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.