[off topic]
Here are a few book series that have a tough, lone wolf hero who actually seems human.
Parker by Richard Stark. ‘The Hunter,’ ‘The Seventh,’ and ‘Firebreak’ Parker is a professional thief. He works with a rotating crew of specialists. Harlan Ellison said that the author was the best writer he knew of.
Easy Rawlins and Fearless Jones by Walter Mosley. ‘Fearless Jones’ and ‘The Devil In a Blue Dress.’ Both men operate in LA circa 1946 to 1980. Fearless’ adventures are narrated by his pal, a skinny bookstore owner who would rather avoid trouble, but rarely does. Easy is in more books, but they do team up occasionally.
Travis McGee by John D. MacDonald. ‘The Deep Blue Goodbye,’ and ‘A Tan and Sandy Silence.’ Trav is a Florida beach bum who lives in a houseboat he won in a poker game. When his retirement funds run low he reluctantly seeks out crime victims who are unable to go to the police. A con man who isn’t afraid of a fight.
Any of these is miles ahead of any Reacher book.
There’s also the graphic novel adaptations of Richard Stark’s Parker books, beautifully illustrated by the late great Darwyn Cooke
James Bond is cooler than all of them for sheer fun. But Peter Gunn books is the detective I grew up on. He even came with the coolest of theme song of all time, thanks to Mancini.
I literally had no idea there were Peter Gunn books.
Thanks for raising me from ignorance.
If you want to really be shocked by Hollywood butchery, watch the Thin Man movies - They are raucous 1930s fun and totally worth it. I’m surprised they haven’t been remade. Then read the book. Hollywood literally just pried the title off for their own use and then burned the character to ashes and launched it in to the sun never to be seen again.
Hell yes brother.
Richard Stark is a pen name for Donald Westlake. He wrote tons of really smart funny mystery novels including the Dortmunder series - Parker but a sad sack.
If you like Parker you might really enjoy the Spenser novels by Robert Parker. He’s an ex boxer turned private eye that loves to cook, loves to read, has a strong moral compass, loves deeply, and was cool with gays and blacks when that was controversial for a Boston tough guy. His very smart girlfriend Susan is a full human outside of him.
The funny thing is that the first Dortmunder book started out as a Parker novel.
When the plot started getting too silly the writer realized that the Parker fans would hate the book, so he changed it to Dortmunder and Kelp.
I won’t say much but ‘Jimmy The Kid’ by Donald Westlake has a brief cameo by Richard Stark.
What a stupid post.
… and they can’t even spell weighs
with alot of roids and peds of course.
Hobo, not vagrant.
Yeah Reacher is just fantasy. He eats like a pig, never has access to a shower and he is built like Mr Universe.
Alan ritchsons always been big and claims he just consistently works out everyday and eats a lot, and he didn’t work out that much before reacher was still pretty big, after season 1 he started taking testosterone I think if i remember correctly, he talks about it in interviews
Thats cool and has nothing to do with what i posted.
This comment from another post:
There’s this story that Mark Hammil tells about being on the set of Star Wars and he mentions to Harrison Ford that their hair should be wet, since it was just wet in the previous scene.
And Ford says something like, “This ain’t that kind of movie, kid. If the audience is talking about our hair, something has already gone wrong.”
The same goes for Reacher, even the books. They’re great, easy and fun to read, but if you start thinking about it like that something has already gone wrong.
Even so, I have to say that the books concentrate more on him just being really tall without being thin. And trained both mentally and physically, but never just muscled.
Damn, I never knew Mr. Universe had all that hiding under his shirt!
He killed me with a sword. How weird is that?
I am a leaf on the wind
Always too soon.
He does have access to a shower. He stays at motels mostly and very rarely sleeps outside.
There’s no explanation for that body though as he definitely never goes to a gym.
I’ll have you know that Reacher cannot help his overactive steroid gland!
easy, just take alot of roids and peds, and maybe go to the gym sometimes.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but those don’t work without a lot of gym time.
If you’re on the juice, but don’t put in the work, your body just gets weird.
Um guys come on it is simple. he lives at the gym between seasons.
The books have one or two references to him working as a labourer or other jobs between books.
Labor jobs don’t make you look like that. They make you hunched over and limping and kinda fat looking. Also an alcoholic
Source: worked labor in my early years and finally decided to quit just as the hunch started to develop
I mean, he isn’t even remotely close to 300lbs of pure muscle. But yes, even with a lifetime of a perfect diet and gym routine most people will never look like this. Like is the case for so many other Hollywood actors, there are clearly steroids involved
Nah you just gotta eat a metric fuck-ton of cod. Like the Rock!
/s
Google homeless man abs
Constant walking, fasting, getting up with the sun and going to sleep at sunset… It might kill you but you’ll be doing a routine whether you like it or not
Maybe he has that mutation like some whippets.
apparently the mutation makes whippets unable to run long periods of time or have high amounts of activity, due to the amount of muscle.
