REGRETS

I’ve made my share of mistakes through training, and ultimately from making mistakes one can learn.  In that capacity, I rarely have regrets, as almost everything can be a learning opportunity.  However, occasionally I’ll make a mistake that just wasn’t worth making, and from this stems regret.  In 18 years of training, you’re bound to have a few, so I wanted to share mine.

I haven't made this one...yet

-I regret buying a swiss bar.  I really thought it was going to be something awesome to include in my training, as I’ve torn the labrum in my right shoulder, dislocated it 6 times, and subluxed it a few dozen times.  I figured a neutral grip to press with would really help things along.  However, most swiss bars have VERY long handles, and when you unrack them from the j-hooks to bench, it’s incredibly unstable, which I found put a good amount of pressure on my shoulders and jacked up my wrists, as I spent all of my training time stabilizing the implement.  It was ok for pressing overhead, but put the weight pretty far out in front of me, like a log, without the benefit of being a shorter ROM press like a log would have.  It feels ok for floor pressing and incline, but that’s about it.  These days, I leave it at the top of my power rack to be able to do chins with a bunch of different grips, but that can be easily replicated with a lower cost ad on.  Just not worth it.

-I regret buying a Glute Ham Raise.  I read everything about it from Westside and Dave Tate, and thought for sure it was going to be the future of my training.  It definitely works, it will hammer your glutes and hamstrings…but so will so many OTHER lifts.  It’s just super niche for what it does, and for a guy running off a 1 hour clock for training, I can rarely find a time or place to include it in my training.  Pretty much any time spent doing that is time that could be spent doing something much better, especially if reverse hypers are an option.  These days, about the only thing I use a GHR for is weighted sit ups.

-I regret buying any band above a miniband.  I will say that I use my light bands to help make the bench sticky so that I don’t slide down it for bench pressing, but otherwise, there’s no room for bands in my training.  Every time I set them up, they get shredded on the equipment, because my plates are jagged and I don’t have band hooks.  I can get like 3 weeks out of use of them before my joints start hurting.  Yeah, they’re low cost and portable…but what good is that if they don’t get any use?  Once again, if I gave myself more time to train, maybe I’d play around with them more, but they take so much time to set up that they just aren’t worth it.

But without bands, you can never do this!

-I regret buying a dragging sled.  Once again, Westside and Elitefts had me convinced that this was going to transform my training.  However, about a decade later, Jim Wendler pulled an emperor’s new clothes on us and pointed out that looping a sled through your belt and walking with it probably doesn’t actually do anything.  A sled with an actual pull harness isn’t bad, but a dinky sled looped through your weightlifting belt is very little stimulus.  The prowler is awesome, and what we needed all along.  These days, my sled just leans against my wall.

-Ok, how about one that isn’t about something I bought?  I regret the years I spent thinking I didn’t need direct arm work.  For some reason, we all thought we were cool by what we DIDN’T train, and one of the biggest status symbols was not training arms, because that meant you WEREN’T a bodybuilder, which is what we all wanted to be…for some reason.  All I was doing was denying myself an opportunity to become stronger all over.  Big, strong arms are awesome, and even if you can train them with rows, chins, and presses, you can train them MORE with curls and extensions too.

-I regret NOT buying a 13mm belt from day 1 of my training.  Once again, I gate keepered myself and was convinced I had to hit certain lifts before I was allowed to use a belt.  One day I finally went out and blew out my back on a set of squats to pins, ordered a belt, waited for it to arrive, and it was night and day the amount of confidence I felt under heavy weight.  I learned how to brace hard with a belt, which meant I learned how to brace hard WITHOUT a belt, and I believe the belt would have taught me that valuable skill MUCH earlier.  I would have been lifting heavier weights earlier in my training, and in turn got bigger and stronger.  No shame in wearing a belt if you only squat 95lbs: only shame in caring that OTHER people care about you wearing a belt.

But maybe stick with neutral colors

-I regret not learning how to hinge at the hips much earlier in my training.  I’ve been an oaf for life, and it meant I was able to be quite strong without knowing what the hell I was doing, but it also meant that I wasted a lot of training time forcing deadlifts to be all lower back when I could have developed a strong hip hinge early, experienced much less back pain, and really gotten to see what I could do at a young age.  I wasn’t stubbornly refusing to learn the hinge: I simply had no idea what it was.  It wasn’t until I got a kettlebell and practiced some swings that I noticed the VERY distinct difference between hinging at the hips vs flexing at the lower back to complete the movement.  The former felt powerful and explosive, the latter HURT.

