HOW TO THRIVE ON A CRUISE VACATION

I’m writing this for several reasons.  The first one being: I had an awesome vacation and I want to brag about it. The deeper reason here is that I had an awesome vacation BECAUSE I did just that: had a vacation.  In the past, I’ve written posts in the realm of “how to survive a vacation”, and it dawns on me just how ridiculous and martyring that mentality is.  A vacation is a time of celebration, relaxation, and reward for hard work, yet so many of us meatheads will develop immense anxiety around the topic of vacations: HOW will I get in my protein?  HOW will I get in my workouts?  HOW will I stick with my diet?  And I’ve absolutely done the stupid things that we all do in those situations: signed up for 1 week memberships at a local gym, or paid the day pass rate each day, pack an entire kitchen full of food/cooking implements, I’ve had kettlebells shipped to where I was residing so I could get in workouts, purchased protein powder upon arrival, etc etc.  It’s NOT a vacation if we just do what we do every day: this is just transplanting ourselves. 

"This is no longer a vacation. It’s a quest. It’s a quest for fun. You’re gonna have fun, and I’m gonna have fun. We’re all gonna have so much f*cking fun we’re gonna need plastic surgery to remove our g*ddamn smiles! You’ll be whistling “Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah” out of your a**holes! "

 

No: this time, I decided not to survive this vacation, but to THRIVE on it.  And it worked: I had a wonderful time, I ate my face off, regularly eating to the point of “Thanksgiving level” fullness/discomfort, remained physically active without having to “make a thing” out of it, and came back home bigger and still stupidly lean.  So allow me to discuss the ins and outs of that.

 

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HOW I ATE ON A CRUISE: 

I've never even seen this show, yet I know this quote

I know I’ve alienated half of my readerbase with my current nutritional approach/drumbeating, but the more I dig into this the more success I find, so I’m just going to keep talking about it.  For those of you that have never BEEN on a cruise before, the best way I’ve heard it summed up is “It’s like someone took the city of Reno Nevada and put it in the ocean”.  You’re basically at a 24 hour a day buffet, with some fine dinning options as well if you so choose.  Since I was on a Disney Cruise, we didn’t have the casino element that tends to be present on other cruises, but we DID have Mickey Mouse waffles, so that’s a fair trade.

 

* Meat and/or eggs, at every meal, FOR every meal.  No carbs, to include fruits, veggies, starches, grains, and INCREDIBLY limited artificial sweeteners (like 1 diet coke a day).  No plants either, so I was off coffee and tea the entire time, sticking primarily with water, and occasionally sparkling/fizzy/soda water.  Already people are reading that and think what I’m writing is martyrdom.  “How can you pass up ALL those yummy desserts, pastries, pastas, potatoes, ice cream, fresh fruits, vegetables, 24 hour pizza stations, etc etc”  I could do that easily, because alongside all that is literally EVERY kind of meat you could ever dream of, readily available in unending amounts. 

 

* For breakfast, I would eat platefuls of scrambled eggs, and alongside that I would have 3 full ribeye steaks, breakfast sausage, bacon, salmon and turkey, along with some fried AND poached eggs, all topped with butter, with just a tiny bit of real whipped cream for a “dessert”.  I always made at least 2 passes through the buffet line, and legit could NOT get enough scrambled eggs.  I was fitting in with the Disney theme and trying to get my Gaston on. 

There are honestly worse strategies

 

* When lunch would roll around, I’d hit up the prime rib carving station like I was playing Blackjack (hit me again), I’d gotten the drumsticks off the turkey at the station, consumed copious amounts of lamb, every fish in the ocean, much pork, beef (steak and ribs), chicken, shrimp, crab, lobster, etc.  2-3 passes through the line, always with a plateful of meat.

 

* For dinners, we’d go to the sit-down service rather than the buffet, where I was absolutely not shy about ordering 2-4 appetizers and 2-3 entrees, nor was I ashamed about eating only the meat and leaving the veggies to the side.  I let them know ahead of time that I came there with a big appetite, and they were more than pleased to accommodate.  And, I knew that, if I ever felt “underfed” when the meal was over, there was an all day to-order hamburger and hotdog/sausage stand on deck I could hit up (which I DID take advantage of on our final night).

 

PRINCIPLES

I consume way too many pork ribs for this to work

 

* I DID abide by a few principles to make this “work”.  Yes: I was there to enjoy myself, and eating as much as I wanted definitely met that goal, but in order to eat ALL that I wanted and not suffer catastrophic effects for having done so, I still held myself to a few standards. 

