SUPER SQUATS: THE GAME GENIE OF GAINING

Those of you who either grew up in the 90s or are into the retro video game scene know that early 90s Nintendo games were a certain kind of difficult.  “90’s difficult”, people will say.  Home video games were still a pretty new medium for entertainment, having just rebounded from the crash of ’83, and many companies were just getting their legs under them in the home console game and sort of learning as they went.  And a big part of this learning process was dialing in the appropriate degree of difficulty for a game to make it challenging enough to be entertaining without being so difficult that it was impossible to play.  And game developers failed at this task.  Epically.  To the point that one often wondered if there even WAS any sort of playtesting before these games were foisted upon the public.  “Contra”, “Battletoads”, “Silver Surfer”, these “games” were the Omaha beach of 90s gamers, responsible for many lives lost and controllers destroyed in a fit of rage.  Then, one glorious day, Galoob, a company with lots of ingenuity and little scruples, gifted our generation with “The Game Genie”.  This nifty little device clipped directly onto the Nintendo cartridge (which already enhanced gameplay by allowing a shaper connection to the 72 pin connector of the typically flimsy NES console) and, through some sort of programming sorcery, allowed us gamers to put in codes that made the impossible games FINALLY survivable.  Unlimited lives, unlimited continues, unlimited health bars, unlimited time on the clock, full power ups from the start, etc.  People liked to refer to these things as “cheat codes”, but here’s the thing: this wasn’t cheating, it was getting even!  These games started out SO blatantly stacked against us gamers that we NEEDED the Game Genie just to have a shot of actually PLAYING them: let alone beating them!  And that, in turn, is what Super Squats gave to us out here in the realm of physical transformation: a shot.  Super Squats isn’t a gaining cheat code: Super Squats finally made the game playable.

"Video Game Enhancer" sounds like the kind of marketing you'd see on suspect supplements

 

How did Super Squats do this?  Much like how the Game Genie removed obstacles of gameplay, Super Squats removed obstacles of physical transformation.  To start, Randall Strossen, a PhD in psychology, ABSOLUTELY uses the book to brainwash the trainee in order to ensure compliance.  And as Stan Efferding would tell us many decades later: “Compliance is the science”.  Because what we’ve observed through many decades, if not centuries, of physical transformation is that the most important thing is showing up, and to KEEP doing that over a long and sustained period of time.  The details are inconsequential if the consistency isn’t in place.  And Randall brainwashed the trainees into believing a few key things that were crucial to the success of Super Squats and, in turn, physical transformation as a whole: that all the growth was in the last rep of 20, that milk was magic, and that, with enough breathing between reps, we can always add 5 more pounds compared to our previous workout.  These were his Game Genie codes.

 

That first code: all the growth is in the last rep of the 20 rep set of squats.  What Randall was doing was explaining the concept of “pushing close to failure” that is one of the key principles to hypertrophy training.  Decades later, science would continue to confirm this notion, and though it’s absolutely true that one does not NEED to train close to failure to grow (look at the physiques of Olympic level male gymnasts), it’s definitely the FASTER way to achieve hypertrophy compared to training away from failure (look at the TIMELINE it takes to achieve the physique of an Olympic level male gymnast).  However, trying to convey the significance of this fact to trainees can become challenging, as one can observe in the current era of social media influencers.  You tell a trainee that training to failure is important for growth, and they’ll pick exercises that are EASY to fail on in order to make sure they get there, and then they’ll STILL phone in the effort and just sorta quit the set when it starts to suck.  OR you run into the dudes that are totally unboard the failure train, and just grind themselves into the dirt session after session and have no way to grow because they have no way to recover.  Dr. Strossen simplified this by just saying “All the growth is in the 20th rep of the set of squats”, ensuring that the trainee would NOT quit before they got to 20, pushing as close to failure as they possibly could WITHOUT actually failing.  And anyone who has run Super Squats KNOWS what happens if you fail on any rep shy of 20: you spend the next 47 hours OBSESSING over getting that 20th rep “next time”, and then you roll back into the gym and crush it.  With this simple code, Randall was able to convey the significance of training close to failure with a challenging movement and the appropriate amount of weight (“take what you squat for 10 reps and do it for 20”).  He cut through SO much debate and silliness and just got to what matters.

Promising 30lbs of muscle in 6 weeks kinda helped with compliance as well

 

His second code: “GOMAD”.  Milk is magic, drink a gallon of it a day.  What was he doing here?  He was giving trainees a “no count/no track” nutrition protocol for gaining.  In this current era of smart phone apps, it’s hard to imagine there was an era where tracking nutrition input was laborious: requiring the reading of labels and actual BOOKS with nutrition information on it, and then hand jamming all that into a notebook with a calculator to figure out your intake.  There’s a reason I DON’T do that: it was the era I grew up in.  But by giving trainees the task of drinking a gallon of milk a day, Randall created a SMART nutrition goal (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time restricted) that would provide all the nutrition needed to benefit from the program, ESPECIALLY when paired with normal daily meals.  There’s nothing magical about milk: it could have been the Building the Monolith diet of a dozen eggs and 1.5lbs of ground beef, or it could have been the Paul Carter Blue Collar diet suggestion of adding 2 PBJs between meals, but no matter the case, this Game Genie code equipped the trainee with the tools to fuel training, recover from training, AND have the nutrition to build muscle from the training.

 

The other code was adding 5lbs to the bar and breathing enough between reps to keep progressing.  Selecting the squat was a genius move for this protocol, as Dan John has revealed in his own high rep squat program “Mass Made Simple” that, by nature of the bar being on the back rather than in the hands, there’s a bit of a physiological disconnect such that we don’t run into the normal governors one encounters with other resistance training movements.  If you try to get “one more rep” on bench, deadlift, chin ups, etc, we can fall flat and fail.  But on the squats, you take enough time between reps (via breathing squats!), dive down, and, somehow, like a miracle, you come back up again.  And BECAUSE you’ve been brain washed, if you ever DON’T come back up, you NEVER think it’s because you’ve reached the limit of your abilities: instead, it was either you didn’t drink enough milk, or you didn’t breathe enough between reps, so, in 47 hours, you come back READY to do it all again.  And when you succeed, you slap another 5lbs on the bar and do it all over again.  Randall simplified progressive overload AND made it achievable AND created a positive feedback loop wherein each time we go to the gym, we can add weight, which makes us stronger so that, when we go back to the gym, we CAN add the weight.

