Training Log: Entry 3785

AM WORKOUT (0400 wake up via alarm)

TACTICAL BARBELL MASS PROTOCOL SPECIFICITY BRAVO Week 3, Workout 5

DB rows
4x8x180

Axle curls
3x8x103
6+2x103

GHRs
4x8x80

GHR sit ups
30

Stone of Steel load to platform
215lb stone, 4 rounds, Fail, 1, 1, Fail

Notes:

• Final workout of the cycle, and it was stupidly heavy and cheaty: good way to send it out. I also want to celebrate that I look jacked in the thumbnail for the video, which is a real win.

• I know those DB rows were lacking in form, but they felt awesome on my back. Fantastic stretch.

• Curls were super cheaty. Good forearm pump.

• I think the stone was primarily a product of fatigue. Same weight I set a deadlift PR, I’m feeling fried. On the very last rep, I felt my left lower back/hip fire of a warning shot, so I shut down the rep. Might’ve had it if I fought for it. Re-learning lessons: the deeper I lap the stone, the higher it goes.

• Got in a lot of general physical activity after this. Mowed the lawn and did some fence repair.

• Weighed in at 81.8kg. This is the biggest week of fluctuations I’ve experience on the program. I’m looking leaner than usual: seeing telltale veins that are usually the signs of bodyfat dropping.

• Tang Soo Do had some solid physical elements to it yesterday. Decent enough workout. I’m intending to spend the rest of the day laying low, because I feel beat. The Valkyrie was noting that my body was radiating heat last night, so perhaps I’m ill, or my NEAT is just turned up.

 Training Log: Entry 3784

AM WORKOUT (0500 wake up via alarm)

TACTICAL BARBELL MASS PROTOCOL SPECIFICITY BRAVO Week 3, Workout 4

SSB Squat
4x8x325

Lever belt squat
4x8x330

Axle strict press from rack
3x8x146
5+3x146

(3) Incline DB bench
3x8x85s
6+2x85

Dip/HLR superset
17,15,13,11/3x10

Notes:

• Had the day off work, so slept in. Came up with a million plans on how to skip the squats, and then just knuckled up and did them. The 3rd set went better than the first 2 and gave me hope. The faster I did the squats, the sooner the set was over, and I kept it at 1 minute rest.

• Was surprisingly strong throughout. Rested 60-120-120 on the axle, then 90s on the DB. At that point, I was just thrashed and with this being the final workout of Specificity for this cycle, didn’t see a need to use weight on the dips.

• Weighed 82.0kg this morning. That’s a 2.2kg drop in 2 days, and a 1.3kg drop from yesterday. Apparently I was holding a lot of fluids. Things are fitting better, but it also makes feeling stronger today even more remarkable. I also don’t hurt as much as I expected after the deadlift yesterday.

• Tang Soo Do last night was a decent workout/amount of activity for the 90 minute class. At one point, we played a ring toss game, where, if you made the toss, you didn’t have to do they physical exercise on your deck of doom. I intentionally threw all my rings on the floor. I told my instructor “I’m not going to ‘win’ an opportunity to not do exercise”. They respected that.

• My competition has been moved from 8 Aug to 29 Aug. Gives me an extra 3 weeks to train for it, but I also don’t know if I want to spend 12 solid weeks in competition prep mode, so we’ll see. Chaos is always the plan. They also changed the weight classes, so now there’s only 4 groups to choose from, apparently something highland games does. I may go in the heaviest group, based off deadlift weight.

 Training Log: Entry 3783

AM WORKOUT (0358 natural wake up)

TACTICAL BARBELL MASS PROTOCOL SPECIFICITY BRAVO Week 3, Workout 3

Texas Deadlift Bar Deadlift
9x455 (+3 rep PR)

DB row
4x8x165

Axle curls
4x8x93

GHR
4x8x75

ASSISTANCE

GHR sit up
20, 15

Reverse hypers
3x15x270

Band pull aparts
3x25

Notes:

• I genuinely have no idea where those deadlifts came from, but I’m thankful for them. Anything above 6 was a PR with this weight. I wanted 10, would be satisfied with 8, wound up at 9. Actually had some difficulty finding the floor on the set: I’d hit one side and then the other. My strap set up had some issues, so I think that was part of it. May have actually had that 10th rep if I wasn’t fighting the bar the entire time. I’m definitely shot to hell from the training and due for that bridge week coming up, but that just makes this even more awesome. And the moonwalk afterwards is always a joy. I also came VERY close to blacking out at rep 7, after managing to hold my breath for that long.

