RACING TO REDLIGHTS

Driving is when I tend to do most of my thinking, and when a vast majority of my blog post ideas tend to populate in my head.  I’ll actually have to get my phone out once I reach the parking lot and send myself a quick summary of what I came up with before the thought fleets away.  Amazingly enough, it’s not the actual DRIVING that tends to inspire my thoughts: it’s just a time when I am by myself and my brain can ruminate.  However, today’s post is different, for it is inspired by observing driving behavior, and understanding how much it maps on to what we see in the world of physical transformation.  Because one of the silliest things I observe when driving is people racing toward a redlight.  The light is blatantly red, yet the motorist shows no sign of yielding, and, instead, slams on their breaks at the last possible second upon reaching the light.  Aside from the fact this is very distressing for fellow motorists, as it appears the driver does not recognize the light and is going to run it, it’s also just flat out not good for your vehicle to drive it like that.  You exhaust your break pads and put needless wear and tear on it.  The more prudent action upon seeing a redlight is to ease off the accelerator early in hopes that, by the time you arrive, the light changes and you never even need to apply your breaks in the first place.  And much as life imitates art, so often trainees, in turn, find themselves racing toward a redlight of physical transformation, blunting their progress and causing damage that could easily be prevented by easing off the accelerator a little.

A video game about a cartoon about a commercial about crash test dummies...the 90s were a trip

 

We see this so frequently in the world of training, with 5/3/1 being the easiest example to go do.  SO many trainees absolutely refuse to even ENTERTAIN the idea of employing 5/3/1 for the same trite reason: “it’s progresses too slowly”.  I’ve written numerous posts on how this is a silly critique, but for today’s focus, let’s go examine what the alternative is.  What is the BENEFIT of progressing quickly compared to slowly?  What do we achieve, aside from simply arriving at the stall EARLIER?  What is the benefit of racing toward this redlight?  If we just slap 5lbs on the bar every workout irrespective of how the last one went, how we’re feeling today, how we’re eating, what our workload is, etc, we’re simply going to reach a point where it’s unsustainable, we stall, most likely regress, and we are simply DONE with this protocol.  As Dan John famously asks: “Now what?”  But if we employ something like 5/3/1, with an intelligent and nuanced progression scheme, we ease off the accelerator of progress and more slowly approach this impending stall.  And what is the benefit of THAT?  By approaching it SLOWLY, we actually have the time and opportunity to get STRONGER before we get there: meaning that the stall won’t actually happen!  We see it coming on the horizon, decide to ease off and allow ourselves a chance to get strong enough to overcome it, and we get to keep on cruising through, getting stronger and better, compared to our compatriot in the other lane that is now just hitting the reset button an in attempt to generate another running start at this stall.

 

We see this same redlight racing in the world of nutrition as well, with fat loss is the biggest culprit, and that’s because everyone is totally fine taking a long time to GET fat, but no one is willing to do the same when it comes to fat LOSS.  Once the decision is made to lose fat, it’s a crisis event, and it’s attacked with that level of ferocity.  DRASTIC calorie restriction is employed, and training is doubled in terms of frequency, duration and intensity.  And in one week, 5 pounds are lost…and then a stall.  And for the next 3 weeks, a stall.  And maybe even a little jump up in weight.  What happened?  The body ADAPTED, because that’s what bodies do.  And it’s that adaptation that one is supposed to FIGHT during fat loss.  They’re supposed to bamboozle the body into giving up the fat by HIDING the fact that we’re losing fat.  It’s going to be a slow, gradual process where we sneak a few calories away and do a little more walking than usual and save harder interventions for when the body displays some stubbornness.  But if we try to race to the redlight of adaptation, we achieve exactly that, and, once again “now what?”  We WERE eating 800 calories of lettuce and water while running a marathon a day: do we now eat 400 calories and run 2 marathons?

