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

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

Just pointing out that "TactiCOOL Conan" IS a thing

 

WHY DID I PICK GREY MAN?

 

Because sometimes grey is the only color you need

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

 

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

 

MY SUPPLEMENTAL WORK

 

No, not this kind

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

 

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

 

 

MY CONDITIONING

 

Not this...at least, not yet

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

 

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

 

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

 

PROGRESSION

 

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

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

 

HOW I DEVIATED

What?  Me?  A deviant?!

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

NUTRITION: INTERMITTENT FEASTING

Seems legit

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 SAMPLE MEALS

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

 SCHEDULE

A simple breakdown of my weekdays would be

 

* 0400: wake up, train

 

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

 

* 0930: Same as 0615

 

* 1230: Same as 0615

 

* 1730ish: FEAST

 

* 2030: Same as 0615

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

RESULTS SO FAR

 

Can't argue with results

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

THE FUTURE

The more things change, the more they stay the same

 

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

DUNGEONS AND DIETS PART 5: DETERMING YOUR STATS

Welcome, yet again, to the DnD World fellow physical transformation nerds.  Herein I will continue the saga started a while back where I make hamfisted analogies between DnD and nutrition.  In this post, I will discuss how nutrition and training relate to the notion of our character stats, which, for the uninitiated, basically described the general attributes that make us who we are.  Whereas class determines what we do for a living and race determines our ethnic background (which, in turn, can influence what we have an affinity toward, and aversion against, and other qualities, ultimately being an appropriate representation of “genetics”), the stats are the point black numerical representation of where we stand in the world.  Allow me a quick crash course and then an explanation of where this is headed.

Inevitably, it's always this

There are six core stats in the world of Dungeons and Dragons: Strength (my obvious favorite), Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence and Charisma.  For a quick rundown, strength is obvious, and will impact how much damage you do with melee weapons, whereas dexterity impacts ranged weapons along with your general ability to move swiftly/steal stuff/etc.  Constitution is like endurance/hardiness/hard-to-kill-ability.  For the best ever explanation of the last three: intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is understanding that you shouldn’t put tomato in a fruit salad, charisma is understanding that you can sell a tomato fruit salad as salsa.  Intelligence is knowing stuff, wisdom is being able to actually apply the stuff you know, and charisma is about emotional intelligence and being able to navigate/manipulate people.  And here’s what else you need to know: stats range typically range from 3-18 for a newly created character, with 3 being the absolute worst you could be at something and 18 being the absolute best, traditionally indicating that a “newly minted” person in the DnD world is all 10s down the board: completely average.  So now let’s talk about HOW we can those stats to range from 3-18 vs simply walking around as straight 10s down the board.

 

There are 2 primary ways to determine your stats in DnD: you can “roll a character”, which you’ve most likely heard the term before, or you can employ a “point buy” system.  In the case of the former, traditional/hardcore rules dictate rolling 3 six sided die (3 d6, if you wanna know the hardcore lingo) and whatever those numbers add up to: that’s your stat.  You can see how 3-18 happens now.  A kinder/gentler approach is to roll FOUR six sided die and take the best 3 of those 4 rolls.  In either case, you do this for a total of 6 times, and then plug the results into your stats.  There are even more homerules approaches to this, but we’ll cap it off there for now, because this is already going to get way too wordy.  Point buy, on the other hand, is a system wherein you are allotted a fixed amount of total points to spend across the 6 stats.  It removes randomness from the equation and creates a more “fair” character creation process.  Worth appreciating is that, as stats get higher, they require more points spent to increase the stat (like, going from 10 to 11 strength only costs 1 point, whereas going from 17 to 18 costs 3, for an example).  Already THAT is an excellent metaphor for training, and how, the more advanced you become, the harder you have to work to get the gains that used to come so easy at the beginning, but perhaps I’ll save that for another blogpost.  Worth appreciating is the fact that the Dungeon Master will ultimately decide HOW many points you could to play with: if they want you to have a high power campaign, you get a lot of points, whereas a low level campaign will be few points.

You laugh until you realize these are YOUR party members...

