Full Body Workout...Of Death!!!

You wanna see some full body strength? Watch this!

WOW

Now that's a full body workout!

First Nutrition Post

I figured since the title of this blog has nutrition in it, I should probably talk about it a bit. Today, I want to talk to you all about post workout nutrition. Most of you probably already know you have to eat or down a protein shake at least a half hour after you finish your training session. Good for you, give yourself a pat on the back. However, do you a) know what it should consist of and b) do you know WHEN and what to have in your next meal? I can feel your confused faces, so please, read on.

First off, lets talk about the timeless post workout shake (or PWO for you lazy people). Many people I've talked to about their shakes say that they just down some low carb whey protein and maybe some creatine. Alright, protein is all well and good, and very important to building muscle as we all know, but why low carb? Granted, if you're a person trying to lose weight, I can completely understand you shunning the carbs, but us young people who could eat Home Town Buffet out of business shouldn't be worried about them, especially after a tough weight training session. You see, when you train, your body uses glycogen as its main fuel source. Without glycogen, your body would have a real hard time making energy for training. When you're finished, you need refill those glycogen stores in the muscles so that they have more energy to start processing the protein and synthesizing it to make muscle. If you don't refill them, the muscles could go do something crazy and use protein as the energy source, and what is the most abundant source of protein in the body? That would be our all important muscle! So, if you don't give the body glycogen to work with, it will catabolize (break down) the muscle in the body to rebuild the muscle you worked (seem kinda backwards doesn't it?).

Now, there is a certain ratio of carbs to protein that is generally accepted by the strength and conditioning elite. A 2-3:1 carbs to protein ratio is the optimal amount you should have in your post workout drink. So, that would mean if you have 20 grams of protein in your shake, you should have 40-60 grams of fast digesting carbs, like maltodextrin, to go along with it. You can add 3-5 grams of creatine to it too if you feel it's necessary. My favorite shake is Biotest's Surge Recovery.

It's got the optimal ratio AND many necessary amino acids like L-Glutamine and L-Leucine (L-Leucine is being shown more and more to be very important to protein synthesis).

Ok, so now that we've covered the post workout drink, now to cover what to do after that. About an hour after or so after you down the drink, what do you think you need more of? If you said protein, correct! If you said carbs, correct! If you said a massage from a naked women, correct! Seriously though, you need more carbs after that because the glycogen is still not filled yet. However, now the ratio is shifted. Protein should be the main thing in the meal now. At this point, a cup of fat free cottage cheese and strawberries would be great, or maybe a cup of pasta and a chicken breast. Ok now I know your going to hate me. Two hours after that, I want you to eat more carbs. I can hear the groans and the people yelling "You're going to make me a fat ass!" All I can say is try to trust me. I can tell you that this will help you build muscle. On your off days, you can lower the carbs but on training days, try this out. All the other meals should consist of protein and fat with little carbs.

Alright, to sum up, here are the general guidelines to follow:

-Eat 5-8 smaller meals a day.

-Eat most of your carbs after training.

-A 2-3:1 carb to protein ratio is optimal in your post workout shake.

-The two meals after the shake (one and hour after, one another 2 hours after that meal) should also consist of protein+carbs.

-The rest of the meals throughout the day should consist of protein and good fats.

Well, those are my thoughts on post workout nutrition. Give a try for a couple months and I think the results will be good. Til next time, be strong.

First off, I would like to apologize to all you avid readers for my delinquency as of late. What with getting prepared to switch colleges and starting to train my athletes, I haven't had the presence of mind to write, much to my dismay. For this, I grovel at your feet and beg for thy mercy.

Ok, so, like I said, I've started training the water polo players of Esperanza High School in the weight room and so far so good in my mind. I've looking forward to get back to coaching for some time now so I can try out some of my insidious ideas on the trainees. So far it's going pretty well, but I've had to make some minor adjustments to the programming due to time constraints and the lack of equipment in the weight room. I'll update you with some pictures and a sample week in the upcoming days when I get it all set in stone.

Recently, I have had the opportunity to join an athletic training gym right down the road (how I didn't know about it in my search for the anti-24 Hour fitness, I'll never know). It was my second day there today (and it's Thursday, so it was metabolic day today) and let me tell you, I had a frickin blast. Here is what I did:

• Tire flips for 15 yds w/ jumps in and out of the tire x 6
• Sled sprints x 95 lbs x 6
• (60 lb sand bag clean x 5 then sprint with bag on shoulder) x 10
• Kettlebell one arm swing Tabata (8 sets of 20 sec on 10 sec off) 

I'll wait til your jealousy subsides....Are we good? Cool. So, needless to say, I'm as giddy as a school girl who got asked to the prom by Zach Efron.

