1 YEAR OF TACTICAL BARBELL: THOUGHTS AND EXPERIENCES

INTRO

You could definitely pick far worse trinities to follow

Despite training for 25 years, I have had the attention span of an ADHD addled ferret on triple espresso when it comes to training methodologies, as I seem to only stick with one for a few months at a stretch before something shiny comes along and I jump ship and do something new.  Oh sure, I COMPLETE programs, but I rarely ever stick with an actual methodology proper long enough  to REALLY see what it’s all about.  I’ve done Super Squats, but never did the follow-on 5x5 program, followed by another cycle of the squats, as the book recommends.  I ran Easy Strength combined with Mass Made Simple, but never did another cycle of Easy Strength afterwards.  I’ve run several 5/3/1 programs, but once the specific program was done, I didn’t follow it up with an “appropriate” 5/3/1 program, nor properly repeat the program in the leader/anchor style Jim Wendler recommends.  I’ve run DoggCrapp for a 2 month run and a 3 month run respectively, just long enough for some blasts and never for the cruise.  And I certainly never repeated Deep Water over and over again per Jon Andersen’s recommendation.  But here I am, having accomplished a full year of using the Tactical Barbell system, and I foresee no signs of stopping.  Something about this system just hits differently, and I want to take the time to discuss what, exactly, that is, my experience with it, changes I’ve made, takeaways, and forecasts toward the future.

 

BACKGROUND

No radioactive spiders necessary for this origin story

This is already going to be a long read, so I’ll try to be brief.  I currently compete in strongman, and have done so since 2013.  Prior to that, I competed in 3 powerlifting meets from 2010-2012, and have a background in martial arts and wrestling (I’ve done 3 grappling tournaments on a whim recently, despite not having trained grappling since 2006).  I’ve also run 2 half marathons, and a handful of 10 miler, 10ks and 5ks. All this to say, I like being big, strong, and capable.  I’ve been lifting weights since I was 14 back in 1999, and have trained with a lot of different programs during that time (reference the intro).  I’ve also experienced a handful of injuries from my time in athletics, to include a shoulder with a torn labrum after 6 dislocations and multiple subluxations, a left knee that was surgically repaired after a ruptured ACL, torn meniscus and fractured patella, and a right knee with an undiagnosed but most likely torn meniscus.

 

When I started Tactical Barbell, I was dealing with those kinds of injuries.  I had just finished up a strongman competition which, despite winning, the training cycle for it had completely destroyed me.  My right hip was in so much agony that I had to literally pull myself DOWN to the barbell to get set up for deadlifts because I couldn’t voluntarily lower myself, and one of my co-workers asked me if I had herniated a disk based on how I was walking.  Through sheer willpower, I could force myself to complete workouts and compete, but my ability to just simply locomote day-to-day was absolutely shot and I was concerned that I was going to need to give up lifting for good in the near future.

 

DISCOVERING TACTICAL BARBELL

An introduction I was not ready for at the time

Interestingly enough, I had already read Tactical Barbell books 1 and 2 well before this moment.  But, at the time, they just didn’t resonate with me.  In truth, I was too obstinate: at the time, I was obsessed with training as hard as possible, both in lifting and conditioning, and not really concerned with the outcome of that training.  I was too focused on what I was accomplishing within the workout, vs what the workouts were accomplishing within the training cycle.  But after finishing up that terrible training cycle before that strongman competition I mentioned above, I found myself the scrawniest I had been in quite a while, as my attempts to make weight matched with a poor training approach had me shed a lot of muscle and strength.  As I was trying to come up with a way forward to regain some mass, the “Mass Protocol” e-book popped up as recommended reading for my kindle, and being a lover of all things related to gaining weight (see my previous posts on the subject), I dove in.  If you’ve read my review of that book, you know what a big fan of it I turned out to be, and that got me started on this path.

 

WHAT I’VE DONE

I mean...you gotta stick with the plan

I’ve already written extensive reviews of my training blocks within Tactical Barbell, and to prevent this from running even longer I won’t repeat those here, but for an overview of my timeline, I started off with the Mass Protocol, running Grey Man specifically, followed by Specificity Bravo.  I found that Grey Man slid perfectly into Bravo, as I could take all the same lifts I was doing and just arrange them into a push/pull split rather than a 3x a week full body approach.  This was from Mid September all the way through the New Year, at which point I embarked on a VERY long run of Operator until the start of August.  This was a result of me wanting to train for 2 different strongman competitions, along with a 10 mile race, within that window of time, which required me to keep my bodyweight down and my strength up.  Once that season ended, I got back on Mass Protocol Grey Man (with the modifications I wrote about in my most recent review) and will be following that up with Specificity Bravo.  From here, I intend to really give “OMS” a solid shot, as I’ve got nothing significant in my horizon to train for.

