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.