TACTICAL BARBELL OPERATOR (FOR STRONGMAN) 8 WEEK CHECK-IN

INTRO

As far as trinities go, you could do a whole lot worse

* I intended to keep this short.  I failed.  It’s over 4000 words.  I don’t know why I do that.  But I’ve been running Tactical Barbell Operator for the past 8 weeks now in order to prep for a Strongman Competition in the second week of April along with a 10 mile race in the first week of April, all while dropping bodyweight in order to make the weight class for said strongman competition.  I made a few adjustments to make the program best fit my needs for strongman and running, but still stayed within the lanes and rules OF the program in order to do so, and wanted to lay out what I’ve done, how it’s gone, and what I’ve learned.

 

BACKGROUND

Reading this book will sum me up pretty well

 

* In preparing for my last strongman competition, I ended up breaking my body HARD.  Two biggest contributors were doing my own programming for it combined with my initial competition getting canceled and signing up for a new one that was 2 months down the line from the last one.  If I isolated these variables, I probably would have been fine, but I ended up pushing myself too hard in training for too long that, by the time I got TO the competition, I could barely perform, and then I had to spend the next 8 weeks AFTER the competition healing from my efforts.  This can be observed in the training videos post comp/my first run of Mass Protocol’s Grey Man, as I struggle just to get into deadlift position and basically combust after every set of squats.  The day of my first post comp workout, I had a co-worker ask me if I had a compressed disk, because I was limping hard and favoring one side.

 

* On top of all of this, I’ve genuinely lost my appetite to lift weights more than 4x per week, and even then that’s a bit of an ask.  I didn’t care for that during the Specificity phase of Mass Protocol, so 3x week is my sweet spot.  I discovered that during my most recent run of Building the Monolith, which led me back to DoggCrapp, and even my own self-built programming was 3x week, so this made Operator a great fit.

 

* I had a few specific goals to train for.  One is the strongman competition in April, the other is a 10 mile race my wife and I run every year, which was the week BEFORE the strongman competition, and I also had a Disney Cruise in March and one in June, for which I wanted to be lean for the sake of looking awesome on the pooldeck AND being able to just absolutely eat my face off without regard for the impact it had on me. 

 

* Which, on the subject of cruises, before starting my strongman competition prep with Operator, I had just finished running 2 cycles of Grey Man followed by 2 cycles of Specificity Bravo from Mass Protocol before going on a 1 week New Year’s cruise, resulting in me putting on 15lbs of bodyweight in 16 weeks, landing at 190lbs and needing to be 9lbs lighter in order to make weight for my weight class, meaning I needed to engage in training where building muscle WASN’T the focus.

 

* All of the above led me to select Operator from TB1, and the Black conditioning protocol from TB2.

 

HOW I RAN IT

About the only kind of running I can stand

 

* The strongman competition I was preparing for had a press medley, topping out with a log press for max reps, a car deadlift, atlas stone over bar, a triple implement carry medley (husafel stone, keg and sandbag) and a sandbag throw over bar series.  This helped determine my movement selection for the Operator Cluster: SSB front squat, log clean and strict press away, weighted chins, kb swings and trap bar lift for my deadlift.  For the first cycle, I’d train the deadlift once per week for 3 sets on Wed, and then would perform the KB swings on Mon and Fri for 1 set of 100.  For the second cycle, I kept the deadlift the same, but started including the KB swings in an assistance circuit (detailed below).

 

* Thought process: the other two implements in the press medley were the keg and the axle, and the weights were light enough that I wasn’t concerned with my ability to clean and press then, so I wanted to max focus on the log.  The trap bar deadlift doesn’t EXACTLY replicate the car deadlift, but it’s close enough for my purposes, and easier to program compared to a lever deadlift set up.  Neutral Grip chins spare my elbows from pain, which is crucial when training for strongman, as they tend to take a beating from heavy loading, but keeping that pull in the program is good for the sake of maintaining a strong back.  I opted for a front squat variant over a back squat because I knew that, training for strongman, my lower back was going to get heavily loaded from the stones, deadlifts and carry medleys, and I didn’t need to add on top of that.  A front squat naturally forces one to use a lower amount of weight, which is less load in general.  I went with the SSB because my ability to maintain a front rack is limited by mobility, and the SSB front squat actually feels a bit more like a log and stone movement based on where the weight sits on the body compared to a barbell front squat.

 

 

* For the first 3 weeks of my first cycle of Operator, I did no strongman implement work for conditioning.  I, instead, opted for very general conditioning, with a focus on running in the 400-800m range along with some bodyweight work.  Strongman implements can really beat up the body, as I learned in my last training phase, and I didn’t want to burn out too early.  I went through a variety of workouts in TBII, to include Black Out on Oxygen, Buffalo Laps, Meat Eater 1, etc.  We had good weather, with no snowfall, so I was maximizing my outdoor training capability during that time.  I also would include a regular 90 minute walk/ruck.  After those 3 weeks, I started training stone over bar and carry medleys on my conditioning days, specifically on weekends, performing the Operator Workouts Mon/Wed/Fri with some TBII workouts on Tues and Thurs.  I started including some non-running based workouts for the TBII work, like Heavy bag resets and Meat Eater II, primarily when weather was bad or when I was short on time.  I continued this protocol into the second cycle, at which time I settled into a pretty steady rhythm of M/W/F Operator, Tues Oxygen Debt 101, Thurs 90 minute ruck, Sat Stone over Bar, Sun carry medley.  I would train throws when I had time to do so, but they weren’t a high priority.  I picked weekends specifically to train events because they’re LOUD, and I train at 0430 on weekdays, so I wasn’t going to wake up my family.  It did make it so that my weekends weren’t very restorative for my lifting efforts, but I just had to manage recovery as best I could.

