Dip-push up dropset Max reps dips, then push ups, then push ups w/reactive slingshot, then slingshot, then metal catapult
100 BPAs
Notes:
* Got the day off work, so slept in and got this knocked out. Knees are feeling a little twitchy. I'm wondering if I need to cut back on the front rack holds, since it's effectively a short range lockout exercise and puts some pressure on them, but it could also be from so much time running around the Dojang and just running in general.
* Didn't feel as strong in this workout as I did last week at the end, but by the middle set things were clicking.
* Chins feel like they're moving in a good way. Part of that may also be the weight loss.
* Dip/push up dropset is part of my ongoing "hypertrophy preservation" effort. I feel that 2-3 minutes of work at the end of these workouts isn't going to compromise recovery. Lateral raises on day 1, curls on day 2 and this on day 3 should put me in a good way.
* Once again, the distances aren't exact, but close enough. Running in my neighborhood, vs on a track. Taking advantage of the lack of snow and decent weather for now.
* Still wearing my bearfeet shoes for this. No idea if that's a good or bad idea, but it's what I'm doing. I don't feel any worse running in them.
* The most difficult part is finding the pace for the 800m. It's not supposed to be max effort, but also supposed to be harder than a jog. But I'm appreciating getting in the reps for running here. This is a very digestible format for it, and it should carry over well for my race.
* It's nice being able to shut off my brain and just pick a workout from the book. I DO have to fight the voice inside my head telling me to absolutely nuke myself with conditioning. I'm really trying to find that balance of recovery to get better at all things rather than make Faustian deals in my training. Just sticking with the plan.
* On the note of sticking with the plan, I've excited the no-man's-land of fat loss, where you spend the first two weeks looking worse than when you started. Midsection is tightening up again and I'm feeling leaner. Good to be in touch with my hunger signals again too. Had 12 chicken wings for dinner last night, and it was enough food. It's why I always chuckle at the kids that never want to have a cutting phase: there is a LOT of value to be had in getting re-sensitized to food.
* Tang Soo Do is on the schedule for tonight. Should be another solid workout.
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Training Log: Entry 3438
AM WORKOUT (0404 natural wake up: forgot to set my first alarm)
* I’m no longer logging the warm-ups, as they’ve reduced as I’ve healed. I’m pretty much just sticking with the Hatfield squats/jump squats and then some light sets of squats.
* Kept it at 2 minutes rest between sets.
* The log still isn’t feeling awesome, but it’s not soul crushing either. I’ll have to eventually start training the push press again, as much as I hate it. Might include it in conditioning, or maybe finish off each set with 1 push press rep.
* Those pulls felt absolutely incredible. Really goes to speak to the impact of fatigue and small injuries. A few weeks ago, I couldn’t break the weight off the floor, and only managed 425 for a very grindy single. 315 exploded off the floor for my warm-up, and 440 moved without drama. Didn’t feel awesome, but I had more in me than just those 5 reps. DID blow out a bunch of blood vessels still, so something to be aware of.
* This was my first time wearing my powerbelt since I left on vacation, primarily because I didn’t want to run the risk of trying to put it on while bloated, having it not fit, freaking out and torpedoing my bodyweight. In turn, it actually fit the best it’s fit in a LONG time. Given my elevated bodyweight, the fact my waistline has remained set to “svelte” leads me to believe I’ve put on some quality mass in these past 4 months. Should be good as I continue to trim down.
* Rather than do full Poundstone curls, I went until I stopped, and got a good pump. I'm going to see how my elbows feel with this approach.
* Tang Soo Do was a really solid workout last night. We stayed in motion for the full hour. We were broken into 3 groups, 1 in the middle working on something specific, and the other 2 running laps around the Dojang until it was their turn. Idea was about performing under fatigue. Valkyrie and I never fell out, whereas we watched a bunch of kids unable to hang, at a running pace I would best describe as “leisurely”. Our instructor is a much better human than I: emphasizing “if you feel dizzy or lightheaded, fall out and recover”, whereas I’m of the mindset “that means it’s working!” But, in turn, I was proud of my kiddo for not falling out and just grinding through the suck.
* We’re getting takeout tonight in support of my kid’s school’s fundraiser “Chef’s Night Out”. Gonna get some chicken wings from a local pizza place, as that’s about as “Apex Predator” as this diet can get, ala Jamie Lewis’ recommendation. It dawned on me the other day that I wrote about not being good at maintenance, but I suppose that was the point of “Feast, Famine and Ferocity”: it was a manner of maintenance VIA extremes. I might bring that back after this initial weight cut: maybe let it guide me to my cruise in June.
