The Situation: Getting Back into Antiques as Covid Slowly Regresses

Has it regressed yet? I'm always hearing different things. Anyway, this whole thing threw a wrench in my tire as far as my business at the time. People stopped buying antiques and vintage items. Crap.

It's fine - this isn't killing me - but the market, I believe, is going to go back to buying more luxury type items atleast somewhat soon. Not ten years or anything. More like six months. And just as luck would have it, I have an inventory of antiques ready to go.

I want to start teaching you guys where to find good deals on antiques, jewelry, and things like that. A good thing to check out is estate sales. It seems half and half; some want too much for everything, some are letting things go for nothing.

I've seen real, antique silverware sets selling for $150 or so that I didn't have that day!

Ok guys, one more. You can make money from gems and precious metals. Obviously (I'm a numbnuts). Where do you get that for under retail? Thrift stores. Go in there with a magnet after reading up on identifying silver, gold, and the most common gems. I've purchased diamond earrings before for $2.99.

Vintage Tiffany's necklace on top of a huge chunk of Amazonite. It's hard to see but it's a teal color.

Mind you - it's a real skill to tell the real thing. Don't be afraid to learn. Ask questions. In this profession, you can't know enough! Trust me!

I will say this. I've had months where I've made a killing and then I've had months where nothing happened. Maybe I bought all of the good stuff up or sometimes I felt people would watch me and copy what I'm doing. More competition. However as long as you know what to look for and you get in and out, you should have no problem bringing in $1,500 a month when you first start. You can ofcourse do it part time.

- Rokas 'Roscoe' K.

Strength: Beginning Bodybuilding for Martial Artists (Your metabolism will be different) and

I always thought the two should go hand in hand - at least to a certain extent with the physical part - because everyone needs to be in good shape. It reduces many negative health factors, makes you more able to do things (I truly feel embarrassed when I see a grown man at a construction site struggling to pick up a long piece of pipe). It also grows your mind. It exercises different parts of your brain and if you do it correctly, it becomes a meditation.

Car windows make you look jacked. They make you look rounder... Bull.

As a matter of fact, when you properly train it is exactly a state of meditation. You have no thoughts and your mind is clear. You don't have to think about the weights, you know.

This is an introduction to future articles. I have been bodybuilding and generally training for probably 8-9 years and before that, I did martial arts. (Update; it is now 2020 and I have been training for more than 15 years.)

Doing martial arts actually made it hard for me to gain mass and there's a good reason why. All of the muscles I had developed were fast twitch muscles. Those have 1/5 of the growth capacity of slow twitch muscles. When you switch from a fast twitch sport to a slow twitch one, your body has to re-learn to build muscle because you are now introducing a different stimulus. This is how to get through this six month phase.

If you try to lift heavy weights, you might notice that you can put up respectable numbers. What you need to do is lift weights that keep you in the 8-15 rep range. Anything below 6 and you're mainly training your fast twitch muscles so don't even do that for now. It will hurt how your body re-learns to build muscle; it will tend to focus on the fast twitch which is only 20% of your maximum body muscle.

Listen, your body changes the ratio of the fast to slow twitch fibers aswell. To give you an example, if you did a whole lot of pushups as a teenager, gained some muscle, and then you hit the weights - that chest blew up because it was full of slow twitch fibers activated mainly in higher rep ranges but like I said, you should vary your reps.

You're going to do compound exercises like rows and pullups for back, pushups and weighted dips for chest, squats (don't neglect your legs; go high rep, even 20), deadlifts (60% of the muscles in your body; don't keep going if tired).

Damn I'm small. (That's actually what I used to think...)

Let's talk more about legs. I hope you like me cause I'm gonna keep feeding you info with a damn shovel. Most fighters know - I would hope they all know - that most of your power from a punch comes from your legs. Yes, 60% and that's knockout numbers. You have a good, strong cross and you know how to use your legs to produce more force - game over.

Google this study they did on Russian boxers where they were trying to find out where the force is coming from. It's an interesting read. I think arm alone is maybe 22% or somewhere there.

I'm gonna leave you fighters (I'm a lover, sorry - I felt bad beating my friend's ass...) with a tip and some encouragement. The encouragement? Look - some of you reading this may be 13 years old or 18 or 34, it doesn't even matter, but you obviously want to improve yourself and that is the quality of every champion ever and you can succeed. I don't CARE if you have bad genetics - Dave Palumbo, a famous bodybuilder, said he had horrible genetics - and he was able to do well by working on his strong points but making sure to also keep little to no weak points. Genetically his arms did not compare to the pros so, although I forget what procedure he went through to do this (IGF-1?), his arms ended up being 22 inches and up.