I'm really excited for what this new setup has in store for my. I'll be updating more frequently now that I'll have more time. Until then, be strong.

COC Clinic

Alright, yesterday I attended the College of the Canyons 10th annual Strength and Conditioning Clinic. This is my second time attending and in all honesty I can't think of a better way to spend $60. I'm sorry, I should say invest if I don't want Alwyn Cosgrove to kill me. There were some fantastic speakers at this years event. It's your lucky day, because I'm going to give you a brief overview of what the titans of training told us (that was some damn fine alliteration).

Chad Waterbury, best known for beating you over the head with what equates to a sledgehammer of knowledge in the realm of the central nervous system, spoke about just that, the central nervous systems usefulness. It shouldn't come as any surprise to you, it's kinda important. Chad's speech revolved more around something called the "Size Principle". It shows that motor units (Type I, Type IIa, and Type IIb/x) are recruited in order from smallest, being Type I, to largest and strongest, being Type IIb/x. He says that in order to get maximum gains in size and strength, we must somehow get to our largest motor neurons. This can be reached by either moving the weight quickly in an explosive fashion or using a heavier stimulus, meaning weight. This is generally done with 85% of the 1 rep maximum for maximal loads but with small sets or can be done with submaximal loads, which are between 60-85% of 1 rep maximum, but moved more explosively. So, basically, what to take away from this is lift heavy weight and lift it fast right? WRONG!!! Don't forget to do it safely, or Chad will castrate you with a weight training implement.

Greg Vandermade, head strength and conditioning coach for Cal State Fullerton, which is right down the road, spoke about program design considerations for various athletic programs. Basically, he said that what we do in the weight room is to help these kids get a level of General Physical Preparedness, or GPP. We need to make sure that the athletes can do basic movements that are at the foundation of movement and kinetics in the human body, like skips, jumps, push ups and the like (Side note: I think it's really sad that people these days can barely jump or skip. Didn't we do this as kids or has Halo made us immobile?). Once they can perform those, THEN we can implement weights into the program. Also, we need to cater to the demands of the sport we are training. We wouldn't be doing massive deadlifts for a marathon runner or rotator cuff work for football players (when I say football, I mean soccer. It's played with your feet, it makes sense) but we would do those for football and baseball players. Lastly, he says don't forget the posterior chain. I will repeat that, my gentle snowflakes. DON'T FORGET THE POSTERIOR CHAIN!!! To reduce injury, you need to work what you can't see in the mirror, meaning the hamstrings, glutes, lower back and upper back. Put it this way:if you can bench 300 lbs but can't do 5 GOOD pull ups, there is something wrong there.

Ken Vick, sprint coach extraordinaire, spoke about if sprint technique is important in sprinting. His logic was if sprinting was just about how much force you can produce toward the ground for propolsion, then does technique matter? Well, he says that it does, A LOT. You see, there is a time where someone can be too strong for their own damn good when it comes to sprinting. So, when they reach that point, technique needs to be worked on. However, if the guy runs a 4.4  40, but his form is not what people say it should be, don't change a muda fuckin thing. At that point, it's all about making him stronger and comfortable. I would delve deeper, but to be honest I don't understand the science behind the kinetics and kinematics, so I won't say shit that could be wrong.

Valerie Waters, who is the "trainer of the stars", has trained such Hollywood hotties as Jennifer Garner, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, and Richard Gere. Wait, how did that last won get in there?! Anyways, she spoke about how to speak to the client to make them happy. You see, magazines forged terms like"toned" and "long muscle" and "fit". People see these words, associate them with a model or actress and say "I wanna be like that!" and use that lingo when conveying that to their trainers. Well, if trainers try to explain that there is no such thing as toned, then they would keep that client long because that clients intelligence has been insulted. So, to keep money coming in, we need to speak the lingo of the client and swallow the knot in our throat that makes us want to take a cheese grater to the face of the editor of Allure.