Incline: 3.0 for first 45 minutes, 4.0 for final 45 minutes
Total Distance: 4.5 miles
Weight: 45lbs
Notes:
* TB calls for a 90 minute ruck for E work. This was more leisurely than a ruck, but given I haven’t walked with a vest in quite a while, and I haven’t done that for 90 minutes ever, I decided to ease into it. I upped the incline at the halfway point to add a little more challenge. I’m pleased with how it went, and at the end there was discomfort but not anyting intolerable. I wanna keep this up as an every-other-week thing, per the Black Protocol, and make this my primary prep for my 10 mile run. If I get used to just moving at a constant rate for 90 minutes, I’ll be in a good way. This got me over 11k steps before 0600, so that’s a good way to start the day.
* Had my family meal last night, and even there I’m being a little more conservative than I was during the gaining. I’m not restricting myself: I’m simply not eating BEYOND satiety at this point. We did some 4 cheese tortellini with garlic bread, and then I had 2 of my wife’s oatmeal peanut butter cookies with some raw local honey alongside a more reasonable slice of homemade peppermint cheesecake and a small mug of Fairlife skim milk.
* Digestion finally seems to have sorted itself out.
* Tang Soo Do tonight. This is “Wildcard/Cardio Week”, so should be some physical activity in store. We’re skipping class on Wed and making it up on Sat, due to schedule.
* First workout at 80%, and it’s feeling solid. I’m thinking the program is working as designed. Really focusing on getting that front squat smooth. Instead of the 2 stage approach I’ve used where I squat, hit my natural depth, relax and get deeper, I’m trying to get it all into one solid motion while keeping tight/braced. Along with that, focusing on getting that log clean as explosive as possible so I don’t waste any energy on it. Wearing my grip shirt will help too, but I don’t want to rely on gear: I want to have strong mechanics. It’s why I’m wearing my belt so early into the training phase: I want to practice it the way I need it to be.
* Still keeping 2 minutes rest. If I need more, I’ll take it, but right now it’s still plenty.
* My left hip was a little achy from the swings from yesterday, and I considered not doing them today, thinking maybe I’m doing too much, but I reflected on how the 10k swing challenge requires 500 per day 5 days a week and people manage. I’m sure I’m out of condition, but I can fix that. I’ll still listen to my body as best I can, but it’s a balancing act.
* Allowing myself a little bit of hypertrophy maintenance work in the assistance if time permits. Lateral raises, some direct arm work on my deadlift day, and maybe some chest work somewhere else. I don’t intent to do a workout on top of a workout, but I can spend a few minutes if I have the time to get a slight pump that won’t interfere with recovery.
* Weighed in at 86.4kg this morning. When I finished Mass Protocol, I was 84.6, so that’s up almost 2 full KG 2 weeks after finishing the program. I also know I’ve dropped some weight since last week, based on how my weight belt was fitting this morning, alongside my rings. Some of that is definitely inflammation, as the whole family is still overcoming some manner of stomach bug we contracted while traveling, but I’m also calling this a “hypertrophy hangover”. Even though the TRAINING for mass had stopped, the RECOVERYING from the training did not, and that 1 week on the cruise gave me ample time to eat, recover and grow. Having “too much muscle” is a great problem to have, but it’s also something for me to keep in mind for future training cycles in relation to proximity to competitions and weigh ins. I’m not at all concerned about making weight for 12 Apr at 181lbs at this point, but I’m also delighted to have so much “runway” as far as nutrition goes. Primarily because I’m really not good at maintenance, so being 9lbs over gives me plenty of time to slowly lose some weight while focusing on getting my strength up.
* Already making small, simple changes that will add up big. Swapped out some whole eggs for egg whites, ditched the pork rinds, going with leaner cuts of steaks, including a little more lean white meat, etc. We ate out twice this week (we tend to on the weekends), and I went to my favorite Hibachi place and had a plateful of shrimp with a touch of beef, compared to my normal half/half approach, and I went with the full rack of ribs at our BBQ place with no extra sides. I’m still sticking with solid meal a day and the rest being Metabolic Drive, because I really like that approach, and it means far fewer variables to control as far as nutritional manipulation goes. Whereas my 1 meal a day used to be an eating competition, now I just eat to satiety with leaner foods. We’ll see how it all shakes out.
* Going to try to get in some more walking today while my kid is at show choir. It was 5 degrees this morning when I walked the dog, so it’ll be chilly, but I don’t mind bundling up, as long as it’s not raining.
100m sprint 20kb swings w/24kg bell Walk back to start
10 total rounds
Time: 21:10
Notes:
* Got this done around 12:30. Figuring out training on weekends. It was stupidly cold outside, but no snow, so I wanted to take advantage of that and do some outdoor stuff. I'm feeling speedier on the sprints. Last 2 rounds my legs were done, but still got my heart rate up and breathing hard.