It's just about as simple

 

The book put in one more SECRET code: the 6 week 5x5 follow on program one is supposed to run AFTER Super Squats…which no one ever does (guilty).  BUT, if implemented, what Randall did was create a simple and sustainable periodization approach to continue to self-perpetuate the positive feedback loop of physical transformation that Super Squats Game Genied into success.  Because, again, we see this with trainees currently: they want just ONE program, and to run it forever, because they don’t want to bother thinking.  By equipping the trainee with a second program focus on low reps and strength building, Randall created a very simple 6 week to 6 week phasic training approach of accumulation and intensification which, in turn, SHOULD coincide with a cyclical nutritional protocol as well (as one need not be drinking a gallon of milk a day if NOT doing 20 rep breathing squats).  And, as periodization is SUPPOSED to accomplish: that strength training block SHOULD allow the trainee to lift even MORE weight on their bodybuilding lifts when they return to the breathing squat program. 

 

All this to say that there wasn’t ever anything magical about Super Squats: the real magic was the MIND magic that Randall Strossen employed to simplify the core tenets of successful physical transformation.  He got the trainee bought in, and then took these complex concepts and presented them in an easy to follow protocol in order to ensure compliance, which resulted in observable success, which perpetuated even further compliance.  And after having read the book 20 years ago (holy christ how did I get so old?) and run the program 3 times, I’m able to see and appreciate these codes for what they are.  I’ll still always suggest this program as a paradigm breaker, and I feel like every trainee owes it to themselves to do it one time, because, much like running the Game Genie in the 90s, it can be useful to use some codes to understand how to even PLAY the later stages of the game before you go and try to tackle it “as intended”.      

 

 

THINGS I BELIEVE AT AGE 41 IN 2026: PART II

Welcome back!  Now that I am ACTUALLY 41, and no longer the sham I was when I posted the first entry in this series, allow me to continue to bloviate on the things I currently believe, along with those things I’ve “learned” or re-learned over this last year.

---

It's amazing how profound a comedy about penis jokes could be

·       To coincide with the previous post’s ending thought on metabolic flexibility being the key to health/performance, fasting was the missing “lever” in my nutritional pursuit.  I’ve written previously about how fasting is liberating, as we’re no longer beholden to a fixed eating schedule or slaves to our blood sugar.  However, the reason fasting was missing was BECAUSE I lacked the metabolic flexibility to be able to effectively leverage it.  Fasting should NOT be about denying hunger and white knuckling until the next meal.  That isn’t fasting: it’s starving.  Starving is NOT how one becomes healthy or fit: it’s part of a process of dying.  Fasting should serve as the opposite, and be part of a process of thriving, which tends to mean it serves as the counter-balancing force to feasting.  Which is what ties into the metabolic flexibility portion above. When my body wasn’t able to effectively utilize fat as a fuel source, if it I went longer than 30 minutes without eating, I’d be overcome with voracious hunger and unable to function until I satiated it.  Fasting was completely non-viable: I was starving.  With the flexibility restored, I can eat a large meal, walk away satiated, and not eat again for another day or more.  And with that tool, it’s incredibly easy to modulate nutrition to suit whatever goal I have.  If I want to be leaner, I just fast for longer.  If I want to gain weight: shorter fasts.  And this simplicity so perfectly suits my “high speed/low drag” philosophy of nutrition and training.  Living by a calorie tracker just plain doesn’t suit me, nor does walking away from the table still hungry.  Being able to eat until I am satisfied and then not eat again until I’m ready for another meal is incredibly simple and frees up bandwidth.  I wish I had discovered this earlier, but at the same time, I needed to be in a healthy enough state to be able to implement it.

We are going to want to get this number up

·       Coinciding with dedicated timelines for training phases, another big “ah hah” for me is “make the method the goal”.  Most of these things I’m writing about here I’ve written about at length in other posts, so I’ll not fully rehash that here and just go with the wavetops.  Rather than saying “I’m going to gain .5lbs per week during this gaining phase”, which is making the outcome the goal, I believe the way forward is to make the METHOD the goal, and, in turn, strive to not deviate from the method throughout the entire duration of the training phase, thus combining the two principles.  So if I’m in  gaining phase, it would be “I’m going to execute the Grey Man program, lifting weights 3x per week and doing conditioning 2x per week, while ensure I eat twice a day on lifting days and once a day on conditioning days”, and in turn the goal is to get as many consecutive days together as possible sticking with the plan.  This means, I don’t step on the scale one week, see “too much gain” and decide to completely change the plan in a moment of freakout.  I step on the scale, collect the datapoint from it, and continue to execute the method without deviation.  Once I reach the end of the timeline, my consistency with the method will determine my success.  The more consistent I remain: the better the outcome.

Yeah, this is most trainees when it comes to volume

 

·       “Enough” training/nutrition is, sadly, less than what most meatheads really want.  This is something I heard Justin Harris mention on Jon Heck’s podcast (specifically the training portion), and the older I get, the more I appreciate it.  There is a difference between recoverable training and effective training, and just because we CAN recover from training doesn’t mean it’s what we need.  And I fully understand and appreciate the notion that diminishing returns are STILL returns, and that the dudes willing to do the extra 80% of work to get the 20% of missing gains on the 80/20 rule ARE going to come out further ahead than those of us looking to do “enough”, but having been on both sides of that spectrum, I appreciate that even IF we can recover: there will still be a cost.  Perhaps it’s a downstream effect hormonally, or perhaps it’s the cost of that extra time spent training one quality that could have been invested toward another (getting 80% in 2 realms by vesting 20% effort twice, vs 100% in one realm by vesting 80% once), or perhaps it’s the risk of burnout, but in whatever capacity, I’m appreciating what it is I can achieve and accomplish while vesting a fraction of the time I had in the past.  And, as much as it hurts my inner fat kid and love or Bruce Randall, I’m also finding I need far less nutrition to “feed the machine” than I’d like to believe…but, thankfully, fasting continues to be a great lever there, as I can consolidate all of my nutritional demands into one meal and feel satisfied with that feast, vs if I parsed that out over the span of several meals.

