Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you already know who TC Luoma is. He’s editor-in-chief of Testosterone Magazine (aka T-Nation), one of the best free sources for weight training and bodybuilding on the planet. Holding degrees in both English literature and microbiology, Luoma pens the Atomic Dog column, a witty look at the masculine ideal. TC is also the author of the book ATOMIC DOG: The Testosterone Principles, a best-of collection of his columns with some brand-new material thrown in. In true form, the chapters of the book are sometimes crude, often thought-provoking and always entertaining. I had a bunch of questions for TC when I was done reading. Here are some of them.

I’m trying to think of where to start, because I read that you got fired over a fax once, and I wanted to ask you about that.

Oh geez, that would take several hours, the whole Bill Phillips story. I used to be in an office right across from him, and this is the way he would communicate with me was he’d write a little note, put it in his out basket, the secretary would dutifully walk in, take the note and put it in the inbox outside my door. And I’d have to get up, walk over to the basket, read the note and then I’d write my answer out and repeat the process. Even though I could see him across the hall.

So I was editor-in-chief of the magazine, we were doing very very well, we’d actually gotten to #1 in newsstand sales, as far as the bodybuilding magazines, not counting Muscle and Fitness, and all of a sudden he decided to change the format. He wanted to make it more mainstream. I don’t know why he didn’t just start a new title, a different magazine if he wanted to do that, but anyhow my services and energy were no longer needed. And he just sent me a fax And he didn’t even call me to talk about it. I just got a fax. No apologies, nothing. In retrospect, it was the best thing that ever happened.

I did read something that you wrote saying you left because they sold out to supplement company... and you wanted to bring really unbiased information to the market.

Yeah, eventually he sold out to, I think it was Avent Drugs, I can’t remember. I met Tim Patterson at the grand opening party for EAS’ new building, and I didn’t really know him very well, but when I stopped working for Muscle Media he gave me a call and he wanted to start a supplement company and a magazine and the rest is history.

I guess I’m wondering, since you left Muscle Media and wrote that they sold out to supplement companies, what do you think is different about your supplement company?

We make premium supplements. We don’t make stuff that’s cheap; we make stuff that we want to use. So if we’re making a protein product, we look for the best quality protein there is. It’s not from China; it doesn’t have melamine in it. It’s stuff that I want to use. It’s stuff that Tim Patterson wants to use. And I don’t know if every supplement company does that; many just want to sell stuff that makes money, not that we don’t want to make money, a lot of money, but the first goal is to make stuff that we actually want to use. We’re lifters.

So in reading your book, I knew it was going to be really well-written because all of your columns are so well-written, but it wasn’t nearly as sexist as I thought it would be.

I hear that a lot. I worry about women who may just look at one article or one page and judge me, because I think if you read the whole book, then you have a different perspective, right? I don’t actually consider myself sexist at all.

Yeah, because you said that guys should be nice to ugly women because it’s the right thing to do...

I don’t know if you read this week’s column, but it’s about the purported lack of libido among women in this country. They either can’t reach orgasm or they’re not interested in sex. And I analyze the situation and I blame it almost entirely on men. The art of romance is dead.

My favorite part of your book is when you rip apart Dear Abby columns.

I always find Dear Abby columns are great when I’m looking for material. In fact, I was looking at a Dear Abby column today and thought I’d have something to say, but I struck out.

What are your other secrets for finding things to write about?

Oh, God. I probably get 20 periodicals a month. I read the internet all day; I read books all day... I listen to NPR all day; I’m talking to people all day. I watch television. I’m constantly looking for ideas.

Do you guys get a lot of hate mail?

Um, yeah. We do. There’s a lot of trolls on the site. I’m not sure if they’re sincere, and they actually hate us, or they just hate life and are just trying to cause trouble. There’s a Lou Reed song that goes, “there’s always some evil mothers they’ll tell you life is full of dirt.” I have to listen to a lot of those people. And there are a lot of sites that bash us all the time, I guess. I haven’t looked at them for a long time but I think they, one of their pastimes is ripping us apart. And that just happens when you get popular. Anyone who has an opinion is going to get ripped apart by somebody somewhere. And that’s okay.