 

* On the first cycle, I would finish each lifting workout with some ab/core assistance work.  I took to performing a circuit that was 3 rounds of a 30 second timed front rack hold with the SSB heavily loaded, along with either a set of 10 standing ab wheels or hanging leg raises.  The front rack hold was something I remembered from the aughts/10s that people were really into, and it’s like a heavily loaded standing plank.  After that, I’d get in 100 band pull aparts, and then either direct chest work via dips and push ups, direct arm work with curls and band pushdowns, or a lateral raise dropset.  During the second cycle, I started training the assistance as a circuit, turning it into a small conditioning workout.  I would do 3-5 rounds, 30 seconds each, of SSB front rack holds, standing ab wheel OR hanging leg raises, dips, KB swings and push ups.  The first time I did this, it just happened to fit my schedule, but I ended up appreciating it so much I made it a permanent feature on the second cycle.

 

* Two other additions I made on the second cycle was the inclusion of 1 heavy log clean per week, performed on Wed before the trap pull sets.  The intent was to condition my body to moving heavy weight on that one lift so that I wouldn’t waste energy on it during the competition.  Along with this, I added 1 push press rep after finishing my 5 strict reps on the log for each set, once again with the intent of re-grooving the motor pattern of push pressing.

 

HOW I CHANGED IT

Nailed it

* I didn’t.  My cluster was basically the grunt cluster (front squat, overhead press, weighted chins and trap bar lift), the 100 KB swings was something I lifted directly from TB2, I stuck with the recommended structure of the Black conditioning protocol and considered my strongman events as HIC workouts.  About the only thing that could be called deviations was my inclusion of direct arm and side delt work, as even my core work was permitted as assistance work and the push ups and dips fit within the general conditioning workouts.  I wanted to make sure I ran this program as laid out so I could give it a fair evaluation.

 

* If I WERE to change anything, I’d consider changing the order of the weeks, employing a 3/5/1 rather than 5/3/1 structure.  Which is to say, instead of going 70% week 1, 80% week 2 and 90% week 3, I’d go 80% week 1, 70% week 2, 90% week 3.  I liked that layout from 5/3/1, as the 70% in week 2 effectively primes you for a big performance in week 3, whereas the gradual scale up in weight week to week can leave me feeling beat up by the time I get to the final week.  I may experiment with that in future runs, but as it stands, I’m not messing with success.

 

* I also think, instead of straight deadlift sets, I’m going to bring back ROM progression.  I’ll still only pull once a week for 1 set, go for max reps rather than a fixed set of 5 at a percentage, and increase the ROM each week.  I’ll have to experiment and see how much it impacts recovery: I may have to do it on Friday vs Wednesday in order to have more recovery time.

 

WHAT I LIKED

Hey, double Homer Simposon

 

* 3 days of lifting gave me 4 days to do things OTHER than lifting.  It made it easy to balance strongman event work, alongside general conditioning work, walking, and 3x a week martial arts classes. 

 

* Sustainable progression.  Lifting the same weight 3x a week gave me ample opportunity to recover and “master” the load before moving on, and the percentage increases between weeks were gentle enough that I didn’t get crushed in the next week, even WHILE losing bodyweight.  I employed a forced progression between cycle 1 and 2, rather than testing maxes, because I had specific marks I had to hit for my competition.

 

* Flexibility of set and rep ranges to account for demands outside of lifting and recovery.  There was a bare minimum and a maximum to work within, and it gave me a chance to autoregulate as necessary.

 

* Wide variety of conditioning workouts to choose from in TB2.  There were some days I wanted to sleep in, and I’d pick a very short and intense HIC workout, and other days I had more time and could expand to a 90 minute E workout. 

 

* This was the first time in quite a while I managed to drop weight without just completely jettisoning it.  Muscles stayed full as I leaned out, and my strength improved through the process.

 

* I liked how the conditioning was laid out that we did an easy week during the heaviest week of lifting.  It made this week a week where I could sleep in more, since the workouts were shorter, which meant I recovered better, and therefore could put in my best performance.  I also liked how K. Black had specifically scaled workouts in TB2 so I KNEW how to “make it easy” vs leaving it up to my own devices (since I would inevitably do something stupidly challenging instead).

 

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE

Just please, don't give him any more ideas

 

* Resting a minimum of 2 minutes between sets.  Try as I might, there was no way to avoid it.  K. Black had me beat at every turn when I tried to find a way around it. I thought about super/giant setting the main lifts, only to read in his FAQ that you’re free to alternate between movements: just rest 2-5 minutes between them.  When I ran the Mass Protocol workouts, I rested the bare minimum 1 minute between sets to make it really challenging, but there was no avenue for that here, and it honestly just killed my soul to rest that long.  BUT: I did it.  Because I wanted to give the program a fair chance, and not change it from the start and then complain about it not working.

 

* The very consistency that made progression sustainable is also going to be flat out boring.  Doing the same workout 3 times in a row makes you start to wonder if the third workout is any more valuable than the second, and the temptation to skip or mess around is there. 

 

WHAT I LEARNED

I could kinda see why Skynet wanted to kill John Conner after this movie...

 

* My entire time with Tactical Barbell has been a real eye opener on the balancing act between stimulus and recovery, and how one needs to work “hard enough” rather than trying to make every single training session a war.  At least, if the goal is to improve in the metrics of strength and size, AND to do so while also still improving conditioning.  There’s definitely room for the maniac training I’ve done in the past, but that ultimately did a great job of building my conditioning at the EXPENSE of other qualities.  I DO have a resting heart rate of 38 these days, which I attribute to all that time, energy and effort, but now, with Tactical Barbell, I can throttle back on maximizing conditioning and instead allow my other qualities to grow.

