FLOOD MYTHS AND REBIRTH

 

If you look into it, pretty much every culture on earth has some sort of “flood myth”.  For most of my audience, the most easily accessible one is the “Noah’s Ark” flood myth from the Christian Bible/Jewish Torah, which for my readers who somehow AREN’T familiar with that story, I’ll quickly summarize: God realizes humanity was a mistake (I mean…) picks one man out of the lot, tells him to build a big boat for him, his family and 2 of all animals on the planet (because humanity was a mistake but the animals are alright, and if you’ve ever had a pet dog you surely agree with that), then floods the Earth for 40 days and nights, effectively etch-e-sketch erasing the species, then the family safely docks and generations of inbreeding re-populates the planet.  The Gilgamesh Epic has a similar such story to it, Viking “Ragnarok” is to lead to the eventual re-start of existence once the battle is done, Hinduism has a concept of a continual destruction and recreation of existence (meaning a non-linear timeline, and instead a cyclical one), and Nietzsche wrote about the eternal recurrence in his own philosophy, which he borrowed heavily from 19th century understandings of Hinduism and Buddhism. And outside of “myths”, we, as a planet, actually DID experience our own flood story.  It’s wild to think that, prior to the existence of humanity, there were f**king DINOSAURS roaming the planet, living full lives, eating mega-fauna and living in a balanced eco-system only to have a goddamn meteor strike the Earth, disrupt everything and set in course a chain of events eliminating one species and allowing the creation of another. 

If you want a quick summary

The fact these myths exist in all cultures AND that we’ve actually, as a global populace, have experienced a real-live version of this phenomenon is proof-of-concept that we, as a species, AND the universe as an entity have some sort of inherent and intrinsic desire to experience this wiping the slate clean and starting over.  There’s something appealing about it in the very fiber of our being as a sentient species AND within the cosmic energies that it’s simply an undeniable drive.  We will it from within AND it’s willed upon us as well.  In turn, fighting against this drive is to fight our own nature AND to fight against the will of the very universe, which, like fighting the tide, is a losing battle.  No matter how much we thrash, no matter how much progress we feel we are making, we will eventually succumb to this drive.  It is simply what we are.

 

And as grand-scale as this discussion may appear, it absolutely still relates to how we train and how we eat.  I’ve alienated some of my reading base recently due to my current obsession with carnivore style eating, but ultimately what I am expressing is a flood myth and rebirth within my nutrition.  I had one way I had been following for years (“low carb” via tons of hacks and cheats and VERY frequent food consumption) until a catastrophic flood event resulted in a total wiping of the slate clean and starting over from scratch.  The transformation happened live, all was documented, I was drawn to “high speed/low drag” and found myself where I’m at now, which is in turn the catalyst for the e-book I’m writing based off 3-sentences, which I’m honestly writing THIS piece JUST to give my readers a break from that book as I write it, because I know it’s not everyone’s jam.  But I’ve already digressed.

I am quite talented at this trick

 

This is NOT the first time I’ve experienced a flood in my training and nutrition.  This is one of several flood myths.  My first bit of ANY sort of formal training was martial arts when I was 8 years old, and martial arts consumed my life until I was 21, at which point I hung up my gloves and switched my entire focus to lifting.  Yes, I lifted before that time: to supplement my martial arts. Now, suddenly, I was married and had to pick my priorities: martial arts, lifting weights, being a loving spouse.  I could manage 2 of those: not 3.  And hey, at that same time, my nutrition experience a flood: I went from low-carb college dinning hall living to full tilt Dave Tate early 2000s style junkfood binging to put on as much weight as possible.  And this flood lasted for 3 years until I actually COMPETED in a powerlifting meet, at which point my reality got hit with another flood (you’re eating and training like an a-hole) and I had to wipe the slate clean and start over again.  And when I had my kid: a flood: it’s time to start eating and training like a role model.  And when I blew out my knee, a flood.  Etc etc.

 

And often, these floods coincided with me obtaining new (to me) information/education, for good or for ill.  Pavel Tsastouline’s “Beyond Bodybuilding” completely wiped my slate clean when it came to training, and overnight I switched from Muscle and Fitness workouts to sets of 5 for everything all the time.  Randall Strossen’s PhD in psychology was absolutely put to use when I read “Super Squats”, because he had me bought in hook-line-sinker on 20 rep squats and a gallon of milk a day, completely reversing my low-carb college dinning hall living up until that point.  After missing a 500lb squat the second time in a powerlifting meet, I decided to see what all this “5/3/1” was all about.  Mark Bell’s “Power Magazine” (which, at the time of its publication, my local Barnes and Noble would only ever order 2 copies of each issue, so I had to work FAST if I wanted to read it) is where I rediscovered Jon Andersen after having first seen him compete in a 2005 IFSA competition, wondering who that super-jacked strongman was, and my first exposure to Deep Water and the WILD ride that followed there.  A flood of new knowledge, to inspire a cleansing flood to change paradigms.

Perfectly built to survive flood

 

Which is why I speak to not fighting these floods as they occur.  We have within us both a drive to wipe the slate clean AND some inherent seeking of comfort in things NEVER changing.  That, alone, is a fantastic demonstration of the duality that is humanity.  But people forget the former, and instead get upset with their favorite sources of training and nutrition WHEN those very beings experience their own floods.  “Why does this person keep changing their views!”  Because they are GROWING.  They are BECOMING!  Nietzsche, alongside his eternal recurrence, wrote of “the overman”, noting that humanity, in its current state, was simply a stepping stone in the course of history that would eventually result in the arrival OF the overman.  We are not done growing.  And, in turn, if the source you turn to for training or nutrition changes their views on things, this should be an EXCITING time rather than a time of anxiety.  It means we still have more room to grow, more potential to activate, and, ultimately, more avenues for success available to us.  How awful would it be if there were, in fact, limits to the ways we can succeed.  If a former carnivore finds success with eating carbs: outstanding!  More ways to win.  Same if the reverse occurs.  If one was initially an advocate of super high volume and now espouses the benefits of minimalist training, this person is no “traitor”: they are a shinning beacon of periodization.

