JRPGS AND WRPGS

I already feel bad for my audience that isn’t fluid in nerd, because this is going to be incredibly nerdy.  Let me start by breaking down the two acronyms in the title: Japanese Role Playing Games and Western Role Playing Games.  These distinctions will matter as it relates to the subject matter I’m about to discuss, and credit to u/JeremiahWuzABullfrog over on r/kettleballs for providing the inspiration for writing on this topic.  I don’t feel like this is even really an intro at this point: me a mea culpa, so let’s actually start talking.

In a few paragraphs, this will be hilarious

 

In the world of video game nerdery, role playing games are constantly divided into 2 categories (which, yes, like heavy metal, there are a million SUBcategories, but we’re not going to talk about them today): Japanese RPGs and Western RPGs. The distinction between these two primarily relates to degree of linearity present in playstyle.  Traditional JRPGs typically provide you with preset characters to play with and a direct path to get there, providing an almost “on rails” experience as you play.  The focus is on making the characters you have strong enough within their own playstyle to be able to get to the end of the game.  WRPGs define themselves through their “open” playstyle, wherein you typically get to build a character/party of characters in whatever style you like, and there are multiple solutions and paths to the end of the game, to the point that you can decide if you want to even be a hero in the first place or play as a villain instead.  WRPGs are like playing a video game coded version of Dungeons and Dragons, while JRPGs feel more like a traditional video game in general, where you’re trying to “beat the game” within its own specific set of rules.  Why even discuss this?  Due to the parallels that exist between this and the world of training.

 

Much like how you can never step into the same river twice, you can never play a JRPG for the first time twice.  The significance of this is that, the first time you play it, you’re discovering it as you go, and the world is magical and incredible (assuming it’s a good game) and the story is full of twists and turns and it’s an epic journey…but the second time you play it, it simply can’t be as magical because you already know what’s coming.  Sadly, in physical transformation, we experience this same phenomenon.  Joel Greene, among others, discuss the premise of how we aren’t able to keep eliciting the same responses to training/nutrition as we get when we first experience them, and how this relates to the necessity of variety in both instances in order to continue growing.  Aside from just newbie gains and the novel training stimulus effect in general, the body is a mechanism built around adaptation, and once it adapts we are no longer forcing it to change.  Super Squats will trigger ridiculous growth the first time you run it, and then pretty decent growth the second time, but if it ALWAYS added “30lbs in 6 weeks”, we’d be 150lbs heavier in just 30 weeks.  The Velocity Diet can trigger rapid fat loss, until our body downregulates metabolism and we’re forced to do some reverse dieting in order to rebuild our caloric runway.  Even my beloved Tactical Barbell necessitates changing the program through periodic training phases to keep growing, as does 5/3/1, as does just general basic periodization.

Change does a body good

So enter the WRPG, wherein we can actually have a NEW experience each and every time we play it BECAUSE it’s on us to make the character that we play and the decisions our character makes as they navigate the world.  You CAN get a new experience with multiple replays of the game, and as you do so you discover more and more about the gameworld.  Games like Fallout New Vegas can have over 100 hours of gameplay tucked away, with various secrets and hidden easter eggs, and hell, I still play the original Fallout released in 1997 and STILL find new things in that game with my replays.  HOWEVER, in order to discover these hidden gems, it necessitates NOT playing these WRPGs like a JRPG: you have to actually be willing to play a different character and do some experimenting.  It’s honestly why I was hesitant to tackle this topic at first: because it was originally proposed from the lens of DnD, wherein, in truth, I’m ALWAYS a barbarian because it’s what I love being, but it is from the branching out and discovering the contents of the game that we learn so much.