-I regret not focusing on my conditioning much earlier in my training.  This is a pretty obvious one, but I started lifting with a VERY solid foundation of conditioning due to combat sports, let it almost completely go away, then clawed my way back up.  I just wonder what could have been if that middle part never happened.

-I regret ever concerning myself with what people on steroids can do vs. what natural lifters can do.

-I regret taking Animal Pak vitamins, even if it was just 1 bottle, even if it was on sale.

-I regret ever posting a form check video.  What was I hoping for others to see that I didn’t?

-I regret not taking creatine sooner.

-I regret caring about my Big 3 more than I cared about getting bigger or stronger.

-I regret letting fear of injury hold me back from reaching my potential earlier in my training.


Early entry this week folks, because I'm going on a cruise and won't be back until the 4th.  I'll get some inspiration while I'm there, but can't promise an entry next weekend.  Stay tuned until then.

NO ONE LIKES A PALADIN: ROLL A NEW CHARACTER

[I’ve received request to do more DnD based posts, so let’s give this a crack.  I’m going to do the best to translate for my non-nerdcore audience out there.]

The paladin, upon initial glance, appears to be one of the most, if not THE most, powerful classes available in Dungeons and Dragons.  To summarize, a paladin is a holy warrior, combining the combat prowess, weapons and armor abilities of the fighter with the holy magic of the cleric, meaning that they can fight in armor with powerful weapons while still casting magic.  On top of all that, they get their own unique ability to heal themselves or other party members, PLUS they get an innate bonus to resisting the effects of magic spells cast against them.  I’m sure there are other cool things they get, it’s been a while since I looked, but the point is, they are stacked.  But what’s the catch?  There’s always a catch, and for the paladin, it’s a big one.  The paladin HAS to be of lawful good alignment.  To explain that again, every character in the DnD universe has a certain “bent” as far as morality is concerned, ranging from Good to Evil and Lawful to Chaotic.  Some are Robin Hood (Chaotic Good) types, who do what is right no matter what the law says, others are unscrupulous mercenaries (Neutral to Choatic Neutral) that do whatever gets them paid, and others are tyrants or psychopaths (Lawful or Chaotic Evil).  The Paladin is a bastion of all that is good, righteous, holy and lawful, for if they deviate from that path, they lose all their powers…and that makes them worthless.  No one likes a paladin, leave the party and roll a new character.

And next time, put some stats in strength and constitution

Why am I being so unfair to the paladin?  Because their oath to lawful goodness SERIOUSLY hamstrings their ability to be a worthwhile contributor to the party.  All that fighting ability, the heavy armor, the spell casting, the healing, absolutely WORTHLESS without the ability and intent to use it to get the job done.  A character who refuses to take the RIGHT course of action, irrespective of its goodness or lawfulness, is an awful character, and I’d gladly take a one legged kobold barbarian with gumption over a jacked up paladin any day of the week.  To idly watch a plan fail despite having all the tools necessary to make it succeed because it conflicts with YOUR personal code of ethics calls into question your dedication to the success of the party, and ultimately your dedication for your own success.

Ok, sometimes the metaphor needs explaining, so let me do that here.  Paladins are EVERYWHERE in the training world.  They are the people that REFUSE to deviate from their own code of ethics as it relates to training.  These are the people that refuse to ever do anything other than a set of 5, who refuse to do anything other than full body training, who refuse to do giantsets at fear of being too fatigued to hit heavy lifts in training, who refuse to let form deviate in training, etc etc.  And in true Paladin fashion, many times these people began their journey with innate advantages that allowed them to maintain these ethics for a LONG time.  They had superior genetics (as much as I hate to make mention of such a thing for the can of worms it opens), an excellent foundation in athletics beforehand, natural sense of kinesthetic awareness, etc etc, that allowed them to make significant progress without deviating…but eventually it DOES stop working.  Everything works, but nothing works for ever, and after a while, it becomes times to get a little chaotic evil.