 

It is the “lukewarm” transitions that we must reject, as THEY are unnatural.  There is no myth about gradual change: that is evolution (which, yes, some may contend that evolution is the myth and the flood is reality…some other day, perhaps, we discuss that).  We are a species that exists in a universe that promotes and supports the belief in a radical, destructive change from which we are reborn like a Phoenix.  THAT story is far more compelling, and it’s impacts far more substantive.  Embrace the desire to just scrap everything and start over from scratch.  Take everything you know, throw it out, and start over doing exactly the opposite of what you were doing before.  Periodization through complete and total self-destruction, as soon to follow will be self-Reconstruction, and what will result is something unique and incredible.         

  

“CHAOS IS THE PLAN” GETS PUNCHED IN THE MOUTH

Readers, often I find myself struggling to come up with an idea of what to write about.  I’ve got a self-imposed deadline of at least 1000 words written once a week, and I’ve abided by it for over 10 years now, and sometimes I just plain can’t think of anything until the 11th hour.  Other times, I am blessed with an opportunity that is too surreal to be fake, and I have the gift of being able to simply tell a story that happened to me.  This week, THAT happened, and it was just incredible.  I will begin with the story, and try to make it a learning experience by revealing the lessons we can learn from it.

THE STORY

If David and Goliath got re-told like this, I'd pay more attention in church...

Allow me to paint the picture here: I had the day off work, and I’ve learned that, whenever I have time off, I go for walks.  Apparently, walking is something I enjoy, and I owe Jamie Lewis for helping me re-discover that.  I like to listen to podcasts, get outside, and get in vitamin D.  And to accomplish that last part, yes: I am that guy walking around shirtless all the time.  This summer has been awesome for that, and I am the darkest I’ve ever been.  Those of you that watch my youtube channel may have noticed my sick tan.  I was absolutely rocking it, having gotten in a solid workout that morning with Jamie Lewis’ “Juggeryoke” protocol and a light breakfast of some egg whites before I hit the nearby nature trail.

As I’m walking and listening to my podcast (which was, no joke, Dungeons and Dragons Lore, because I am STILL a nerd), another walker on the opposite side of the trail frantically flags me down.  He says something that my noise canceling earbuds canceled out (which should have been a warning that what was coming next was, in fact, noise rather than signal), so I removed one earbud, asked him to re-state, and he points at me and asks 

“How many calories?”

"Am I on 'Punked' right now?"

…I am STILL baffled at this point, so I ask him what he means.

“How many calories do you eat per day?”

This was STILL baffling, but at least I could answer and (hopefully…but not likely) get back to my walk.   I responded that I had no idea, I had never counted a calorie or macro in my life, and that it sounded like a terrible way to live.

“Oh, well I DO count calories, and you’re about the size I want to get to, so I was curious how much I should be eating.”

And here, I saw the golden opportunity to introduce “Chaos is the Plan: The Plan” “out in the wild”.  I informed him “When I eat, I eat meat and eggs until I’m no longer hungry.  I don’t count, weigh or measure anything.”  

Slam-dunk!  I just gave this guy all the secrets, and I did it in just a handful of sentences.  That’s exactly what my 3 Sentence Training Manual is going to be!  Well my 3 sentences just got beat by 1 sentence, spoken by one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th and 21st century.

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”-Mike Tyson

You can actually SEE the plan vanishing

“Yeah, well I’m eating 2400 calories a day, and I’m wondering if I should add 1000 calories.  I think I may be losing weight too fast.”

I stared blankly at this man.  To go with that quote from Mike Tyson, I threw what I thought was going to be a fight ending haymaker, and he managed to pull Anderson Silva on me and knock me out WHILE backpedaling.  Motherf—ker defied physics on me: he “Neo in the Matrix’d” me.  He pulled off the kind of combination you watch Scorpion perform in Mortal Kombat when your little brother says “Hold on: let me try out all the buttons so I can figure out my character”.  I was in no way prepared for his counter response.

For those of you that don't speak MMA: shutting down a man's CNS with a lazy job thrown while backpedaling is like hitting a 400 yard drive using a minigolf putter

Because allow me to take a moment to further describe this scene.  I speak not with malice but mere accuracy when I say that this man could best be described as “doughy”.  He had the typical “melted candle” physique one observes in middle-age-ish men (I turn 38 in Oct, I think I’m just about at that demographic as well): narrow shoulders, upper body mass that is a combination of some manner of muscle and adipose tissue, pear shaped midsection adorned with love handles, dutifully hidden with a too large t-shirt covered in sweat from the sheer exertion of the walk, and legs that appear to sport development primarily from the labor of locomoting its own body around.   

And here I am, talking to this fellow human, giving him the keys to the kingdom, FINALLY being at a point where I CAN take 23 years of training and nutrition and boil it down into 3 sentences…and my gift is spurned.  Rejected.  Not even genuinely acknowledged.  He deftly parried it to the side and continued the dialog on HIS terms.

I tried to re-explain myself.  “I don’t count calories.  I eat meat and eggs when I’m hungry until I’m not.  Once I’m hungry, I eat meat and eggs again.”

“Yeah, but I can’t do that.”

Rest in Peace Dale...

“..You..you can’t do that?”

“No: I’m afraid I’ll overeat”.  Remember; he was wanting to ADD 1000 calories prior to this moment, and was afraid he was losing weight too fast.

“You won’t overeat: you stop when you’re not hungry.  You won’t eat if you’re not hungry.”

“It’s something I struggle with.”

At this point, I’m already pretty upset.  I walk specifically to have time to myself, and now I was no longer walking NOR was I by myself, and I was trapped in an argument with this dude wherein there was no prize whatsoever for winning.  

I had plenty of raisins at that point...

He volunteered more information I didn’t ask for “I think I’m actually just thirsty rather than hungry.  I’ve added a 15 mile bike ride to my daily activity to burn more calories.  I’ve lost 70lbs.  All I eat is pure protein.”

