"OPERATION CONAN" SITREP: CURRENT UPDATE ON MY TIME WITH TACTICAL BARBELL MASS PROTOCOL

Already full apologies for those of you that hate when I go “in character” with my training and lifestyle, but with this being my foray into “Tactical Barbell” I’ve totally embraced “TactiCOOL” and have been militarizing everything with this training protocol.  A few months back, I reviewed the Tactical Barbell Mass Protocol book and basically said it was THE book I wish I had started with and I regretted everyday I hadn’t read it up until that point.  Needless to say, I soon after started following one of the programs listed in the protocol: Grey Man.  Along with that, I’ve been VERY diligent about complying with the instructions laid out by K. Black…with the exception of one area: nutrition.  Mr. Black is very much a fan of carbohydrates to drive up bodyweight, and, in the discussion of low carb approaches to mass gaining, though not explicitly forbidding it, he notes that he does not recommend such an approach.  I, however, have decided to completely ignore that advice and, instead, pursue weight gain while undertaking a carnivore style diet, which is what “Operation Conan” became: Tactical Barbell Mass Protocol training with carnivore nutrition, a blending of soldiering and barbarism.  It’s been 7 weeks so far, and I want to share my thoughts and experiences as they currently are, with room to continue to update.

Just pointing out that "TactiCOOL Conan" IS a thing

 

WHY DID I PICK GREY MAN?

 

Because sometimes grey is the only color you need

The go to recommendation in Mass Protocol is General Mass, which is about as bare bones as it gets.  3 days a week you squat, do a weighted pull up, and bench press, and then on a 4th day you train the deadlift.  I am more than certain this approach would be awesome for many trainees.  However, coming into Tactical Barbell I was coming off my most recent strongman competition, wherein the training leading up to it had me really junk up a nerve in my right hip, and whenever I tried to squat heavy it would force me to regress even further into pain.  Grey Man has the trainee alternate between squats on 1 day and deadlifts on another, still training 3 days a week (so in 2 weeks, you squat 3 times and deadlift 3 times).  Deadlifts were NOT bothering my hip in a similar manner, and this meant I actually had time to recover between squat workouts and heal up.  Additionally, Grey Man rotates between the bench and the overhead press, and as someone with a few strongman ambitions left, I wanted to continue to train my overhead press.  Beyond all this, Grey Man is legit 3x a week, vs that sneaky 4th day of General Mass, and I really wanted to keep the lifting at 3x a week, and the supplemental movements allowed in Grey Man had it so I felt like I was covering all my bases programming-wise. 

 

There are plenty of good programs in Mass Protocol.  Grey Man isn’t the best: it was just the best for me.

 

MY SUPPLEMENTAL WORK

 

No, not this kind

As previously mentioned, Grey Man allows the trainee to pick up to 3 exercises to form a “supplemental cluster” to train alongside the two main lifts of the day (in my case: squat and press, or bench and deadlift).  On the day that I squatted and pressed, I picked the incline DB bench press, neutral grip chin (weighted on the final 2 weeks, bodyweight on the first) and glute ham raises (bodyweight only).  On my deadlift and bench day, I did lever belt squats, weighted dips and axle curls.  I trained each cluster in a giant set format: going from 1 exercise to the other to the other before resting a minute and starting again.  I prefer this approach, as it’s faster, and tends to generate a decent metabolic hit. 

 

A quick overview of the logic in my exercise choices: since I train in a home gym with a small training footprint, I can’t do lever belt squats and incline DB bench comfortably (I’d have to move equipment between exercises, making giant sets less viable), so those two don’t occur on the same day.  On the day I train deadlifts, I want something quad focused in my supplemental work, whereas on the day I train squats I want something posterior chain focused.  My back is getting heavy training on the deadlift day, so I don’t need to hammer it again with chins, and can instead focus on arms, and I’m focusing on arms/biceps because ever since tearing my left bicep I’ve felt like it’s worth keeping them strong.  I also figure that it will help contribute toward my chinning ability.  It’s honestly a bit like a Sudoku puzzle.

 

 

MY CONDITIONING

 

Not this...at least, not yet

I kept this incredibly vanilla and listened to K. Black’s recommendation: twice a week, I’d engage in a 60 minute walk on the treadmill at an incline.  4.0 was my default incline, and 3.5 was my default walking pace, but I’d play around with both of those depending on the day and my level of excitement.  Ultimately, these were recovery workouts, ESPECIALLY after the squat workouts.  The squat workouts aren’t particularly brutal for many, but with my junked up hip and a torn meniscus in both knees, training first thing in the morning, I’d always finish those workouts pretty stiff, and these walking workouts in between (along with some reverse hypers and hanging from a bar) would always have me feeling ready to roll come the next workout.  They really fell into Dan John’s recovery workouts that he talks about in “Mass Made Simple”.