• DB rows felt better than I deserved. Seem to really be responding well to the heavy weight. GHRs were awesome too.

• Dropped the weight on the reverse hypers. Noticed last week that they lit my hips up, and started to wonder if they were yet another contributor to my hip pain. My back is getting enough stimulus between the SSB, deadlifts and stones: this can be more of a rehab effort.

• Tang Soo Do last night was more about precision than anything else. Not too terribly active.

• Weighed in at 83.3kg this morning, 3rd week in a row that I dropped .9kg on Wed. Fun to see the consistency.

• I have the next 2 days off work, and my in-laws are coming into town. Schedule is going to be a little nutty, and I’m already dreading tomorrow’s squat workout, but it’s the last one of the program.

• I realized that we’ve taken a monthlong hiatus from ABF due to various obligations and competitions. Valkyrie has expressed interest in starting it back up again. I’m thinking the reduced pressing volume could actually be a contributor to my axle press not progressing as rapidly as it was previously.

 Training Log: Entry 3782

AM WORKOUT (0510 wake up via Valkyrie’s alarm)

TACTICAL BARBELL MASS PROTOCOL SPECIFICITY BRAVO Week 3, Workout 2

“ROW, ROW, ROW YOUR BLOAT”

19 chins

20 minute recovery row

Notes:

• Woke up feeling a million years old and couldn’t be more excited for a recovery row. Told myself distance didn’t matter: we were just there to feel good. Despite that, still got 4150 in the 20 minutes, matching last week. General fitness seems to be trending upward.

• “Row your bloat” true to form, because I weighed in at 84.2kg this morning: heaviest I’ve been in the entire 12 week Mass Protocol block. Specificity is absolutely wrecking me, in a way that I HOPE is hormetic. It’s definitely a “body by Nietzsche” thing. That said, I did feel much better after getting that row in.

• The daily chins are actually more a struggle than usual, which most likely the small amounts of weight gain are at play there.

• Tang Soo Do tonight. This week is Wildcard/Cardio, so we’ll see what kind of workout we get.

Training Log: Entry 3781

AM WORKOUT (0400 wake up via alarm, rough night of sleep)

TACTICAL BARBELL MASS PROTOCOL SPECIFICITY BRAVO Week 3, Workout 1

SSB Squats
4x8x315

Lever belt squats
4x8x305

Axle strict press from rack
2x8x148
5x148
6+3x148

(3) DB incline bench
4x8x80s

Dips
7x105
2x4x105
15xBW

ASSISTANCE

Hanging leg raise
3x10

Notes:

• My training motivation is in a weird place, as yesterday afternoon I was thinking about this training day and feeling quite excited to get it done, but once it came time to actually pay my dues I had zero desire to do it. But part of that could be the puppy joining us in the middle of the night and then hacking in my face at 0200, waking me out of a sound sleep. But also, I am absolutely fried from this training. Steely eye observers will note I repeated the weight from last workout, which was sets of 10, and used it for sets of 8. I gave 335 and honest attempt and managed 2 reps with it, and knew that, yes, I COULD grind out a set of 8 with it, and quite possibly even 4 sets of 8, but in doing so I’d leave so much of my soul in the garage that I’d have nothing left to train on. Instead, I achieved a victory by keeping the rest times strictly at 1 minute, whereas last week I couldn’t get through that. I also kept the press weight at last weeks, so I’m operating off split percentages for the final week of Specificity.

