IOWA GAMES STRONGMAN 2025 WRITE UP

 

 

THE VIDEO

INTRO

Not just a fantastic quote, but an incredible introduction to a life changing movie

* These always run stupidly long and I’ll try to prevent that, but here we go: I competed in yet another strongman competition.  I turn 40 this year, have competed in strongman since 2013, my knees are absolutely shot and I’m way too damn skinny these days, but I don’t seem to learn lessons well, so here I am.

* I liked this competition because of the events: axle press for reps, frame deadlift for reps, wheelbarrow, sandbag over bar (load, not throw) and max distance sandbag carry.  It was a light show, which meant it would be conditioning heavy, which just called out to me, and nothing was terribly technical.  In fact, I traveled over 2.5 hours for this show when there was one RIGHT down the road for me in my hometown because I liked these events more, which worked out well, because this event ended up having 5 dudes in my weight class (counting me) whereas the other show would have only been 3 of us.  I like having a lot of competition.  It turned out to be the right decision, because after I drove home and had a dinner of a full rack of spare ribs, I checked in on the other comp and they were STILL competing…and they started BEFORE us.  The difference was that there was no novice division at the comp I was at, so we had fewer people and everyone already knew what to do, so it went quick.

 

* I took 4th out of 5 on this one.  I was within a rep of changing my place in every single event, minus the wheelbarrow (that doesn’t shock me), which was far more motivating than it was devastating, because I got to do that “playing the game how I want to play it”, meaning I didn’t have to cut weight, I didn’t have to balloon up during competition prep, I didn’t have to slam a box of pop-tarts in the middle of the event, and I got to train the way I wanted to train leading up to it, while competing with some dudes who were most likely 10 years old when I started in the sport.  I had an absolute blast doing events I liked doing. 

 

TRAINING

I mean, kinda yeah

* I’ve been sticking with Tactical Barbell since 16 Sep of 2024, and have just continued that trend through this.  I broke this up into 2 different phases of Operator: a 6 week block, followed by a 2 week bridge week as a result of a European Vacation/Cruise, followed by a 5 week block upon my return, with a bridge week before the competition.

 

* For the first 6 week block, I used a 2 movement main cluster of Buffalo Bar low bar squat and axle strict press from rack, 3 work sets per workout.  I made use of bodyweight chin ups (various grips) in a submax style, focusing on total rep accumulation, to include training them during the warm-ups and between sets of the main work.  This was in contrast to doing heavy weighted chins as a main movement: I was experimenting with emphasizing volume rather than intensity with the chins in order to build my back size in an approach I referred to as “Operation Planet Mongo” (a nod to Paul Kelso’s “Powerlifting Basics Texas Style”).  This back building priority is also why I settled on 3 work sets vs 5 for the main work: I wanted to have more time to focus on my back.

 

* Each of the 3 training days had a different follow-on workout after the main work: Day 1 was 20 rounds EMOM of dips, chins, ab work and band pull aparts, aiming to hit the total reps from Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 Building the Monolith Day 1 assistance work (100-200 dips, 100 chins, 100-200 pull aparts).   Day 2 used my 6 week ROM progression mat pull/deadlift approach, and then a 3-5 round circuit of DB rows, reverse hypers, axle curls and ab work (once again, stealing from Building the Monolith’s day 2 assistance work).  Day 3 was Crossfit’s Cindy WOD (20 rounds of 5 chins, 10 push ups and 15 air squats), starting with bodyweight and then adding a weighted vest with gradual added weight over the 6 weeks, in preparation for Murph on the Memorial Day holiday that fell during the training block.

 

* Conditioning work emphasized the rower, once again with a desire to build my back.  I picked workouts that let me get in a lot of rower work, and would also do rounds on the rower post lifting workouts if I had time.  On Saturdays, I would do Sandbag over bar with my 200+lb sandbag, typically in an EMOM style. 

 

* I also kept my habit of daily carry work, focusing on carrying my 200+ sandbag once a day for 4 lengths in my driveway (going down and back twice).  I also endeavored to get in daily chins on non-lifting days.

 

* During my first bridge week (which was more like 2 weeks), I made it a point to get in resistance training when I could on my vacation, breaking into the cruise fitness center and performing the 100 press workout from Dan John’s Armor Building Formula using dumbbells, along with some general pump work.  Beyond that, I got in some bodyweight exercises.  Since it was 2 weeks off of training, I didn’t want to get too detrained.

The Armor Building Formula is old school AND legit

 

* For the second phase of the training (the 5 week block), I shifted back to 5 sets of main work (4 sets during the heavy week) and swapped the buffalo bar for a safety squat bar.  Emphasis was now shifted to specifically becoming stronger for strongman.  I kept the submaximal chins in the warm-ups/between sets.

 

* I changed the day 1 follow-on workout from BtM day 1 to my “ultimate shoulder circuit” from my book of bad ideas/the best press training cycle I ever ran.  This was a 6 round circuit of a press (rotating implements each round between trap bar, behind the neck press and axle press), dips to failure, lateral raises and band pull aparts.  Press was part of the competition, and I wanted to build mine strong.  I ended up keeping day 2 and 3 the same: I was appreciating how fit day 3 was keeping me in general, and day 2 was still benefitting my deadlift.

 

* I kept the daily sandbag carries, but dropped the daily chins, to spare my elbows.  I didn’t have time for follow-on rowing post lifting, now that I was doing 5 sets, but still chose conditioning workouts that allowed me to emphasize the rower.  One of my favorite adpatations was to take “Devil’s Trinity” and swap out the heavy bag for rower, going 1 minute rower, 1 minute KB swings, 1 minute burpees, 1 minute rest for 5 rounds.  It was really solid.  I also continued my weekly sandbag over bar.

