WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

  

A big pet peeve of mine (which my regular readers will understand that, ultimately, everything I write about is a pet peeve, and with so many pets it’s more like a zoo of peeves…but already I’ve digressed from my own point) is when I see a trainee phrase the following style of question: “I just watched a bunch of videos of guys dropping benches on their chests/rupturing their biceps/tearing hamstrings/passing out while deadlifting/etc etc…HOW DO I PREVENT THIS?!”  This, of course, annoys me on many levels, to the point that the only course of actions I find to be acceptable is to simply not engage, as to otherwise speak to them would result in non-productive dialogue.  One of the biggest issues I have with this is I wonder how these humans manage to simply function on a day-to-day level when they live in such abject and consistent fear of their environment.  You see something dangerous, and now you wonder how you can avoid it…but we see dangerous stuff happen ALL the time.  Have you ever seen a car accident before?  How come you haven’t sworn off driving?  You ever watch the news and see someone get hit by a car?  Why haven’t you sworn off walking?  Listeria outbreak: you aren’t swearing off fruits and veggies (HAH!  Jokes on me: you don’t eat them anyway).  Why is it that you’re only worried about these specific and rare instances of failure?

...ok, but seriously, what are the odds of Randy Johnson obliterating TWO pigeons?

 

But let’s dive even further into this.  You just want to be as safe as possible…but do you REALLY?  Do you have an anti-slip mat in your shower?  Slip and falls in the shower kill scores of people: way more than errant bench presses.  Do you ever go over the speed limit?  Ever talk on the phone, text, or listen to the radio while driving?  Or ever drive when you’re sleepy?  Or not come to a full and complete stop at a stop sign?  Do you realize how many people die from car accidents for failure to follow very basic driving rules and laws?  Ever not chew your food adequately?  People die from choking on food so much it’s downright ridiculous.  And oh my god, if you’re drinking alcohol or taking recreational drugs and wanna talk to me about the safety of using mixed grip on deadlifts I’m gonna have a hearty chuckle here.  I think you have a severely compromised concept of “risk assessment”.  You’ve taken something that has an incredibly low probability of occurring and devoted a high level of energy in preventing it while, in turn, dedicating a very low amount of energy into preventing the maladies that have a HIGH percentage of occurring.

 

But no, let’s go EVEN further.  Why is it that, when you see a video of someone tearing a bicep on a deadlift you go “THAT COULD HAPPEN TO ME!  I need to know what to do to prevent it!”, but if I go and show you a video or share a story with you about a trainee that worked hard and ate well for years and turned into an absolute monster you go “PSH!  Genetics, good luck, unfair advantages: that could NEVER happen to me?”  Why is it that you’re so assured that you are guaranteed the unfortunate aspects of training but have no possibility of achieving the POSITIVE aspects?  I mean…SOMEONE has to receive one or the other…right?

Don't let yourself get beaten by a space lobster

 

Catastrophic failure AND excessive victory are simply opposite sides of the same bell curve of training: most trainees are going to fall in the middle, while some will fall on one side and some on the other.  The odds are, in fact, low that you’ll achieve the extreme ends, but for f**k’s sake: why assume you’ll come out on the bad side if you’re going to assume you’re an outlier?  At LEAST assume that you’re average and that you’ll probably never have to worry about excessive failures or victories, but if you’re going to assume you’re special, assume it in a POSITIVE way, because the power of positive thinking IS real, and it’s the element you’ll find common in those that DO achieve that excessive victory in the end.  Sure, not everyone gets to be elite, but in the same token, not everyone gets to be a massive failure as well, so why not leave the latter to those who want it.  You, instead, choose to want to be on the extreme side of victory.

 

Because guess what the end result of dedicating all of your energy to “not failing” is?  It’s certainly not victory: its mediocrity.  If all you do in dodgeball is dodge, you’re eventually going to get tagged out: at one point you need to actually throw a ball.  So why dedicate your energy toward preventing an incredibly rare instance of catastrophic failure when you could, instead, dedicate that SAME amount of energy toward achieving a ridiculous degree of victory?  The payoff for the latter is SO much greater than the payoff for the former, and it’s the same energy invested.  The time you spend researching prevention is the same amount of time you could spend researching action, the energy you invest in “safe training” is energy you can invest in ridiculous over the top excessive training that gets excessive results.  And if you’re in that middle of the bell curve, neither will matter, but hell, at least you were TRYING to succeed this whole time vs simply not fail.  Because hey, not everyone gets to win the lottery, but the people who DON’T play will NEVER win it, while those that do play at LEAST have a chance.

God I miss the 90s...

 

Strive to be the guy that, when people see you, they don’t ask “how can I keep that from happening”, but, instead “how do I make THAT happen”    

ODE TO THE BARBARIAN

 Anyone that has followed my writing knows that I am a fan of barbarians, the barbarian, and barbarism in general.  I have written on many occasions why the barbarian is the ideal class in Dungeons and Dragons and have annoyed many of my friends with my unwillingness to play other classes.  But I feel it’s time for others to really look deep and understand that they too owe a level of appreciation and, dare I say, gratitude to the noble (or otherwise) barbarian.  Despite what you may believe, there is a fair chance that you have much to thank the barbarian for.

 

CONAN

For those of you that actually read the stories by Rob Howard, you already have much to be thankful for, as Conan served as a fantastic philosopher and role model of physicality, masculinity, and simplicity in manner.  But to be real, we all REALLY have Arnold to thank for his portrayal OF Conan

 

How can this be both timeless AND pure 80s?

 

Though not his film DEBUT, this was unquestionably Arnold’s breakthrough role, and with it he ushered in an era where “excessive” musculature was celebrated and pursued.  Sure, there was some other Hollywood hunks prior to Arnold, but they were few and far between and simply did not have the “gravitas” of the future California governor.  Additionally, this was an era where bodybuilding was still considered a freakshow oddity, and building muscle purely for the sake of having it was vain and taboo.  Oh sure: you could build muscle if you were playing sports, but even then, you weren’t supposed to do it with those nasty weights: it was just supposed to happen organically through the playing of sports and employment of calisthenics.

