ONE LITTLE SPARK

I recognize the insanity in my own writing, which I’ve often written off as “duality”, because I frequently find myself screaming sentiments that are the exact opposite of what I’ve said almost in the most recent post, and today will be no exception to that.  For though I’ve written much on the subject of going to extremes in order to get extreme results, today I wish to discuss the notion of just how LITTLE it takes in order to make progress.  But, in turn, because of that, we are truly so very liberated in our pursuit of physical transformation, for it means that effectively ANY avenue we take will lead to success: we simply need to take one.  Which, in turn, speaks more toward one of the most significant principles at play here: intention.  And this may well be the missing variable in many folks quest for physical transformation: a lack of clearly understood intent, operating instead of a nebulous constructs, hopes, thoughts and prayers.  And unwillingness to flat out say “THIS is the thing”, perhaps out of fear that, once identified, their intention is vulnerable to critique, whereas an undefined concept renders itself impervious to criticism by means of a “no true Scotsman” defense.  But let us explore just how little is required in order to achieve change, such that we no longer need fear having an understood intent and can, instead learn to embrace just what “one little spark” can ignite.

And now the song is stuck in YOUR head

 

Our current state of existence is alien to our biology.  Our bodies are old (at least 6000 years!  …if you believe certain schools of thought, but realistically more in the hundreds of thousands of years) and were designed to operate in old environments, and in such environments they operate VERY well.  Unfortunately, one of the cool things ABOUT our old bodies is the big brain they carry, and those big brains got our bodies in some trouble, because they went about INVENTING an environment that we were in NO way suited to exist in.  We had bodies built for migration and scavenging, but we created agriculture and a static environment.  We adapted to eating seasonally, but we learned how to force the plants to grow on OUR schedule.  We were built to experience stress in limited capacities, engage our sympathetic nervous system to mitigate the stress, and resume relaxing, but instead created “fake stress” by means of employment, deadlines, social obligations, etc, and put ourselves in a perpetual sympathetic state.  We were built for motion, and then we built chairs.  What is the end result of this?  We have bodies that were built to move, to flux between periods of feast and famine with the changes in the season, to exist in a state of low stress and instead we have locked ourselves down to a point where we can get HUNDREDS of steps per day while eating processed “food like substances” and still be stressed out of our minds without relief.  Our current existence is destroying us.

 

WHICH MEANS that literally ANY intervention is going to be a POSITIVE one as it relates to physical transformation, so long as it is one with intent.  So long as we specifically identify SOMETHING that we are going to do differently than what we are currently doing, we stand to make SOME sort of improvement to our situation, irrespective of how insignificant it is.  Quite simply, this is because, often, the introduction of ONE thing necessitates the cessation of some OTHER damaging thing that is in our current environment.  For an absurd example: if you decided you were going to go on the “Big Mac Diet”, where you ONLY ate Big Macs…this would ACTUALLY be a significant improvement from the current state of existence for the majority of Americans.  If you’re ONLY eating Big Macs, this means you AREN’T eating the fries, milkshakes, office candy, or other processed garbage that exists out there: you’re limited the dosage of your poison.  You cut OUT a lot of junk by deciding you’re only going to eat ONE junkfood.  We’ve witnessed these sorts of interventions work COUNTLESS times: people switching from regular soda to diet soda, people swapping from beer to vodka, from triple whoppers to double whoppers, etc.  When I was 14 and lost 25lbs over a summer, I went from eating 6 slices of pizza during “pizza night” to 3 slices, and from 3 cheeseburgers to 1.  In all these instances, the avenue to success is the same: IDENTIFYING that there is, in fact, something wrong with the current environment and engaging in AN intervention of some variety.

This outcome looks MUCH better than how the Subway diet went for Jared...

Again: this is liberation!  It means we can do whatever we want and make progress, because the only place to go from rock bottom is UP!  Which means we never need to stress on if we’re making “the best decision”, because ALL decisions are the right one.  It simply boils down to you making a decision you can actually sustain.  And THAT is “the rub”.  Interventions only work if you actually abide by them, which is WHY they must be “intentional interventions”.  People that approach transformation by just saying “I’m going to eat better and exercise more” do neither, primarily because they have no northern star to follow.  People that engage in seemingly stupid interventions STILL succeed simply because they actually ABIDE by them.  It’s why “fad” diets and programs work: because they are AN intervention from our currently destructive environment, and often it is the gimmicky nature of them that ALLOW for compliance, because it’s just ONE thing to do.  So many folks are simply lacking in bandwidth AS A RESULT of our ridiculous environment that they don’t feel they have the capacity to navigate anything with any actual nuance, but tell them “don’t eat bread”, “don’t eat after 8:00pm”, “do 300 push ups a day” and they can now approach intervention with intent and, in turn, succeed.

 

So give yourself the permission required to attempt any means of intervention you desire in the quest for physical transformation: it’s ALL going to work.  ANYTHING is better than our baseline, and “one little spark” will ignite a significant change simply because it will get us moving AWAY from center toward something different and better.           

