DEEP WATER BEGINNER PROGRAM REVIEW

  

PERSONAL BACKGROUND

 
Hi, I'm the internet's "MythicalStrength", and I make poor decisions

For anyone new to me, I’ve been lifting weights for 18 years and have competed in 3 powerlifting meets and a dozen strongman competitions.  After deciding against competing in strongman nationals this year, I found myself with a lot of downtime between comps and decided to give Jon Andersen’s “Deep Water” program a try.  I had first seen Jon back in IFSA, and was immensely impressed with his physique and ability, and then rediscovered him in Mark Bell’s “Power” magazine where he’d have a monthly Deep Water column written about him by his training partner Jasha Faye.  Through these columns, I got to understand/appreciate Jon’s mentality and find it resonated pretty well with my own.  It’s a focus on overcoming and pushing the body to the limits, rather than a more academic approach to training.  I ended up purchasing his $10 kindle book earlier in the year, read it, enjoyed it immensely, and always had the program on the back of my mind as something to try.  In prepping for my last competition, I had stolen bits and pieces of the program and found it pretty damn brutal, but now I was ready to just run it in full and see what would happen.

SUMMARY OF PROGRAM

 
Yeah, pretty much every squat day

Out of respect for Jon, I’m not going to write out the full program here.  The book is only $10, and it is well worth it.  In addition, I’m pretty sure you can get it for free off his Instagram account, and he gives a lot of details about it on youtube as well.  You could pretty easily piece it together.  

For a brief overview, there are 4 days of lifting and 1 day of active recovery/cardio/conditioning.  In the lifting days, you have 2 days that could be considered “bodybuilding days”, which are a back day and a chest day essentially, and 2 days that are the “Deep Water” days.  The latter days take 1 big movement and train it 10x10.  1 of those days will either be a squat or a deadlift depending on the week, and one will be a press or a push press.  You’ll use a weight that is supposed to be about 70% of your 10rm for these days.  After the 10x10, there will be some assistance work.  You train abs every lifting day with the program.

The first 2 weeks of the program, you rest 4 minutes between sets.  The second 2 weeks, it’s 3 minutes.  The final 2 weeks, it’s 2 minutes.  I applied those rest protocols to EVERY movement in the program, not just the Deep Water days, as it seemed to make the most sense.  The weight does not change for the 10x10 work.  Trust me: you won’t want to change it.  For the bodybuilding days, I kept pushing the weight each training day.  So basically, there’s a few different approaches to progression here.

SUMMARY OF NUTRITION

Memorize this chart

Jon is very much anti-carbohydrate.  If you watch his videos or read his works, this becomes clear.  He has a video called “Carbs are for the weak”, wherein he discusses how there is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate (compared to essential fats or amino acids) and compares carbs to painkillers.  It’s worth noting that, in Jon’s books and videos, he discusses how he grew up with a bad relationship with food and still has one, and this will certainly color his dialogue on the topic.  All of that being said, this nutritional approach was pretty much spot on with how I approach nutrition, so it was very easy to adopt.  I dropped what few excess carbs I had (primarily from greek yogurt) and ate some more fats to compensate (using avocados and fatty meats).  Jon provides a list of approved foods in his book and has a macro calculation if that is your thing, but also like me, Jon doesn’t count calories.  Which, again, I was a big fan of.

Jon does say though that, if you MUST eat carbs, eat them around training, and I did employ that.  I eat fruit with my post training meals, because it has health benefits, and would usually eat something small with carbs prior to training just to get something in my stomach.

MODIFICATIONS

 

Would you believe it is still street legal?

I made a few small tweaks to the program to fit my lifestyle, but kept it almost entirely in total.  Unlike my time with 5/3/1, Jon’s program really gelled with my mindset, and I didn’t have to do anything to make it please my psyche.  I started my training weeks with the 10x10 lower body workouts on Sat, rather than on a Monday.  This was because those workouts could take 2 hours on the squat day, and I don’t have time to do that during the week. Sunday, I’d do the active recovery work, and then Monday would be my back workout.

