Empowered Man Murders Controlling Wife In Lifetime For Men Original Movie
LOS ANGELES—The new made-for-television movie A Just Killing—the inspiring true story of a man who finds his own inner strength by murdering his needy, overbearing wife—premiered on Lifetime for Men this past Saturday, earning the network its highest ever ratings.
Enlarge ImageCritics called the just-for-men TV movie "inspirational" and "nice set of tits on the wife."
The highly anticipated movie event is another boon for the cable channel, which specializes in uplifting programming geared toward 30- to 60-year-old men. The film chronicles the painful ordeal of Gary Mulkeen, a fun-loving mechanic who meets a seemingly perfect woman, but must soon fight for his very life after she reveals herself to be a clingy, manipulative shrew.
"It's about one man's perseverance against impossible odds," said director Tom Dunlop, whose previous credits include the Lifetime for Men original films Suffocated Independence and Not With My Hard-Earned Money You Won't. "Hopefully Gary's struggle will inspire other men out there to empower themselves and stand up to frigid women who attempt to micromanage every last minute of their lives."
Early word from viewers has been overwhelmingly positive. Many particularly praised the chilling scene in which Mulkeen, played by actor Steven Weber, is viciously browbeaten by his wife into admitting he has been having an affair.
"I found Gary Mulkeen's harrowing true-life experience to be incredibly moving," viewer Richard Downey said. "Here's a guy who journeyed deep into the heart of marital exasperation and came out the other side a stronger, newly single person. Finally, a movie that tells his side of the story."
Audiences have also responded enthusiastically to the film's suspenseful climax, in which Mulkeen narrowly escapes his wife's nagging clutches by throttling her to death in order to save himself from going out to yet another French restaurant.
"I was touched by the moment when Gary realized he could murder his controlling wife, get away with it, and go on to lead a normal, happy life on his own," Lifetime for Men devotee Gary Zander said. "A life free of shrill accusations and neediness, where he might one day enjoy multiple exciting lovers at once and choose to spend all of his income on classic muscle cars."
"Plus, it worked out that he got all the life insurance money, which was awesome," Zander added.
Lifetime for Men debuted the original television movie as part of its spring schedule. Other programs in the new lineup include the weekly drama series A Life Unburdened, starring Treat Williams as a man who enjoys a series of meaningless sexual encounters and then dies rich and happy, and the hit Catching Up, in which two old college friends get together to drink cheap beer and eat sandwiches for 60 minutes.
"At Lifetime for Men, we strive to create programming that reflects the unique problems and issues confronting today's man," said Lifetime for Men president and CEO Fred Rasmussen. "We like to think of it as sort of an entertainment roundtable, wherein we can finally address some of the frustrations that have been holding men back and keeping them from realizing their desire to do absolutely anything they want."
Rasmussen reported that production has already begun on a sequel to A Just Killing, which follows Mulkeen as he summons the courage to leave his dead wife's demanding sister after she becomes overly attached following their fifth night of sex together.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Satire - Empowered Man Murders Controlling Wife In Lifetime For Men Original Movie
Friday, April 10, 2009
Hysterical Men: The Hidden History of Male Nervous Illness by Mark S. Micale
Hysterical Men: The Hidden History of Male Nervous Illness
by Mark S. MicaleMacho Misery
A review by Sherwin B. NulandAs far back as has been recorded of the history of human societies, men have equated life with movement. If our ancestors of antiquity could feel stirrings inside their bodies, it must mean that large, living structures were at the very least shifting their positions, and perhaps even migrating from place to place within the mysterious recesses of the internal cavities that encompassed them, whether the abdomen or the chest. Like other peoples of their time, for example, the Egyptians believed that the inner organs were so many distinctive and individual creatures, with whims and moods of their own that determined their peregrinations from neck to pelvis.
Of all the named structures within the abdomen and the chest, those associated with reproduction retained the mysteries of their willful behavior long after others had been solved to the satisfaction of physicians and philosophers. When, in his Timaeus, Hippocrates's contemporary Plato called the uterus "an animal within an animal," he meant it to be taken literally. He was echoing a common belief of his time and earlier when he stated that under proper conditions the womb -- or hystera, as it was called in Greek -- "becomes seriously angry and moves all over the body." Chief among those proper conditions was any frustration of its desire to bear children.
Though the Hippocratic physicians themselves, in their general disavowal of the mystical, rejected any idea of all but relatively small degrees of uterine movement (and even that was thought to occur only within the pelvis), most of their medical contemporaries continued for centuries to insist that the female gestational organ had the capacity to leap all over the place, whether through the diaphragm and up into the neck or sideways, downwards, and anywhere else within the body cavities where it might find expression for its moods. In Book II of On the Causes and Symptoms of Acute Disease, Aretaeus the Cappadocian, one of the most prominent physicians of the second century C.E., wrote a chapter entitled "On Hysterical Suffocation," in which he described the various symptoms that he attributed to the womb's wanderings, as well as his certainty that it is attracted toward what smells fragrant and flees from what is fetid. Not only odors and barrenness, but also a demanding sexual dissatisfaction, had been implied since Egyptian times as the etiological basis for uterine rovings.
In Aretaeus's description are to be found many of the clinical manifestations associated with the emotional state which in later centuries would become known as hysteria, for the organ with which they were associated. Aretaeus describes what he calls the womb's displacement resulting in violent pressure on other organs, which may result in choking, loss of breath, vertigo, fainting, unconsciousness, headache, loss of function of the extremities, and irregularities of the heartbeat. Even authorities such as the Hippocratics and the great Galen, the giant of medicine in the second century C.E. whose powerful influence would persist for a millennium and a half -- and who denied the notion of significant uterine wandering -- believed that hysterical symptoms are related to unrequited sexual passion, which was said to deprive the uterus of necessary health-giving moisture. Galen is known to prescribe sexual intercourse for the malady, or manual stimulation of the clitoris or uterine cervix. One way or another, sexually or maternally, the frustrated womb was destined to remain the imputed source of hysteria for many centuries, well into the period when experimental and clinical science had become the basis of the healer's art. And quite obviously, since hysteria originated in the hystera, it could not occur in men.
The rising influence of Christianity meant that the naturalistic views of the ancients were displaced by the clergy's supernatural explanations for disease, and the notion that human suffering was the consequence of evil acts or inclinations. Since hysteria exhibited such erratic and otherwise unexplainable symptoms, it was interpreted by many, including the influential Augustine, as evidence of possession by the devil. Ecclesiastical trials were held, prayers and incantations were offered, and many a woman and girl was burned as a witch. All through this period of perhaps a millennium or more, hysteria remained a disease exclusively, archetypically, of females.
The early modern centuries brought a return to -- a renaissance of -- the search for natural explanations of the phenomena of nature, and particularly of the human body. The writings and the recommendations of the earliest medical scientists and the new breed of clinicians between the mid-fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries were based on the supposition that sufficient study and experimentation would elucidate not only the origins of disease, but its treatment as well. Still, even the most eminent of the new scientists continued to believe that the symptoms of hysteria were related to some dissatisfaction and consequent displacement of the womb and perhaps other of the female generative organs. Thus, the disease known commonly as the hysterical passions was likely, in medical writings, to be called uteri adscensus, suffocatio uterina, strangulatio vulvae, or some similar designation.
