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The Journey Animal Pak’s Progress Iconic Epilogue Lost Entry 1 Lost Entry 2 Lost Entry 3 Lost Entry 4 Extras Wrath Supplement Plan W rath Training Training Plan
52 Extras Wrath M eal Plan Plan Wrath Meal Plan Phase 2
53 Extras Life is hard. It chews you up, spits you out. It even shits on you for good mea sure. But fuck that, you deal with it… The isolation. The doubts. The voices in your head. Getting up every morning, in t h e d a r k … Th Th e m o n o t o n y , a llll f u c k i n g d a y and all fucking night. Living in the s h a d o w s 2 4 / 7 c a n r e a llll y f u c k w i t h y o u .
So why do you do it? Fame? Glory? G e t t i n g s o m e a s s ? T h a t ’ s j u s t t h e i c i n g . .. .. You do it because you got something to prove to yourself. This life, this trip, this journey… It’s about enligh tenm ent. It’s about looking destiny square in the eye and grabbing hold of it for eighteen weeks, and not letting go.
There’s purpose here. Eighteen weeks and at the end, you’ll know where you stand. The destination is on the map, brothers. The Journey starts with Week “00”. Follow the progress in each log. So you getting in? Course you a re… Now b u c k l e u p a n d h o l d o n t i g h t . We We ’ r e g o n n a floor it.. it....
Wrath Offseason Training Split
54 Extras Wrath Offseason Diet Plan Wrath Offseason Supplement Plan
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Logs & Notes Your Words W ha hatt Is Animal Animal Supplement Facts Animal Gear The Forvm Contact Us
Why am I not in bed, like everyone else, dead to the world? Why do I do this, live with the constant pain, the suffering, the sacrifice? Why? Because I can. Because pain tells me I’m awake. Reminds me I’m alive. Who am I? I am the wrecker of steel. I am the crusher of mediocrity. I am the face of here. But this is just one journey among many... There is no end. destiny. ItIstarts am Animal... There never is.
I begin tomorrow. Eighteen weeks in this dark hole. 126 days of pain. 3024 hours of hunger and desire. I’m already counting the minutes, the seconds. Until then, you’ll live in shadow, in the darkness, in a place few will ever
When it’s over, I’ll step up out into the light. I will shine... see... Where ugliness becomes beautiful.
This place, this darkness... There’s no better place to be. This is where the real work gets done. So if you’re with me, get that time card and punch in, cuz it’s gonna be a long, sweet ride. Be prepared to get your hands dirty. Listen... Hear that silence? Tomorrow, it’s gonna rock ‘n roll. So let’s get the show on the road. Let’s throw some iron into the fire...
LOG 1
4:29am... STAND UP. BE COUNTED.
It’s out there, brothers... Has been as long as you or I or anyone can remember. It thrives in the dark, dank corners of shithole gyms everywhere. Listen... Can you hear it? It's the call. Those fortunate enough to have heard it, who've made the journey, know the road is long. The way is covered with mud, rock, and shit. To all those who've come before me, I tell you this... I too have heard and I am ready. I am ready to toil in anonymity under the merciless weight, under the scrutiny of my own unforgiving gaze. I am ready for this undertaking and when I am done, I will no longer be among the nameless, the faceless. It's my time... I will stand up and be counted.
LOG 2
4:41AM... IN THE GAME.
How do you know you're ready? Let me tell you something... You don't. As I'm lying here in the dark, alone in the gym and thinking about the next 18 weeks, I know this... You won't find answers anywhere. It's not written in any book. There's no guide. Nobody's gonna tell you it's time. Only one person will know... You. You just got to want it bad enough. Maybe one day you'll wake up and you'll know today's the day and you start your own journey. Just remember this... Making the decision to venture into the unknown, into uncharted territory—that's the hard part. You get over that, and your future will open up. Destiny will be within your grasp. That doesn't mean things will get any easier. Fuck no, they won't. But just getting to the edge, being able to look over–that's why I'm here. Listen, you can't wait until you think you're ready. I got news for you—you'll never be ready. You'll never be big enough. You'll never be lean enough. Your lagging parts will never catch up quick enough. So if you waited for that time when you thought you might be ready, you'd never step up. And if you don't step up, you're not in the game. I'm in the game. I'm gonna look and see what's on the other side...
LOG 3
5:11AM... THE LAST WORKOUT.
In a couple hours, the sun will be up and the world will start buzzing. But for now, it's still dark outside and fucking cold. The gym is still empty, silent. I'm alone. I've got another set to do. I grip the bar, feel the cold iron in my hands. It's familiar, yet strange. How many times have I been under this weight, looked up, and tried to push the weight through the ceiling? I couldn't begin to count. But every time I feel the steel, I tell myself it's the first time—and the last. Never take anything for granted. Not a single rep. Not a single meal. That's what has kept me from getting stuck in a rut. What'll keep me fucking going for the next 18 weeks? It's a date circled in red. Soon, when I'm done here, I'll punch out and head on home. Is bodybuilding a job? Fuck yeah. The toughest in the world. And the gym is my office. When I get home, I'm not done for the day. Far from it. Shit, bodybuilding is a job, but it's much more than that. Bodybuilding... This is my life...