Whereas previously it was an Anderson Silva backpedal  counterpunch he threw at me, this was more like a clusterbomb of pure Kafkaesque lunacy.  He just threw a “Brazilian kick” at me, which, if you’re unversed in the world of kickboxing, is yet another physics defying act of brutality wherein a combatant throws a kick where the knee is saying “I’m going low!” but the shin goes “haha jokes on you: this is a head kick!”  It breaks your brain in multiple ways.  

Notice how, in the example, you need 5 legs to pull it off!

I zeroed in on the two biggest red flags right away: “pure protein” and the fact that, up until this point, I only know that this dude walks and rides bikes.  

“Pure protein?  Dude, you need fat in your diet!”  Why did I care?  I genuinely don’t know.  Despite my misanthropy, I suppose I didn’t want this guy to be one of those rare humans that starves to death while being overweight…

“Oh, there’s fat in the meat I eat.  And eggs”

But then…then it’s not pure protein…

“What kind of meat are you eating?”

“Beef.  Sometimes chicken”.  What a “not response”.  The fat profile of beef jerky is vastly different than a chuck roast.  Give me some DETAILS here man!

“Are you engaging in any sort of resistance training?”

“Oh yeah, I do weights 3x a week.”  Again…what does THAT mean?

“I brought in the bike because it gives me a chance to really emphasize the lower body.  I feel like a lot of people neglect it.  You can burn a lot of calories that way.”

At this point, I switched to one word responses and grunts.  I realized we were simply a bridge too far here.  He was giving ME advice now…and all I wanted was to go for a walk.  A walk, mind you, that I WASN’T doing to burn calories…simply to walk.  Because I like walking.

LESSONS LEARNED

Aside from parents being absolutely right about “don’t talk to strangers”, this was a fantastic real-life case study both in all the issues I’ll experience when I release my 3 sentence training manual along with mentalities regarding eating and training in general.  Let’s examine here.

* This person sought ME for MY help, and when given it, tried to spin it into his preferred paradigm.  And the literal casual observer would be able to deduce who was successful and who wasn’t between the two of us in the pursuit of physical transformation.  Paradigm breaking hurts, it’s hard, and it’s necessary.  If you are asking someone for their help: ACCEPT their help.  Come at it with an empty cup.  Do you need to do what they say 100% without question?  No: of course not.  This isn’t about cult-leader worship, but it IS about being open to new information IF you find yourself in a situation where what you’re doing ISN’T getting you to your goals.  I had achieved this guy’s goal, and irrespective of the fact that we would NEVER look like each other simply because of genetics variances, I at least had a case study of n=1 to contrast his n=0 in physical goal achieving.  He had nothing to lose and everything to gain by at least TRYING my approach and abandoning his current one.

They wouldn't make it a meme if it didn't really happen

* Having the diet and training relationship flipped.  This guy saw training as purely a means to burn calories in his pursuit of losing weight…but not “too fast”.  I don’t even know what to do with that, but I imagine his fears were in regards to “losing muscle”, in which case it makes the LEAST sense to try to burn fuel with training.  Training is there to IMPROVE us, and the food is there to recover from and facilitate the process OF improvement.  When we approach it with that understanding, we tend to be exacting about WHAT we put into our bodies.  We recognize that the food is key to actually REALIZING the results of the training.  But when we train simply to burn fuel, we, in turn, put any fuel we want into the gastank.  This guy was eating “pure protein”, which, taken at face value, is a recipe for dying from essential fatty acid and vitamin deficiency, but all he cared about was putting fuel in his body so he could burn it all up.  

* Hell, from a “losing fat” perspective, he’d be better off skipping the exercise and just keeping the fuel low.  OR, if he DOES exercise, make it primarily resistance training focused so he can signal to his body to build/hold onto muscle WHILE he loses the fat.  Instead, he’s telling his body “Hey, everyday, we ride a bike 15 miles and walk a ton: you need to re-configure yourself to be optimal at that”.  The body is going to say “Roger that: let’s start by getting rid of ALL this heavy and metabolically taxing MUSCLE.  It’s really weighing us down on these bike rides and walks.  We’ll be MUCH more streamlined AND we won’t need as much fuel!”  If you remember “being that which does”, this dude was being that which does long endurance activities, and the body was responding in kind.  And he was EATING like a scavenger vs a predator.  You ever see a really jacked coyote?  Me neither.

* “Help me help you”.  I genuinely had no interest in the success of this person, and I STILL was pulling teeth trying to get details out of him that actually mattered in the pursuit of things.  Don’t say you’re eating “pure protein” when you’re not actually doing that.  I heard that and assumed this guy was following a protein sparing modified fast, only to learn that he most likely meant “meat and eggs”.  And as I’ve learned from Dr. House “Everyone lies”.  I know his “pure protein” included some off menu things at this point: cop to it.  I’ve told several people that I only eat meat and eggs, only to have those people agree with me…only to observe those very people loading up on all sorts of debauchery at an office get together.  Once, I struck gold: we had a “build your own fajitas” table at an office function, and I was going to TOWN picking out chicken and steak and leaving behind all the veggies, only to turn around and see another self-proclaimed carnivore with his plate dutifully loaded with several tortillas, salsa, fajita veggies, rice and beans.  Yes, this person ate a LOT of meat; they did not eat ONLY meat.  These realities are worlds apart.  And it does you NO good to lie when asking for help: don’t try to impress the person giving you advice with a fake lifestyle, because the REALITY is as apparent as the love handles were on this dude.  What his mouth said couldn’t be heard over what his body said.

* The simpler the solution, the more complex the excuses have to be…apparently.

But, if nothing else, this will make a great Q&A/Annex for my book, so I am thankful for that.    

REVIEW OF DAN JOHN’S "MASS MADE SIMPLE"

 **INTRO**

Rather interesting how similar these two are...

* Greetings once again and welcome to another program review.  I endeavor to keep this one a little on the shorter side, as I’ve done a lot of the set-up for it in this post . My intent here is to specifically review Dan John’s “Mass Made Simple” program vs the combination that I’ve been running.

* But, in THAT regard, I must re-disclose that I did NOT run the FULL Mass Made Simple program: only the “important parts”.  That would be the complexes and high rep squats.  For the upper body work, I relied on daily Easy Strength workouts to carry me through, along with a daily prescription of 300 push ups (and 300 bodyweight squats…but that’s not upper body).