The Scientific Revolution, that remarkable transformation of European thought that occurred between approximately 1550 and 1700, brought with it an ascendancy of the experimental method and the refusal to believe any explanation of natural phenomena that could not be proven to the satisfaction of the empirical observer. When large numbers of autopsies were performed on women who had died of what was thought to be hysteria, no evidence of uterine abnormality could be identified by objective eyes. Toward the latter part of the seventeenth century, attention was accordingly turned to the brain and nervous system, with the result that two of the leading English physicians of the time, Thomas Willis and Thomas Sydenham, put forth what might be called a "neuropsychological" theory of many diseases, and especially of the so-called "hysteria," which neither of them believed to be in any way connected with the female reproductive organs.
If Willis and Sydenham were correct, the symptoms of hysteria could be found in men -- and these physicians showed that they did indeed occur in certain of their male patients. At this point, enter, or re-enter, hypochondriasis, a disease found usually in men and much less commonly in women, which had been recognized from the time of the Greeks, and characterized by discomfort beneath the lowest ribs (perhaps radiating in all directions from the spleen), spreading out into a cluster of unexplainable symptoms very similar to those of hysteria. These provocative suggestions led to a wide variety of theories that were united by the fact that they all referred to these phenomena as "nervous distempers," a term we might replace today by "psychosomatic" or "psychoneurotic" illness.
Nervous distemper became a fashionable diagnosis during the Georgian period of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, most particularly as evidence that the patient so afflicted, whether male or female, was of a "feeling" or "sentimental" disposition. Since such a high degree of sensitivity was required to contract it (and it had lost its uterine connotations of effeminacy), the symptoms were soon socially restricted to the upper classes. All manner of authors, poets, philosophers, scientists, composers, and other varieties of intellectual were said to have it, and it was with a certain sense of pride that the well-bred Englishman took to calling it "The English Malady." Unwilling to leave its social and cultural significance to the British alone, many on the Continent claimed it as part of the human condition. Despite the discomforts of its symptomatology, it was unmistakable evidence of refinement. And its very acknowledgement made it permissible for men to admit, finally after more than two millennia, to certain emotional states that had been thought to be the exclusive burden of women. As the medical historian Mark Micale makes clear in his illuminating description of these events and their consequences, "It is not today's psychiatric writing about post-traumatic stress disorders, nor the medical commentary on 'shell-shock' during the First World War, but the early modern discourse on the nervous distempers that represents the first instance of the medicalization of male emotional suffering in the European West."
That sentence articulates one of the underlying messages of Micale's fascinating and important book. For the story of nervous maladies has been, from approximately the end of the Georgian period until relatively recently, a story in which male physicians have returned to their earlier habit of bringing forth theories of female emotionality and mental frailty based on their close -- and obviously biased -- observation of women, while failing to acknowledge, or perhaps even to observe, that men of all social classes could be shown to suffer from the same ailments. Not from lack of evidence or cases to study did this situation exist, but for a complex of reasons personal and general, ranging from the anxieties of the individual male observers all the way to the growth and perpetuation of a reliable economic and civil order in nineteenth-century society -- the political and cultural imperative of a patriarchal structure in which the image of stability and dependability of the rational, clear-thinking male was assured. "Sustaining patriarchy, however," Micale makes clear, "required both idealizing the virtues and denying the vulnerabilities of hegemonic bourgeois masculinity." As a result, the homogeneously male medical community leaned toward restricting their diagnoses of nervous disabilities almost exclusively to female patients, thus contributing to a model of masculine human nature which, although fragile and ultimately shown to be untenable, operated successfully over a span of more than two centuries.
Seeking writings in which symptoms of male hysteria are described in the long period prior to Freud -- except, as noted above, during the reign of "The English Malady" -- one would have to look for the most part to non-medical sources, because there are figures from the worlds of literature and even philosophy who did not shrink from describing such states, not infrequently in themselves. Whether these sorts of writings are more common or less so in any era, Micale points out, would seem to depend on the degree of gender polarization and general liberalization of the era. Times perceived as periods of stability and personal security were times, he tells us, in which introspective authors were more likely to write, sometimes confessionally, of symptoms recognizable as those of male neurosis. Another factor appears to have been whether the writer conceived of hysteria as a neurologic and therefore physically based disorder, or as one that was psychological and therefore based in emotions. Micale provides an interesting, original, and I believe quite accurate, list of examples of the latter: Burton, Shakespeare, Mandeville, Hume, Cheyne (an eighteenth-century Scottish physician, and the author of a widely read book called The English Malady), Johnson, Wordsworth, Mill, Flaubert, and Freud. Of the former, he lists Sydenham, Georget (a nineteenth-century French psychiatrist) and the great Charcot.
In one of the strikingly insightful passages that are characteristic of Micale's perceptive way of looking at the influence of the surrounding culture on European medical thought, he points out that "for most thinkers who were open at all to this line of investigation [the psychological/emotional], literature and introspection were doubtless natural, even inevitable, allies in the systematized study of subjectivity, whereas the strict and exclusionary methodology of positivist science seemed insufficient to the task." The organized research methodology of the laboratory and the university clinic, presented in language that Micale refers to as "the opaque and impenetrable surface of medicine's official rhetoric of science," served to screen the mind of many a thinker from any but a gender-specific interpretation of what was being observed.
The period between the waning years of the Enlightenment and the beginnings of psychoanalysis -- roughly speaking, the nineteenth century -- was a period of burgeoning activity among an increasingly large group of men dedicated to the intellectual discipline of what Micale correctly calls "positivist science," a way of thinking that demands the intellectual and personal distancing of the investigator from the phenomena or persons being investigated. If one studies this era carefully, as he has done to our benefit, it can be observed that the injection of the self into cogitations about human behavior was vigorously rejected, to the point where any such inner envisionings were considered not only unscientific but even unmasculine, a threat to the self that must be avoided at all costs. And this introduces another consideration: Micale argues, quite originally to my knowledge, that "the specter of male physicians gazing with passionate intensity on other adult men in intimate emotional distress suggested an unacceptable homoerotic intimacy."
The foregoing factors, bolstering one another, brought about a long stretch of time when the likelihood of identifying the reality of the real hysteria, the gender-free hysteria, became vanishingly small. It was not until psychodynamic psychiatry appeared, heralded by the studies of Freud toward the end of the century, that the terra incognita of the human psyche was accepted by scientifically-minded physicians as an independent field of study, one that must be explored without pre-judgment regardless of where the investigator might be taken by the clues that appeared, especially if from their own internal thoughts. Despite their splintering into sects, the new groups of observers of the mind's inner workings probed in usefully subjective ways into problems that they recognized as arising in the depths of the unconscious mind.
Like a wind of freshness not to be denied, the new thinking, much more free of a gendered notion of illness than its predecessors, spread to successive generations of mental health workers after Freud, with the result that notions such as the exclusively feminine nature of hysteria began to be eroded. But after some three millennia in which it dominated, the concept of the disgruntled hystera has proven to be difficult to dislodge. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association for 1979, known as DSM-III, still listed "hysterical neurosis" as an accepted entity, and it was not until 1994 that it was replaced in DSM-IV by the term "conversion reactions".