 

* For the bridge week before the comp, I started the week by finishing my ROM progression cycle on deadlifts (hit a 10x425 VERY controlled deadlift) and spent the rest of the week walking on a treadmill or doing some light rower work.

 

* With this training block, I was effectively covering every event except for the wheelbarrow.  I figured the time spent trying to get better at that event would be better spent really nailing the other 4, because it was such a wildcard that trying to figure out how to jerry-rig something at home to get it to work didn’t seem worth it.

 

NUTRITION

 

When this dude talks, you should listen

* I remained on Vince Gironda’s “Maximum Definition Diet”, which I have previously detailed extensively.  It remained effective, with me weighing 79.7kg the day before the competition: VERY comfortably within my weight class, and having gradually dropped 7kg of bodyweight since the Christmas holiday.

 

THE COMPETITION

Always keep your cool

* I got up at 0530, ate a breakfast of a 10oz piedmontese grassfed New York Strip slathered in wagyu tallow alongside 4 pastured eggs cooked in the same tallow and topped with ghee, and then had a “Primal Fudge” keto brick and hour later during the 2.5 hour drive to the event…and weighed in at 181 with my competition clothes on.  Again: I got to play the game the way I wanted to play it.

* I warmed up by doing 2 reps on an axle with a 45 per side, then picked up the frame twice.

EVENT 1: 185lb Axle Clean and Press Away

* I got to go last in the first event, which meant I knew that I had to get above 7 to avoid getting last place. Highest score was 14 reps with 185. The continental wasn’t explosive, but the weight felt light. Looking at the video, I wasn’t using any leg drive at all, which is pretty standard for me. My knees really hold me back there. I was able to grind out those last 2 reps, which made me some fans in the audience. I’ve always been good at grinding reps. I missed co-second place by 1 rep, as we had 5 guys in my weight class, last place had 7, I had 8, and two tied with 9 vs the 14 in first. As I wrote: lost a lot today by inches.

 

EVENT 2: 365lb Frame Deadlift

* I went 2nd in the second event, knowing I had to beat 27, but wanting to set a VERY high mark to beat. We had to get a down AND an up command, and I did my best to wait for both, because in the press event I was the ONLY one that didn’t lose a rep due to outrunning the command. However, that proved to be a poor strategy here, as the 33 reps I got were a good amount, but I got beat by the other 3 guys who were willing to take a few no reps in order to outrun the commands and squeeze in more total reps. This was such a repfest of an event that it really came down to seconds.

 

EVENT 3: 450lb wheelbarrow (50’ – turn – 50’)

 

* The third event, the wheelbarrow, I came in dead last by 5 seconds. I’m not shocked by that: I didn’t train for it and I’m not very fast, and with both of my knees shot, it didn’t really suit me as far as running goes. Dusted myself off: I was still in 4th place: not last.

 

EVENT 4: 150lb Sandbag over 50” Bar

 

* The sandbag over bar, I got to go second and knew I needed to beat 12 reps. I had been training with an over 200lb bag at home, and the competition bag was 150, so I was able to breeze through it really well. Repeated a mistake from my last comp though: my fingers got trapped in my shoelaces when I reached down for the bag. That’s the second time that has happened: time to learn a lesson. That MAY have cost me a rep, which sucks, because the two guys ahead of me got 14 reps, once again, an opportunity to share second place on the event. But this meant heading into the final event knowing I wasn’t going to get last place.

 

EVENT 5: 150lb Sandbag Carry Max Distance

 

* I got to go second in this event. The guy before me did 4 full laps, a total of 800’. I knew I was going to beat that. I got to 500’, and, in truth, I could have just kept going. I’ve done a 5 minute carry before: this was significantly less than that, and I wasn’t hurting nearly as bad. However, I knew I had no shot of placing at this point, and didn’t feel like I needed to make myself the center of the universe by subjecting everyone in the audience to me carrying a sandbag for 8 minutes, so once I had comfortably beaten the guy below me I dropped the bag. However, what was cool about this was I went far enough with my carry that the guy in third couldn’t match it, so I overtook him, AND I set a very high standard for the next 2 dudes, with one only beating me by 3 feet and the final guy going 550’ total.

* I know that, if I knew the distance to beat, I could have beaten it. I am too good at dealing with the suck.

* When my effort was done, one of the other competitors asked me “Dude: who hurt you?”  I got a kick out of that.  In general, I had a lot of folks come up and tell me they admired my grit in the competition.  That’s pretty much what I bring.

 

TAKEAWAYS, LESSONS LEARNED, AND THE FUTURE

Time for some REAL old school progressive overload...

 

* I would have liked to have not made those small mistakes and put on a better show, but I really just had an absolute blast, I’m delighted that I lost by inches and wasn’t just totally blown out of the water, and my body feels absolutely incredible. 2 competitions ago, I finished and was completely physically broken. Now, I’m champing at the bit to get back to the gym on Monday. Knees, hips, shoulders and back are good to go, and I’m ready to do some eating and some growing.

 

* Which, on that note, I’m sticking with Tactical Barbell, as it’s just serving me incredibly well.  I’ll soon be a full year on the program.  I’m back to the Mass Protocol, doing Grey Man, but a little different.  Instead of A-B-A, B-A-B, it’s just going to be A-B-A on repeat, squatting and pressing twice a week and benching and deadlifting once a week.  I also intend to continue my daily carries, but with a twist: I’ll be using my loadable keg, and increase the weight 1-1.5lbs each day, ala Milo of Croton.  While my bodyweight goes up, so will keg weight, and I’m curious how far I can go with this.  If nothing else, a fun experiment.  Diet is going to be more of the same.