 

* One was to minimize my cheese intake.  There’s a few reasons there.  One is that I KNOW I can easily overeat cheese.  And yes: “eat when hungry until not”, so how is it possible to “overeat” something?  In the instance of cheese, it’s a question of nutritional “opportunity cost”, in that the stomach space occupied by cheese is space that could be occupied by meat, and meat will tend to have more beneficial qualities to it compared to cheese (in terms of protein to fat ratio, specific amino acids present, omega 3 vs 6 vs 9 fatty acids and other micronutrient concerns).  Cheese doesn’t really have the satiating effect that meat does (for me at least), and so I can keep on eating it and never really feel satisfied, whereas when eating flesh I’ll eventually reach a point where I’m no longer hungry/interested in having more food.  And I’m writing “cheese” here, but I’m sure this is true with all dairy: I just genuinely don’t consume much dairy ASIDE from cheese. 

 

* Avoid sauces and be wary of seasonings.  Once again: I was shameless about this.  One day, the buffet line had my most absolute favorite meat in the world: bone in beef short ribs.  However, they were BBQ bone in beef short ribs.  So I grabbed a goodly amount of them, and took my napkin and de-sauced the ribs with some liberal covering and squeezing of the ribs until they were sufficiently dry.  It’s like “blotting the grease off pizza” taken to the nth degree.  Sauces tend to contain sugars, as do many seasonings, and these increase the palatability of food, which is going to interfere with correctly interpreting hunger signals.  When the food tastes like food, the body will say “I’ve had enough food”.  When the food tastes like dopamine, the body will say “let’s keep eating this until we die from it”.  All that said, it was vacation, and if something had a trace amount of seasonings or sauces on it I wasn’t going to freak out, but whenever given the choice between something just straight up grilled/baked/broiled vs something that was dusted and caked in seasonings and sauces, I opted to fill up on the former and have a taste of the latter.

 

* Seriously: eat until “Thanksgiving Stuffed”.  I don’t write “full” because I’m a very particular person when it comes to words, and I’ve only been “full” 4 times in my life, one of which times was when I took down the “Stellanator” cheeseburger (4.5lbs of food in 30 minutes).  To me, “full” means when you reach the point of discomfort and then keep eating for another 15-20 minutes.  But I think we (Americans/Canadians) understand “Thanksgiving Stuffed”: you’ve absolutely eaten more than you normally would at a meal and are teetering on the very between happily satiated and potentially uncomfortable.  Eating to this point, when combined with WHAT I was eating, had the fantastic effect of making me NOT HUNGRY in between my 3 giant meals a day.  Carbs tend to have an insulin spiking effect, which can cause us to feel satisfied with a meal and then hungry shortly after.  And, of course, simply not eating enough will ALSO cause us to be hungry after eating.  But gorging on meat and eggs?  Now I have fuel to carry me through until the next time I sit down for a big meal.  And we had some packed days on the cruise where the delta between breakfast and lunch would have seemed significant back in the day, but I was so satiated from my massive breakfast that I could let lunch fade back for an hour or so without concern.  This was a big win for me; not needing to pack snacks while I traveled.  And along with that, there was never any “food guilt” from eating this way.  I wasn’t “overeating” junk: all of this was animal fat and protein: absolutely outstanding fuel and nutrition, while at the same time STILL eating like a king.

HOW I TRAINED:  

I DID steal from this...

Most cruise ships DO have some sort of fitness center, and if one were so inclined they could absolutely go there and get in a workout.  There’s enough dumbbell WODS and other things out there that there’s no shortage of ways to get in a pump or blow out your lungs.  However, in my case, I wanted to simply be on vacation and enjoy myself, so here is what “training” boiled down to.

 

* Each morning, upon waking, I’d do 50 prisoner squats and 50 push ups.  I’d do this with Dan John’s “2-3-5-10” protocol, doing 2 squats, then 2 push ups, then 3 and 3, etc.  Once I got to 10, I’d start over.  One round is 20 reps, so I’d do 2.5 rounds of that.  The constant getting up off the floor is an added stressor.  This was, ultimately, a way to just limber up and get ready for the day AND “make” some hunger for the upcoming breakfast.  This takes all of 5 minutes to do, if not less.  We spoiled ourselves and had a veranda that I could do these exercises on, taking in the fresh sea air in the morning, but it can just as easily be done in the room.

 

* In that regard of “done in the room”, if I found myself with some downtime while hanging out in our cabin, I’d knock out a set of 5-20 squats or push ups, with a goal of reaching 300 in the day.  That number comes from Jamie Lewis, and is an excellent benchmark for “baseline physical activity for the day”.  This allowed me to be active, keep blood flowing through  my muscles, get in a decent pump WITHOUT having to change into gym clothes, go to the fitness center, shower afterwards, etc.  I was just on vacation thriving.