 

Now, all THAT established…what the hell does it have to do with nutrition?  Because, in the realm of physical transformation, nutrition is what DETERMINES your “stat pool”.  Irrespective of if you are doing point buy or rolling a character, your nutrition determines what NUMBERS you have to play with.  But what makes us roll a character vs point buy?  Nuance and approach, fundamentally.  Many MANY trainees are employing a “roll a character” approach in the hopes of scoring a whole bunch of 18s with some random luck, but if these folks want a predictable and fair approach, they need to engage in some point buying.  Allow me to explain.

 

When I was young, I definitely was rolling stats as far as my nutrition went.  My focus was on food QUANTITY.  I was operating under the premise that, as long as I ate ENOUGH of it, I was BOUND to eat the right stuff to trigger the physical transformation I required.  I watched the scale as my feedback for my success, and saw my bodyweight climb up as I pounded away all the fast food, yummy sugary treats, blender bombs, gainers, PBJs and quick fixes I could get my hands on.  It was an approach of pure randomness that I had convinced myself was logical and intelligent: as long as I kept my protein high, I was bound to be building muscle, and all that other food was going to provide me energy to fuel training and the metabolic functions necessary to promote growth.  And this is not that much further away from If It Fits Your Macros, operating under the premise that, as long as you hit specific benchmarks and milestones of nutrition, you’re going to get the results you desire.

I was taking some nutritional cues from this dude...in his 2008 era of nutrition

 

As I wrote: this is randomness.  It’s rolling 3 die and hoping they end up all 6s.  Maybe they will…and maybe it’ll be all 1s.  Because, unfortunately for you, there IS nuance when it relates to this whole “human biology” stuff, and what you eat DOES have a determining impact on the outcome you receive.  Calories in/Calories out may determine bodyWEIGHT outcomes, but it does NOT determine body COMPOSITION outcomes.  And along with that, WHAT we eat can even impact BOTH the calories in AND calories out portion of the equation: foods we cannot actually properly digest due to intolerances among other issues will not factor into our “calories in” despite our counting of it, and some nutrients are going to have a thermic effect that actually contribute to their own “calories out” portion of the equation, to say nothing of the impact of surplus energy sometimes unconsciously impacting our own non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT).  And then, from there, we can discuss the impact of spiking insulin frequently with sugary food intake vs the impact of a fat based diet, the influence of being in a fat adapted/ketogenic state vs a sugar burning state, the myriad of hormone responses in the body, etc.  This isn’t to say that calories/energy/macros DON’T matter, but to say that OTHER things ALSO matter…which brings us to point buy.

 

With point buy, the randomness is taken away from the equation.  This is what one hopes to accomplish with a more nuanced nutritional approach.  And look: you already know I’m big on carnivore, but at least you ALSO know I’m big on it BECAUSE of the research and personal experimentation I’ve done in order to come to this conclusion over MANY decades of playing around with my nutrition.  In the same way, I fully support people with a mixed diet, a vegan diet, a flexible diet, etc etc, so much as they have taken the time to consider BEYOND merely their caloric and macronutrient needs when determining WHAT to put into their body.  Because nutrition DOES have more to it than that…at least, if our goal is to have a solid stat pool to pull from as far as physical transformation goes.  By going deeper and understanding the hormonal impact of food, the influence of micronutrients and minerals, the impact digestion plays and our ability to actually ABSORB the nutrients we are consuming, avoiding our own personal food intolerances, etc etc, we allow ourselves to remove randomness from the equation and to be able to have a much more stable stat pool to draw from. 

I get how you 90s kids think random is always best

 

And, in turn, we absolutely have the opportunity to achieve some 18s: it’s just not going to happen accidentally.  It will be focused and achieved through legit hard work and research.  Stan Efferding is a fantastic example of someone who took the effort to play in a high level campaign with their stat points, along with folks like Thomas Delauer, John Meadows, John Berardi, etc.  Can you Sam Sulek, Dave Tate, Randall Strossen, Paul Anderson, Hugh Cassidy your way to victory as well, by simply relying on the notion that quantity is a quality in and of itself?  For sure: randomness is always an option, especially in the realm of DnD, but what IS worth appreciating is that even those aforementioned people at least had a method to their madness.  None of them were simply relying on an app to tell them what their “goals” were: many were at least mindful enough to have a theory to their approach to nutrition.   