 

THEY CAN’T ALL BE BOSS FIGHTS

The “boss fight” is a time honored trope in the world of Role Playing Games, from tabletop to videogame, from console to computer, and whether you know them as bosses or BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy), the experience is the same: you get to fight someone that is clearly a cut above the dungeon fodder you’d been mopping the floor with up until this point.  After countless battles against goblins and kobolds, or slimes, or sentient heads of lettuce (yes, this was an enemy in Final Fantasy 6), you run afoul of…a gigantic snail that stores lightning in it’s shell (yes, also an enemy in Final Fantasy 6), or perhaps some sort of dragon or an evil knight or something like that.  It becomes immediately apparent that these battles carry significance, as quite often the music changes, and the tactics that were previously slaughtering minions wholesale are now barely registering as effective.  We’re going to need to pool together ALL of our resources, and quite often, after the battle is fought, our party is in need of healing and resupply.  And it is precisely BECAUSE of this that not ALL battles can be boss fights.

Yes, this WAS the first boss I ever fought in an RPG, and I thought he was ridiculous even all the way back then

Boss fights are significant events within the realm of the game.  They tend to be milestone markers and rites of passage: an indicator that you have progressed to a “new level” in the game and, upon completion, validation that you have the appropriate skills to take on even BIGGER challenges.  Sometimes this is even underscored to the point that the first boss you fight in the game later becomes regular dungeon fodder, like fighting a demon known as “The Butcher” in Diablo, only to encounter many similar demons in the later parts of Hell.  And, in turn, as a rite of passage, we tend to walk away from them with the scars to prove our experience.  They are a draining and taxing encounter, and once completed, rest and recovery are in order.  If one were to go straight from one boss fight to another, they would surely face annihilation, the exception, of course, being FINAL bosses in games, which DO tend to be a series of boss fights linked together, culminating as the “capstone” experience of the game, where all the stops are pulled out and we have to REALLY prove how far we’ve come.

 

Which, in turn, leads to the argument of the NECESSITY of the NON-boss fights in the game.  We NEED these insignificant battles that string us from boss fight to boss fight, for they truly are NOT insignificant and, instead, hold the true significance of the fights themselves.  It is FROM these non-boss fights that we learn, grow, and develop those skills necessary to achieve victory IN the boss fight.  Funny enough, one of the clearest examples comes not from an RPG, but from the original Super Mario Brothers for the Nintendo Entertainment System.  Bowser, the fire breathing turtle lord, awaits us at the end of his dungeon as our first ever boss fight, but to get there, we jumped on goombas and stomped on koopa troopas and kicked their shells and launched fireballs, grabbed stars, jumped from platform to platform…and effectively learned all the skills needed to defeat Bowser upon encountering him.  Had the game just thrown us Bowser at the start, we’d perish, having no idea how to overcome him, but the game TAUGHT US how to win simply by navigating from left to right, and it allowed us an opportunity to accumulate extra lives along the way so that we’d have the resilience to survive this encounter and move on to the next level.

This was sheer terror in 8-bit form back in the early 90s

All this talk about video games and RPGs and where are we headed?  I know I’ve been guilty of this: trying to turn every training session into a boss fight.  Hell, I’ve played boss fight music IN my training sessions.  And there is certainly a time and a place for boss fights in our training, but not EVERY training session can be a boss fight.  Boss fights are significant events that have negative impacts on our recovery: they are taxing and place a great demand on us to recover.  If one is to stack a boss fight on top of another boss fight, over and over again, they simply never grant themselves the necessary amount of recovery to actually grow from the process of training.  They simply run themselves into the ground and die, metaphorically or otherwise.

 

Those non-boss fight training sessions are what SHOULD make up the majority of training, just as they do the majority of a good game.  And just like how those fights are teaching us how to play the game, they’re teaching us how to win the boss fight OF our training.  These training sessions are the learning sessions: we try to grove strong and crisp techniques so that our bodies LEARN what success feels like, we find ways to progress from workout to workout to perpetuate a positive feedback loop and, in turn, we understand that progress does NOT necessarily mean “more weight on the bar” each workout.  We progress with faster reps, cleaner reps, less rest between sets, more sets than last time, more density, etc etc.  We often come out of the training session feeling BETTER than when we started, because these sessions are SUPPOSED to make us better.  We know the boss fight is coming, and we are preparing for it by NOT being too destroyed by the time it shows up.  If we have to kill ourselves on the WAY to the boss fight, it’s a sure sign that we’re underleveled for this part of the adventure, and need to spend more time grinding away and developing ourselves.

May need a few more sandwiches along with those levels...

 

And much like how the boss fight/minion fight paradigm exists within the scope of from training session to training session, it ALSO applies from training CYCLE to training cycle.  It’s blatantly obvious that some training programs are just plain harder than other.  Deep Water is a harder training program than Easy Strength, which neither author will take umbrage with me saying, as the names alone are dead giveaways.  It’s not wrong to run either of these programs, but it’s worth appreciating that, upon running a Boss Fight program like Deep Water, the smart move is to move onto something like Easy Strength, in order to take a little bit of time to recover, regroup, and grow for the next program.  Hell, Deep Water itself acknowledges this within it’s own program, with Deep Water Advanced being a different animal from Deep Water Beginner and Intermediate, focusing more on AMRAPs vs fixed reps, sets and percentages, and we see this same approach in Super Squats with the two different 6 weeks workouts to alternate between.  Dan John lays out structures like this alternating between Armor Building Formula, Easy Strength and Mass Made Simple, Tactical Barbell structures this with the Operator-Mass-Specificity layout, Dante Trudel has this with “Blast and Cruise” on DoggCrapp, Jim Wendler’s Leaders and Anchors function this way, etc etc.  And I write this fully acknowledging I cobbled together my infamous 26 week gaining plan that is 6 HARD months of training, but ALSO acknowledge that, once that plan was done, there was never a recommendation to run it again right afterwards.  The bigger the boss, the longer the time needed to recover, and one can certainly argue that the 26 week plan fit within that “final boss fight” capstone I mentioned earlier.