Jamie and I have the same taste in comic books it seems

 

* I did have ONE day where the Mrs wanted to get in a quick power nap while I wasn’t feeling tired, so I allotted myself 30 minutes of actual focused training, and performed the following workout.  EMOM for 20 minutes: do 5 prisoner squats, then 5 push ups, then 5 FULL ROM Burpees, then do 2-3-5-10 for 5 rounds.  The distinction of a full ROM burpee is that I would do a full prisoner squat, THEN drop down into a push up, from the push up jump straight up in the air and then land into the prisoner squat to start over again.  In general, this whole week I focused on rep QUALITY, and I feel like that was incredibly helpful in actually getting some sort of result from the training.  I actually found myself with a little more time at the end of that, so I did a few pull-ups off the beam on our veranda and some ab work.

 

* NEVER use the elevator.  Ever.  Forcing yourself to take the stairs wherever you go on the cruise ship will get you a LOT of non-exercise general activity, especially if you’re on one of the lower decks, since the food tends to be on the upper deck.  Plus, being on an elevator means being with a lot of people who have been eating the WRONG kind of foods in a confined space: you can imagine how fun that is.

 

* But probably the most beneficial thing I did was WALK.  We got in 15-20+k steps a day every day.  And we didn’t walk for exercise: we walked because we enjoyed each other’s company and enjoyed exploring the ship and the ports off of it.  On the days we were at sea, we’d walk around the jogging track for fresh air, then get inside the ship and walk around the shops, look at art, check out the lobbies and lounges, listen to music being played over the speakers, go on scavenger hunts (people hide plastic/rubber ducks on cruise ships, and looking for them can be fun) and just have time wondering around doing nothing, which, when combined with “never taking the stairs”, can add up real quick for steps and activity.

 

*RESULTS*

It felt like this

* My wife flat out asked me on day 3 of the cruise, after I returned to our lunch table with a plateful of lamb, steaks, ribs, turkey and salmon “How have you been able to eat so much and still be ripped?”  And it actually seemed like I was getting MORE defined as time went on, while my muscles filled out and I looked the fullest and healthies I’d been in a LONG time.  I genuinely think I’ve been undereating for a bit now, and I was finally giving myself the nutrients I needed which, when paired with reduced training, low stress and opportunities to catch up on a massive sleep debt, gave me an opportunity to heal and ultimately THRIVE on vacation.  I ate and lived like a king, and I’ve now returned fully recharged and ready to take on some SERIOUS training until my next cruise…in 9 weeks.  This is an awesome season.

 

*BONUS MATERIAL: EATING WHILE TRAVELING*

 

* This wasn’t on the cruise, but I still managed to abide by the nutritional principles when I was getting ready to board/returning home from the cruise.  We were ported in New York City, where I lived off of street kabobs and lamb gyro slices

 

* and while at the airport, we had a Wendy’s, where I got 2 plain “Dave’s Doubles” with no cheese, and just tossed the bun and ate the patties with a fork and knife.  It’s honestly simple stuff, and it still worked: I ate enough that I didn’t need more food.    

 

JAMIE LEWIS' JUGGERYOKE PROGRAM REVIEW

**INTRO AND BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT**

Here are some yoke goals

* Allow me to start with the conclusion: this program is awesome, like most of Jamie Lewis’ programs.  It looks daunting until you finally do it, and then you realize the genius built into it.  It has my approval, and I highly recommend people pick it up alongside the “Feast/Famine/Ferocity” bundle here .  

**WHAT IS JUGGERYOKE**

It's not a grip training program, in case you thought that

* Jamie sums it up as “the traptastic YuggerYoke Protocol V 3.0, a 3 page pdf of a super trap-heavy full-body training program that will appeal to strongmen, powerlifters, and anyone trying to look like a Marvel superhero.”  I assumed this was a 6 week program, since Jamie says in the document “After 6 weeks of this, you should be ready for the beach, looking like a lost member of the X-Men.”, but in the actual Juggeryoke link it says “This product is not a book- it’s a 3 page PDF specialization program designed to be used for 8 weeks to quickly bring up your yoke area (traps and shoulders).”  Whelp, I’m finishing the 6th week right now and writing my review but I DO intend to carry it forward for the next 2 weeks as I prep for a follow on comp on 14 Oct…so maybe I’ll write about that too.  Chaos is the plan.

* Jamie has a 5-6 day and a 3-4 day variant of the program in the book, similar to what he did with “Feast, Famine and Ferocity”, which turned out to a positive for me while I ran it.