* 3rd lifting workout of the week, keeping the weights the same, and I’m really digging how this all works. Today felt the best it’s felt, and I moved smooth and quick on everything. It took me quite a while to be mature enough to “get” this program, but I’m in the right spot for it now.
* Focused on really bracing hard on those front squats and really trying to pop the log up on the clean. No wasted energy. Chins felt strong as well.
* The swings come from K. Black discussing one of his clients (I forget if it was TB 1 or 2) that performs Operator with squat, bench and 100 swings with a 36 or 48kg bell. I’m blending ideas here, but as far as I can tell, still complying with the protocol, as Operator allows for 3 movemetns+1 BW, which would grant me the ability to include those 100 swings alongside the weighted chins. I feel like having the swings on Mon and Fri and the deads on Wed should work well for me. Allow me to still train the hinge/triple extension without beating myself up too much. Having the deads on Wed and then stones on the weekend gives me longer breaks between heavy posterior chain work to recover. I really dig the puzzle solving when it comes to this stuff.
* My right knee is feeling so much better, which bodes well in a lot of ways. It’s good to know I didn’t permanently destroy it: I simply wasn’t giving it enough time to recover because I kept hammering it with that squat style that just wasn’t a good fit for me. Going back to a more normal stance has me moving fast and feeling strong again. I do want to keep that other stance as a tool in my backpocket, but I think 2-ish years of squatting that way was enough to accomplish whatever I needed to accomplish.
* I keep upping the weight on the front rack hold, with no real end goal. This may have been heavy enough at this point to settle in for a while. I don’t need to be a front rack champion: just have to get some benefit from it.
* I keep talking about wanting to do 3/5/1 for TB, and I can definitely do that in the future, but I realized I have an avenue to employ something similar within the week itself. It’s 3-5 sets, which means I could always do something like open up the week with 4 sets, do 3 sets on the second workout and then finish up with 5 sets. There’s also the potential to do 4 sets, then 5 sets, then 3 sets on the final workout, saving my back a little before I do events work on the weekend. Both have their advantages: having the low amount of sets in the mid workout correlates with the workout where I do trap bar lifts, so I can save myself for that OR I could do more than 1 workset of the trap bar that day. It’s funny how, the more limited the training, the more creative I get.
* We ended up only doing 1 TSD class last night. We all are still feeling a little crummy post travel. We’ll get in one more class on Saturday.
* Day off due to national day of mourning for Jimmy Carter, so slept in, got some breakfast with the Valkyrie and got this in while she went off to get her nails done. The weather was good enough that I wanted to get in an outdoor session with some running, but still keep it on the short side. This worked out perfect. Those "sprints" were definitely fast runs, but I'm getting back into shape. I also measured off the distance using strava, so nothing is precise here.
* This met the intent of breaking my lungs. 12 weeks of this is going to be good for me.
* Doubled up Tang Soo Do last night. Did a lot of roll/break falls. Doubling up tonight as well, with some intent to get in some walking today as well.
* Digestion still a mess. Constantly changing diet, but I'm keeping the protein stupidly high while keeping the energy low.
* Sticking with 2 minutes rest between exercises. Still kills my soul to do that.
* I’m employing the “1 day of deadlifts” protocol from the book, rather than a workset every training session. I’ve settled on one set for now, as, historically, I’ve done quite well with one big set of deads per week vs multiple sets. I’m willing to play around with that, but I feel like once I start regularly training stones and carries, this will be the right call. Since the weight was light, I went with the soft belt/power belt set up vs my traditional power belt set up, and that’s not something I’m going to do again, because it felt awful.
* On that note, I’m already losing some of the travel boat, as the belt is fitting better. My digestion has been absolutely wrecked, which is another reason I’m taking a week to dry out and get situated.
* The squats and presses both felt smoother today than Monday, which is the exact goal of this protocol. This is like a programmed take on Easy Strength. Let the strength be the strength work and the conditioning be the conditioning work.
* Meant to mention it on the first day, but I started doing those front rack holds, as I feel like that should have some solid carryover to trying to be a strongman again. I remember these were really popular about a decade back. It’s like doing an upright heavy loaded plank. This becomes almost like the “plank and shank” when I combine it with the ab wheel or HLRs.
* Most likely not going to get in much walking with the dogs as winter is setting in, but thankfully we haven’t had any legit snowfall yet. It’s just cold.
* Tang Soo Do was pretty low impact yesterday. Our instructor was wanting to ease people back in after the 2 week break. We’re doing a double class today, so we’ll see how that goes.
* Leaning into the lower rations at this point. I don’t tend to count calories, but we’re eating more quick meals as we’ve returned from vacation and didn’t do any sort of legit shopping, and yesterday’s dinner was 3 Don Lee chicken breast patties, a quarter cup of Kalona grassfed sour cream and 200g of egg whites, which was exactly 500 calories according to labels, and around 95g of protein. I’m really good at not eating, but, in turn, I have to make sure I don’t fly too close to the sun there.