 

And then Arnold exploded on the screen and the whole world changed…

 

Do you remember where you were when the film flashed forward on the Wheel of Pain and Conan had grown into a man?  Do you remember just how in awe you were?  Do you remember wanting to spend a decade yourself grinding away at the wheel?  And then do you remember learning that Arnold had to LOSE muscle for the role?  Because he was so goddamn big that it would have been comical to have him absolutely dwarfing his adversaries?  Well you weren’t alone, and you’ll find that many MANY successful athletes today accredit that VERY film with inspiring them to pursue getting bigger and stronger.  Every red blooded male at that point wanted to be Conan, and if not him, some other Arnold vehicle, or Rocky, or Rambo, or Van Damme: the dominos had started to fall, and it had become obvious now that the pursuit of size and strength was a reasonable and nobly barbaric pursuit.

 

Thank you Conan.

 

THE BARBARIAN BROTHERS

Once again, overhead pressing is the key

Peter and David Paul don’t get to enjoy the same esteem as Arnold in regards to making muscle awesome again, and, in fact, they were very much the beneficiaries of Arnold’s Conan contribution to the world.  And yes, they also attempted forays in to the “swords and sorcery” world that had exploded as a result of Arnold’s work (hell, even Arnold effectively parodied himself with “Red Sonja”), but it is not the Barbarian Brothers work in cinema for what we owe them thanks, but instead for one quote.  One MAGNIFICANT quote.

 

“There is no overtraining: just undereating”

When in doubt...

 

I love this quote, primarily because, whenever I share it, it upsets a LOT of people and, as a misanthrope, that seems like something that should please me.  However, along with that, I love the quote because of how true it is and the message that it communicates.  So many trainees are so absolutely terrified of overtraining that they suffer the opposite: they UNDERtrain.  And there exists a VERY interesting correlation between a fear of overtraining AND a fear of “getting fat”, resulting in birdlike eating as trainees attempt to operate under the THINNEST of margins for weight gain, in some sort of hope to min/max the gaining process.  Here we are talking DnD terms again, and once again: the noble barbarian rises above all and requires no special build, feats or hacking to hit something really hard until it dies.  If these very trainees would dedicate themselves to training as hard as absolutely possible and then turn right around and dedicate themselves to EATING as absolutely hard as possible, they would witness the type of results that would have people questioning their biology, genetics, and chemistry.  Which is something the “nattyorjuice” crowd just will never be able to grasp: you simply can’t quantify the benefits of hard work both in AND out of the gym.

 

My current training and nutrition is very much exemplifying this: I am training at the LEAST 2 times a day, but very often 3 and sometimes even 4 times a day.  COVID has still wrecked the world, and I have little else to do.  Any time I’m not training, I’m EATING.  I’m at the point where I eat something every half hour at work (packing for work has, in turn, become quite laborious) and I am STILL hungry.  I eat a huge meal before bed and wake up at 0300 from hunger.  When I go to bed, I dream of my breakfast, and after I eat my breakfast I start lifting (often having done a quick fasted conditioning session BEFORE breakfast), and halfway through the workout I’M HUNGRY.  I eat WHILE I’m cooking the next meal.  As long as I am not undereating, I won’t be overtraining, and meanwhile, as long as I’m training THIS goddamn hard and eating THIS goddamn much, the results have been, and will continue to be, absolutely bonkers.

 

THE BARBARIAN

Who needs armor anyway?

And finally, an ode to barbarians themselves, who have existed so long as culture itself has existed.  There have always been those “outside the gates”: the unclean, the uncivilized, the uncultured.  For them we owe thanks, for they were the ones who challenged the status quo enough to force change to occur.  Weather change occurred through the intermingling of cultures, through the self-reflection that occurs when one observes something outside of themselves, or through forceful, sudden and rapid change as a result of the toppling of nations and ending of regimes, the barbarian has served as the necessary “cultural brushfire” that eliminated the excess, brought us back to basics, and forced us to start again.  Sometimes it resulted in the ushering in of dark ages, but in such darkness new light could shine: light that had previously been stifled by old paradigms, “the way things are”, vested authority figures, etc etc.  When the classless hold nothing sacred, when the Vikings pull up on the shores of monasteries and slaughter monks and take gold, when Germanic mercenaries infest the ranks of the legion and hold no loyalty to any king or commander, suddenly all those things we “knew” become immaterial and we are forced to start again and find NEW principles, values, and guiding lights…and often times these prove to be superior.  We simply needed that “push”.

 

Launch your own barbarian invasion: tear down the walls of your own society and let nothing sacred survive.  Rebuild your society from the ashes and find out what was hearty enough to withstand the barbaric hordes.  And perhaps ONLY barbarism is what survives…and you could do far FAR worse than that.

ALL THINGS WEIGHT GAIN

My more perceptive readers have most likely noted that I tend to obsess over whatever it is I’m currently pursuing in my own training, and it reflects in my writing, so I figured I’d just full on embrace it and do a post about all things weight gain.  I’ve been binge reading all my favorite books and articles on the subject, and here’s what they have in common: they don’t mention counting calories or macros at all.  That just takes “the romance” out of the equation: makes it so mechanical and robotic.  So “unhuman”, while we are human, all too human (thanks Nietzsche!)  I loved reading Super Squats and seeing Randall Strossen talk about just prodigious amounts of food, with the only measurement being a gallon of milk.  I loved reading “Eating Through the Sticking Points” by Matt Reynolds, where we measured intake by the pan of brownies.  Chase Karnes’ “How to Stay Small And Weak” should be required reading for all gainers, and once again, no mention of calorie tracking, just taking in lots of food, Paul Carter’s “add a peanut butter sandwich a day” approach, Dan John’s ALSO PBJ based gaining approach in “Mass Made Simple”, etc etc: all of these reports are, if nothing else, so much more INTERESTING to read vs the trite “add 250 calories over maintenance” that you can get from anywhere else.  In turn, I want to write more of what I want to read.  And since I’ve already written “THE Nutrition Post” and detailed my approach to gaining, let’s make this more of an appendix to that and talk about gaining weight in general.  Buckle in: it’s going to be a big one.  I mean, hell, we ARE talking about growing.

 

WHAT I’VE DONE IN THE PURSUIT OF GAINS

I mean...yeah...