Anybody who lifts weights in the first place has something seriously seriously wrong with them or something that they’re trying to overcome. So obviously a site that caters to people who are more physical is going to bring out a lot of that.

So why’d you guys change the name from T-Nation to Testosterone?

Well, it was originally Testosterone; when we first started it was Testosterone and T-Nation was our forum area, and people started calling us T-Nation and it became part of our identity, but then we decided to go back to our roots as Testosterone because it explains more than anything what we really are.

I was kind of wondering about your claim that one of your products creates unlimited muscle growth. How can you have unlimited muscle growth?

Ohhh. Yeah. You probably can’t. You can’t have unlimited muscle growth. It’s a little bit of hyperbole. If used properly, some of it will produce, if used properly with the proper training, will have some pretty remarkable muscle gains.

It reminded me of those PowerThirst commercials. No, seriously, there’s something about the site that just has a sort of comic book feel to it. Maybe it’s your avatar.

I’m going to ComicCon in two weeks!

So you’re a big comic book reader?

I used to be. They’re responsible for everything I am or am not in some way. I think I started reading Marvel Comics when I was like five or something. And I just freaked out. The writing, as you know, is not traditional comic book writing, it was aimed at college students or something so I fell in love with language at that time, and I fell in love with those (lustrous) physiques, and I fell in love with being a hero. So I owe a whole lot to comic books.

What’s your favorite comic?

Well everything I read was always Marvel and it would just change ever two months I loved Fantastic Four, X-Men, Ventures, Spider Man it would just change every two months. I am really disappointed with the new Spiderman movie though. Toby McGuire does not work for me, it just does not work.

Who’s your favorite X-Men?

I like Professor X. He’s the brainy guy.

What is a typical day for you like?

A typical day for me? I get up about 6, I feed the dog, I get three newspapers, I used to get 4 but I get three now, and I open them all up and I compare the headlines and I like to see how they treat the same story. If something with Obama, like let’s say something good happens one of the papers like the NYT might have it on the front page, but the Wall Street Journal might have it on the last page, or the smaller headlines; it doesn’t reflect what the story’s about. Or vice versa. I just think it’s interesting how different newspapers treat a story, even though it’s supposedly unbiased, the placement of the story, the headlines reflect a bias on the part of the paper. So I get a conservative paper, I get a liberal paper and I get a middle of the road paper. And I read through most of those. And then I go check my e-mail, which takes a long time. And then I start editing articles. Then, about 10 or 11:00 I either go to the gym or I go on a bike ride. There’s a mountain here, I live next to a mountain, it’s not really a high mountain it’s about a thousand feet high, and I just ride up and down it for cardio work. So I’m either doing that three days a week or lifting three days a week. But that’s relatively new, because I took a vacation three months ago, and I took pictures; you take pictures because it’s a beach vacation. And the pictures came back and I thought, "Oh my God, I turned into a fat bastard." Not compared to normal standards but relative to where I was two years ago, but I didn’t realize I was not quite as lean as I was a few years ago. So I freaked out and bought a bike and doing that I’ve leaned out pretty quick. But anyhow then I go back to work. And like I said a lot of my work is really reading other periodicals, or looking through the internet. And that’s essentially my workday.

One of my many favorite parts of your book was when you talked about how it was cool to be smart. Do you think that... it was never considered cool to be smart, but considering to how things were when you started writing do you think people are collectively getting stupider?

It’s a funny thing. I think about this a lot. There’s a book out called Shallow that talks about how the internet has affected the intelligence of mankind. And it’s sort of paradoxical, because here you have this, literally the libraries of Alexandria at your fingertips, everybody does, and people are overwhelmed by it. Attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter and people just skim; nobody absorbs anything. Sites that offer distraction or entertainment have killed sites that offer information or insight. It’s very odd. As you well know as a writer, it’s hard to write anything and get people to read it from start to finish. What I try to do is make each paragraph as entertaining as I can and hopefully they’ll stay 'til the end. But yeah, it’s very strange. Learning and intelligence seem to be less of a premium, it’s very strange. Very disconcerting.

It certainly is a mixed bag. Certainly the opportunity is there but there is no verification of what is true or what isn’t. That’s really troubling. It’s like the truth doesn’t exist anymore; nobody knows what the truth is.