MAKING THINGS EASIER IS MAKING THINGS HARDER

The longer I train, the more I marvel at the reality that, the harder we try, quite often, the SLOWER we go, as it relates to physical transformation.  It’s an interesting bit of biology and alchemy where the body seems to function like a non-Newtonian fluid: resisting more when we push harder yet giving way when we let off.  However, to continue in this trend of irony, it appears that the opposite seems to hold true as well: in our attempt to make things easier IN the course of physical transformation we end up actually making things harder for ourselves.  Specifically, it seems when we attempt to employ scientific advances as a means to supplant nature, nature laughs at us like Crom on his mountain and asks “how’s that working out for you?”  This is because our biology is hundreds of thousands of years old, whereas our science is still quite new, and when the two meet, age triumphs over beauty.  And as is most often the case on this journey of transformation, we perceive this in the realm of training AND nutrition, and most often new trainees commit both of these errors simultaneously, exponentially increasing the difficulty of their journey in their attempt to increase the ease.  Let us discuss.

And nature finds a way

In the realm of training, I’ve discussed previously the topic of training in a state of emotional arousal (psyched up), but to re-iterate: it’s less than ideal.  I know it makes for good social media posts to get incredibly psyched up, blast heavy music, huff ammonia, slam your head on the barbell and crush a grindy new PR set, but once the camera stops rolling and all the likes go away, we’re left having to deal with the SUBSTANTIAL inroad on our recovery we’ve created.  This is because our brain and biology naturally places governors on our physical output in typical circumstances as a means of self-preservation.  Our bodies all possess INCREDIBLE physical potential, reference the stories of mothers lifting cars off their infants in a moment of sheer physical panic, HOWEVER the activation of this potential can be incredibly destructive on a body that has not been conditioned to produce this sort of output.  Stan Efferding has discussed the stretching, as an activity, is less about making muscles more pliable and more about training the body how to RELAX enough to be able to achieve it’s flexible potential, citing the notion that, if you were to render a person unconscious, you could most likely get them into a full splits without an extensive stretching regimen.  Where this relates to a state of emotional arousal is that, in the absence of it, our bodies are designed to exert a certain degree of output, and it’s only through the activation of our sympathetic nervous system (entering a state of fight or flight) wherein we’re able to EXCEED these limitations.  HOWEVER, this is a ancient deeply encoded biological defense mechanism: meant to be employed in EXTREMELY limited circumstances as a means of survival, the body effectively making the bargain that it’s worth experiencing a non-lethal amount of damage LATER if it means saving it from a lethal amount of damage NOW.  Effectively writing a check to be paid off in the future, and the pay is recovery: we need to dump the flood of cortisol, rest, eat, and recover.

 

So now, already, we understand that ALWAYS psyching up for training is putting us in a bad way…now what if we decide to go BEYOND our biological capability to do so by means of some sort of chemical assistance?  Pre-workouts and caffeine supplementation prior to training are incredibly popular among new trainees (AND trainees who SHOULD know better) because they allow one to rapidly reach levels of emotional arousal that are BEYOND what one can normally achieve, to the point that it can happen even if one is not in a state to be ready FOR such arousal.  We constantly hear stories of dudes who “aren’t feeling it” that day, take their pre-workout, and then are ready to tear the doors off the gym.  Folks, that’s a bug: not a feature.  You don’t WANT to constantly be triggering your fight or flight response just go to lift some weights: that response is there for a reason, and this ISN’T it.  Trainees do this because it allows them to lift more weights for more reps in training, and think that THIS is the shortcut to faster gains, but INSTEAD what is happening is their shortchanging themselves on the part of the process that actually GETS them the gains: recovery.  They’re digging DEEPER into their recovery well than their body is naturally poised to be able to recover FROM, and each training session just keeps on digging deeper and deeper.  In order to recover from an unnatural degree of fatigue generated, one would need to employ unnatural means of recovery…and that’s a game of whack-a-mole to discuss for another time.

In fairness, Rocky was drinking raw eggs, which Gironda said was just LIKE a steroid cycle...

 

But in the realm of nutrition we see another interesting manner in which apparent ease has hoodwinked us into greater difficulty, and it’s a surprising source: protein supplementation.  Protein supplements have been around since the 60s, once we discovered just how darn awesome protein is at building muscle, and it seemed like a very logical answer to the problem of just HOW do we get enough protein in our diets.  Interestingly enough though, as more and more research unfolds, we find that we may not need QUITE as much protein as we estimated based off those 1960s numbers (quite possibly due to the fact that the folks that were selling the protein were ALSO telling us how much we needed…but I digress), but irrespective of that, there’s a long established tradition of meatheads trying to take down a LOT of protein in the quest for muscle, and with the recently released new food pyramid here in the states, we’re ALSO seeing predatory food companies engaging in “protein maxing”. This is the latest trend where EVERYTHING is labeled “high protein” by shoehorning some incredibly low quality and cheap protein source into an already chemical crapstorm of a “food product” (yes, “high protein Pop Tarts” are out there) as a means of riding the wave of the cultural gestalt for “health”.  Needless to say, it’s never been easier to get in your protein these days…and that’s the problem.