In brief summary of my life, martial arts were my passion from ages 6-21 (and I actually just started back up again with Tang Soo Do, so that’s cool), after which point I got married, hung up the gloves and started pursuing lifting as my primary passion.  At that time, I still wanted to be strong more than I cared about my physique, and the only way I knew to be strong was through powerlifting (because there were only two ways to train: bodybuilding or powerlifting, DUH!), so I got sucked into the Elitefts bandwagon.   This was mid 2000s, when Dave was JUST recovering from the effects of what he had put his body through, and the majority of the material on the site was still very “old school” as far as nutrition went…so that was my guiding principle.  No bad calories: get them in and grow.  And before that, I had already experimented with Super Squats.  With those as my guide, I managed to go from 5’9 190lbs to 217lbs in about 9 months during my first big go at bulking, and over the next 14 years I’ve bobbed up and down with weight gain and losses employing more tips and tricks along the way.  These are some of the crazier things I’ve done in pursuit of growth…

 

* I have absolutely done the “gallon of milk a day” while running Super Squats.  I feel it’s a rite of passage, and if you do the program and DON’T drink the gallon of milk, you didn’t actually “do the program”.  Future runs can be done without the milk, but you NEED to do it on the first one to REALLY experience it.  People always talk about this ruining your bowels, but here’s the thing: just don’t be stupid.  If you haven’t had milk since you were a baby, don’t just drink a gallon right off the bat: work up to it.  Randall Strossen says exactly this in the book (which, hey, maybe read it before running the program).  I started with a glass of milk at night before bed, then worked up to having a glass at my evening meal and then before bed, then a glass at every meal, then multiple glasses at meals, which would get me to my gallon.  I was in college at the time with a meal plan, which meant unlimited access to 2% milk.  I kept a gallon in my minifridge in the dorm as well, to keep me compliant.  I was also eating a LOT of food at the time.  Wanna know what goes good with a gallon of milk?  PBJ bagels.

 

* Living in California at the time, I ate at In n Out a lot, wherein my go to meal was three Double Doubles.  They had the perfect “bread to meat ratio”.  I had bought into the idea that burgers were always better choices than fries when it comes to gaining, so I had stopped eating fries at this point and would just order extra burgers.  That’s one of those ideas that’s SORTA true, but too easy to get stupid with.  At Taco Bell, I’d order 4-6 cheesy gordita crunches (those are 500 calories each…and I was never full).  McDonalds was 4-6 McDoubles or 2 Double Quarter Pounders, BK was 2 triple cheeseburgers/triple stackers (unless I was getting breakfast, then it was 3-4 sausage biscuits), Carl’s Jr was 2 double western bacon cheeseburgers, Panda Express was a triple order or orange chicken with fried rice, always ordered “The Feast” at Subway with Itallian Herbs and Cheese (eventually switched to a footlong meatball sub with double meat), 3 Polish Sausages at Costco.  I was a total fast food addict.  I still am one too, but I’m in remission now.

 

* My wife has mini-breadloaf pans that she uses to make loaves of banana bread.  She wraps them in aluminum foil to keep them fresh…which makes them look like big candy bars.  And that’s exactly how I would eat them.  I’d bring a load to work, peel back the foil, and eat the whole thing over the course of work.  Didn’t even slice it: just bite out of the loaf.

She still makes them...but now I slice them.

 

* I’ve already detailed it in this blog before, but I’ve run Building the Monolith before (and I’m actually currently running it), to include the dozen eggs and 1.5lbs of ground beef a day.  I actually had to add MORE meat to it.   And even outside of BtM, I’ve regularly made 10-12 egg omelets during times where I simply couldn’t think of what else to make for dinner.

 

* On multiple occasions, I’ve eaten an entire 2lb pot roast by myself in one quick sitting.  I have a bottomless appetite for meat in truth.  In fact, I wasn’t even trying to gain weight for this story, but when I was 19 I got a job at “Big 5 Sporting Goods”, which was right across the street from Carl’s Jr the VERY summer they released their “Double Six Dollar Burger”, which was a full pound of meat.  They offered a low carb lettuce wrap version, so you know it was practically health food.  I got one of those for lunch EVERY day I worked there.  What’s funny is that the burger actually cost more than an hour’s wage for me at the time, so I ended up LOSING money whenever I worked a 7 hour shift, because we were required to be given a lunch break for 7s for 6s.  The first time I had that burger, it filled me up, and by the end of the summer I’d eat it in the span of like 5 minutes and still be hungry…

 

* When I heard that dextrose and maltodextrin where excellent carbs for post-workout, I found out that those were the primary ingredients in Sweet Tarts and made it a habit to eat a pack of them post workout with my shake.

 

* I have absolutely employed frozen pizzas as a pre-workout meal.  And I should actually call it a pre-pre workout meal, because I was still eating a PB and honey sandwich before I lifted: the pizza was eaten before that.  And, of course, I’m talking about a WHOLE pizza: slices have no place for gainers.  Sometimes I’d switch it up and have a 1lb ribeye instead.

 

* Hey, here’s a non-eating one: I built a home gym.  When I was in college, I had access to the weightroom, which was awesome.  When I graduated, I had to join a for real gym, which was all kinds of awful, but the FINAL straw was when I had JUST written up my conjugate training plan based off the $40 Elitefts Basic Training Manual (which was, in fact, just a complete repackaging of all of their previously released articles on their website…which you can now get for free as an e-book) only to show up to the gym and see a sign that said they were going to be closed for 2 weeks due to remodeling.  I legit went straight to Play-it-Again Sports, bought a 300lb Olympic weightset, busted out my bench press station (flat AND incline) and never looked back.  Fun fact: since I was doing conjugate and needed to do a max effort exercise and because my max squat was GREATER than 300lbs, my very first workout in my home gym was max effort good mornings.  I put the j-hooks backwards on the bench so I could take the bar out of it from behind, unracked it from a bent over position, walked back some dangerous steps and eventually worked up to like a 280something good morning for a single.  That felt so awful I resolved to get some more weight ASAP so I could do some squats.