The IIFYM crowd double checking their calorie counting apps

 

I was going to write that we see this in muscle gaining as well, but in truth, we’ve moved SO far away from THAT issue due to everyone being so afraid of losing their abs in pursuit of building muscle that, instead, we have people that have been sitting at the greenlight for 4 full cycles and STILL refuse to hit the accelerator, so perhaps a discussion for another time.  So instead let’s talk about the dreaded “deload” and how this is a prime example of easing off the accelerator BEFORE we hit the redlight.  There’s some sort of bizarre stigma against employing deloads right now, hinging on the premise that needing a deload is a sign that you’re improperly managing intensity and volume in the first place.  But let’s go back with that traffic metaphor again.  Sure, in theory, if you drive your car at exactly the right speed with lights that are perfectly timed, you’ll never need to hit the breaks: you’ll always hit greenlights and just coast right through.  But what can happen?   An animal can dart out into the middle of the street and force you to slowdown or swerve, or a car can pull out in front of you and start going slower than you intended, or you miscalculated the size of your bladder and suddenly you need to arrive at your next destination with a little more urgency.  What happened?  Life.  It’s a full contact sport: wear a helmet.  And we encounter that same entropy when we train as well.  Illnesses happen, unexpected social obligations, late nights, minor tweaks, etc.  Sometimes, a planned and scheduled deload IS properly managing volume and intensity, because it’s like a training slush fund, set aside to deal with those less than desirable elements that impact our recovery.  We budget a necessary degree of “oops” into our planning, so that we don’t find ourselves racing toward a redlight of a stall.  The deload lets us take our foot off the accelerator for a minute so we can keep on cruising through greenlights.

 

For all of our sakes, please be a good driver out there. 

INTENTIONAL INACTION: WHAT WE DON’T DO

I find one of the most challenging notion for westerners to accept and appreciation is that of NOT doing something.  We are a culture of doing: that is how we know we are BEING.  “I think, therefore I am” ala Decartes was there to resolve an existential crisis, the notion that, because I am thinking, I MUST therefore exist, premised upon the idea that action affirms existence.  Contrast this with an eastern philosophy of duality, wherein action is necessarily balanced by inaction, and this audience can far more appreciate the importance of NOT doing along with doing.  This comes to a head in the realm of physical transformation, because those who embark on this journey with a western mindset are always fixated on what they can DO to achieve results, rather than what they can NOT do.  “What foods do I eat to lose weight?”  Already that question seems so ridiculous on the premise: how will EATING make us LOSE weight?  But it’s the question fired right out the gate.  “What workout do I do to get in shape?”  “What supplements do I take?”  Why do we need supplements BEFORE we even know what’s wrong?  People will ice plunge and detox and juice cleanse and red light therapy themselves to hell and gone, but few will actually STOP doing stuff, because DOING is satisfying, while NOT doing feels like stagnation, decline and death.  But I propose a notion of intentional inaction as a necessary counter balance to action.  To satisfy this western sensibility, we must ACTIVELY practice inactivity.

Nailed it!

What does this mean exactly?  It means to be inactive WITH INTENT.  It’s easy for us to equate inactivity with sloth, what the west considers to be a sin due to puritanical values that praise industry (which Nietzsche would most likely argue is, in fact, slave morality, crafted by the masters, to have a content workforce out there producing goods while the masters enjoy luxury, but I digress), but we can instead turn the act of inactivity (boy that’s confusing) into a form of intentional action.  We CHOOSE inactivity as a means to specifically achieve the effect that the inactivity produces.  Because yes, “an object at rest remains at rest”, but we exist in a system where all the objects have already been placed into motion.  In turn, by placing an object INTO a state of rest, we actually disrupt the system and create effects. Inactivity is not merely the cessation of action, but instead to catalyst for an outcome that can ONLY be achieved THROUGH inaction.  We achieve results that cannot be achieved through action.

 

By INTENTIONALLY fasting, we engage in the inaction of not eating.  We are NOT doing something, but we are NOT doing it for a reason.  Fasting from carbohydrates makes it so that we are NOT experiencing blood sugar and insulin spikes during the day, which, in turn, gives us an opportunity to improve insulin sensitivity.  When we fast from protein, we can increase secretion of the FGF21 hormone, which can improve lipid metabolism and increase insulin sensitivity.  And just fasting in general gives our digestive tract a rest and gives us a chance to trigger autophagy (which, yes, training can ALSO do this, but we’ll talk about training in a bit).  We’re also not triggering mTOR as much when we engage in some intentional fasting, AND we give the metabolism an opportunity to ramp down, which, if you’ve been pounding food in an arms race to put on size and find yourself staring down the barrel of 8000 calories a day just to put on some size, a chance to drop demand is a blessing.  We re-sensitize our bodies to food by denying it some for a little bit.  We’re not simply “not eating”: we’re INTENTIONALLY not eating because of the effect that NOT eating achieves.