Though the scientists and physicians of the nineteenth century clung adamantly to notions of female-gendered hysteria, the work of at least one of them contained powerful elements that would presage the beginnings of change. Jean-Martin Charcot, appointed in 1862 to be chief of medical service at the huge Parisian hospital complex called the Salpetriere, became increasingly interested in neurological diseases. It was in the 1870s that he turned his prodigious attention to the problem of hysteria, and began to publish the clinical descriptions of dozens of such patients, many of whom were men. His writings refuted uterine theories of hysteria that were enjoying a resurgence of popularity in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. Though it was his opinion that twenty female victims of the disorder existed for every male, he insisted not only that the uterus had nothing to do with the case, but also that male hysteria could occur in any social class, including the most impoverished. More, he stated boldly that there was nothing particularly effeminate about his male patients, a notion that others had put forth to link its existence to lack of proper masculinity or to excessive refinement.
It was Charcot's belief that hysteria's cause was relatively simple: it was due to an underlying hereditary predisposition upon which an acute triggering episode is suddenly imposed. When he was unable to identify the hereditary organic lesion or chemical imbalance in any of the sixty-one males whose histories and findings he published, he explained its absence by postulating the existence of an as-yet-undetectable diffuse physiological abnormality of the nervous system. He was certain that the nature of the abnormality would eventually be discovered with advances in science. In other words, Charcot felt certain that hysteria was an organic disease and no respecter of gender differences.
Charcot's suppositions did not sit well with many European and American neurologists. They reasoned that since the actual organic basis of hysteria had not been discovered, it might mean that the origin of the illness would be found in the psyche, and therefore the psyche of the male and of the female are less different one from the other than had always been supposed. Such a notion, Micale suggests, made many physicians distinctly uncomfortable and therefore ambivalent about the very conclusions that they were drawing from Charcot's rigorous work. One response to this was to make little or no mention of male hysteria in the textbooks of the time. Another was to deny the statistic of one in twenty, and ratchet it up to one in a hundred or higher. Some authorities ignored hysteria completely or combined it with other diseases when making the diagnosis in men, so that new entities such as hysteroepilepsy, hystero-neuropathy, and traumatic hystero-neurasthenia began to appear, always far more frequently among male than female patients.
No matter their approach, the typical French physician who accepted the notion of male hysteria continued to think that its victims were in some way sexually abnormal: "Thus, despite Charcot's innovative work, the male victim of hysteria in late-nineteenth century French medical imagination was still frequently envisioned as an effeminate heterosexual, an overt homosexual, or a physical or emotional hermaphrodite." If not different sexually, male hysterics were said to be different in other ways, such as race or nationality, among whom African, African-American, south Asian, Arab, or Eastern European Jewish men predominated. Outside of France, other methods of denial appeared, such as the suggestion that male hysteria was restricted to Frenchmen. The medical literature of the time is full of evasions and denials and contradictions of the truths that Charcot had quite obviously demonstrated.
These trends were reflected in the artistic contributions of the period, exemplified most perfectly by the literature of the so-called French decadent school as well as by the large number of sexually ambiguous characters that appeared in its paintings. The parallel in Britain was the aesthetic movement and a tradition of literary homosexuality. Another factor was the noteworthy British phenomenon that manifested itself as the movement that Micale refers to as "the literature of generational revolt," in which young men reject the Victorian authority of powerful patriarchal figures. Throughout Europe and America, writers and artists were attacking the rigid images of high Victorian respectability, but the physicians remained reluctant to join them. In the midst of all of this, a twenty-nine-year-old graduate of the University of Vienna medical school with advanced training in clinical medicine, brain anatomy, and neurological research, arrived in Paris, in 1885. Sigmund Freud was dazzled by Charcot, and deeply impressed by his work on hysteria. He soon abandoned any thoughts of continuing his microscopical and laboratory work, and began to study his idolized teacher's notions of the importance of traumatic experiences. When he returned to Vienna in April 1886 to open his private office, nervous disorders, and particularly cases of hysteria in both men and women, comprised most of his practice. By October of that year, he appeared before a meeting of the Vienna Society of Physicians to lecture on a case of male hysteria he had seen in Paris, and returned five weeks later to discuss a case of the disorder in a patient of his own, and implications of its characteristics that can only be described as psychoanalytic. As Micale notes, "Psychoanalysis originated as a theory and therapy of hysteria, the paradigmatic malady of fin-de-siecle Europe; but Freud's initial encounter with the neurosis began with his study of hysteria in men."
As time passed, Freud turned increasingly away from Charcot's organic explanation and looked into the psychic pre-history of the disease and the unconscious and sexual lives of his patients, both male and female. When in 1895 he published, with Josef Breuer, Studies on Hysteria, the volume that Micale calls "the first distinctly psychoanalytic book," he illustrated his emerging theories by describing five patients, all women. Micale enumerates several possible reasons for the absence of male examples (though Freud had treated many), of which Breuer's reluctance to play the intellectual revolutionary is the most convincing.
After Freud broke with Breuer and took up a new and productive relationship with Wilhelm Fliess, he relied more and more on the combination of personal self-examination and the clinical observation of his patients. His self-analysis became a crucial element in his investigative methodology, along with his case studies and his voluminous reading. Considerable academic scholarship has been devoted to the Freud-Fliess correspondence since it was published in the 1980s, all erroneously stating that Freud's hysteria patients of the 1890s were entirely female. There were in fact many male analysands, and they were just as important to the evolution of his theories -- about hysteria and everything else -- as their feminine counterparts. The fact is that the notion of male hysteria has remained difficult for male physicians to accept, even in relatively recent times. Among other reasons for this state of affairs, claims Micale, the "turning of the male gaze inward" at itself is too threatening, too fraught with the danger of discovering elements of femininity in the masculine psyche, too much liable to result in an unacceptable homoerotic perception. "Fear, vanity and the drive for power are the underlying sentiments operating in this story."
With the progress of psychoanalytic psychology introduced by Freud, the psychodynamics underlining the denial have been revealed, Micale tells us, to be that the male "psychological imperative to free oneself from infant maternal identification ... requires a continual censuring of the eternal 'feminine within.'" Culture often operates against science. For hundreds if not thousands of years, these traditions of gender stereotypes and sexual anxieties have hindered opportunities for insight into the existence and the nature of male hysteria.
The long tale of hysteria makes a fascinating, if often convoluted, story. It would have been all too easy for a writer without Mark Micale's skills to have lost his readers within the multiplicity of theories, debates, terminologies, and misapprehensions of various epochs, but he has somehow managed to follow the tortuous narrative line through a tangle of disconnected confusions that are all but incomprehensible to a twenty-first-century mind. Certainly, it was often incomprehensible to physicians, intellectuals, and other reasonably well-educated people who lived through hysteria's various incarnations and explanations. But Micale has done more than tell a good story. He has made numerous perceptive interpretations along the way, scouring the state of concomitant literature and art in order to seek the ambient clues that come together to form the supporting structure for much of his theoretical speculation.
What Micale has accomplished is a tour de force of medical, cultural, and psychological detective work. In his hands, the three-thousand-year refusal of the medical world to acknowledge the existence of hysteria in any but females is proven to have a perfectly understandable psychoanalytic basis, but it has taken a scholar of wide-ranging intellectual background and enormous perspicacity to build, era by era, to its discovery and the construction of his impressively supported thesis. He has provided a model for other scholars to follow, not least in demonstrating by example that a historian of medicine must be also a historian of culture.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Working to Understand Men's Mental Health
Working to understand men's mental health
More can be done to help men in this little studied area of wellbeing
Men's mental health is a particularly salient issue in these troubled times. Worldwide, more than one million people kill themselves each year. In the UK, men are four times more likely than women to kill themselves and there have been over 6,500 male suicides in the past six years.