I’m not like everyone. I don’t live like they live. It starts here. But this is just Ione journey amwhat ong mthey any... eat. There No is no end. don’t eat donuts. There never is.
No coffee
with cream & two sugars. No morning papers. It’s 6:52am & I’m on my second meal. While everyone else is hitting the snooze, I’m hitting my stride.
What do I do? I’m a bodybuilder & yeah, it’s a job.
Until then, you’ll live in shadow, in the darkness, in a place few will ever
Only the day doesn’t start at 9 & it won’t end at
see... Where ugliness be com es beautiful.
5. It starts from the time I open my eyes to the time I shut them. It’s not a 5 day work week. I live it 24/7... This is a job. This is my life.
The toughest part is sticking to the path, enduring the crushing routine. My drive won’t change & each day
that
passes
will
bring
me
closer
to
my
destination, the one I’ve circled in red & taped to the cabinet. There is no rest. I’ve got miles to go.
LOG 1
THIS IS MY ALARM.
That piece of paper taped to my cabinet? It’s a call to action, a declaration of war. I put it there to remind me of the date every single fucking day… It’s also my personal alarm clock. Every morning, as I’m making my eggs, taking my Animal Pak, prepping my meals—it goes off, like a hammer to my brain. My alarm doesn’t have a snooze. It never lets up. It cuts me no slack. Some days, I see it and it gets me jacked. Yeah, I’m gonna do this. This is my destiny. Other days I think, “What the fuck am I doing? I look like shit.” Either way, I can’t escape it. Every time I see that piece of paper, it stares back at me, calls me out, challenges me. So I just keep grinding forward. Listen, this is how things work. If you want to get something done, you gotta set a goal. Then, write it down—put it in a place you can’t hide from. Every day, look at it and ask yourself, am I farther along than I was yesterday? Am I moving forward? Cuz if you’re not, why did you even set a goal to begin with? My goal is up there, circled in permanent red ink. Every day it greets me, my own personal fucking alarm clock. If I listen closely, I swear I can hear it ticking. Tick… Tick… Tick… Ticking down from 126. Can’t you hear it? It’s fucking thunderous. And it’s winding its way down to 0…
LOG 2
THIS IS MY PLACE.
My place? It's a small, dark shithole. A place where it'd be tough bringing my folks, let alone my girl. Still, I've got three rooms and a roof over my head. It's not much, but it gets the job done. Here in this room, it's just this stool, a large mirror, the boombox I've had since I was in middle school, and some lights I rigged up. This is supposed to be the living room, but shit, I call it my “posing” room. For inspiration, I've got a couple of posters of bodybuilding greats from the past, to build me up. And a large mirror to scrutinize myself, to tear myself down. Yeah, home, sweet home. So this girl I just started seeing—the other day, she comes over for the first time. She has this shocked look on her face. She asks me why I don't get a nicer place. A coffee table. A couch. Somewhere she can sit. A coffee table? Couch? Fuck that. What's next, some silk fucking flowers? Anyway, I tell her there's always the two chairs in the kitchen... Or my cot. Look, rule number one—and I always say this right from the start—if you want to see me, you get all of me. Everything.
all the shit you collect—these are the things that tie you down, hold you back. In this world, I don't have much—just the clothes on my back and this burning desire in my heart. But that's alright because I'm just passing through... On my way to something bigger.
LOG 3
THIS IS MY MIND.
It's cold out there. So lately, I've been spending a lot of time inside, in these three rooms I call home. The kitchen. The bedroom. The living room. These rooms are like the confines of my mind. The kitchen, my Hunger. The bedroom, my Desire. The living room, my Solitude. Three things I have to deal with every single fucking day. Shit, I spend a lot of time within these places, within my mind. Out in the real world, you can always step outside for a breather. In my head, there's no escape... Not ever. When I meet people, they take one look at me and dismiss me as some stupid, oversized meathead. Someone who doesn't have a thought in his brain. Fuck that. I've got the opposite problem. I think too much. I dwell on too many things. My mind wanders... Sometimes, I feel trapped... Like the walls are closing in on me. It's suffocating. I wonder if I can keep this up for another seventeen weeks and make it to the end. Some nights, when I'm awake, I imagine that the front door is unlocked... Fear comes a calling. Doubt walks in... Questions howl outside, rattle my windows. But within these three rooms I must remain. Alone with Hunger, Desire, Solitude. I gotta keep driving forward. I gotta keep moving... So when I'm sitting here alone on another night, I tell myself I'm not gonna go fucking nuts. When I lie in bed, I'm not gonna stay awake. When I eat, I'm not gonna puke... These are the tenants that occupy my mind—the place where I live.
