports you have in the house. In the aftermath of Z-Day, you don’t want any band of marauders being able to figure out who you are or if you’re of any worth. Trust no one, trust is for the weak.

Within those three minutes, you will have also made it outside into your backyard or into your basement. This is where you will have constructed your WHEEL! You will push your wheel until 6:00AM with no rest. Don’t dispute the use of the wheel! My brother is building one for his son. Conan built Mister Olympia sized quads with one and lats that could feed a third world country.

Conan is pretty much a survival guide onto itself:

Tuesday –

Getting gritty is part of the program, so Tuesdays are meant to be spent training like this:

If you follow Rocky’s “Drago!!!” program, Tuesdays will always be a success. Definitely plan on following one of these training days on Christmas and receiving “No money” in return.

Wednesday –

We do two things on Wednesdays…
We Squat and we bench…

And both are done so heavy that your nose should start bleeding. If you don’t black out or rupture blood vessels in your eyeballs at least every other week then you’re really just wasting your time.

Why squat? Stop reading this site immediately…

Why Bench? Because as I keep harping away, in the new world Zombies are just a part of life. We will have to learn how to always be one step ahead of them. But RAIDERS… Vile raiders will try to take what you have. How do you stop them? By using the muscular barrel chest you’ve built up under hundreds of pounds of iron. No raider will stand up to the challenge of a silverback swinging a broad sword while slapping it’s burly pecs. Train hard, train heavy my friend.

Thursday –

Rest
Rest should be spent reviewing material from Wednesday’s post

Friday –

“Freeway Training”
You will spend the day pushing cars. Big, heavy, cars with flat tires. You will deadlift cars by their bumpers. No you can’t use straps for this, only on car shrugs. You will also flip cars. The bigger the car you can flip, the more valuable you are.

Why you ask?
Because once the living dead have had their way, the roads will be a mess. And to travel these you and your crew will have to clear them. And clear them quickly. The faster you can push, pull, or flip a car out of the way, the better.

Saturday –

You should squat. This session should be even heavier than Wednesdays. Your legs should cry for mercy and but your mouth should call for more weight!

After squatting, you should long cycle clean and jerk two 2 pood kettlebells. Once you’ve broke the thirty minute mark you should pick up the pace. Zombies never tire and neither should you.
To round it all out you should spend 30 minutes “Pigging”.

It’s common knowledge that to kill a zombie you must destroy its brain. But in the new world you must be able to do this with your fist. And from mere inches away.

“Pigging” is simple. Go to your local butcher and get some pig heads. Then practice. You must be able to punch through the pigs head and grab its brain from mere inches away. This is not a task that you must only accomplish once. You must be able to pulverize at least three pig heads in a row before a single day’s training is over.

Sunday –

Rest
If you’re lucky, you’ll be recovering for the next day’s training and not waking up to Z-Day. Try this for one week and see where you stand among those ready to defend an America under the attack of Zombie bastards.

You’ve all been warned. We spent a week trying to educate you. Watch for the signs, research the material, train to HTFU. But this is your journey. I can only be your Sherpa… Your sherpa up the mountain… The  Mountain of Zombie Survival. Don’t let lack of taking action take care of you.
 

A Carrie and Z Joint Production

“Take action before Lack of Taking Action takes Care of You…” (Part 2 of 3)

Well the cats out of the bag now. You’ve been informed, you’ve heard of the danger, you’ve heard what signs to watch for. You’ve heard the beat of drums calling to be prepared. Are you prepared? Can you start a fire? How about hot wire a car? Have you taken the short amount of time it takes to learn how to deliver a baby? Do you even know how to properly strip a tank?

Come on, I’m not asking you guys to be Rambo here. But wait, maybe I am. I’m asking if you get up in the morning, dry shave with a knife (ladies I could be talking about your legs), look yourself in the mirror and say, “Alright you heaving sexual tyrannosaur, are you ready rip today’s eyes out and piss in it’s skull?”
Well if you don’t maybe you should. Because I bet John Wayne did.