Alwyn Cosgrove spoke about fat loss programming (side note: he had 48 hours to prepare, and the sheer amount of information and studies he had was enough to make a college research paper look like nonsense.) He said that there are 5 things that must be done to lose fat (I only got three because he went fast. If he posts the info, I'll post it): #1. Correct nutrition-this means eating 5-6 meals a day, reducing carbs by tossing out refined and processed crap (no one ever got fat off eating apples), eating breakfast and having protein with every meal. #2. See #1-ya, it's that important. #3. Do activities that boost the metabolism and burn calories- in one study, after 1 hour of intense weight training, metabolism was boosted for 38 hours after training ceased! You might wanna start putting intense weight training into your routine. Also, he showed a study that showed aerobic exercise, like running and jogging, did little to burn fat. One study showed that after 12 months of running 6 miles a day 6 days a week, people in the study lost only 1.25 lbs! I don't know about you, but I would be kicking small animals out of sheer rage at that point. Instead, add in some interval training like sprints to your regimen. This forces the body to work harder and use fat stores as energy. That's why running backs are so damn lean. Here is an example session:

• Kettlebell swings: 15 seconds
• Rest: 15 seconds
• Push ups: 15 seconds
• Rest:15 seconds
• Jump Squats:15 seconds
• Rest: 15 seconds
• Pull Ups: 15 seconds
• Rest: 15 seconds

Do each exercise twice and that is one set. Repeat 3 times. Make sure you go hard!

Do 2 days of intense circuit total body training and 2 days of metabolic interval training a week for best results.

Well, all in all it was a good clinic and I can't wait til next year.

Until next time, be strong.

I'm back from Arizona, which is both good and bad if you ask me. Good because now I'm not being burned alive in the 3rd level of Hell a.k.a Tempe, Arizona, but bad because now I have to go back to training and 24 Hour Fitness, which I'm sad to say is a giant step down from a college gym atmosphere (at least there they have something resembling an Olympic lifting platform). So now, instead of getting to argue the merits of why I do what I do with people that care, I have to argue with the personal trainers about why I'm making noise or "intimidating their clients". Wow, I didn't know I was such a beast. Anywho, the point is, my training is going to have to change to accommodate the atmosphere I'm in, meaning many things:

• A lot less Olympic lifts-apparently, doing a lift that involves a bar going over your head makes the trainers get all ansy in their pantsy.
• Longer waiting for weights/equipment- even though the frat guys using the benches were using them to complete the latest "Arm Blaster" workout from Muscle and Fitness, at least they would let me know how long they would take. Now I gotta find a way to stay moderately intense while the 8th grader busts out his 12th set of 15lb dumbbell flys because he forgot what set he was on. Kids these days (sigh).
• Less room for density training- since there is about 10 square inches of room to work with during rush hour at the "gym", I'm pretty much limited to one exercise at a time, which blows

Now, since my training will inevitably suffer a bit, I'm going to have to get creative (maybe even a bit medieval) on your/my ass. Can't do any kind of Olympic power lifting? Fine bitch, I'll do dumbbell jump shrugs. Longer waiting for Johnny to finish his seated hammer curls? Boom, jump rope. No room for density training? Bust out the kettlebells comrads! See, I guess this isn't bad after all. I get to become more creative and think on the fly when I can't use some equipment, or come with a new way to work the same movement pattern. 

The same can work even if you don't have a gym. If you have a park, go be a kid and do pull ups on the jungle gym and box jumps on the benches. Got a high school near by? Do some interval sprint training. Maybe you're an unlucky being and have access to nothing. Well, do some body weight training in your living room while you watch Days of Our Lives. So basically, the moral of the post is to tell you to be creative in your training. Gym setting can actually be more intimidating and less useful than the world around you. It's all up to your imagination.

P.S. Here is an example of something you can do just to get you started. This isn't the end all be all, just a basic example of something you can do at your house.

Squat Jumps x 10

Step Ups x 8 (each leg)

Push ups x 8

Pull ups x 8

Plank x 30 seconds

Rest 1 minute then do 2-4 more times.

Monday (Finals Suck) Mayhem

Ok, the mayhem refers to my life right now, not this post. I have 2 more finals coming up then I'm back home where I can have the time to post to my completely thrashed hearts content. Meanwhile, here is a post from Tony Gentilcore, a man who never ceases to make me laugh my ass off (not literally, that would be wierd).

http://www.bostonherald.com/blogs/entertainment/step_up/index.php/2009/05/11/morning-cup-of-vomiting-in-my-mouth-2/

Monday Mayhem

Alright, I'm back! It's fianls week here at ASU which all the more reason for me to start lifting again. It was a tough workout today, lots of unilateral exercises. It was good though. Anyways, here's some things I have noticed or wanna talk about today:

1. I saw a dude wearing sunglasses in the gym today doing standing tricep extensions. I'm not ashamed to say I LOL'd at him (yes I used LOL as an action, so sue me). It's ok though because I didn't say anything to him and what would have come out of my mouth would have be a barage of insults broken up by more LOLing. 

