The burn means it’s working
July 14, 2014
2:54 am
You know quite a lot of big weightlifter dudes I know swear by yoga
Manly Guys Doing Manly Things
Updated Mondays or whenever I feel like it
You know quite a lot of big weightlifter dudes I know swear by yoga
I stayed doing yoga a while back. Couldn’t believe the benefits it had for my overall fitness and martial arts training. At the more advanced levels it is ridiculously hard.
I wasn’t convinced for a while, but eventually I got the hang of it.
Being able to teleport and breath fire is the best part-the stretchy limbs are just an afterthought.
OMFG the fire breath hurt so bad the first time! My guru just laughed at me and was all like “Don’t swallow beforehand. The saliva will insulate you.”
Thanks, jackass. Could’ve told me that a few minutes earlier, non?
This whole thread is great :D
My roommate dated a yoga instructor for awhile. She’d gone to Australia to study the circular breathing the aborigines do while playing the didgeridoo. Could blast fire for almost an hour, no breaks. It was real fun when he dragged her home to Minnesota for Christmas. Screw snowblowers and shovels.
This is why you breathe IN through the nose, and OUT through the mouth! Pranayama means not burning your sinuses.
I was pretty much Jared when I started Yoga. And I believe you about musclebound dudes swearing by Yoga, my instructor is fucking ripped.
Pic or lie :P
This isn’t 4chan
I just started office work in a Mountaineering business, keeping dates of expeditions and stuff, most of the guys I work with do rock climbing and hiking nigh constantly, and the others do Yoga 3 times a week, alongside the expeditions, it’s hard to say who does the whole thing better.
It’s a shame yoga has the reputation it has among the “hardcore” physical fitness culture. Having biceps the size of your head doesn’t mean you’re in shape. Bodybuilding only focuses on strength, with cardio and endurance done as an afterthought if not a side-effect. Yoga does EVERYTHING.
Bodybuilding fixates more on building the perfect symmetrical body while getting as big as you’re able to in that mindset, powerlifting might be more of what you’re thinking though I agree yoga would be beneficial.
Bodybuilding focuses more on looks then functional strength. Power lifting and Olympic lifting are more strength oriented in my opinion.
Powerlifter (Someone focusing on strength) vs Bodybuilder (focusing on building up the body)
http://www.t-nation.com/img/photos/2011/11-679-05/tom-platz-fred-hatfield.jpg
If lobsters had testicles, they’d probably look like Tom Platz.
My dad is a big gym rat, not a bodybuilder, but he wants to make himself stronger, and he’d always make fun of the people doing Yoga.
He was like, “Go do your pansy sh*t somewhere else!” and this petite woman walks up to him and goes, “Why don’t you try it out then if you’re so sure it’s ‘pansy sh*t’?” He said he wanted to die after the first 10minutes of the session.
He does Yoga now with the petite woman when she teaches her class.
Good on your dad for being able to admit he was wrong. :)
Anyone who is “hardcore” into fitness and puts any stock in biceps, is no lifter. He is a curlbro. Biceps are almost purely aesthetical.
“bodybuilding focuses on strength”- No, it doesn’t. You’re thinking of powerlifting, bodybuilding is all about gaining size and losing fat for definition. Strength means nothing to them, it’s all about hypertrophy.
Yoga does not do everything. Flexibility, and some core strength are it’s strengths. It will not make you strong enough to hurl a calf, it will not bulk you up to a giant, it will not give you better endurance. It is still an absolutely perfect compliment for a serious lifter, because you don’t want to lose that flexibility.
Cardio and endurance are something of a point of contention in fitness though. Many say you need strength and endurance to be truly strong (unfortunately, crossfit really damaged this position’s image) and some shout “Cardio kills gains!” and refuse to do it. And both have arguments to back them. Short burst strength like powerlifting is somewhat overspecialized. While doing Cardio and lifting both means you need to eat far more to fit your nutritional needs.