 

All this to say that we have to have the maturity to understand that a game of ALL boss fights simply wouldn’t be a fun game.  Boss fights are significant BECAUSE they are significant: there is some gravity to the situation because it’s immediately apparent that this is “different” from what we’ve encountered previously.  Much like how, when we try to make a greatest hits album, it just makes us appreciate all the songs on it a little less, if ALL we ever did was fight bosses, none of them would really seem all that cool or significant.  We’d end up minimizing their significance and ultimately robbing us of the fun and wonder of overcoming them.  The same becomes true in our training: trying to turn every single training session into some sort of significant rite of passage style event just ends up souring the whole experience while stagnating our own growth.  We NEED those fodder fights BOTH to allow us the ability to grow and improve en route to the boss fight AND in order to make the boss fight carry the significance it needs to carry.  Spend the appropriate amount of time doing battle with goblins and heads of lettuce UNTIL they are comically easy SO that you’re able to advance past the boss onto the next level and start the whole process all over again, after you’ve achieved your adequate rest and recovery.  You’ll appreciate the next boss fight all the moreso for it.

HYPERBOLIC LANGUAGE IS LITERALLY KILLING YOUR GAINS

Yes, that topic title is ironic like an Alanis Morissette song, because those clickbait titles drive me nuts, especially when I see them coming from legitimate sources (Dave Tate, I’m looking at you and your Table Talk titles that have practically nothing to do with what is actually being discussed).  The unfortunate thing about popularity when it relates to a hobby is that, the more people interested in your hobby, the more people want to try to find a way to make MONEY off of that interest and, in turn, the more disingenuous and unscrupulous practices tend to come to fruition.  And in the attempt to attract the attention of the lowest common denominator (as they tend to make up the largest demographic to pull from), hucksters take to the employment of hyperbolic language to create a false dichotomy in order to leverage their own product/approach.  “This is KILLING your gains”, “This ONE movement is all you need to gain”, “THIS approach is garbage”, etc etc, it’s a world where there are no shades of grey: everything is black and white.  If we want to talk gains killers, let’s talk the REAL gains killer here: hyperbolic language is literally killing your gains.

Anytime I hear the word "hyperbole", this pops in my head

 

First of all, let’s just go after that whole “killing your gains” comment, because it absolutely drives me nuts and I was equally guilty of thinking that this was a thing to be concerned about when I first started training.  Folks, when I first started drinking protein shakes, for one, I had to mix them in a big cup with a handmixer, because there WERE no shaker bottles and protein powder was stupidly thick, and, in turn, I’d look at how the sides of the cup were coated with the powder when I was finished and wondered if I “wasted” the shake because I didn’t get every single gram of protein.  So needless to say: I get it.  It’s too easy to get into our own heads when it comes to physical transformation and wonder if all of our effort is being wasted which, in turn, is a terrifying prospect that we could put SO much energy into something and get ZERO reward from it…which is EXACTLY what these predators attempt to capitalize on when they tell you that something is killing your gains.  They’re preying on your fear and anxiety, which, in turn, makes them total a-holes.  DON’T GIVE IN! 

 

Gains can NOT be killed.  This isn’t a thing.  They are slow to accumulate and, in turn, slow to lose, as much the reverse is true: anything quickly gained is quickly lost.  If you’ve ever allowed yourself to get out of shape as far as physical conditioning goes, you know you can get back in shape in a matter of weeks.  This is why fighters have fight camps that only last 8-12 weeks: it doesn’t take that long to get back into CHAMPIONSHIP shape.  And strength athletes have 8-12 week blocks to PEAK for a competition: it doesn’t take that long to get BACK to maximal ability.  What DOES take a long time is to build up TO the state of being able to perform at these levels IN a matter of 8-12 weeks: this is the foundation building, where the REAL “gains” exist.  And, in turn, it means that nothing done in the span of a day is going to kill or maximize your gains.  It also means one single training session isn’t going to make or break gains.  Gains are the result of consistent habits, applied over a LONG duration, with sufficient effort (where have we heard all that before?)  Little and often over the long haul, as Dan John says.

Unless, of course, you're this dude and you just deadlift 500kg on a whim

 

But because of these hucksters employing hyperbolic language, we ignore the obvious (effort, consistency and time) and hyperfocus on the minutia of training.  We get overly concerned about ensuring each muscle group is trained 2x per week, that we are training ALL sets to failure (hah!), that we get the party approved number of sets for each muscle, we rest the EXACT amount that is necessary, we eat EXACTLY when we’re supposed to eat and WHAT we’re supposed to eat, and we get so hyperfixated on the METHOD that we forget to actually track the RESULTS.  We have so much anxiety about correct EXECUTION that we forget that all of this work is for a purpose: to get results.  Because we end up mistaking correct execution for goal achievement, because gains take a long time to observe accumulating, and in the absence of patience to trust the process and watch the results roll in, we week self-assurance by ensuring we did everything “right” to ensure gains.

 

Because along with this, we deal with the hyperbolic language where methods only exist in 2 realms: awesome or garbage.  Something is either THE best approach/method/idea OR it is the WORST: there is no middleground in the battle of language.  And, in turn, this creates the false perception that not only does perfection exist, but that it’s obtainable and, in turn, EVERY decision is a navigating a minefield wherein we will either pick the BEST approach or accidentally choose the only other alternative: the worst approach.  And, again, this all boils down to the typical marketing approaching of not only promoting yourself but tearing down the competition.  It is not enough that I should win, but that others should lose.  We cannot peacefully and harmoniously co-exist in the world of physical transformation: it must be a case where it’s us versus them.