* All that said, I’m going to just hit some wavetops here and leave it more open for discussion/Q&A.

**HOW I MADE IT INTERESTING**

You wouldn't try that against Andre the Giant though...

* I did exactly like Dan said and came into this stupidly lean

The before photo was me at the end of Super Squats on 2 Mar, and the after was around 2 Jun, which is actually not quite my starting level for MMS.  

This is a bit closer

taken after my second Mass Made Simple workout, wherein I’m looking pretty damn flat and small.  

Here is workout 1

 so you can see a live action documentation as well.

* I changed my squatting style.  

Here was the 20x405 Super Squats Workout

Contrast that with the Final Mass Made Simple workout

 

This was legitimately the first time in 23 years I tried high bar squatting, and I imagine that being at a lighter bodyweight honestly helped there, as I had less “body” to get in the way of the squat.  I finished Super Squats at 201lbs, and started Mass Made Simple at 166.  I was simply a “new” human, and, in turn, ready to learn new mechanics.  But I ALSO changed up my squat style so that I wouldn’t have any old numbers to compare against and freak out over.  This was going to be totally uncharted territory for me.  Going completely beltless factored into that equation as well.  Plus, in the book, Dan says to go deep.  Roger that Dan!

**WHAT MAKES MASS MADE SIMPLE “DIFFERENT**

Aside from getting to eat like a King!

* HEAVY complexes BEFORE high rep squatting.  When you read the program, it just looks pretty vanilla.  Bench, press overhead, rear delts, abs, complexes and squats.  When you actually DO the program, the sick, brutal logic sinks in.  The complex that Dan prescribes is simple, and it’s BRUTAL when performed at the level he demands.  You rarely go above 5 reps, and, in turn, are often moving very heavy poundages (relatively) on these complexes.  If you keep your rest times honest (I aimed for a minute), you will come into your high rep squats with a significant amount of accumulated fatigue.  Along with that, all the “missing volume” of the program suddenly reveals itself.  On top of your upper body work BEFORE the complexes, you now get in 6-30 quality heavy reps of a wide variety of movements.  It was actually because of this that, the next time I tackle this, I’m going to use a horizontal press (most likely dips) during the Easy Strength portion of lifting: the complexes will get me enough overhead work.

* The reps BEFORE the high rep set.  Again, you don’t notice that they’re there UNTIL you have to do them, and suddenly you realize Dan was a real jerk and has you hit a hard set of 10 before tasking you to take your bodyweight for 50 reps.  This is all part of his master plan to turn you into a squatting machine by the end of the program and it absolutely works.

* Lifting every other OTHER day.  This is 14 workouts in 6 weeks, which means you go Lift-day off-day off-Lift vs the traditional Lift-day off-Lift style that you see with 3x a week programming.  You have some weeks where you lift 3x and some where you lift twice.  It’s absolutely the right prescription of frequency for these workouts.  That said, because I don’t lift on weekends, I had to tweak it a little bit, but I did so by hitting a MMS workout on Fri and Mon, with an occasional one on Wed when my schedule required it.

**MY NUTRITION**

You are what you eat

* I did not abide by Dan John’s prescribed Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches protocol.  I think they would absolutely work and anyone who wants to get after it can go do so.  My nutrition is really pretty nutty these days, and if you want an indepth read on it, go back to this post

* Simplest explanation is Jamie Lewis’ Apex Predator diet.   Whenever I eat food, it’s carnivore.  Otherwise, protein sparring modified fasting using protein shakes.  I would train fasted and drink shakes/eat pure protein until either my midday or evening meal.  Weekends would have 1 pure carnivore day with 4 meals and 1 Rampage day with a carb-up meal.  I also employed Jamie’s “Feast, Famine and Ferocity” protocol, and spent the first 4 weeks of the program in a feast status and finished in a famine.  Ideally, I’d have reverse that, starting with a 2 week famine and ending with the feast, but this was just how my schedule shook out.

**RESULTS**

Certainly felt this way

* I started the program at 166lbs and weighed in on the 5th week at 171.2lbs.  5lbs in 5 weeks: I like it, especially when I was merely eating to satiety vs forcefeeding.  I also stayed lean as hell through it, primarily because those complexes make you WORK!

* I added 8 reps to my 192lb squat, going from 50

to 58

and added 13 reps to my 212lb squat, going from 27

to 40

**WHAT I WOULD DO DIFFERENT**

Try to have cleans this strong WITHOUT looking like this...

* Either learn how to clean or use a different implement/complex for the complexes.  The clean was the primarily limiter I ran into, followed by the press.  If you watch some of the videos of my complexes, I often can’t get the bar into the rack position to start the front squats.  I MAY have been able to solve this by resting slightly longer and coming in fully refreshed, but the REST of my body was fine: I was just lacking in the ability there.  I DID make a point to try to focus on moving as fast/explosively as possible, but I feel like switching to an axle and continentaling the weight would have been a better call.  Otherwise, I could just do a different but still heavy complex to accomplish the goal.  I give myself permission to do so next time, now that I’ve run the program in full as much as I could.

**SHOULD YOU DO THE PROGRAM?**

"Is this a joke?"

* Oh my goodness yes, AND buy the book that goes with it.  It’s another fantastic “all in one” read for only $10 and contains SO much Dan John goodness in it.  I’m so excited to have finally had a chance to run it and realize Dan John’s genius yet again.

