so you cant perform a single one of the upper body basic skills ? i say that makes you weaker than ponytail's girlfriends. maybe you have a narrower definition of 'strength'. are you offended by the assertion that olympic gymnasts would outlift you in the gym within a few days as well ? i bet they would. why arent they in the gym lifting every day ? gee good question. turns out they do 95% body weight strength training. portal lifts a lot of his stuff from the gymnastics world. why ? because it works. successful gymnasts tend to be genetic freaks but so are professional powerlifters and bodybuilders as a rule. portal method lends ungodly strength to everyone with the dedication to apply themselves to it, not just the genetic outliers. youtube 'portal method' and look at people filming their progression over various periods of months and make your own judgments.
your agenda dictates your parameters. if you wanna get swole, hit the gym and deal with the consequences. if what you're doing works for you - great. no one's trying to convince you to join a club or a cult. do what works for you. its not my job to convince anyone of anything. i'm not pushing a product i just want to do what works best for me. i think 'bang for buck', resilience to injuries/imbalances and maximal flexibility / range of motion are important parts of what constitutes real 'strength' and the most intelligent effective approach to developing it - if you have a different philosophy, that's your business. if you think what you're doing already strikes an optimal balance among those things - keep smashing it up.
what i like about portal is he challenges every exercise thusly: what question does this answer ? is there a better answer ? what question are you answering when you throw that barbell around ? is there a way to get where you want to be faster, with less effort/strain on the joints or with less risk of injury/imbalance/limited ranges ? how about maintenance ? once portal method upper body basics are attained, near-optimal strength is maintained with a half-hour of work a day. less strain, less effort, less opportunity for injuries to occur, more time and energy available for general movement and improvisation.
bruce lee was a big proponent of weight training - but even he injured the fucking shit out of himself thusly (with + his own BW good mornings - jesus !) ... just because weights are 'an' answer doesnt make them the 'best' answer. when it comes to injuries there's more than just the statistical likelihood of an injury occurring - there are also questions of severity (how badly you get fucked when it does happen) and recovery (how much of the effort that you've put in evaporates if your luck runs out and how much of what you do is halted by the injury) ... so are there any upper body strength questions for which the best answer is: throwing heavy weights around ? captain ponytail does not believe so. if you disagree, hit the gym i'll just be playing touch butt in the park