 

My favorite bit of nutritional advice is “eat only non-processed foods and try to get 1g of protein per pound of lean bodymass”, which, if I ever DO release the Chaos is the Plan training book, that might be what I do instead of “meat and eggs when hungry”.  The reason being is this, if you try to eat 1g of protein per pound of lean mass using ONLY non-processed foods (don’t be stupid, I get it that any food found at a grocery store is “processed” because the butcher had to butcher the meat and the farmer had to harvest the fruit, but the rest of us on planet Earth understand what this word means), you end up making a LOT of good nutritional decisions in general, IRRESPECTIVE of your goal.  This is because we only have SO much stomach space and capacity AND our body’s natural hormones for regulating hunger and satiety (ghrelin and leptin) will effectively auto-regulate intake with that protein goal being the northern star.  If you decide you’re going to try to do this pure vegan, it’s most likely just plain not going to work, as you’ll run out of room or appetite for beans and rice.  If you decide you’re a living carnivore meme and are going to try to do it eating 50% fat pork sausages, our gallbladder will tap out before you get to your protein goals.  You effectively won’t be able to overeat, nor will you truthfully be inclined to, as unprocessed food isn’t hyperpalatable.  And, unless you specifically go out of your way to ONLY eat the leanest protein possible (egg whites, chicken breasts, shrimp, etc), you most likely won’t UNDEReat either, as natural protein sources tend to bring either fats or carbs along for the ride.

You can see the night and day difference in physique outcome

And through this explanation, I imagine you’re already understanding how attempting to make the acquisition of protein EAISER is, in fact, making the whole process more difficult.  For one, let’s consider the fact that almost ALL protein supplements (to include protein spiked junkfood) is artificially flavored and sweetened, which is going to bypass the body’s natural satiety signals and most likely INCREASE hunger rather than satiate it.  We compound this with the reality that protein supplements tend to be devoid of OTHER macrounutrients, being PURELY a source of protein.  So now we’ve rapidly achieved our protein goal for the day WITHOUT having come close to meeting whatever needs we have for other energy sources (fats and carbs) and are found seeking sources for these IN ISOLATION of protein…a completely alien way to eat, and who better to help us meet this demand than the processed/junk food industry that will GLADLY package fats and carbs together with minimal protein in a means to make their food hyperpalatable and prone to overconsumption.  And as Alan Aragon’s protein powder and ice cream (with whiskey) experiment has demonstrated: attempt to live this way is depressing and non-sustainable.  Our current food environment is so toxic that, in an attempt to make the process of nutrition easier by employing a protein supplement to reach our protein goals, we’ve ended up making the nutritional process FAR more difficult, having to rely on willpower and white knuckling to get us to “stay on target”, compared to if we just reached our protein goals by eating real, honest to goodness food.

 

There’s an old saying of “you’ll have plenty of time to do it right the second time”, a cautionary tale of how, in our attempt to rush the process, we end up spending EXTRA time fixing our mistakes and then doing it “the hard way” as we should have done it in the first place, and that continues to hold true here today.   As we attempt to make things easier, we just make it harder.  We’re not going to outsmart our biology.  We need to, instead, work to understand and appreciate it, because it has a LOT of cool stuff to teach us, once we’re ready to sit down and listen.

 

·  

THINGS I WISH I HAD FIGURED OUT EARLIER: HACKS AND TRICKS

Well folks, once again, I started out with something that I thought was going to be a quick “bullet points” style post and it’s already grown into a monster, so I’m going to chunk this out.  26 years into training and I’m still learning/discovering new stuff along the way, often times RE-discovering (Dan John jokes that it’s called “REsearch because you’ll find something, lose it, and have to go looking for it again) things that I figured out before and ignored at the time.  I’ve compiled a list of things that I wish I had figured out earlier in my journey, as it would have save me a lot of time OR put me much further ahead than I am now, or, if nothing else, saved me from some frustration.  I’m going to open up with some of the most immediate fixes here: hacks and tricks.  These are small things that have big impacts and could be implemented nearly immediately by many, so hopefully you find it helpful.

 

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STRONGMAN GRIP SHIRT

I didn't buy it JUST for the cool emblem...but it helps

 

* The solution for elbow pain with low bar squatting is a strongman grip shirt.  We’ve been using primitive approaches to this for so long, to include chalking the bar/t-shirts, wearing hoodies, shirts with screen images printed on them, etc, but we have the technology now to really address this.  For those unaware, a grip shirt is a shirt worn in strongman competitions with a bunch of sticky material sewed onto it intended to grip onto implements like stones, kegs, etc on the FRONT of the shirt, but often the TOP/shoulders of the shirt have the same material on it for yoke events.  And for those ALSO unaware, low bar squatting is notorious for causing elbow pain, because often the trainee is actually holding the bar in place on their shoulders with their hands as it will have a tendency to want to roll down the back.  Trying to hold, 4, 5, 6 etc hundred pounds with JUST your hands will put a LOT of pressure on your elbows/forearms, and eventually causes a lot of trainees to have to swap the movement out OR seek aids for elbow tendonitis.  I know, in my case own case, often a 6 week run of Super Squats had to end simply because my elbows couldn’t take any more, and one of the primary reasons I rotate movements in Tactical Barbell is because my elbows are toast after 6 weeks of Mass Protocol.  But having implemented the grip shirt from day 1 of this cycle, I’ve actually managed to roll into week 8 with only slight tweaks here and there, and much greater longevity.  I still have to not completely squat like an a-hole, but now I can focus MUCH more on the quality of the squat movement itself vs trying to balance the bar on my back.