 

* Make the strength work strength work and the conditioning work conditioning work.  Similar to my above point, I tried too hard to make my own workouts everything at once, and in turn none of it was much good.  Similar to my blogpost about greatest hits albums, I also may write a post where I equate this to buying the jar of peanut butter mixed with jelly vs just getting two separate products and mixing them on your own: the latter will work out better than the former.  When strength work is JUST strength work, you focus hard on that one objective and you crush it, and then, when it’s time to do conditioning work, you do the same, and you maximize the RESULTS of both efforts.  When you try to sneakily turn your strength work into conditioning by playing around with rest times and giant sets, you end up degrading your strength work so you can accomplish a not great conditioning workout along with it, which is, as Stan Efferding puts it “stepping over dollars to pick up dimes”. 

 

* And with that above point, K. Black DOES employ a good “no dessert until you eat your dinner” approach with how he lays out Operator.  You want intensity?  You want variety?  Cool: that’s what CONDITIONING is for. You do your lifting to get your strength done, and then, when it’s conditioning time, go wild.  Pick any workout you want (within the prescription of Green or Black) and have at it.  You want to suck wind?  Do Oxygen Debt 101.  Feel like suffering for a long time?  Do a 90 minute LISS session.  Need some Crossfit stuff?  Do the general conditioning circuits.  And he’s got challenges in there too. I suppose this is more of a “what I liked” bullet, but it ties into the above.  You CAN make the strength work the strength work, because you know that, after you get that done, you can go wild with the conditioning.

 

* On THAT note, what I like about TB is how easily it can map to other programs.  TB1 is basically a structured version of Dan John’s “Easy Strength”: it just slightly breaks the rule of 10 reps, but you’re still not struggling on the reps and focusing on building the SKILL of strength.  Meanwhile, TB2 totally answers the 5/3/1 question of “what should I do for conditioning”, and could ALSO be mapped directly onto Dan John’s Easy Strength if you wanted to use THAT program instead.

 

NUTRITION

Trying to get more Dakota Dude and less Buffalo Bull with the high beef intake...and props if you get this reference at all

 

* Since my goal was to drop weight, I still stuck with a similar approach to what I did during the weight gain phase: I just changed the end of day meal.  To recap: I’m employing the Velocity Diet/Apex Predator diet, wherein I consume a protein supplement throughout the day leading up to one evening meal of solid food.  Specifically, I’m using Metabolic Drive by BioTest, with me training first thing in the morning at 0430, then having 2 scoops of MD at 0615, 0930, and 1230, then a solid meal around 1730, 2 scoops of MD at 2030, and then 1 scoop of MD in the night, kept in a shaker bottle in my bathroom that I’ll drink at some point when I wake up to pee. 

 

* When I was gaining, that evening meal was MASSIVE, and very high fat.  I’m sticking with carnivore, so the main feature was some sort of large amount of fatty meat, and then 4-6 whole eggs, pork crackling and cottage cheese, with ghee typically to backfill some energy.  Now, with fat loss as the goal, I’ve leaned out the protein source, switched to egg whites, and cut out the cracklin and cottage cheese.

 

* I should point out that the above describe my weekday nutrition.  On weekends, I have 2 solid meals: my wife makes me a great breakfast, consisting of 2 omelets made with 3 whole eggs, ghee, swiss cheese and whatever meat we have leftover from the week, alongside 3 strips of beef bacon and a piedmontese grassfed hotdog.   For dinner, on Saturdays we go out somewhere (frequently it was either our favorite local BBQ spot where I’d get a full rack of pork dibs without sauce or an awesome Hibachi/buffet spot where I’d load up on all sorts of grilled seafood) and on Sundays I’d typically cook steaks.

 

* Aside from water with electrolytes, the only other thing I’d drink is a green tea twice a day, also mixed with electrolytes.  I picked up some sort of cold around week 5 of the program, and took to including a teaspoon of cinnamon in the tea, as it felt good on my throat.

 

* After week 9, my intent is to attempt Vince Gironda’s “Maximum Definition Diet” of steak/meat and eggs for all of my meals, ideally doing a breakfast and dinner daily with this approach.  I’m currently below weight for my weight class, and should ideally be able to eat UP to weight leading up to the competition.

 

 

OUTCOMES/LESSONS LEARNED

Honestly, this would be just as accurate for many program jumpers

* Since I’m still running the program with the intention of competing at the end of the second cycle, this is a “check in” rather than a program review.  Along with that, I have no intention of testing maxes to evaluate results, as this is the year I turn 40, and I’ve only got so many maxes in me and I intend to use those IN competition.  So instead of “results” or “before/after”, I’m going to list the current outcomes I’ve gotten from running Operator for these past 8 weeks (along with TB programs in general for these past 23 weeks).

 

* The biggest thing is that I healed up a lot of nagging injuries by following programs with controlled volume and intensity.  Once again, if you roll back to my training videos at the start of Mass Protocol, you can see how dysfunctional my squat pattern is, and it was because my right hip was in so much agony that racking the bar after each set effectively crippled me.  It was a significant amount of nerve pain, and there’s a fair chance I had/have some manner of compressed disc that is pressing against a nerve, but with enough time on an intelligently laid out program, I’ve managed to heal to the point that I have much better mobility and do not need to hang from a bar between sets to stretch out my back.  My warm-ups have also gotten shorter, as I need less prep for training.  I’ve also eliminated the persistent pain I have in my elbows, which typically grows during strongman competition prep.