Aw. I hope they at least feel really swole, so they get something out of it
This can happen in a lot of mammals, including humans. One of the really popular “strongmen” guys, like the top one, has it.
When you’re this big, what does it do to your blood pressure levels? Honest question.
Well according to a couple random sources he’s actually around 235 in this photo.
At 6’3, that would imply that he has an elevated risk of high blood pressure. Sometimes people who are engaged in consistent vigorous exercise can maintain normal blood pressure at that weight, but it’s fairly likely he’s abusing steroids for the role, which are strongly correlated with high blood pressure.
So most likely not great
Apparently he gets testosterone prescribed by a doctor. He’s open about it. I’d assume they monitor his overall health, including blood pressure. He’s probably way healthier than average, but not as healthy as someone who maintains their fitness without shooting for a look like that.
Reading around a bit now, I guess officially he denies steroid use during season 1 and says he only began using before season 2 after the season 1 push “wrecked his body” and he got some scary bloodwork relating to suppressed testosterone levels
So if we take that at face value, it seems like he was having health issues at one point which steroids then fixed lol.
Random side note, but I went looking around his socials to see if he was shilling anything and he appears to have a freaky ai generated image of him one arm deadlifting 3 plates while chilling on a wooden deck and talking on the phone. Featured prominently on his personal website
Edit: I found it so unsettling that I looked it up. It’s from a men’s health photoshoot. Article is “Jack Reacher Goes Big”. It also has a video of him bicep curling it (let the introductory video play). Not AI, just badly made prop weights. He cropped the image and is using it to promote himself without context on his personal website which is why it looks so out of place
To his credit, he is one of the few in Hollywood open to admitting that he uses exogenous anabolics. I’d guess that pretty much all of the older, completely jacked stars are also using such compounds, as it is very difficult to add muscle mass later in life. This creates a very unrealistic body image for the rest of us to live up to.
FWIW, I’m 60 and have been on a health journey over the last several years, and have transitioned from morbidly obese to the best shape of my life. Per my last Dexa scan, my muscle mass, bone density, and body fat percentage are in the top 15% for 30-35 year old men, and I am still progressing. I do, however, cycle with Ligandrol, a SARM, and use HCG combat suppression when on cycle and maintain my endogenous testosterone production. As a consequence, I’ve been able to add a significant amount of muscle mass and improve my health, as muscle is a critical metabolic sink and is also an endocrine organ.
I’ve used the drugs to rehabilitate my body and build a fit, athletic physique that is easily maintained in the gym, even when off cycle. In my opinion (I’m not a doctor and this isn’t medical advice), it is far better for me to use the drugs in a reasonable way to get the functional muscle mass and bone density now, rather than to fight sarcopenia and struggle for years with little progress. I’m in the gym 5 hours a week for resistance training, and stack on average 9hrs per week of cardio on top, with about an hour of that being HIIT.
Mac from isaip is another, but he tries to dance around the issue, or downplay it. he also admits to it, but he makes it seems like its not that.
they say that as a smokescreen to justify thier current body, eventhough its not natural and at thier age to. people not into roids always see ped usage as cheating and not honest.
His health is fucked later in life. Roiders all die of heart attack or stroke. Average NFL player age of death is 25 years below the overall average.
“Come with me if you want to live.”
He’s not abusing steroids like a lot of people. He will be fine I’m sure.
Really interesting info. I’m also getting older, and in the past couple years I started going to the gym too. How did you figure out all that? Did you talk to a doctor, or a personal trainer, or people at the gym, or what?
I’m in the U.S., and the medical system is abysmal. Primary care physicians are basically robots that dole out pills based on the “standard of care”, which is a standard produced with health insurer input. I had metabolic syndrome, and uncontrolled high blood pressure despite being on 3 meds. No doctor ever mentioned metabolic syndrome to me, and I figured out that chronic stress was driving my high blood pressure, and presented evidence of this to a cardiologist and told him I needed a beta blocker. That wasn’t next on the list, so he prescribed something else that was worthless, so I had to wait another month to show him the drug did nothing. In the mean time, I found I was able to use exercise to bring down my blood pressure. I did hire a personal trainer, but they were worthless (YMMV on this, as I know others that have had very good trainers).
What got me on the right path was studying longevity science, and deploying the strategy outlined by Peter Attia in his book “Outlive”, which is a free audiobook on spotify premium. Basically, the levers you have to pull are sleep, exercise, nutrition, supplements and drugs. With respect to exercise, he emphasizes resistance training (min 3 hrs per week), zone 2 cardio (6 hrs per week) and HIIT (1 hr per wee).
I had never done resistance training before in my life, and I started with bodyweight fitness in my apartment, which I did for about a year before it became clear that I needed to figure out weight training. I found Joe Delaney’s youtube channel, and thought it would be a good starting point, and I hired a personal trainer, who disregarded my opinion and had me do other things, and gave me a program that was difficult, time consuming, and had significant potential for injury. After a couple of weeks of struggling with that, I tossed it, and did Delaney’s beginner program. After two months of that, I modified it to add exercises to target my specific areas of weakness. It was a good starting point.