You can see it being used here

THE SOUS VIDE

For when you want to make cooking look like a drug lab

* The sous vide is something I wish I discovered much earlier: in college.  I lived in the dorms, which, of course, had an explicit “no cooking rule”.  Those who remember my post about my hotel adventures while eating the Maximum Definition Diet know that I’m not opposed to setting up a griddle in an enclosed space, but you ALSO know that I managed to set off the fire alarm once during a 3 day stay in doing so.  I’ve come up with all sorts of cooking in confined space solutions, but had I known about the sous vide, that would have solved all my issues.  For those completely unaware, sous vide literally translates to “cooked in a vacuum”, and refers to a technique of cooking where you vacuum seal food, submerge it in water, and use a circulator to set the temperature TO THE DEGREE and the time of the cook.  The outcome is food cooked to the exact temperature you desire, but it ALSO means there is absolutely no cooking odor, smoke, fumes, vapor, etc.  It is also stupidly simple and effective foolproof: any college kid could use it and manage to cook food WITHOUT risk of accidentally contracting food poisoning.  I know, when my kid goes to college, I’ll be gifting them one of these, and these days I do the vast majority of my cooking via sous vide.  Yes, IDEALLY you’d finish off your food with a sear, which WILL generate some smoke and fumes, BUT it’s absolutely not required to accomplish that step and still have perfectly enjoyable cuisine, especially compared to the usual grub you can grab on campus.  Also, if you’re super worried about the impact of charred meat and carcinogens, this makes it a non-issue.

CHOPSTICKS

You don't have to be a Surf Ninja to appreciate a good set of Chopsticks

* Chopsticks for portion control.  Those who remember my Stellanator cheeseburger challenge video most likely recall seeing me eat 6 1/3lb burger patties in the span of 4 minutes such that you’re aware that I am a VERY fast eater.  And you’re most likely also aware of all the information we have these days that establishes that eating SLOWER leads to greater satiety.  It’s also helpful for just being “aware” as you eat, and exercising mindfulness.  I have a boxer (dog) that we use a food control bowl for, because boxers are notorious for eating too quickly and developing bloat (which apparently can kill them) and I myself have to employ similar tactics in the form of using chopsticks when I eat.  Because I grew up in Southern California in the 90s, I am, in fact, total yuppie scum and fully versed in the way of using chopsticks, so it’s not that it slows me down simply because I’m incompetent, but you just plain can’t put down food with chopsticks as quickly as you can with a fork or spoon unless you use the “snow plow” tactic.  Otherwise, you take small, reasonable bites that fit within the sticks, enjoy it, and move on to the next.  I eat all my breakfasts during the week with my family this way, which helps me stay engaged with them at the table.  Funny enough, another strategy I’ve found helpful is eating meat on the bone.  This has a similar impact: you have to be a little strategic with HOW you approach the meat, and you’re only going to take as big a bite as you can fit in your mouth and what you can tear off with your teeth.  You’re a bit more connected with the food this way, if nothing else than in the most literal sense of it, and there far less robotic “fork to mouth” action.  You also can’t play with your phone while your hands are full of food.  And even further, it’s why I like hot drinks over cold ones: I’m forced to slow down, sip, consider, and contemplate.

 

 

That’s it for the surface level stuff.  Stay tuned as I get weirder!

 

19 MONTHS OF TACTICAL BARBELL: LESSONS LEARNED

 

INTRO

I've definitely followed worse trinities before

On 16 Sep 2024, I started employing the Tactical Barbell system of training, and I haven’t looked back.  It answered all the questions I ever had about training and, honestly, gave me a bit of the feeling of Alexander when he wept because there were no more worlds left to conquer.  I really no longer had a need to ever train any other way again, because the system was so comprehensive yet modular that, whatever I needed it to be, it was, and whenever I needed to pivot, it was there to pivot with me.  I’ve already written multiple reviews on my experiences with individual programs within the system (Operator, Grey Man and Specificity Bravo) along with my experience after a year of making it all work, so now I just want to capture a snapshot of this moment, my thoughts, what I’ve learned, what I’ve changed, and how it all fits together.

GENERAL STRUCTURE

Sometimes it's hard to agree even on this part

What I have found works best for the Tactical Barbell system is what was laid out in Mass Protocol (which was the book the finally got me bought into the system in the first place): “Operator-Mass-Specificity”, or “OMS”.  This is periodization/phasic training in a very digestible form, similar to what Jim Wendler implemented with “Leaders and anchors” or Dan John’s “Bus bench-park bench” concept, but with Tactical Barbell it really grabbed me due to how prescriptive it is yet still with room to maneuver.  In my case, that room comes from my ability to select the movements I need for my exercise cluster along with my conditioning workouts, but on a broader level one can choose entirely different programs (Instead of Operator, Zulu.  Instead of Mass, Grey Man, like what I do.  Instead of Specificity Alpha, use Bravo), meaning there really is just an unlimited combination of approaches that can be implemented to alleviate even the most intense of training ADHD while still “sticking with the program”.  And again: that freedom with the conditioning work really opens up a LOT of avenues to get creative.