At least the creators of DnD made the right choice of "Half-Orc" VERY obvious

Folks, I saw this growing up between the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis, and quite frankly it looks just as goofy now as it did then.  We’ve lost perspective of the reality that most of us are, at most, going to achieve “good enough” when it comes to a method for physical transformation AND that enough time spent doing “good enough” over a long enough timeline is going to result in some INCREDIBLE physical transformations compared to the average populace who isn’t even bothering to try to do ANY manner of approach.  Paul Kelso did a fantastic job in Powerlifting Basics Texas Style of laying out his favorite movements per muscle group in a tiered system and, in doing so, explained how he felt some movements were BETTER than others, but all of them would achieve the goal of training the muscle and getting it to grow.  We saw Stuart McRobert do the same thing in Brawn, and Vince Gironda in “The Wild Physique”, and so many other credited and established authors who WEREN’T trying to fleece a bunch of beginners but, instead, genuinely interested and full of passion in the pursuit of helping others achieve their goals.  The common ground we find in the topic of physical transformation is that those who are truly passionate about this pursuit LOVE helping others “get to yes” by finding ANY means of succeeding, while those are in this game to make a profit for themselves LOVE to gatekeep by dictating that anything that isn’t THEIR specific approach is absolute garbage and totally ineffective.

 

Don’t let hyperbolic language hold you back.  Don’t listen to it, and don’t allow YOURSELF to adopt this framework in your own thinking.  Allow yourself some mental degrees of flexibility here when it comes to analyzing the approaches available to you.  If you just shut off your brain and only see things in terms of “awesome” or “crap”, you’re going to miss out on a LOT of the nuance between those two realms and, in turn, miss out on the little nuggets of gold that exist in even some of the poorest of ideas.  And if you let your own fear and anxiety overwhelm you regarding killing your gains you will, ironically enough, kill your gains due to all the cortisol this high stress ends up creating.  So relax: it’s just lifting weights.     

STARTER DECKS

I was first introduced to Magic the Gathering back in 1995, and I know this because “Ice Age” was the most current edition available, so it’s like combing through the fossil records to determine the era of the epoch.  I was 10 years old, and my adult second cousin who was a god in my eyes because he was in his late 20s/early 30s and played video games and DnD and all sorts of other nerdy stuff sat my brother and I down one day while we were visiting the family for Christmas and told us he was going to teach us “Magic Cards”.  I, of course, anticipated some sort of card trick, and was instead introduced to a new colorful world of imagination and tactics and mythological creatures and, truthfully, yet another reason for middle school bullies to throw my own lunch at me and steal my cards.  That next Christmas, my brother and I now being full on Magic the Gathering addicts, we got the coolest gifts ever in our stockings: brand new starter decks!  My brother given a deck from Mirage, and myself a 4th edition (I apologize for all my non-MTG versed readers out there, but this is one of those “if you know, you know” kinda things).  We tore the little plastic coating off of them, gave them a few quick shuffles, and immediately went to war.  And, dear reader: that’s the way it SHOULD be.  My brother and I, at this point, already had hundreds of our own cards, we have our own decks we had built by carefully hand-selecting each and every individual card, weighing and measuring it’s impact on the overall balance of the deck and it’s effectiveness as a weapon of war against another, and we even had decks specifically built to beat other decks (if they play a mono-burn deck, I play my counter spell/protection from red deck!).  But that morning, on Christmas, while we waiting for everyone else to wake up so we could open the rest of our gifts, we just opened up the decks, had NO idea what was inside them, sat across from each other and just played whatever came up, learning as we went.  Let’s bring back those starter decks on Christmas morning: let’s just play some Magic.

I genuinely don't care how niche' this photo is, it's a nostalgia bomb for me.  Also note how it uses the same packaging as a pack of cigarettes: not even trying to hide the addictive nature of the game

What are the starter decks of physical transformation?  I’m speaking on the topic of taking things that are already built for us and running with it.  Not starting from the ground up and trying to piece together something from a bunch of singular ideas, but, instead, accepting the gift of an entire system already built and ready to run.  Because what was a starter deck in MtG?  They were ALWAYS 60 cards, 20 of which were lands, 4 of each of the 5 colors, the remaining 40 cards were a combination of creatures and spells across those same 5 colors, giving the player a sampling of what was contained within that edition of Magic and all the tools they needed in order to successfully play a game.  They even came with a tiny manual explaining all the rules of how to play and what new rules were included in this current edition.  There was never any doubt when you opened up a starter deck that you WOULD be able to play a game with this deck.  Would it be exactly the way you wanted to play?  Was it 100% uniquely your style?  No, but it was totally and absolutely functional: you never had to worry that you had some sort of unplayable deck due to an inadequate amount of lands, creatures or spells.

 

That’s the same guarantee when we follow the programming of someone who is worth trusting: someone with the necessary credentials of producing results.  Yes: if we just jump on board with the latest influencer, we could in fact be using an unplayable deck, similar to if you were to just borrow a deck from a stranger or your friend who never seemed too sharp on the rules vs one officially endorsed and built by “Wizards of the Coast”.  And, similarly, just going onto youtube and grabbing a bunch of ideas from a bunch of different influencers and trying to cobble together your own SUPER PROGRAM from all the “best ideas” is most likely going to give you the same outcome as just grabbing a random pile of all the “best cards” and trying to make that into a deck: you may, in fact, find out you have no lands to cast spells with, or no idea how to actually USE all these “best cards” you grabbed.  Meanwhile, when you buy into a program with a proven track record, ala 5/3/1, Tactical Barbell, Super Squats, Juggernaut Method, RTS, Deep Water, Cube Method, etc etc, it’s like having a deck officially stamped with Ice Age, Mirage, 4th Edition, Revised, etc etc: you KNOW you’re playing with something that WILL work, and you can alleviate yourself of any anxiety of failure. 