I’ll give you a political example. One site said president Obama has only had one press conference since July of last year. But I looked it up and it turns out he had eight. So you read things and nobody cares whether it’s true or not anymore. The truth is more evasive than ever. So that’s troubling. But overall I’d rather have the internet than not.

I like what you wrote about how come everyone wants to be the bad guy when they’re watching a movie anymore; how come nobody wants to be the hero anymore.

Yeah! That’s what’s weird. Did you hear about the Barefoot Bandit that was just captured in the Bahamas? This 19-year-old kid committed a bunch of break-ins and robberies and he stole a plane and flew into the Bahamas and was stealing a bunch of stuff there. Well, they’ve been trying to catch this kid for a couple years and he’s got a facebook fan page and all these sites, let him go, let the Barefoot Bandit go. And there’s this other bandit here in San Diego, he’s called the Geezer Bandit, small guy, carries an oxygen tank, and he’s robbing banks. But they think he’s faking it and it’s actually a young guy wearing a mask. But this guy’s a hero now! Why are we idolizing these guys that are breaking the law and stealing stuff? It’s strange!

I have a friend whose 12-year-old kid admires these gangsters. It’s insane. I don’t know where this is coming from. I have no idea why people in such large numbers are idolizing the bad guy. Where did this come from? Don’t they read comic books?

Any comments on the increased feminization of men?

I'm tempted to blame it on endocrine disrupters in the environment, or something equally insidious, but it's probably more psychological than physical. Maybe it's Hollywood, maybe it's society, maybe no one knows what it means to be a man anymore. I've often written that boys, upon reaching the age of 16, should undergo some sort of rites of passage, kind of like they do in primitive societies, or even what they do in Judaism. At some point, a boy needs to be told that it's time to put away childish things, that he's a man. My Western version of it would entail presenting the initiate to a group of men--his father, uncle, older brother, whatever--and his friends, each who gives him sort of "talisman" of manhood, along with saying a few words about manhood, the message being that "you're part of a 'tribe' now, and that you have a pack to answer to, and if you act like an idiot, we will cuff you like a little wolf cub."

But feminization in general is probably the fault of men everywhere. Take a look at the average relationship in a marriage. This is usually the situation: Most men let women provide the structure in their relationship and their whole dynamic, and those men will pay a price in terms of anger and disrespect (from their mate). A woman, ultimately, isn't going to admire a man like that.

What's your weight training look like?

My current training is a mash-up of Tim Patterson's and Chrisitian Thibaudeau's High Threshold Hypertrophy Training, Dave Wendler's 5-3-1 training, various Poliquin methodologies, and various cockeyed TC strategies learned throughout the years. Add in a few power cleans and you've got a little bit of a snapshot of what I'm doing. It's always changing, though. That's the best thing about Editor-in-chief of Testosterone; I'm privy to some of the best minds in the business and I'm often the first one to learn about a new training methodology.

Where do you think people are missing the boat when it comes to training?

People are missing the boat in training by the lack of progression. I rarely see people change up their routines or even write anything down. How can you make progress when you don't write down your lifts? Just yesterday I saw this bozo doing bent-over rows with 140 pound dumbbells. Now you have to understand, every time I see this guy, he's doing bent-over rows, and doing them with horrible form and putting them down so hard, the floor shakes. He increases the weight he uses, not because he's gotten stronger, but because he thinks it's time to move up in weight.

What I mean is that he makes an assumption based on time spent in the gym, reps performed over time, etc., to determine that he should be increasing the weight, when in reality he should be using a weight that's about 40 pounds lighter. He's a buffoon.

What's the dumbest thing you see people do at the gym?

The dumbest thing I see lately is guys doing kettlebell movements on bosu balls. If that isn't bad enough, they're doing the kettlebell movements slowly, actually doing things like kettlebell swings by slowly muscling the thing up, rather than using the explosive movement of their hips to propel the bell upwards. Bizarre. I think it's some kind of epidemic.

To stave off this and other epidemics with a steady stream of riotous laughter, check out TC’s book, Atomic Dog: The Testosterone Principles. You won’t regret it.