“CHAOS IS THE PLAN”: A 3 SENTENCE TRAINING MANUAL

Any of my regular readers know just how big a fan I am of all-inclusive training books: one stop shopping that covers everything you need in order to get training and eating right.  Paul Kelso’s “Powerlifting Basics Texas Style” does a fantastic job of providing a wide variety of programs AND a fantastic discussion on the 3 main food groups (Tex-Mex, BBQ and Cajun) to get a trainee eating and training right, and even dives into coaching.  5/3/1 Forever quite literally gives you all the tools you need to train, well, Forever.  Marty Gallagher’s “Purposeful Primitive” is an insane value with how it covers lifting, eating, and cardiovascular training, “The Complete Keys to Progress” is exactly that, “Super Squats” and Deep Water, etc etc.  And this love for all-inclusivity also corresponds with a love for all things “high speed/low drag”.  I don’t need fluff or presentation: I want to get to the point and get out.  Heck, people that have observed my bare bones nutrition of meat touched by flame can see it unfold, alongside my strongman equipment cobbled together out of gorilla tape.  It’s also why I’m such a fan of Dan John vs some of our more “science based” authors out there, or why I care more about a good story vs a good study.  And, in a true display of irony, this longwinded bloviation of an intro was put here to introduce the idea I have for a 3 sentence training manual which may, in fact, become my second e-book:

 

“Eat meat and eggs when hungry until no longer hungry.  Spend 180 minutes a week picking something up off the floor and putting it over your head.  Don’t repeat the same meal or workout twice in a row.”

 

Oh my god it was right there in front of us all along

EAT MEAT AND EGGS WHEN HUNGRY UNTIL NO LONGER HUNGRY

We've seen this before...

There’s no perfect diet, sure, but man, if everyone ate JUST meat and eggs when hungry until not, think of all the junk they’re NOT eating, all the damage they’re NOT doing, all the good stuff they’re putting into their body (protein and monounsaturated fats). And this doesn’t require a sliderule and degree from Harvard to figure out (although I AM shocked at how many people don’t seem to know what is an animal vs a plant…)

 

One of the “high speed/low drag” benefits of “eat meat” as a dietary prescription is how it avoids many of the issues trainees tend to have with food allergies and intolerances.  There are SOME meats out there that people can have allergenic reactions to (shellfish is notorious for this, and some folks can have reactions to pork and other animals), but beef, in particular, tends to be one of the least allergenic foods out there.  This is a boon because SO many times a trainee will ask for advice on how to eat and I’ll mention a wide variety of foods only for them to zero in on ONE of them and say “oh, I can’t eat peanuts, so peanut butter is out”. And rather than hold their hand and walk them to the MILLIONS of other choices available I tend to just get frustrated with the experience and wish them luck, as they’ve demonstrated just how much they fixate on the negative and refuse to engage in basic problem solving.  With our choices cut down, we earn MORE freedom, because we’ve eliminated SO many options that might trigger a negative biological response that there are only good choices available.  I say “meat” and you go from there.  There are SO many animals on the Earth that you’re bound to find one you can eat.  Yes: this will preclude vegans and vegetarians from succeeding.  You have the deepest condolences I can offer: you’ll have to walk your own path.

You aren't without your own role models

 

Eggs occupy an interesting space in the allergysphere as well.  Eggs tend to have higher instances of an allergenic response compared to meat, but, often, it’s the egg WHITES that people respond negatively to vs the yolk.  In turn, one can attempt to abide by “meat and eggs” and simply opt for the yolks vs the whites and see how they suits them.  There’s a LOT of good stuff in those egg yolks as it is, so eating them isn’t a bad idea at all.  BUUUUUT, if worse comes to worse and eggs are taken off the table, it just means eating more meat.

 

As a final aside to the aside, Dr. Ken Berry is a big fan of “Beef, Butter, Bacon and Eggs” as the answer to “what to eat”, with the helpful pneumonic of “BBBE”.  There’s methods to the madness too: beef remains one of the least allergenic meats out there, butter is a dairy product that few have a histamine reaction to as a result of the rendering out of proteins/lactose (which, if there is STILL an issue there, ghee can resolve it), bacon is simply magical, and whole eggs/egg yolks contain SO many awesome vitamins and nutrients.  And again, if we wanna talk high speed/low drag, boiling the list down to 4 foods definitely accomplishes that. 

I feel like it's self-explanatory...

 

And then there’s learning about hunger cues: not eating based on a schedule but because we’re hungry, and then eating until we’re not (not until we’re “full”, not until there’s no more food on the plate, just because we’re not hungry). We also get to learn about the difference between “hungry” and “bored”. When ALL we’re eating is meat and eggs, if we’re hungry: we’ll eat it. If we’re not, we won’t. Caveat: there would be no sauces or seasonings, outside of salt. If we have to trick ourselves into eating the food, we aren’t hungry.

 

It's worth observing that in no way am I advocating a means of achieving optimal health here.  That’s between you and your medical provider.  I am simply coming up with A high speed/low drag solution to the question of “what do I eat?”  If you have a BETTER approach: use it…but then, why did you come to me for answers?

 

SPEND 180 MINUTES A WEEK PICKING SOMETHING UP OFF THE FLOOR AND PUTTING IT OVER YOUR HEAD 

Yes; that will do nicely

Man, that just says it all. Much l like how the food is “when hungry, until not”, the pick the thing up and put it over your head can be “Do it until you can’t, wait until you can again, then do it again”. That answers the question about sets and reps. And if people REALLY want an answer, we could prescribe a time limit. And as I wrote that, I thought “how about a “per week” time limit?” That would REALLY streamline things. An hour a day, 3x a week is a very standard amount of “average human” training, so say we do that. 180 minutes. Split it up however you want now. You wanna train 7 days a week? Great: 25 minutes a day. Dan John would be proud. Can only train twice a week? 90 minutes each time. Man: imagine how goddamn strong you would get if, twice a week, you spent 90 minutes putting something over your head? That is a SCARY motherf**ker: especially if, after those 90 minutes, he puts away a dozen eggs and some steaks or ribs.

DON’T REPEAT THE SAME MEAL OR WORKOUT TWICE IN A ROW

Agree to disagree here Tyler

Forced variety/periodization. Don’t eat ONLY ground beef and eggs for every single meal: one meal, yes, the next steak and eggs (and hey, maybe chicken eggs for one meal and duck eggs for another, we can switch that up too), then ribs and eggs, pork chops and eggs, salmon and eggs, etc. For the workout, if ALL we have is a barbell, we’ll change the weights OR the way we got it over our head (snatch vs press), but if we have multiple objects, the world is our oyster. Kegs, stones, logs, sandbags, etc etc.