 

* But all of this healing has come along with consistent performance IMPROVEMENT as well, compared to the results one gets when they simply rest to recover.  I haven’t tested maxes, no, but I am moving weight easier in training while my bodyweight continues to drop, which in and of itself is an observable form of progress.  My Stone of Steel workouts get stronger each week, I’m able to lift more loads during my strongman medleys, I see progression on my log clean maxes, and my technique is getting sharper from all the consistent practice. 

 

* Part of the healing process was also about me not being stubborn any more.  I was still dealing with pain during Grey Man, and it was primarily a result of my squatting style.  2 years ago, when I radically changed my nutrition, I ALSO radically changed my squat style, because I was taking a page from the Dave Tate injury playbook of picking brand new movements so that I wouldn’t have my old ones to compare against.  I went from a belted, VERY low bar moderate stance squat to a beltless very high bar VERY close stance squat, to the point that my heels practically touched.  When I first started squatting this way, there was no problem, as the weights were so light, but once I started getting strong on it, it started putting pressure on my structure that I wasn’t able to support.  If you look at me, I’m built for conventional pulling and low bar squatting, as I’m pretty much all femurs with no upper torso.  Squatting high bar with a close stance had me squatting about a mile before I reached depth, and without the belt my core was getting hammered.  Eventually, this resulted in my grinding up my right knee (I tore the meniscus in it on a log clean over a year ago, which most likely happened because I was stressing it with this squat style), forcing me to squat SLOW to work around the knee, which put more pressure on my core, which I imagine is why my hip was so beat up.  I finally got over myself and put the belt back on and widened up my stance a little for the Operator phase of training, and since that time my healing has really taken off and I’m feeling incredible.  I think there IS still a place in my training for that style of squat, but not as a main strength movement.

 

Day 1 of Mass Protocol

Training as of today. Note the difference in squats

* I’ve lost around 10lbs in 8 weeks, once again without having to count or track anything that I’m eating, and through the process have grown in strength and managed to hold on to enough lean tissue that I don’t like stringy as I did after my last strongman competition prep/fat loss experience.  I imagine this is a product of NOT trying to turn the lifting workouts into conditioning workouts, and actually giving my muscles an opportunity to recover from heavy work while still getting stimulus from that and some of the conditioning work.  That, and also keeping conditioning on point, to either be short and intense or low effort and long, avoiding the middle ground of moderate intensity for moderate durations.  As I learn more, I realize how significant it is to understand what energy systems you’re training and what fuel sources they’re using.  I don’t want to be a “sugar burner”.

 

SUMMARY

You mean to tell me there is no room left for a trained weapon of mass destruction?

* These past 8 weeks with Operator have been a success, and I imagine that will continue until I get to my competition.  After I finish week 9, I go on a 1 week Disney Cruise, which I will be counting as a bridge week, then come back and finish up the last 3 weeks of the program, culminating with the 10 mile race, followed by another bridge week, and then my competition.  I’ll do a write up of those events, and from there we’ll see what happens.  8 weeks after the competition, I go on ANOTHER cruise, this time for a longer time, to Greece and Italy, of which I am excited for the cuisine and my attempt to LARP Heracles.  I’m kicking around a few ideas of how I’ll train leading up to that, but ultimately how I’m doing after my competition will determine that. 

 

* And, of course, if you want to watch all the videos of the training up until this point, here is the playlist.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfcuGAffLlSc5VdM9E8i5dZLsMN84dfNg&si=eI-23nA67HJL4FKw 

 

 

NO ONE GETS FAT ON VACATION

I already know from the title that there will be much gnashing of teeth and racing to provide counter examples of tales of gluttony and hedonism during some magical 2 week all inclusive stay at some resort and reports of 20+lbs gained, but as a man that is intimately familiar with the interior of many a cruise ship AND Vegas casino/resort/buffet (to say nothing of Reno as well, because really, the less said of Reno, the better), please allow me a moment to explain myself.  Quite often, I observe anxiety of those about to depart on some sort of vacation in regards to the loss of “all of their gains”, concerns about getting fat, halting progress, etc etc.  I observe similar concerns when it comes to an even more micro level issue, such as ONE bad night of sleep, and it’s impact on the recovery from training.  OR, ONE bad training session itself, and the impact it has on the progress of the trainee as a whole.  And again, as one that has been to many a vacation locale, participated in the debauchery first hand AND witnessed my fellow participants, I can safely, soundly and surely inform you of the truth: no one GETS fat on vacation.

But we can sure try!

 

…you were already fat before you got there.  Yes, THAT Is the truth.  Even IF you had spent the last 4 weeks undergoing the most INTENSIVE physical preparation and dietary restriction in order to get yourself beachbody ready, you were already fat before arrival.  Even if you APPEARED lean, you were simply what is currently being referred to as “skinny on the outside, fat on the inside”.  And how do I know this?  Because one does NOT get fat in the span of a week or two.  The body simply cannot build tissue at such a rate.  It does not possess the biological capabilities to do so, baring some sort of horrible genetic mutation (looking at YOU Fred Dukes).  If we COULD get fat in just a week or two, we’d solve the world hunger crisis by rolling in to impoverished nations with a firetruck loaded with melted ice cream and just water board (ice cream board?) citizens until they resembled the average American at Disneyland.  No dear reader: the seeds of fatness had already been sewn WELL before the vacation: the vacation simply provided even more sun, water and food to help nurture those seeds. 