Yes, in the 90s, we were so extreme we had glow in the dark dominos to knock over

 

·       Linking a lot of these ideas together (and, in turn, being somewhat poetic) is the notion I’ve realize that workouts should set up success for OTHER workouts, rather than detract from them.  Which, again, most of the rest of the world already figured out, but I spent a LONG time training in a manner that I can best describe as “antagonistic” rather than harmonious.  I’d perform some sort of absolutely ballbuster of a weight training session, only to chase after it with a ridiculous conditioning workout, and then just repeat the process until something broke, calling the down time a “deload” before starting it up again.  The idea of an “easy day” was alien to me, because it was time wasted.  I saw it as an opportunity cost: 20 minutes spent doing an easy rower workout was 20 minutes I could have spent doing some sort of terrible Crossfit style WOD that absolutely floored me.  If I wasn’t redlining, then it meant I was regressing, right?  Now, I look forward to my 20 minute easy rower workouts, not JUST because it means not having to feel like I’m dying, but because the NEXT weight training session I do is even better than the previous one.  I come into it better able to execute, fully recharged and refreshed, which allows me to absolutely crush it and grow, whereas before I was just barely clinging on and surviving.  Everything should fit together harmoniously, balancing each other out, like a string of dominos setting up the next block to fall.  There are times when we run things into the red, but it’s for a purpose, with a plan, which compliments achieving the overall goal.  And those easy workouts we do ARE making us better: they lay down the foundation for GREATER output when the time comes TO run us into the redline.  Sometimes, we need to take a few steps back to get a running start for a big leap forward.

 

I’ll conclude here for now, while looking forward to seeing what this year will bring and what lessons I’ll learn.

THINGS I BELIEVE AT AGE 41 IN 2026: PART I

Last year, I wrote a post about “Things I believe at age 40 in the year 2025” because both of those numbers seemed significant from a “base 10” perspective, and with my birthday approaching next week, it seemed like a good gift to myself to be able to refresh that idea and write about the things I’ve “learned” or rediscovered during this year.  This may, in fact, become a great idea rolling forward, doing a “year in review”.  However, in true “me” fashion (boy I’m using a lot of quotes in this intro), I started writing and, what SHOULD have been just some quick bullet points, turned into single paragraphs that could be posts in and of themselves.  So I’m chunking this out, allowing myself to write before AND after my birthday, to document the things that, at this moment in time, I currently believe.  And what that having been established: here goes part 1.

 

---

I gotta say, it was kinda false advertising to put a dude on the cover who wasn't using the training style in the book...

·       It was THIS year that I finally figured out something that I’d “known” all along but wasn’t intentionally implementing: base training phases around timelines/deadlines rather than milestones.  The very first time I really pushed myself hard with lifting, deciding that THIS was going to be “my thing” and that I was going to put martial arts on the backburner for 15 years, I made it a goal to get my bodyweight up to 220lbs.  I was 21 years old, 5’9, Kroc was all over the net, was ALSO 5’9, and competed at 220lbs, so, of course, if I weighed that much, I’d be as jacked and strong as Kroc…even though I was EATING like early 2000s Dave Tate and following the Elitefts Basic Training manual (which is honestly still a great book, but it wasn’t how Kroc trained).  I engaged in this in a long, drawn out 9 month campaign of eating copious amounts of fast food and baked goods while maxing out once a week thinking I was doing Max Effort work, and eventually pushed my bodyweight to 217lbs before I had to put everything on hold to move to a new location…dropping 10lbs of bodyweight over the process and hurting my back so bad on my first new workout that I gave up deadlifting for 3 years to let it heal.  Much later in my life, after a similar gaining phase where I was attempting to put 75lbs on my keg clean and press in 12 weeks (that number will come up later), I decided to see how lean I could get, and chased that leanness dragon WAY too far down the rabbithole (do dragons GO down rabbitholes?), cut to a point where I could watch my pancreas excrete insulin, and absolutely wrecked my hormones in the process.  In both cases, my mistake was having no determined end date for the process, instead chasing an end STATE and deciding I was just going to chase it for however long it took to get there.  What this did was set me up for a negative feedback loop.  Yeah, at the START of the process, I was getting a wonderful return on investment for my effort, but the longer I engaged on these protracted campaigns, the worse it got.  Hormonal responses to training/nutrition blunted, as my insulin sensitivity crashed in that weight gaining phase whereas my testosterone was plummeting during the fat loss phase.  My metabolism was ramping up to unsustainable levels in the weight gain phase and crashing during the fat loss phase.  What I, instead, needed to do was say “I’m going to spend the next 16 weeks chasing muscle building” or “I’m going to dedicate the next 12 weeks to fat loss”, and then, no matter WHAT my end state was at that time, shut off the phase and move on to the next one.  This would have created a necessary degree of urgency to prevent meandering during the phase while ALSO putting me in a state wherein I didn’t have a lot of damage to undo as a result of a prolonged stressed period on my body.  And, of course, it allows for periodization, which I’ve written at length of the benefits, which is exactly what improves that return on investment.

Always trust this man for sound wisdom

·       The above is a good transition into the realization that “the harder you push, the slower you go”.  We all love to think that intensity is the solution to all problems, but I needed to listen to myself after all this time: “effort, consistency and time”.  Those weren’t in order of importance: they’re ALL parts of the triforce, and trying to lean into one to obviate the other doesn’t work.  The effort has to be there, sure, but once enough is applied, MORE doesn’t make things better: it tends to make it worse.  The muscle will be built in time, the fat will be lost in time, but trying to make it go faster by going harder makes it go slower: we damage ourselves hormonally by training too hard and no longer get the anabolic response we’re looking for.  We crash our body’s metabolic processes by trying to diet too hard and put us in a state where we’ve run out of runway to cruise down toward our leanness goals.  We overtrain conditioning so that we CAN’T recover between workouts, etc etc.  “If some is good, more is better” is foolishness.  And tying this together with the above, I’m a big fan of Tactical Barbell’s 3 week long work capacity block, because whenever we REALLY feel like we need to do something stupid, 3 weeks is at least a short enough timeline that we won’t damage ourselves too much.