 

WHY I LIKE TACTICAL BARBELL IN GENERAL (WHY I’VE STUCK WITH IT FOR A YEAR)

Not having to do any of this is part of the reason

·       It tells you EXACTLY what to do.  At this point in my life, I (clearly) needed that, because when I let myself design my own training program, I ended up incredibly broken.  HOWEVER, this also required me to be in the right head space to be able to RECEIVE this instruction.  If you’re the type of dude that, as soon as they get a training program, immediately goes about changing it before giving it a try: this isn’t going to work.  However, if you're open to the instruction, this does a fantastic job of balancing stimulus with recovery.

·       But to continue riffing on the above, Tactical Barbell struck me as what I always wanted 5/3/1 to be.  In truth, you can see Jim’s influence in K. Black’s writing, but whereas Jim (rightfully) leaves a lot of room to the reader to make 5/3/1 work for them, Tactical Barbell provides much tighter bumpers that remove any ambiguity and gives clear marching orders.  Yet, at the same time, there IS room to play within the programming, as for one, K. Black will continue to re-iterate “this is what works for me and the people I train, but feel free to do what works for you”, but along with that, within the TB structure itself there is still some room for variance.  All the conditioning workouts in TBII are scalable, the workouts in TBI often include rep and set ranges to allow for some auto-regulation, and Mass Protocol allows for an either very streamlined approach or the opportunity to throw in some extra work and movements as needed.

·       I love how the whole thing is a SYSTEM.  Once again, I’ll contrast with 5/3/1, wherein Jim does a fantastic job outlining the conditioning requirements of his programs (3 hard conditioning workouts, 5 easy ones, for example) and he provides examples of what conditioning workouts exist, but beyond that, the trainee determines their fate.  With TB, you have specific conditioning protocols (Green or Black) which slot into your training protocols based off the goals of the training block.  Shorter, high intensity efforts are black, longer lower intensity efforts are green.  From there, we go to the collection of prebuilt conditioning workouts and select the ones that fit our schedule and equipment allowance and are all set.  It’s all plug and play and requires minimal thinking or planning.  The same is true of the lifting: ones the weights are figured out, plug in the percentage and go.  There are no PR sets to content with: progress is measured simply by sustained compliance.

·       The system aspect continues when you read through the Mass Protocol book and are given VERY CLEAR instructions on how to program block training.  Again: this DOES exist in other training systems (5/3/1, Westside, Deep Water, the works of Dan John, etc): K. Black just manages to break out the crayons and make it all dummy proof.  His “O-M-S” protocol (for “Operator-Mass-Specificity”) provides you with a very simple way to periodize your training, with a focus on maximal strength development, general hypertrophy training, and then a lighter weight/high rep follow-on phase.  And since the conditioning requirements change with each phase of training, the periodization continues in that manner as well, irrespective of what you’ve selected as your Operator conditioning protocol, because Mass REQUIRES the green protocol while specificity requires Black, so no matter what you get variety.  Additionally, there’s a bit of genius in the loading structure of this approach, as loads will be their heaviest on Operator, then get lighter during Mass, and even lighter during Specificity.  It prevents the trainee from grinding themselves into dust in any one particular modality, and by the time they come back round, it’s a breath of fresh air.

·       It’s incredibly adaptable.  I’ve used it to prepare for 2 different strongman competitions, a grappling competition, and a 10 mile race, along with simply getting lean for a cruise and putting on size, and within the framework is everything I need to succeed.  This DOES require some creativity in interpreting instructions or a willingness to allow yourself to go off the reservation at times, but sticking with the principles outlined allows it to all fit well.

 

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT TACTICAL BARBELL I’S OPERATOR SPECIFICALLY

It's like the ultimate team up

·       This program was an excellent choice when my goals involved athletic performance and reducing bodyweight to meet weight class requirements.  Per my final bullet in the above paragraph, it was easy to plug in strongman lifts as my main lifts during the lifting workouts, and include strongman events or distance training for the conditioning portions.  And then, along with that, since the lifting was all about practicing and keeping things sub-maximal, I could run this program while my food intake was reduced without any concern for recovery. 