 

What this is arriving at is the reality that we are a product of our HABITS, and NOT of our deviations.  And “deviation” does not necessarily have to infer negativity, despite the term “deviant” typically used in a pejorative manner.  Deviation tends to be viewed in a negative light because it’s an implication of deviation from the NORM, and, in turn, the norm is implied to be the acceptable standard we all agreed upon, wherein deviations are violations of our social contract.  However, in a debased and corrupt society, deviation is to seek health and justice, and in a debased and corrupt individual, deviation is to seek correction and “rightness”.  In turn, when we deviate from our standard of gluttony and hedonism INTO a practice of regimented nutrition and hard physical training, this IS a deviation…and, in turn, will NOT be reflected in our being.  These are just one offs: they are not our “core essence”.  We are, instead, a reflection of our habits.

'He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.'

But this is NOT inherently a negative.  Much like the whole “good, bad, we’ll see” notion of Zen, understanding that deviations are not immediately manifested can be liberating IF we engage in those habits that will develop us into what we desire to be.  Once again hailing back to “being that which does”, we are going to be an outward manifestation of our habits in all circumstances.  In turn, one does NOT get fat on vacation IF one is not regularly one who does fat things.  One who regularly engages in monk-like adherence to nutritional and training protocol is going to be a manifestation of that habit, such that, when they DO engage in a 1-2 week deviation of hedonism and debauchery, this deviation will not be persistent enough to impact their actual being.  They will come out the other side of this deviation STILL as an individual that engages in monk-like adhered to nutritional and training protocols.  1-2 weeks is not enough to disrupt the lifetime of work leading up to that moment.

 

And the same is true, one again, on that micro level.  One bad night of sleep is NOT going to undo the machine that is your body that has been successfully recovering from training for weeks, months and years on end.  It is going to take a sustained HABIT of poor sleep before we begin to witness this impact.  One poor workout is NOT going to undo the efforts of a fully fleshed out training protocol: it is going to take many poor workouts, at which point we must analyze WHY these workouts are going so poorly.  One bad training CYCLE is not going to undo years of good ones: it’s WHY we have the license to experiment, try out new things, and learn.  Hell, we heard all the reports about how Soviet athletes would take 3-6 MONTHS off of training once the competition was done, primarily because many of these athletes simply had no access to training EQUIPMENT immediately post competition, and they’d come back better and stronger than before, because 3-6 months of NOT training could NOT undo a lifetime of training.  We saw the same thing during the pandemic, with Mark Felix being restricted to only 225lbs of weights to train with, only for him to come back and STILL set world records and win WSM masters.  Meanwhile, we had people that quit training altogether because they didn’t have access to a belt squat…

225lbs does a body good

 

Knowing you can’t get fat on vacation is liberating, because it grants us the license to HAVE these vacations.  The story about people gaining weight over the holidays is only half the story.  YES, people tend to put on the majority of their weight during the holidays, with an average of 1-2lbs per year which, over 20 years, gets you 40lbs overweight.  However, they KEEP this weight because of their consistent habits of inconsistency when it comes to managing their physique and nutrition.  The individual that “cheats” every DAY with office place snacks and treats “because I deserve it” is the individual that has made cheating the norm, rather than the deviance.  When the holidays roll around, they are simply manifesting the accumulation of their habits in a concentrated time period, whereas those that have been “on the program” all year can have this deviance, experience it to it’s full effect (stay away from the sugar free chocolate, for reasons beyond hedonic joy) get back on the program in January, and be no worse for wear.  They may, in fact, be in a BETTER position than they started, for they are refreshed, recharged, and reinvigorated to go out and get it after the downtime.  Like those aforementioned Soviet champions, or like returning from a deload, the deviance provides a moment of RECOVERY, whereas most other individuals are suffering from sustained OVERrecovery. 

 

No one gets fat on vacation, just like how no one gets jacked in 2 weeks.  Change, positive or negative, takes time and dedicated consistency of effort.  Self-improvement AND self-destruction both take dedication, whereas deviation is ephemeral.

JEET KUNE DON’T

In this post, I am going to become everything I despise, because I am about to levy a critique on a martial art/concept which I have not studied, have not fought against, have not received instruction in, NOR have I ever read the book “The Tao of Jeet Kune Do” to be able to actually have an informed opinion.  Instead, I am going to offer a critique to a soundbite of Jeet Kune Do, BUT, it DOES happen to be the most popular soundbite available (which, in turn, may be an instance of me critiquing popularity, like some edgelord counterculture Hot Topic goth kid, but I digress): “absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”  Right away, a bunch of kids wearing button down anime shirts running the physical gamut of methed out skinny to “4 Cheetos away from ‘holy sh*t’ (and, for some reason, no in between) all got excited at the mention of such a quote, because it became the mantra of every wannabe “martial strategist” who has a TON of great IDEAS about how to win a fight…just no actual practice experience.  It’s because this is one of those quotes that, on the surface, seems incredibly enlightened, progressive, and revolutionary but, upon the slightest bit of scrutiny, completely falls apart.  What appears to be a recipe to achieve the most optimal outcome by using ONLY what is useful instead results in a disastrous mishmash of half-baked concepts that never amount to anything successful.  The fact of the matter is, everyone else was ALREADY doing all of this before we got here: we just couldn’t appreciate it BECAUSE we lacked the experience to understand what it was that we were observing, believing that we ALONE were the sole determiners of the useful and the useless.

This WAS a pretty quick way to make that determination...