 

YEAR LONG STRUCTURE

 

Always good to have a plan

Now that I’ve had a chance to run Tactical Barbell for longer than a year, I’ve noticed a rhythm that I fall into that may be helpful for understanding Tactical Barbell in the “long term”.  One COULD simply run OMS indefinitely, going 3-6 weeks each phase, and be more than fine, but per Dan John’s “Armor Building Formula” being “Bodybuilding for REAL people”, I find that, often we humans have lives that can dictate what our training looks like.  So here’s a snapshot into mine.

 

·       My birthday is in late October, near Halloween.  After that is Thanksgiving.  After that is Christmas.  And it’s cold during this time where I live (middle America).  All of this means it’s an excellent time for feasting and not doing a whole lot of extra physical activity.  So I take these 3 months to focus on Mass Protocol, using Grey Man and Specificity Bravo.  I already know I’m going to be eating well and I’ll be able to recover, so it’s an excellent time to get bigger and stronger and put conditioning on the back burner.  With the OMS structure, if I DO decide to include a block of Operator in here, it will just be a 3 week block, basically to give me a break from the high reps and keep me from getting too sloppy.  Typically, we do a cruise vacation around New Years, so I make that my bridge week, but if I need one sometime before that during that block of training, I’ll take it.

·       Now it’s January.  January is an awesome month, because EVERYONE has a New Year’s resolution, so no one bats an eye if you are on a strict diet and doing a lot of exercise.  After 3 months of intense gaining, it makes it a perfect time to prioritize fitness and eating leaner.  For me, this means a 6 week block of Operator with a heavy conditioning focus while shifting the lifting cluster toward less heavier weights (I use a front squat, rather than a back squat, because it means I don’t move as much weight AND I can spare my back for more conditioning work).  Since I’m not moving as much weight in the gym, I don’t need as much food.  I’m not specifically trying to get lean (training is always my focus, not bodycomp), but by nature of focusing on conditioning and not feasting, I naturally lean out.  Often, there’s a strongman competition for me to compete in somewhere around here, so the week before that is when I’ll take a bridge week.  If that doesn’t happen, I’ll grab one before the next phase of training.

·       After those 6 weeks, I’m in Mid-Feb.  What I’ve discovered is that this is a great time to do more of a body re-comp/reverse diet sorta thing for 12 weeks.  I move from Operator back to Mass protocol, but I don’t eat like I was eating during the Oct-Dec block.  Again: it’s not a time of feasting and, in fact, it’s typically Lent during this time (not that I’m Catholic, but I attended their schools for 8 years), so some fasting can be appropriate (more on that when I discuss nutrition).  But what I’ve discovered during this most recent training block is that I can slowly/gradually up the food intake without putting on much bodyweight, effectively “rebuilding my metabolism” from the January push and give myself some caloric runway, which is good for the NEXT phase of training.  Typically, my kid will have Spring Break in where, which is where I’ll find a Bridge week.

·       So now it’s June.  Summer is here, the weather is warm, it’s good to get outside and be active, so I’m onto Operator.  Once again, I’m not planning on leaning out, but it’s inevitably going to happen as a result of getting outside more, being active, and improving my conditioning.  Along with that, there are lots of strongman competitions that happen in the summer, so I’ll typically find one to train for, which further vectors me toward Operator.  As of my writing this, I have one scheduled for 8 Aug, so it’s my “zero hour” to train for, giving me 9 weeks and a bridge week to prep.  For me, that’s 6 weeks of Operator and 3 weeks of Operator Pro to act as a peaking cycle.  But for a non-strongman competitor, this could also be an excellent opportunity to do Base Building from TB1 and spend the good weather getting some outdoor mileage. 

·       And now we’re looking at October’s feasting block again.  In between August and the end of Oct, I have some time to play around.  Basically, I can analyze where I’m currently at, decide what needs improving, and build on that.  This is effectively a “free block”.  I could just run a simple OMS (having just finished the “O”, I’d roll into Mass and then Specificity before cycling back to Operator) if I’m at a loss, or it could be a great time to tackle Base Building from either TB1 or Mass Protocol.  I’ve also had situations where I’ve had multiple strongman competitions in a row, and if that’s the case, I’ll just keep knocking them out until I get closer to the end of Oct to start the feasting block.

 

MY TWEAKS

Why would I trust experts when I can just do it myself?

I’ve detailed this more extensively in my other write-ups, but I wanted to recapture the hows and whys of the modifications I’ve made to have Tactical Barbell suit me.

·       For all Tactical Barbell workouts, instead of following the Rx plan for deadlifts, I do 1 set of pulls at reps above 5.  Specifically what I am doing is my ROM progression protocol that I’ve used for over a decade, where I start with 6 rubber patio pavers under the plates to create a partial pull, and each week remove a paver, eventually working my way to the floor.  I skip the “1 mat” week, which makes this a 6 week cycle, and allows it to slot in perfectly with the TB 3-6 week training cycles.  I use a higher rep range on this, starting at 12-15, adding weight each cycle until I’m around 6-8, then re-starting it back at the 12-15 (ideally with higher weight than last time).  This is something that I’ve worked with over the years that just plain works for me, whereas trying to pull from the floor every week is always a disaster.  I’ve written about this idea in the past, but essentially, my body is built for conventional deadlifting (long arms, short torso, I lockout nearly at my knees), which means I can move a LOT of weight on it (relatively), which ALSO means I put a LOT of stress on my system when I deadlift, and trying to pull from the floor with heavy weights frequently just burns me out, while this approach seems to spare me and continues to foster growth each cycle.