**PROGRAM OVERVIEW**

I don't know what this is, but I have to imagine this program is infinitely better

* I won’t give away the full programs, although I DID take video of every single workout and you could most likely piece it together from that, but still: please buy the program and support Jamie.  

* I primarily ran the 5-6 day variant, which is effectively 3 full body workouts with an arm day in between each day for a total of 5 directed workouts and a 6th one wherein you can do whatever you want (similar to the “Dealer’s Choice” from Feast/Famine/Ferocity).  The 3-4 day variant takes those 2 arm workouts and merges them into the 3 full body days, along with a bit more exercise shuffling, and gives a bit more guidance on what to do on the 4th day as a gap filler.

* The program requires training without a belt and a daily 1.5 mile walk, both of which are awesome.  It includes front squatting and squatting, push pressing and strict pressing, touch and go benching and pause benching, high pulls and HEAVY shrugs, ab wheel and hanging leg raises with lat shrugs, squat singles, triples and squatting for time.  That final bit was definitely my “favorite” part of the program.  1-2 sets of 2-3 minutes of squatting with 135lbs on your back.  I, of course, opted for 2 sets of 3 minutes and used 1 minute of rest between, and made it a goal to hit a new rep PR each week.  That was a fantastic challenge.

**MY DEVIATIONS**

Think of it more like an alternative universe variation

* When I run a program the first time, I like to stick with it pretty close, BUT I also picked Juggeryoke in particular because it would allow me to include some movements that would benefit me for my upcoming competition.  So in that regard: I used a strongman log for my push pressing work, an axle for all my other pressing (bench, incline and strict), same axle for most of my skull crushers and reverse curls, grenade balls with chains for more of my arm work, and a trap bar for my high pulls and my shrugs.  Also, on the day where I was to do 15x1 squats, I often would lower the bar weight and use chains instead.  This was primarily due to sustaining a slight knee injury in the second week of the program during log clean and push press.  I moved a bit too quickly and possibly tore a meniscus.  By the end of the program it was feeling better, but it still seemed to work well to limit loading at the bottom of the rep and increase it toward the top.  Besides: Dan John said that, if he had to do it all over again, he’d always squat with chains, so good enough.

* I took to adding a set of Poundstone curls at the end of one of the arm days, just for even more pump, and would throw in band pull aparts and lateral raises where I could find space for it.

* For my 6th day, I ran through a ROM progression cycle of trap bar mat pulls, since I had a max trap bar lift coming up in my competition.  This was ultimately a 5 minute workout that I would frequently do without a warm-up.  After lifting was finished on each day, if I had any extra time, I’d do some short intense conditioning work.  I’d also do some sort of strongman training on Sundays: some sort of carry and load of some variety.  

* On the 3rd week of the program, my schedule got compromised, so I ran the 3 day variant, and on the 6th week (current) my competition was at the end of the week, so I dropped my lifts back to their starting point and made it a point to move these (now) lighter weights fast and with short reps, as something of a mini-deload.  I actually think these might be good intentional decisions in the future.  They’re tools in the toolbox if nothing else.

**WHAT I LIKED**

SO much better than "it's clobberin' time!"

* As much as I genuinely didn’t care for the arm days (I get up at the crack of dawn to train, and its hard to get motivated to do that when it’s JUST arms…), they are honestly a brilliant touch in the program overall, because they effectively give you an active recovery day between the BRUTALLY hard full body workouts.  I would be incredibly sore from the previous day, but wake up knowing I “just gotta do arms”, and then, by the next day, I was ready to train again.  And one of those arm days includes 20 minutes of non-stop bodyweight work, which I used as an opportunity to do burpee chins, which did a great job of getting some restorative bloodflow to the sore muscles and a touch of conditioning.

* The timed squats are just plain awesome.  The weight is light and it encourages PR chasing, to say nothing of the lactic acid threshold benefit and the sheer anabolism that comes with it.  It’s also another great break between one day of heavy front squat triples and one day of heavy squat singles.  

* On that, the variety of rep ranges and movements in general is just intelligent and awesome.  This is typical Jamie Lewis “Chaos and Pain” training: a great break if you’ve been doing the same thing for a while.  And since I was coming off of “Easy Strength”, that’s exactly what was happening.

* HANGING LAT SHRUGS.  Oh my god that makes SO much sense.  You do 10 lat shrugs at the end of every set of hanging leg raises you do, and lat shrugs from a hang are so much more intuitive than trying to do them with dumbbells/barbells.  This is giving Paul Kelso his proper due.  And they’re very restorative.  Jamie does a great job of forcing me to do the things I SHOULD be doing, and that includes these lat shrugs, alongside all the direct arm and ab work.