 

 

And once we have our stat NUMBERS, it is training that determines stat ALLOCATION.  Yes, if you train to get stronger, you’ll be able to take that high number you either rolled or saved up points for and put it in strength.  You spend your time on mobility, it goes to dexterity.  Spend it on endurance, it goes to constitution.  Etc etc.  But the key takeaway here is this: training determines ALLOCATION: it does not determine AMOUNT.  The actual stat NUMBERS you get to play with are a product OF that nutrition.  You can train as hard as you want: if the nutrition isn’t there to actually give you a high stat pool, you’re just going to take your highest crappy stat and put it into one of your attributes.  So congrats: you now have a 12 in strength instead of a 10.  Play a high level campaign and you’ll have a MUCH better character to play.

Although sometimes you SWEAR they were cheating when they made their character...

 

Roll a character or point buy: the decision is yours.  But, in real life, you don’t’ get a mulligan on your die rolling: what you roll is what you roll.  Do you really wanna risk being all 10s and 8s in your pursuit of an 18? 

LESSONS LEARNED FROM CONAN THE BARBARIAN: BUILD THE BASE FIRST, THEN SPECIALIZE

Once again, it’s incredible how those OUTSIDE the realm of physical transformation understand the process SO much better than those of us inside of it, proof of concept enough that we “get this” on an instinctual, primal, lizard brain level, and it takes the kind of hubris and stupidity that can only be produced by humans to convince ourselves that there is a “better way”.  In today’s diatribe, I reference the phenomenal 80s movie “Conan The Barbarian”, inspired by the works of Robert Howard and his “Conan the Cimmerian” stories, but I wish to make the distinction that I am SPECIFICALLY referring to this movie in this instance.  If you have NOT seen this movie: stop reading right now and go watch it.  It is your birthright to do so, and it will also make it that this post does not spoil anything.  This movie chronicles Conan’s beginnings, including the ransacking of his village as a child, his being taken into slavery, being forced to fight in the pits for his life, and his eventual escape from slavery and journeys as a dangerous man seeking vengeance for the slaughter of his people.  It was a breakthrough role for Arnold, has a banging soundtrack, and viewing it is an anabolic experience.  But, specifically, I want to focus on that early part of the film, for, within it, the filmmakers actually laid out for the viewers a FANTASTIC protocol for physical transformation, which, somehow, we all overlooked, forgot, and reversed.  Conan undergoes a process of developing a BROAD physical base to build from before he goes through a process of specialization to become an incredibly dangerous man, yet so many trainees want to either do this in reverse or completely skip the first part.

Just like skipping leg day

 

When Conan is first captured and sold into slavery, he is put to work on the “Wheel of Pain”, which is one of the most iconic scenes in 80s barbarian film history (which may sound incredibly niche, but is actually a pretty well fleshed out genre of film).  It’s not really stated what the intent is behind this wheel: it’s simply an apparatus that slaves/prisoners are chained to that they push laboriously, day in and day out, with no rest in sight.  The mechanics of it are not unlike a prowler: there’s no eccentric load, you just set your hips and shoulders and push for all you’re worth.  Over the years, we watch Conan’s development laboring under this wheel, going from a scrawny boy into a powerfully built man, each day and each repetition lending itself toward developing a powerful and massive physique: the result of much general toil with no real specific intention behind it.  And, once his time on the wheel has been deemed adequate by outside observers, Conan faces his second phase: time in the pits.

 

Now a fully grown man (“grown” here emphasized, because god DAMN did he get big), Conan is thrown into the pits in order to fight for his life and the fortune of those who wager upon him.  His captors are banking on the premise that Conan’s time under the wheel has given him the physical advantages necessary to be able to take on all comers, for when you observe HOW Conan fights initially, it is clearly the work of an untrained savage (dare I say: a barbarian).  He fights primal and feral, like a caged animal backed into a corner and forced to defend itself.  He bites, gouges, grabs, smashes, and oafishly clubs and swings whatever weapons he manages to acquire.  As time goes on, we see Conan start to develop his own style and approach to combat.  He takes that raw, physical talent of his and is able to sharpen it to a finer point through frequent repetition, practice, refinement, and testing of concepts under the most rigorous possible testing field one could engage in: quite literal “succeed or die” situations.  Much like how, under the era of Miyamoto Musashi, inferior swordfighting styles were weeding by means of killing to owner of the style to prevent it’s flourishing, there was no room for significant error under Conan’s pitfighting phase of training, and lessons had to be learned quickly in order to continue to thrive.  It was from here that Conan entered his final phase of training: specificity.