This is pretty much how every "rate my program" thread goes online

 

And these starter decks apply to the world of nutrition as well.  Yes, for sure, you can absolutely try to build your own deck here with the world of “If It Fits Your Macros” and decide that you’re going to just set the bumpers of your diet and fill it in with whatever, no different than saying “I’m going to have 20 lands and 40 other cards and go from there”.  But without REALLY knowing “how to play the game”, there’s a fair chance that the deck you build just ends up being random janky garbage.  Meanwhile, if you pick a starter deck, like keto, paleo, carnivore, whole foods vegan, Mediterranean, Vertical Diet, Mountain Dog, etc etc, you KNOW that you are picking something that HAS worked before, and WILL produce some manner of result.  You don’t need to spend days, weeks and months trying to build your own deck to play: it’s Christmas morning, and you can just rip off the plastic, give it a shuffle and go to war!  And if we COMBINE these two approaches together, picking a program AND a diet that have already been built FOR us, we are really off to the races!  Nothing is slowing us down on our journey to progress: we are ready to play!

 

And just like I wrote about on that Christmas morning: we were learning our decks AS we played.  The same will hold true on the path of physical transformation: we play with these starter decks of programming and nutrition SO THAT we can learn AS we play.  Too many trainees want to learn BEFORE they play: they want to spend MONTHS trying to figure out the EXACT perfect program and diet before they embark on them, comically enough, in the interest of “not wasting time” by doing something suboptimal…not understanding that, by doing NOTHING during that time of research, they’re putting themselves SO far behind compared to if they had just started with SOMETHING and adjusted as they went.  We play with these decks, not knowing what’s inside but knowing it’s enough for us to play a game, and each turn we learn a little bit more about what we’re dealing with, such that, after we play a few games, we have a better grasp of our capabilities, limitations, and where we could stand to make some improvements.  Much like how I say to run a program AS WRITTEN before we make adjustments to it, let’s see how we play with these approaches and THEN see if it needs tweeking.

You didn't swap out the squats for leg presses because you thought it would be better: you did it because you thought it would be easier

 

Because you know what was a great thing to spend some of our Christmas money on?  BOOSTER PACKS!  (Yes, MtG was pretty much drugs for kids: there is a reason I got out of the game).  These were little 15 card packs you could buy for a few bucks (back in the day) that allowed you to add ONTO your starter deck.  We had a core with that starter deck, we understood how it played and what we would want it to do better, and now we’d buy a booster pack and see what sweet new cards were inside that could enhance our starter deck into something “more”.  Unique to these booster packs though: they rarely contained any manner of land, and if they did, it was something unique, rather than a basic land.  Lands, in MtG, are your powersource used to cast spells/summon creatures.  No lands, no power, you lose.  In turn, you could NOT build a 60 card deck by just buying 4 booster packs and slapping them together: you NEEDED that starter deck to have a foundation to build off of.  Again, this is no different than trying to build your own approach by just taking a bunch of random great ideas and forming it into a program/diet: it’s not going to fly.  SAVE those great ideas for AFTER you’ve got some sort of foundation established and THEN you can apply your boosters.  And those unique land cards will be an AWESOME little tweak to your foundation of basic lands, but if you try to build an entire deck off of JUST unique lands you’re simply not going to be able to play the game because you’re lacking in the basics, just like if you try to have a diet based around biohacks and nutritional tricks and don’t have a basic foundation of whole foods and sound principles.

 

I’m honestly having way too much fun with this metaphor and could write a LOT more about it, but let me try to just summarize what I’m saying here.  On the path of physical transformation, one day we may very well make our own decks from scratch and play with a playstyle that is totally and uniquely our own.  However, in getting to that path, we need to play SOME games first, and to get started there, we start with a starter deck.  We have starter decks for training AND nutrition, and some enterprising individuals will even package the two together to have an entire SYSTEM already built for a trainee, but by picking a deck and playing straight away, we can learn the rules of the game as we go and get better THROUGH playing, rather than trying to learn everything FIRST and try to build from scratch.  And just like there are many editions of MtG, there are MANY decks for us to choose from, cycle through, and learn from the process.  Once we have a firm understanding of the rules and how WE play, we can start applying some boosters from those random one-off ideas we picked up along the way, as the experience we’ve accumulated will help make these ideas make more sense compared to hearing them as a newbie and not having the context of experience to leverage them.  Ultimately, we do ourselves a service by picking an approach and running it full force and full compliance in order to learn as much as we can about the system at play and how we respond to it, and with enough time playing, we will build something mighty.      

THE BEGINNER’S PARADOX

Unlike my re-release of “defeating the prisoner’s dilemma”, I KNOW I’ve written about this topic in the past, but I still see it come up enough that I want to tackle it again, perhaps with some new words that will help those that are a bit lost on things.  I’m a fan of logical paradoxes, which is why I named a squat protocol after Zeno of Elea, and because of my fandom I can recognize when someone is trying to hoodwink me with some sort of sophistic paradoxical nonsense when it relates to training.  Which brings us, once again, to beginner trainees.  Despite my long era of unsustainable training insanity, I am honestly a big fan of reasonable and sustainable programs that allow for incremental growth over the long haul, to include 5/3/1, Tactical Barbell, and Dan John’s Easy Strength.  And, in my fandom, I frequently find myself offering to young trainees the suggestion that they look into these programs from the start if they are interested in making gains for the long haul.  And, inevitably, some all-too-helpful chucklehead will come out of the woodwork and exclaim “those programs progress too slow for beginners”…and herein we have our paradox.

These two in the same photo contain more combined knowledge than the entire army of bros populating your favored social media platform

 

Allow me to explain.  What is being argued is that, BECAUSE a beginner is prone to fast progression, this program’s “slow” progression is not suited to the progression rate of a beginner, and will therefore prevent them from being able to progress to the best of their ability.  On the absolute surface, this makes sense, but as soon as you dig even SLIGHTLY into the statement, it completely falls apart on itself and the paradox is revealed.