Also, you same athletes. Yes, you the reader. Support me in the slightest (shout-out?) and I will support you EVEN one on one for FREE. Yes, I am a personal trainer. Right now I'm not in it for the money but for the name and respect.

- Rokas Kirvelis

Gaining Mass With No Access to Weights

I have always been this way because I was broke and so I would get in these situations where I needed a good workout tool but I had nothing. So I thought back to how people used to train before dumbbells existed.

Yours truly.

The smart ones that figured out that lifting something over and over makes your muscles grow if you're eating enough. In this case, I'm sure there was a lot of lifting of stones. If I can push this stone above my head six times and seven next time, even logically I'm stronger.

There was a story in Greek mythology of a man who started carrying a baby calf to its watering well and never stopped. By the time the cow had grown, this guy was a beast of a man. He knew you needed progressily heavier weights.

So that's the main problem in this case. It's easy to find any old weight but it's hard to find something that you can keep increasing the weight of. Think water or sand. Get a 5 gallon jug that you would use for water. If an almost-full (the sloshing activates stabilizer muscles) jug of water is too light for you, replace the water with sand.

Another way to go is sand bags. You can get the ones they use for floods or you can make your own and make it heavier. You can use large logs to squat with. You can find sturdy wood to hold two buckets on your back (one on each side) and either squat or lunge.

There's always the Natural Stone of Strongman fame.

The gym at the Training Trailer! I'm like Dorian. But I'm in a trailer and I think he was in a basement. 

That baby is about 200 lbs of awkward grip but if you get it right, what a sick workout. Think about this. Rack pulls? What about picking a BIG stone up off of a brick or two. Your lower back gets super strong, not to mention your core and legs if you walk around hugging it. 

Lastly I want to give you some jail secrets for building muscle. Everyone knows there's little to no weights in jail or most prisons even. However some of these guys are straight goons!

This is my best example. In jail, many people use a particular movement for their biceps that involves a towel and is honestly so good as far as pump and feel that I do it to this day. There's bunks in jail so they will simply throw the towel over the top corner edge piece of metal. Now you have something you can grip. Well you put your feet close to the bunk to stabilize, grab the two ends of the towel, gradually let yourself down (so you are essentially tilting backwards to get the proper angle), and this is when you can perform the PULL or concentric portion. Pull yourself up, squeeze the muscle (think of flexing it), control yourself down, rinse, and repeat until your arms become stiff as boards from the pump. 

The Current Situation: Learning to Treasure Hunt

Hello people.  Today my neighbor told me to stay crazy and my pops says I'm a scavenger so you can call me Crazy Scavenger. I've been collecting coins and silver for a while now and have hunted for metal before but had no idea where to go and ended up selling the unit.

This article was written a long time ago. I have since built my collection that I also sell out of. I want you guys to see the progression. It starts really slow and gets faster and faster with more momentum and weight (you can take that literally). 

Fast forward to today. I'm scavenging around looking for things I can pawn that people are throwing out. Listen, when you have no money, you do what you gotta do. I got a flat screen TV that day. Well anyway, I never do this but something told me to ask this guy that was outside if he has any car parts or anything he wants to throw away.

His response was, "Well I do but these aren't your typical car parts. I'm a treasure hunter. How you doing?"

I immediately noticed the many metal detectors he had. At the front of his garage was two full trash cans of aluminum cans he had dug up. He invites me further inside.

I love how this picture came out. That is a very old secret container actually. I think it's beautiful and it's in my collection of antiques and vintage items. I want you to get an idea of who I am besides just a bodybuilder. It can get boring - the ONLY bodybuilding part! 

Now let me say that, in a way, I believe in fate. Fate such as meeting someone you were always supposed to meet. Just keep following me.

His garage is so full of antiques and trinkets that it takes me a minute to get oriented when I notice it. On the ground was two huge rectangular spots that this man could arrange his best coins and jewelry.

Notice I said his best. This man has probably 300 coins dating back a couple hundred years ago along with antique gold and silver jewelry among a list of treasure. To be honest with you, I would have never let me see that stash. Or anybody at all because there had to have been more than $50,000 in just things you could fill one big garbage bag with. That's how I know this was fate.

I look like a hoodlum too.

Anyway, he is super nice to me. I mean overly nice, taking the time to show me things even though he's running late. Long story short, he gave me his number, a magnetic sticker of his company, and a regular sticker. He sent me off telling me to call him when I get a metal detector. I went to the pawn shops - none right now. But I'm going to get one.

- Rokas "Roscoe" Kirvelis representing Lithuania!