I used an axle for all pressing and curls, a buffalo bar for all squats, and a texas deadlift bar for the 10x10 deads and an axle for light deadlift technique work.  I did the ab work every training day, but the program would call for hyperextensions 2 days a week and planks the other 2, and I ended up just doing planks 4 days a week.  I don’t have a hyperextension (but I own a reverse hyper…go figure), and though I DO have a ghetto GHR, trying to set it up for hyperextensions sucked.  Also, since my legs would be sore a full week after the 10x10 squats, I’d be in too much agony to have the pads press up against my quads.  Fully willing to admit to being a wimp there.

One other slight change was that I added in band pull aparts to superset the 10x10 presses/push presses.  They make my shoulder feel better.  For the active recovery work, I’d do the prowler on deadlift weeks and Stone of Steel on squat weeks.  Also, I added in 3x10 reverse hypers on the back day, because reverse hypers are awesome.

PERSONAL EXECUTION/EXPERIENCE

Pretty much me half of each month

-I followed the program about as close as I could, with the above exceptions noted.  Of note, anyone who has seen how I squat knows it is a painful mutant affair, and after doing that 10x10 on a Saturday, I would be sore until Friday.  The amount of pain I was in was very obvious.  Many co-workers would ask me what was wrong.  I wonder if someone employing a high bar style squat with a bouncy eccentric would fare better.  I did not experience nearly as much soreness with the deadlifts.

-The squat was definitely the worst day of the program in terms of difficulty.  As soon as I’d finish the final rep of the final set, I’d start a clock in my head for 2 weeks down the line, dreading when I’d have to do it again.  During that workout, it was pretty common for me to start laying down between sets at about the 6 set mark.

-The program’s back day is basically teaching/prepping you for the intermediate program, which has a 10x10 power clean in it.  There is no clean on the beginner program, but there are clean pulls, which I had to learn pretty quick, since I had never done them before.  This is combined with 4 weeks of bent over rows and 2 weeks of shrugs, trying to teach you strength in the forward torso position to get strong on the initial pull and then how to get power out of the traps on the final pull.  The big takeaway is, don’t modify it.  At first, I contemplated switching the bent over rows out for a t-bar row or dumbbell row, but I am glad I stuck with it.  There is a method to the madness.

-That same method holds true to the order of the days.  You end up doing 2 pushing days in a row, which makes little sense from a “muscle resting” perspective, but makes total sense in that it keeps you from having 2 10x10 days back to back.

-You will be in a constant state of recovery with this program.  In turn, I found that I could eat pretty much without restriction in terms of quantity, so long as I stuck with the approved foods.  A snapshot of a training day would be this

0440: Wake up, eat 2 cookies and a serving of fat free greek yogurt,

0500-0605: Training
0630: Post training meal of 2 cups of mixed berries, 2 scoops of protein, 1 serving of non-fat greek yogurt, 2 tablespoons of PB2 peanut butter powder, 1 cup of skim milk and 2 tablespoons of raw honey
0900: 2-3 beef ribs
1200: 1 can of diced tomatoes and 3 heaping handfuls of chopped kale mixed in with 1+lb of meat
1730: Meal similar to noon
1900: 3/4 cup of full fat cottage cheese, half an avocado and 2 tablespoons of PB2

On non-training days, I’d skip the 0440 meal, and at 0630 I’d have a shake that was 3/4 cup 5% greek yogurt, 2% milk, a heavy serving of cream, 2 scoops of protein and 2 tablespoons of PB 2, along with some fatty meat (bacon or ribs).

RESULTS AND CLOSING THOUGHTS

How you feel at the end...until you realize it is just the beginner program

-I started the program at 192.4 lbs, and started the 6^th week at 199.6lbs.  I am the leanest I’ve ever been at this bodyweight, as typically, once I start approaching 200lbs I tend to see fat accumulate, especially lovehandles.  I have slightly more lower back fat than when I started, but my midsection has remained tight.  Still in the same size pants, still on the same notch on my lifting belt.

-I successfully went from squatting 270lbs 10x10 with 4 minutes rest between sets to 270lbs 10x10 with 2 minutes rest between sets.  If that’s hard to quantify, another fun tidbit is that I squatted 240lbs 10x10 with 2 minutes rest between sets the week before I started the program, so that’s a 30lb increase on squatting ability in 5-6 weeks.  I also went from benching 226 for 3x10 to 256 for 3x10 in 5 weeks while on the program during the chest day, while reducing the rest periods from 4 minutes to 2 minutes between sets, and still more room the grow. 