I’m not gonna... puke. I’m not... gonna puke. I’m... not gonna puke... Not this time. I chew on these words, force them through my head. In the kitchen, eating another meal alone, it’s just those words and another plate of chicken & rice. This jug of water--without that I’d be screwed. Only my second week into it and I’m sick of it already.
Bite, chew, water, chew, water, chew, wash everything down. Repeat. This is my system. Listen, the toughest part isn’t the lifting. It’s not the cardio or getting up in the dark on a cold morning. It’s the diet. The monotony of eating. My training won’t change much. But eating? It will define me...
Some days, I’m actually hungry... These are the good days. The food is still dry and tastes like crap, but at least I can get everything down and keep it there. Other days, I just sit and stare. I break out in a cold sweat. I have to will myself to start. Yeah, eating like this is a real pain in the ass.
People in the other world, they don’t understand. They can’t. They eat instinctively. For me, eating is another part of my life that must be controlled. I’ve had to learn how to eat, overcome my appetite. It sounds messed up, but that’s what I gotta do to prepare for this. It sucks and I’ve still got miles to go.
LOG 1
EATING TO LIVE.
Most people, they live to eat. They enjoy food, the taste and all that shit. They eat out whenever they want. Yeah, what I wouldn’t give to eat what I wanted right about now... I like eating food too. Who doesn’t? But I gotta eat to live… I’m eating to achieve something. I can’t fucking stand what I’m eating right now, but know what? There’s something comforting about it—the regularity, the consistency. If there’s one thing that’s fucking regular in my life, it’s eating. It’s like clockwork. I follow a set time with each of my six meals. For every meal, I know what I’m eating and how much. I’ve pretty much got the calories, protein, fat, and carbs down to the gram. What’s shitty is that variety is gone. I’m down to a couple of foods. That’s it. You want to hear something fucked up? When I’m dieting, I crave foods I normally don’t like. That’s some weird shit. Anyway, when I go food shopping every week, it’s a piece of cake. (Cake… Aw shit, there I go again, daydreaming…) Four aisles, four items. One thing about shopping—always go after a meal. Big fucking mistake is to go when you’re hungry… So I go every week—same day, same time. Everyone knows me, from the manager all the way down to the cashiers. They know me so they don’t ask any questions. Yesterday, when I was there, a new cashier rang me up, a pretty girl. Never seen her before. Anyway, as I’m unloading seven dozen egg cartons, she looks up, smiles, and asks me, “Hey, you must like eggs, right?” Here it goes again. In my mind, it all comes back up... I’m thinking about how much I fucking hate eggs. Can’t fucking stand ‘em. How can she know that I boil a dozen every morning, remove the yolks and toss the whites back? At night, before I go to bed, the same thing? She can’t. She doesn’t know how hard it is to choke ‘em down, how they stick to my throat. On a couple occasions, I’ve even puked ‘em back up. When that happens, I gotta boil ‘em again, and start over. “Yeah,” I tell her. “I love ‘em...” and return the smile. Like I said, this is not living to eat… And it fucking sucks.
LOG 2
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT.
Growing up, I don’t know how many times I heard this… “You are what you eat.” Fuck that shit. If that were true, I’d be a cow. Yeah, a big fucking cow with an oatmeal tail, yams for horns, and eggs for hooves. What a fucking sight that would be. Eating the same shit every day is
Still, there are other issues that come with dieting… Like the patience you need to explain why you eat the same meals, the same foods for weeks on end. See, when it comes to this sport, food is the bedrock, the foundation. You can pay your dues and put the time in the weight room, but if you don’t have your diet in order, you’re just spinning your wheels. At this level, everything’s gotta be just right. Another issue—dealing with not being able to go out on the weekends to kick back and relax. Dieting can really make this sport a lonely one. Here’s what I’m talking about… This girl I’ve been seeing, she’s been on my case about taking her out to eat. Dinner and dancing. I haven’t been with her long, but her birthday is coming up and she wants it to be special. I told her I’m dieting, but she won’t back off—she’s tough and I like that. “Just sit there and watch me eat then,” she says. Now tell me, what the fuck is wrong with that? Am I supposed to just sit there with a grin on my face and my thumb in my ass? Anyway, I try to explain to her what dieting means, put it in terms she’d understand. I ask her why she always goes out with her bag. “It’s got all my valuables in there.” Well, when I go out, I carry something too—a cooler and what goes in it is valuable to me. That cooler is my lifeline. When I’m out longer than two hours, I take a cooler with me. OK. Now depending on what’s she’s wearing, she’ll take one bag or another. Me? Depending on how long I’m out, I’ll take my small or large cooler. So far, so good. Now I ask her about work. She’s got a job with pretty regular hours. She looks at the clock to watch the day pass. Me, I can pretty much tell what time of day it is by what meal I’m eating. Now what about eating? She’s a skinny girl and a real looker, but she tells me she’s gotta watch what she eats. I watch what I eat too. But she’s not eating four foods and only four foods. So she’s starting to get the picture… I tell her to imagine a slice of pizza. ‘What’s the first thing that comes to mind?’ I ask her. She starts talking about the taste. Yeah, that’s how most people are. People go through life taking a lot of things for granted. How easily they could eat whatever they want, when they wanted. They live life on the surface—they don’t try to see below it. When others see a slice of pizza or a burger, they’re thinking about how good it tastes. They’re looking
well, it’s another brick in this motherfucking house I’m building. I knew going in that it would take a lot of bricks and a lot of time. But if I eat that burger or drink that beer, well then I’m eating shit. It’s simple: You can’t build a house made of shit and expect it to stand up to the rain. With that first drop of water, you’re fucked. So for me, every time I see a piece of food, I’m asking myself, am I building up or am I tearing down? Will my house withstand any storm or will it easily crumble? Anyway, I think I’m beginning to get to her. I think she’s beginning to understand. I think. Now about that birthday...