 

On weekends, I’d engage in as much leisure walking as possible, simply because I feel like it’s the best physical activity we can possibly engage in, especially if done outside in the sun.  On my birthday, I racked up 29.6k steps, just doing what I found fun.  Also, 3x a week, I’d attend an evening Tang Soo Do class, which, now that the whole family has moved up to the advanced class, IS a bit of a workout in it’s own right, and I had a few nights where I came home having broken a good sweat in the Dojang, but I don’t feel as though these detracted from my recovery…minus the time I got kicked in the knee in a sparring match, woke up the next morning unable to extend my leg, and had to postpone training to the afternoon.

 

There was only 1 time I deviated from the plan, and that was after getting a wild hair and deciding I wanted to see how well I’d do on my “5 minutes of burpee chins” protocol.  After 6 weeks of just walking on a treadmill, I came within 1 rep of my PR, getting 55 burpee chins in 5 minutes.  I felt like that was a good sign of the conditioning holding up.

 

PROGRESSION

 

Gotta appreciate a leveling system where you lose your hair AND your pants as you get stronger

Another thing I dug about Grey Man was how I could approach the progression on it.  K. Black lays out “4-5 sets” for the main work.  I took this to mean, do 1 cycle with 4 sets, the next cycle, do 5 sets, THEN up the maxes, start over at 4 sets, repeat.  I like this, because it allows me to progress for a long time on the same maxes and really “own the weight”, vs racing to a stall.  For the supplemental clusters, no such option exists, so I would just up the weights on the maxes each cycle (5lbs for upper body lifts, 10lbs for lower body lifts).

 

HOW I DEVIATED

What?  Me?  A deviant?!

 

Surprisingly: not by much.  Unlike many of my other program reviews, where I twist programs into horrible mutations of their former selves, I remained VERY compliant with Tactical Barbell, which honestly may just speak to the fact that I genuinely found the right program for me at the right time that I needed it.  I DID attempt to employ a mat pull ROM progression day on weekends, using a barbell, since I’ve experienced success with that protocol in the past, but that honestly became a pretty hit or miss approach, as many weekends my training time was compromised and, in other cases, my hip pain was flaring up and I decided against actions that would make it worse.  In regards to that schedule, there were 2 weeks within the past 7 where I was only able to get in 2 lifting workouts in a week vs 3, so we can call that a deviation. 

 

Otherwise, I added ab work to the end of every workout (3x10 standing ab wheels), which K. Black DOES say you can do, and, on bench days where I had extra time, some lateral raises (which CAN fall into the realm of shoulder health exercises).  Also, all of my “deadlifts” on the program are done with the low handles on a trap bar vs a traditional barbell.  I’ve a VERY good barbell deadlifter, and I’m not very good with the trap bar, so I felt like it was worthwhile to spend time focusing on that (reference my previous writings on how training what you’re bad at is good for hypertrophy).  This was another reason I wanted to include that weekly mat pull workout: to maintain skill with barbell deadlifting…but it’s not the biggest deal.

 

And this isn’t a deviation, since it’s allowed, but it’s worth noting that, along with Giant Setting the Supplemental Clusters, I ran the main work in a superset style.  In this case, I would rest 1 minute between exercises, but still alternate them (Squat, rest 1 minute, press, rest 1 minute, squat, etc).  Between this and the giant sets, training never lasted over an hour, and often I’d complete the required work in under 40 minutes, taking the extra time to train my abs.  And I got in a little sneaky grip work by hanging from a bar after my press set before my squat set, but this was less for grip and more for spinal decompression.  Which, on that note, I DID also include reverse hypers into my training, but as a warm-up exercise, rather than an actual exercise.  I found they were quite restorative to my hip.

 

 

NUTRITION: INTERMITTENT FEASTING

Seems legit

 

Now here is where things go totally off the rail and brings the “Conan” into Operation Conan.   It’s no secret I’ve taken on a carnivore approach to nutrition (and my frequently declining readership numbers have alerted me that this is an unpopular choice, but I’ve always been myself since the start of this blog, so here we are) and I had no intention of interrupting that for this program.  K. Black effectively says “good luck” if you try to do a low carb approach to gaining, so I took that as a blessing and went for it.

 

However, an even more interesting pivot occurred around week 4 of the protocol, where I decided to experiment with another unique approach to nutrition: protein sparing modified intermittent feasting.  Yes, that’s a mouthful, but let me explain.

 

One of the big reasons I took on a mass gaining protocol in general was that I was coming out of summer, wherein I had leaned out to the point of feeling kinda stringy, and there was an upcoming holiday season in front of me, starting with a late Oct birthday, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas, and after Christmas, we go on a Disney Cruise, wherein I intend to continue eating my face off.  It was THE most ideal time to start leaning into heavy eating and feasting.