 

Which is the lesson we can take to physical transformation: the more we’re willing to get out there and explore, the more we’re able to pick up tips, tricks, hacks and skills that we can apply UNIVERSALLY to the quest of physical transformation.  Aside from the fact that you can avoid stagnation simply through the act of changing the approach, you’ll also learn along the way in order to discover what works best for you AND have a bunch of tools in your toolbox for whenever you encounter a challenging situation.  Much like how various playthroughs of a WRPG can equip you with the necessary background to be able to tackle the problems you encounter from a variety of angles, trying out different programs and nutritional approaches can allow you to personally craft the solutions you need in order to overcome the problems you experience.

I appreciate the irony of this meme being over 20 years old

 

But fascinating enough, we enter into another realm of discovery here: challenges.  Because for avid JPRG fans, this tends to be how one reconciles adding replay value into a game that has preset rules, limits and paths to explore.  In order to make the game “new” again, we impose artificial restrictions on ourselves to see what solutions we overcome.  I’ve played JPRGs where I didn’t allow myself to use magic, where I couldn’t use certain powerful equipment, didn’t allow my characters to level up beyond a certain point, etc.  The game was STILL beatable: but it was up to ME to figure out HOW to come up with the solution in order to succeed.  Since the traditional way “wouldn’t work”, I had to develop new strategies, and in doing so, I once again learned new things about the game that I could apply further.

 

These same challenges allow us to take what is old and make it new again.  Our training doesn’t need to ALWAYS be played like a WRPG: with a completely new take on the game each time. We can replay a game we’ve played before and just implement a new challenge.  I once ran Super Squats where, instead of 1x20 and adding weight each workout, I kept the weight the same and added a REP each workout, until I got to 1x30.  I took Jamie Lewis’ “Famine” workout and ran the whole thing like a circuit, instead of running it linearly.  Running Building the Monolith in under an hour is a challenge many other trainees have taken on.  OR we can take a method that worked for one lift and apply it to others.  I've taken ROM progression from deadlifts and tried applying it to squats and seated pin presses, and I've taken the Zeno squats workout and tried it in combination with deadlifts.  And nutritionally, I’ve run various permutations of the Velocity Diet, the Apex Predator Diet, The Maximum Definition Diet,  and my own “Red Meat and Black Coffee” variant. 

 

How my dietary changes appear to outsiders

Interestingly enough, we’re getting into the area that Dan John describes as “wild, mild and none” in terms of variation, which he originally applied to Easy Strength, but the theme applies universally.  Easy Strength completely captures the JPRG mentality: you’re doing the same workout 5 days a week for 8 weeks for a total of 40 workouts, effectively “level grinding” so you can level up at the end and be stronger than where you started.  Within the workout, there are no forking paths or game changing decisions to be made.  But once those 40 workouts are done, we now have the option to just replay the game again (which, sometimes, for JRPG fans, that’s exactly what we want, just like re-watching a favorite movie or re-reading a favorite book), or we can introduce a “mild” variation (going from flat bench to incline bench) or a WILD variation (going from flat bench to clean and jerk).  And then we have the WILDEST variation possible: we just do a whole new program.  Dan talks about cycling 8 weeks of Easy Strength with 8 weeks of the Armor Building Formula, and we can always throw in a Mass Made Simple block to really shake things up, or the 10k swing challenge…and these are JUST Dan John programs.  If we threw in some 5/3/1 or Super Squats or something else, we’d REALLY be playing something different: like transitioning from Squaresoft (they’ll always be Squaresoft to me, not Squarenix) RPGs to Interplay.  A whole different RULEST to abide by.

 

We’re seeing the lessons we can learn from these games here.  If we’re a JPRG fan and just want to keep running the programs and diet we like over and over again, we simply owe it to ourselves to implement some challenge runs from time to time in order to keep the game fresh.  As much as we may consider Final Fantasy 7 to be the zenith of game design and story, we can only play it so many times in a row before our eyes start to bleed.  And if we’re a WRPG fan, variety is a necessary part of enjoying the experience.  We can’t just keep playing the game the same way over and over again: it’s missing out on the point of the experience.  We must, instead, try new characters and make new decisions and see what we can learn and discover through that process.  We make the most of our games playing them in this way.        

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.