·       You really “own the weight”, ala Jim Wendler, with Operator.  You have 3 opportunities per week to lift the same weights on the same lifts, and by the time you get to the third workout, you’re cruising.  I really enjoyed how gradual the progression scheme worked, as a result.  Progressing weight week to week rather than day to day felt far more sustainable, especially, once again, in a state of reduced food.  It’s the opposite of that “oh sh*t” experience you get from programs like Building the Monolith or Deep Water, where you feel a sense of doom for the next workout.

·       It honestly feels like magic how, if you have the right maxes selected, each training cycle you hit the lifts exactly as laid out.  No guesswork.

·       As a home gym owner, it was nice that I could leave my gym set up the same way all week, vs having to change the configuration from workout to workout.

·       Even with the strict rules of the program, there’s ways to play around and introduce novelty.  I took to making the days that I deadlifted to be the days I did as few working sets of other movements as possible (3 instead of 4 or 5), and have contemplated runs where I play around with the sets the whole week, starting with 4, dropping to 3 in the middle workout, finishing with 5, in a “medium-light-heavy” approach.

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT TACTICAL BARBELL II

At least NOW I won't be tired if I run

·       The creation of “conditioning protocols” just answers so many questions, clears up so much ambiguity, and creates the ultimate “plug and play” approach to conditioning.  Even if I wasn’t running a Tactical Barbell strength program, I can easily see myself just stealing from TBII or Mass Protocol’s conditioning protocol ideas.  I actually was kicking around that idea with Mass Made Simple, combining it with the Mass Protocol conditioning recommendations to fulfill Dan’s “recharge” workouts.

·       The vault of workouts just further reinforces shutting off your brain and getting work done.  The fact that each workout can be scaled to 3 different levels provides a LOT of options, and from there one can easily figure out “the pattern” of these workouts and find a way to fit in their own (as I did with strongman stuff).

·       The idea of mixing the hardest week of lifting with the lightest week of conditioning is just more genius from K. Black as far as basic periodization and structure goes.

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT MASS PROTOCOL GREY MAN

He's not wrong

·       After squatting with a bar on my body 3x a week with Operator, cutting it down to 3x every 2 weeks (if employing the A/B/A, B/A/B style) or twice a week (If employing A/B/A repeating) is refreshing.  And because of my supplemental movement selection, I’m still SQUATTING 3x a week: just one of those days is a belt squat rather than a barbell squat.

·       The varying rep ranges each week are much more mentally sustainable.  It creates a novelty effect, and makes each week something to look forward to in it’s own right.  The week with the highest reps is the lightest week, which is a break from heavy lifting, but the heaviest week has the fewest reps and tends to go by the fastest.

·       Mass gaining phases are always the most rewarding phase of training, because you’re in a state of building and can very clearly observe progress.  Even though this isn’t a strength phase of training, I get quite strong when I do this, as I’m eating to support growing and feel incredible in each training session.  With Operator, when food was low, there were times that the training sessions were a drag.

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT MASS PROTOCOL SPECIFICITY BRAVO

Frank's got the right idea

·       This is a great time to really give the body a break with some lighter loads, because even Grey Man can get heavy toward the end of the run.  This is a great primer for a follow-on Operator run, AND, if you keep the rest periods tight at 1 minute, there’s even a bit of a conditioning element to it.

·       The high intensity conditioning, even though reduced in duration, is a refreshing break after so much time spent during low intensity work on Grey Man.

·       This program follows on perfectly with Grey Man, as you just take the same movements you were doing before, slot them into push/pulls, and you’ve got a “new” program.

 

THINGS I’VE DONE DIFFERENTLY

So I may have taken a few liberties...

I’ve covered this stuff in individual write-ups, so I won’t try to speak too much to it, but I’ve made a few adjustments and tweaks along way that I can cover quickly here.

·       Per K. Black’s allotment, I always include ab/core training at the end of the lifting workouts.  It’s either ab wheel, hanging leg raise or GHR sit-ups, and usually just dependent on what equipment/floor space is available.  I also include the reverse hyper as core training, and will train that 1-2x per week, also at the end of the workout, usually superset with some ab work.

·       I also like to include band pull aparts whenever possible.  After dislocating my right shoulder 6 times, I take all the rear delt work I can.