Breaking this down from a martial arts perspective, here’s where the concept tends to fall flat.  If one were to apply this concept in a vacuum, it would mean taking an individual with no martial arts training whatsoever and Frankensteining an entire martial art from the ground up by selecting only the best techniques from every style, rejecting all the “useless” techniques.  Take the roundhouse kick from Muay Thai, the left hook from boxing, the double leg from wrestling and the triangle choke from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and you’ve got the ultimate package!  …yeah, except: what STANCE do you execute these moves from?  What GUARD do you employ?  Ever watch one of those matches were a pure boxer fights a kickboxer in K-1?  The boxing stance tends to get it’s legs chopped down with low kicks, BUT, that is the BEST stance to throw that left hook from.  If you try to throw it from a more upright Muay Thai stance, it loses a lot of it’s power, but trying to throw that Thai roundhouse from a traditional boxing stance is a disaster, and both of those stances are garbage for shooting that double leg, but the ideal stance for THAT technique really lowers your guard and allows you to eat knees to the face.  And god forbid if you wanted to mix any capoeira into this, or some drunken boxing, or what about some weapons? 

 

What are we discovering here?  There needs to be a FOUNDATION to work upon first, and this, ultimately, boils down to my previous discussions regarding understanding through the lens of CONTEXT.  Those things that seem “useless” upon initial inspection suddenly make a WHOLE lot of sense when understood from the context of the foundation.  Traditional Muay Thai’s punchwork may appear like inferior boxing, until you realize that it was designed with a more upright and open stance in mind, and used as a means to create openings for kicks and elbows while also being able to WARD OFF attacks from 6 other limbs that boxers don’t need to concern themselves with.  And even when we THINK we’ve figured it all out with modern Mixed Martial Arts, we have to understand THIS through the lens of context, as you can watch the “evolution” of successful MMA styles coinciding with changes in the rules.  Bas Rutten’s success with open palmed strikes in Pancrase was not replicated once gloves became a more standard practice in MMA, and the soccer stomps allowed in Pride greatly changed the ground game compared to what was permitted in the UFC.  And, along with all of that, so many of the greats IN MMA came in WITH a foundation to build upon: the notion of a ground up MMA fighter is a modern novelty, and in that instance, it was their instructor who arrived with a foundation in the first place that ultimately developed their style. 

Soccer kicks make the decision to pull guard and scoot an undesirable one...

Which, of course, leads us into the realm of physical transformation, wherein we have to again view everything through this lens to understand that those things we consider “useless” that are worth rejecting are, most likely, more a product of necessity within the context of the foundation of the programming.  Alex Bromely, in a recent Dave Tate podcast, spoke to understanding “the spirit” of a program, which captures this notion so well.  It’s too easy to just look at a program on paper and say “I don’t like this, I’ll take this out, I’ll add this part from this other program I like”, etc etc, but one must FIRST understand WHY the program was structured the way it was to be able to even consider making these changes.  Was this program built around high frequency in order to get lots of practice on the movements?  If so, you do NOT want to burn yourself out with max weights or max reps in a set, even IF you find that you respond well to that stimulus.  Though sub-max may seem like something “useless” for you to throw out, in the context of the programming as a whole, it makes total sense and is incredibly useful. 

 

It's why a foundation is so essential.  So many young trainees want to just build a training program from scratch, and it ends up exactly as you expect.  For one, it’s not even a program, but simply a routine, and all it boils down to is a selection of exercises, sets and reps, because they think that a foundation means “train a muscle group 2x a week” and that the only way to accomplish this is with a 6x week Push/Pull/Legs split.  And, much like my earlier critique of JKD, what we end up with is a mishmash of half-baked ideas that don’t actually amount to anything successful, because there is no actual foundation being built upon.  There is no structure to the progression, no plan for managing fatigue, no control mechanism for eliciting enough stimulus for growth without achieving TOO MUCH, etc etc.  If one were to take an established foundation in something like 5/3/1, Conjugate, Juggernaut, Western Periodization, DUP, etc etc, they could at least have something to build UPON and refine. 

Sometimes that foundation IS sure brutality and insanity

 

In that same podcast, Alexander DOES go on to say that one SHOULD personalize these approaches based on their own personal experience, which is the last little bit of that JDK quote that is absolutely and totally applicable.  But, in turn, the necessary caveat there is that it has to be based on EXPERIENCE, which can only be gained through time and repetition.  If we try to reject what is useless from the get go, we never get a chance to actually try out all of these ideas in the context they were intended to be employed.  Similar to my “ketchup” rant, if we never actually experience these ideas as intended, we never get to understand HOW they work such that we can later employ them to our own advantage.  When studying a martial art, study it EXACTLY as it was designed FIRST and THEN take the time to play around with it.  When learning a training system, give the program a run as designed for at least ONE full cycle and see how it goes.  I’ve been lifting weights for 25 years, and I’m running Tactical Barbell Operator EXACTLY as it is laid out by K. Black right now.  I’ve been training martial arts since I was 9, and I’m in my Tang Soo Do classes right now doing EXACTLY what my instructor says to do, even IF I think the Muay Thai roundhouse is a better kick than the Tang Soo Do one.  I’m here to learn SO THAT, when the time comes, I can make the necessary adaptations.  But until I understand the WHY, I won’t be able to execute the how.

YOU CANNOT COMPENSATE FOR A DEFICIT OF TIME WITH A SURPLUS OF EFFORT

If I can be credited for giving any “gift” to the world of physical transformation, it would be the identification of my 3 keys to success: effort (what I would like to call “intensity”, but that, unfortunately, is equated to mean percentage of 1rm, so I say effort), consistency, and time.  And, of course, I’m not the first to have identified this, as Dan John quotes “little and often over the long haul”, which he himself attributes to a coaching mentor, and, of course, all thought originates from the Greeks anyway.  Plus the Simpsons already did it.  But all that aside, in the discussion of effort, consistency and time, it’s worth appreciating that I phrase “AND time”, rather than “OR time”, indicating that all 3 of these variables are important.  The absence of one negates the value of the other two.  If you consistently put in minimal effort over a long time, you will achieve minimal results, and if you inconsistently kill yourself in the weight room over a long time (like those folks that get charged up at New Years and right before spring break, and then fall off for the rest of the year), you’ll forever spin your wheels and stay in some sort of skinnyfat limbo.  And, of course, when we remove time from the equation, we find that killing ourselves in the gym consistently grants little in the way of results…because we haven’t WAITED long enough yet.  But this is the LEAST satisfying prospect of the 3, because we can always train harder, we can always be more consistent, but try as we might: we cannot compensate for a deficit of time with a surplus of effort.