Would it kill people to look up definitions in lifting, by the way? I hate people confusing bodybuilders and powerlifters, and just general lifters. That stuff is what makes people accuse you of using steroids.
It’ll actually give you *great* endurance if you do the right routines.
Biceps are crucial for any type of climbing or lifting (the motiong, not the act of weight training) though. Huge biceps are superfluous, but omitting biceps training is really doing oneself a disfavour.
To be fair, Bruce Lee did more Cardio than anything else and… he was Bruce Lee. There’s not much more I can say. If Commander Badass was going to respect ANYONE who is shorter than his beltline, it would be Bruce.
I can’t help but wonder how Jarrett manages to keep up with the the jobs that the commander gives him if he’s already you push to his limits. Especially since we’ve seen him babysit the commanders kid least once
Mr fish is able to do 4 tricks, I suppose “Jaretts Job” could be one of them.
Jared.
Yeah – Jared. Jarrett keeps up just fine. But then again – he’s just left working at the agency to intern at Night Vale Community Radio sooo…..
I find that when I’m playing around I can be alot more active than when I’m actually trying to exercise so it could just be mindset.
Playing around for an hour or two while sprinting half the time? Perfectly fine
Jogging for 5 minutes? OH GOD THE PAIN!
Long time follower/lurker here, stirred from quiet simply to say that I enjoy your work.
And also the Commander’s legs are bending in an unnatural way that even yoga can’t explain – perhaps the benefits of being from the future? It’s best not to dwell on such things.
I dunno about that.
Not sure if a man is capable of going at the angle a woman is. And with a man the size of commander, his spinal erector muscles might well simply be too large to allow that sort of thing.
I know they are in my case XP
Well – y’know… http://st.depositphotos.com/1424188/900/i/950/depositphotos_9003878-Man-yoga-scorpion-Vrschikasana-Pose.jpg
Maybe….
Gotta remember the dude is genetically engineered to be the father of all badasses.
My mind simply wasn’t ready for that. Thanks for posting the reference – I’m equal parts amazed at the beauty of human form, and horrified at the dark arts of yoga.
What’s so unnatural? His back is arched, his hips are flexed, and his knees are bent.
That and I’m pretty sure he’s going to have athlete’s foot behind his hairline.
The human body is capable of a lot of impressive things. That pose, while beyond me, isn’t even close to the limit.
Every time. Every time, I fall more and more in love with the Commander. He is just too many levels of awesome. I have been reading this for a few years, but I needed to leave a comment today.
Commander’s right in the last panel: If you really want to learn what the world is like, hang out with the kids. The rest of this page, he’s trying to show Jared how to keep up with them long enough to learn from them.
Insights like these are why I love and continue to read this comic. Commander’s line in the last panel is absolutely perfect.
(During the school year I help out with a program that involves me overseeing about 30 or so children at once between the ages of 5 and 7. Granted, it is not quite the same thing as being a parent, but I can attest to it being both tiring and rewarding.)
I am fully convinced that figuring out the secret of a child’s energy is the first step to building a perpetual motion machine.
Kids turn food straight into energy when it enters their body. This is why they can eat an enormous amount and not be fat.
Adults tend to turn food into fat, which only gets turned into energy when we need it.
If you want to have a child’s energy, just eat and act like one; have small but frequent snacks throughout the day and remain active.
That is… hilariously misinformed.
The digestive process works exactly the same for kids and adults. Energy in, energy out. You only build up fat at a caloric excess, no other way. It isn’t even what you eat either, expend the energy, and you will not gain weight (unless it’s cake all day, because then you will be essentially malnutritioned due to a lack of micronutrients. This is one of the leading causes of obesity- people eating lots of empty calories and their brain telling them they’re starving due to a lack of iron, zinc, vitamins and so on).
The reason kids are more active has to do with psychology, curiosity and such. And the days of kids being lean are long gone. Childhood obesity epidemic, remember? Human bodies work the same.