• This tends to happen in the final weeks of the program, and one of the contributors is I don’t use a different TM between my buffalo bar squat and my SSB squat. I can get away with that in the first 2 weeks, but I always end up having to pay the piper in the final week. I’m also learning that 9 weeks is probably my cut off before I need to take a bridge week. I’ve been playing on borrowed time. But also, while I’m talking about how I could have done this better, I’m thinking the recomp strategy was the right call for Grey Man, and once I entered the realm of Specificity I needed to stop eating like a prom queen and just open up the floodgates. But honestly, it’s pretty cool I’m still learning lessons at 40 after 26 years of lifting. It’d be boring if I already knew everything.

• Too little too late, but these next few weeks are gonna be some great feasting weeks, which I suppose will give me a little caloric runway leading up to my comp in Aug…which I’m hoping is still on, because as it stands I’m still literally the only competitor signed up.

• Weighed in at 83.8kg this morning. Yesterday was a wonderful classic family meal of spaghetti with 93% lean ground beef, some homemade sourdough rolls with grassfed butter and 3 peanut butter, reece’s pieces butterscotch cookies and a homemade sourdough banana muffin with raw local honey. We also went out to eat at the Valkyrie’s favorite Hawaiian BBQ place for mother’s day, so my sodium is in a good place.

• Just a little bit of reflection: gaining programs and endurance events always make me wonder how life would have gone if I never cared about certain health markers or having to maintain a certain bodyweight. I am so talented at eating large quantities and enduring significant sustained periods of misery. Somewhere out there, on an alternate timeline, I am a 308lb powerlifter, and on another one a 150lb ultramarathoner…and on another one, a youtube competitive eater.

 Training Log: Entry 3780

AM WORKOUT (0900)

TACTICAL BARBELL MASS PROTOCOL SPECIFICITY BRAVO Week 2, Workout 6

Prowler Sprints

4 sprints, high handle prowler, 90lbs loaded

Notes:

• 100 paces for the distance, sprints ranged from 37-41 seconds, and then rested 4 minutes. This is still just the perfect prescription for now. Once I get back from the cruise, I’ll ramp this up a little. Got this done on Sunday rather than Saturday, but given the nature of the prowler I don’t think it will impact my recovery that much.

• Got the full 19-19-18 on chins this week.  

 Training Log: Entry 3779

AM WORKOUT (0400 wake up via alarm: rough night of sleep)

TACTICAL BARBELL MASS PROTOCOL SPECIFICITY BRAVO Week 2, Workout 5

DB row
4x10x155

Axle curls
4x10x91

GHR
4x10x70

GHR sit up
20, 15

Stone of Steel to platform
4 1 minute rounds w/205lb stone
-Triples for rounds 1, 2 and 4, a single and missed double on round 3.

Notes:

• I love that this workout is on Friday, because I actually appreciate this one. It’s so much easier psychologically, and my reward at the end is I get to play with an event. I put the final touches on the platform and now it’s solid: I’m using bands/band pegs to keep the swiss bar in place, which locks the whole thing down. Zero sliding, and, in turn, I got some crazy loads on it. It’s a little louder, being a little heavier, but the workout still times to when the Valkyrie wakes up, so this is continuing to prove sustainable.

• What ISN’T sustainable is getting woken up at 0200 to the news that the dog pooped on the carpet. Got back to sleep around 0300. It’s been a hectic week, and the whole family is due for a relaxing evening.

• DB rows continue to feel awesome when placed first in the workout. I genuinely hate how DB rows are my most effective row, as they’re unilateral and take twice as long as a bilateral row, but it just always works. I might actually need to buy some more 10lb plates soon, since I’m exhausting my supply.

• Got a great pump on those GHRs. Cheated quite a bit on the curls.

• Weighed in at 83.0kg this morning. .4 kilo drop from yesterday. Decided to have breakfast this morning, because I wanted it, which seemed like a good sign. Body has re-stabilized from the insanity I threw at it on Wednesday. It’s a good time to be gaining.

• The first week of Specificity, I remark how great my body feels with the light weight and the high reps. Then reality hits like a truck on the final 2 weeks. My body is demolished. I’m approaching 12 weeks of training to gain without a break, and it shows. This system works so well: I transition to Operator from here and suddenly the volume drops and I get a chance to recover.