2. I'm loving fitcast.com. Really good information given everyweek on strength, conditioning and nutrition. Now if they could just explain this rash on my...(Just kidding ladies.)

3. I personally believe that Megan Fox is a goddess. It just needs to be said.

I wish this was taken by me.

4. You need to take the Polish approach and eat some cabbage. Apparently, cabbage is uber high in carcinogen-fighting antioxidants and a study has shown they reduce the chance of breast cancer in women. It may smell like ass, but you're a big kid now, you can handle it.

5. I think I'm gonna try and ditch my protein shake for a while and save some green. I also wanna see what can happen when I go all stone age nutrition status and use just regular food post workout (bum, bum BUM!!! dramatic music).

6. Foam roller. Learn it, love it, live it. This thing is saving my life. It only costs $20, invest in your well being.

I bet Megan Fox foam rolls.

7. This just hilarious. Crossfit LOL.

Alright thats all for now. I'll see you cats on the flip side. Til then, be strong.

Great Article (For The Guys)

It seems as though guys these days are slightly confused about how a man should act. TC Luoma of T-Nation fame hit the nail in the head with his article this morning. Check it out:

My Speech to the Graduates, 2009
by TC 

Thank you, parents, distinguished faculty members, and students of Notorious B.I.G. University. I'm truly honored that you've asked me to make the commencement address to this year's graduating class...

Long uncomfortable pause. The speaker looks disgusted. He looks around with a contemptuous smirk on his face, crumples up his notes, and then shoots them into the audience, making a three-pointer into the pronounced cleavage of Miss Weatherby, the shocked glee club director who's sitting in the front row.

Screw this. I was going to make some high-falutin' speech about achievement and bright promise and all the wonderful opportunities in your life, but let's get real. Most of you are sitting out there Twittering and Tweeting and texting and OMG'ing and it's doubtful you'd even hear one word, so I'll just go ahead and say what I feel like.

Gawd, where do I start? I guess I'm going to address only the males out there because they're far worse off than you ladies. You, I'm not worried about too much. All the same, you're welcome to listen in.

Hrrrum (clearing throat).

Good afternoon losers.

If I had my druthers, I'd have you graduates come up here one by one, but instead of giving you your sheepskin, I'd bitchslap your rosy red cheeks so hard and loud that it would sound like I was playing Heigh-Ho Silver horsie in my hotel room with a stable of naked co-eds.

Hell, I'd go Moe on you.

The thing is, just about all of you are going to be dead in 60 years or so, assuming, among other unforeseeable events, that the Swine Flu doesn't mutate into Captain Tripps and wipe you all out cuz, the thing is, the younger and healthier you are, the more robust your immune system, the better your chance of drowning in your vomit and assorted bodily fluids.

How's that for a kick in the crotch?

And I don't know if this will bug you or not, but when you go? Nobody will give a shit. 

Oh, and one more thing: you're going to be dead a very long time.

You ever hear of the Greatest Generation? They grew up during the Great Depression, contributed to the war effort either by fighting in it or making materiel contributions to it, and then went on to build America.

You guys? Hell, you might well prove to be the worstest generation. 

Here's what your future likely holds:

You're going to drift from job to job because you have bizarrely high expectations for your salary, benefits, responsibilities, and vacation time, while having little concern about doing a good job or showing any loyalty at all to the company that was stupid enough to hire you.

Amazingly, though, you'll continue to have grandiose but highly unrealistic expectations for your future. Sure, you're just treading water until you get a Tweet from some company that wants you to write television shows or design games or do the graphics on a new line of snowboards. It's just a matter of time.

And if, by some small chance none of that works, you've got your secret weapon: you'll design Iphone apps! Sure, you've got one in mind that makes your screen turn into a virtual flickering Zippo lighter so that after Slipknot has just played their last set, you can wave it in the air and people will say, "That's just stupid cool."

You'll make millions.

Too late, app-boy, they've already done it.

But your parents promised you that you'd be successful, right? They said you were special, that you were all little Bill Gates or Stephen Hawkings—minus the talent, genius, or wheelchair, of course. How could you not succeed? It's only a matter of time!