-My chins, dips and push ups declined during my time on the program.  For the latter 2, they are at the end of the chest day, and I’m willing to call it a result of fatigue.  For the chins, it might be due to the added bodyweight and reduced rest times.

-This program absolutely kicked my butt.  I’ve been training for 18 years, I’ve competed in a dozen strongman competitions, I’ve run 20 rep squats and Building the Monolith, and this was a whole different beast.  It’s not Building the Monolith on steroids; it’s Building the Monolith on bathsalts.  That said, it’s paced well enough that you are able to recover.  Your bodybuilder days start out light and get more intense as time goes on, serving as a break after the initial shock of the first 10x10 day.

-On the above, you have to swallow your ego on this program, specifically when it comes to weight selection. 70% of your 10rm LOOKS really small, and when you hit set 7 of 10 it’s going to feel like the whole world coming down on you. 

-I attribute my success on the program to my dedication to eating.  Unlike Building the Monolith, there was no pre-req for a specific amount of certain foods, so instead of suffering through a dozen eggs a day, I was allowing myself a little creativity so long as I stuck with the approved foods I’d eat until the point of discomfort frequently, and it was the right call, because I’d need the energy for recovery and to get through the training.  Also, an interesting aside, but I no longer craved/needed my weekly cheat meal with this approach.  I was eating so much damn food that I never felt like I was lacking anything.

-PB2 is Jon Andersen approved, and as you can see, I used it frequently.  It was a quick way to add some calories and protein to meals.

WHAT’S NEXT

Maybe I need some of this

I am sold on the Deep Water method, and want to continue it.  That said, looking at the intermediate program weights, I’m unsure of myself.  I plan to hit a middleground between the beginner and intermediate weights to help ease me in for 6 weeks and then attack it in full force after that.  If a competition creeps up, I may alter or abandon as needed to prep, but I can see this becoming my go to off season approach for the foreseeable future.

SHOULD I BULK OR SHOULD I CUT?

Oh my god this question drives me nuts, so now is my time to rant about it.  First, if you’ve been following along, you know I hate the terms “bulk” and “cut”, as they are greatly misused by the training populace.  People tend to say “bulk” when they really mean “eat more” and by cut they mean “eat less”, not at all giving consideration to how TRAINING needs to change during periods of bulk or cut in order to actually have nutrition match training demands.  But that aside, this question is even more aggravating because it’s absolutely inane.  Should you bulk or cut?  How the hell should I know what you should do.  Here’s a quick test.  Do you want to get bigger?  Then bulk.  Do you want to get smaller?  The cut.  There!  I just solved it!  Print that out and carry it with you and that way, before annoying any strangers on the internet, you can have the answer for you right then and there.

Bring this one with you too

“But how do I know WHEN to bulk or cut?”  Are you serious?  You bulk when you want to be bigger than you currently are, and you cut when you want to be smaller than you currently are.  That’s it.  That’s all there is to it.  “But isn’t there a formula I can use?”  A formula to know when you want to do things?  Are you nuts?!  No, there’s no formula!  It’s a thing YOU choose because it’s what YOU want to do.

Jesus man, do you think Paul Anderson or Pat Casey or Doug Hepburn asked when it was time to bulk?  Hell no!  These guys decided on a goal: to get as strong as possible, and in turn, they decided on a method: to get as big as possible.  That’s how you figure it out!  You have goals, and then you take the course of action needed to get to those goals.  Paul, Pat and Doug ate herculean amounts of food and gained massive amounts of weight.  Did they get fat?  Hell yeah they got fat.  Did they care?  Hell no they didn’t care, because they had a goal: to get as strong as possible.  And they achieved those goals.  And hey, if you care about getting fat, you know what you can do?  You can cut when you get too fat.

Crazy talk, I know

“But I heard from some guy with a LOT of letters after their name that there is an IDEAL bodyfat% to be at before cutting or bulking!”  Hey guess what?  Now we’re talking about goals, because that statement is made under the understanding one wants to minimize fat gain and maximize muscle gain.  NOW we’re getting somewhere, because if THAT is your goal, THEN you have to employ a specific method compared to simply if you want to get big or small.  But DOUBLE guess what?  You’re amateurish attempts to ascertain your bodyfat would be comical if they weren’t aggravating. 