·       I never got much out of the heavy weighted chins, so I switched back to the 5/3/1 tactic of just doing a set of sub-max chins between my other exercises.  With Operator, I do it once the set ends and then start my 2 minute timer.  With Grey Man, for the main work I start my 2 minute rest timer and do the chins as part of the rest period, and then will do it between exercises for the supplemental and assistance work.  For Specificity, it’s just between exercises.  I also include it between sets of warm-up sets, just to get in more volume.

·       I swapped out conventional deadlift sets/programming at about the 8 month mark and went back to ROM progression cycles and have found that it just fits me better.  Thankfully, it’s very easy to slot in to Tactical Barbell.

·       My most recent run of Grey Man had me go A/B/A-repeat vs A/B/A, B/A/B-repeat, and this worked out well with the above bullet of ROM progression deads.  It’s very similar to 5/3/1 Building the Monolith in that regard. 

·       I haven’t done this yet, but I’ve contemplated running Grey Man in a similar manner as 3/5/1 from Jim Wendler, starting the cycle with the middle week, going to the first week, finishing with the third week, in a “Medium-light-heavy” approach.  I’m sure it would work, but I just haven’t had the need to do it yet.

·       And, of course, I never follow the nutritional instructions, but K. Black always says you’re free to try whatever you want.

 

THE FUTURE

The future looks intense!

I turn 40 in October, and I genuinely regret having taken this long to discover this approach, which is a sentiment I remember seeing a LOT on Jim’s 5/3/1 Forum on t-nation and thinking “yeah, sure”, but it’s true.  I feel like, had I found this at 30, I’d be in an even better place than I am now, but at least take solace in the fact that I still have quite a few more productive years ahead of me, especially so armed with the “Ageless Athlete” Tactical Barbell Book, which I didn’t even go into here, but is yet another incredible asset in the library.

 

For now, I intend to continue on O-M-S for the foreseeable future: training to gain and eating to supporting it for 9 week stretches with Mass and Specificity, then taking 4 weeks to “dry out” with a bridge week followed by a 3 week Operator block.  This is, of course, all assuming no competitions to prepare for.  If something comes along my way, I’ll most likely give myself 2-3 cycles of Operator to prepare for it before getting back on target. 

 

But, of course, chaos is the plan, and I fully account of occasional one-offs back to my greatest hits of Deep Water, Super Squats or Mass Made Simple whenever I want to chase a wild hare, but Tactical Barbell is so perfectly modular that I don’t really see an issue here.  Those programs are all 6 week blocks that I could easily slot in somewhere along the way, call it a Mass block, hit up a bridge week and get back to the program.  As it stands, I’m good with calling Tactical Barbell my core system and moving from there.

       

 

 

 

 

TACTICAL BARBELL MASS PROTOCL GREY MAN CHECK-IN: OPERATION MILO

 INTRO

Prepare yourself for a WHOLE lotta bull...

In an unprecedent display of whatever the opposite of ADHD is, I’ve managed to stick with a training protocol for almost a full calendar year.  16 Sep 25 will mark a full year of training under the Tactical Barbell system, and I’ll be sure to release a blogpost detailing my experience and lessons learned over that time, but suffice it to say I’m clearly a fan of the system and this is now my second time running The Mass Protocol, which was the original program that got me hooked in the first place.

 

Since it’s my second time through, I’ve allowed myself a little bit of leeway regarding how I’m running it, and have also engaged in a fun side-project that I’ll be carrying forward (pun partially intended and you’ll see why) through my next few cycles as well. 

 

I don’t really write “program reviews” at this point because I don’t tend to take the diligence to fully establish “befores” to contrast against “afters”, and instead just offer “check-ins”, where I discuss how the program is going, what I’m liking, and what I’m learning.  And that’s what this is here now.

 

WHAT IS OPERATION MILO?

This is like the world's whackiest Charles Atlas ad

 

I totally go full “tacti-cool” when it comes to Tactical Barbell stuff, and will label my phases of training as Operations.  The very first Mass Protocol outing was “Operation Conan”, as it was all about gaining with a carnivore diet.  “Operation Planet Mongo” was my attempt to emphasize back growth after I had neglected it for so long.  So Operation MILO?

 

MILO is an acronym that stands for “Mass Increase, Lifts Overload”, because I needed to keep reminding myself of what the goal of the training was: get bigger and get stronger.  Which is primarily me telling myself “Don’t be stupid about conditioning: you can come back to that during Operator”, along with “Eat up!”  HOWEVER, MILO is also an inside reference to the side project I spoke about in the intro.

