STRONGMAN COMPETITION WRITE-UP: "STRENGTH GAMES V" @ "THE BAR" JOHNSTON IOWA: THE PRE-WRITE UP

 **INTRO/BACKGROUND**

The last time I competed was summer of 2022 in an Unsanctioned Competition at Testify Strength and Conditioning in Omaha, NE, wherein I came in 2nd out of 3 competitors in the 185lb category.  Since that time, I had radically switched gears as far as nutrition went and ended up walking around regularly at 166lbs: my high school weight.  It was a wild ride to get there that goes beyond the scope of this write-up, but it meant that this was going to be my first competition as a lightweight male.  Previously, I’d competed at Strength Games as a Middleweight, so I was excited for a new challenge, but also realized that coming in 15lbs under the weight limit against guys who most likely cut weight to get there meant I was definitely operating behind the 8-Ball.

 

To make things even more interesting, I actually signed up for TWO competitions: this one, and another one 2 weeks later.  I took on that second one primarily because it was in my current hometown, so it meant zero travel necessary.  But of the two competitions, Strength Games looked to be the more fun of the two, so I was the most excited for this one, but it also meant I had to consider balancing the two competitions against each other.  Again: new challenges.  Reference my post “Here Comes a New Challenger”: I need this in my life.

 

**TRAINING**

I made it a point NOT to train for this competition.  I signed up for it because the events looked fun, but also signed up for another competition that would be 2 weeks later with similar-ish events, and at that point decided that I was just going to get generally “strongmanny” again, as prior to this I was really just winging it and experimenting with my training.  The closest thing you could say it was before was “Crossfit”: just trying to get ok across a broad range of physical qualities.

 

I saw this as an opportunity to try out Dan John’s “Easy Strength” program to build up my ability to handle heavier poundages again while ALSO giving myself more training time to do some event/carry style stuff at the end of workouts.  And since I was so skinny, I blended it with “Mass Made Simple”.  You can read my reviews of that here and here

After 32 Easy Strength workouts, I found myself 6 weeks out from competition.  If I ran Easy Strength for the full 40 workouts, I would have been in an interesting spot as far as a follow-up program went, so I cut Easy Strength early and transitioned to Jamie Lewis’ “Juggeryoke” program, a review of which may occur in the future, but ultimately it looked like it would be a pretty beneficial approach.  It contained a solid amount of overhead work and focus on the arms, traps and abs: some areas I had been neglecting.  I made some slight modifications by allowing myself to use some of the implements that would be featured in the upcoming competition (log for push press, axle for strict press, trap bar for high pulls and shrugs), and would use weekends/ends of workouts to drill strongman style stuff like carries, stone loading, KB “throws”, and just general moving heavy stuff over distances.  Again: VERY general “prep”.

 

**NUTRITION**

Yeah, it was basically this

 

I went and did a VERY detailed overview of what my nutrition is like, and you can find that here

 

Which, if you want to contrast it against how I WAS eating, you can go to my previous nutrition post, found here

  

But ultimately I had fallen for the “keto junkfood trap”, where I had convinced myself that, as long as everything I was eating was “keto friendly”, it meant I was eating “right”.  This meant I was taking in an ungodly amount of artificial sweeteners, nut flours, and all sorts of other frankenfoods and alien substances, and my guts were an absolute wreck as a result.  I ran an amalgamation of T-Nation/Biotest’s “Velocity Diet” and Jamie Lewis’ “Apex Predator Diet” as something of a total system reset, and through experimentation arrived at my current approach, which I’ll give the highlights of below, as these write-ups always end up WAY too big as it is.

Seriously: this is NOT human food

 

* Overall, this is a cyclical ketogenic diet.  I have no idea if I’m actually IN ketosis, but it would make sense given how the rest of the diet shakes out.  I have a weekly carb-up meal (Sunday evening), and otherwise, when I eat, it’s carnivore: all meat/animal.  If I’m not eating, I’m consuming a blended protein powder (Biotest’s “Metabolic Drive”).  Which is why I assume I’m in ketosis: there’s pretty much no carbs.  I’m not consuming any veggies, grains, fruits, starches, or honey, and the dairy I do consume is consumed sparingly and frequently full fat, which means the lowest carb amount.  The weekly carb up is what makes it cyclical, and I also wave calories through the week.  Most of this comes from Jamie Lewis “Apex Predator Diet”.  On some weeks, I skipped the carb-up meal, but this was more due to schedule than intent.

 

* There is a “famine” phase and a “feast” phase.  Famine is 2 weeks, feast is 4.  They are run back to back.  

 

* On weekdays, protein sparing modified fast accomplished using Metabolic Drive blended protein powder.  I’ll fast either until the midday meal or evening meal (famine will be until evening, feast will be until midday). 

 

* On the above, some days I eat a whole food midday meal and some days I don’t.  This is part of waving the calories.  Even during the feast, I’ll have 1-2 days where I keep the PSMF until the evening meal.  One of those 1-2 days is ALWAYS the day after the carb-up meal.

 

* On weekends, I ditch the shakes and transition to pure carnivore eating.  3 meals a day at least.  On Saturday, it’s pure carnivore the whole way, while Sunday has the evening meal be the carb-up meal.  This is true even during the famine phase, because weekends are times with the family and I’m not going to go through a PSMF with them.  I WILL try to eat leaner cuts of meat during that time and fattier during the feast, but that’s about it.

 

For this competition, I decided to keep up with my current nutrition.  In the past, I’d legit eat an entire box of poptarts, along with a bag of hostess minidonuts and breakfast cereal and gatorades and basically take in like 800g of carbs, but given I was so rarely consuming them AND, whenever I did I’d experience some VERY interesting reactions (excessive sweating/overheating, extreme fatigue, etc), I decided not to mess around with that.  I also got off my excessive amount of caffeine I was consuming previously (nearing a GRAM of caffeine a day…) and didn’t want to play around with that during the competition either.  So I boiled up a dozen eggs, mixed it with some ground venison and grassfed sour cream and brought some extra meat snacks in case I needed it.

 

Is this egg salad or venison salad?  You decide!

 And in full disclosure, as I write this my competition is tomorrow, so we'll see how all of this shakes out.   Stay tuned for part 2!