**WHAT I WOULD CHANGE**

I imagine Rogue wishes she could undo that punch

* Jamie has an arm day where you are to do skull crushers and reverse curls as a superset, using the same weight.  Jamie either has the strongest biceps ever or the weakest triceps, but for me, a weight I can reverse curl is too light for skull crushers, and trying to make this work was just square peg/round hole for me.  I came up with a bunch of tricks, but ultimately, when I run this again, I give myself permission to just use 2 different set ups.

* My next run, I’ll probably bring the Safety Squat Bar in for that day of heavy squat singles.  I feel like the SSB better fits the “Yoke” portion of Juggeryoke, given how much it hammers the upper back.  I’ll most likely do SSB front squats too, just because my front rack is jacked up after 6 shoulder dislocations and toward the end of the program I had to deal with bar slippage issues.  

**RESULTS**

Yeah, pretty much this

* You can see my physique in all the training videos.  In general, I’m more filled out in the areas I was lacking, which is awesome.

* This program was GREAT for my horizontal pressing, as funny as that seems.  I went from 225 to 255 on my pause benching, and my dips went from 105 to 120.  I also went from 77 squats to 90 with 135.  My burpee chins each week tended to climb up, front squats went from 185 to 220 for the 10x3, etc etc.  All of my lifts went up: the program worked.

**NUTRITION**

I'd go with something a bit more nutritious

* Nothing specifically prescribed by the program, but during this time I was using the nutrition protocol I laid out here , which included a 5 day “mini-famine” in the 5th week, which allowed me to eat VERY big in the 6th week…which might also just be a good approach.

**CONCLUSION**

What else is there to say?

* This program is awesome.  Please buy and run it.

WHEN SHOULD YOU CHANGE PROGRAMS?

I see this question, and permutations of it, get asked all the time: when should I change my program?   If not “when should I change my program” it’s “how long should I run this program to see if it’s working”, “when should I stop bulking/cutting”, etc etc.  It’s all the same base question: what landmark am I looking for to determine when it’s time to make a change.  The answer: as soon as you ask this very question.  Once the question has been asked, the change needs to be made.  Why?  Because the mere asking of the question demonstrates that the faith in the method has been lost, and THAT means it’s time to move on.  We must worship a new god at a new altar, because the old ones have now abandoned us.

The OG pre-workout

Here I am, undoing the renaissance, because I’m going to put faith above science here, but ya’ll expect that from me by now.  The truth is (note I say “truth” and not “fact”, because, again, this is theology and not science) that no trainee succeeds on a program or protocol that they do not have faith in, no matter HOW much the science backs it up.  If we do not believe that we are doing exactly what we need to do in order to grow, it will not matter IF we are doing just that: our lack of faith will prevent us from achieving our goals.  Like Freddie Kruger (appropriate for this time of year), the only way to strengthen the program is to believe in it and give it power, and once that belief and faith stops, so too, does the progress.

Why?  Because, flat out, we will NOT give a program proper due diligence and effort unless we actually BELIEVE in it being effective.  This is just stupid human reality about the situation: we will invest ourselves totally in something that we believe in, and will not have that capability for something we merely pay lip service to.  You’ve seen this countless times that you MUST acknowledge the truth in it: there tends to be a significant disparity between what people SAY they want and what they actually want.  Many people SAY that they want to be big, strong, jacked and lean, but take them to the grocery store and they buy cakes, ice cream and cardboard carbs and completely bypass the butcher section.  Give them a free weekend and they binge watch Netflix rather than engage in any manner of physical exercise.  IF these individuals DO manage to participate in these activities of self-betterment, it’s of a faithless attempt: they’ll buy and partially consume one pre-made bagged salad and go for a 20 minute jog.  Meanwhile, the true budding physical transformation psychopaths have cleared the meat department of every last ribeye and got up at 0400 on their day off because now they don’t have work to get in the way of their epic 4 hour training session.  Both of these are manifestations of illness, sure, but we see which altar we worship at: who is faithful to which god.

Plus you get meat on the bone, so that's a plus

And, of course, people attempt to employ science in absence of faith, because faith is a terrifying concept: believe without proof.  Instead, we look to make and manufacture truth through “facts”, but science is cold, sterile, and, ultimately, lacking and behind the times.  Science is OBSERVATION, eventually recorded, codified, explained and “understood”, but science does not MAKE reality: it merely documents it.  The phenomenon of physical transformation was already out there, ready to be pursued and believed in: it just asked for your faith.  Instead, trainees take their observational and epidemiological (absolute garbage) studies and attempt to create a new god after they killed off the old ones.  They attempt to say “I KNOW this training method works because it’s been scientifically PROVEN to work”…and yet, the results are lacking.  Why?  Because despite the facts, there is no truth: there is nothing to have faith in when your source is agnostic.  