 

THINGS I DIDN’T DO IN PURSUIT OF GAINS

Meanwhile some of you are wondering where to buy weightless strawberries

Despite that super crazy list above, there are some things even I thought were pretty goofy.  These include…

 

* Use weightgainers.  I’ll caveat here: of course I TRIED weight gainers.  Specifically 3: Serious Mass, MHP’s Up Your Mass and MuscleTech’s Masstech.  And I never made it through a single tub.  The first time I opened up the Serious Mass and saw that the scooper looked like a laundry detergent cup, I honestly had a laugh.  That product is garbage as well: protein powder and maltodextrin: woo!  MHP’s “Up your Mass” WAS a great product back in the day: diverse carbohydrate profile, good fat sources, not loaded with maltodextrin…now, not so much.  And the Masstech was similar: used something other than malto, and I had it for breakfast at the tail end of a mass gaining phase, just to get in some easy calories…but I ended up getting halfway through the tub before I gave it to one of my wife’s co-workers that was trying to put on some size.  The fact is, there’s SO much food out there these days that there’s really just no need for weight gainer.  Hell, just eat some oatmeal or some breakfast cereal if you want a bunch of carbs.  Mix it with protein powder if you want protein.  Or go make an old school blender bomb.  You don’t need some other company to make you a powder.

* Weigh my food.  Come on folks.  Just eat more if you’re not gaining.

 

* Care about gaining fat.  The goal is gaining weight, specifically so I get stronger.  If my lifts are going up: I’m winning.   During that initial 9 month span at age 21, my strength EXPLODED.  I went from a 435lb deadlift to 540, a 335 squat to 420 (both without a belt), a 330 bench to 365 (technically STILL the most I’ve ever benched in my life), and a 200lb press to 235, only VERY recently surpassed with my 266lb axle press, ALSO set after a period of focus on weight gain.  Remember: losing fat is the easiest thing in the world.  All you do is NOT eat.  It’s inaction.  And you’ll be REALLY good at this after you’ve been LIVING eating.  I’m always excited to have my life back after gaining: no more cooking, cleaning, planning the next meal and spending so much goddamn time on the toilet.

 

* On the above, I never worried about my bodyfat percentage before or during a weight gain phase.  The numbers that matter are the ones on the bar.  Those need to go up. 

 

WHAT I WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY

Probably not so many of these...

Really, this is “what I’m DOING differently”, because I’m actually in a gaining phase now that is being QUITE different in my 30s vs my 20s.  Here’s some of the changes/lessons learned.  A big thing to note is that, yeah, most of these are health focused, but they’re ALSO changes that have been really easy to implement that there’s honestly minimal reason to NOT do them.

 

* Pick better saturated fat sources and avoid transfats.  I put away a LOT of fast food previously, and though it’s not terrible to eat on occasion, I was using it as a staple.  That was out of a combination of laziness/addiction to convenience and, of course, enjoying yummy food.  There’s no need for transfats in one’s diet, but saturated fats are still pretty critical…which means you want to pick good sources for them.  I’m clearly no nutritionist/dietician/anything, so this is just my approach, but I opt for organic free range eggs and grassfed beef/dairy as my primary saturated fat sources these days.  I avoid grainfed/non-organic stuff when possible, because apparently the toxic stuff in bodies tends to stay in the fat stores.  On that note…

 

* Eat lean protein sources and direct fat sources rather than try to get all my fats from animals.  I grew up in the 90s, where we rapidly transitioned from “fat is bad” from the 80s to “fat is good” with the Atkins revolution, and somewhere in between we lost nuance.  I think dietary fat is awesome, but there’s also good and bad fat SOURCES.  I was getting all my fat from animals and making zero effort to get any sort of poly or monounsaturated fats from any non-animal sources.  I’d get in some peanut butter on occasion, but that was about it.  These days, I eat a LOT more leaner cuts of meat and use nuts, nut butters/milk and avocados to augment fat.  I also make it a point to eat 92-100% dark chocolate.  By eating lean meats, you don’t need to care QUITE as much about if it’s organic/free range/whatever, because you’re not eating the fat stores, so this can save some costs and just make life a little more convenient, and those plant based fat sources are the bee’s knees these days.

 

* I already touched on it in the above, but to make it abundantly clear: COOK more and eat out LESS.  I’ve written in the past about phasing junk food into a diet to support weight gain, and I still believe in that, but that’s the point: these things should be PHASED in, not done from the start, and it should only be after having EXHAUSTED the conventional methods.  At present, I’m still not out of “clean food” options to gain.  I’ll still eat out with the family, but I also make MUCH better choices when that happens unless it’s specifically a cheat meal.

 

* No direct carb sources.  In a bit of counter-intuitiveness, I’ve found inclusion of carbs more valuable when losing fat vs gaining weight.  I know a lot of authors say you need to take in a lot of carbs to gain weight and make sure you have energy for hard training, but I’m finding that not true at all this time around.  The only way I get any carbs in with my current diet is anything that comes with 2 servings of greek yogurt, 60 calories worth of 100% Dark Chocolate, fiborous veggies and nuts/nut butters (and I’m avoiding cashews because they’re “too carby).  I have zero energy issues and my weight is going up.  I JUST recently started implementing a weekly cheat meal, and even THAT meal tends to be fattier rather than carby (I’ll allow myself some transfats and not-great saturated fat sources).  However, during my recent fat loss phase where I got to my leanest, I made it a point to have a carb-up meal right before my heaviest training days (squats and deadlifts).  It worked well, because leading up to those workouts I felt dead, and the carbs helped me come back to life and fill out a bit.  It all checks: during fat loss, I’m going to be depleted.  During weight gain, even if I’m not eating direct carb sources, I’m going to have so much nutrition going through me in general that I’m at minimal risk of being depleted.  Same reason why a guy gaining weight most likely doesn’t need any supplemental vitamins: they have so much food going through them they’re probably hitting all the marks. 

Joey most likely isn't deficient in any nutrients after this feat...but could probably use some pepto

 

* If no direct carb sources, what macro am I manipulating?  Fats.  Protein has actually dropped a bit since transitioning from fat loss to weight gain, but I’m taking in a LOT more fats than I was before.  Fats do tons of great stuff for the body, and, again, GOOD sources of them do the body plenty of favors.  With fats being 9 calories per gram, it’s a great macro to play with for weight gain.