Incidence data from the last century show suicide rates have peaked during past economic recessions. Gay men are two to three times more likely to have a mental health problem and 4.3 times more likely to attempt suicide than straight men, and have around double the rate of depression and anxiety. 94% of young offenders are male and 80-90% have mental health problems.
Furthermore, while the rate of deliberate self-harm is higher in females (associated with problems in interpersonal relationships), it is four times more likely to lead to suicide in males, and is associated with alcohol, employment, financial and housing difficulties. One question is, will we see an escalation of distress and suicide in males during the current economic downturn?
Men's mental health is a dramatically understudied and poorly understood area of human wellbeing. Men are half as likely as women to be diagnosed with depression, yet twice as likely to abuse alcohol and drugs.
What's going on here? One compelling possibility is that what society teaches men about what it means to be a man leads us to express our pain in ways that differ from women. Among the more striking differences is that men are more likely to keep their problems to themselves. We frequently suffer in silence, and sometimes with dire consequences. Our research at Clark University in the US has shown that men who are more likely to value self-reliance and stoicism are more likely to have significant symptoms of depression; they are also more likely to report feeling ashamed of being depressed, and more likely to keep the problem to themselves.
Factors that may lead to mental wellbeing or ill-health are multiple and have complex interrelationships. Comparatively little is understood about how these manifest in men differently to women. There is lack of public knowledge about mental health problems generally. During their lifetime, 25% of the population will experience a mental health difficulty. However, when asked, half of company bosses estimated levels at 0% in their workforce.
Stigma is associated with mental health problems and their perceived effect on employment. In western cultures, boys are taught that it is better to express emotions such as anger than fear or pain and there are cultural sanctions for those who deviate from this. Depression and anxiety may get expressed as anger. Men are socialised to fix problems. As one service user put it "men deal with it – I'm not dealing with it, therefore I'm not a man". No wonder men may have a tendency to play down their problems, overestimate their ability to deal with them and have a reluctance to seek help. Nor is it surprising that it is commonly hard for those around them to spot the symptoms.
So, what can be done? Men and women need educating in what symptoms to look out for in themselves and others. Signs may include inability to concentrate; being unable to engage with people; a change in appetite; feelings of worthlessness or hopelessness; change in sleeping patterns; and increase in use of alcohol or drugs.
Some men have faulty perceptions about, and place low value on, therapy. As a society, we need to associate help-seeking with strength and courage. Media campaigns in the UK, such as Time to Change, aim to start addressing this. The effects of redundancy on men and women need consideration and employers need educating. At Clark University there are plans to establish the first centre devoted to the study of men's mental health.
Half of people experiencing depression, after a relatively short course of therapy, go on to make a full and lasting recovery. However, sitting and talking about problems is not what many men are comfortable doing. Therapists need to develop more effective methods of engaging them.
The national strategy, Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT), is aimed at identifying and treating anxiety and depression more effectively in the general population. Early statistics show lower take-up of this service among men. While research indicates that higher numbers of women experience mental health difficulties than men, it is unclear whether this is because it is a hidden problem and self-referral to the new IAPT services might help. Linking commissioning of educatio n, social care and health care services may lead to men's needs being more comprehensively addressed in future.
• Michael Addis is professor of psychology at Clark University, Massachusetts
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
John Peck - The "Cred" - One Arm Dumbell Snatch
The "Cred" - One Arm Dumbell Snatch
By John A. Peck
Among my usual exercises, when I first enter the gym, is a series of what I call "the Cred," one arm dumbbell snatches.Now this may seem a strange initiation to a weightlifting workout, but I believe by the end of this short article, you may be inspired not only to try it, but to regularly work it into your schedule. The benefits are nothing short of amazing, and nothing compares for gaining confidence and motivation in the typical gym.
Let me start by saying that I'm not very tall (5'7" on a good day), nor am I particularly strong, nor flexible, but this lift will not only increase both, but will make it look like you have loads of both - a great motivator for increasing each.
THE HISTORY
No, not the history of the lift - the history of me doing it. It went like this. I walk into Dave's Gym in Louisville, Ohio, an honest, hardcore weightlifting gym run by a deceptively experienced owner. He knows his stuff. The regulars of this gym are big guys generally; firemen, policemen (with arms bigger than my legs, literally), one guys who wants to be a model, and an on-and-off smattering of teens doing 'curls for girls,' and not much else during their three hour workout.
When I started the dumbbell snatch as a part of my routine, as I was told (by Charles) to concentrate on form, which I did, but soon I found that doing the lift right became natural as my body seemed to figure out the most efficient way to do it. In fact, after a few sets, I found that adding weight was simple, and in fact, the dynamics of such a full body lift are really relatively simple, and that fear, from lack of familiarity, was the biggest factor.
THE SNATCH
Some important points.
Set/Rep schedule: I recommend doing 5sets of 5 reps, until things get a little heavy, then 3 sets of 3 reps. When you get to 100 lbs (and you will) go to one rep on each side for each set. Don't do more than 5 reps at anytime. Just increase the weight.
First in line. Do this lift first in your workout. You'll need all your energy. When performing a good, textbook one arm dumbbell snatch, one must take into account that this is a full body lift. You will be using all of your muscles, especially the big ones, in accomplishing this lift. It is not an 'arm' exercise. If it becomes an arm exercise, you will either fail the lift, or hurt yourself, especially the shoulder, and you do not want a shoulder injury - ever. I also found no reason to add any cardio to my workout. This is more cardio than I would do anyway, and I encourage everyone to do it with as little break between sets as possible.
Left, right, left, right - Start with your weak side. You know which one that is. The set is complete when you have done all the reps with each arm. For me, I start with the left arm, and end with the right arm.
Drive from the heels. Anytime you are about to push something heavy, you do it from the heels, and dig in. You are about to push something heavy, so do it right. If you rock onto the balls of your feet, or toward the toes, you will lose much of your power. Stay on your heels from the start, and drive hard from there for maximum power.
Snap the hips. Anyone even slightly familiar with kettlebell snatches will know this very well, but I'll assume you don't know it. All of your power will come from the hips. When you start, snap those hips up as hard and fast as you can. Your hips, not your arm, is lifting the weight, and your back will compensate somewhat, which you will feel when you're done with your first workout. All the vertical power comes from the hips, so don't worry about your arms. In fact, if you try to utilize your arms, you are likely to end up 'swinging' it up in an arc, which means it will sail not up, but around behind your shoulder, and give you a nice, permanent shoulder injury. For this exercise, the weight needs to go straight up, and your hips and back will do it.
Drop under the weight. If needed. This is not cheating, it is good form. Once that weight starts flying upward, dropping under it slightly is better than trying to muscle it up with your arm and shoulder, and it is much better than having to drop the weight because your form is bad and you can't get the dumbbell all the way up. It's not complicated, but it may take a few tries. Don't worry. I believe you will do this naturally in a small way, but if you do so intentionally, you may find yourself completing lifts that otherwise you would fail.
Hold it. If you've done the lift right, you will standing there for a moment with the weight directly over your shoulder joint. Count slowly to three (in other words, three long seconds). Then lower it to the ground as safely as you can. Remember, don't fight the dumbbell for space. You will lose, and it will be painful. Plus, it just looks bad when you get a huge amount of weight up with one hand…and then drop it squarely on your foot. The laughter following you little-girl-squealing and hopping around will not make up for it.
THE PEANUT GALLERY: INSTANT CRED.