Instead, the folks who have succeeded in the realm of physical transformation did so BECAUSE of their unshaken faith in their methods, irrespective of the madness behind them.  In fact, many would argue that madness was a key component TO their success.  These individuals looked at what everyone else was doing, saw the results they were getting and said “that’s not for me: I’m going to do something ELSE”.  This was the story of Dante Trudel developing Dogg Crapp in the presence of an era where everything was volume driven: he pursued single set intensity.  The very same single set intensity that drove HIT/Heavy Duty, that drove Super Squats, that drove Stuart McRobert and Dr. Ken Leistner.  Or how about Louie Simmons breaking his back, surveying the scene of Western powerlifting and observing all the injuries and lacking results, and deciding he was going to merge the past of the Culver City Westside Barbell club with the overabounding success that the Soviets were experiencing and just make up his own method on the fly, which he KNEW would work because it HAD to.  How about Dr. Shawn Baker taking on the carnivore diet because nothing else was making sense?  What about every single thing Jamie Lewis has put out?  Jamie cites all his work, but he’s a historian, not a scientist: he knew what he did would work BECAUSE it had worked: not because science said so.

Whatever produced this in the pre-steroid era is probably pretty effective

And I’m just skimming the surface of pioneers, but the point is: these folks succeeded because they believe in the method they were employing.  They had unshaken, zealot-like fanatical faith in their approach and, in turn, pursued it so hard with every fiber of their being that they WILLED it to be successful.  Every program I take on, I ONLY take on when I’m feeling that surge of faith.  I’ve discussed before how I got Super Squats as a gift on Christmas and was already planning my training cycle on it later that afternoon after I had absolutely devoured the book: Randall Strossen’s PhD in psychology was put to good use as he sunk his hooks in and got me bought in. And prior to that, I was drinking the Pavel Tsastouline Koolaid and only training in the 1-5 rep range because I had read “Beyond Bodybuilding” and learned ALL the secrets.  And after that, I saw some of the best gains in my life COMPLETELY botching the Westside Method because, in my mind, I was “doing Westside”, which meant that success was guaranteed!  Jamie Lewis’ “Feast, Famine and Ferocity” book did the same to me too.  And maybe what I’m demonstrating here is how easily influenced I am by charlatans and snakeoil salesmen…but if it means I got big, strong, jacked, lean and physically transformed, does it even matter?  Does it matter that everything I did was scientifically “wrong” if the outcome is the one I desired?

Which, of course, ties it all back to the beginning: once we start asking “when should I switch?”, it means the time is NOW.  Once we display a wavering of faith, the magic is gone and it’s time to move on.  Find A method that you can buy into with 100% of your being.  It cannot be a half measure, it cannot be lip service, we cannot be “Easter-Christmas” worshippers: we MAKE the protocol work THROUGH our faith.  It’s much better to abandon a program early in pursuit of the shiny new one that grabs our interest than it is to endure something we’ve lost all faith in simply because “it’s the best”.  And what’s awesome about all this is that THIS faith is self-perpetuating: we create our success by believing in the method, which in turn further reinforces our believe IN the method, which allows us to continue pursuing it and achieving more success.  Contrast this with the wheelspinners: those that have been doing the same thing for YEARS and have nothing to show for it, yet are so afraid to abandon their facts in pursuit of the TRUTH.  If some protocol out there is offering you it’s siren’s call, go crash your ship into the rocks, because right now the course you’re sailing on is merely a long slow death.           

STRONGMAN COMPETITION WRITE-UP: "HOW TO COME IN DEAD LAST AS A LIGHTWEIGHT MALE AND LOOK JACKED WHILE DOING IT"

I’ve competed in another strongman competition, this time my first time as a Lightweight Male in the 181lb class.  I’ll cut to the chase and say I came in dead last and zero’d more events than I’d ever done before.  I’ve dropped 35lbs since March, and I’m still adjusting to my new body in that regard, which helped make this one of the most challenging competitions of my life.  I’m pretty excited in that regard, and thought I’d share the experience.

And here is the video of the full comp

**PRE-COMP**

These guys still have it figured out

I ate the same breakfast I’ve been having every training day: 150g of egg whites mixed with 150g of beef bone broth with 1.5 scoops of Metabolic Drive and some powdered electrolytes.  A wild departure from my days of eating…nothing, so I could make weight, followed by some sort of sugary/fast food blitz.  I drove an uneventful 2.25 hours to the site and weighed in at 173.0 while wearing full sweats, shoes, and my strongman compression gear underneath.  