 

* I’m still a fan of frequent meals (I grew up in the era where we were told eating every 2-3 hours kept the metabolism humming, and even if that’s bunk, I like frequent small meals over infrequent large ones for the sake of digestion), but instead of having all of my meals be equal in size I like to start and end the day with big meals and having smaller meals/snacks in the middle.  I shared a bunch of my breakfasts in my BBB Beefcake review along with the more snack-like meals I bring to work, but a quick overview would be a breakfast of 2 whole eggs and 1 egg white with a slice of fat free cheese, 2.5oz of some sort of red meat, half an avocado, a slice of keto toast with sunbutter, 2 stalks of celery with nuts n more spread and a cup of cashew milk.  My pre-bed meal would be 1/3 cup of organic lowfat cottage cheese (I’d buy full fat but my store doesn’t sell it), 1.5oz of red meat, 1 whole egg, 1/6 of an avocado, 2 stalks of celery with nuts n more spread, 1 slice of keto toast with peanut or almond butter and a cup of cashew milk.  In between those meals would be “meals” of greek yogurt, 5oz of ground turkey with veggies or a chicken breast/thigh, a protein bar, etc etc.  I like book ending the day that way because breakfast gets me off to a solid start nutritionally so that I’m not playing catch-up with my other meals and, IF, for some reason, I end up under-eating for the day, I can make up for it by just taking on to the pre-bed meal.  It’s nice to have that insurance.

 

HOW TO HAVE AN APPETITE/GAIN EFFECTIVELY

You'll definitely create an appetite after you empty your stomach

* GET A PROWLER.  I cannot emphasize this enough.  The prowler is an amazing conditioning tool and WILL make you hungry.  Primarily because it has zero eccentric component to it, so you can just push and push until you are absolutely nuked, feel totally wasted for that day, and fresh the next morning.  Your appetite will be through the roof as a result.  And it doesn’t have to be a “prowler”: use the Rogue Butcher, or the Titan knock offs, or any other company’s pushable sleds.  Or go make your own.  Or go push a car (did that a bunch, but make sure to have someone working the breaks).  I’ll accept pulling a sled too, but walk backwards with it and hold onto handles, rather than looping it into your belt. 

 

* Do your conditioning in general.  The prowler is a must, but other conditioning is great too.  I actually make it a point the start my day with SOME sort of conditioning before breakfast.  Tabata work is great for this: it’s a 4 minute workout.  Here’s one I’ve been doing a lot of recently: 1 armed alternating KB snatches during the 20 seconds on/1 armed alternating KB swings during the 10 seconds off.  Gets you breathing hard and ready to eat, and probably helps with nutrient partitioning or something.  No KB?  Do some burpees.  Or pick a Crossfit WOD or something out of Book 2 of Tactical Barbell or do some updowns or SOMETHING.  Outside of pre-breakfast, there’s always hill sprints, running, weighted vest walks, etc.  Again: these things create appetites, along with getting you in better shape and most likely putting your nutrients to good use.

 

* Take all presses from the floor.  Do yourself this favor.  And it pains me to have to explain this, but “the press” refers to pressing a weight overhead.  “So it’s the overhead press?”  No, because there IS no THE overhead press: pressing a weight overhead can be done with a push press, strict press, push jerks, etc etc.  But THE press specifically refers to pressing without the use of leg drive.  That having been said now, when you press, take it from the floor if you’re looking to gain.  It adds more work to the movement, which is what drives hypertrophy.  In addition, it will build up some athleticism and explosiveness in you, and in many cases actually prime you/put you in a better position to press.  At the least, take the first rep from the floor and press out the rest, but if you’re feeling REALLY spicy, take every rep from the floor.  Exceptions are granted for max singles out of the rack, but you ideally DO want to be able to clean anything you can press.  And if cleaning isn’t your game, learn the continental.  This is also a great tactic for odd objects.  Oh, and if you have access to a log, do viper presses.  You won’t regret it.

You'll get hungry just watching this

 

* Daily work.  I’ve written about this before, but for the unaware, my most successful weight gain phases have included daily resistance training exercises ON TOP OF whatever other training I have for that day.  At present, no matter what is on my schedule, I do the following every day: 50 dips, 50 chins, 50 band pull aparts, 40 bodyweight reverse hypers, 30 glute ham raises, 25 band pushdowns, 20 standing ab wheels, and 10 neck bridges in 4 directions (front, back, left and right).  The key is to keep things WELL below failure, so as to not sap recovery from your actual training.  Sometimes I get these done by just rest pausing until I get the reps, other times I do a bodyweight circuit and chain together a bunch of movements, and other times I just knock out reps here and there (my gym is in my garage, which I pass through to take out the trash/do chores through the house).  Either way, you break down those numbers and I’m getting in an extra 350 dips/chins/pull aparts a week along with everything else.  It all adds up.  This is ALSO a great way to remove some assistance work from your main training workouts so you can shave off time and get out of the gym sooner.  I keep these exercises as bodyweight or banded movements and stay away from externally loading the body, as it seems to facilitate recovery.

 

* I feel like the trend is starting to make itself obvious here: do MORE, not less.  And I know that goes against many of my lifting forefathers’ thoughts on the matter, but I’ve DONE the whole “don’t run when you can walk/don’t walk when you can stand” stuff as it relates to gaining and I found it didn’t result in the sorta growth I wanted.  When you’ve got a billion calories surging through your body, THAT is the time to captailize on it and go make EVERYTHIGN on you get better.  Conjugate training for sure.  Right now, I’m in the best conditioned shape of my life, because I’ve been running 2, 3 and 4 a days as far as training goes.  COVID has shut down the world, I’ve got nothing else to do with my freetime, so I’m just training like a madman and eating all the food in the world to fuel it.  And what’s cool about that is just how many nutrients you can put through your body when the demand is that high.  I get in so many different sources of fats, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, etc etc, because I can eat SO much food with this training, which in turn primes to body well for growth.  When you’re only afforded the thinnest of nutritional margins, you miss out on that stuff.  Leave lethargy and sloth for times of REDUCED calories: that’s known as hibernation. 

 

 

Boy what an epic this turned out to be.  Hopefully some good will come of it.  Be sure to ask any questions you have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

IF YOU WANT TO GET BIGGER, STOP LIFTING 6 DAYS A WEEK

 

Oh boy am I going to upset a lot of folks with this one, but turn-about is fair play, because this has been upsetting me.  Didn’t we learn anything folks?  Hardgainer already covered this in the 80s, as did Stuart McRobert, Paul Kelso, Randall Stroseen, John McCallum, and then even modern contemporaries like Paul Carter, Jim Wendler, Dan John, etc etc.  When size is the goal, we lifting 3-4 days a week has historically been THE successful approach, with OCCASIONAL forays into 5 days a week, but just as frequently deviations into twice a week or 3 times every 2 weeks.  This 6 days of lifting each week thing is a goofy fad that has hoodwinked a lot of new trainees and brought them onto a path of lacking gains and wasted time and energy.  If you want to get bigger: train LESS.