Despite the inclusion of carbs and fats, this is NOT an example of metabolic flexibility

 

·       “Metabolic flexibility” ultimately seems to be “the goal” as far as health and performance goes.  This refers to the notion of having a body that can seamlessly transition between using carbs and fats as a fuel source.  This seems like something that SHOULD be a “duh” sorta thing that ANY human can do, but the reality is that the majority of us are so fundamentally and biologically broken that we need to undergo significant efforts in order to “right the ship” on this one and get in a good way.  I’ve been banging the low-carb drum for decades, and that’s because, from my own personal experience, I had a “broken carbohydrate metabolism” from a VERY young age.  Insulin sensitivity was low and I was predisposed to store fat rather than build lean tissue as a carb response.  I also had a non-stop voracious appetite, as my blood sugar was constantly spiking and crashing and registering as an energy crisis that needed correcting.  Those following my nutritional insanity for years will recall that I was, at one point, eating something every 30 minutes and basically counting down from minute 29 until the next meal.  It took an EXTREME overcorrection by means of the Velocity Diet leading into eventually a carnivore diet in order for me to hard pivot my body to start being able to metabolize fat as a fuel source again.  And during THAT pivot, my carb metabolism was still broken, as I remember eating a bunch of white rice, having my mucus membranes explode and effectively falling into a coma.  After spending enough time in a state of ketosis, I was finally in a place where I could move between fuel sources, primarily relying on fat as a fuel source but being able to eat a weekly carby meal without any negatives and, most likely, a lot of positives as far as hormonal health and energy goes.   And THAT is what a healthy and high performing human SHOULD be able to do: be able to use carbs as a fuel source when present and, once depleted, shift to fats and use that without any biological crisis response.  Honestly, I can bloviate on this at length (and most likely will at some point), but this has been probably one of the biggest “ah hahs” for me this year.

 

Ok, that’s a LOT of writing already, and I got a few more points to bring up, so stay tuned next week for a follow-up!

IT’S NOT A ZERO SUM GAME

I was first introduced to the idea of a “zero sum game” from a buddy of mine that worked on Navy submarines, informing me that, once the submarine was “underway” (below water for a sustained and unbroken duration), happiness was a “zero sum game”.  “In order for me to be happy, I have to take away someone elses’ happiness”.  Wikipedia gives a more official sounding explanation, explaining it as “a situation that involves two competing entities, where the result is an advantage for one side and an equivalent loss for the other.”  Truthfully, the Navy explanation tends to stick the landing a bit better, and is especially relevant in the discussion of physical transformation, for my observation is that it needs to be explained that this endeavor is NOT a zero sum game and that, instead, we are all boats benefitting from the rising tide.  Because I frequently observe individuals within this sphere in a RUSH to “disprove” those who espouse opinions, viewpoints, perspectives and findings that run counter to what they “know”, which you’ll note my annoying and frequent utilization of quotations because, as a formally trained scientist* (*political, please note full degree of tongue-in-cheek) I can appreciate and understand the difference between observations and findings vs facts and proof, whereas many other social media junkies are content to hear a talking head discuss an abstract and never once actually glance at the study they hold in such high esteem.  But, as is typical of me: I’ve digressed.  Call off your dogs, put your studies back in your trapperkeepers, close your 47 fitfluencer Instagram reels and come back to Earth with us: this is NOT a zero sum game.

Don't ACT like you don't keep your studies in one JUST like this

 

What ultimately inspired this discussion is someone I’ve been following on Facebook, which in and of itself is proof of concept that I myself am not immune to the dopamine blitz that is social media.  But this individual started off at 375lbs with a sole mission to “eat carnivore everyday until I’m 200lbs”.  And that’s it.  They’re some sort of video game streamer, and that’s what they do when they’re not eating meat on camera: very little physical activity or investment in physical transformation otherwise.  He recently eclipsed 300 days and has lost 85lbs: an average of 8.5lbs per month, or 2.125lbs per week.  By almost all accounts, that’s right around the top range of the number that is constantly quoted as the “safe”/ideal rate of weight loss, in order to preserve lean tissue, maximize fat loss, and be sustainable (not a “crash diet” with a massive drop followed by an even bigger rebound).  And boy: if you read the comments this dude received, you’d swear he was setting puppies on fire every day.  People are legitimately wishing death upon him (by way of heart attack), they are hoping that he will fail soon or that he’ll put all the weight back on, they’re posting studies and reels “proving” how he isn’t actually losing the weight that he’s losing, they’re proposing conspiracy theories that his weigh ins are faked and this is all a social media stunt, etc etc.

 

And this reaction is NOT atypical in the realm of physical transformation: pretty much ANY time someone demonstrates any manner of success with ANY approach, the volume from the crowd of detractors almost always drowns out the crowd of supporters.  Those who employ conventional approaches are shouted down by those on the fringe, and those on the fringe are shouted down by those employing the conventional approaches.  Science argues against alchemy, evidence argues with anecdote, theory argues with experience, etc etc.  Why?  For what purpose?  It’s NOT a zero sum game.  The success of others does NOT rob you of your own success: it affords even MORE avenues for success.  That is a GOOD thing.  Having more tools available in the toolbox allows us an even GREATER potential to succeed, because it means we can actually succeed by accident!  We can STUMBLE blindly into success, not realizing that some crackpot idea we set off on is actually an established means of achieving success.

Like these two brave adventurers! 

 

We need MORE stories around the campfire: not fewer.  When we observe someone achieving success with a method that does NOT match with our worldview, experience, understanding or knowledge, our first reaction shouldn’t be to “disprove it”: it should be curiosity.  Explain more to me.  How does it work, WHY does it work, why do you do it?  And if none of those explanations make sense, this should be EXCITING, not upsetting!  Can you imagine how dull existence would be if we already had everything figured out and it always made sense?  Don’t you know that joy when you’ve been playing a game since the day it came out, only to discover that there was a whole hidden section to it that you’ve never explored before?  Or if you thought you’d read ALL the books from your favorite author, only to learn there was a whole series kept hidden away in a vault somewhere that you can FINALLY access? 

 

Because the truth that no one likes to hear is that the road to physical transformation is a simple road: it’s just not an EASY road.  All we honestly need to do is something DIFFERENT in order to set in motion the mechanism that is physical transformation.  Our body exists in a state of stasis and status quo until we act upon it in a manner that is different, and upon that action it reacts and adapts.  Because of this, literally ANY manner of intervention is bound to achieve SOME manner of outcome, and rather than try to tear down others who “aren’t doing it right”, we owe it to encourage their own curiosity and self-discover, in hopes that maybe THEY will learn something that we simply have shut ourselves out of.  In martial arts, this is known as “white belt magic”, where someone new to the art ends up coming up with stuff out of thin air that NO ONE could possibly see coming because it exists so far outside the confines of the martial art that it never occurred to anyone to actually TRY it, resulting in them getting the upper hand on senior students that have been training for YEARS.  And when that happens, it’s not our place to say “you’re doing the martial art wrong”: it’s on us to say “why didn’t my training prepare me for THAT?!” 

