You can't teach passion. You can't manufacture or fake it.

It is something that has to come from within you.

No one hits the PR for you, you have to summon the courage and do it yourself.

In a similar way with Raskol, you can't fake authenticity.

It was on a day like today (in Fall 2020 during the pandemic) that we first revealed our now best selling tee, All Pain. No Gains.

As a lifelong lifter, I was irritated by the slogan “No Pain! No Gains!” as if suffering was the solution to anything. The implication being if you just tried a little harder, you would get better results.

What a load of bullshit. It's one of those platitudes that sounds true...until you start examining it.

In fact, I experienced the MOST progress in the gym when I stopped maxxing out. The tee resonated with a lot of people and it became our best seller.

Weirdly enough, there seems to be some sort of energy around Fall because ONE year later, in Fall 2021, we released our best selling tee of THAT year, PR or ER.

A delightfully morbid tee, I may have said “either I'm going to hit a PR or go to the ER” prior to attempting a PR at least once in my life.

It struck another chord. People loved the punk attitude of a guy willing to sacrifice himself for a 5lb PR.

And then this year, as if on cue, our best selling design of our October 2022 launch was Cardio Kills.

Now we're NOT saying cardio is harmful (that's where the irony comes in the tee).

It just sucks.

And apparently a lot of people feel the same way because it became our best selling tee.

What is the connection between all of them?

They are all genuine. None of our designs try to sell you illusions (or delusions). They are the hidden truths of our hardcore community.

Rallying calls for the initiated. Like I said, you can't teach passion. Or pretend to be inspired.

You need to live it. Here's to your next PR.