Here are a few of the comments I've heard while doing this lift. Why include these? Because these are the unexpected benefits I have noticed as a middle aged man returning to the gym after a long layoff. Just as being in better shape, having larger muscles, more strength, and a thinner waist make me feel better, so these little jewels of commentary have really brought me some unsolicited joy and satisfaction.
· "Dude, what are you training for?" (High schoolers)
· "That's a lot of weight! I could never do that." (Gigantic fireman)
· "All of them!" (Gym owner, when being asked by high schoolers 'Which muscle does THAT work?')
· "Your husband, he's that strong guy. Yeah, I've seen him." (A different gigantic fireman, talking to my wife, who works at the gym as morning receptionist.)CHEATS
Yes, there are a few cheats one can utilize in doing this incredibly basic exercise.
For example, I don't use grips or wrist wraps when I do the "Cred." Many people find that at some point, around 90-110 lbs they have the strength to do the lift, but not the grip to hold the dumbbell. A common problem, perhaps, but a problem still. Here's my solution.First of all, use wraps if you like. It doesn't matter to me, and it won't matter to anyone who watches you. They won't even notice. If you don't use wraps, try these cheats to make things go a little easier when you are struggling at a particular weight.
Hand position: Keep your hand, and the dumbbell parallel to your feet (see picture), but when you lift, turn the dumbbell slightly to the outside. That is, clockwise if using your right hand, counter-clockwise if using your left. This gives your grip a little bit of a break, and a little more strength for the lift. Don't over do this cheat, but it will help you get an extra rep or three, when well into your sets.
It is also a good idea to move the hand closer to the "thumb" side of the grip. Again, this adds more balance, and therefore more strength, to the grip and allows you that extra 'oomph' you need to blast out those last reps.
From the Low Hang: Rather than snatch the dumbbell from the floor, pick it up and let it hang about 3-6 inches off the floor.(see photo) I don't know why this helps, as I can't imagine that those few inches make any difference at all, but it seems to. Ask Charles why this helps.
Now, I'm not an expert at this lift. I'm not an expert at any lift, but I would call myself a veteran of it. In my opinion, the One Armed Dumbell Snatch deserves a place on the roster of one of the greatest single lifts of all time.
This lift gives you instant 'cred.' You know, 'credit.' Strength credit. As my dad once told me, it doesn't matter if they're stronger than you, as long as you are stronger than they think you are, they'll respect you. Dad was right. If you don't believe me, try it at your gym for a month. Do it right, and do it hard. Then, write in and tell me what you see and hear, and enjoy the comments of the peanut gallery.
About The Author
John A. Peck is the priest of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Prescott, Arizona. A lifting veteran, he finds it an enjoyable way to avoid dying of life-style diseases. John is an adjunct instructor for Tri-City Prep High School (Latin), Yavapai Community College, and Veritas Theological Seminary. He has enjoyed great success in utilizing tiered and measurable physical training in Christian Youth programs. He is a happy husband, father of three sons, and owner of one dog, 13 chickens, and a set of bagpipes. He currently trains at TNT Fitness & Body in Prescott, AZ.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Recession beards for charity, meet a group of men in a growing movement
Read the whole post - there's pictures of some of the guys.Recession beards for charity, meet a group of men in a growing movement
As the recent recession beard trend has gained traction, chin curtains have become a way for some men to embrace unemployment and express a new-found sense of freedom. However, for one firm, they have also become a sign of community involvement and a way to help a charity survive the recession.
Observing the wave of layoffs across the country, workers at a Massachusetts-based financial services company decided that facial hair might be a great way to show solidarity with their unemployed friends. The company already has a bi-annual mustache contest, in which employees vie for the distinction of best and worst lip locks. The unveiling occurs at the company's yearly formal dinner, and is a much-anticipated occasion.
For one worker, Justin Unton, the transition from mustaches to beards seemed logical, and he suggested to human resources that the company should conduct a recession beard contest to let unemployed financial services workers know that his company felt their pain. In the process, he and his 16 fellow beard growers decided that this was also a good opportunity to raise money for the Make-a-Wish foundation. They set a goal of $1,000, charged a $20 entrance fee, took "before" pictures of their clean-shaven baby faces, and began the race to manly beardiness.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Larry Barnes - Influences and Challenges of Male Gender Construct
Here is an academic paper on the Influences and Challenges of Male Gender Construct, by Larry Barnes, Assistant Professor, West Texas A&M University. The article provides a good look at how gender identity is formed as a collision of interpersonal and environmental influences, but it seems to reject a psychological formation approach.As usual, academics miss the wholeness that constitutes gender identity and consciousness. Still, this is an interesting look at one quadrant of how boys become men.
Influences and Challenges of Male Gender ConstructRead the rest of this interesting article.
Larry Barnes, Assistant Professor, West Texas A&M University, lbarnes@mail.wtamu.edu
Abstract
Adolescent males face a variety of challenges and influences regarding male identity. Environments and activities that suppress the testing of various roles complicate negotiating conflicting messages about what it means to be a man. Positive and negative influences on male construct identified by current research are discussed. Specifically, influences of peer groups, leisure activities, and the classroom are examined. The experimental process of identity construct for males is identified. Challenges to role experimentation are recognized and a theory of diverse experience is established as guidance for caregivers in helping adolescent males through the identity crisis.
Introduction
Identity development is a critical and complicated process for adolescents. Erikson (1959) maintained that the formation of a healthy sense of identity was crucial in transitioning from adolescence to adulthood. This important step in maturing is challenged from many sources. Prior research has identified both psychological stress and anti-social behavior as adversaries to identity development (Wires, Barocas, & Hollenbeck, 1994). However, new research has implicated lifestyle, classroom dynamics, peer interactions, and parental influences to be associated with identity development as well. In addition, public image as transmitted through media services plays a role in determining an adolescent’s acceptance of gender roles and expressions (Shaw, Kleiber, & Caldwell, 1995). With the increasing understanding of multi-factorial influences on identity development, how are adolescents coping with the deluge? The problem is adolescents are struggling with managing the myriad of identity contradictions resulting in increased violence (Goodey, 1997), harassment (Murnen & Smolak, 2000), sexual deviance (Bogaret, 2003), and self-destructive acts (Beautrais, 2003). Understanding the people, places, and associations related to identity development will assist caregivers to distinguish healthy approaches for adolescent development.
Gender identity differences are considered to be interpersonally and environmentally influenced (Pollack, 1995). This is attested to, in part, by the questioning of the meaning of masculinity that typically occurs during periods of social and economic tensions (Kimmel, 2005). Because gender identity is significantly influenced by environmental factors, seeking combinations of diverse experiences would provide an adolescent male with the opportunity to find himself, given time. The purpose of this research article is to discourage the formulation of a complicated psyche for purposes of identity construct and encourage a carefully and individually planned activity schedule that maximizes the opportunity for healthy construct. The theory is that given appropriate diversity in social engagements the adolescent male will discover himself with fewer complications or stereo typical behaviors. This article will attempt to provide the reader with a framework from which to contribute proactively to adolescent male gender identity.