Between the two of them they trained 1/4 as much as you do and carry 11x as much muscle...take note

 

Why train less?  Haven’t we scientifically proven that training a muscle twice a week is the optimal amount for maximal hypertrophy? Any of my regular readers will know how painful that sentence was for me to write.  First of all: you’re not going to prove anything with a study: all you can hope to do is observe.  You can observe trends, you can observe CONSISTENT trends, but you’re not going to prove anything.  It’s up to us to take the findings of these studies and draw our conclusions.  But along with that, any discussion of “optimal” as it relates to a human is silly, because we are NON-optimal beings living non-optimal existences: nothing we do will ever be optimal.  And in that point of fact, often it is the case that, when living a non-optimal existence, the “optimal” approach is actually LESS effective than the non-optimal approach.  Example?  Let’s say the Bulgarian method was, for the sake of argument, THE optimal method: it’s certainly not optimal for family man that works a full time job and takes night school classes: that dude probably needs a far more INFREQUENT approach to training to get optimal results.  And finally, “maximal hypertrophy” is a silly concept: we don’t know what that is, because, again, we can’t prove that.  All we can do is observe.

 

All of THAT said, even without my little “semantics tantrum”, training twice a week STILL isn’t the optimal amount for maximal hypertrophy: RECOVERING from training is what is needed for hypertrophy.  Training is CATABOLIC: it breaks down muscle.  After the catabolism, we need anabolism: that’s the recovery portion.  I covered this in a fairly recent post about training for self-destruction and eating for self-preservation, so rather than beat you up again over all that, I’ll get to my obvious conclusion there: the “secret” to getting bigger isn’t about training more: it’s about RECOVERING better.  It’s why steroids are popular among bodybuilding: it improves muscle protein synthesis, so the body recovers from training better and you gain more muscle than you naturally would.  Yes yes, some of you chuckleheads will talk about how they can also increase recovery and allow for more frequent training: do yourself a favor and read the “Metroflex Gym Powerbuilding Basics” book and TRY to find a 6 day a week program in it, to include the ones used by Branch Warren and Ronnie Coleman. 

Just imagine what they could have accomplished if they trained CORRECTLY...

 

But let me get to the REAL meat of the issue here: folks, if you’re lifting weights 6 times a week, you’re phoning it in.  I’m sorry, that upsets you, but it’s the truth.  The effective muscle building programs are 3-4 days a week because THAT’S THE MOST YOU CAN TRAIN.  You’re REALLY going to run Super Squats 6 times a week?  You’re really going to add 2 more days of lifting onto Deep Water?  You’re really going to run the lifting in 5/3/1 Building the Monolith back to back in one week?  Triple widowmaker DoggCrapp weeks?  No: not if you’re ACTUALLY putting in the required effort that these programs demand.  This is how I know that folks don’t understand effort: they balk at these programs because they “want to spend more time at the gym”.  If you LIKE spending time at the gym, that means you’re DEFINITELY not putting in the required effort to grow.  When you’re training hard enough to grow, it SUCKS.  I legit laid on my back in between sets 6 and 7 of a Deep Water workout one day and contemplated selling all of my equipment and quitting lifting because I hated it THAT much.

 

We make the body grow by imposing a significant demand on it, and said demand is going to take a WHILE to recover from.  I would legit walk like a wind-up toy solider for 6 days after the Deep Water squat workouts: leg day wasn’t happening twice a week.  When you set out with the requirement that you MUST lift weights 6 days a week, you put yourself in a position where you’re holding back 6 days a week to be able to meet your arbitrary programming requirements, which defeats your goal of training HARD enough to actually grow muscle.  Yes: even if you split the muscle groups “intelligently”: reference my previous discussion on bro-splits.  Unless you figure out a way to exclusively employ isolation exercises in your muscle group split, you’ll never NOT have overlap in your training, which means muscles will get stimulated from indirect work, which ALSO means that your “twice a week” approach is resulting in MORE than twice a week stimulation and, in turn, that you must hold too much in reserve to be able to accomplish that sort of frequency.

The berserker at Stamford wasn't planning on coming home

 

But fear not, follower of studies and science: it’s STILL possible to train a muscle twice a week without lifting 6 days a week: it seems you have (convieniently) forgotten about conditioning work.  What a shock, I know: everyone wants to lift weights because it’s easy: no one wants to do a burpee.  But conditioning is the answer here, specifically intelligently selected conditioning: stuff with minimal to no eccentric loading.  Pull a sled, push a prowler, walk up a hill with a weight vest, skip rope, do some Crossfit WODs with Olympic lifts, load stones and kegs, throw stuff, etc etc.  You get to train the muscles AND, when done well, these serve as “feeder workouts”: getting restorative bloodflow to your muscles in between these incredibly brutal muscle building sessions so that you can recover and give MORE effort into your lifting, which, in turn, will drive you to grow bigger and stronger.  It’s self-perpetuating. 

 

Ever wonder why Jim Wendler put all that conditioning in between the lifting in Building the Monolith?  Notice how Jon Andersen put in a day of stair work on Deep Water?  Remember John McCallum talking about getting in mile runs?  It’s because it’s been understood that, in the pursuit of getting jacked, we don’t ONLY lift weights.  Getting big means doing things that suck, and conditioning sucks.  Lifting weights is easy: you can do it while you lay down.  It’s natural that trainees want to gravitate toward doing THAT more often…and doing what comes natural to us is what makes us fat, slow, weak and soft.  Our nature betrays us: go be a freak.

Both are freaks: we wanna be like the one on the left

 

Lift hard enough that you CAN’T lift more than 3-4 days a week, and spend that extra time doing conditioning so that you CAN do the next workout and grow. 

PROGRAM REVIEW: 5/3/1 BBB BEEFCAKE

[Hey folks, I don't know why blogger is being so stupid with the formatting on this post.  Sorry]

**INTRO**

As COVID continues to be a thing and the possibility of strongman competitions still being far out of reach, I decided to join the programming party over at r/gainit on reddit wherein they were undertaking my 26 week mass building programming block composed of BBB Beefcake, 5/3/1 Building the Monolith, Deep Water Beginner and Deep Water Intermediate.  Undertaking this has boded well with me psychologically, as it’s rather uncharacteristic of me to ever suggest a program/approach I haven’t personally employed, so now was my chance to “put my money where my mouth was”.  In addition, I had just come off my most successful fat loss block ever, and was in a prime position to do some growing.