 

Taking the approach of Milo from Croton, who carried a baby calf everyday until it grew to be the size of a bull in order to become monstrously strong and one of the greatest wrestlers to ever live, I decided I was going to take my loadable strongman keg and carry it for 1 trip down and up my driveway everyday (about 80’ total) and increase the load by 1-1.5lbs.  I choose that load because I have an amount of spacers for the keg that equals a pound, and I have many 2.5lb plates, so I would just alternate between the two each session, meaning the weight would increase 8.5lbs each week.  I  started at 175lbs (keg plus a 25lb plate) and as of this writing have increased it to 225lbs.  I’ve noticed that the carry has actually gotten EASIER as time goes on. 

 

I figured, while I’m gaining weight, that’s the best time for the keg to gain weight as well, and ideally my strength will grow in proportion to the weight of the keg.  This also puts me on a trajectory to carry over 500lbs in a year…which we know won’t happen…but the real question is: when WILL it stop working?

 

HOW I SET UP GREY MAN

The instructions were so clear!

 

I’ll start by saying there is absolutely noting wrong with Grey Man as it is written.  K. Black writes awesome programs that work, and most people tend to screw them up by messing with that.  That having been said, I had specific goals I wanted to accomplish, and the framework of Grey Man suited them: I just needed to make some tweaks.

 

·       The biggest change is, instead of performing a rotating workout structure of A-B-A, B-A-B repeat, I stuck with a static “A-B-A repeat” approach, meaning workout B was ALWAYS the middle workout and workout A would be performed twice as much as workout B.

·       That big change was due to the second biggest change of the program: I cut out the deadlift protocol and, instead, swapped it with my (in)famous deadlift ROM progression protocol.  This is primarily because this approach ALWAYS works for me, and whenever I deviate from it, I regret it.  I’m willing to face the consequences of my actions here.  And in that regard, this protocol is a once a week deadlift protocol, so I needed to keep my deadlifting day to once a week, and slotting it right in the middle of the week worked out well there.  I COULD have accomplished something similar by just running Mass Template and having that 1 day a week deadlift week, but after 40-ish weeks of running Operator, I felt like I needed the supplemental clusters found in Grey man.

·       The third biggest change is that I eliminated chins/pull ups as main cluster work, and didn’t include them in the supplemental cluster as well.  Instead, I would just accomplish sets of sub-maximal chins during my warm-ups and in between sets of main cluster and supplemental cluster work. Similar to the ROM progression, I’ve noticed my best results from chins came when I was following this approach, and it didn’t seem to impact my recovery.  Diligent readers will recognize that I did the same thing during “Planet Mongo” 

·       I paired the squat with the press on Day A, and the bench with the mat pull on day B.  Part of that is logistics (I can set up the squat and press at the same time in my gym, and same with he bench and the deadlift, but bench and squat can’t happen because they both occupy the power rack), but the other part is that I prioritize the press over the bench, so I want to hit it more often.  Squatting only twice a week was a nice change compared to Operator’s 3x week.

·       For supplemental cluster lifts, Day A was incline DB bench, DB row, and GHRs.  Day B was Lever belt squat, dips and axle curls.  Once again: logistics were a partial factor here.  I wanted to do squats on the days squats weren’t in the main cluster and posterior chain work on the days they were, and when I have the lever belt set up I don’t have room for the incline bench, so I employed dips on those days.

·       For assistance work, I used GHR sit ups on day A (since I was already at the GHR) and a reverse hyper/standing ab wheel superset on day B.  If I ever had additional time, I’d include some lateral raises or band pull aparts.  And, of course, all the chins between sets.

 

CONDITIONING

Treadmills have always sucked

 

·       I abided by the rules somewhat with conditioning, but also re-read Mass Protocol and saw K. Black say we COULD use workouts from TBII if we had a solid grasp on our own recovery and conditioning, so game on!  This meant that, along with a 20 minute recovery row between workouts A and B, I would do a 90 minute treadmill ruck between workout B and A, and then 10 minutes of Stone of Steel over bar on the Saturday after the final A workout. 

·       For that ruck, I at least made it easier than what I was doing during Operator by using a lighter load and a lower incline.  I was just doing 30 minutes more than what was recommended.

·       I also still kept a decent amount of daily steps, aiming for 10k per day, often exceeding it, sometimes coming short.

·       On top of all this, I trained Tang Soo Do 3 days a week, typically after work, but occasionally we’d do a class on late Saturday mornings.  These weren’t terribly exhausting classes, but they could accumulate at times.