No, seriously, let me get this straight: a guy whose accreditation is having a youtube channel told you that you need to be a certain bodyfat to bulk or cut, and you decided you were going to determine your bodyfat % by posting shirtless photos of yourself online for a quorum of strangers to evaluate?  Once again, your insanity knows no bounds.  Do you think internet people have calibrated eyeballs?  Even better, do you think they have X-ray vision?  How the hell are they going to see the visceral fat that’s contained between your organs do know your actual bodyfat%?  Oh, they’re just supposed to base it off of other photos of people with bodyfat %s listed next to their photos?  Well for one, can’t you already do that yourself?  Why do you need someone else to do it?  But secondly, what the hell is the credibility of those photos?  Oh, these are people that super duper pinky swear that their numbers are accurate…right.  Sounds good to me!  Use those numbers to calculate your future!

To clarify, this is an actual accepted theory, meaning your idea is even more stupid than this

Wait wait, no, I got it: the NAVY method.  It’s accurate within 4-6%!  Hell, I made that number up, because the sheer notion of measuring your bodyfat with a tape measurer is also silly.  And let’s be real honest: pretty much every method is going to have a range of errors in it.  I got measured at 8.4% on a BODPOD once, and the internet assured me that was impossible because I didn’t LOOK like 8.4% bodyfat…once again, based off the photos of people they had seen at 8% bodyfat.  Because again, we’re all so very stupid. 

Quit letting other people determine your goals!  Everyone is in such a rush to quantify and calculate everything in a search to obviate themselves from actually having to THINK.  You’re not smart because you use a lot of numbers, especially when you consider that everything is done with a calculator and a spreadsheet and you’ve completely removed your brain from the equation.  You exercise intelligence when you engage in the action of FREE THINKING, and this means taking the time to critically think about what your goals are and how you want to get there.  Letting everyone ELSE tell you that your goal is to optimize everything and never stray too far outside the realm of acceptable bounds is how you end up exactly like everyone else: mediocre.  The true giants out there, metaphorical and otherwise, kept chasing their goals until they met them, and sometimes it meant doing things that other people didn’t like or weren’t comfortable doing.  It sometimes meant not looking their best 100% of the time.  It sometimes meant having a set of numbers that the internet would scoff at.  But it also sometimes meant being the literal best at what they did, because they set a goal and went after it irrespective of the literature and groupthink.

Hey, you know what: you go do you

Should you bulk or should you cut?  You should do whatever it takes to reach your goals.    

ON PREDESTINATION: THERE IS NO DISCIPLINE

I have had many people tell me that they admire me for my discipline.  They witness my dietary compliance, or how rigorously and regularly I engage in physical training, or that I wake up early to get things done, and through their observation they conclude that I am a highly disciplined individual.  Many times, they even express envy, how they WISH they could be as disciplined as I am, because, if they were, they could really do the things they want to get done.  But that is where I have to ultimately disagree with them.  My experience has dictated that, fundamentally, we always do the things that we want to do.  There is no discipline: our actions are predestined as a result of our inclinations, motivations, and desires. 

And if we did not pursue these desires, there would be no greatness in the world

But isn’t that exactly WHAT discipline is: the ability to overcome your desires to instead do something else?  In point of fact, I argue that the logic on this is reversed.  We must utilize the outcome to determine the motivation, rather than attempt to determine that the outcome is the result of a circumventing entity of discipline.  Put simply, if a thing was done, that thing was done as a result of the desire to do that thing.  If one’s compulsion were to do something other than that thing, then something other than that thing would have been done.

And again the statement is made “but discipline is the OVERCOMING of these desires”, to which again I refute that there IS no discipline.  All we have control over is our desires, but once that is set, the chain of events becomes set in motion.  So what of the individual that wakes up at 0500 to engage in a grueling training session day after day and then eats a bland diet rich in nutrients but lacking in enjoyment?  A true paragon of discipline?  NO!  That individual is as hedonistic as the rest of us: pursuing their own personal joy.  It just so happens that, for that individual, the joy of BEING something great is greater than the joy of experiencing pleasures.  That individual required absolutely zero discipline to engage in their protocol: the path was already set as soon as the decision was made that they preferred the results of training over the experience of non-compliance.