·       I don’t include weighted chins in any cluster for any program.  The same thing that makes me a good deadlifter makes chins a challenging lift, as I have a stupidly long ROM on it, and I never seem to get anything out of programming them like a traditional lift.  For a while, I relied on just getting in sub-max sets of chins throughout the workout, but these past few cycles what I’ve stuck with is just setting a daily chin up goal and getting it down in a “grease the groove” style by knocking them out throughout the day.  Right now, I’ve settled on 3 sets daily, and up the reps by one per WEEK.  This week, I’m doing 18-17-17, having done 3x17 the previous week, and once that’s done, I’ll go to 18-18-17.  The slow increase spares my elbows.

·       When I run Grey Man, I run it A/B/A indefinitely, rather than A/B/A, B/A/B.  The B workout is my deadlift workout.  This makes it so that I only ever deadlift once per week (for the reasons outlined above).  I pair the press with the squat on workout A, and the flat bench with the deadlift on workout B, primarily because the press is more valuable to me as a strongman than the bench.  But I also use the Grey Man supplemental clusters to make it that I’m still benching in some manner 3x per week, the same with squatting.

·       When I run Specificity, I STILL only deadlift once per week.  When I repeat that workout later in the week, I swap the deadlift with unweighted chins, and add reps each workout.

·       When I run Operator, the goal is to improve my strongman lifts, which includes a LOT of lower back taxing stuff (atlas stones, sandbags, logs, farmers carries, yokes, etc).  In turn, I use a front squat in my cluster rather than a traditional squat.  People mistake this into thinking that the front squat has “more carryover” to strongman, but it’s more that saving my lower back in the weightroom allows me to expend it more in the conditioning/events training.  If I tried to do it all at once, I’d overtax myself.

·       Just as an aside, on top of all the Tactical Barbell training and scheduled conditioning, I also train Martial Arts 3x per week and I join my family in running Dan John’s “Armor Building Formula” 3x per week as well.  However, to make that all work, it’s worth noting that the martial arts are “traditional martial arts” rather than MMA/BJJ/etc, with classes lasting 60-90 minutes vs 2 hours, and since I’m joining my family with ABF, I’m using their loads vs ones appropriate for me, so the workouts are more a tonic recovery workout vs an additional stressor.  I also try to get in a walk at lunchtime when I can…since I’m not eating lunch. 

 

NUTRITION

I genuinely don't know what this is but it exists, so here

I’ve done a bunch of different nutritional protocols through my run of Tactical Barbell, but most of them are pretty much more of the same to an outside observer, as I still each practically zero carbs outside of 1 meal a week.  That said, I’m really jazzed up about my “Red Meat and Black Coffee” protocol I wrote about earlier, and I feel like it’s “the one…for real this time” as it relates to a protocol that fits well with the modularity of Tactical Barbell, so let me give a brief re-summary of how it slots into the program.

·       On days where I lift, I eat 2 meals: one post training, and an evening meal.

·       On days where I do conditioning, I eat one meal: an evening meal.

·       Between/before meals, I permit myself black coffee.  No bulletproof or other keto magic: just plain black coffee. 

·       On rest days, it’s flexible.  Sometimes 1 meal, sometimes 2.

·       For all but 1 meal, I only eat animal products, and primarily fats and proteins.  Dairy is used in very limited quantities: primarily meat and eggs.

·       For 1 meal per week, I include carbs/plant sources.  This isn’t a binge/cheat meal: it’s a social meal.  It’s more about enjoying the company and the experience, rather than mainlining carbs into my face.  With it being a social meal, for me, this happens in the evening on a rest day.

·       I don’t consider this a meal, but before bed every night I eat 170g of full fat Greek yogurt with 1 scoop of protein powder mixed in.  This is something of a “protein failsafe”, especially for those single meal days.  And since I train first thing in the morning, it’s nice to have something in my system before I go to bed and get up to train.

What I like about this is the simplicity.  I don’t measure/track my calories or macros.  Instead, I evaluate outcomes.  I look at how my performance is doing, and how my clothes/weightbelt fit, and can adjust as needed.  And with so few meals to eat AND such limited food selection, it’s pretty easy to manipulate if you aren’t getting the outcome you’re looking for.  So with that basic framework, here’s how it modulates based on training phase.

·       During Operator, I don’t need as much food to recover, because the weight training isn’t as intense, and since I’m keeping carbs stupidly low, I don’t need to replenish glycogen from hard training sessions as I’m running off of ketones.  This means I can eat fewer meals on rest days, or eat smaller meals during the training week.  They don’t even need to be particularly smaller: I saw success slowly transitioning from 16oz of meat at breakfast to 12oz, while still keeping eggs at 3 whole/5 white.

·       And, of course, in feasting phase, the reverse is true.  I can eat 2 meals a day on the rest days, or allow myself to eat bigger meals at those opportunities.  I still keep a minimum of 2 days a week with 1 meal per day, as I find this allows me to maintain insulin sensitivity and keep up a healthy appetite while also not getting too sloppy during the gaining phase.