I set-up camp and actually dug into one of my meals before the first event: 4 hardboiled whole pasture raised organic eggs mashed into a paste with a serving of grassfed sour cream and 4oz (cooked) of ground venison, personally hunted and butchered by my wife’s Uncle.  Another departure from my glory days, which I’ll address next, but it was also weird being so hungry when I hadn’t done anything yet.  

**GOALS**

He's not wrong

Since I knew I was super behind the 8-ball on this due to my bodyweight, this was going to be a different kind of comp for me: this was about personal growth.  My goals were to not eat any junk OR carbs and keep it as carnivore as possible.  Not because I felt like this was more noble, but more to simply see if I could, and how it would go.  The Metabolic Drive was the closest “exception” and I packed an emergency Finibar in case I found myself crashing, but otherwise it was just going to be that mashed egg/venison mixture, green tea and water.  

I also was going to go limited caffeine: only the stuff in the green tea.  I have a 3 week streak without energy drinks of coffee going, and I wanna see how long I can keep it going.  Again: no particular reason, just to see if I could.  In the past, I’d be about 2-3 energy drinks deep by the end of the day.  Did I “need” that?

The third goal was to not re-tear whatever it was I tore in my right knee on week 2 of “Juggeryoke”.  The first event was where I was most worried about that, since I did it on the log, but I was going to keep my eye on it all competition.

And final goal was to leave it all out there and have fun.  It’s the whole reason I signed up.

**EVENT 1: 200lb Log Clean and Press Each Rep**

That's about as far as I got with it too

I was excited about this event, since cleaning each rep is awesome and gasses competitors.  Then I got to actually handle the log we were going to use and realized this was going to be a “ WHO can get a rep” contest for the lightweights.  The log handles were STUPID far apart, like the Rogue 10”.  

First guy got the clean but no rep.  Second guy got in 2 of the grandest reps of all time with a jerk and a JPS-esque “press the log off the head” technique. 

I got set, got my head right, grabbed the log, went to clean it, felt it feel like a jillion pounds, got stuck midway, somehow through sheer force of will get it all the way to my chest…and knew that there was absolutely no way I was going to press it.  I let it crash, thinking that, if I could do better on another clean and not be so exhausted, I might be able to set up for a stronger press.  Well, that didn’t happen, and I didn’t want to re-tear my left bicep on an errant log clean, so after a few more attempts, I hung it up.  The guy after me got a jillion reps and was the clear candidate for first that day.

**EVENT 2: Max Trap Bar in 3 attempts**

Good thing this wasn't strengthliftng...

I had been doing a ROM progression cycle on trap bar with 405lbs, so I knew I was good for that.  We were allowed to pick the starting weight in the rules meeting, so I asked for 400, knowing we’d go 20lb jumps from there.

The guy who also zero’d the log ended up asking for us to start with 380, and he missed that, so I knew if I got 400 I at least had a win there.  400 was grindy, but made it.  We were apparently pulling on the Eleiko Oppen bar, which was cool since it had knurl marks on the center of the handle, which made strapping in easy.  I had an issue with strapping in too far forward or backward in training and having the bar tilt.

No other MLWs went for 400, the next time one jumped in was at 460, so I went for that to match too.  460 felt WAY too damn heavy, but I pulled it.  Since we were doing “Rising Bar”, I decided to pass on 480 to allow me some recovery time, and asked for 500.  I really liked Rising bar for the strategic element of it, and it made a last man standing event tolerable.  I actually felt 500 ever so slightly start to break off the floor, but not enough to be worth chasing after.  My knee was holding up strong so far, and this was keeping it in place.

**EVENT 3: Sandbag and sled drag**

Yeah, that about summed it up

This and the 4th event are why I signed up: medleys in a competition.  I missed these so much.  Unlike previous comps, I did ZERO sandbag training to prep for this, which was for the best, because I usually end up tearing the hell out of my arms when I do that.  

I used some strongman cheating and put the sandbag on top of my feet as part of my set-up.  This gives a little bit of daylight between the floor and the bag, which allows for handholds.  I also ditched my competition shirt at this point and decided I was going to go for the Mariusz Pudzianowski/Jon Andersen Award for “Most Jacked Person at the Competition”, because if  can’t be the strongest at least I can look pretty while I lose.  You can actually hear some folks making commentary about it during this event.

The sandbag pick actually went pretty well, and the carry moved about as fast as I would expect with so minimal training.  The sled drag caught me off guard: about the only clue it was going to be so awful was watching the other competitors attempting the sled and being caught off guard.  So I went for the initial pull, realized it was going to be heavy as hell, and just leaned into it and pulled like hell, knowing that, if I ever stopped, I’d be dead.  Just like a shark.