Just in case you legit have no idea what I'm talking about

 

Yes, after enough time in the pits fighting as a barbarian and developing the basics of combat, Conan’s captures saw fit to get him some REAL training, in order to take that edge he had developed and turn it razor sharp.  We observe him receiving personalized sword instruction from a master instructor, no longer relying on instinct and savagery, but instead learning about technique, precision, efficiency and maximizing capabilities.  It is at the end of this phase that Conan has reached “peak dangerous”: he has all the raw physical strengths granted to him from the Wheel of Pain, the savagery, aggression and instincts granted to him by his time fighting in the pits, and the technique, skill and proficiency afforded to him by direct, one-on-one expert level training and coaching.

 

WHICH IS SUCH AN OBVIOUS WAY TO DO THINGS!  It’s so obvious that fantasy authors and script writers managed to figure it out without ANY advanced education in the realm of physical transformation, yet you have individuals who dare to refer to themselves as coaches that are out there trying to convince new trainees that they need to START with specialization and MAYBE consider building up some GPP when they run into a stall.  Jesus Christ how are we this stupid?  Everyone who WATCHED Conan the Barbarian ALSO totally understood what was going on, and yet we, who call ourselves “ironheads” or “meatheads” or “strength athletes” or “athletes” or any other term expressing our interest, love and passion for physical transformation somehow convinced ourselves that the most obvious approach to physical transformation was wrong and that flipping it on its head would somehow get us where we wanted to go.

Just want to point out that none of this is doctored or edited

 

Learn from Conan: he had it totally figured out.  I upset a LOT of folks on the internet when they ask what they should do to start lifting and I say “Go play a sport for 6 months”, but it’s the absolute truth: if you have NO athletic base, you need to develop that FIRST before you start touching barbells.  It’s taken for granted that a trainee will have such an athletic base, but we currently live in a world where a human can grow to an adult at the age of 18 having NEVER played any manner of sport during that time, and some of these individuals never engaged in any sort of basic outside play either.  No running, jumping, swimming, swinging, crawling, etc etc.  What happens when you throw this adult into the pits?  They get killed within the first 10 seconds: they have NO physical attributes to rely on to allow them an opportunity to discover and refine their inherent savagery.  We need to get in shape BEFORE we get in shape.

 

And again, if you HAD that sports background, it would make total sense to you.  When you show up out of shape, you aren’t able to spend the time necessary to develop the reps to develop the skills, because you gas out too quickly in practice.  If you’ve ever attended a martial arts class, you’ll see this first hand: folks aren’t able to do the drill for the day to develop their skills because they’re winded and their muscles are tired.  Whatever reps they DO drill are sloppy and reinforcing bad technique.  It’d be similar to trying to learn to shoot freethrows after doing 500 lateral raises: your shoulders are just junked up and you can’t get the mechanics right.  But if you get yourself in good shape first (like, generally prepared to do physical stuff…GPP?), when it comes time to learn the skills, you’ll be able to focus on JUST learning those skills, AND you’ll be able to apply all your physical strengths INTO the skills as well.  You’ll be physically able to learn AND physically able to produce.

When you're built like this at 15, you get to be the heavyweight champ at 20

 

And from here, we can move on still to a phase of GENERAL strength training.  It makes no sense for us to try to master the sword when we don’t have any of the necessary aggression, savagery, or reflexes to make use of the weapon in our hand.  Similarly, dedicating ourselves to mastering a handful of lifts makes no sense when we haven’t even developed any sort of rudimentary BASIC strength and coordination with the iron.  There are a LOT of muscles in the body, and they’re all pretty cool at getting bigger and stronger, and to focus on just a handful of them so we can master a few lifts is a surefire way to burn out quick, accumulate overuse injuries and end up neglecting parts that will eventually result in plateauing until we address them.  BUT, if we show up for specialization as a specimen who has spent time developing a broad general base of strength through a wide variety of exercises, we have MUCH more potential to draw from when it comes time to specialize.