* The headings on these posts are getting ridiculous, but I’m too bought in at this point. In keeping with the 12 labors, each week will be labeled sequentially as the labors of Heracles, the first being the Slaying of the Nemean lion. I don’t necessarily have sins to atone for here, unless we’re going Judeo-Christian and counting gluttony these past 14 weeks, along with pride, but if nothing else, it’s a good story and lead into a montage. Which, actually, the Super Mario Brother Super Show had a great episode on this
* It should surprise absolutely no one how influential that episode was for me as a kid, along with the “Karate Koopa” one.
* This was a good wake-up call. After the second round, I was getting that copper taste in my mouth, which I’ve had explained to me is the taste of blood. Something about metabolic waste products and blood vessels. It’s all alchemy to my simple barbarian mind. But I was breathing hard but also remembering how to recover between rounds.
* Running definitely wasn’t setting any landspeed records. I actually ran in my bearfeet shoes, which may be a good idea, or it might be terrible, but with the short distance and need to perform burpees and swings, it was my preference. My distance wasn’t exactly 400m: I was running around the block my house is on, but I’ve measured it out that 4 laps of that is .97 miles based on my GPS, so it’s close enough for my purposes. The big takeaway for the conditioning work is to meet the spirit of the exercises from TB II, rather than the exact letter, especially once the strongman stuff comes in.
* It was 17 degrees outside according to my phone. Toward the end, the swings were a little challenging as my hands were numb. Tried to focus on exploding up AND back down, per Dan John. Tried to keep the burpee form sharp as well. I liked this workout structure in general to hit just about everything: some running, some getting off the floor, some triple extension. All areas I’m weak in.
* We have Tang Soo Do tonight. We might do a double class: we have to make up for some lost time.
* I had my carby meal yesterday. Some tater tots with my dinner, and then a dessert of 3 of my wife's cookies with some honey alongside a slide of a "peppermint bark" cheesecake she made. Heckuva way to start a leaning out phase, but it's been about 10 days since I've had any sort of carb, and I know I do better with the cyclical approach.
Monday, January 6, 2025
Training Log: Entry 3430
AM WORKOUT (0400 wake up via alarm, semi-restless sleep)
* This is the start of the next training phase. I’ll go into further detail in a later post, but the “12 Labors” is a reference to Heracles, and it coincides with me having 12 weeks of training until my next strongman competition, along with the fact that, in June I will be going on a cruise to Greece and Rome to celebrate the year I’m turning 40, and I fully intend to look, feel and perform like Heracles when that time arrives.
* I employed 2 minutes of rest between sets. It absolutely killed me to wait that long, but I am, once again, fully complying with this program. 2 minutes is the absolute minimum amount of rest to take between sets, so I’m doing that, with an option to extend further as weights get heavier. You ARE allowed to alternate between exercises, but with 2 minutes of rest between EACH exercise, so I’m really taking like 4 minutes of rest between squats with this approach.
* I paired up the squats and the press together because they both used the same belt set up, and I didn’t want to deal with taking the belt off and putting it back on if I were to throw in the chins as well…primarily because, while wearing this many layers and with my increased abdominal circumference from 7 days of feasting, putting the belt on over top the soft-belt is a chore.
* I have finally returned to a more traditional wider squat stance. I’ve proven whatever point it was I was trying to prove, and, in returning, also validated a few other theories I had. One being that my mobility/depth in the wider stance would be much better than it ever was before, and the other being that the narrow stance has been the reason my right knee feels like absolute garbage. I tore the meniscus in it on a log viper about 1.5 year back, but all this time narrow stance squatting has just been grinding it to a pulp. Sitting for prolonged periods in confined spaces has been agony. Meanwhile, today, there was minimal pain DURING the squat, and minimal pain after the workout. I think the big takeaway is that the majority of my squatting needs to be a more traditional stance, and the close stance stuff should be used sparingly, and for high rep sets.
* I’m also belting up because my intention is for my lower back to get hammered during strongman prep, which I will also expand upon in a later post. But I’m really trying to learn how to balance the training demands throughout the training program.
* I’m going to spend this week “drying out” from my vacation, and not do any weighing in. Next week, I’ll take a weigh in and assess where I am in regards to my comp on 12 Apr. However, “diet starts Monday”, so I’m already on my way to leaning out. “Operation Conan” has ended, as I’m no longer trying to gain size at this point and, in turn, the nightly updates on meals have ended. I intended to prove that I could gain on carnivore, and I did, but there was never any doubt you could LOSE fat on carnivore, so there’s no novelty there.
* May get in some more walking tonight while my kid is at their Monday activities.