**EXECUTION**

I wanted to give this program a fair shake, so I did everything Jim said to do.  I did the exact assistance work directed, used the percentages prescribed, kept my supplemental work to within 20 minutes, etc. …however, I ALSO went well above and beyond that, with LOTS of extra assistance work and a LOT of conditioning.  I was running 2 and 3 a days for training, and frequently ran all 4 days back to back.  It’s what my schedule could support, and, in turn, drove me to eat a ton, which was one of my goals.  It all worked out in the end though, as I only ended up missing 1 single rep from the program, and it was on 5s pro mainwork on the press, primarily as a result of a technical issue.  I’ll detail specific deviations below.

**ADJUSTMENTS AND MODIFICATIONS**

* I ran the program 3/5/1 vs 5/3/1, which I imagine is more how Jim would have wanted it anyway.  For “hard” 5/3/1 programs, 3/5/1 works really well.  The 5s week functions like a mini-deload.

* On the deadlift day, I rotated between 3 different implements depending on the week.  On the 5s week, I’d use an axle.  On the 3s week, I’d use a Texas Power Bar.  On the 1s week, I’d use a Texas Deadlift Bar.  I really liked how this worked out, because the implements get easier to pull on as the percentages go up, which gave each week its own unique challenge.  An axle is incredibly stiff and puts the weight slightly out in front of you at a slight deficit, whereas a power bar is stiffer than a deadlift bar.  This helped me maintain the “oh sh*t” factor of gaining programs, where you’re afraid of the future so you eat to grow.  If I had pulled on a deadlift bar for all 6 weeks, the 5s week would have felt like a joke and may have resulted in me undereating out of lack of fear for the 1s week.

* I did all my pressing with an axle.  I originally had an idea to rotate in the strongman log as well, but in truth I have an easier time strict pressing a log vs an axle, and whenever my axle press goes up so does my log, so staying with the axle worked well.  Early in the program, I started taking my presses from the floor instead of out of the rack.  It added an element of challenge, and as a strongman competitor it was a good skillset to maintain.  On the 5s week, I made it a point to clean each REP off the floor for the BBB work, and I considered that my “rows” for the day.  Since I was training early in the morning, I was actually controlling the eccentric on the way down, turning these into “touch and go cleans”.  I had a few cleans that turned into continentals when the weight got heavy enough.  

* For benching, I took to pausing each rep of the BBB work for the 5s week and pausing the first rep of each set of the BBB work on the 3s week.  Also used an axle for benching.

* I used a buffalo bar for all my squatting.  Didn’t really get cute with modifications on it: I just used shorter rest times (75 seconds) on the 5s week, 90 seconds on the 3s, and up to 2 minutes on the 1s.  

* I made frequent use of supersets with the BBB work on all days.  DB rows superset with benching, axle rows or cleans supersetting the pressing, reverse hypers supersetting the squatting, and weighted dips supersetting the deadlifting.  

* I did ABSURB amounts of assistance work.  I’d meet the minimums laid out by Jim, but tended to kitchen sink things.  DB benching on the bench and press days, rows and belt squats on the squat days, a full on “back day” for the deadlift day, Poundstone curls on bench day, etc etc.  Jim says you can always do more assistance work if you feel like it, and I sure did.

* I also had my conditioning work turned WAY the hell up.  I did some form of conditioning everyday, and usually did hard conditioning 4-5 times a week.  I did a lot of 2 and 3 a days.  My 4 “go to” hard conditioning workouts were 2 Crossfit WODS ([Grace done with an axle

and Fran done with strict chins and occasionally a log instead of a barbell), 100 six count burpees for time, and a Front Squat/burpee workout using Josh Bryant’s “Juarez Valley” protocol out of “Jailhouse Strong” (front squat a near max rep set, do 5 burpees, then do 1 rep of front squats, 5 burpees, a set of front squats with 1 rep fewer than the topset, 5 burpees, 2 front squats, 5 burpees, continue until you meet in the middle, next week do it faster, heavier, or for more reps).  I’d have some wildcards in there, like doing Stone of Steel shouldering for 30 reps as fast as possible, a workout I dubbed “Dan John’s mistake” that was 95lb thrusters for 1 round alternated with 1 arm KB swings (switch hands each rep) for 1 round, performed at Tabata intervals for 16 rounds total, prowler stuff, KB circuits, etc.  And then for easy conditioning I’d do weighted vest walks and some running, as I had a 10 mile race coming up on my deload week.

* On the above, I tried to match up conditioning workouts with lifting workouts to be complimentary.  I’d do Grace later in the day after my press workout, since the axle was already loaded and I was primed to clean and press from earlier in the day.  I’d do Fran later in the day after my squat workout, to get blood flowing to the legs.  I’d do that Juarez Valley workout the day after squats for similar reasons.  I’d do the 100 burpees the day after deadlifts because I wanted to keep a load off my body and move it through space a bunch in order to get some restorative bloodflow.

* It wasn’t often that I lifted weights 4 days a week and had 3 days of not lifting weights: I frequently employed a 6 day training week instead.  Just how my life shook out.

**NUTRITION**

I kept things low carb, as it’s just the way I like to do things.  I was coming off my most successful fat loss phase ever, wherein a major player in that was slashing my dietary fats, so I wanted to focus on bringing them back up.  I tried blending principles of Deep Water and Mountain Dog nutrition together, and took to calling it “Deep Mountain”, and, in turn, came up with stupid names for the whole process like “Big Deep Beef Mountain”.  Essentially, it was low carb with a focus on quality nutrition sources.  Whenever I needed to allow “dirt” into the diet, I’d lean to one of the two authors on allowable deviances.  Meadows is pretty anti-quest bar, while Andersen tolerates them.  Andersen is anti-sweets, while Meadows supports dark chocolate.  Etc.