 

The nutritional variety will cover our nutrient bases. The implement/movement variety will cover our imbalances.  It also dawns on me that, if I wanted to be cute, I could change that sentence to simply “Chaos is the Plan”, so that it reads “Eat and eggs when hungry until no longer hungry.  Spend 180 minutes a week picking something up off the floor and putting it over your head.  Chaos is the plan.”…but you’d have to “know” me to know what the hell that final part means.  But it also DOES communicate more than JUST “don’t repeat the same meal/workout twice in a row.”  Now we can use that third sentence to mean that, not only are we not repeating meals and workouts twice in a row, but perhaps we won’t repeat weeks in a row either.  Think about that: now we just created a training cycle. 

 

When we employ the “Chaos is the plan” corollary to training, it means that some weeks our 180 minutes are divided between 2 workouts, sometimes 4, sometimes 7, etc.  And the change in amount of training days would result in a change in training time, which would naturally cause a waving of training volume by changing the training density or load employed to meet the training time.  Hey, isn’t a weekly change something we saw in 5/3/1, the Juggernaut Method, Dan John’s “1 lift a day”, basic western linear periodization, much of Alex Bromely’s programs, etc etc?  And what if we really DID make chaos the plan and used the roll of a die to determine how many days a week we were going to train THAT week?  Oh my god I’m loving this.

 

And heck, we could even boil this down WITHIN a week.  Just because I’m training 180 minutes over the span of 4 days doesn’t mean they have to be evenly divided workouts.  Rather than 4 45 minute workouts, what if I had one 90 minute workout and 3 30 minute ones?  Or 2 75 minute workouts and 2 15 minute ones?  30-90-15-45?  The possibilities are limitless!

Holy cow: I got 2 memes out of this movie!

 

And Chaos can be the plan with nutrition too.  Eat meat and eggs when hungry until no longer hungry.  Simple enough.  Don’t repeat the same meal twice in a row.  Simple enough.  Chaos being the plan means that some days we may simply just plain not eat.  If we’re not hungry, we’re not eating.  Or maybe we employ a protein sparing modified fast ala the Velocity Diet/Apex Predator Diet, or keep it full carnivore and rely on egg whites, chicken breasts, lean fish, etc and then do a day MUCH heavier on the fats.  I’ve heard some folks employ “fat fasting”: why not give it a go and see what happens?  A surefire way to take in a variety of nutrients is to eat a wide variety and methods of food, and through that we’ll learn just how our body responds to these foods to best maximize performance AND gain a little bit of metabolic flexibility to go along with it.

 

That even lends well to cyclical nutrition, something Jamie Lewis has written about among several other authors.  This could be a golden avenue to employ something ala the ABCDE diet, or take Justin Harris’ carb cycling and put it on its head by doing fat/protein cycling instead.  Therein, just like with training, we observe instances wherein the nutrition can be rotated on a weekly basis or within the week itself.  And this can be done while STILL keeping the nutrition simple: meat and eggs.  There is SO much variety within those two things that we can have limitless possibilities available.  A grassfed sirloin is going to have a much different breakdown compared to a grainfed slab of prime rib, to say nothing of comparing that same grassfed sirloin to some pork ribs, or a pot roast, or chicken thighs/wings.  And wanna compare some quail eggs to an ostrich egg? And while we’re talking about eggs, think about how you can eat the same eggs but PREPARE them differently.  Fried, poached, hard/soft boiled, omelets (steak and egg omelets are the meals of warriors), raw, scrambled, etc.  John Meadows spoke to the idea that we can reduce the instances of egg intolerances by varying the method in which we prepare them on a frequent basis.  Chaos is the plan, and chaotic nutrition can exist in the realm of restriction. 

 

EVERYTHING ELSE

I genuinely can't think of a more fitting image...

I had actually already shopped this idea out and someone pointed out to me the value of an adding a walk to the prescription.  It was the greatest contribution I had seen to any protocol in a long time AND completely overlooked by me because I subscribe to Jamie Lewis’ paradigm that walking isn’t a workout “it’s part of being a human being”.  That said, it wasn’t UNTIL I took on “Feast/Famine/Ferocity” that I started walking daily, so I was living a sub-human lifestyle for quite a while as well.  As far as walking goes, there are several outstanding prescriptions out there to follow.  There’s a lot of great science speaking to the value of a 10 minute walk after meals, and with Chaos being the Plan as far as our eating schedule goes, this allows for a chaotic walking schedule as well…but it also means on those fasting days we won’t walk at all.  But, perhaps, since calories will be on the low side, that’ll be a good thing.  Jamie Lewis prefers a set prescription of “2 miles a day, minimum, outside, rain or shine”, which is also a great way to get in some vitamin D…when it’s sunny.  And Dan John’s Easy Strength for Fat Loss tackles it by having the trainee have a set 60 minutes of training, lift weights at the start, and go for a walk for the remainder of the 60 minutes.  Given it’s an Easy Strength workout, the lifting can last anywhere from 10-25 minutes, so you can get in some decent walks, and Dan wants to trainee to legit put the weight down and head out the door while the heart rate is still up.  All of these are great prescriptions, and all rely on the trainee to do SOME sort of walking, which is the big takeaway.

 

Beyond that, I’d be a cad if I didn’t cop to still making use of nutritional supplements as part of a “safety net” for my carnivore based nutrition.  Everything I’ve read and heard says you can get all the required nutrients you need from animal products, and I find the position believable enough, but I also get my supplements for free from a high quality and high caliber company, so I see no reason to NOT use them.  So if you feel a need to supplement outside of the food to ensure all your bases are covered: go ahead.  The big takeaway with the nutrition prescription was to provide a VERY solid working foundation.

AND it's paleo!