Remember deer antler velvet?

 

I was first exposed to this reality when I was recovering from ACL reconstruction.  My regular readers (the few, the proud at this point) recall what happened: in my attempt to carry a 775lb yoke 30’, I made it 29.5, went for a quick pick up to secure the distance, and ended up rupturing my ACL, tearing my meniscus and fracturing my patella all in one shot.  I ended up getting a hamstring graft after waiting 6 weeks for my patella to heal up enough to have some screws put in, at which point I began what would boil down to 5 months and 22 days of recovery before being cleared to return to regular training.  I had heard of the 6 month recovery time for ACL reconstruction, but I was different: I was going to be EXTRA diligent with my recovery.  I was going to do EVERYTHING in my power to heal faster.  I was going do train my uninjured side as hard as possible, push the limits, and lick this thing in no time.  I shared all of this with my surgeon and my physical therapy team…who went on to inform me that ligaments DON’T get much blood flow in the body, compared to muscles.  They take a long time to recover because that’s how LONG they take to recover.  It’s not a matter of doing your physical therapy harder than everyone else, it’s not a matter of taking the right drugs or using the right protocols, it’s not a matter of nutrition: you simply can’t rush the healing process.  But you CAN absolutely set yourself back in your progress by pushing too hard too soon and compromising the recovery of the healing ligament.  And I certainly came close to doing just that in pursuit to prove them all wrong, and for my effort, I managed to shave a whole EIGHT DAYS off my recovery time…go me.

We see this same thing whenever people find themselves with an abundance of free time.  “Guys, for the next 3 months, I have no obligations whatsoever.  I can LIVE training.  How can I maximize this opportunity?  2 a day training every day?”  The answer is, sadly, so very very pedestrian.  There is very little one can accomplish in such a short window, and, most likely, the best thing this person can do is use this opportunity to maximize RECOVERY rather than training.  Because the body can simply only grow SO much in a given time, and once we’ve flipped the growth switch, we cannot “flip it harder” to make it grow more.  But, comically enough, quite often, the very things that ARE suggested to do during this time are flatly ignored, because they’re not “sexy” enough for the trainee.  Use these 3 months to rest as much as possible, eat as well as possible, and learn as much as possible, so that, when you find yourself ABSENT the time to do all these things, you’re so much further ahead.

Lee Priest setting the example

 

Make no mistake: effort IS the driver OF the progress, but time is to governor of it’s distribution.  Yes, it is true that many trainees ARE undertraining as far as the necessary degree of effort goes in order to drive a stimulus and, in turn, these trainees will see “faster” progress once they learn how to properly up the effort, but this isn’t a demonstration of how more effort equates to faster progress universally: it demonstrates WHAT the necessary base level of effort is in order to maximize the benefits OF consistency and time.  It’s why I say all trainees should run Super Squats at least once in their lives: just to learn what effort FEELS like.  But what I DON’T say is that these trainees should run Super Squats 7 days a week in order to get twice the results, because it just plain doesn’t work that way.

 

In point of fact, quite often, our attempts to speed up time with effort have the opposite of intended effect: they REDUCE our results and slow us down.  Dan John related a story about his brother, who did no training for a marathon and ran it cold.  Typically, the prep phase for a marathon is 3 months.  By skipping these 3 months of training, his brother “saved” himself 3 months!...except, after the marathon, it took a full 3 months for him to regrow all of his toenails and heal his feet enough to be able to walk normally again.  Which meant, not only did he lose the same 3 months he would have lost before, but he lost even MORE training time, because a normal marathon runner is able to actually TRAIN in those 3 months leading up to the marathon, whereas his brother was sidelined the entire time. 

All that time you saved skipping out on boxing lessons is going to get spent re-learning how to tie your shoes

 

We see this same thing when it comes with diet: those that are on the quest to drop fat and improve their physiques want to do it as fast as possible, and in doing so, engage in some sort of crash diet that rapidly jettisons their lean tissue and puts them in a terrible hormonal state, setting them BACK significantly further than they would have been had they simply taken a more sane path, even if it “took longer”.  And we even see this among those who THINK they’re “taking the long road”, by attempting the ever famous “long slow lean bulk” in an attempt to avoid ever having to have a fat loss phase.  Because they’re trying to save themselves the time of the cutting phase by investing heavily in the effort of the bulking phase via precision nutrition, they end up spinning their wheels for months, putting on minimal, if any, new lean tissue, and squandering a LOT of hard training hours in the gym.  Had they simply been willing to invest the necessary TIME into the second phase of the nutritional protocol, they would have actually come out ahead.

 

None of this is doom and gloom: it’s quite the opposite.  Physical transformation is one of the few guaranteed returns on investment out there in life.  If you go to any gym, you will find a ton of jacked dudes who are training in all sorts of ridiculous manners, simply because they’ve put in enough TIME under the bar that the results happened.  And not only does interest generate on your investment: it compounds!  The longer you do this, the better you get at it, which improves your ability to engage in physical transformation, which allows you to get better at GETTING better.  That speaks to the value of “consistency” in the “effort, consistency and time” equation.  All it requires is patience, which is, of course, in short supply in a world of literal instant gratification.  But, in turn, think about how ridiculous of an X-men power that is to have: the ability to WAIT.  That’s a super power you can pick TODAY without any need for genetic mutation or exposure to radiation, and it will put you SO far ahead of everyone else who is simply unwilling to wait for the results to come their way.  Put your head down, dig in, wait, and you will see the results of your effort.

