This giveaway is now closed. Thank you to all, *cough* all THREE of you, who played!

Congratulations to STEPHEN, our winner! I’ll be contacting you soon to make arrangements to get them to you.

Well I sat down with the intention of writing something exciting, profound, and just all around awesome, as you folks have come to expect; but then I realized: hey, this is going to be my 50th post since I started doing this thing last year.

My first thought was, of course, to do that epic montage that I’ve been pondering. But I think I’ll save that for number 100. So I figured instead of me doing that whole pat myself on the back thing, I should just give the people what they really want: Something free.

MMmmmm. Organ meat.

Now what you may or may not appreciate, is that I like try and give away things that are relevant to what I’m currently into. Hopefully you’re interested in the same thing, and if not, well then I’m sorry: I hope you don’t win.

To keep in line with this, I’m going to be giving away the following two “Paleo Diet” books to our lucky winner:

1. The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet (The why)
2. The Paleo Diet Cookbook (The how)

The reason being, that I’ve decided to give this whole Paleo diet thing a try for at least 30 days later on this month or the beginning of April (more specifically, I plan on doing the Whole30 as I mentioned in a recent post). which means I’ll probably be reading the same books. (See, we can be reading buddies! Let’s start a book group! …no)

So whether you want these books for yourself, or want them for your fat, tired spouse/bf/gf/kid/grandma, all you have to do to enter this contest is:

Leave a comment at the bottom of this post telling me why you want to win these books.

The contest will go on a little longer than the previous ones. This one lasting for 2 weeks, at the end of which I will announce the winner here. Which means I’ll give you until midnight of Tuesday the 22nd of March, Eastern Standard Time.

So leave your comment and then check back in 2 weeks! Happy 50th peeps.

Congrats to the winner: Alison!

While all contest winners are randomly generated, it’s always nice to give away things to friends. I’m pretty sure I know who’s getting this in their stocking come December…

Thank you to all who entered! Please check back for future giveaways.

There are two things we know about Popeye:

1. He loves spinach
2. He has terrible taste in women. He’s dedicated and loyal, God bless him, but I’m just… I’m not feeling it man.

That's the face of a very frustrated man

What is never explained to us, is how he developed such amazing tumor-tastic forearms. I’ve decided that it’s from one of two things:

1. He was a very, very lonely man. You would think from all the work that he’s put into Olive, that woman would’ve married him by now.
2. Captains of Crush. The man can close level 4, no doubt. (Only 5 people in the world have ever done it).

Who is this Captain of Crush? He sounds like a real badass. You’re right, and you can be too: The Captains of Crush are built for the sole purpose of giving you Popeye-esque grip. They are simple, durable, and challenging pieces of equipment. I’ll write a full review for you here soon, but for now you’ll have to settle for free things.

Giving away some free badass

While grip-specific training might not be something you focus on, your grip is the common denominator in close to all the lifts you do. You want to get that 400+ lbs. deadlift? Try doing it without some serious grip strengh… Or use straps, pansy. (I say this like I can deadlift more than 300, which I can’t. I also own a pair of straps, but they’re gathering dust)

So to help you along in your quest towards huge-itude, I’m going to lay two of these bad boys on one of you lucky Yokesters. Since I don’t know how far along you are in your quest, I’ll let the winner pick which two they want: Check out the Amazon page, or the Iron Mind site, and let me know which two you want. If you’re a weakling, you’d probably want to start with the “Guide” or “Trainer”. If you regularly lift, and think you’re a badass, maybe go for the 1.5 and 2.

…But I’m getting ahead of myself. You haven’t won yet. How do you win? I’ll tell you how. You can get a total of 2 entries from the following:

1. Post a comment on this post. In the comment list your favorite article from TheYoking.com, and tell me why. Sorry, this will take a little bit of reading, or some good BSing skills. I’m fairly certain many of you will go the BS route, but I reserve the right to not count your entry if I think you’re full of it.
2. Hit the FaceBook “Like” button at the bottom of this post.

As a little bonus for my loyal “fans”, I’m going to give you an entry for each comment you’ve posted in the past month as well. How’s that for a frequent flyer perk?

Sorry ladies. Unless you’re trying to achieve a kung-fu grip, or develop those man hands you’ve always wanted, you’re probably going to want to sit this one out… Or maybe you could win this for that special man in your life that happens to have the infamous dead-fish handshake.

Contest runs through 11:59PM EST on Thursday, November 18^th. Winner will be posted at the top of this article on Friday the 19^th.

Good luck.

This giveaway has come to an end. Congrats to the winner, Katie Kelly! Hopefully she’ll share her body fat with the world….No pressure.

Keep checking in for more giveaways. I hope to have them monthly. Thanks to everyone who participated!

I want to thank everyone who’s been faithfully reading this blog, and appreciating the simplicity of words, pictures, and stupidity that has made this blog what it is today.

But I figure at this point, if you’re at all like myself, your interest is starting to wane, and you’re thinking why do I care and what’s in it for me.

Well now you can have some skin in the game. So here’s the deal:

To one lucky sucker, I’m going to be giving away a brand new Omron HBF-306C Fat Loss Monitor, which I personally own and recommended in my review.

So how does one enter to win this snazzy piece of machinery that will be sure to lower your self-esteem and likely spark a fight with your spouse and/or domestic partner?

Everyone is entitled up to three entries, and here’s the three ways to do it:

1. Post a comment to this post, telling the world and myself what your definition of “yoked” is. Pretty simple. Make it as serious, funny, short, or long as you like.
2. Facebook friend me, with a message that says “giveaway” or something to that affect (effect? ALWAYS get that wrong). If you’re already my friend on FB, just post a comment on my link to this post.
3. Share this link on Facebook. You can either click “share” on my link, or post it yourself. If you do the latter, you’ll have to drop me a note to let me know. I’m not magical.

Got it? So you can do one, or all of these, for a maximum of 3 entries per person. Or you can be lame and do none of these, which seems kind of stupid after having read up to this point. Just saying…

The contest will last until midnight of next Wednesday (the 20^th), and I’ll announce the winner on Thursday night. Simple enough?

Fine print: I’ll pay all shipping costs, but unfortunately this means that only folks with an address in the lower 48 of the USA are eligible to win.