Being one of the greatest grapplers in the world can't prepare you for facing a minotaur

 

This is not a zero sum game.  We can all win.  Let’s try to make that happen.          

 

OPTIONAL TRAITS AND MIN/MAXING

In 1997, the original “Fallout” game was released on PC and went on to subsequently blow my mind and influence my life to this day, to the point that I STILL have a file I’m playing through right now.  At the time, I had grown up on a steady diet of Japanese Role Playing Games (JRPGs) which, though quite enjoyable, were very much an “on rails” experience: you played with the characters you were given and followed the story set before you.  Fallout was billed as a game where you could be anybody and do anything, which, of course, meant that I IMMEDIATELY built the physically strongest character I possibly could and punched everyone I met in the groin with a pair of brass knuckles.  And when I say “physically strongest possible”, I wholly mean that, because central to the character creation process of Fallout are “optional traits”: quirks you can pick that help further define your character by offering them a trait/quality that has an element of “give and take” to it.  You gain advantages in one area at the expense of disadvantages in the other.  The one I immediately keyed in on was called “Bruiser”, which was described as “"A little slower, but a little bigger. You may not hit as often, but they will feel it when you do! Your total action points are lowered, but your Strength is increased.”  Oh my goodness yes, how do I take this one twice?  I actually BROKE the system by first increasing my strength score to 10 and THEN selecting Bruiser, netting me a strength score of 12, which the game informed me was “outside the limits” (“be anything” my ass!), which I’m sure is of no surprise to my regular readers who understand my propensity to love strength AND not follow rules.  But longwinded nostalgia bloviation aside, I bring ALL of this up for us to understand that life imitates art and that we are all playing our own game of Fallout right there, and for many of us, those things that we perceive to be “flaws” are, most likely, simply optional traits. And like any good little munchkin, it’s up to US to engage in the time honored tradition of “min/maxing”.

If you knew me in 1997, or you know me now, you know I'm always picking this

Ok, so now what is “min/maxing”?  Min/maxing is the dirty trick that “powergamers” engage in where they select traits that ALLEGEDLY have flaws to coincide with their bonuses and find ways to maximize the bonuses while obviating the flaws.  In Fallout, a classic approach to this is to select the “Fast Shot” optional trait, which allows you to shoot more times per round at the expense of not being able to do targeted shots to specific bodyparts, and then specializing in big guns, which don’t allow you to do targeted shots anyway.  All the advantages and none of the consequences.  It breaks the spirit of the optional traits without actually breaking any of the rules: fully “suffering” the consequences without actually suffering.  This is why min/maxers frustrate dungeon masters and game developers, but for us, the player: we’re just looking out for number 1.

 

Which means you need to recognize WHAT your optional trait is, what the alleged “consequence” is of it, and how to obviate yourself from that consequence.  I grew up a fat kid (a fact I’ve shared often), and frequently lamented an ever present voracious appetite AND capacity for food.  I was always hungry AND whenever I ate, I could eat a LOT of food without really feeling “full”.  For those of you that remember my write-up of eating the Stellanator, a 5lb cheeseburger, in 31 minutes, this was a fantastic demonstration of these abilities, especially when considering I am NOT a professional eater, and was just a dude that showed up on a Thursday and ate a burger that over 1000 people have tried and only 70 have succeeded on.  I viewed this wholly as a curse at the time, until I got into lifting, and suddenly discovered that I had a super power.  I NEVER had to worry about recovery, the notion of “overtraining” seemed like a myth to me, and I could take on RIDICULOUS training schedules and volumes, because the amount of food I could put away at any given time was more than adequate to replace whatever the energy demands were being placed upon my body.  And this created a positive feedback loop, wherein the ridiculous training volume and intensity significantly increased my work capacity and conditioning, which allowed me to train even harder and with more volume, which drove up appetite, which permitted me to eat even more to fuel the whole process.  It was effectively the Bruce Randall story, only stopping “halfway” (more around 220lbs than 402lbs).  And, of course, I didn’t really come to understand I HAD this superpower until I got online and observed other trainees who did NOT possess this ability: their appetite and capacity limited their ability to grow and recover from their training, as they simply could NOT eat enough food to maximize their results.

Laugh it up: we could honestly all learn a few lessons from Fred Dukes

But there’s a downside right?  Not feeling full until you’ve eaten a lot of food is pretty much WHY we have an obesity epidemic right?  Yes, that certainly CAN be a consequence, IF one does not employ min/maxing.  Because I’ve learned that my strength in the realm of eating ALSO makes it that I’m one of the few people out there that can successfully employ eating one meal a day while STILL meeting whatever protein threshold I have in order to spare/build lean tissue.  Because, again, one meal a day, in and of itself, often has the consequence that attempting to employ this manner of eating prevents people from eating adequate nutrients because they simply don’t have the stomach capacity or appetite to eat enough food to fuel hard training.  But tapping into my optional trait, I’m able to leverage my strength in a manner to obviate my flaw, sitting down to one meal and putting away enough food and nutrients to satisfy whatever demands I have.  And because of the timing of eating AND the foods that I’m choosing to eat, I find a way to quell the voracious appetite portion of the optional trait while still leaning into the “near unlimited capacity” for food element of it.  I’ve become a dirty powergamer.