Like fame and fortune!

NOT training IS action: it’s the action of letting fatigue dissipate so that we can train HARDER upon our return.  For some reason, it’s become en vouge now to claim that, if you NEED deloads, your training is poorly set up, and this absolutely smacks of the HIT reductionists claims that “if it didn’t work, that means you didn’t train hard enough, because HIT ONLY works if you train hard enough”.  Hey Emperor: hate to break it to you, but you’re naked.  For those of us living on planet Earth, life happens, fatigue builds, and taking a week off of training is a surefire way to let that fatigue go away.  And along with FATIGUE, even IF you have somehow managed to find the perfect balance of training such that you never exceed your recovery abilities, there’s no denying that the sheer act of training itself is an inflammatory activity, and simply allowing your body a week off from constantly exposing it to inflammation can ALSO have some positive effects.   Yes yes: acute inflammation of hormesis and chronic inflammation is the concern, but just from a “making weight class” perspective, taking a week off of training means letting some of that fluid out of your body so you can step on the scale a little lighter.  It means letting your connective tissues have a little break so all those chronic aches and pains can go away.  It means, psychologically, relighting the fire, as the week off should ideally have you champing at the bit to come back to training.  It also means having a light at the end of the tunnel of a hard training block, knowing you can REALLY go all out on that last week, as you’ll have a full week off to recover.  These are all objectives that we CANNOT achieve through DOING: it’s the NOT doing that allows us to achieve this.  The deload is an ACTIVE process: we are actively NOT doing the things that prevent us from experiencing these outcomes.

 

And what’s comical about all of this is I’m discussing intentionally not doing the things that we understand are GOOD for you.  NOT eating foods, no matter how healthy or unprocessed they are.  NOT doing exercise, no matter how effective it is for producing lean mass or positive cardio health outcomes.  Just imagine the benefits from all the NOT doing of things we know are BAD for us.  Not drinking alcohol, not doing recreational drugs, not eating processed garbage, etc.  These are some of the simplest wins we can rack up in the quest for physical transformation, and they’re the most overlooked because they’re NOT doing things rather than doing things.  And then we can go even further and try to NOT do the things that we THINK are good for us but we know are really self-destructive.  NOT making every single training session a max out, NOT trying to destroy ourselves with conditioning but instead let it build us up into something great, NOT focusing on our strengths and ignoring our weaknesses, etc.  If we dedicate some serious effort into NOT doing things, we might actually become something.   

A FOUNDATION OF LIES

As a parent, it breaks my heart how much we have to lie to children in order to educate them, because all you want is to build trust between you and your child so that they’ll have the faith and confidence to come to you in times of need.  Our lies are non-malicious and, in fact, intended to be benevolent, but this does not change the fact that they are lies.  And since these are the lies we tell our children, we build their knowledge upon a foundation of lies, resulting in us having to later go on to CORRECT the lies that we used to establish the foundation once they’re better equipped to handle the truth.  And it’s because our brains develop incrementally, and not at the rate that is best suited for our own survival.  Children aren’t equipped to handle the nuance and, quite simply, barbarism of our history as a species (or our current barbarism for that matter), so we tell them heavily sugar coated stories to the point of being completely inaccurate regarding the founding of our country (which, for the majority of us, the country as ALREADY founded: just by indigenous people that were murdered and exiled by our own ancestors) along with world historical events in general.  When it comes to Christian theology, children are given sanitized stories, because the Bible itself is honestly WILD.  We tell kids not to talk to strangers because we don’t want to explain the nefarious intent of CERTAIN strangers, even though, later in life, talking to strangers is going to be a valuable skill, and the inability to do so is going to severely limit one from being able to have basic social interaction skills.  But therein lies the rub: if we do not, eventually, UNDO these lies, we leave one in a childlike state: unprepared to face the challenges of adulthood and unequipped to succeed.  And it is no different in the realm of physical transformation.  Quite simply, the foundation you build upon is a foundation of lies, and, eventually, the truth will need to come out.

Learning the truth about Santa can cause violent reactions in some...