In the meantime, you'll continue living with a bunch of guys, just like you did in college, because you don't want to give up that dorm life; you want your video buddies and drinking buddies and gambling buddies nearby because they're your smelly, toe-jam, hair-clogged-drain security blanket, and you take inestimable pleasure in waiting for them to pass out after drinking a dozen tall boys and then super gluing elbow macaroni to their faces to see how closely you can get them to resemble the thing Arnold fought in that Predator movie.

Besides, you can't afford to live on your own...at least not until you get the call from the gaming company that wants to buy the video game concept that exists only on some ephemeral to-do list in your muddled head. 

But still you strut around...

...my God do you strut. You're so full of false bravado and machismo that anybody with half a credit in psychology could see that it's compensation, compensation for fear and feelings of inadequacy. 

You don't know what life is about, and you have all these gosh-darn feelings that you suppress on 8 cylinders because you learned that men aren't supposed to have feelings and if people found out that you did, you wouldn't fit in; you wouldn't be allowed to play in all the reindeer games. 

And you can't talk to your parents because they won't get it. And you can't confide in your friends because that would reveal you as the weak sissy boy you are.

So you couch yourself in bravado. After all, you have to be a guy; you have to be accepted by the other guys.

So you follow the guy rules, the ones that say you have to act tough, not to impress women, but to impress other guys! Walk with a kyphotic slouch, talk without a hint of diction. To do otherwise might make your peeps think you're a homo!

Don't show any emotion other than anger, of course. Don't show interest in art or any music that isn't metal or rap and dress crappy because to do otherwise is so ghey! And by God if you get that bitch in your car, push her head down towards your lap until she gets busy. Make sure you get it on video, too. Hell, showing your friends you got a blowjob is better than the blowjob itself!

Trouble is, you can't even see that the heroes in the movies you idolize usually stand alone; are usually ridiculed by others for having independent thoughts, but what you idolize and how you act are completely at odds; there's absolutely no congruency.

But go ahead and follow the herd; it's safer. And go ahead and be angry, because that's the only acceptable emotion. 

And you deserve to be mad, don't you? 

The world is filled with all these beautiful women that you can't have. They dress all sexy, showing their cleavage and neathage and buttage and flashing their underwear and just taunting you, dude. Those...those bitches! 

So you listen to angry music. Four out of five gangsta rap CD's are bought by you angry white boys because by God, the black men on those CD's are angry and you can relate! Of course you can! Like that time your dad gave you the old family Volvo for your birthday instead of the new baby Beemer you wanted. That's anger man. It's almost-sorta-kinda like being raised in the Projects, isn't it?

Sure! You can relate to the black rapper!

And you listen to the old guys on talk radio and hate TV that are angry. They're fuming over the lost privileges of other white men! Those problems you're having? Not your fault! You're constantly being emasculated and humiliated by the government and the gays and liberal sissies and it's not your fault! 

The angry guys know it's easy to justify any prejudice by exaggerating real or imagined differences with the thing or person or people or institution they've targeted. That's how they play you. Man, you are so easy to manipulate!

But all you know is that you're angry.

That's okay, because there are video games, video games and porn.

The video games allow you to live in a world where you're constantly in control. You never have to show weakness, never have to show indecision or cowardice or insecurity! In real life, everyone tells you what to do, your parents, your teachers, your bosses, but in Grand Theft Auto, you're the meanest SOB around!

In fact, the experiences you have in your video games are often more authentic than the ones you have in the real world because, really, if you had sex with a hooker and then killed her and robbed her, that would be like, bad. Ask Philip Markoff. 

And the porn? It's because you're confused. Those damn bitches on the streets and in the clubs and in the Starbucks keep sending out mixed signals and you can't even scan some girl without being tagged as a stalker or a pervert, so you rely on porn for your "inter-gender" encounters.

No wonder you freaked out that one time you hooked up with a real flesh and blood girl. Man, her asshole wasn't even bleached! What a colossal turn-off!

Luckily your life is all about endless entertainment. Keep busy doing something, anything, so you can pass through life as distracted as possible. The only activities that matter are sex (real or electronic), money, power, drinking, and video games. Everything else, all the ordinary activities of life, have no value. They're nothing but a drag.

Trouble is, that's the majority of life. Once you devalue the ordinary activities, your mind sleeps through most of the rest of your life. You need to value everything you do, do everything in earnest, realize the potential for learning in any event, no matter how mundane it may seem.

Oh oh, I accidentally just gave some advice there. Not sure I meant to do that. 