LOG 3
WITHIN, WITHOUT... WITHER.
When it comes to dieting, it’s all about living within boundaries you set for yourself. Those boundaries are determined by your goals. My goal is pretty lofty so my boundaries gotta be tight. Dieting is about restraint, constraint. In other words, it’s about living without. Without the ice cream, the pizza, the burgers, the fried chicken, the cake. And that, my friends, fucking sucks. In the end though, giving up these things, it’s not so bad. Yeah, there are moments when you just want to give up, but you figure out a way to get by... The real torture when you’re dieting is losing the muscle. No matter what you do, no matter how you do it, when you diet and do cardio, you’re gonna lose some of that hard earned meat on your bones. How do I diet without withering away? That’s what fucking gets me. See, bodybuilding is full of ironies. When you diet, you get smaller, but you actually look bigger. When you diet, you look your best but you feel like fucking shit. This game is all mental. Make no mistake about it. You gotta assert the mind, the will, over the body. Living without, I can handle. But there are a couple things I have to live with. Necessities, staples, whatever you wanna call them. First, a cooler for my food when I’m out. Second, a microwave—I pretty much microwave everything I can—my yams, my oatmeal. Fast and easy, because I don’t want to spend more time on food prep than I have to. Third, a fridge, for storing my steak, my veggies, my eggs, my diet soda. Fourth, my supplements. Four things you’ll always find in abundance in my place. Speaking of the fourth, if you know a competitive bodybuilder, then you probably know the answer to this one. There are some who think it’s just marketing created by supplement companies. I’ll say it here for the
record—I use supplements. Now I don’t use a whole lot compared to some other guys, but there are key ones I never do without. This is especially true when I’m dieting. This is how I do it... I start with the basics, like Animal Pak and Animal Nitro (the Pak covers all my nutritional bases and the Nitro’s got key aminos my body needs). Then I work a nutritional program around these two. Simple. I’ve used a lot of different supplements over the years and you gotta figure out what works best for you and stick with ‘em. Trust me, I’ve used things other than the Pak and the Nitro, and I learned this lesson the hard way. Funny thing about supplements... A lot of people who aren’t in this sport don’t have a clue about supplements. When they see me throwing the pills back, the cans of Animal Pak and Animal Nitro on my shelf, or the little plastic packs in my gym bag, they think they’re some kind of drugs. That’s some pretty funny shit... Bodybuilding is a tough racket. It takes some real balls to do this day in and day out. I’m eating food that tastes like shit. And I’m eating it four times a day every day. I’m chugging pills and mixing up powders. And I haven’t even talked about the gym yet, the cardio. All this dedication and sacrifice and for what? So I can get big? So I can look my best one night out of the year, standing under those bright lights? For that I gotta put up with a lot of shit. Looks. Stares. Insolence. Constant questions. Who wants to be treated like a second class citizen, like some social misfit or genetic abberation? In my mind, I think of Frankenstein’s monster... I see people with that look in their eyes—fear, loathing, disgust. Is it worth it? Fuck yeah, every time. I wouldn’t trade any of this for the world. I gotta do what I know I was born to do. So if the villagers come calling with their torches, so be it. Shit, I’ve got the matches. Let’s fucking start a fire.
In 1983, the first Animal Pak rolled off the production line and history was made. Today, many millions upon millions of “packs” later, history continues to be made
In 2008, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the legendary Animal Pak, the entire line will get a major facelift. The new label design, the Animal Iconography,
The new Animal Iconography will capture the essence of what Animal is all about. Determined. No nonsense. Serious. While the packaging will