 

Because there’s nothing wrong with specialization: it’s the key to maximizing our ability to be dangerous.  But there IS something wrong with trying to specialize at the wrong time.  If Conan attempted to master the sword as a boy, he would have been slaughtered by the first highwayman he came across in his quest for vengeance.  Sword mastery can only carry you so far when you’re 4’ tall and weigh 60lbs.  In turn, if you decide to take on the squat, bench press and deadlift from day 1, you’re most likely going to hit your first stall at about 80lbs.  But, if you decide to spend the necessary time suffering under the wheel and fighting in the pits, when you decide to undertake mastery, you will be able to excel FAR and for long periods of time, being able to rely on all the qualities and attributes you developed leading up to that decision.  While others fumble merely attempting to hold the sword, your physique and instinct will carry you far.

VERY far

 

Learn these lessons from Conan.  Hell, soon enough I can discuss his nutritional wisdom as well. 

    

BLESSED ARE THE GEEK: THE BENEFITS OF EXISTING ON THE FRINGE

I have never been cool.  I grew up a fat kid, from day 1, which I most recently learned was primarily because my parents followed the conventional wisdom at the time of the 80s to put cereal in our bottles so that we’d fatten up and sleep through the night faster, which meant I quite literally never had a chance, and from the first day of school I was an obvious target.  My family was also not particularly high income, so most of my clothes were hand me downs from my brother, Walmart specials my grandmother got me for Christmas, “Payless” brand shoes, etc.  From there, I also had nerdy hobbies: I loved video games, martial arts (they were NOT cool back then: this wasn’t MMA), Magic The Gathering, Pokemon, comic books and their trading cards, etc, and I shunned most sports, primarily because I was bad at them (but, keep in mind, this was 30+ years ago, so I still PLAYED a bunch of them growing up compared to today’s perpetual inside kids).  Even when I lost the weight in high school and got into lifting, it didn’t suddenly make me cool, despite what a lot of young trainees HOPE will happen when they start lifting: I was now just the nerdy kid that lifted weights.  After graduating from college at age 21, I married my college sweetheart (who is still with me to this day: I really struck gold), and my first car as a minivan…we had no kids…and I loved that van and drove it for 13 years.  And as a married man with a minivan, you can surmise that I did NOT spent my early 20s partying…especially as a non-drinker, smoker, or recreational drug user.  I say none of this seeking your sympathy: the opposite in fact.  I say all of this to establish what an INCREDIBLE advantage I had with this upbringing.  I’ve NEVER been cool so, in turn, I’ve never been in any sort of rush to conform or comply with what IS cool.  I’ve ALWAYS existed on the fringe, which has, in turn, given me access to SO many more opportunities compared to those that ONLY know the straight and narrow party-approved methods and ways forward.

Wisecracking smart aleck nerdy strong dude: there's a reason I resonate so well with this character

In point of fact, upon my own self-examination, it would appear that my lifetime perpetual uncoolness has resulted in me simply having my OWN bias that just so happens to REJECT the mainstream vs seek it: counter-culture purely for its own sake, which is trite and tedious in of itself on a social level (going back to my own 90s roots, the goth kids hanging out at Hot Topic just to form their own bizarro reverse-cliques) BUT, as it relates to physical transformation, has been a boon.  Holy cow that was a crazy run-on sentence.  But harken back to a key point I’ve made time and again: if you keep doing what everyone else is doing, you’re going to get the results that everyone else is getting.  In order to BE different, one must ACT differently, and this relates to methods and methodology employed in the pursuit of physical transformation.  One does not necessarily guarantee BETTER results, but they will at LEAST be different results, and those of us perpetually uncool individuals are VERY familiar and downright comfortable with being different.