Kids actually do have a faster metabolism, though. Because they’re growing.
http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/fitness/everything-you-need-to-know-about-your-metabolic-rate.html
Was the first source I found on google to support.
All that says about metabolism is that kids expend far more energy because they’re growing. It’s still just energy in, energy out.
Most people tend to mean catabolism when they mean metabolism. And no, there’s no real difference in the ability to digest and absorb energy from food. In this case, anabolism is the thing you mean – the expenditure of energy to create new cells. Which yes, can be very different between individuals, and is heavily determined by nutrition, exercise and indeed, age.
If you meant anabolism, I apologize, I assumed you didn’t know the difference.
You’d be prescribed pills or called crazy. An adult with a childs energy is considered manic…I should know I used to be just that. EVERYONE kept telling me to hop on pills to calm down that it was bad and so on…But yeah…You are looking for mania.
And I agree gods I had ENDLESS energy felt like I could power tokyo and new york at once for at least a few weeks if not 20 something years solo.
Those kind of people who would call an energetic adult manic are trying to make you feel older than you really are…Possibly because they’ve already grown jaded & cynical enough to envy others who still approach life with some vigor.
Drug you into a mental stupor, drug you to sleep, drug you for this, that & the other thing. It’s ridiculous.
You know, mania is actually a mental health problem. Let me break it down for you.
1: You have about yes times the amount of energy that a normal adult has.
2: You cannot control this energy (THIS PART IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR THE DIAGNOSIS OF MANIA), and so you have poor impulse control and hyperactivity.
3: Mania doesn’t last forever, even untreated. It has a very high coincidence with depression, which is the polar opposite of mania and can lead to suicide. If you didn’t get treatment for mania, you probably won’t seek it out for depression, so you’re reliant on someone else getting you to the treatment before that happens.
4: Even if you don’t get depressed, the poor impulse control can lead to decisions that leave a manic person in massive debt, an enemy to dangerous people, unemployed, and just generally worse off than they’d be if they hadn’t had that unbridled energy.
If a small white pill can keep someone’s emotional state and energy levels stable, reduce risk of depression and suicide, and keep them from harming themselves physically or socially, isn’t it a net good? Don’t use the old line about mind altering substances; it’s impossible to avoid mind altering substances, and has been since man first took a bite of fruit.
Five-year olds have a big advantage over Jared; they’re short and light. When they do body weight exercises for no reason, they’re lifting much less weight and on a much shorter lever arm.
Yeah … lots of people think yoga’s really easy… totally not :)
Also, why am I not surprised at the Commander? I wonder if there’s a type of workout the man HASN’T mastered :D
Catflexing?
Oh, who am I kidding. The Commander catflexes with ligers.
This is a thing. Holy… Ineedtofindacatrightnowkaybye!
Yoga is awful. It killed me. I am dead.
You type well for a member of the deceased. What’s your secret?
Cool Ranch Doritos and human souls. Many, many human souls.
I would guess that it’s easier for a spirit to telekinetically type on a keyboard than it would be to write it on paper & send it by snail-mail. Just figure the extra amount of energy it would take to hold a pen or pencil steady enough to write even small words, compared to just pressing a few keys.
And that’s without even thinking about how one would lick the stamp.
The only time I’ve done yoga both my little toenails fell off. I’m not sure how or why.
But, wh-how is that even..what would….graasdkjsdflasjkdabsdlksdjs*Brainimploding nosies*
Instructions were not clear enough, my dick got caught in a fan.
yae yoga
Omg Jared in the first panel. what is he decomposing or something? XD
and yoga, though I heard about it’s benefits, I’m much more of a runner. And plus I don’t find putting your legs in “weird” places amusing. why I think that? cause I tried…
hurts as hell…
Oh come on, thats not fair! Commanders chest is the size of a semi, how can he be so nimble?!
I never really got the point of yoga. Does it work you out, or is it a relaxation thing, or what?