Dude, too far

Yes dear reader, sometimes you have to give in to chaos and evil to achieve a greater good.  At this time, I’d like to very much point out my hamfisted metaphor before someone tries to implicate my blog as a calling for radical violent revolution or government overthrow, as once again, I’m just talking about lifting weights.  Anyway, sometimes, you have to break all of the laws set before you and do things downright evil.  You have to let form break down and risk potential injury, you have to overtrain and overreach, you have to push too hard, bite off more than you can chew, train VERY stupidly, mix the wrong bodyparts together, etc etc, to finally do SOMETHING different enough to start growing again.  Sometimes, you have to break codes and oaths and alliances and allegiances in order to truly benefit YOU in the longrun.  If you are “Westside or Die”, I hope you are ready to cash in on the latter the one day that you might need to start running some Sheiko instead.  If you believe everything over 5 reps is cardio, get ready to call yourself a cardio bunny when the time comes to actually get out of your comfort zone and start growing.

And some folks truly buy into the Paladin mythos; they believe that the INSTANT they abandon their oath, they will lose their powers.  These are the weenies that run 5/3/1 for 3 weeks and talk about how they lost ALL their strength during that time…after 1 cycle of the program.  But because their feeble minds can’t grasp how sub-maximal training works, they default to believing they have upset their gods and experienced their wrath.  These people do 1 week of conditioning and talk about how their recovery was crushed.  They spend 3 days NOT stuffing their faces with fastfood, drop a few pounds of bloat, and freak out thinking they lost all their muscle in that time.  These paladins are so vested in their oaths that they make them self-fulfilling prophecies.

Always pick the barbarian

I’ll take a party of bloodlusted lunatics over a party with 1 paladin in it any day of the week.  Lunatics may be unpredictable, but they are predictably so, and the random genius theory dictates that one day, they might ACCIDENTALLY succeed through their chaos.  But the Paladin is static, and as such they start out day 1 doomed to eventually fail as a result of their inability to deviate from their oaths.  A paladin will sit back and watch you get slain by the town constable, because the constable is within his lawful rights to do so, while some deranged chaotic evil barbarian will save your life one day simply because THEY want the satisfaction of killing you themselves…but at least they saved you.  An uncertain death tomorrow is always a superior choice compared to certain death today.  When given the choice, be chaotic, not lawful.

Don’t be a paladin.  No one likes a paladin.  Go roll a new character.  Preferably a barbarian, but hell, I’ll even take a bard over a paladin.

UNQUANTIFIABLE STRENGTH

The more I train, the more I found strength to be a far more nebulous concept.  When I started, strength was about how much weight you could lift.  I got further along, and strength became more specifically how much weight I could lift for 1 rep on 3 different movements.  I got even further along, and it started to blur.  Many of the things I thought were strength turned out to be instances of skill, programming, or simply luck, and what I understood to be strength became harder and harder to truly be able to identify.  In turn, I began to appreciate a concept of unquantifiable strength: strength that can’t be counted or measured with numbers and metrics, but is instead simply “strength understood”.  Like the difference between art and pornography: you’ll know it when you see it.  And in turn, it is this unquantifiable strength that I prize above all other forms of quantifiable strength, for it seems he how possess this strength has strength above all others.

Seriously, put away your scouters for a second here

Unquantifiable strength is incredibly unsatisfying, because there is no “answer” to the question of “how strong are you”.  I get asked what my 1rms are, and I reply that I don’t know.  I haven’t tried for a 1rm in 6 years.  Sure, I’ve hit a heavy single here and there, but a true, no crap for real 1rm, moving as much weight as possible for 1 rep 1 time?  I have no idea.  So how do I know if I’m stronger this year compared to last?  Because I trained for it to happen, and the training went well, therefore, I know I’m stronger.  In the absence of measurement, I am still aware that I am stronger.  Even in the presence of reduced performance compared to previous times, I still know I’m stronger.  Why?  Because that unquantifiable strength was built in those hard training sessions.

What do I mean?  I’m talking about the strength you develop doing the things other people refuse to do.  When you train when it’s too hot, you develop unquantifiable strength.  The same when it is too cold.  The same when you are hungry, tired, sick, injured, stress, fatigued, or whatever other malady that you encounter that would shut down a lesser person.  The same is true when you set up for the next set when you’re still winded, when you have to pick yourself up off the floor to set up for the next set, when you’re pretty sure you hurt yourself on the last rep but ALSO pretty sure you can still make it through the session before the pain REALLY sets in.  When you do these things, you develop strength that simply can’t be understood by mere numbers.  It’s strength that exists deep within you, that can be called upon in the darkest of circumstances.