·       During the re-comp/reverse diet phase I mentioned previously, it’s a middle ground.  I will slowly increase the amount of food I eat at my regular meals, but I’m not feasting like I would from Oct-Dec.  This is what “maintenance” looks like.  I walk away from each meal satiated, whereas in the feasting phase there was definitely more “enjoyment” had during the meal.

And now just a bit of nuance.

·       This “works” BECAUSE of eating only fats/proteins during the majority of the meals.  Becoming fat adapted/ketogenic makes it very easy to subsist off so few meals with long times between meals.  There is no “white knuckling” hunger with this, no starving.

·       Along with that, because the only food I’m eating is fat and protein, there’s a good chance I’m still hitting whatever protein requirements I need.  Ketones are protein sparing, but I’m getting 50g of protein in egg whites alone each day.  If I tried this with a mixed diet, it’d be much harder to hit those goals.

·       This way of eating requires the capacity to eat large quantities in a single sitting.  I’ve never struggled with that, and most likely had some form of binge eating disorder as a child.  If you have a small appetite, this may not work.

·       The coffee is NOT a replacement for poor sleep.  In truth, I’m fairly certain I’m a “rapid caffeine metabolizer” or simply a non-responder, as I can drink a cup of coffee and go right to sleep.  For me, it’s a bridge between meals, because something warm is soothing and the small cortisol spike from the coffee will blunt any appetite.  It’s not at all required: simply permitted.

 

 IN SUMMARY

Eat like, train like

Through 26 years of training, I feel like I've settled on a home as far as training and nutrition goes.  Tactical Barbell provides the skeleton that I need and is malleable to meet my current needs, demands and goals.

 

BEGINNERS ARE DOING DUALITY WRONG PART II: NUTRITION

Often, when I write about the subject of nutrition and, specifically, the poor state of it among the general populace, I got out of my way to clarify that I’m writing about a western audience and, more specifically, the United States, in order to provide my perspective.  However, as globalization increases, we’re finding that more and more previously uncorrupted areas are suffering the same experiences that we have in the states, so hooray for global reach, and what I’m writing may apply even more universally than usual.  But in that regard, the food environment in the United States is absolutely abhorrent and has resulted in what has been termed “The Standard American Diet” (“SAD” for short…and in practice).  There is no one single codified SAD, but it’s benchmarked by the qualities of daily eating being entirely ad hoc, no actual plan for what to eat for any meals, frequent snacking (with some quotes estimating people eating up to 18 times per day when we factor in ALL incidents of food going into the mouth), the majority of the intake being ultraprocessed food AND from sources outside the home (restaurants/door dash/etc).  It is low protein, low fiber, high fat (primarily from ultraprocessed sources), high carb/sugar (again, ultraprocessed) and low in nutrients, resulting in an interested dilemma where the majority of Americans are overweight AND undernourished.  This has been deemed as “energy toxicity”, wherein we are consuming too much energy (calories) such that we experience the health maladies associated with it (diabetes and heart disease) while also not consuming enough actual NUTRITION due to the hyperprocessed nature of the foods we’re consuming in order to actual achieve a meaningful degree of satiety or general health.  Yes: the “foods” we eat make us HUNGIER when we’re done eating them and leave us LESS nourished when we’re done: Kafka couldn’t write something crazier and Satan couldn’t come up with a more ironic punishment for gluttons.  And it is BECAUSE of this food environment that literally ANY dietary intervention proves successful as it relates to improving health markers, because, quite simply, the sheer act of THINKING about what you are eating is, in and of itself, enough to start mitigating some of the damage of the SAD.  …and yet, somehow, when the ONLY option is “success”, beginner trainees manage to find a way to failure and it is, much like training, because they refuse to follow A plan and, instead, feel the need to construct their own!

Only 3 steps and you still manage to screw one of them up...and meanwhile, you CAN succeed on the "Filet o Fish" diet

 

Mitch Hedberg was a comedic treasure that we lost way too soon, but he imparted on us the gem that “I play guitar.  I taught myself how to play the guitar, which was a bad decision….because I didn’t know how to play it, so I was a sh*tty teacher”.  And, in turn, a beginner that trusts themselves to write their own diet after years of failing at dieting has already set themselves up for failure.  Because, inevitably, much like building a training program, beginners just take a bunch of ideas from successful diets and try to Frankenstein them together into the PERFECT custom diet for them, not understanding that physical transformation operates off the Gestalt principle, wherein the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  I realize I’m bloviating here, so let me try to just say what the actual problem is.

 

Beginners want concrete, definite, finite answers, because it obviates them from having to think, learn or understand nuance.  So what they seek is a mathematical equation to understand nutrition.  This inevitably results in the pursuit of a nutrition app which spits out numbers which become their “goals” in terms of total calories and the macronutrients necessary to get there.  Armed with these goals, the beginner then wonders right back into the VERY food environment that got them all messed up in the first place, and decides to set themselves up for success using the VERY foods that got them all messed up.  As though the whole problem was simply a matter of not COUNTING the “food like products” properly.  Now that I KNOW my macros, I know exactly how many Poptarts to eat for my carbs and fats and then how much whey protein powder to take to get in my protein content for the day.  The perfect diet!

Hah!  Eliminate the middleman!