It is a fairly complex workout system that focuses on mastering control of the body. I remember seening a picture of a chubby Yoga Master who could relax the (properly mind) muscles of his spine so effectively that he could bend it at ninty degree angles (he was laying half on, half off a very short table) without any injury. Stretching is a huge part of it, but knowing how to control your muscles to let them stretch without injury is the true lesson of the exercise. But to be able to do that much it takes a Container ship of experience to do. I love the Commander as much as everyone else… but I think he hasn’t mastered it… I think he is still a student, albiet a good one. I could be wrong though.
It’s not a “workout system.” It’s a Hindu religious practice with no physical applications beyond what marketers have been able to sucker idiots into believing.
Just because something happens to be tied with a religion, doesn’t make it have “no physical applications” and “for idiots”. Yoga is difficult, and has many proven scientific health benefits, which you could find with a very quick and easy google search that will give you results from many reliable, unbiased, scientific, and medical sources.
Strictly speaking, unless you’re a gymnast, it does not have a physical application. Neither does weightlifting in a modern mechanized society though.
The reason you do it is for health, maybe looks. It isn’t a really practical thing unless you pick bananas for a living and need to contort at some very odd angles though.
Strictly speaking, unless you’re a gymnast, it does not have a physical application.
Strictly speaking, that’s
horseshitinaccurate. As one of many who has had to take a loooong time to recover from a serious back injury, it is an excellent way to regain flexibility and build core strength. Come to think of it, it is an excellent way to do that regardless of having had such an injury or not. All movement stems from your back – if it’s fucked up, physical activity is not your friend.The reason you do it is for health
Yes, and since when is health not a physical application?
Yes, and only true Shaolin monks can master the martial arts, and you can’t really appreciate Bach if you’re not Catholic.
It does seem that only Cajuns enjoy zydeco though, so I’m sure he has a point somewhere.
like on top of his headIt does a little bit of both, actually, depending on what style you use. Hatha yoga, which is the one most people think of when they think of yoga, is more about flexibility, while Ashtanga makes you flexible and works on strength building at the same time. All yoga focuses on breathing, which is where it gets its reputation for being relaxing. However, that ability to control your breath and breathe deeply while twisting yourself around like a pretzel is also really good for other kinds of sports, especially the cardio heavy ones.
In short, yoga is great, and attending a class if you get the opportunity is a lot of fun!
It’s almost like he was genetically grown to be the epitome of human fitness!
yeah you`d think he is not a clone made out from grade A +++ steak and dirt to be the ultimate TIAL
Is there any possibility of getting this as a print? I know about five yoga practitioners who would love having it in their studio!
I still maintain that yoga is just davening marketed as a health exercise for suckers and idiots.
As much as any health system is. Some work for some lifestyles, others work for others. My wife and I tried yoga for a year or so, it was challenging and relaxing at the same time. I still find Downward-Facing Dog (Jared’s pose) very difficult.
Everything gets marketed these days. Boxing gyms and martial arts studios are pretty aggressively marketed these days, and like all marketing, it’s designed to appeal to ‘suckers and idiots’, who spend their money on membership, and then drop out after a month or so. It doesn’t mean exercise doesn’t work. You just have to not be an idiot, and stay the course when things get hard.
That’s an incredibly ignorant perspective. Yoga is physically taxing. Performing physically taxing tasks will make you more physically adept in the long run. It’s just basic logic.
And sure, marketers like to inflate things out of proportion, by saying that yoga is the cure-all for everything in the universe, but what don’t marketers bullshit you on? They bullshit people the exact same way with those home-gyms and the like. But just because some people exaggerate it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have some valid points.
Yoga is a perfectly valid form of exercise. Deal with it.
Hey, if it works for Diamond Dallas Page…
Man I’m so out of the habit of yoga, I’ve got to get back at it. It’s like giving yourself a massage, it’s amazing how many simple little things over the course of the day get hard to do when you stop doing it for a while.
There’s a guy I work with named Sam who teaches yoga. This wouldn’t be all that unusual except that he’s 80 years old. He’s a pretty awesome guy.