What am I talking about? You have got to be prepared for every day like it’s Z-day! It’s the day that the zombies might come shuffling into YOUR office building and think you look like a KFC Double Down. Are you gonna just lay down and roll over Double Down boy? Hell no! You’re gonna grab the broad sword you keep under your desk and ask “Which of you bitches is gonna cry uncle first!?”
And of course it’s ok to keep a broad sword under your desk! No you don’t have to ask for permission to have it there. Did goddamn Conan ask permission to carry a broad sword? No damnit! He was to busy giving one-hitters* to camels!

*One-Hitter – Common slang term used for a single blow delivered by an individual, usually with their fist, that leaves their rival in a broken mess on the floor.

Well maybe you haven’t gotten to that stage yet. Maybe swords and dry shaves are a little to edgy for you. If that’s the case, I feel sorry for your children. But if you take some of the advice we give you. Then you might be able step up your game enough to make yourself useful to a group of pipehitters ready to make a stand against the zombie hordes.

Since some of you are still having doubts about this, we have decided to wait until the last post to actually give you some helpful training tips to prepare yourself. So instead I’ll start with a list of movies and other valuable educational material you should review to get yourself ready. Don’t let lack of taking action take care of you.

Books

I only own three books and I have two copies of each. These two stacks of books are easily accessible and reviewed constantly. Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe, The King James Bible, and Max Brooks’ “The Zombie Survival Guide” should be read constantly. The majority of the rest of the information you need is online, that’s where the real magic happens.

Internet

Most of you aren’t really ready to go down the rabbit hole yet, so I’ll spare you. But if you check only one site, check this. Any site that has a shirt that says “Fuck the Revolution, Bring on the Apocalypse” is good in my book. You might even see that it talks about this weekends ZombieCon, you could learn something that might save your life.

Movies

Just a small sample for you:
Rambo 1 – Learn how to “deal” with unfriendly “locals” and “Warlords” when the Zombie apocalypse destroys our civilized way of life. It won’t only be the undead you have to worry about, but those that want what you have. Remember, trust is for the weak, and believe me when I say it will be them that draws first blood, no pun intended.

Rambo 2 – Educational information on how to take out rambling hordes of Zombies with Jungle warfare tactics. (First Blood should have taught you how to deal with our native Northwest environments.) And let’s not forget learning the use of explosive arrows. Shock and awe, Robin Hood style.

BraveHeart and Training Day – These will teach you how to inspire a rowdy mob to make a stand against zombie invaders and also how to run shit in your neighborhood. This will come in handy when blocks become strongholds against Zombie blitzkriegs.

Zombie Land, Planet Terror, and Sean of the Dead are full of shit, That crap won’t ever happen. One viewing of Dawn of the Dead could save your life.
The Old Country Syllabus is also full of movies that will help you find those testicles buried deep down in there. But when all else fails, anything in life can be learned from a Patrick Swayze movie. Even Ghost…

Friday – Get ready for hell ladies, it’s time for Zombie Apocalypse strength and conditioning.

A Carrie and Z Joint Production

Take action before Lack of Taking Action takes Care of You…

Welcome to Old Country Strong’s Halloween Edition. A holiday theme isn’t something you see all that often when it comes to OCS, but this project is the brainchild of our own little Carrie Winecoff. When she contacted me about writing this joint piece on “Conditioning for the Zombie Apocalypse,” she didn’t realize what a can of worms she was opening.

Carrie and I believe that strength and conditioning for the Zombie Apocalypse isn’t only a good idea, but is totally essential. We will be having a three part series this week leading up to Halloween. This series will be full of information necessary to survive the coming threat. Remember, it’s not IF the Zombie Apocalypse is going to happen, but when…

The end is upon us, my friends. With genetic testing, toxic pollution, biological weapon development and radiation, it’s only a matter of time before Zombies become a real threat. No longer the stumbling blood lusty morons from the movies, the walking undead will ravage our cities resulting in pandemic hysteria as the human population shrivels. When our social- and infra-structure crumble, when martial law fails and when all dogmatic hopes that someone will cleanse the “evil zombies” from the face of the earth are snuffed, only the toughest will survive. Are you tough enough?

This series will ready you for the foreboding future. We will give you the tools you’ll need to train your body, your mind and your guts to withstand…

T H E   Z O M B I E   A P O C A L Y P S E

The first and arguably most important survival skill is the ability to recognize impending doom. It will be expedient for you to begin tracking the news. You don’t have to listen too closely to notice a few harbingers that could very well save your life. Has there been a recent toxic spill? Solar eclipse? Nuclear plant meltdown? Are the stories littered with words such as “terrorists”, “virus”, “outbreak”, “panic”?