IT’S WHAT YOU DON’T DO

Americans, and possibly other westerners, are obsessed with doing.  We take pride in it: “we’re doers, not talkers!” and other such trite bravado.  We see inaction as sinful and action as virtue, and even I have displayed this mentality with one of my favorite Klingon proverbs of “in battle, make a decision: if it’s a good one, even better”.  However, quite often, it’s the stuff we AREN’T doing that is responsible for our success, while the doing becomes our undoing.  And this fact is the cause of so much cognitive dissonance, because we take so much satisfaction when we are in the process of doing, whereas we experience so much anxiety from not doing.  But, in that regard, the basic premise of physical transformation continues to hold true: physical transformation is an uncomfortable process.  The body transforms BECAUSE of discomfort, as the body is attempting to adapt as a means to avoid this discomfort.  And this will include the discomfort associated with the stuff you AREN’T doing.

In this case: exhaling

 

The fitness industry has latched onto this broken part of our psychology and weaponized it against us in order to make a profit.  Growing up in the 90s in San Diego, I heard radio ads (holy cow what a 90s sentence) for a product called “Metabolife”, which was a miracle weight loss powder.  All you had to do was, stop eating 3 hours before bed, and then mix this powder with water and drink it before bed, and like magic, the fat would just come off.  Hey, what happens if you stop eating 3 hours before bed and DON’T drink the powder?  …oh yeah…but you can’t sell “Don’t eat for 3 hours” to people for fat loss: where is the DOING?!  Where is the ACTION that MAKES the fat loss happen?  Surely it can’t be the INACTION causing this!  And it was the same with the “shock your abs to a six pack” electro stim products sold by infomercial.  Ever notice how those products came packaged with a diet?  What happened if you followed the diet WITHOUT the ab shocker?  Oh yeah: abs.  Because they’re made in the kitchen.  But where is the DOING!?  Same with 8 minute abs, the ab wheel (which is a GREAT product for training abs, but won’t make a size pack happen) and, honestly, the entire “health food” industry.

 

Why health food?  Because it’s not what we eat that is making us healthy: it’s what we AREN’T eating.  We, again, see this trap all the time: people fill their shopping carts with kale and wheatgrass, and chow down on it alongside their Captain Crunch and 5 drinks per evening.  This idea that the “health food” will “undo” the consequences of the unhealthy food.  That drinking a diet coke will undo a Big Mac.  That Manuka honey and protein bars will undo eating out of the vending machine at work.  That slamming a Slim Fast shake alongside a Subway footlong will make us skinnier.  Because, again: now we’re DOING something.  No one wants to believe that the path to health and fitness is traveled by NOT eating the stuff that’s killing us.  No one wants to believe that the health food DOESN’T come in a box with special labeling and mixing instructions: that it’s just ACTUAL food.

We figured this out decades ago...

 

This is why REAL nutritional interventions are successful, irrespective of the specifics of them.  Whole food vegans experience similar health benefits as carnivores when it comes to the initial phases of the intervention, because both AREN’T doing the same thing: eating highly processed hyperpalatable chemically engineered “food like products”.  One is only eating plants, one is eating no plants whatsoever, but both have eliminated the stuff that was actively poisoning and killing them, and their health improves.  And, consequently, you can go on the other end of the spectrum, eating “dirty vegan” or “dirty keto”, living entirely off of Oreos (yes, they’re completely vegan) or Atkins frozen pizza (yes, ALSO a thing), completely following “the rules” of the diet, DOING all the things, and end up in far worse health than you started, because now you’re ONLY living off of hyperprocessed junk.  The only “not doing” that’s happening here is NOT eating actual, real food, which is absolutely setting you up for failure.

 

This, of course, exists in the training world as well, with examples abound.  Both Chris Duffin and Stan Efferding have spoken of how, during their peak performance in the sport of powerlifting, they were training about 3x per week.  But the ENTIRE internet has decided that we NEED to lift 6x a week to get the OPTIMAL muscle protein synthesis: why can’t these dumb strongest humans to eve live figure that out?  Both these dudes were forced into these training frequencies as a result of life circumstances…and both talked about how, with such infrequent training, they were able to RECOVER so much better from the demands on their training, such that they could develop SO much more strength, now that their fatigue was better managed.  It’s the whole reason deloads exist: we let fatigue heal so we can continue to push hard.  Dan John has shared a similar sentiment with the origins of Easy Strength: life as a busy father and teacher confined him to 15 minute workouts 3-5 times a week, and it was during that time he had his best ever performances in throwing the discuss. 

What's the point of training 3 days a week if you can only deadlift 1000lbs?

 

Hell, what we just described is WHY abbreviated training itself became so popular: trainees had been slamming themselves with volume for so long in the pursuit of growth that, when they FINALLY backed off, they were ABLE to grow.  They were SO obsessed with doing that it was their UNdoing.  They had it in their minds that they HAD to do more sets, more workouts, more training, more frequency, more more more…and, ultimately, it was the NOT doing that would get them results.  Stuart McRobert wrote about this exact experience in Brawn, and he was not alone in that era.  What weren’t the trainees doing?  RECOVERING from the training.  Because the recovering WAS the “not doing”, and not doing was so hard to accept.

 

 

Take stock of all the “not doing” you need to be doing.  Stop doing the things that are taking away from your progress.  Stop OVERdoing the things that are supposed to be BRINGING you progress.