 

The argument here is that the program itself is ineffective for a beginner to realize their fast gains.  However, IF that were true, wouldn’t that mean that the beginner who ran the program would NOT progress too fast for the program?  By nature of the argument that the program is ineffective for the beginner because it progresses too slowly, this should mean that the beginner who uses the program will ALSO progress too slowly while on the program.  The program should reduce the progression speed of the beginner, right?  But then, if that’s true, then the beginner WON’T progress too fast for the program: the program will actually make the beginner match the rate of the program.

You'd basically end up in one of these situations

 

But we’re arguing the opposite, right?  That the beginner is just going to blow through the program’s progression speed?  That the program will say to add 5lbs, but the beginner is going to be ready to add 10, 15 or 20lbs?  Wouldn’t this be an indication of the program working…excellently?  If the beginner is running the program and he is just progressing by leaps and bounds the entire time that they are running it, isn’t that a sign that this program is absolutely crushing the goal of making the trainee stronger?  Have any of you ever run into an issue where you were just getting too damn big and strong too quickly?

 

So then we get to the argument that, no, the beginner trainee is progression IN SPITE OF the program, because beginners will progress on anything.  If THAT’S true, then why NOT have the beginner START with a program with a logical and sustainable progression scheme that will set them up for long term gains for YEARS rather than some en vogue nonsense that just has them race as fast as possible to their first plateau?  If beginners progress with anything, why NOT start them off with something GOOD vs forcing them to endure some sort of training “rite of passage” with a party approved beginner program?

Because if we're GONNA have rite of passage programs, I got a few ideas...

 

And then the argument turns to 1 rep maxes, and how a beginner on a “beginner program” could be squatting 315lbs in months, whereas a beginner on a “slow” progression program won’t reach those numbers for perhaps YEARS, and will instead just find themselves performing 20, 30 or 40+ reps with 135-225lbs.  But, once again, we run into the paradox of how this beginner is simultaneously progressing rapidly and not at all at the same time.  A trainee that takes a weight that they could initially squat for 1 rep and, in a matter of weeks, is now able to squat it for 20 has absolutely gotten stronger.  People fixate on the low numbers when it’s about going from 135x1 to 135x20, but if took a trainee with an 800lb deadlift for a single and had that trainee manage to deadlift it for 20 reps, there is NO one who wouldn’t say “that trainee got STRONGER”.  Hell, most of us would DEMAND to know what they did in order to achieve such an absurd outcome.  In turn, we accept and understand that taking a weight you could initially move for 1 rep and growing to move it for 20+ reps is yet another way of growing in terms of strength, so now we just analyze the significance of a 1 rep maximum.

 

Is a 1 rep maximum ALSO a means of evaluating strength?  Yes, absolutely.  Some would argue it’s the best measure of evaluating maximal strength.  HOWEVER, we must appreciate that the very nature of “peaking programs” is indicative that there is MORE to a 1rm than simply strength: that a 1rm is also a SKILL that can be improved through the matter of practice.  Which is what many “beginner programs” offer: the opportunity to practice closer to one’s limits to better develop the ability to move maximal weight for minimal reps.  But, in turn, by understanding and accepting this, we ALSO understand that a beginner trainee following these “slow” progression programs has just as much opportunity to take some time developing the skillset of the 1rm IF they wish to maximize their ability to lift maximal weights in order to express the strength that they have built ON these “slow” progression programs.  Put simply: that high 1rm is simply a training cycle or 2 away from being realized, but the “strength” behind it has already been developed over the long periods of training.  Much like how the trainee who only ever trained 5 reps per set will need time to adapt to hitting a 20 rep max, the trainee that has kept things light, reasonable, logical and sustainable will need a little time to adjust to lifting near maximal poundages, but this is not indicative of a lack of strength.  Jim Wendler has many stories of trainees using a training max of something like 275lbs and then going on to move 400+lbs on the lift once they are given the clearance to go ahead.

Derek said the reason you didn't see guys in his era deadlifting 1000lbs is that there was no demand for it...so here he is pulling 800 for 9 reps...little did he realize you can't get strong with high reps!

 

So let’s break this down.  If the programs DIDN’T work, then the trainee WOULDN’T progress too quickly…which would actually make the programs work perfectly, because the program’s progression rate would match the trainee’s progression rate.  If the trainee DOES progress “too quickly for the program”, this indicates that the program DOES work, because the trainee that is following the program is progressing VERY quickly and absolutely crushing the program.  If the trainee is progressing in SPITE of the program, then the program itself is immaterial to the trainee’s success, and in such a case, it makes more sense for the trainee to FOLLOW one of these logical and sustainable programs in order to make continued steady progress over the long haul vs some flash in the pan program that has them race into their first plateau.  The notion that a beginner will simultaneously be progression so quickly they invalidate the effectiveness of the program yet the program will also limit them from progressing due to the slow rate of progression is, in itself, an impossible paradox, and anyone trying to tell you this is most likely trying to sell you something. 

NEW GAME+

One of the most iconic video games I ever played which had deep reaching impacts on my childhood, adolescence and upbringing in general is the Super Nintendo Classic “Chrono Trigger”: a game which is often brought up in contention as “the greatest came of all time” to this day: 30 years after it’s release (and writing that just made me feel incredibly old).  This game was put together by the dream team of Japanese gaming and culture: a combination of the geniuses behind Final Fantasy AND Dragon Quest, which at the time were the rival companies of Squaresoft and Enix (before the two companies merged into Squarenix), the two biggest Japanese RPG giants in the industry, with art helmed by the creator of Dragonball Z.  This was like if “The Expendables” was a videogame…and actually good.  It had incredibly sharp visuals, an amazing soundtrack (pick it up sometime for some awesome training music), a mindbending story, incredible characters, a great combat system, over 10 different endings based upon your actions in the game (giving it incredible replay value for an RPG): anything you could ever want in a game.  However, for me, the most incredible part of the Chrono Trigger experience was the inclusion of a concept that I had never seen before in any videogame outside of employing some sort of cheating device ala a Game Genie: the “New Game+” feature.