 

And once again: life imitates art.  In Fallout, pretty much each optional trait had its dualistic counterpart.  For Bruiser, it was “small framed”, wherein one had an extra point of agility at the expense of how much weight they could carry (THIS trait was ripe for min/maxing, and a popular choice for powergamers), and in the realm of physical transformation, we’ve seen my opposites: either the people that have no natural appetite OR the people that can eat massive quantities and NOT put on weight.  I interact with these people frequently on the internet, as I have always been a fan of the prospect of transformation by way of eating big, training hard and growing, and look to encourage it whenever possible.  And, in turn, the min/max strategy I convey to these individuals is always the same: they have ZERO concern of ever getting “too fat” in a gaining phase, because they have the superpower of effortlessly existing/achieving leanness that, as soon as they are ready to get BACK there, all they have to do is get back to being “normal” and it’ll happen.  For so many OTHER trainees, the prospect of a cut is terrifying because it sounds like existing in a state of perpetual willpower and denial (which, I’ve written on many occasions, is the sign of a dysfunctional diet, but among the calorie counters and IIFYM crowd, it’s the ONLY way they know how to lose weight).  This prospect is so terrifying that these trainees will try to engineer the gaining phase in such a manner that there IS no follow-on cutting phase: they only gain “pure muscle” the entire time and, when it’s done, can just transition to maintenance.  Yeah, that NEVER works, and they just end up spinning their wheels the entire time because they’re too afraid to eat to grow.  Which is why, for these alleged “hardgainers”, I inform them that their optional trait is that they can “full send” in the gaining phase, drinking heavy cream mixed with melted ice cream mixed with ghee in order to get in the calories and REALLY live the Bruce Randall story, because they’ll very easily achieve the SECOND arc of the Bruce Randall story where he lost half his bodyweight to become one of the most jacked men on the planet.  And meanwhile, DURING that gaining phase, these dudes are going to be absolutely CRUSHING their workouts, because their effectively going to have rocket fuel running through their bodies through the sheer amount of calories put down, with no doubt whatsoever that they’ve consumed enough energy to maximize protein synthesis and achieve full muscular development.  Yeah yeah: science has determined that we don’t need “that much” in order to grow…but isn’t it awesome when you have NO doubt whatsoever that you’ve hit that mark?  THAT is your min/max: now YOU’RE a powergamer too.

Bruce Min/Maxed so hard it honestly looked liked cheating

And there are SO many more optional traits that can be discussed in this regard.  Anatomical structure, food preferences/aversions, sleep habits, etc etc.  The point is, in an era where kids will legit upload photos of themselves online to have their “genetics” evaluated while asking if they have any hope of a future in the pursuit of physical transformation, let’s take a step back and appreciate these optional traits for what they are.  They were put into the game to give a little character to our character: make them stand out beyond simply being the guy with the gun.  And they DO give us character, they DO make us unique, but they are also RIFE for exploitation by those who are willing to be creative IN a game where we are TOLD to explore our endless creativity.  Find your optional trait and find ways to min/max it, so that the rest of the world playing the game normally can get upset with you for being a powergamer while you coast toward the next level up and perk.      

TIME IS NOT ON YOUR SIDE: THE VALUE OF DEADLINES

In nearly 14 years of writing over 1000 words a week on physical transformation, I feel like one of the very few legitimately beneficial/revolutionary ideas I’ve introduced to the conversation is the notion of having training lead and nutrition follow, rather than the other way around.  I know I did not come UP with this idea, moreso I re-introduced it, for I myself grew up with this notion and it seemed to be “the norm” to me, only for me to wander out of my cave of shadows into reality and discover that the whole world was doing it the other way around (holy cow I’m doing this allegory backwards, but whatever).  With this post, I am hoping to (re)introduce a SECOND concept that may prove beneficial in the realm of physical transformation: operating off of deadlines based on time, rather than outcome.  And again, this is an idea that has existed WELL before my discussion here, along with my own rediscovery of it: this is a notion that perpetuates the realm of REAL athletes, who operate with seasons and periodization.  However, this notion has eluded those whose “education” subsists entirely of talking heads on social media, and most likely because it does not sell WELL on social media to tell people to operate based off a timeline, because it necessitates SOME degree of patience along with actually sitting back and observing the results roll in, compared to FORCING the results to come irrespective of if they’re ready or not.  But I’m already digressing here: what I intend to discuss is that, in the pursuit of physical goals, instead of basing our training and nutrition decisions on the ACHIEVEMENT of said goals, we need to base our decisions on how much time we will spend PURSUING those goals.  Time is NOT on our side: let’s make the most of that fact.

Our relationship with time perfectly demonstrated

To begin, let’s discuss what a lotta folks are doing right now, which is what I take issue with.  Let’s take a trainee who is unsatisfied with the amount of bodyfat they have.  They decide they’re going to go on a cut.  Quite often, they decide that they have a goal weight or a goal bodyfat percentage (the latter of which they measure using ridiculous methods, to include having AI evaluate a photo of them, using a bioimpedance scale, etc) and, from here, decide that the cut ends once they’ve reached their goal.  Because, quite often, one only decides to cut when bodyfat has becomes a “crisis”, these cuts tend to start with a LOT of steam, rapidly slashing caloric intake and engaging in some serious intense training, which, in turn, results in some metabolic slowdown and burnout, leading to a cycle of binging due to starvation, doubling down on the starving and training, and frequently failing to meet the objective of fat loss.  The “cut” goes on for MONTHS, and possibly even a year, and when it’s done, the trainee may have FINALLY reached the goal number, only to be stringy, burnt out, weak, fried, and with crashed hormones. 

 

And to keep this post from getting too long, let’s do a quick summary of the bulking trap.  Because trainees want to avoid that situation above, they’re so absolutely terrified of putting on ANY fat during a gaining phase that they handcuff themselves to the SMALLEST of bodyweight gains on a fixed weekly progression while aiming for a final bodyweight goal, only to frequently fail to put on ANY actual tissue in the muscle building process, spending months and months spinning their wheels while effectively “reverse dieting” by slowly upping their calories to the point that the body just keeps revving up NEAT and metabolic processes, eventually getting to a point where 3500+ calories per day is NOT moving the needle on the scale, their guts are exhausted from having to process SO much chicken and rice daily, their body is worn out from training hard to build muscle without enough actual nutrition to support it, and people STILL have to ask them if they lift weights, because it’s not readily apparent to any outside observer.  …I guess I didn’t actually do a quick summary there.

I'm sure you're used to this by now

 

What is it that I am observing as the flaw in these “plans”?  A lack of deadline.  “We’re done when we’re done” seems noble when understood from the lens of “we’ll do whatever it takes to get the job done”, but frequently a lack of established deadline means that projects can meander WELL beyond any reasonable measure of time to accomplish the objective.  A lack of urgency tends to result in a lack of focus and intensity, something that anyone who has ever written an academic paper can appreciate.  Hell, it’s why this very blog is written weekly: I force myself to come up with SOMETHING to write once a week, because if it was just “whenever I felt like writing something”, this would have significantly fewer posts (which, for some of you, may actually be a blessing, but again, I digress).  In the case of the fat loss trainee, because the objective was simply to hit a number on the scale, and there was no timeline associated with it, those binges were just met with a shrug and the thought “whelp, next week I’ll do better”, only for the cycle to repeat.  For the bulker, with each passing week wherein the scale didn’t budge, they just consoled themselves “well at least I didn’t get fatter: I’ll do better next week”.