I was surprised when I ran out of time.  I felt like I was moving at a good pace.  I had a slight technical error getting set up on the straps, and I lost a little bit of time on the bag, but ultimately I imagine I needed to move faster on the sled.

But I think this was the first time I had a sled in a comp where I didn’t fall backwards on my butt, so that’s a win.  This got me a last place finish.

**EVENT 4: Duckwalk and powerstairs**

It was absolutely my goal to be one jacked duck

Event was supposed to be duck walk 25’, do 3 reps of power stairs, then duckwalk it back.

Lotta dudes were struggling with those stairs, and I figured out where: those WIDE 100lb plates pretty much give you no opportunity to hinge.  I’m only 5’9, so I’m already sawed off as it is, but now that I have to take a sumo stance I was totally hosed.  

But also, you might be able to tell in the video: I about blacked out on the initial pick, and was basically jump zombie-ing forward until I went night-night.  I managed to fall forward, have the stars clear, do a quick pick and repeat.  I fell into the platform, corrected myself, and struggled futilely to get it to the platform.  But I gave it some solid effort, and loading my frame down with 100lbs over bodyweight was awesome for making every muscle in my body pop, so I got a cool facebook photo.  This, once again, got me last place.

**EVENT 5: Stone Medley**

Same technology as what was behind "Stay Put Socks"

I won’t bother listing weights and heights here, because as you saw on the video, it was a big goose egg.  This is the only event I have a bitter taste in my mouth about.  You might be able to see it in the video, but I was literally GLUED to the stone.  I applied a moderate amount of tack to myself, but the stone ITSELF was COATED in tacky from previous competitors, to the point that it was stuck to the platform.  So it didn’t matter about being strong enough to pick up the stone: I had to be strong enough to BREAK the tacky off the stone first and THEN pick it up, and then, once I got it lapped, it wasn’t going anywhere else.  With how high the platform was, my plan was to try to shoulder it, but I could never even get the momentum necessary, because it was like trying to walk through mud: each movement was about getting unstuck and then stuck again.

I realized at that point I’m a dinosaur in the sport: everyone else is using tacky shirts and stone sleeves and, in turn, has material that can help by pass the tacky issue, while I’m just applying sticky stuff to my body.  I the future, I think I’m just going to avoid tackying myself and just rely on what’s on the stone.  Zero’d here.

I will say that I got another great strongman win here: as I was standing there, bare chested and covered in tacky, another dude who was going that route was standing next to me.  He was definitely more “strongman built”.  He looked at me, there was a pause, and then he “Dude..are you, like, bodybuilding?”

I replied with “Nope: just not eating enough”.

He appreciated that.  Told me I was definitely the leanest dude there, and I said “Well at least I won that”. 

**LESSONS LEARNED**

I had a lot of the latter here

I knew coming in this light was going to be a challenge, and it delivered.  Doing no specific training for the comp also added to that.  But, that’s really the big thing: I grew up.  Strongman isn’t my life anymore: it’s a thing I do for fun.  And that’s absolutely what happened: I had a blast and I DIDN’T have to change my life for it.  I kept training the week of the comp, went for a 3 mile walk with my family after it was done (and after having an AMAZING dinner at our favorite BBQ place where I got the biggest, fattest pork ribs I’d ever seen in my life alongside some amazing sliced brisket) and just treated this like it was an events day.  I intend to keep it this way: if a comp looks fun, I’ll sign up and have a blast.  And I got to help out some folks along the way: the guy who took second in my weight class cramped up BAD, so I gave him some of the electrolytes I brought and it totally transformed him.  I also let him use some of the goo gone and paper towels I brought for tacky removal and got him sold of WD-40.  And I got to meet a few awesome folks off reddit as well.  A dude named John introduced himself to me: “Dude, are you MythicalStrength?  I’ve been reading your articles for 6 years!”  That was really cool, and honestly was one of the highlights of the competition.

**WHAT’S NEXT**

Well, about that: I originally had a competition signed up for 14 Oct…but I just went looking for it and it’s gone: instead, having been moved to 4 Nov.  That’s a less viable date for me, and currently I’m the only person in the 181 weight class, so there’s very little incentive to go do it compared to just a hard events day at home.  I have a 5k signed up for 15 Oct, and then I go for a Disney Cruise on 16 Oct.  So now that I don’t have a competition looming, I’m probably going to do 2 more weeks of Juggeryoke with a few movement alterations leading up to the cruise and most likely do a mini-famine there so that I can absolutely eat my face off the whole time I’m cruising.  After that?  Chaos is the Plan.  But I’ll be at this weight class for the next competition, whenever that happens.