 

NUTRITION

Talk about paleo!

 

To the outside observer, my nutrition has remained completely the same throughout my time with Tactical Barbell, but the truth is that there HAS been some nuanced difference.  When I started, I was basically following Jamie Lewis’ “Apex Predator Diet”, where I lived off protein shakes through the day and then ate one solid food meal at night.  When I started Operator, I switched to Vince Gironda’s “Maximum Definition Diet”, funnily enough because BioTest had a shortage of Metabolic Drive at that time and I could no longer rely on protein powder as a staple.  However, I honestly really grew to enjoy having a large breakfast in the morning, fasting through the day, and eating again at night (reference by full detailed write-up on my experience with the diet), so I decided to take that approach with Mass Protocol this time around.

 

So how do you take a Maximum Definition Diet and turn it into a gaining diet?  You gotta turn the food volume UP!  Now, when I was running “Operation Conan”, I noticed that I was relying primarily on pork cracklin and cottage cheese to make up the bulk of my “augmentation” food: stuff I was adding on TOP of the meals in order to gain.  I don’t think there’s necessarily anything WRONG with these foods, but I do prefer to keep pork a little on the low side due to the higher concentration of Omega 6s in their fat compared to beef, and cottage cheese can get a little carby for my liking when consumed in large quantities.  Plus, I find cheese, in general, does not trigger my satiety signals, and with the presence of casmorphins, there is an argument that it can be addictive (I know I certainly enjoy it).  So I decided to still stick pretty strongly with the “Maximum Definition” guidelines of no dairy aside from butter (I use ghee, it still counts) and heavy cream (never found myself using that).  I WOULD occasionally permit myself cheese (my wife makes me omletes on the weekend, they’re amazing, and cheese makes a great binder, and occasionally I’d do a burger night where I made chaffle buns), but it was much more controlled compared to previous outings.

 

So, instead of relying on pork cracklin’ and cottage cheese, I engaged in a protocol of “side meats”.  I had my breakfast and dinner pretty clearly established: around 1lb of some sort of meat, 3 whole eggs, and 5 whites (both topped with ghee and cooked in beef tallow).  Breakfast would have some beef liver with it as well, and dinner could often go above 1lb of meat.  From here, in order to gain, I would add some sort of meat alongside this meal.  I have 2 big freezers in my basement, and had accumulated all sorts of meats through buying bulk sales, hunting, and my wife’s family farm in Iowa making generous donations to my cause, and decided to start cooking all that stuff up on the weekends for some meal prep.  This included smoking 2 whole chickens so I could have drumsticks with 4 breakfasts, then a thigh and a wing for 4 breakfasts, pork belly, pork shoulder, sardines, a bunch of chicken thighs, etc.  It was honestly straight out of the Bruce Randall playbook: just take what you’d normally eat, and then add more food to it and eat that as well.

 

A pretty standard breakfast

Surf and turf

Ribs and brisket (going out to eat)

But we also have ribs at home

 

For the “1lb of some sort of meat”, I always tried to make this some sort of ruminant animal.  I found that I just felt and performed better when I was eating that.  I lucked out and got some great sales on leg of lamb and a bunch of frozen corned beefs that I soaked overnight to wash off the brine, and I’d slice these into 1lb steaks and air fry them in the morning.  On weekends, we’d go out and I often would have a dinner of a full rack of pork spare ribs, a 26oz bone-in ribeye, a bunch of steak, eggs and seafood from a Hibachi buffet, or just a ton of burger patties. 

 

And, in keeping with the Maximum Definition diet, I’d have 1 meal a week with some carbs in it.  This was often some sort of American mid-west pasta based casserole dish my wife would make alongside some of her (amazing) homemade cookies with some raw local honey and a mug of fairlife skim milk.  

 

RESULTS AND TAKEAWAYS

I guess we know what phase II is going to be now...

 

My bodyweight is up 1.4kg, once again, without counting or tracking calories or macros: just eating big from my choice of foods.  Along with this, all of my lifts had gone up in accordance with the percentages set up in the program, and my deadlift ROM progression was successful, resulting in a 10x440lb pull, which is a 15lb PR from my previous best 6 weeks ago, and much easier.