When we start training, we start with the lie of progressive overload.  And that already upsets many to hear me call it a lie, but like all GOOD lies, it contains an element of truth within it.  We love the story of Milo of Croton and the bull, but that story is FULL of bull…but it’s a good story that helps teach us the lesson of doing more this time than we did last time.  And so we equip a trainee with a basic linear progression program and tell them “this is how you get stronger: you put more weight on the bar this time than you did last time”.  And thus, the foundation of lies is built…but eventually we must put away childish things!

 

We’ve seen this before: a trainee learns ONE program and decides that their education on the matter has stopped.  And hey: some authors DO manage to make that work.  You COULD just buy 5/3/1 Forever, or the 3 Tactical Barbell Books and have all the tools to train for the rest of your life, but even then, you’re still using MULTIPLE programs under one methodology to accomplish this goal.  And it’s because of the principle of periodization: get good at something until you can’t, then pick a new thing to get good at until you’re able to get good at that other thing again.  But a new trainee is such a babe in the woods that simply the act of training in ANY capacity is going to raise ALL of their abilities at the same time.  It’s only once they’ve exhausted that newb superpower that new interventions must be undertaken, at which point the magic of linear progression ends and we must employ different avenues of progression.  But for that trainee who does NOT unlearn the foundational lie, they just keep running the same basic linear progression until they stall, the they reset and repeat, hitting the same stall over and over again.  Like a child stuck repeating the 3rd grade, they never learn the TRUE history. 

Or repeating the 4th grade for 38 years

 

And we fuel these trainees upon a nutritional foundation of lies as well!  The lie of protein, and specifically, its significance and importance.  And once again, a scared cow is slaughtered, but I come here merely to speak the truth: not to make people happy.  Is protein necessary to build muscle?  Indisputable.  Is it as important as we PORTRAY it to be?  This, of course, is a SUBJECTIVE area to refute, but from my lens, the significance has been overstated.  And like the lies we tell children, it was, initially, for noble intent.  This is because it is QUITE possible to go a full day of eating and take in a VERY low amount of protein.  If you have children or have been around children, you know very well this is possible (once again, children the carrier of the lies).  A kid can go a whole day eating cereal for breakfast with toast and jam, possibly even fruit, a lunch of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with applesauce and goldfish crackers, and then a dinner of sauceless pasta and breadsticks, with a dessert of ice cream.  Take a kid to a buffet and see what they pick out…and realize that many adults don’t outgrow these childish tastebuds.  And THEN factor in that we exist in a food environment where junkfood manufacturers have keyed in on the fact that protein and fiber are satiating and work AGAINST making food hyperpalatable so they intentionally engineer it to be low in those properties and that MANY folks live off these foods because they are shelf stable and require no preparation and, once again, it’s clear that one CAN operate in a low protein state.

 

That said, though: as soon as one simply has the AWARENESS to NOT do this, protein’s importance really tends to wane.  It honestly doesn’t take a significant amount of protein in order to build muscle: with every passing day the numbers seem to drop lower and lower.  In fact, what we observed is that those who were pushing at the top end range FOR protein requirements tended to be the same folks who were selling us protein supplements: they were creating a problem and then selling us a solution.  Specifically in the realm of muscle BUILDING, we find that the presence of adequate fuel from EITHER fats or carbs will have a protein sparing effect such that they body won’t be forced to breakdown protein for fuel and, instead, can use it purely for the sake of building muscle.  It’s only in the absence of a fuel abundance (fat loss phases) that protein requirements tend to drive higher, and even then, still to a manageable level.  We tell new trainees the lie that “protein is VERY important” simply to get them to start eating the damn stuff, but once THAT is figured out we can say “ok, it’s not QUITE that important, but it’s still good to have some”, because we soon find ourselves with trainees that are fixated on getting that protein that they don’t care to consider the source NOR do they have awareness of where they are obtaining their other sources of fuel.  They eat protein poptarts and protein breakfast cereal and protein bars and drink protein shakes and all other manner of shenanigans, because much like those strangers we warn children about: companies are predatory, and they found a mark in the new trainee. 

A whole EIGHT grams of the stuff!

 

But think about it: protein ISN’T an energy substrate the body can readily use: WHY would you need a “protein snack”?  A snack is there to address an energy demand: we ran out of energy and need a quick pick me up to get more.  This means, traditionally, a simple carb, but could also be complex carbs and fats (trail mix is a great example of this): it makes no sense for us to need a snack of protein.  That can wait until we can sit down for an actual meal.  And this is the TRUTH about nutrition that is a bit too much for the new trainee to take in.  Do we need to bog them down about energy substrates when they’re ALREADY eating a diet of almost pure fats and carbs?  No: we tell them that protein is important. But once they HAVE that foundational lie established, THEN we start slowly leaking the truth into them.