Exploring Identities
In an attempt to clarify the process of identity development, Marcia (1980, p.156) identified three periods of transition: identity diffusion; moratorium; and foreclosure. During the identity diffusion stage an adolescent begins confronting their identity predicament and becomes confused with little or no examination of alternatives and no commitment to a particular identity. The moratorium stage is characterized by an exploration of alternatives without any commitment about self. Foreclosure is marked by a premature commitment to an unsatisfactory identity without any prior consideration of alternatives. True identity is only achieved when alternatives have been fully explored and a commitment made to a particular role and image. It is important to note, however, that adolescents may go through multiple stages of development, switch from one developmental period to another, and even get trapped in a particular period of growth (Waterman, 1985, p. 73). Each of the periods identified allow adolescents to experiment with different skills, evaluate different outlooks and test different identities in a variety of contexts (Kleiber & Kirshnit, 1991). Multi-factorial influences shape the process and responses to experimentation often determine the next step in discovery (Bracken & Lamptecht, 2003). These influences and responses warrant closer consideration and deeper understanding if caregivers are to identify methods of coping during these sensitive periods.
Continuing research further defines the social contexts most beneficial to identity experimentation. Diverse gender interactions involving structured activity, non-sports related competition, and language rich interactions provide some of the most beneficial opportunities for experimentation (Sommers, 2000, p.128). However, such diverse contexts require careful review and planning in order to progressively build on previous self discoveries.
Bracken and Lamptecht (2003) determined that self-identity is progressive in the sense that behaviors and self-perspectives become increasingly refined within individual domains and differentiated between spheres of influence with age. They cite an infant as an example of limited experiential history or environmental exposure and thus expected to have no definitive self-concept. However, as children are exposed to a variety of settings and experiences they become more adept at differentially evaluating their individual characteristics and behaviors within those settings. Such an evaluation leads to a commitment of identity. However, Simmons, Rosenberg, and Rosenberg (1973) discovered consistent outcomes within similar environmental contexts and somewhat consistent outcomes across different environmental contexts are crucial in adopting an identity. They concluded that self-image diminishes at adolescence because of the mixed messages received during this age resulting from limited diversity in social engagements. Consistent and inconsistence response patterns among domains must then be considered when looking for ways to guide the self-discovery process.
According to Josselson (1980, p.12), exploring identities involves both individuation and social relatedness. Individuation refers to the need to separate self from others and social relatedness refers to the need of belonging to a group. Both needs are influenced by the unique gender roles explored by adolescents (Poole, 1986). In relation to both needs, Goodey (1997) discovered that the uniquely male “fearless façade” is largely responsible for a male adolescent’s denial of vulnerability and the display of aggressive acts toward others. The popular understanding of ‘maleness’ is often reduced to that which is not feminine. As a result, Ghaill (1994, p.40) concluded a stable male identity has traditionally fallen into a stereotype of the strong, rational, and sometimes aggressive man and the contexts for experimentation traditionally promote these stereotypes. Boys experimenting with acts of recklessness (denial of vulnerability) or aggression towards others and receive consistent, positive responses are more likely to accept this identity and become part of a group with similar identities (Goodey, 1997). The dynamics of social influence are two-way, meaning the individual persuades the group and the group persuades the individual in identity development.
Goodey (1997) provides a specific example of the two-way sphere of influence on identity development by illustrating a young adolescent male avoiding confrontation with a rowdy group of his peers by crossing the road. The risk-avoidance individual will assign meaning to his action of crossing the road in the context of his own personal history of avoidance and fear assessment. The group will consciously and subconsciously interpret his action in relation to the influence their own masculine status and action as a group and as individuals who make up the group. Of course ‘fearlessness’ is a difficult task and just one of many roles an adolescent will attempt to play out in his young life. However, its focus on emotional expression gets to the heart of what so many adolescent boys struggle with in their search for identity. Emotional disconnect and the subsequent lack of language for emotional self expression is the result of separation from primary love objects (mothers) during adolescence (Pollack, 1995). This places many adolescent boys in a vulnerable developmental phase.
Following his interviews with boys, Ghaill (1994, p. 38) found two themes repeatedly surfacing: first, that boys perceived no safe space in which they could talk about their feelings of vulnerability and, second, boys lacked the emotional language necessary for expressing their feelings. As a result, boys adopt their own “macho script of cynicism” in order to hide their feelings. Research conducted by Broderick and Korteland (2002) suggested not only are boys hiding their feelings, rather they are expected to avoid such issues. The researchers distributed questionnaires to 205 school age girls and 191 school age boys. A significant number from both genders stated in their answers that males should not direct their attention inwardly toward negative feelings but should distract themselves from emotional problems. Further research suggests boys are doing just that. Studying gendered reminiscence practices, Thorne and McLean (2002) discovered gender differences in the emotional construction of life-threatening events. Evaluation of male narratives of threatening events showed prevalence in expressing tough, action packed descriptions that were noticeably lacking in compassionate language. Goodey (1997) stated, “herein lies the problem of the hegemonic masculine ideal….boys don’t cry, or at least, they shouldn’t be seen to.” Suppressing emotional expression can have a profound negative effect on discovery of identity. The impact of emotional suppression becomes pointed when examining peer group influences of the male gender.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Is Satire that Hard to Grasp?
Apparently a lot of T-Nation readers (like about 95%) didn't get it. Here is the beginning of a discussion about the issue in this week's Atomic Dog article.
You can read the rest of the article at the site.So let's start by stating the obvious: It's hard as shit to be funny on purpose. I've never heard of this guy, but I agree wholeheartedly with a point he makes: If a reader doesn't understand a poem, he blames himself. If the same reader doesn't get a joke, he blames the writer.
Everything I just said about comedy goes double for satire. And it goes triple for satire on the Internet, a medium that encourages readers to express strong opinions on material they may not have read from beginning to end.
Which brings me to last week's Atomic Dog column, "12 Manliness Guidelines."
You have to go to the eighth page of comments on the discussion thread before a reader drops the S bomb. And that was after TC asked, on the seventh page of the thread, if there was an English major in the house.
TC and I emailed back and forth about the column, and the readers' reaction to it, for several days before we decided it was a good time to give readers some insight into TC's creative process — how much of his material is true (as opposed to "true"), how his perspective and sense of humor have helped define the editorial mission of Testosterone Muscle, and what we hope to accomplish going forward.
TC has talked a lot about his background, his book, and the poorly understood link between poker prowess and the proximity of the cards to the dealer's breasts.
Now it's time to get into some meatier subjects.
Testosterone Muscle: When I read your Atomic Dog last Friday, it never occurred to me that you were seriously saying real men don't drink wine or beer, or send text messages, or anything like that. I assumed you were satirizing the idea of one guy, or one group of guys, defining manliness for all other guys. But when I read the discussion thread, it looked like at least 95 percent of the posters took it seriously. Did that catch you by surprise?TC: Ha! Let's put it this way: it kinda surprised me.
I knew a lot of guys would get pissed and defensive, but I thought they'd "get it" when they got to the very last line, which was, "I think my deed in reaffirming manliness is done here. Now scuze me while I go tweeze my eyebrows."
I guess they got so pissed, they never made it to the last line.
But I didn't consciously attempt to write a satirical piece. More accurately, I was just deliberately going, in poker terms, "over the top" to elicit a rise out of the readership. As anyone who's read more than one or two of my columns knows, it's what I like to do.
I think of myself as the impish Zen master who tries to elicit "awakenings" in his students by punking the reader. They're all Beyoncé and I just convinced them they knocked down the 50-foot Christmas tree.
TM: Sorry to break it to you, but when you look like a Viking, "impish" isn't exactly an option. Okay, truth time: How many of those items in the column actually apply to you, personally? I mean, you're a successful guy, and you never drink wine? Really? To me, it's one of the best reasons to become successful — you can afford more wine, and better wine.