Some people go through darker times than others

The gap between many people’s best performance and worst performances are such a wide and expansive gulf that it’s almost impossible to even comprehend, and it’s because this unquantifiable strength was never built.  Everything has to be perfect, sterile lab conditions for them to perform, and as soon as that is taken away, so too goes their strength.  The person doing what other people AREN’T doing is the one that narrows this gap, until they have simply developed that strength that is forever present.  In addition, they find things they never knew were there when they truly dig down deep inside.  While others dig deep in the well and come up empty, these people discover hidden strength.  They set lifetime PRs when the chips are down, rather than bombing out.  They win events the first time they see them, rather than losing due to a lack of skill against the masters.  They have a strength that simply cannot be measured.

We saw this unquantifiable strength in Bill Kazmaier, as he dominated World’s Strongest Man for 3 years until his mere existence was deemed “unfair” and he was banned from competition.  He beat highland games experts at highland games events the FIRST time he approached the implement.  I asked Bill at a seminar if he had any advice on throws, since I was coming from a similar background as him, and he told me “Just show up and throw the thing.”  …and goddamn if he wasn’t right.  It’s the exact truth.  Develop that strength that can’t be measured or understood through numbers and express it.  Bill trained like a goddamn lunatic and built simply unfathomable strength, to the point that the powerlifts simply did a poor job capturing exactly HOW strong he was. 

Answer: inhumanly strong

And when the critiques come from these approaches, that is what you must keep in mind.  Because yes, you may in fact not see numbers climb like they would on a program dedicated to making your numbers grow as fast as possible on a handful of lifts.  You may not get the satisfaction of always having a number ready to go when someone says “How much you lift?”  You may even show up to a competition with PRs WELL below those of all the people you are competing against…but you may also completely blow all those people out of the water, because you developed that unquantifiable strength that they simply cannot fathom.  You became something hard, different, and beyond.  And you know that it’s there when you need it.

LESSONS LEARNED FROM PREVIOUS TRAINING CYCLE

To my fans of my usual half-cocked philosophical rantings, I promise I’ll return to that soon, but today I’m going to actually discuss training absent of any bizarre metaphors.  I realize what a wild departure that is, but hey, maybe this lifting blog can actually be about lifting?  On that note, this blog just hit over 1 million views yesterday, so thank you to all my readers that made that possible.

I want to discuss this most recent training cycle because, to date, I feel it is the most successful one I’ve had.  For background, I signed up to compete as a middleweight (231lb limit) back around April.  This was right before I competed in the Empire Classic Competition as a 200lb athlete, and also before my annual completing of the Murph hero WOD, so I had to do those 2 things first before I could start training for a competition to be held on 28 Jul.  Once Murph was over, I had about 2 months to train for the comp…and I weighed 189.8lbs.  I wanted to gain some quality weight to not get completely blown out of the water, and I also needed to get strong enough to handle the weights 1 weight class higher. 

The fun part of the story is that, 2 weeks out from the comp, they ended up increasing the lightweight cap to 200lbs, so I dropped a class and completely blew it out of the water since I had been training to go 1 class higher, but the motivation to compete up a class inspired the most effective training cycle and nutrition approach I had ever run.  Here are the details and what I took away from it.

Oh yeah, also, in the end, I weighed in at 202lbs in the morning before I started dropping a few pounds to easily weigh in the day of the comp. And I looked pretty big compared to last year.

Left is August of 2017, right is Jul 2018.  Also, left is DisneyWorld, right is Disneyland, for those that want to question the angles

TRAINING PLAN PHILOSOPHY

Based off my previous posts, none of this should surprise you

I took a page from the Barbarian Brothers here that “there is no such thing as overtraining; only undereating”.  I wanted to add some quality mass, not just eat more food and get fatter, so I decided to really up the volume to force my body to grow and then eat enough to make that happen.  I found all sorts of places to sneak volume into the program, and very slowly upped my calories with quality sources.  I started by upping my post training meal with 1 extra cup of frozen fruit and added half an avocado to my daily intake.  When I needed more, I threw a slice of sourdough bread into my post training meal.  When that stalled, I added 3/5 of a serving of Masstech as my pre-training meal.  And through out, I would eat slighter larger portions of meat at meals.  That was enough to get me to the end of the training cycle.

THE TRAINING PLAN

Yeah pretty much this

I’ll try to get as detailed as possible without getting super dry.  For my readers, if you have questions, please leave comments.

The overall structure of the plan was ala 5/3/1: a press day, a squat day, a bench day, and a deadlift day.