 

This lifetime existence on the fringe made it that the idea of 20 breathing squats followed by pullovers to expand my ribcage and a gallon of milk a day made SO much sense to me, despite, to this day, having young trainees STILL try to inform me that you need more volume than that, squats don’t build the upper body, you can’t expand your ribcage, a gallon of milk a day will only make you fat and give you diabetes, and you can only gain .5lbs of muscle a week and anything after that is 100% pure fat.  Even IF all of that was true, one CANNOT account for the intangible benefits that came with my pursuit of Super Squats early in my lifting journey (but not early enough, because god DAMN do I wish this was my first ever program): I learned how to push myself STUPIDLY hard in the weight room AND in the dinning room, how to OBSESS over progress, and how to eat, live and breathe training: a skillset that was INVALUABLE in my pursuit of physical transformation, and came into play when I pursued ANOTHER fringe program by way of Jon Andersen’s Deep Water program.  Wherein, once again, the training AND the nutrition contained within it completely violated all semblance of what was “cool” and, once again, by following the protocol, I unlocked SO much inside of myself that simply could not be done if I stuck with the mundane 3-5 sets of 8-12 reps for 2-4 exercises per muscle group that all the cool kids did while they calculated their macros based off their TDEE with the ideal macro spread of chicken, rice and broccoli. 

In a world where "chicken, rice and broccoli" is somehow cool, be uncool and eat steak and eggs

 

My mind simply cannot be satisfied or placated by coolness, for I interpret it as “mundaneness” and, ultimately, ineffectiveness.  A program that is based around balance and gradual returns simply will not satisfy me: I need stupid gimmicks and hooks that fly in the face of all accepted conventions.  It’s honestly amazing I never got into HIT honestly, but maybe that’s because I somehow KNEW there was going to be a resurgence of it thanks to Tik Tok and it would one day become cool again, so I headed that off at the past.  And my nutrition has been this way as well: I was low-carb BEFORE it was cool, which, of course, meant I had to go take it in an even stupider direction once that got tired out and ended up becoming Captain Carnivore while the rest of the community derided it.  I honestly wouldn’t know how to function if I wasn’t getting made fun of for the way I do things: it’s literally the ONLY way I’ve ever known how to live.  And again: I don’t say this to lament my upbringing, but simply to highlight it.  There’s this mythos that those who get bullied take up lifting weights in order to create “armor” to protect themselves and that they grow stronger as a form of overcompensation, but perhaps what we’re instead observing is the instance wherein a lifetime of existing on the fringe sets one up to select the methods that are going to ensure a different outcome on the quest for physical transformation compared to what the majority will experience. 

Although if you ARE going to get revenge on bullies, this is MUCH better material than "bully beatdown"

 

Those that have existed on the fringe in perpetuity will be the ones who end up becoming the outliers as a result of fringe methods producing fringe results.

 

          

THE TARRASQUE SLAYER: IMPOSSIBLE GOALS FOR RIDICULOUS RESULTS

Welcome back to the DnD world fellow lifting nerds (referring to folks who are both nerds about lifting and also nerds who happen to lift, look at me go with the double meanings).  Today, I’m going to discuss what was once an in-joke between me and my brother: The Tarrasque Slayer.  And, in turn, how this joke actually models the very behavior that so many young trainees shy away from when they should, instead, run full tilt after it…much like the Tarrasque itself.  “What in the 9 Hells is a Tarrasque?” you say, already demonstrating your DnD nerdery with the correct number of hells?

 

THIS is a Tarrasque

 

Like something painted on the side of a van in the 70s

 

It is described as this in the Monster Manual as “the most terrible creature known to inhabit the Prime Material Plane. The beast is a full 50 feet (15 meters) tall and 70 feet (21 meters) long quadruped with a long tail, reflective carapace, and two large horns on its head. Supposedly, there is only one tarrasque, which slumbers within the world's core.”  Along with that, it’s immune to just about every spell, resists damage from all but the most heavily enchanted of weapons, has about a million hit points which it can regenerate during battle, etc etc.  It is absolutely ridiculous, and was frequently a threat leveraged by a Dungeon Master against an unruly party: “Play nice or I’ll make you guys fight a Tarrasque and have a total party kill”.

 

BUT, there’s also one other feature there to focus on: there’s only ONE of these things.  Which makes “The Tarrasque Slayer” equally ridiculous.  What is a Tarrasque Slayer?  In the world of DnD, one of the character classes a player can choose is “The Ranger”.  I’ve written extensively about the Barbarian, the Fighter, the Monk and the Paladin, but haven’t divulged much about the Ranger.  Think of them like Aragaon from “Lord of the Rings”: these are a fighting type class, typically fleet of foot/lightly armored and connected with nature, with animal companions and an affinity for hunting.  But what REALLY makes Rangers unique is their ability to have a “favored enemy”: a certain creature/race/enemy type that they gain an advantage to find, hunt and fight due to a combination of an extensive amount of time studying the enemy often paired with a deep seated hatred for said enemy.  You have rangers that are orc-slayers, giant-slayers, vampire-slayers (SO cliché), etc etc…which brings us to “The Tarrasque Slayer”.