With respect to the drugs, I knew it would be difficult to add muscle at my age, so I dug into PEDs. There is a lot of “noise” in this area, but one of the social media influencers I stumbled across referenced Llewellyn’s Anabolics, which provides a thorough summary of pretty much every anabolic compound in common use today, including reference to the actual studies, the common side effects, the effectiveness, etc. Ligandrol is currently in phase 3 clinical trials, but is widely available through grey market sellers on the internet. Thus, there is not only the risk of using a non-FDA approved drug, but also the risk of whether the producer is actually selling you the actual drug. The drug itself had enough human trial data for me to be comfortable with it (note: some SARMs available were abandoned because of major issues, such as causing cancer in rats), and the seller has been around for a while and had a big enough user base that I could be comfortable that I was getting a reasonably good quality drug.
I’ve made some mistakes along the way. For example, I crashed out my testosterone the first time I tried Ligandrol, because I used Nolvadex, a SERM, to maintain testosterone production when on cycle, and it wasn’t up to the task for me.
Overall though, my efforts have been very successful. We have a world of information at our fingertips, so long as we are able to filter out the bullshit. There is a lot of “tribal knowledge” passed from peer to peer, much of which is complete crap, but you can find smart people that review and reference the actual science that can point you in the right direction.
Thanks for sharing the process you went through.
I had/have the same problems with doctors here in the US. Even if they’re good, they just don’t have enough time to work with any individual patient.
The first personal trainer I went to wasn’t that good, but the second was great, and I got in a lot better shape and got comfortable working with machines.
The Peter Attia book and Joe Delaney channel sound interesting, I’ll check those out!
Thanks for posting this, it was interesting to read as I know nothing on the topic.
The real reason for my reply though is to say; congrats dude, it must have been a long struggle with weight and health to be this dedicated to go from morbidly obese to fit and healthy at the age you did.
Seriously, well done and congratulations; keep up the good work!
I wish you all the best with your journey.
That’s great dedication and a well-earned payoff. Cheers!
A friend of mine was shocked when I offhandedly mentioned The Rock’s likely steroid budget. “You think he uses steroids?!” she asked. This was during his monstrous peak years.
I’m also reminded of the reddit story where a guy’s girlfriend or wife suggested that he go to the gym to get into slightly better shape. Nothing excessive, “maybe like Jason Momoa in Aquaman.”
Your physique is dierectly related to the amount and type of physical activity you perfor. Not the food you eat. Your body doesnt care how it gets protien. The character is exactly like my brother who eats thousands and thousands of calories every day but expells thousanfs and thousands of calories thru work, excersise and kids.
You can eat “shitty” food as long as you work off the calories consumed and the calories contain enough protien.
Not surprising a site primarily used by fat IT workers would think this is infuriating tho lol
expels thousands of calories through (…) kids
is your brother a pregnant woman?
Children are pretty calorie dense.
Hey, people in war movies can have perfectly coiffed hair in combat too.
Actually infuriating is that this show is touted by anyone as “the greatest show on streaming now” or even “greatest show ever.”
This show is popular because it has the moral intelligence of a toddler and stars a beefcake with way more charm than he has any right to.
I haven’t really seen that sentiment anywhere.
I am watching the show, but I don’t think it’s very good.
It’s a fun bit of escapism, though.I would rate it 6 out of 10. It’s alright, nothing more.
Have you noticed very few jacked characters lift any weights on tv? The only times I can recall a gym scene was on Brooklyn Nine Nine and Firefly.
It’s been awhile but I remember Arrow frequently showing his funky pullup setup
You are correct. If I’m not mistaken it’s called the Salmon Ladder.
and you never see them shooting up steroids.
Alan Ritchson’s testicles…
I hate this image for personal reasons. Fuck the california raisins.
I’m sorry you had to hear it through the grapevine not much longer would she be thine.
He has four of them? And they sing?
He grew up in a military family with an older brother so there were likely nasic fitness regimes available. Plus he spent his entire adult life in the Army. It’s also been said his genetics are geared towards high metabolism and muscle density. I’ve known plenty of people who barely work out, don’t exactly rat super healthy but they tend to look like a gym rat.
Reacher does walk a lot. And not just casually, he will walk for miles as a time across town and avoid busses/taxi unless he’s traveling across states. Plus he tends to get into a lot of sticky situations he needs to fight and exert his way out of.
Walking for miles makes you the opposite of whatever this sculpted shit is, it’s an endurance activity. In order to look like that you need to spend workdays in a gym doing specific gym things, it’s a bodybuilder’s body, not a walker’s body or “occasionally has to fight random people in a parking lot” body
Maybe he walks on his arms
Does he walk with his abs??
The excessive walking was more to burn the fat as opposed to being sedentary.