TC: Actually, I don't drink wine. I really don't like it much. And I really do want to put my boot in the ass of the kind of the guy played by Paul Giamatti in Sideways: "Oh, oh, you've got to try the new Pinot!"
TM: But he's an unattractive, unsuccessful, self-centered jerk who sleeps with Virginia Madsen! If that's not an argument for increased wine consumption, I don't know what is!
TC: Well, that might be a reason to coerce women into drinking more wine; you know, so they'll make poor judgments about who to have sex with.
Anyway, I don't give a rat's ass if anyone drinks wine. And I don't think whether or not you do is indicative of manhood.
As far as the other stuff on the list that I do, I have to admit that I'm a texting fiend. I'm a writer after all, or at least I play one on Testosterone Muscle.
I'm definitely not a hugger, but shit, I'm Scandinavian. It's a cultural thing. If my parents wanted to show affection they gently stroked me with a 10-foot pole. I'm all for hugging women should they initiate it, though. I mean, hell, when you hug a woman, there's only a millimeter of cotton separating you from a totally naked woman.
And I've got some clothes you could probably find in Details. Shit, I don't own a pair of shoes that wasn't handmade by fancy-schmancy shoe designer Donald J Pliner in the mountains of Italy. Granted, they're all different colors of the same shoe, and they're about the only ones that don't cause the fascia on the bottoms of my feet to tighten up, but still they're a bit foppish.
I do other "metrosexual" things, too. I use moisturizer on my elbows. I've trimmed my nasal hairs so that female birds have one less place to go for nesting material.
As far as the rest of the stuff, I don't really do any of it. But it's not a manhood thing. If I wanted an ice cream cone or a fancy coffee drink, it's not like I'd be afraid to order it, lest someone judge my masculinity. However, I really do think it's strange to wear a jersey with some sports star's name on it. Likewise, along the same lines, I'd probably never ask anyone for their autograph. But it's not a question of manliness; it's just that the idea has no appeal to me.
Above all, being "manly" is not giving a shit about what others think. I would have thought the readers knew my real thoughts on the matter.
Lyle McDonald - The 5X5 Program
The 5x5 program is one of the classic protocols for weight training. In this informative article, Lyle McDonald takes a look at some variations of the program that make it useful for people at all stages of experience.
The 5X5 Program
Training, like most things in the universe, tends to follow fads and trends. Popular programs go out of style and others become the ‘next best thing’. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes that’s bad.
In recent years, people have gotten fairly fascinated with what is a truly classic program: the 5X5 program. Since this system happens to be an excellent way of training, this is one of those cases where the fad isn’t a bad thing at all.
In this article I want to look briefly at the history of the 5X5 program as well as at some of the various interpretations that have been used over the years. One source of confusion comes in that there are so many different ways to interpret 5X5 (depending on the goals and status of the lifter) and just saying that you’re doing ‘5X5′ doesn’t really give all of the details.
So let’s look at the details.
The History of the 5X5 Program
I’m not sure if anybody can say for sure who first did a program consisting of 5 sets of 5 repetitions; it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if lifters in the early 20th century didn’t do something similar since they seem to have tried just about everything at one point or another.
However, almost without exception, the program can be mostly attributed to Bill Starr in his book The Strongest Shall Survive: Strength Training for Football. Even if others had done it before him, he was assuredly the one who did the most to popularize it.
So me…I’m giving him the credit for it.
Tangentially, The Strongest Shall Survive, even after so many years is truly a great book and I highly recommend that anyone who is a student of lifting get a copy. It’s only $20 (a paltry price to pay these days) and can be had from the excellent folks at Aasgaard.
Now, here’s an amusing bit of trivia that I bet most aren’t aware of; and that is how Starr actually came up with 5X5 in the first place. Quoting Starr himself:
The researchers found that 4-6 repetitions of 4-6 sets, increasing the weight on each successive set, produced the most significant increase in strength. Terrific, I simplified the formula to five sets of five reps as that was the exact median and it was easy to remember.
In recent years, strength coaches such as Glenn Pendlay and Mark Rippetoe have re-popularized the 5X5 program and there are many other write-ups (including the Madcow writeup of 5X5 programs) out there as well.
Basically, the 5X5 program is here to stay and there’s a good reason for that: it’s an excellent program for many applications. It may not be the be-all, end-all that some seem to think it, but there are definitely a lot worse ways that the average trainee could train than this.
What is 5X5?
In the simplest terms 5X5 refers to a program made up of 5 sets of 5 repetitions. As I noted above, Starr came up with this by simplifying data showing that 4-6 sets of 4-6 reps was about optimal for strength gains.
Now, sets of 5 are actually a good repetition range for a number of reasons, I’d note that these are discussed in both of Mark Rippetoe’s excellent books Starting Strength and Practical Programming for Strength Training both of which I not only also highly recommend but are also available from Aasgaard. Again, very highly recommended.
As I discussed in Reps Per Set for Optimal Growth, sets of 5 are actually in the range that I commonly use for hypertrophy anyhow. Generally speaking a maximum set of 5 will be about 85% of maximum and lifter will use a bit less if they are doing more than one set. That’s a weight that provides sufficient tension to get maximal muscle fiber recruitment; 5 reps also allows sufficient work to be done with that weight. High tension plus metabolic work is a winning combination for both strength and size. Especially combined with load progression over time.
As well, since the metabolic fatigue from a 5 rep set tends to be fairly low (compared to higher repetitions sets), technique is often much more stable compared to higher rep sets. When fatigue starts to hit on higher rep sets, lifters without stable technique often get sloppy. Stopping at 5 reps avoids much of that.
I would note that this can also go the other way around, especially as the reps get lower than 5 and the weights get heavier. Groove becomes much more critical as the reps get lower; whereas lifters can often save a lift that is out of position when the reps are higher, their technique has to be much more consistent to do low reps without getting into problems.
I should note that there are critics of the 5X5 for certain applications, notably competition powerlifting. The usual criticism is that 5X5 doesn’t provide enough heavy first reps to prepare someone for powerlifting. A routine based around triples, doubles and singles are often preferred since this not only lets you go heavier but you get more properly done first reps which is a key to optimal powerlifting performance. And there is much to this idea.
However, I don’t recall the 5X5 being explicitly recommended for powerlifting so I’m not sure it’s a particularly valid criticism. 5X5 is a good way of building basic strength (and some decent size if you do it right) and that’s what it’s typically presented as.
Admittedly, some on the web (as people on the web are wont to do) have tried to make 5X5 the ultimate training program for all applications but that has more to do with people on the web than how 5X5 was ever really presented or meant to be used.
However, even saying that the program is 5X5 still doesn’t get into the details and that’s what I want to talk about next since there are at least 4 different interpretations of the 5X5 program that I’m aware of (and some folks have probably come up with more).
Read the whole article.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Masculinity in the Modern Mainstream Cinema
The way masculinity has been portrayed in film has changed a lot over the years. HopkinsCinemAddicts takes a look at this issue from a film buff's perspective. Part of what they examine is the gulf between the tough guy action hero and the softer, more sensitive man.Obviously, there needs to be more reality and a middle way, rather than the extremes at either end of the spectrum, and I look at that a little below the quotes.