 

And much like when it comes to your parents, do not begrudge the foundational liars.  They had benevolent intentions.  Do not discover the lie and think to yourself that now you can no longer trust them to provide you the truth.  Do not mistake EVOLUTION in thought for REVOLUTION.  This is not them completely changing their position: this is them allowing you to build up appropriately to where you need to be.  And, in turn, do not doubt YOURSELF when what worked no longer “works”.  You’ve simply grown up.  It’s now time to unlearn the lies and start learning the truth.        

STRONGMAN COMPETITION WRITE-UP: TRIALS OF HERACLES MEN'S OPEN MASTERS

 

Summary: Came in 2nd place, which was also last place. But it came down to 5 seconds in the final event, as up until then we were tied with 2 first plans wins. The dude I was against also weighed twice as much as me, so that’s something.

Biggest wins were not getting injured, not blacking out, and having the best showing in my press in a LONG time, going the full minute and not missing a single rep to get 9 in the round. I didn’t zero a single event, which is the first in quite a few recent competitions. In general, feeling like my old self again.

THE TRAINING

I mean, it IS Tactical Barbell...

 

I have been using Tactical Barbell since Sep of 2024 and that has not stopped.  It really fits well for strongman, at least as far as I need it.

 

I employed Operator from TB1.  My cluster was Safety Squat Bar front squat and Axle Strict Press from rack.  I would do unweighted chins (various grips) as part of my warm-up and in between sets of my main lifts.

 

Monday and Friday, I’d perform 5 sets of 5 for the cluster.  On Wednesdays, I’d perform 3x5, and use this day to train deadlifts.  Instead of TB’s prescription for deadlifts, I stuck with ROM progression, as that just always works for me.  I used a 6 week cycle with 425lbs on a Texas Deadlift Bar, getting 19 reps at the start of the cycle and finishing with 14 reps from the floor.  Unlike previous ROM progression cycles, I did not do any rest pause reps: sticking with just 1 topset.  This was primarily because, in the first 2 weeks, every time I’d try a rest pause, I’d end up hurting something in my left hip that would take about 6 days to heal.  With a competition being the goal, I needed to be healthy enough to train until the event, so I played it safe.  This COULD be why I saw such a reduction in reps from start to finish, but I was also dropping bodyweight along the way (to be discussed in the nutrition section).

 

On Mondays and Fridays, after the main cluster, I’d train 3 rounds of a sandbag carry medley, using a 150lb Rogue sandbag.  I ran this in my basement, with no distance measured, but each round was 2-3 trips with the bag, with a focus of running back to the start and back to the bag to get in some fast feet time.  I’d finish up with some GHR sit ups and lateral raises if I had time.  On Wednesdays, I’d do some easy assistance work of curls, extensions, reverse hyper and ab wheel.

 

Daily, I would hang for time from my chinning bar with fat gripz attached.  This was to prep for the Heracles Hold.

 

For conditioning, I’d do a 90 minute treadmill ruck on Thursdays, some sort of HIC workout for 15-20 minutes on Tuesdays, and the Crossfit “Grace” WOD with an Axle on Saturdays, the goal there to improve my clean and push press with the axle, along with my conditioning.  I also trained martial arts (Tang Soo Do) 3x a week, and made it a goal to get in a walk on my lunch break as often as possible, and a long one on Sundays.

 

NUTRITION

 

Yeah that about sums it up

Since I was competing open, I had no weight class to make.  That said, I had finished 15 weeks of gaining leading up to this, to include coming back from a holiday Disney Cruise, and Operator doesn’t have the same nutritional demands, so I used this as an opportunity to lean out before another gaining phase.