 

We have to be able to run out of “next weeks” so that we CAN’T rely on them.  Just like Apollo Creed said in Rocky III “there IS no tomorrow”.  This is why signing up for a competition does such a great job of producing changes: we have a deadline wherein we NEED to be able to perform, and if we show up and we’re not ready, we don’t get to move the date back.  I’ve written many times how I got the strongest I’d ever been when I had 12 weeks to add 75lbs to my keg clean and press: a challenge that seems patently insane, but by having it in front of me it vectored all of my other training decisions and had me locked in and “on point”.  My time with Super Squats proved effective in a similar manner: knowing I had 6 weeks to make the most of the training phase, I dutifully drank my gallon of milk a day and breathed so hard my teeth hurt on those squats to watch my bodyweight climb 12lbs in 6 weeks.  Same with my 6 week run with Building the Monolith, same with my 12 weeks of Deep Water Beginner and Intermediate, and same with my 26 week “ultimate mass building block”

Locking in is locking in

Talking around the topic up until this point, let me lay this out into something actionable.  It’s totally fine to have goals based around outcomes (“I want to be leaner, I want to be more muscular, etc”), but we’re going to structure the PURSUIT of these goals based around time.  “I’m going to allow myself 12 weeks to get leaner”, “I’m going to allow myself 16 weeks to become more muscular”.  This is going to have multiple benefits.  First is the aforementioned artificially induced urgency: we know we ONLY have so many weeks to pursue this goal, and if we don’t achieve our desired outcome in time, we “lose”.  BUT, in something of a twist, having a finish line ALSO makes the pursuit of these goals far more endurable.  If I just tell you “go run” and never give you an idea of how far we’re going, you’ll have no idea how to pace yourself, if you need to conserve energy, etc.  If I say “go run 20 miles”, as much as that amount SUCKS, at least you know WHAT the end is, and once you get to mile 18 you can tell yourself “2 more miles: I got this”.  It’s no different when you’re deep in a fat loss phase OR completely exhausted in the pursuit of building muscle: if there is a finishline in sight, you can bear down for a few more weeks, make it to the end, and then ease off the throttle.  And finally, having predetermined and fixed periods of pursuit prevent us from allowing these pursuits to meander to UNREASONABLE stretches of time to the point that they start having deleterious impacts on our health.  Even if we’re frequently FAILING in the pursuit of losing fat, LIVING in a persistently restricted state is going to have negative impacts on our psychology and physiology, and trying to “bulk” for a year, irrespective of if the scale is moving, it just going to exhaust us.  By having an established timeline, we give our body and mind some necessary breaks along the way, allowing us to recover and revive between attempts, so that we can charge in full of vim and vigor for the next go round.

 

And therein lies my contribution to this dialog.  Let training lead the way, let nutrition follow, and structure the pursuit of that training and nutrition around time, rather than outcome.        

A PEEK UNDER THE HOOD

With my recent write-up comparing 5/3/1 and Tactical Barbell, I figured this would be an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the “Uncrustableness” of Tactical Barbell as it relates to planning out the my training for the next year.  Because, yes: with TB, it’s simple to map out a year of training.  By knowing my bumpers and milestones to vector around, TB provides plenty of latitude to be able to maneuver, plan and execute.  Ideally, if you’re interested in employing TB in your own training, you can take from this approach and employ it on your own.

 

TO START: THE BUMPERS/MILESTONES

 

Not to be confused with this, which is how I lost my first ever Magic the Gathering tournament

I am a big fan of limitations, because they provide us structure.  If I just say “Go make a workout”, there’s too much openness in the statement and we end up suffocating with options.  If I say “Go make a workout using only 1 kettlebell and a chinning bar”, suddenly we have a vector and can make something incredible.  In that regard, when it comes to mapping out a training plan, I start with what my limitations will be.  These are the bumpers/milestones: events occurring during the year that will lend vector to my training.  In that regard, here is what I’m operating with.

 

* My birthday is late Oct, which is a day of feasting.

* After that, Thanksgiving happens: another feast.

* After that, Christmas happens, another feast.

* After that is the New Year, which is a time when anyone can engage in a hard training program and strict dietary protocol and no one will bat an eye.  It’s the expectation. 

* I am signed up for a strongman competition on 20 Feb.  I have no issue with making weight for it (Masters 220).

* I go on a Cruise for my kid’s spring break in late Mar.

* The wife and I run a 10 mile race in Apr.

* Memorial day is the end of May, which, along with a day of remembrance, we celebrate the memory with a feast.

* Though unannounced, there is most likely going to be another strongman competition in Aug.  And at that point, I’ve come full circle for the year.

 

STORYBOARDING

 

Sometimes you gotta break out the crayons

Knowing the bumpers and limitations, we can begin drafting up some general thoughts to help guide the actual plan development.  Here is what we know.

 

* Looking at the above, fall through winter is a lot of feasting opportunities.  It’d be a poor time to try to prioritize fat loss, while ALSO being an excellent time to try to leverage all that feasting toward hard training.  We’ll have no shortage of fuel, and recovery will be good.  This is sounding like a “Mass Protocol” situation.

 

* The New Year’s will be an excellent time to “detox” from all the feasting from Fall to Winter.  It also is leading right into a strongman competition.  It would be a great time to focus on getting fit, strong, and lighter.  This is sounding like an “Operator” situation.

 

* The cruise in Mar would be 3-4 weeks after the strongman competition.  That will be after about 7 weeks of leaning out since New Year’s, and the cruise itself will be an avenue for feasting.  Taking the above 2 data points, it sounds like it could lend to a 10-11 week leaning out phase before the start of some growing.  3-4 weeks is an opportunity to continue running Operator OR to do a Work Capacity training block.

 

* After the cruise, aside from that 10 mile run, the next milestone is a Memorial day Feast.  This means I have some feasting bookends: the start of feasting at the cruise, and the final feast on Memorial day.  This lends to a Mass Protocol situation for 8-9 weeks.  