PRESS DAY

Pro-tip: only the internet cares about standing bench presses

I went with the traditional 5/3/1 approach for my press work (as in, the reps and sets from 1^st edition).  However, after I completed my topset of the day, I would do something similar to a joker set, where I’d hit a heavyweight 3 weeks, trying to go from a single to a triple, before upping it 10lbs and doing it all over again.  After THAT set, I’d take the weight I did for the very first workset and do that for as many reps as possible.  For all of these sets, I was using a log and doing viper press away, so I’d viper press the first rep, then just touch and go the rest of the reps, all strict press without leg drive.

After all THOSE sets and reps, I’d take the topset weight again and do some push presses.  Usually 4-5 sets of about 5 reps.  As the comp got closer, I’d go even heavier, and start dropping the reps to triples.

I was cleaning the weight off the floor for every set, so this hammered the hell out of my back.  In addition, I was using giant sets with all of these presses to get in my volume.  At the start of the training cycle, it was press/chins/pull aparts for the first half and press/rows/reverse hypers for the second, but as things moved along, weights got heavier, and my limbs started to get beat up I switched the chins and rows for reverse hyperextensions, and started focusing on hammer curls in case the clean came down to that.  Up until the weight was lowered, my biggest concern was being able to clean the MW weight, as I ended up being able to strict press it for a single.

SQUAT DAY

Warning: training plans from this guy are insane

At the beginning of the cycle, I was trying to continue my ROM progression with a chain suspended buffalo bar, but it fizzled out and I had to get creative. With weight gain being the goal, and high rep squats helping there, I decided to bite the bullet and steal from Jon Andersen’s “Deep Water” training protocol for the squat. 

This boiled down to 10x10 squats to start.  Jon recommended using 70% of your 10rm to start with, but that just wasn’t happening for me, so I stole from Jim and using a training max instead of a true max, and that made it more viable.  From there, I worked on bridging the gap between my TM and my real max, and once I was able to get 10x10 doing that, I focused on getting it done with 2 minutes of rest between sets, and THEN on getting the 100 reps in 9 sets, and then in 8.  This meant light weight, so my joints didn’t get beat up, but it also improved the holy hell out of my conditioning and made me tough.

During the first half of the cycle, I was still using supersets here, alternating between bodyweight dips and log cleans with the squats, but toward the end things got too intense and I had to just focus on the squats.

BENCH DAY

Oh, how silly of me: clearly strongman don't bench

Like the press day, went traditional 5/3/1 with a FSL back off set, but no joker set.  Once I was done with that, I went with axle strict presses for 4-5x8-10, as I wanted to keep upping my strict press strength while also keeping the ROM necessary with a straight bar rather than a log.

Stuck with giant sets here again.  For the first half, it was Bench/t-bar rows/pull aparts and then press/sandbag bearhug and carries/lateral raises.

On those sandbag carries: I had a hussafel stone carry in this comp, and had never done that before.  I didn’t have a proper stone to train with, so I took an Ironmind sandbag, put 5 50lb bags of playground sand in it, and would pick it up as a bearhug and carry it across my garage.  It wasn’t much distance, but I figured it’d get my back strong and get me used to holding something tight to my body.  Initially, I started with a keg, and would load it by throwing sandbags from my weightvest onto the top as a means of scaling the progression, but worked up to the sandbag pretty quickly. 

DEADLIFT DAY

Pictured once again in my stylish NEVERsate tanktop: it gives you at least 3 reps

No shock to anyone that I was using ROM progression deadlifts here.  I used a texas deadlift bar, and attached chains to it to create a somewhat different training effect.  However, instead of my usual single topset with rest pausing on this one, I started including a dropset at the end as well.

Once I was done with that, I’d do the car deadlift simulator (2 barbells in a corner with some plumber piper handles).  I’d do 2 heavy sets, then a 3^rd heavy set that included a dropset at the end, staying in the 6-10 rep range through out the training cycle.

I’d finish the day off with some bodyweight or weighted dips and pull aparts, and also include some standing ab wheel.

STONE DAY

Calm down for a second

Since I had an atlas stone medley in this comp, I decided to actually learn how to do stones, since I could finally train for it.  I took out my Stone of Steel and did stone over bar, since I don’t have platforms to train on.  I’d work up to a top single or triple, and after that hit a backoff set of 4-7 reps to get in more volume.  I went to a Kaz seminar where he said “if you can get strong at stones, you can be strong anywhere”, and that seemed like a good idea.

After this, I’d do some prowler work to get blood flowing and a little more lower body volume.

WHAT’S NEW?