Are murders increasing? Animal maulings? Growing missing person lists?

What goes along with these incidents? Are the “murders” beheadings? Maybe double tap* shootings increase? Maybe these aren’t murders at all. Maybe this is someone who has already recognized the threat and is taking action before lack of action takes care of you.

* “Double tap” – Two bullets fired into a victims head from a fire arm, pistols and assault rifles both apply here. This is where the slang reference “two in the head makes sure they’re dead” comes from.

Are these “animal mauling” victims ever heard from again?
Example: “Local news reports the victim of this alleged tiger bite is fine. Sadly, this station has not been able to reach the victim for their side of the story, as they have decided to return to their family in the lowlands of Bulzaria.”
Be able to spot local and government coverups such as these. Remember, you will not only need a strong body in these dark times, but also a strong mind. And a strong mind knows trust is for the weak. Don’t forget, “take action before lack of taking action takes care of you.”

It’s likely that Z-Day will not happen on Pacific Northwest soil. In the Pac NW, we have a lot of survival advantages in our natural environment. Rivers and lakes are good deterrents for the Re-animated, who can’t swim but can easily move below water. The need for oxygen is no longer a worry for these wandering dead. We have forests and trees for hiding and woodlands to forage for food. Fortunately we even have dense green spaces within our cities.

The pathogen will likely turn larger, more populous cities first, sprawling urban areas such as New York City or Mexico City. But, once the Zombie plague has been un-leased, there is not much time for you to prepare. Again this is when you will need to turn to warning signs. Take action. If flu shots become scarce, local military begins to with draw, heads of state take “extended: vacations. These are warning signs. Big brother is protecting their own ass. They pull everything they may need. In short “they” will abandon “us”. And why not? Washington state is a geographic outpost. It would be easy to leave us to our fates with the Canadians. But the people of the northwest are a hardly folk. Locals are descendants of original NW settlers who were largely loggers. You know who was also a logger? Paul Bunyan*, that’s who. And Paul Bunyan isn’t gonna roll over for anyone. We have the means, but now you need the moves to defend yourself.

*

We have a high number of Crossfitters and lifters in our area. We spend so much time in the gym, we’d want to be on preservation mode. Homeland Security of the Dojo is of utmost importance. Why the gym you ask? Because on Z-day, that’s my first rally point. Why? Have you taken a look around your gym? Ours is full of 200+ pound behemoths with nicknames like “Beastmode” and “GreyBeard”. Gym functions resemble a “usual suspects” line up except Kevin Spacey has a beard, weighs 220 and can squat the house. You need those you can depend on, and if you can’t depend on your local Barbell Club who can you depend on?

But with the size of gyms comes chance of pre-infection. It’s proven that eating massive amounts of meat along with heavy squats will fight off the disease. So who do you watch out for? Quiet simple: tofu junkies (to start, eating tofu is literally one step away from eating brains) and those that consider themselves “long and lean”. Think of it like the Lion King. Stay with me here for a moment. Who did you trust? Large, strong Mufasa or gangly, lean Scar*?

Exactly. The warning signs will be every where. Your gym will house some of the most powerful people in the area. But as stated before, do you count yourself among these gladiators of the now modern zombie infested colosseum? Take the advice from this week’s post and you will take your place among them.

Part 1: A  Carrie & Z Joint Production

“Pals”

October 31st 2009 – Seattle loses one of it’s Bravest. Officer Tim Brenton, “Lumpy” as he was known by friends and family, was survived by his wife Lisa, his son Quinn, and daughter Kayliegh. His Brother Matt Brenton (Matty as we call him), sister Betsy (Brenton) Porter, and brother in law Derek Porter along with friends and family remeber him in a workout called “Lumpy”.

October 21st 2010 – Crossfit.com declares an officialy recognized HERO WOD. That night friends and family once again honor the memory of a real hero in the form of the workout “Brenton”. Below is a small tribute to those who showed up. We chose to never forget someone who stood up for those who couldn’t stand up for themselves.

Matty, Betsy, and Derek thank you for allowing me the chance to try and do what little I could to help. You are some of my dearest friends and there have been times in my life I don’t know what I would have done without you. 