 

The “If It Fits Your Macros” crowd always likes to talk about how that is a hyperbolic example, but that’s because they approach their nutritional approach with more nuance than their soundbite of a diet name implies, because even THEY emphasize that the majority of the macros SHOULD come from whole/unprocessed foods while having SOME wiggleroom for junk as long as the macros don’t get exceeded.  What these folks can’t fathom is just how much a “babe in the woods” a brand spanking new beginner can be when they were raised in a food environment where it was NORMAL to go multiple days in a row eating “food” out of boxes that had a near infinite shelf life and in no way resembled anything that could be found in nature: so far removed from reality that the “fruit” in the Trix cereal has to be artificially shaped, flavored AND colored to resemble the very fruit it’s trying to be.  For so many of these trainees, they’ve been so inundated with a ridiculous food environment that they’ve lost all perspective on what actual for real food IS, and when left to their own devices to construct their own nutrition, their diet STILL looks like the food choices of an unsupervised 12 year old: there is simply LESS of it.

 

Folks, you can’t get healthy eating the same stuff that made you sick in the first place, even if you reduce the dosage.  There needs to be an actual DETOX that occurs to get you off the junk for a little bit BEFORE you consider re-introducing it into your life (please try not to).  This is why ACTUAL for real nutritional interventions work: aside from whatever gimmick they tend to employ, they ALL hinge upon the principle of removing some or ALL of the poison from the nutritional environment.  Yes, even the juice cleanse diets or the lemon water and cayenne pepper diets “work” because you’re at least NOT eating Poptarts (man they’re an easy target) and Doritos and other junk while you’re living off of condiments, but other approaches (ketogenic, Mediterranean, vegan, vegetarian, carnivore, whole 30, paleo, Atkins, carb cycling ala Justin Harris, Deep Water, Mountain Dog, The Complete Keys to Progress diets, DASH, Dukan, Vertical Diet, Warrior Diet etc etc) predicate themselves around the notion of unprocessed foods comprising the MAJORITY of the nutrition, and then, from there, they vary.  Or, at least, the successful ones do.  There are ABSOLUTELY predators out there that have found a way to make keto/vegan/paleo/every diet junkfood, using the exact same ingredients that got us sick in the first place and finding a way to engineer them into meeting the letter of these diets while completely violating the spirit of them.  Folks, take a look at the ingredient on “low carb tortillas”: I’d MUCH rather just eat one that is corn, water and salt and deal with whatever the carb consequences are of THAT.

You could definitely pick a worse diet

“But why does it matter?  If they meet their macro goals, won’t they achieve their transformation goals?”  Alright, well, for one, their “macro goals” are often not, because if you ask this beginner WHY they picked those macros as their goals, they’ll say “it’s what the app told me”, so they don’t even HAVE an actual “goal” for their macro: just instructions.  But, beyond that, Stan Efferding (writer of the Vertical Diet, which I’ve reviewed and think it’s just flat out awesome) said it best: “compliance is the science”.  And trying to comply with the goals of these apps while eating the food that makes up the SAD is setting you up for NON-compliance.  Again: this food is SPECIFICALLY engineered to make you overeat.  The same scientific brains that worked to make cigarettes as addictive as possible pivoted to the food industry and employed their exact same talents there to find the most precise way to combine cheap ingredients ala low quality fats, carbs/sugar and salt to create an umami experience that has never existed in nature in order to override your body’s natural satiety signals and trigger binge behavior with an impossible to match dopamine spike.  Now you’re hooked, and because the body is awesome, it adapts to this dopamine hit such that you now need a BIGGER dose in order to achieve the same high, which, when combined with a hyperpalatable food that never triggers satiety due to a lack of protein and fiber, compels you to just eat more and more in pursuit of this high.  The ONLY tool we have available to resist this situation in the presence of this food is willpower, and that is a FINITE resource that, once expired, results in a compensatory binge that tends to UNDO the results of the diet up until that point AND cause further damage.  We observe this phenomenon occur in former Biggest Loser contestants who put on MORE bodyweight than when they started, along with bodybuilders who finish the show and go on to put on 20-30lbs in the weekend afterward as they indulge in all that they had denied themselves up until that point.

 

And none of this addresses the terribly hormonal state all of this junk puts a trainee in, making their attempts at physical transformation far less successful than they would while eating similar macros from better sources.  Getting the majority of your carbs from hyperprocessed sources tends to result in far more significant insulin spikes compared to something more natural, which, in turn, over time, drives down insulin sensitivity, making fat storage more prominent and muscular gain more difficult.  And the terrible fat sources being employed also wreck testosterone production/jack up estrogen, further complicating matters.  And then, feeling like garbage from eating garbage food, especially in a caloric deficit, is going to mean ineffective training, once again achieving less desired benefit.

Funny enough, these dudes think "cycling" is the solution

 

Because, again, in the face of the Standard American Diet, literally ANY nutritional intervention is a better option…but in terms of duality, it’s a balancing act between food quality and food quantity that is the driver of results, and beginners manage to find a way to balance both sides of the equation such that they get the worst of both worlds and achieve the opposite of success.  Don’t trust yourself to find a way out of the mess you got yourself into: if you knew HOW to do it, you wouldn’t be there in the first place. Don’t try to make the plan fit you: find the plan that FITS you.  Or become the person that fits the plan.