The above was pretty standard training for me (4 days of lifting, 1 day of events), and though the volume within the lifting days was slightly more than normal, I didn’t feel it was enough to gain the amount of mass/strength I needed.  I needed to do something more drastic to get drastic results.  So I added in a front squat workout between my bench and deadlift workout, typically benching Thursday mornings, Front squatting during my lunch break on Fridays, and deadlifting Saturday mornings.  The front squat workout was my standard dropset/rest pause sorta workout, where I’d start with a weight I could manage for about 5-6 reps, rest for 12 deep breaths, go again to try for half as many reps as before, repeat until I was down to 1 rep, then strip off a 45lb or 25lb plate per side (whichever was the final plate on the bar) and repeat until I got back down to 1 rep on that set.  It was tough, but didn’t leave me limping like back squats did.

In addition, I started doing a daily set of dips and chins.  I’ve done daily training before, and always ended up blowing out my elbows, so this time I exercised extreme diligence in ensuring I was staying in sub max territory.  Basically, I did dips until I felt myself starting to struggle, then I stopped the set.  Once I found that number, I stayed there for a week or 2 and then would do 5 more reps the next time.  Hold for a week or 2 and repeat.  In full disclosure, this practice started with 100 push ups a day the week I was going to do Murph, since I was visiting my in-laws and had gym access, but I kept it up.  Chins were similar in approach.

Those 2 additions seemed to be incredibly helpful toward reaching my goals, as now I had an opportunity to get a lot of volume in over the week, yet it didn’t cost me as much time as a full on dedicated additional training day.

LESSONS LEARNED

-Once again, effort is the most important factor in training.  And by this, I don’t’ mean my usual “try hard and you’ll succeed” (despite the fact that is true), but more that, in a training plan, degree of effort applied needs to remain consistent, if not escalated, in order to get results.  The reason I bring this up is because, with this style of training, I had accumulated a LOT of fatigue, and my ability to lift big numbers in training was significantly diminished.  In truth, I was basically surviving many of my training sessions, and I saw previously accomplished PRs slip by me, as it appeared my strength was diminished.  Throughout the training though, I never phoned it in.  I went into everyday with the plan to execute to the best of my ability, and if my ability that day was to do less than I had done a month ago, I still crushed it.  This leads to my next point.

-You don’t need to set PRs in training to set them in competition.   I saw numbers regress on my deadlift workouts, since I was absolutely hammering the crap out of my back with log cleans, sandbag carries, front squats, atlas stones, and reverse hypers.  I started to doubt myself, and thought that I might actually be getting weaker.  Then, I had a few days off, felt good, and set a lifetime deadlift rep PR.  After that, I decided to just ride out the wave fully, and with a week off before my competition, I showed up and absolutely smoked everything.  I only managed to hit 6 reps of 225 on the log in training, and I hit 8 reps like I was sleep walking, shutting it down only because I had already won the event.  Car deadlift was a breeze, I launched the throwing implements, I once motioned 4 out of 5 stones, etc.  I spent the majority of the training cycle UNDER fatigue, but that just meant that, once I recovered from it, I was insanely strong.

-You don’t need a ton of food to grow.  Once again, I went with my approach of “eat to support training, not the other way around”, and as such I didn’t start eating more until I started feeling hammered from training.  And what I made were very small changes.  A cup of fruit, a slice of bread, half an avocado, etc.  People tend to go full tilt right out the gate on the diet, and in turn end up putting on a ton of fat, and then, on top of that, they grow accustomed to all these surplus calories before they even really need it.  Then, when training DOES get hard, they up the calories from this ridiculous baseline and get even fatter. This is what leads to disappointing weight gain.

-Daily training is viable, but keep it submax.  Additionally, sometimes, it’s going to feel like you’re pushing it too much.  Just ride it out: it goes away.  Rest seems to be the worst thing.

-Getting stronger under fatigue means being stronger OUT of fatigue.  I keep saying this, and people keep doubting it, and it keeps happening still. 

-Fatigue makes you feel awful.  That seems obvious, but up until this point I couldn’t really appreciate it.  I bring this up because I started wondering if maybe I had done more harm than good.  I found myself one day at work looking up the DeFranco “limber 11”, thinking that MAYBE it was time for me to start doing some mobility work.  And then I took a week off during my vacation and felt the most limber I’d ever felt in my life.  I was beat down to a point I had never felt before, and now I know what that feeling feels like, but your first time diving into it, you just gotta trust the system.

-It is really really really REALLY hard to overtrain.  I still haven’t done it.