I’ve continued to increase the weight in the keg everyday.  I also just plain FEEL good: not beat up, exhausted, strung out, etc.  This remains a sustainable and appreciable way to set up training for the long haul, and I’m honestly excited to continue down the Tactical Barbell rabbit hole with the “Operator-Mass-Specificity” protocol.  I’m effectively there: I did a LONG stint of Operator, am finishing up Mass, and will move on to specificity.  I intend to run that for 3 weeks, Operator for 3 weeks, then back to mass for 6 weeks.  The fall and winter are great seasons for gaining and I want to make the most of it, but I also feel like 3 weeks of Operator with lighter rations will give me a chance to resensitize myself to food.

 

I still intend to carry the keg until I can, at which point, I may just start over lighter, or find a new project to take on.

 

Thanks for reading, happy to answer any questions, and if you want to observe every training session, be sure to follow this link.

 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfcuGAffLlScJtcQTN0sAGNhNkV8_92pE

THE METHOD IS THE GOAL

Writing my titles in all caps actually handicapped me on this one, because I want to place emphasis on the word “is” here, to state that the method IS the goal, in much the same way that chaos IS the plan.  This is something I realize has always set me apart from the majority of those pursuing physical transformation in this current era, and, truthfully, I cannot explain where or why I developed this mindset: it just always seems to have been there.  Perhaps it was from years of growing up watching training montages, because that’s what the majority of movies were in the late 80s and early 90s, but it’s very much been a matter for me of focusing on the journey rather than the destination.  But even under that lens, we observe trainees who may purport the same ideology and still come to differing conclusions, claiming that the end state will merely be a consequence of the methodology yet still end up mired in all the wrong details and, subsequently, the wrong methodology.  Honestly, I’ve dug myself into a hole with this introduction, so now, allow me to dig myself back out by explaining what the hell it is that I am talking about.

It's so obvious

 

In the realm of physical transformation, there is an abundance of methods out there that one can employ to achieve success.  In this post internet boon especially, there is no shortage of training and nutritional protocols available to anyone, completely free and instantly accessible, for any possible training goal.  Some of these are even good!  While some are, of course, and absolute dumpster fire put together by a charlatan with no qualifications whatsoever relying purely on the naivete of neophytes in the world of physical transformation who are easily hookwinked and refuse to put in a minute of research before buying off on the next miracle snakeoil.  But grumpy old man ranting aside, even before the net, there was STILL a wild abundance of training and nutritional methodologies available, from the wild musings of part time genius and part time lunatic Vince Gironda to Arnold’s (most likely ghostwritten) Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding to the Bob Hoffman York Barbell Club approach to the works of John McCallum in Strength and Health, etc etc.  And again: ALL of these methods were achieving success, so long as one variable was controlled: compliance.  Yes, as I wrote quite recently: compliance remains the science.

 

Ok, so THAT having been established, here is where trainees tend to fall off a cliff.  A trainee decides that their goal is to gain muscle.  In doing so, they determine that the method to get there is to put on .5lbs per week, because that is, apparently, the maximal amount of bodyweight one can put on in a week to ensure that they are gaining maximal muscle and minimal fat.  Minimal fat gain is, of course, crucial for the muscle building process because…actually, I’m not sure why.  Isn’t that the reason we follow it up with a cut phase?  OH, that’s right: no one wants to do those anymore because…well, the reason they SAY is because it’s better to have longer sustained gaining cycles so it’s ideal to put on as little fat as possible so one can gain indefinitely…but I surmise the truth is because they perceive cutting as “hard” because it means NOT eating yummy food all the time.  And though it feels like I’m digressing, this actually takes me right to my point here: the goal has been lost because the method was never really established in the first place.  This trainee started off with an alleged goal of “muscle gain” which instantly transpired into a goal of “minimize fat gain”: NOT the same thing as “gain muscle”.  Because one of the BEST ways to minimize fat gain is to LOSE fat by undereating…which is EXACTLY what these trainees end up doing in their alleged muscle gaining phases.  They undereat, in fear of exceeding their .5lbs per week threshold because they’re actually working a separate sub-goal that opposes the primary goal and end up squandering an entire training phase, spinning their wheels for months on end and NOW they’re just exhausted from all the hard training without adequate nutrition.