 

I’ve written about the protocol I employed (titled “Red Meat and Black Coffee”), but a quick summary was that, on my lifting days, I’d eat 2 meals a day of meat (13-16oz) and eggs (3 whole and 5 whites), and a protein feeding before bed (170g of full fat Greek yogurt with a scoop of protein powder).  On Tues and Thurs, I’d fast until the evening meal, allowing myself black coffee until then, and still have the protein feeding.  Weekends were a bit more ad hoc: sometimes 2 meals, sometimes 1.  And on Sunday, I’d have a family meal, which abided by none of the previous meal structures, and was just something we all enjoyed, made at home, which included carbs and some sort of dessert.  The result was starting the cycle at 89.1kg and ending with weigh ins between 81-82.5kg, all while my lifts and performance increased the entire time.  I really feel like I found something solid here.

 

* I also made it a point to specifically eat lamb and Greek yogurt for 3 days leading up to the comp, and gyro meat/Mediterranean chicken as my post comp victory meal, just to stick with the Hearcles theme.

 

 

THE COMPETITION

We were both old enough to appreciate this reference

Events were:

Event 1: Frame deadlift

Went 455, 505, 555. Winner won with 605.

• I took 1 warm up with the empty frame, then one with 315 and felt dizzy on the second one. Every single one of these pulls felt heavy, but not insurmountable. I’d dig deep, break it off the floor, and feel it come to lockout. Everyone said they were impressed, probably because I made it look so hard. Felt strong, and I may have had a 600lb pull in me today. We both took 505 for a second, and I took my third at 555, not knowing what his intent was, but judging by the size of him, I wasn’t shocked.

Event 2: 185lb axle clean once and press away

I got 9 reps to beat the other guy’s 4.

• I went first, having no idea what the number would be to beat, so I just sent it. The continental was the strongest I’ve had in a long time, with no real wasted energy. I got myself set and felt pretty solid with each rep. In an ideal world, I would have cycled the bar each rep, but instead I settled in and got myself strong. On the latter reps, I had some good back bend, but I never missed a rep. I didn’t get near as much leg drive as I could have, but my knees felt happy with this.

Event 3: Carry medley (225lb sandbag, an engine block and 150lb iron cross)

Got it done in 55 seconds, to the winner’s 33.

• When I signed up for the comp, the sandbag was 150lbs. At some point, it got changed to 225lbs. I still trained with a 150lb bag the entire training cycle, and since this is a speed event rather than a conditioning one, I made peace that I wasn’t going to win it, and just wanted to get a completion. I have NOT been able to load ANYTHING for my previous few competitions, and getting the sandbag to the platform and having it miss the first time, I felt pretty pissed. I lapped it and got a REAL solid triple extension on it, found a spot on it and approached the engine block. I didn’t bother to practice on it during the warm-ups to figure out the handholds on it, so it was just raw when I got to it. It was less heavy and more awkward, but I got it carried, lapped and loaded. The Iron Cross was the end, and it wobbled my knees a little, but was otherwise just solid.
• Bit of comedy: they said we could request the implements to be set up any way we liked. I said “Yeah, can you turn the handles on the iron cross, get the engine block sideways, and then can you move the sandbag closer to the start?” They were like “Well no, we can’t move the sandbag because…hey waitaminute, you’ve done this before haven’t you!” Always one with a joke.

Event 4: 35lb hammer hold

Held for 1:07, to the other guy’s 38 seconds.

• I’ve never lost this event in a competition, and that continued today. It’s just pain tolerance. I was shaking like a leaf, short breaths, tense guts. Pleased to have some thoroughly dominated it.
• Just a little strongman hack here: I wore elbow sleeves NOT to have elbow support, but to disguise the bend in my arms.  Holding the hammer with straight arms is much harder than with a small bend.  Use every tool in your toolbox.

Event 5: Heracles hold (155lb per hand)

Held on for 1:44, to the other guy’s 1:49

• This was the sole reason I signed up for this event. I’ve ALWAYS wanted to do this. We had 2” thick revolving handles on this, but all my timed holds on Fat Gripz paid off, because I felt REALLY solid on this. Biggest issue was simply not knowing what time I had to beat, as I went first. I do wonder if I could have held on even longer if I had a time to beat. But I felt strong and solid.

First competition in a LONG time where I walked away without regrets.

