I love the ideals of hard work, being hardcore, and oozing intensity, but over the years I have learned there are many ways to perceive these things.

It took me about two weeks to figure out I uprooted myself right into HELL. I ran into many of the same issues many of you are still dealing with.

If you want to build total fitness, you need to know about something Jim Wendler calls The Push-Pull Concept — and it has nothing to do with benching or deadlifting.

This is the face of hardcore.

If I could walk up the stairs I would go directly back down and squat until I physically couldn’t make it back up the stairs.

Give everyone within one hundred feet a look that would make an onion cry, a look that scares the souls of children and brings the common man to a standstill.

What happens when you get a potential client who is all about doing the most hard core exercises, who moves mountains and is willing to go the distance to achieve his goals? As I imagine, you’d probably be happy to have a motivated, determined, and disciplined trainee.

I’ve been training with weights for 25 years and have spent the last 25 competing in both bodybuilding shows and powerlifting meets. Although I’ve done fairly well in the sport, it seems my Internet persona has overtaken anything I’ve done lifting.

I decided to write this article a few months ago but never got around to it until recently. It wasn’t until last weekend, when I scrolled through Dave Tate’s hip hop training mix on his iPod, that I realized this article was a necessity. Too many people are listening to, and worse yet, training to bad hip hop.