My Hume readers will appreciate the reference, but also be aware that photoshopping exists in all activities

The notion of discipline exists because people operate under the false premise that all individuals share the same desires and share these desires at the same intensities.  “I enjoy pizza, I enjoy it immensely, consuming it gives me great joy, therefore, to not consume it would deprive me of joy, and to choose to not consume it would necessitate great discipline, which must also be true for that guy over there that I observe NOT eating the pizza”.  But in point of fact, it turns out Mr. No-Pizza Eater finds greater joy in dietary compliance than he does in the consumption of pizza, because dietary compliance, in turn, allows him to BE something that he enjoys.  In both instances, the person eating the pizza and the person NOT eating the pizza are exercising the same degree of discipline: that is to say, none.  It requires absolutely zero discipline to engage in an activity that you WANT to do.  Discipline would only be needed to engage in an activity you don’t want to do and, as we are observing, want necessarily dictates activity.  We cannot reasonably argue for the existence of discipline.

So what of those that are definitely vectored toward accomplishing a specific goal but, in a “moment of weakness”, they engage in activities that run counter to that goal?  Surely that’s an indication of one’s discipline failing, no?  Once again, no.  What we observe there is the fluidity of desire.  Desires can change rapidly, especially in the presence of new stimulus.  Doubt this?  Come home from a long, 18 hour day of work, and your desire will be to collapse and not move.  Collapse onto a hot stove and suddenly, despite your initial desire for sloth, you will be prompted to action.  Your desire changed: you went from “I don’t want to move anymore” to “I want to move to any place other than this one RIGHT NOW”.  In both cases, we observe the lack of presence of discipline, and instead it is the goal and desire that changed and drove the change in action.  The same is true if you only maintain dietary compliance in the absence of temptation but, once prompted, cave to eat things you shouldn’t.  You did not experience a moment of weakness: you have always been following your goals and desires.  It is simply the case that your goal changed.

I'm sure the goal was originally "get stronger" and is now "kill trainer"

What is the relevance of all of this rambling?  I have freed you from the shackles of discipline!  Now you are a much different slave: you are a slave to predestination as determined by your desires.  What you want fundamentally dictates what you do.  HOWEVER, what you have the absolute most freedom over is in DECIDING what it is that you want.  Yes, once decided, the actions are set in motion, but you still control the desire, and, with the right desire, you will accomplish amazing things.  If you honestly, really and truly WANT physical greatness, you will always make the decision to accomplish the things that achieve physical greatness versus the things that deny it.  You will always train when you need to train, eat what you need to eat, sleep when you need to sleep, etc.  You need not exercise any discipline whatsoever: just make the decision and let the universe take its course.  And when you make the wrong decisions, don’t beat yourself up over your “lacking discipline”: you simply wanted non-compliance MORE than you wanted compliance.  There is nothing wrong with that: you’re STILL achieving your goals when you do that.  It just so happens that your goals changed.  The more you want your goal, the more it will consistently remain your goal, which means the more you will continue to do the things that will achieve it.  If you are “failing”, just want your goal more.  And if you find you are “trying” to want your goal, I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s not really your goal.

KLINGON WISDOM: MAKE A DECISION

I’m fairly certain I’ve shared this before, but if not, one of my favorite quotes comes from a mentor of mine, who was in turn a Star Trek fan.  One day, he shared the Klingon proverb “In battle, make a decision.  If it’s a good one, even better.”  That day was a monumental one for me, as it has in turn shaped how I approach life, and has accounted for a vast majority of the success I have encountered.  It’s such an amazing pithy saying that holds so much truth in everything you do in life, not just battle.  When pressed with a choice, MAKE one, for a wrong decision will ultimately be better than no decision.  Choose the road less traveled by, choose the well trodden path, take the high road, take the low road, just take A path so you can keep moving in A direction.

You're about to really train your conditioning by running the f**k away

No transition sentence in the above, because I couldn’t think of one, but hey, look at that: I made a decision.  Trainees are fundamentally CRIPPLED by an inability to make a decision, mainly because they feel there is some sort of ridiculous demand for them to make the BEST decision.  I’m not sure who told them this, but that man was clearly a lunatic and should be disregarded at all costs.  There’s no need to make the best decision at all here: if there were, we surely wouldn’t leave it up to you, the inexperience and uneducated trainee.  No, merely A decision needs to be made.  If it is good is dandy, but if not, it’s still A decision, which is better than NO decision.