I gradually increased fats through the 6 weeks of the program and introduced a few new foods (primarily cashew milk and dark chocolate), but it would be painful to go into the complete and full detail of the dietary evolution.  If you ever wanna know, come find me sometime and we’ll discuss.  Instead, I’m going to lay out a typical training day’s nutrition for me.  Keep in mind: I don’t count any calories or macros.  I DID take to using a food scale a bit during this process, just to keep myself from UNDEReating.  I was still fighting my “diet instincts” through this process, having come off a fat loss phase.  Below is a training day on work days that I worked an early shift at the end of the end of the program.

* 0310: Wake up, eat 2 cage free whole eggs and 1 egg white, 2.25 ounces of grassfed beef (often piedmontese), 1/3-1/2 of an avocado, some grassfed butter 1 Birch Bender keto frozen waffle or slice of keto friendly bread slathered in no sugar added sunbutter, 2 stalks of celery slathered in nuts n more spread.

* 0330-0435 training

* 0440: 8oz of egg whites international drinkable egg whites mixed with 1 scoop of whey protein and a serving of “amazing grass” greens supplement with some fat free whipped cream

* 0500: 3/4 cup of fat free greek yogurt mixed with cinnamon, a protein scooper’s serving of Naked PB peanut flour and some fat free whipped cream

* 0600: 1 Lite n Fit fat free greek yogurt and 1 oikos triple zero fat free greek yogurt with a sugar free energy drink

* 0700: A quest bar

* 0800: Turkey sandwich: 2 slices of keto friendly bread, small serving of low fat miracle whip mixed with mustard or siracha sauce, pickles, lettuce, tomato, 3 slices of organic turkey breast deli meat and a slice of fat free cheese

* 0900: Veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, mushrooms, etc, just something veggy) and either a slice of deli meat turkey or a slice of Piedmontese summer sausage

* 1000: Cabbage salad with 5oz lean meat and some sort of fat free/low calorie dressing (sometimes salsa, sometimes sugar free BBQ sauce)

* 1100: same as 0900 meal

* 1200: same as 1000 meal

* 1330: 4 macademia nuts, 4 walnuts and a square of Ghiradelli intense dark chocolate (92-100% dark chocolate)

* 1630: Some sort of meat and veggie, typically higher fat, sometimes mixed with 1/3 to ½ of an avocado

* 1800: Sauerkraut mixed with horseradish and other spicy stuff (started experimenting with introducing spicy food after doing a bunch of reading on it)

* 2000: Final meal 1/3 cup of organic grassfed low fat cottage cheese, 1.25 ounces of grassfed beef, 1 organic cage free whole egg, 1 slice of keto friendly toast slathered in natural almond or peanut butter, 2 stalks of celery slathered in nuts n more spread, 1 keto friendly brownie made with olive oil, 1 cup of cashew milk (this was an intentionally high fat meal consumed before bed as part of an experiment to improve sleep quality by having high rates of satiety)

For fluids, I’d have at least 6 liters of water a day along with a fair amount of diet soda, green tea, sparkling water and zero sugar Gatorade.

Yup: I was eating every hour on the hour for quite a while in my workday.  I’ve always liked frequent small meals, and even if the science about keeping the metabolism burning isn’t real, it works for me.

Here are some breakfast-porn shots for your enjoyment

* Santa Maria breakfast of grassfed piedmontese tri tip, eggs and a keto waffle

* Egg patties mixed with grassfed ground beef, celery with nuts n more and keto toast with sunbutter

* 6oz grassfed piedmontese sirloin, eggs, celery with nuts n more and sunbutter toast

* Eggs mixed with piedmontese steak tips with half an avocado on a creppini egg wrap, celery with nuts n more, sunbutter toast and a mug of cashew milk

Packing for work

**EXPERIENCE AND RESULTS**

Unfortunately, I never weighed myself for this process.  As you can see from my nutrition, my wake up times are EARLY, and I got 2 dogs that are VERY excited that I’m awake at that time, because it means they get to eat early.  To make my morning move as fast as possible, I sleep in my gym clothes, and I’m not about to strip naked, weigh myself, and get dressed again while my dogs are going psycho when my wife doesn’t need to wake up for another 3 hours for work, so morning naked weigh ins just weren’t possible for consistent measurements.  I DID take photos at the end of each week, and have the start and end here

* [Beginning of program] 

* End

I received enough compliments and observations from outsiders to know that growth was occurring through the process, and my food intake continued to go up while leanness maintained about the same, so I’d say that’s all good signs.  I appear a bit meatier.

On top of that, my lifts performed VERY well on this program.  I kept setting conditioning PRs on timed events (to include a LIFETIME PR on Crossfit’s Grace WOD, done with an axle, with a time of 2:46, a 12 second PR), which is cool in and of itself, AND I managed to hit the week 3 and week 6 numbers, which, with a growing TM, shows improvement through the process.  I also observed my ability to use shorter rest periods with heavier weights between weeks 2 and 5.  I became a total squatting machine, which, for me, is pretty rare: always been my worse lift.

**MY EVALUATION**

This definitely wasn’t the hardest program I ever ran.  I think this could actually serve to be a fairly regular 5/3/1 program for one’s rotation, and may actually just be a plain old “better” way to do BBB.  HOWEVER, weeks 3 and 6 DID have an element of the “oh sh*t” factor that I look for when it comes to programs that force growth.  I’d catch myself looking at the numbers I was expected to hit and find myself coming up with a plan of attack for them, which is a good sign.  It also incentivized my eating, and, when cheat meals worked their ways in right before my deadlift workout, it was kismet.  But I was also killing myself on assistance and conditioning work.  Taking it exactly as Jim wrote, it should be an ideal growing program for a junior trainee that hasn’t had a real taste of hard training yet, as it’s going to push past some comfort zones.

It definitely upped my appetite, in the literal sense.  I was hungry while running the program, and that was ultimately my goal: I wanted to get BACK to eating to support training, as I was stuck so much in a paradigm of eating to lose fat.  It was great being able to keep adding more and more food to my diet each week.

In all, this is a solid program, and doesn’t rank among Super Squats/Deep Water in the “run it once and maybe never again” category.  Definitely run this program, but consider making it a regular feature in your training.

**NEXT?**

For me, I’m continuing with my 6 month training plan, rolling into a deload and taking on 5/3/1 Building the Monolith.  I won’t be increasing my TMs linearly, but will instead use the correct TMs for the program.  I’m thinking of halfway increases, if not some decreases as needed.  I won’t be doing the recommended diet, but instead sticking with my “Deep Mountain” approach.