 

* Now we’re in Jun, with a strongman competition in Aug.  It could be the start or end of Aug depending, so we’re looking at 2-3 Operator cycles for 8-12 weeks (factoring in a bridge week).

 

* The 2-3 Operator cycles mentioned above carry me through the summer, at which point I’m back to Sep, leaned out as a result of the strongman comp prep, eyeing another Birthday, Thanksgiving and Christmas on the horizon.  So here we go again.

 

THE PLAN

 

Much like squatting with a bosu ball, you most likely saw this one coming

Now that we’ve drafted the storyboard, it comes time to get a little more granular and start planning out the actual training/phases.  Those that have read Tactical Barbell Mass Protocol are familiar with the periodization structure of OMS, but for those unaware: those 3 letters stand for “Operator-Mass-Specificity”, which are 3 different programs that exist in the Tactical Barbell universe.  Operator is strength and conditioning focused, Mass is (obviously) Mass focused, and Specificity would best be understood as “bodybuilding focused”.  Whereas Mass is about building mass in general, specificity focuses on higher rep ranges and more isolation/focus to bring up weak areas.  The idea is to move from one phase to the other and repeat as a means of basic periodization.  And that’s exactly how this plan will execute.

 

FALL PHASE (14 Sep – 2 Jan/16 Weeks)

* 2 cycles (6 weeks total) of Mass Protocol (Grey Man, in this case, my preferred Mass Protocol program, which I’ve reviewed in the past)

* Assessment: I use a low bar squat when I run Grey Man, and it can beat me up after too much time.  I’ve learned to value movement rotation, much like what Westside Barbell prescribes for Max Effort for the same reason.  So I’ll see how I feel at this point and, from there, make one of 2 decisions.

- Course of Action (COA) 1: Continue with 1 more cycle of Grey Man, 1  Bridge Week, 1 cycle of Specificity Bravo (currently at 13 weeks of training)

-COA 2: Implement bridge week to recover, then transition to Fat Zulu (from TB III) for 2 cycles, 1 bridge week (13 weeks of training). 

(COA1 assumes I feel fine and am able to continue pushing Grey Man, while COA2 uses Fat Zulu as an “escape plan” [reference previous posts] to let my body recover.  COA1 employs Specificity from Mass Protocol, while COA2 leans into the 4x a week approach of Fat Zulu to function in that regard)

* Irrespective of COA selected, end with Operator Pro (Green/TB III) using hypertrophy rep ranges with cluster based around the events for the Strongman competition.  3 weeks of training, for 16 weeks total.

 

NEW YEAR’S PHASE (4 Jan – 20 Mar/11 Weeks)

Looks like a pattern developing...

 

* 2 cycles of Operator Pro with strength ranges for the supplemental work, followed by 1 bridge week leading into the strongman competition (7 weeks total)

* Assessment: At this point, I’ll have been employing Operator Pro for 3 cycles specifically preparing for a strongman competition.  The comp is over: there’s no “need” to continue with Operator Pro, and the next milestone is the cruise.  I’ll need to assess what my needs are at this point, as I’ll have 4 weeks left to do something.

* COA 1: Continue with Operator Pro simply to maintain status quo and focus on moving heavy weights during a leaning out phase to maintain as much lean mass as possible.

* COA 2: Work Capacity/SE phase from TBIII in order to satisfy my inner psychotic need for self-destruction (being incredibly honest here) before a nice break on the cruise.

* COA 3: The 4 week base building plan from TBIII in order to, well, build my base, as it’s been a while since I’ve focused/prioritized low intensity long duration conditioning.

* Irrespective of COA selected, finishes with a 1 week bridge week due to the cruise.

 

SPRING PHASE (29 Mar – 29 May/9 weeks)  

Oh my goodness this is too ridiculous

 

* Coming right off a bridge week, 9 weeks is an excellent time to run 2 cycles of Grey Man or a similar Mass Protocol template and 1 cycle of Specificity.  I could play around and run different Mass Protocol programs, or take something from TB III/Green Protocol, but ultimately we know that this is going to be a period of gaining, and it’s tight enough to get in 3 consecutive 3 week training cycles.

 

SUMMER PHASE (31 May – TBD August/10-13 weeks)

Nailed it

 

* The date range on this is a little ambiguous, as the date for the strongman comp hasn’t been announced yet, so this plan will need to be further fleshed out.  Be we DO know it’s going to start with a bridge week, since we JUST finished 9 hard weeks of gaining.  It’s also going to have a bridge week before the comp, so we’re looking at realistically 8-11 weeks of training.  And since we’re prepping for a strongman comp, the plan is going to be Operator Pro.  It’s now a question of if we lead into it with the hypertrophy range work for the supplemental or cut straight to the strength work, and that will be determined by if the competition is in early August or late August.  More time means more training cycles.

 

REPEAT

 

THE NUTRITION

 

Yet surprisingly there's a fair bit of fasting ahead

I genuinely feel I’ve struck gold with “The Roulette Diet”, because it honestly makes this entire process so incredibly simple.  Ultimately, all I need to do is up my “2 meal day” frequency during the Mass Protocol phases and reduce it during the Operator phases.  Additionally, I’ve played around with altering the protein to fat ratio of my energy intake simply by transitioning from whole eggs to egg whites as priorities change.  I eat 10 egg whites at a time during my leanest phases, which, if I were to swap 1 egg white out for 1 whole egg, it means adding 40 additional calories to my intake (each whole egg contains 6g of fat and 6g of protein, while each white is 5g of protein and 0g of fat, so each swap means adding 6g of fat (x9 calories, for 36 calories) and 1g of protein (x4 calories, for 4 calories, 40 total).  So if I were to swap out all 10 whites for whole eggs, I’d add 400 calories to my total: right in that sweet spot between 300-500 calories…which would be cool, if I counted calories. 

 

But in either capacity, this is incredibly simple and streamlined and fits in perfectly with what I love about TB: fire and forget.

 

IN SUMMARY

 

Did I miss anything?

Tactical Barbell is so simple, effective and modular that, once you know what your milestones and limitations are for the year, you can map out a full year of training without much difficulty.  Keeping OMS as a framework and allotting for occasional bursts of Base Building or Work Capacity provides an easy to follow structure to operate off of.  And as always: chaos is the plan, don’t get upset if it all blows up once it comes in contact with the enemy.