 

For the training, if I HAD to add something to it, it’d be pushing/dragging a sled.  I’ve often written that my “desert island training” protocol would be log vipers and prowler pushes, and that still holds true.  The sled will build up the legs just fine with a concentric only movement that’s easier to recover from to allow for more frequent training, and it provides ANOTHER avenue of conditioning AND a potential for level changes in a workout as well if one goes with low handles/low crawls and drags.  But, I’ll also die on the hill that this is an unnecessary addition.  Is one doing to develop some Tom Platz looking legs from picking something up off the floor and putting it over their head?  No, but I’m sure they could develop some Milo of Croton or Farnese Hercules legs from doing that…and really, do you need more than that?

 

Another consideration I had was to either have a “dealer’s choice day” ala Jamie Lewis OR a caveat to take 10% of your training time each day and use it to train “whatever”.  I feel like this would do a good job of shoring up any issues trainees may have with imbalances, specific lifts that need bringing up, etc.  When we account for the fact that assistance work is responsible for 10% of our growth, it makes sense that we only spend 10% of our time on it.  So if you have a 25 minute training session, spend 2.5 minutes doing some assistance work.  Whether that’s an ADDITONAL 2.5 minutes or 2.5 minutes out of your 25 minute total training session is between you and your god: just get it done.

 

NOT THE END

 

I genuinely want to expand on this.  Look at how much could be done with just 3 sentences.  I can legit open up a book with those 3 sentences and then go on to list a jillion different “meat and egg” recipes in one portion alongside hundreds of “pick up off the floor and put overhead” workouts.  We could train our whole lives off these 3 sentences AND alongside the 3 principles of “Effort, Consistency and Time”.  The Freedom of limitation shines through yet again: give me 3 sentences and I’ll give you a book.

OBSERVATIONS FROM BEING HALFWAY THROUGH EASY STRENGTH/MASS MADE SIMPLE

About a month ago, I had finished up another run of Jamie Lewis’ “Famine” training protocol and found myself in a situation wherein I had a pretty chaotic summer schedule ahead due to travel and family obligations, and could not, realistically, commit to a structured, rigid and involved training program like what “Feast” would entail.  So I needed to take on a new approach.  I had read the “Easy Strength Omnibook” over Christmas (reviewed on this blog. Spoilers: it’s amazing: read it!), and finally found myself in a position wherein I could run it…

Yeah that's pretty much me

…buuuut…I had JUST finished Famine.  I needed to do something that was going to make me GROW!  Easy Strength, in and of itself, was NOT going to accomplish that…which begged the question of what I would do for the “everything else” portion of the program in order to force some growth.  I, of course, instinctively dove toward Super Squats, and considered how it’d answer the “what do you do for squats on Easy Strength” question…but then it got me thinking about ANOTHER hard squatting program I hadn’t run yet…which was ALSO a Dan John program.  

Enter “Mass Made Simple”, a program that had LONG since been on my list of programs to run…but, in truth, I could not wrap my brain around the upper body portion of the program.  Having read through the book a few times, it seemed to violate the “simple” portion of “Mass Made Simple”, because it required a LOT of tracking, planning and tinkering…while “Easy Strength” actually seemed simple…

…LIGHT BULB!  Combine them!  Let Easy Strength take care of the strength and Mass Made Simple take care of the mass.  From reading Dan’s work and listening to his podcasts, the upper body training portion of MMS was really just boilerplate stuff that was thrown in to get in SOME upper body work, whereas the real “magic” of the program was in the complexes and the high rep squats.  That sounds JUST like the “whatever else” of Easy Strength.  Do the Easy Strength workout, and THEN do complexes and high rep squats for “whatever else”…the goal being hypertrophy vs athletic performance (the latter being the more typical goal/”whatever else” of Easy Strength).

With that, I had a way forward, and decided to be cute and call the whole thing “MESS”, standing for “Mass-Easy, Strength-Simple”, and fully capturing just what this adventure is. And after 20 Easy Strength workouts I’m halfway through Easy Strength, and after 9 Mass Made Simple workouts I’m over half-way through MMS, so I felt like laying down some observations NOW before too much time passes and I forget any of this.  And now I’ll have the intro knocked out when it’s time to do a full-up review.

That said, let’s bulletpoint this up and get some observations down.

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"MESS" IN GENERAL

Props if you get this reference...and it would HAVE to be a PBJ to fit the program

* As far as making the schedule “work”, my situation forced me to get creative.  I don’t lift weights on weekends.  That’s my time with my family.  I will wake up before everyone on the weekdays to get in a lift, but on weekends I sleep in with the Mrs and spend time with the kiddo as much as I can.  This meant all my Easy Strength workouts were Mon-Fri, and I would have to find a way to get in 14 Mass Made Simple workouts in 6 weeks with that approach (Dan DOES permit one to stretch MMS out to 7 weeks, but that wasn’t something I was interested in doing).  In order to make the 14 MMS workouts fit, it required a schedule of effectively 2-3-2-3-2-2 MMS workouts over the corresponding weeks (2 on week 1, 3 on week 2, etc). 

* On the above, my preferred structure was to have MMS workouts be on Mon and Fri, with the 3rd one being Wed if applicable.  The reasoning for this was how my nutrition was structured, which I wrote about recently in my “nutritional alchemy” post, but, ultimately, on weekends I tend to eat more food than on weekdays.  So a Friday MMS workout meant I’d have the entire weekend to eat to recover from the training and force muscle to grow, and then I’d have my Rampage/carb up meal on Sunday and have that to train off of on Monday to really drive hard.  I’d go through my “fasting” meal on Monday, which had enough protein in it to recover and, combined with the HARD MMS workout, did a great job of causing some distress on my body to recover.

Like squatting 25lbs over bodyweight for 50 reps, for example

* The above schedule ALSO helps fit MMS’ intent of following up the hard squatting workouts with a “recharge” workout followed by a “rest” workout.  For me, these would be 20 minute hard conditioning workouts and long walks, while still including Jamie Lewis’ RX of 300 squats and 300 push ups daily.  I’d use the weekends to be generally physically active, but not engage in Easy Strength style workouts or anything that was stressful for long durations.

EASY STRENGTH IN GENERAL

Seriously: buy it.  It's Dan's Best work

* It’s EASY strength: it needs to be treated easy!  I’m a “grinder”, as Derek Poundstone would put it, and super mega slow-twitch, so I move 135 and 405 at the same speed.  But when the weights are easy, they should be moved fast and explosively.  Jim Wendler has spoken about this as well.  We get faster and more explosive by moving that way: grinding light weights just makes us even worse at moving light weights.