We found their ideal physique 

 

For some reason, this wasn’t how I operated.  Instead, I always focused on the method.  I’d state that my goal was to gain muscle, and then I’d pick a PROGRAM that was supposed to get me there.  5/3/1 BBB, Super Squats, Mass Made Simple, Deep Water, Tactical Barbell Mass Protocol, DoggCrapp, Building the Monolith, etc, all of these methods were the methods for success.  From there, outside of Super Squats, wherein I was specifically seeing if I COULD put on 30lbs in 6 weeks (spoilers: I got 12, which was still awesome), I honestly never bothered to weigh myself during the process.  My goal was to gain muscle, and my method was selected, and, in turn, NOW my goal was to FOLLOW THE METHOD.  And, in truth, with so many of these programs being just psychotically challenging, my goal was to SURVIVE the method, which meant that the eating portion sorted itself out completely.  I just dedicated myself to eating as much as I needed to eat in order to be able to get through the next workout and, eventually, through the entirety of the program.  I didn’t care about my bodyweight: I cared about building enough muscle to be able to tackle the weights of the next workout.  And, in turn, whenever I completed these methods, there was never any doubt that I had put on muscle at the end.  For 5/3/1 BBB specifically, I remember that my physique had so radically transformed that my wife’s co-worker, who hadn’t seen me since I started the program, legit thought that my wife got divorced and re-married since I’d last seen him.  He then immediately demanded I share the program with him, and in my mind he set off on his own 5/3/1 journey and achieved success…it’s at least a good story.

 

But making the method the goal doesn’t have to relate to psychotically challenging gaining programs: this can totally fit in with Dan John’s “park bench” workouts AND nutrition for that matter.  So often, trainees end up in some sort of state of ennui whenever “the big event” ends.  It could be an actual physical competition, or some sort of beach vacation where they wanted to look their best, or the completion of one of the above programs, but either way they find themselves listless and lost yet NOT looking for yet another challenge to overcome.  Well why not make the method the goal here?  Why not say “For the next 6 weeks, I’m only going to allow myself to miss 1 workout, and only 2 meals will be off-plan”?  What will be the results of this level of dedication?  Who cares: don’t worry about the outcome, don’t make THAT the goal: make the method the goal.  Because, in truth, we ALL know that dedicated compliance TO training and nutrition will always yield SOME sort of positive: it just simply doesn’t need to be one that is stringently measured.  If you tell yourself that you HAVE to lose .5lbs a week or else your diet and training has failed you, you’ll end up stressing yourself out with every small jump up in water weight or accidental salt overload.  But if you decide that you’re going to give the Warrior Diet a fair 30 day trial of strict adherence while hitting Easy Strength for Fat Loss 5 days a week, at the end of those 30 days you’ll absolutely see positive results of SOME type and, from there, be able to dedicate yourself to the NEXT method.

This is more like "park bench space shuttle bench"

 

Perhaps this is, in reality, a discussion of faith.  When I undertook these programs, I had full faith in their ability to produce results, so long as I followed them diligently, in much the same way those that ascribe to a religious dogma believe they will be granted their eternal reward with their own adherence, or how those bonded by marriage (ideally) have faith in their partner to remain…faithful.  And, continuing on with that analogy, you have those in marriages held together by the thinnest of strings wherein one or both partners are constantly doubting the faithfulness of the other, constantly checking on them, spying, doubting and, ultimately, not experiencing marital bliss, or the follower of a religion who finds their faith shaken, full of doubt and angst.  Those latter people are the ones chained to the scale, constantly monitoring the results of their “adherence” to the method, questioning all outputs and wondering if they are actually moving toward their purported goal.  If these folks simply had faith in the method, they could make the method the goal, prioritize compliance, and observe the outcome that results from putting consistent effort in over a long enough timeline. 

 

And, to question these questioners: why WOULD you undertake a method if you had no faith in its ability to succeed?  Therein is the first mistake on this journey.  I never assumed it was the method that was broken: I figured I had to be the one that was screwing things up if I wasn’t getting the results I wanted.  And if there WAS a method I had no faith in (hello Mike Mentzer’s HIT and high carb diets), I didn’t follow them.  It didn’t matter if the whole world told me that something HAD to work: if it didn’t win my faith, I wouldn’t follow it.  It’s why I HAVE gone off on some of the wildest training and nutrition protocols possible, to include my current approach wherein I’m explicitly ignoring the excellent advice by K. Black and following his Mass Protocol with a Carnivore Diet: because I am, quite frankly, not a smart man but I am VERY good at being absolutely loony tunes bonkers and bending reality to my will to make my kaleidoscope of fractured reasoning achieve my desired outcomes.  I am drawn to these wild and whacky methods, I invest my faith in them, and I make experiencing them the goal, and in doing so I achieve the goal I set out for.

Sometimes faith can be a little confusing

 

Make the method the goal.  Make it your goal to see it through to the best of your ability, and observe the outcome.