Those of you in the know just got hit with a huge nostalgia bomb

 

What was New Game+?  For my audience that grew up playing sports rather than video games, in role playing games, the entire premise is built around the idea that you start the game off weak, and you face weak enemies.  You’re level 1, and you’re fighting rats, goblins, slimes, etc.  You beat enough of these weak enemies that you grow stronger, and then you fight stronger enemies in turn, until you reach the end of the game at your strongest and are fighting the strongest enemies.  You’re level 99, and you’re fighting dragons and demons and eventually the end game boss.  You don’t fight dragons at level 1 and get obliterated, nor do you fight goblins at level 99 and absolutely destroy them…UNLESS you’re using New Game+.  What New Game+ did was allow you to restart Chrono Trigger from the beginning BUT you got to start at the level that your save file was from a previous game, and you got to keep all of your equipment as well.  So if you had a save file at level 99 with all the best equipment in the game, congrats: you’re starting a brand new game, fighting the weakest enemies in the game while you are at your absolute strongest.  The game is an absolute and total cakewalk, and you get to just completely blitz through it all toward the end.  For a young kid who wasn’t terribly great at video games, this was totally mind-blowing for me: I could START off strong, rather than having to spend so much time grinding levels, and I could just enjoy the parts of the game I liked as I effortlessly cut down enemies.

 

Ok, how am I tying this into physical transformation?  I was reflecting on this idea this morning, and realized that New Game+ is, once again, a metaphor for the notion of periodization in our training and nutrition.  There are a few premises at play here.  First, we must appreciate the application that New Game+ demonstrates the notion that our previous training cycles set us up for success with our future cycles.  In order to obtain the benefits of New Game+, you DID have to play through an original run of the game first.  It was based off of your previous save file, so if you didn’t get that far in your first game, you weren’t going to get much out of a New Game+ file.   This, of course, speaks to the premise that we need to give these training cycles their due diligence.  If we are too quick to abandon a training cycle because we’re terrified of “losing our gains”, we’re just going to spin our wheels and never get anywhere due to perpetual program hopping.  The trainee that abandons the GPP cycle in week 2 because they noticed their biceps reduced 1/16 of an inch, only to then abandon the hypertrophy cycle at week 2 because they feel like they’re getting too fat, only to abandon the cutting cycle at week 2 because they feel lightheaded and low on energy, is going to have a really crummy New Game+ file to use, whereas the trainee that gives each cycle it’s allocated time to actually work is going to accumulate enough cool stuff that, when they hit “New Game+”, they’re going to absolutely terrorize the enemy.  Each training cycle improves some physical quality that lends itself toward the improvement of ANOTHER physical quality, like how being in better condition means being able to recover better between sets AND between workouts, which means working harder, resulting in better outcomes in either the strength or hypertrophy block, meaning being able to move more weight in the hypertrophy block OR have the potential to build more strength in the strength block, which means being able to have higher output in the conditioning block, which just continues to self-perpetuate awesomeness in a positive feedback loop.

The opposite of this basically

But along with that, one of the blessings of New Game+ was that it gave us “permission” to beat the game.  Some of you non-ultra nerds may not appreciate the bit of ennui that comes when you’ve invested 50 hours into a videogame and reach the end of it…because you don’t WANT to beat it…because that means the game is over.  If we don’t beat the game, we can just keep playing it forever and ever, but once we beat it, the game is over…and now what are we going to do?  But with New Game+, we RACED to beat the game, because it meant we could hit that New Game+ button and start the game over again, and this time we’ll be even MORE powerful than we were before.

 

And this is the same permission we need to give ourselves WITH periodization.  Opposite of the program hopper is the trainee that will NOT move on from a program when the time has finally come to do so.  We’ve seen these dudes before: those folks running STARTING Strength for 2 years (dude: it says “starting” for a reason) because they want to make ABSOLUTELY sure that they have “milked their beginner gains”, which means just starting and restarting the program over and over again while reaching the same plateau each time because they haven’t improved any other physical qualities to overcome that.  This is also true with those that are married to a method because it’s easier to buy the party line vs think critically about programming.  And it’s true for those that are simply afraid to allow some physical qualities to take a step or 2 back in the pursuit of other qualities, failing to understand that we often need to take a few steps back to get a running start for a giant leap forward.  With periodization, we give ourselves permission to “beat the game” of our current phase of training, knowing that, once we start the game over, we’re going to be even STRONGER than the last time we started the game.

Yeah, it's kinda unfair

 

Because that was what was cool about New Game+: unless you WERE the absolute strongest you could possibly be, you STILL got stronger with your playthroughs.  You didn’t see the exponential growth that occurred when you started a brand new game for the first time and were leveling up practically every 3rd fight, but even at level 50, when you got through the game again, you’d be level 55 or so, a little bit stronger, some more gear and gold in your pocket, and ready for ANOTHER New Game+.  In that regard, Chrono Trigger reflected the lifecycle of a trainee as well, with newbie gains resulting in rapid growth and adaptation, while the longer we stayed on the timeline, the less significant the growth occurs from cycle to cycle.  But growth does STILL occur with each playthrough, and we continue to build upon our successes with each playthrough in turn.  It’s only when we put down the game and stop playing that we stop growing.

 

Chrono Trigger still rates as one of the greatest games of all time to this day.  If you haven’t played it, go do so.  The fact that, 30 years later, it’s still teaching me lessons is testament to just how outstanding of a product it is.  And absorb it’s lessons: embrace the time you spend growing, allow yourself the time to experience the necessary adaptations to set yourself up for success on future cycles, but also allow yourself the grace to beat the game and move on to the next playthrough.