Posted by: Z

“Take her to the zoo”

We have another addition to the syallbus and one would argue what took so long. I asked Bodacious the other day if she had a selection for the syallbus yet. She did not like being put on the spot and wondered out loud if she could do “Rocky”. Hmm, wonder what my response was.

Now this caused a little bit of a discussion. Z believed that the Rocky series should be included but this I believe takes away from the excellence of the first Rocky. Rocky is the movie for the underdog. The guy with nothing going for him gets a chance to become the Heavyweight champion of the world. And what does he want, just to go the distance with the champ, to do the one thing no one has ever done. It is one of the most inspirational movies I have ever seen. That would be enough to merit conisderation but Rocky also gave us two other things.

1. The workout montage. One armed pushups, running through the streets of Philly, the workout montage was born in Rocky. Ask any guy if they didn’t try some of the workouts they saw, you find me one and I say you have found a liar.

2. The quotes.

On a personal note, I love the zoo. If you love the zoo and or Rocky please quote the movie.

Posted by Nickay

Benchmark Week

Well we’ve wrapped another 6 week Cycle up. This time around we saw everything from bulgarian style training, to linear progression, and some sweet wendler overhead squats.

So with our strength portion wrapped up it’s time for some benchmark testing and recovery. As always every one of my athletes has had a workout assigned to them. If your interested in seeing those they are posted in the Training Log.

If you happen to be one of my athlete and your needing some inspiration here is a couple of videos.

All you need is… Viking Power!!!

And an old one but still a classic, hey anything from “The Barn” is welcomed on OCS multiple times…

Posted by: Z

“See that Look in their Eye Rock???”

As you all know I’m a huge fan of Crossfit Football and John Welbourn. John created as site some time ago called “Talk to me Johnny”.

Its intent was to answer questions that were bogging down the Football comment section. The content has grown past that since its creations. The other day it had what has become one of my new favorite articles.

It was called “Mecca of Power”, and it’s definitly worth reading.

http://talktomejohnnie.com/aggressive/mecca-of-power

That article gets me pumped. That’s how I want to train, those are the kind of places I want to train in, those are the kind of people I want to train with, what motivates you?

The Strength Shop which has a link on the right is another one of those locations in my mind. Train Hard, Party Hard….

Posted by: Z

“Beast Mode”

My brother always says that the universe provides and this is no exception. Kids the word for the day is BEAST MODE!

Last week the Seattle Seahawks traded for Marshawn Lynch aka “Beast Mode” (not to be confused with our Beast Mode Timmy). Marshawn is originally from Oakland and stayed in the bay area to play his college ball. While at Cal he made a name for himself as a punishing runner, shifty receiver, and all around bad ass, truly a player Pac 10 fans did not try to convince to come back for senior year of college. He also gained the name beast mode by a coach due to the fact this jovial kid would flip the switch for games and become something else.

After several productive years in Buffalo, Beast Mode is now in the Emerald City. But Beast Mode is not just a great football player, he has other skills.

Gymnastics (this actually pretty impressive)

Driving (and to anyone who says this is not technically ghost riding remember this is an injury cart and to those who do not know what ghost riding is please feel dated and google it)



Schmoozing with the rich and famous

Between Marshawn’s grills and ghost riding escapades and Golden Tate’s donut plundering the Hawks look less like Seattle’s white knights and more like the old Miami Hurricanes,  modern day marauders. Definitely Old Country Strong. Please post something that captures the essence of Beast Mode. GHOST RIDE THE WHIP!

Posted by Nickay.

Bandhas and Barbells

This is article I’ve wanted to write for a while, information I’d been dying to share. I recently went on a yoga retreat after a 2 month hiatus where I was too busy to squeeze yoga practices into my life. My life was full of CrossFit, barbell, box jumps, and steak, and it was hard to fit that one more thing in. I’m sure we’ve all felt like that. I have been practicing yoga for nearly 10 years. Yoga was attractive to me at first in an athletic sense— poses of strength, building a core. Recently I’d been using yoga to work on length and build focus, as supplement to the strengthening and muscle building I’d been doing in CrossFit. This trip taught me there was much more to draw from.