Jared is really not a physical kind of guy. I thought he was just unmotivated.
From what I see in the first panel, Jared *looks* pretty unmotivated…
So commander is a strong, fast and agile man. He also comes from the future.
This may be random….but can Commander badass be the new captain falcon ( super smash bros melee wise)?
He likely trained Captain Falcon.
i wonder which one could lift more.
I would also like to see commander stretch more. I want to see how much he’s capable of….
Jared the pretzel next strip, if panel 1 isn’t.
I always figured yoga helped bodybuilders retain their flexibility. I mean, all that bulking up has got to mess with that.
probably, i mean, Arnold used to do ballet at the height of his bodybuilding carer
Yoga is one of those unassuming types of exercise that will kick your ass before you even realize it’s doing it. Even Ti chi will leave a couch potato gasping for air. If you’re that out of shape, the best thing to do is to walk an hour a day for a month, the begin to slowly increase your pace and distance. Try to go further in that hour than you did last week, but try to keep it consistent for the full week. After a while begin jogging, and then finally running. Try not to sprint, but get a good run in. Then start with they gym. If your heart can keep up, it’s easier to get your muscles in shape afterwards.
Commander’s looking good in that last panel. I wouldn’t have expected him to be so flexible.
Panel five. Pleasing pose. <3 Commander <3
I’ve thought about doing Yoga. It won’t help me with my heart condition which is a genetic issue, not a fitness issue, but it would be nice walking 2 and a half miles without melting.
By the name of yoga!
In yoga’s name!
Yogadamnit!
Is one of those about right?
I just want to know how the commander goes from downward dog into scorpion.
That… Is actually really hot…
you know what would be hot? if he took of his shirt and flexed a little.
(:
Good to see that Commander knows his yoga, on top of his lifting. Now show some cardio!
Click back two comics.
Yeah, Yoga is one of those things that will kick your ass. And if you don’t have an ass, it will give you one, then proceed to kick it.
Want an ass? Do squats. Shitloads of squats and eat pounds of oats. Best exercise for the glutes in existence.
And just… don’t do bodyweight. That’s wasting your time.
Heck, even a five year old can keep up with their whims
RELEVANT!!!!
In that same vein, my boxer friends love dancing.
See! I suggested before that Jared would be better suited for an art that moves his small body! Yoga is a great start for him! Next is acro and rock climbing, then aerial silks!
But damn! I’ve never seen a man so big bend so well, and he’s casually holding a conversation while turning his head! How!?
…
Oh, right. Genetically engineered superhero. He’s like the buff version of Doctor Bashir from Deep Space Nine.
One thing to note about size is the larger you are the worse your muscles efficiency. The smaller you are the more efficient your body is mechanically because your size reduces efficiency logarithmically, while adding muscle mass increases it linearly. This is one of the primary reasons why an flea can jump proportional football fields, but an elephant cannot jump at all. (granted positioning and biology do have an effect, but hte principal is the same.)
The commander is so relentlessly positive.
Dunno if it has been asked before, but how’s the print version coming along?
My manly body needs it
I’m loving the Jared At The Gym arc.
So when and where can I buy some MGDMT merchandise? I love what you’re doing and I’d like to support it
I really love how the Commander is this people’s kind of person. Always see an opportunity to better people and seeing chances for new stuff.
You know, I’ve heard really good things about DDP Yoga. Plus, Diamond Dallas Page has done good work getting some of his fellow wrestlers back on their feet after substance abuse and injuries.
I know I am late on this one (been catching up on my web comics) but I sooo feel this. Down dog is the position I have the most trouble with. I don’t even understand how it can be so hard. And yes before I started yoga I was like, “How sweaty could I get?” The answer very.
I… Feel I have to share that the ad atop the page, as I am reading this, is for Equinox fitness.
And the tagline is “Get obsessed.”
Talk about irony.
yoga is one of the only ways i know to work up a sweat by not moving