This vampire slayer had the looks Buffy could only DREAM of

 

Consider how ridiculous the premise of that is, because you pick out your favored enemy at level ONE.  Level one rangers can get one-shotted by a Goblin armed with a sling who rolls lucky: they need to focus on not tripping over their bootlaces rather than trying to bring down the most terrible creature to inhabit the Prime Material Plane.  And then consider the fact there is only ONE Tarrasque in the game: you’ll NEVER get to actually USE the advantages of your favored enemy outside of ONE battle.  If you pick Goblin as your favored enemy, you’ll get to use your advantages against hundreds, if not THOUSANDS of the little buggers.  If you pick “Demon”, there’s an entire Abyss FULL of demons to unleash your fury on.  But there will only ever be ONE Tarrasque: all of your extensive study, training, preparation, and hatred will be for naught if you never even get to the damn thing. 

 

…or will it?  Consider this: just how ridiculous will the Tarrasque Slayer be when it fights a non-Tarrasque enemy?  What happens when you take the dude who has dedicated himself to fight a 50’ tall unkillable magical beast and pit him against a common orc?  An ogre?  Hell even a lich or a dragon?  Those things are traditionally pretty terrifying, but if you’ve established your baseline at “Tarrasque”, these fearsome creatures…they’re honestly kinda mundane.  Kinda “blah” and ho-hum.  “Hey, listen dragon, it’s cool you breathe acid and all, but I’m looking for something that’s a bit more of a challenge.”  Yes, the Tarrasque Slayer may have dedicated himself to the sole task of slaying only ONE creature…but by picking the most terrible creature known to inhabit the Prime Material Plane, it means they’re PROBABLY pretty darn good at slaying creatures that AREN’T quite so ridiculous.

Sorta like how a guy who has trained to fight 1 300lb man can take on 2 150lb men

 

This extends SO far into the realm of physical transformation that it’s honestly ridiculous what a great fit it is AND equally ridiculous how much folks fight this idea.  I constantly observe trainees that DEMAND to know what their limitations are as far as goal setting goes.  They’ll train for one month and ask the collective internet hivemind to evaluate their genetics to determine if they have “any hope” in this game.  They question anyone who has achieved anyone in success by claiming that they must be using every drug and have superior genetics and every other conceivable advantage possible, demanding that SOMONE out there present them with “realistic expectations” for an average trainee to be able to accomplish.  These folks are kobold-slayers: they’re trying to specialize in fighting the easiest monsters in the game.  They have no ambition to succeed.  And, in turn, they are going to peak VERY early in the game: their utility will quickly wane, and soon no one is going to want them around because they are going to be worthless.

 

Chase after a Tarrasque out there in the realm of physical transformation.  No one has pulled a 1200lb deadlift yet, so why not you?  Why not try to get NINE Olympia wins?  Go run a 90 minute marathon.  Do it all drug-free, carb-free, underweight, underslept, overstressed.  Take on the biggest challenges you can possibly take on in pursuit of the most ridiculous goals you could possibly chase.  Why?  Because through the PURSUIT of these goals, you will grow to BE ridiculous.  Someone chasing a 400lb deadlift will eventually catch it.  Great: now what?  Someone chasing a 1200lb deadlift won’t even think twice when 400 crosses their path: they will be marching onward to 500, 600 and on.  And funny enough, time tends to stretch to meet the very demands we have.  When we dedicate our lives to a 400lb deadlift, it will most likely take us our whole lives to get there.  When 1200 is on our mind?  400 happens QUICK.  Like the slayer cutting through an army of Orcs: what seems amazing to others will simply be a Tuesday for you.

GAME...OVER!

 

Pick “Tarrasque” as your favored enemy.  Become a dedicated slayer of the most terrible creature to inhabit the Prime Material Plane.  Let everyone else concern themselves with Hobgoblins and Trolls: you’re here for the BIG game.