The trip was illuminating. Switching gears so quickly, I’d forgotten how similar yoga fundamentals are to the fundamentals under the bar bell. I guess I should have realized this, as both activities are thousands of years old. Ancient Chinese texts reveal soldiers being required to past lifting tests. Greek sculptures depict men lifting stones and other heavy objects. Likewise, ancient seals were found in Pakistan showing what many believe are precursors to yoga dating back to 3300 BC. That is some old shit.

This stone sits in a Greek museum. It weighs 143kg and dates back to the 6th century B.C.

Inscription: “Bybon son of Pholos tossed this over his head with one arm.”

The Bandhas

The whole weekend my mind was a-buzz with cross-over. What can I use? What can I glean from this? In yoga, there is a focus on Pranayama which put simply means breathing. When you really want to get heady you can say Pranayama is a word combining the two words Prana meaning “life force” and Yama meaning “regulate”. To regulate your life force. Pretty. Rad.

One way to control your breath is through what yogis call the Bandhas. Bandha is Sanskrit for “lock”. There are 3 main locks in the core of the body: Jalandhara at the throat, Uddiyana at the abdomen, and Mula Bandha at the pelvic floor. Activating these locks traps that breath, or LIFE FORCE, and stabilizes you. This is not unlike what we do under the barbell when we set. When you lock the Bandhas and trap air in the belly it provides that set you need in your back for heavy weight.

Midline Stability

Yoga isn’t all about the spiritual big wheel turnin’ seven chakra energy trappin’ stuff you see when it’s spoofed on TV. Yoga practice is based on some really solid thinking about stability and how the body moves and functions in space. Modern yoga is mostly based on the Hatha style, which is a combo word Ha meaning sun and Tha meaning moon. The translation of the word itself evokes balance. Where these opposing forces meet, spiraling up through the spine, is all-important Shushumna, which in Sanskrit is “Most gracious channel”. As, you may have already guessed, it is just a yoga-fancy way to describe mid-line stability. But what I liked about it was the visualization of push and pull, right and left, front and back, and even dark and light, and under barbell weight, I find that visualization powerful.

Meditation

There was a big focus on meditation. Being present in that moment. There are a thousand poses between the poses… Sitting there, trying to clear your mind and focus on one thing, one mantra, for what seems like forever. But what I’ve always struggled with are those voices starting to seep into your head as your feet start to fall asleep and it gets uncomfortable, “Move, just move. Just move a little….” Inner voices telling you to stop.

Sound familiar? How about that voice half way through the second round in Fran, saying “Slow down. Hop off the bar. Just for a second…” Meditation and mantra focus are totally leveragable for what we do in the gym. Not just the mind-clearing you do before 3-2-1-Go. Mantra and meditation are tools. Mid-WOD. When it gets hard. When it sucks. Be present in that moment. That’s where lines are drawn: the difference between good and better, fast and faster, heavy and heavier.

In the end, I found I can use aspects of yoga more than I was using it. There are a lot of connections between these two long-standing practices— yoga and lifting— practices that civilizations have spent hundreds of years refining. We’ve been running and jumping and stretching and carrying stuff around since the beginning of our human existence. What was once about survival is now about what we carry out of the gym with us. My yoga teacher says that there is a reason it’s called “practice”. We’re practicing for life outside them gym.

References:
http://weightlifting.teamusa.org/about-us/the-history-of-weightlifting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_yoga
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shushumna
http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Balance-the-Psychic-Channels-to-Open-the-Chakras&id=936015

Posted by: Carrie
Pictures by: Z

“And they call the thing rodeo”

Roo recently posted an awesome article about cowboying up (if you haven’t read it just scroll on down). While cowboy up is not just restricted to the rodeo world, her post made me ponder, “Which of the OCBC other than Roo have actually cowboyed up?” So I asked the members of the OCBC in secrecy (alright via email) about their exploits. I have taken these exploits and placed them below but without identifying the member. This is a quiz, can you figure out who each said badass is? Put your guess in the comments and hopefully the member will treat us with their adventure if they are correctly guessed.

1. Rode a bucking bull.

2. Rode a bucking sheep.

3. A fellow roper like Roo, has broken horses and been around rodeos across the states from WA  to Texas and Oklahoma.

4. Barrell riding.

Remember to phrase your answer in the form of a question.

Note, no one had participated in cowboy poker seen below.

Posted by Nickay