Examples?  “What training program should I use?”  Who cares: pick one, run it until it doesn’t work, then try another one.  “Should I do high carb or low carb?”’  Doesn’t matter: pick one and try it.  If it doesn’t work, try a different one.  I can say with 100% certainty that making a bad decision and moving forward with it will yield more positive outcomes than making no decision.  Do you know what kind of progress you get if you spend 3 months refusing to go to the gym because you STILL haven’t found the optimal program yet?  Do you know how much further along you’d be if you just did 100 push ups a day for those 3 months?  That’s a DUMB program, and it’s STILL far more effective than no program.  Not only would your super optimal program have to overcome the damage of 3 months of sedentariness, but it would ALSO have to overcome the 3 month head start “sub-optimal you” achieved with their dumb, half-cocked plan.  The same is true of people that refuse to pursue some sort of nutritional program, some sort of training philosophy, some sort of coaching service, etc.  Just make A decision and go with it.

I genuinely don't know why this meme exists, but I'm glad it does

To say nothing of the immense value inherent in LEARNING from bad decisions.  Bad decisions are how we grow: through experience.  Your childhood was marred with bad decisions, as you (like all children) were incredibly stupid and inexperienced and never understood your parents’ warnings until AFTER the fact.  But man, the first time you touched that hot stove, you learned right quick WHY you should never do that.  The same is true when you try out setting a 1rm everyday of the week for 8 weeks, or max effort continentals, or the variety of other bad decisions out there.  You learn what doesn’t work, and, by extension, what does THROUGH these bad decisions.  What do you learn through indecisiveness?  Simply that you need to make a decision.

And this includes deciding on what the hell your goals are in the first place.  Were it not for my exceedingly low faith in humanity I would be absolutely shocked at how frequently I am asked “Should I bulk or cut?”  I, of course, have to stifle my disdain for those very words before I ask my inevitable obvious question “Do you want to be bigger or do you want to be leaner?”  And BOY does that follow-up question upset people, because apparently they want ME to decide their goals for them.  They have abdicated their future to a stranger: what madness is this?!  This is so incredibly simple.  If you want to be bigger, eat more.  If you want to be leaner, eat less.  If you want to get better at weightlifting, weightlift.  Running?  Run.  These are such obvious ideas: why will no one make this decision?

I'm sure this is exactly what this guy decided he wanted to be better at

“But I want ALL those things!”  Hey, that’s cool: me too.  Which one do you want the most right NOW?  Again: no one likes that question, because they don’t want to make that decision.  The battle is waging on, and they’re stuck deciding on if they want to use a mace or a sword or an axe or a spear before some ogre with club smashes unarmed skull in.  Folks, I’ve been training for over 18 years now, and that is through multiple injuries and surgeries: you get to spend a LOT of time doing this.  You will have no shortage of opportunities to pursue multiple goals, which means you don’t need to pursue them all at the same time. 

Think about that 18 years statement, realizing full well that I STILL have life left in me and more time to train: what if I spent 1 year pursuing a different goal.  Just dedicated myself to a full calendar year of chasing 1 physical goal?  I honestly don’t think I’d be creative enough to manage that without some overlap in years.  And meanwhile, how awesome can you get at something if it’s what you dedicate your sole focus to in the span of a year?  Hell, people can learn to play the guitar over a summer with enough dedicated practice time, people have lost an entire human being’s worth of weight in less than a year, you can accomplish AMAZING things when you make it your singular dedicated focus for a prolonged period of time.  And these skills don’t go away once built, assuming you return to them with some semi-regularity.  It certainly won’t require the initial build up that it once took.  This means, if you dedicate yourself to getting lean, and then don’t get too terribly fat again, it’ll be easy to get lean again.  Build a big deadlift, take some time away from it, and it won’t take long to come back to it.  Run fast, take a break, run fast again.  It’s all there: you just have to make A decision to pursue A goal at some point, and know that you can come back when the time comes.

I imagine being The Terminator means you can train for a VERY long time

The battle is on: make a decision.  If it’s a good one, I’ll be happy for you.  If it’s a bad one, I’ll still be happy.