* That’s not to way that rep quality should be poor: the opposite.  Reps need to be owned.  This is an opportunity to master these movements, because the weight is light and we have a chance to really nail stuff.  My continental has grown in leaps and bounds because of the frequent practice and mastery.

* The parallels between Easy Strength and 5/3/1 become more and more apparent as I experience the program and review the lessons from Dan and Jim.  The difference is primarily that Jim is more prescriptive than Dan, which is funny because people comment on how Jim doesn’t spell out enough of the program, so they’ll REALLY dislike Easy Strength.  But, ultimately, the main work of 5/3/1 IS Easy Strength, especially when using 5s pro: it’s a small number of reps with light weight performed with the intent of owning the weight and crushing the rep.  From there, Jim lays out the “everything else” that Dan leaves up to the reader via prescribed supplemental, assistance, conditioning, jumps and throws.  Your “everything else” is hypertrophy?  Cool, do BBB or Building the Monolith.  It’s conditioning?  Great: prowler challenge.  Jim also spells out what weights to use, whereas Dan leaves it up to the trainee, and Jim forces you to use light weights whereas Dan tells you to do so.   So perhaps 5/3/1 is Easy Strength training wheels.

* Yes, there is a difference in that 5/3/1 doesn’t have you do the same movements everyday for 40 workouts, and instead tends to focus on 1-2 lifts a day, but that’s getting into nuance and preference.  One of the big takeaways here is how easily one can blend the methods as a result.  If you want to use Easy Strength AND build muscle without using my MESS approach, you could do Easy Strength and chase it with BBB, Monolith or Hardgainer supplemental/assistance/jumps throws and conditioning.  And hey: Easy Strength for Fat Loss is EXACTLY the “light conditioning” days of 5/3/1.

* In that regard, other places to steal for “everything else” would include the 10k swing challenge, Tactical Barbell (especially volume 2), Crossfit (do the Easy Strength program, then the WOD), Neversate/Brian Alsruhe programs (I’d skip Brian’s mainwork and just steal the assistance/conditioning to make this work) and, of course, Mass Made Simple.

Not really the go to for "Easy"

* Meanwhile, for contrasting programs to run AFTER Easy Strength is done, Dan’s 1 lift a day program is pretty much the total opposite of Easy Strength (focus on 1 lift a day, train that lift once a week, do it for a higher volume of total work), Deep Water (some lifts are trained once every 14 days, and you absolutely smash that lift), and possibly DoggCrapp (you’re rotating through so many movements that it’s a long while before you come back to it).  Conjugate would also strike a similar chord in that regard.

* The next time I run Easy Strength (which will most likely be very soon), I plan to use dips or incline bench vs overhead pressing for the press work.  I get in a good amount of overhead work with my conditioning, and with MESS it happens during the complexes as well, whereas my horizontal press these days is primarily the 300 push ups a day I do per Jamie Lewis’ mandate.  

* What I have found the most interesting thing about this is how my physique actually seems to be IMPROVING with Easy Strength, if not at least maintaining.  I felt like I would see a decline from the “lack of work”, but when you lift the same lifts 5 days a week, you DO get in a substantial amount of volume with high quality reps, vs a bunch of garbage sets.  

* Another theory I have about this is that I have “earned” this minimalist approach, as Dan writes about.  I had been going VERY hard and with lots of volume leading up to Easy Strength, and now this minimalist approach has allowed me to realize a lot of the potential I’ve been building up to as the fatigue dissipates and the body rebuilds.  Perhaps this also speaks to the “hormonal cascade” that Dan speaks of occurring once the lifting is done.

* On top of all of that, I can’t ignore how important my shift in nutrition has been as well.  I’m taking in SO much protein and quality fats these days and finally eliminated the ketojunk for good.

Keto...bread.  How was I this stupid?

* Short burstfire thoughts: Easy Strength works: I’m halfway through and already seeing results.  It IS easy, which is a good thing.  I dig these short workouts BECAUSE it allows me time to do other stuff.  In that regard, it’s good to cycle through the “whatever else” portion of Easy Strength and build other qualities.  Periodization, yet again.  Strength isn’t everything, and hypertrophy is a fine goal, so use Easy Strength to build your strength and use your “whatever else” to build your size.  That’s totally fine.

* A good approach to taking on Easy Strength at the start is to pick “new” movements to you so you can reap the benefits that come with improved mastery ALONGSIDE the benefits of Easy Strength as well.  You’ll observe rapid progression.  So go beltless if you’ve been using a belt, use chains or bands, go double overhand on your pulls, or use an axle, or use different foot/bar/hand placement, etc etc.

* Remember that a loaded carry is a LOADED carry.  If you just carry something: that’s a carry.  A loaded carry is a carry UNDER LOAD.  It took me a while to appreciate that.  It’s why I’m wearing weight vests and chains during most of mine.  Other alternatives are to pull a sled while you do it.  If you look at the cover of “Never Let Go”, you’ll see Dan really personifying this by carrying a sandbag while wearing a loaded backpack and pulling a sled.

Also a fantastic read

* For this particular run of Easy Strength, I kept it easy AND simple.  Dan said, if he could do it all over again, he’d just do 3x3, so that’s exactly what I did.  I also am keeping all the lifts the same throughout, minus the carries of course, since Dan said specifically to never repeat that workout.  The next time, though, I plan to play around with reps and sets and the movements as well.  Specifically, if I were to do another run like MESS or something similar with a hard lifting workout thrown in, I’d most likely make that particular Easy Strength day the 1x10 variant OR use the 1x10 variant for the follow-on day as a means to recover from the workout.  The 5-3-2 day would be a good realization day, and then 2x5 would be a good “punch the clock” sort of workout.  So, again, if this was MESS, you could do 5-3-2 on the MSS day, then do 2x5 as your recharge and 1x10 as your rest.

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With that, there’s my halfway report.  I’m excited to see where this second half leads.