 

Well, as I got closer to my Birthday, and after spending some time traveling and living off of restaurant cuisine (still sticking with meats, but didn’t have the quality control I wanted), I felt like “drying out” a little.  Before this, I was eating 2 solid meals a day: a lunch and a dinner.  The rest of my nutrition came by way of Metabolic Drive protein powder (I don’t say “shakes”, because I actually eat them, by mixing in a little bit of beef gelatin and hot water to create a sticky pudding substance).  Well, I decided to replace that middle meal with more Metabolic Drive and ONLY have 1 meal a day at the end of the day, effectively re-implementing the Velocity Diet/Apex Predator diet.  In the week following travel, I was able to keep that end of day meal a little lighter to re-establish my baseline, and from there I REALLY started leaning into the “feasting” portion of intermittent feasting.  Since I was only eating once a day, I got to eat a TON at these meals.  And I found out I REALLY dug that style of eating.  With 2 meals a day, I was eating a reasonable amount per meal, whereas now I could just absolutely gorge myself and eat until I was satisfied both from a satiety level AND a hedonistic level.  It was, actual, legit feasting, and it happened daily.

 SAMPLE MEALS

Ok, that's probably enough food porn, but check out the variety I'm getting despite the "limitations"

 SCHEDULE

A simple breakdown of my weekdays would be

 

* 0400: wake up, train

 

* 0615: 2 scoops of Metabolic Drive with 1 tsp of gelatin

 

* 0930: Same as 0615

 

* 1230: Same as 0615

 

* 1730ish: FEAST

 

* 2030: Same as 0615

 

* Sometime in the middle of the night: a 1 scoop Metabolic Drive shake in water

 

 

On weekends, I would do 2 solid meals a day: a breakfast and a dinner.  Both of these tended to be on the larger side, and I’d still have the evening Metabolic Drive serving and the middle of the night serving.  There was no training on weekends: I’d sleep in, and just engage in regular physical activity/walking.

 

 

I will note that I do have ONE meal a week wherein I break completely from carnivore, and this meal tends to have a gracious amount of carbs.  Previously, I would use this as an opportunity for a “cheat meal”, but the truth is, I legit love eating meat so much that there’s nothing out there in the realm of junk food that compels me to “cheat”.  I’d have to actually force myself to eat that.  However, if my wife makes something at home, I’ll definitely eat it, because I enjoy the family bonding of the shared meal, and we use some very quality ingredients in the stuff we make, compared to what you get when you eat out.  Often, these meals are pasta or casseroles, and I’ll have some homemade cookies and some raw local honey to top it off.  This creates a cyclical ketogenic approach, which is, once again, very much in line with “Apex Predator”.  I imagine many people are going to read this and go “SEE!  You NEED carbs to gain weight!”, to which my rebuttal is, if the ONLY carbs you need to gain weight is 1 meal a week, then we REALLY don’t “need” THAT many carbs to gain weight.

 

 

RESULTS SO FAR

 

Can't argue with results

I have recorded every single workout and uploaded it to youtube if you want to watch the live progression.  

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfcuGAffLlSc-iaZX2bPBhdDZaqT4aMEw

But I’ve been able to progress on all of my lifts per the progression scheme I’ve previously outlined, and haven’t missed any reps.

 

I’ve also grown in bodyweight, despite K. Black’s opinion on a low carb approach.  I’ve done my best to weigh myself every Monday morning, but sometimes it just plain slips my mind (I’m not one to weigh myself usually), so I only currently have data between weeks 1-6, but in that time I went from 79.1 kg/174lbs to 81.9/180lb.  

 

And then, of course, the things that really matter: my wife says I look bigger, I’m filling out t-shirts more, but my lifting belt still fits the same and my abs are still visible.  I feel like the combination of the walking for conditioning, being zone II cardio that relies on fat as a fuel source, alongside the hard but brief training and my approach to nutrition have all been instrumental in allowing me to feast hard and stay lean through the process of gaining (feel free to watch the training videos for a reference point to level of leanness I’m maintaining while eating my face off each evening).

 

 

THE FUTURE

The more things change, the more they stay the same

 

I legit see no reason to stop training this way.  This is honestly the most content I’ve been with a training protocol in a LONG time, and I STILL have the “specialization” phase to do!  There may be a time that I take on more of the traditional Tactical Barbell work to emphasize strength and conditioning, or get re-bit by the Deep Water bug, but I feel like this is going to be my baseline approach for the foreseeable future.  If nothing else, I plan to at least ride this out until my cruise around the new year, which I will treat as a “bridge week” and roll from there.