Go read the whole article.Masculinity in the Modern Mainstream Cinema
A few years ago, no one had even heard of Judd Apatow, Meg Ryan chick flicks dominated the mainstream audiences and Bruce Willis was the definition of the American hero. Today, things are different. Apatow's films are wildly popular, I Love You, Man, a rated R comedy, opens to critical acclaim and 300 dudes killing people is a pop culture icon. Hollywood's vision of the modern man is confusing to say the least. There are two, polarizing visions: one is that guys have become softer as seen in the many romantic comedies flooding mainstream cinema. Gone is the cocky, robust bad boys of the past. Instead, the modern man has become schlubblier for lack of a better word: for example, Seth Rogen's character in any movie he's been in or Vince Vaugh's character in Wedding Crashers. The modern male protagonist is an emotional one, a lazy one, a hedonistic one. He is, for lack of a better word, an imperfect one who fights with his mind rather than with his hands. On the other hand, there is a definite demand for the hyper-masculine as seen in action movies; heroes who do what have to be done at any cost. The bulging beasts of men in 300. The James Bond who spends more time topless than the Bond girls. However, these two polarizing visions do serve a purpose. Comedy is all about relatability and the schlubby man succeeds in getting the audience to empathize with them. Action movies, to some extent, are our modern mythology where men are larger than life and their deeds to echo throughout eternity. Their viciousness is celebrated because they do things that any normal person wouldn't.
The opening scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall typifies the shows one aspect of the emotional man: he is schlubby. Here is the set up: The main character, played by Jason Siegel, is preparing to meet his highly successful actress girlfriend, Sarah Marhsall, played by Kristen Bell, for dinner. He is walking around in a towel about to get into the shower. Sarah Marshall comes back and promptly breaks up with him. In his shock, he lets go of the towel and his entire figure can be seen in the frame. It becomes painfully apparent the audience that it that Jason Siegel does not have the body of a body builder. Not even close. His figure looks looks more like a potato than Michelangelo's David. His character even cries later during the scene. It's brutally honest and pathetic. But, as pathetic as we may think he is, we empathize with him. Any man in the movie going audience could be Siegel's character, schlubby and emotional. Siegel's physique is a testament to the YouTube generation: he is successful because he looks like one of us. We empathize with him because he does go through everyday tragedies like we do. The initial scene can be any one of the stories on fmylife.com or a similar website. Today, mean talk about their feelings all the time and to some extent, have been emasculated. We like him because he is like us.
Another aspect of the emotional man is how utterly logical he is. Very few secrets are kept between himself and the film and the audience can easily project themselves upon the character. Take, for example, Owen Wilson's character in Wedding Crashers. Even his name, John Beckwith, sounds generic but that may be the point. The reason why the movie is so funny is because he reacts the way any one of us would react. For example, the scene where his love interests mother asks him to feel her breasts, he acts like any one of us would act. First his fame fills us with disbelief and then disgust, not at the breasts, but perhaps at himself for being in the situation and going along with a madwoman's wishes. A neat touch is that the frame is set behind the woman and we actually never see her breasts; we only see John's expression because the breasts are not the point. The point is is his reaction because it reflects the audience's reaction to the situation. He is definitely relatable.
A final aspect of the modern man is how he always has a best friend. "Bro-mances" as a genre is picking up steam: Wedding Crashers, I Love You, Man, Superbad are all films about the strange relationship to men have between one another that oddly resembles a romantic relationship. In Superbad, for example, there is a scene near the end of the movie where both male leads literally proclaim their love for each other after a wild night with of trying (but failing) to have sex with girls. Its an odd experience to watch but perhaps typical in any American setting. Which boy hasn't grown up with the one best friend? It emasculating because it implies that men do really care and need each other. Men are not senseless sex-filled beasts, but ones that have feelings and hearts that are as fragile as any woman's. Its sad, but honest expression of friendship that audiences can relate to.
This quote comes a little further down and looks at the other extreme - the hyper-masculine man best exemplified in 300.
On the other hand, there is a definite rise in hyper-masculinity in action films. Our heroes are lean mean, killing machines. Its an open secret that set designers in the '60s used to make the doors slightly smaller so when the protagonists make their dramatic entrance, they seem bigger than life. Today, set designers don't need to do that. We have CGI, lighting and actors willing to push their physical limits. 300 used a variety of CGI, artful lighting and a masochistic training regimen to sell the audience that these 300 men could really go against a million. Their skill at killing people is celebrated: there is a point in the movie where Zack Snyder, the director, slows down an action sequence so the audience can satiate itself with every bloody moment. The camera pans along slowly as King Leonidas, played by Gerard Butler, hacks down a line of any soldiers mercilessly and the shot ends with his abs rippling. Another example would be in Casino Royale, the reboot of the James Bond franchise, starts with Bond in a gritty fight sequence where he eventually over powers a poor soul. The film further celebrates his masculinity with gratuitous shots of him shirtless even mimicking the body out of water shot popularized by the earlier James Bond film Octopussy and Die Another Day, even though that was with a the female leads. In Crank, the male lead bashes and thrashes his way through the movie and not even a few thousand mile drop into the middle of the city can stop him (as seen with the release of Crank 2 in a few days). Crank's Chev Chelios is an angry, sociopathic murderer and his mastery of bloody comic book violence is embraced. Our heroes, today, are angry, muscular bad-asses.These two extremes are not overly realistic to most men's experience. But that may be part of why they are appealing to so many guys seeking an identity (especially younger men, who seem to be the main audience for these films).
On one hand, this alienates any sense of empathy the audience has for the heroes. No, there is no way any man can get that big (unless he is part of the LAX team). No, there is absolutely no way any movie going audience can kill a billion guys without feeling a touch of remorse. Our society now is one that condemns violence even in video games and suppresses even the vaguest inklings of anger. Maybe that's why there is rise of masculinity in mainstream cinema.
On the one hand, the soft guy shows men it is OK to have feelings, to have close male friends, and to care a women as more than a sex toy. On the other hand, the hyper-masculine image reminds young men that testosterone seeks expression of strength and likes a challenge. This is how the authors sum it up:
Masculinity in today's mainstream cinema is a two faced: on one hand, romantic comedies deflate the male mythos. The romantic leads are a reflection of today's audiences, they are the ones who we empathize with and feel for. If it has happened to us, we are more likely to laugh. On the other hand, our action movies have injected testosterone into our heroes. Our heroes now are strong, violent and Machiavellian. They are who we secretly want to be. They are physical perfection. These two projections of what it means to be a man are a product of society interweaving with each other and I can only wonder what tomorrow's heroes will be like.The obvious need is to have these two extremes more wedded into a mature masculine image - but that is more likely to be found in indie films than in mainstream movies, if it is to be found at all.
The New Man Episode 56: Jeremy Geffen: Vision Quest - Discovering What Really Matters
Episode 56: Jeremy Geffen: Vision Quest -- Discovering What Really Matters
Some would say that being a successful doctor or professional is a meaningful lifetime achievement. “If I could be that, I’d be set!” Well, what does it mean when one of the most successful oncologists in the world is struggling for life meaning and direction? What does HE do to get answers?
Instead of buying another Porsche, this doctor went to the mountains of Columbia to take part in a sacred, age-old ritual -- the vision quest. After strenuous preparations, he was “planted” on top of a mountain alone for four days and nights without food, water or shelter. He withstood torrential downpours and extreme conditions but he did not leave his post.
Why would a guy do this?
Listen to Dr. Jeremy Geffen, author of The Journey Through Cancer: Healing and Transforming the Whole Person talk about this amazingly difficult journey.
And ask yourself, “What would my life be like if I were willing to leave it all behind?”
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