But what the hell, I'll see, for my own amusement since no one's listening, if I can offer up some more wisdom. I guess that's what they're paying me for.

Let's try to figure out why a lot of you 16 to 26 year olds are the way you are.

Now I can understand that real masculinity, real notions of manhood like responsibility, caring, discipline, and integrity, are hard to come by.

Young men used to know they'd eventually find value in their work, but now that we're largely a service economy that doesn't produce squat and we're a culture of consumption instead of production, pride in accomplishment is rare; experiencing masculinity as a provider and protector is rare.

Likewise every male schmuck has told you that men don't cry, as if that's the sole trait essential to being a man. As a result, you strive desperately to shut off emotions. You saw your mother as one big matzo ball of emotions, so you started shutting her out of your life as you neared adolescence because you thought being too close to your mother might make you catch gay.

And since your dad was taught not to have emotions, he didn't talk to you about important stuff either. So you never really got to talk about any important stuff with anybody, because important stuff is often feelings-based and, feelings, as I mentioned....

So you were forced to get your definition of manhood, and life for that matter, from the poor schlubs on TV sitcoms.

Oh sure, you want to grow up to be the henpecked doofus in Everyone Loves Raymond.

No wonder no one wants to get married or grow up. Hell, that's a drag. TV adulthood, ergo real adulthood, is a drag. It's all about paying bills, car payments, buying fucking appliances. Who wants that crap?

Years ago, guys used to leave home, complete their educations, start work, get married, and have kids all pretty much at the same time, which, for self-respecting guys, was at the ripe old age of about 20 or 21.

They got married—and bought into all the crap that came with it back then because that meant you could get all the nookie you wanted, any time you wanted. (Girls usually didn't just give it away back then.)

"Honey, I'm home! Now drop the panties and bend over cuz I'm gonna make one deposit I don't need a receipt for."

But there's usually some free nookie around nowadays, which means you don't have to grow up for a long time. Granted, it's generally not the stuff you see on Girls Gone Wild DVDs or beer commercials or Bebe ads, but some nookie is better than no nookie. 

But if you don't even have Grade B nookie, you've got Internet nookie, and that's nothing to shake a stick...well, you know what I mean.

So the nookie factor is all but removed as a reason to grow up and get married.

Likewise, you never learned about feelings and emotional development and real manliness, but you did get all the other supposed answers from parents, teachers, peers, religion, and popular culture that explain what life's all about, but they never asked you for any follow-up questions.

So you naturally become punk-ass smarty-pants know-it-alls, who are hugely retarded in that your mind is completely closed by the time you hit...well, your age.

So you use these immutable opinions to put a spin on everything. Despite your relatively young age, you pretty much can't learn anything of value on your own and certainly can't be taught anything.

Well it's time to stop laying blame.

Granted, all those people I mentioned earlier—your parents, teachers, peers, etc.—deserve a lot of the blame. Forgive them, for they know not what they do or did. 

But that's as far as the blame game goes. Time to man up. Time to fix yourself, because no one else gives a shit.

First, I want you to forget just about everything you ever learned.

I'd like you to be innocent again. I want you to be open to experience. It's the only way out.

Start asking questions. Look at everything as a possible learning experience. How does what I'm seeing relate to me? How can I learn from this? 

Look for a grain—or a sackful—of truth in what I said at the beginning of the speech. If you know why you act the way you do, know the source of your actions and reactions, you're halfway there in becoming a real human being. 

Second, stop being normal.

Normal people are the guys I was talking to in the beginning of this speech. Normal, as it's defined nowadays, ain't good. I'm not saying to get married or not to get married, not saying to find a respectable career or not to find a respectable career; not saying to buy a house and Maytag appliances or not to. That's all up to you.

What I'm asking is that you define your purpose in life—whatever it is—and set about achieving it. Things just start to click after that. You start to separate the bullshit from the non-bullshit, the essential from the non-essential.

Once you start doing that, you may find that the people you hang around with start to look like children to you, and rightly so. 

And that's not normal, at least not nowadays.

There's still plenty of time for "normal" things like video games and beer and porn, but let's try to achieve some balance, shall we? Give your inner self as much attention as you give your outer self.

Really, it's the right thing to do. It'll ultimately be a lot more satisfying than the alternative. 

As I said, you're going to be dead for a very long time.

Special thanks to the book "Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men," by Michael Kimmel, and Dr. Paul Hatherley, author of "The Awareness and Skills Necessary for Enduring Happiness."