 

WAY FORWARD

 

We all know where this is going

I have no competitions on the immediate horizon, strongman, grappling or otherwise, minus a 10 mile race in mid April that I do every year.  I have another cruise coming up at the end of May, giving me 13.5 weeks of training.  I plan to do a 6 week run of Grey Man, 3 weeks of Specificity Bravo, and then I may do a 3 week run of Operator Pro if I’m feeling it, or otherwise just 3 weeks of traditional Operator.  From there, it will be summer, a great time to be active and lean out, so I may end up doing 2 full 6 week Operator Cycles and evaluate from there.  I specifically slot out the end of October (my birthday) through the New Year for Mass Protocol, since it’s a time of feasting with Thanksgiving and Christmas.  But, of course, Chaos is the plan, and something shiny may come my way and derail the whole thing.  But as it stands, still living Tactical Barbell, still zero need to change.

 

RUBBER BAND PHYSIOLOGY

I heard this term in a podcast recently and it was really eye opening having this notion expressed so succinctly.  So, of course, I’m going to spend time taking something that says all it needs to say in 2 words and blow it up into 1000, because if 2 is good, 1000 is gooder!  The notion being presented here is similar to the “bodyweight/bodyfat set point” theory, wherein the body, desiring to remain in a state of homeostasis, will naturally gravitate toward a specific fixed destination as it relates to bodyfat/bodyweight.  Typically, this amount is “set” via our lifestyle during adolescence, and impacted by genetic and environmental factors, but eventually we reach a point where our body is comfortable, and when we attempt to push it BEYOND that comfort level, it may adjust temporarily, but ultimately it will fight its way back to its original starting point.  We’ve seen this with individuals that have undergone significant amounts of weight loss, losing 200+lbs of bodyweight only to put it all back on (and more) withing a few years, and we also see it with the perpetual hardgainer who fights so hard for that 20lb weight gain only to lose it all in a few weeks of poor eating.  The “rubber band” element here is the metaphor of us stretching the rubber band of our physiology only for it to snap right back to baseline on us…but let’s explore this a little more and see what lessons we can take from a rubber band.

Like don't believe everything you see from 2010s Elitefts...

 

Rubber bands, comically enough, have had a unique presence in the world of physical transformation, such that we can easily observe the lessons from them and apply them to our own biology.  Westside Barbell made their use incredibly popular, attaching them to barbells and employing them with the “Dynamic Effort” method.  This was taking the principle of accommodating resistance and applying it: the idea of making a lift HARDER the further along the range of motion that we travel.  The idea here was to teach the body how to accelerate through the hardest part of the lift, because the best way to overcome the resistance of the rubber band was to move against it as fast as possible.  If a lifter were to attempt to slowly overcome the resistance of the rubber band, they would get stapled in the lift.  If they moved quickly, they had a chance to survive, and then, when the bands came OFF the bar, the lifter would be accustomed to blowing through the lift as fast as possible.

 

However, what we ALSO observed through the use of resistance bands was something Louie Simmons deemed “overspeed eccentrics”, wherein, by employing the resistance band in the ECCENTRIC phase of the lift, the trainee was able to improve their CONCENTRIC force, in a manner similar to how plyometric training achieves outcomes.  Rather than discuss the specifics of this training, let’s observe the fact that, in order to achieve a maximal return on the eccentric phase of the lift, the resistance band needed to be started in a maximally stretched position.  If there was slack in the band, there was no overspeed eccentric achieved, whereas a tensed band would snap hard back into place.

Squats against bands are also less prone to these sorts of issues

Why does this matter?  Because, as we understand the set point as it relates to the notion of “rubber band physiology”, we are appreciating the reality that hard, strong, fast charges against our physiology stretches out our rubber band, resulting in an equally strong counter reaction of the band snapping back into place.  Effectively: the harder we push for change, the harder the body pushes BACK to revert and maintain homeostasis.  This is why crash diets create results that don’t last: the trainee loses the 10lbs in a week, and then the next week they’re up 12lbs.  Or they ran Smolov, added 50lbs to their squat at the end of the cycle, and 2 weeks later their squat has reverted to BELOW their previous max.  Or even in bodybuilding show prep, we see folks achieve ridiculous levels of leanness only to “rebound” and put back on 20-30lbs in a month.  They stretched the rubber band too fast and got snapped back on.

 

But what else can rubber bands do?  They can SNAP.  We decide to just keep on stretching and stretching until we’ve reached the end of their structural integrity and now we have a broken rubber band.  And if you’re the one STRETCHING that band, you know the end result in some pain when it snaps back and hits your flesh.  The body, once again, is no different.  If we decide to take these extreme measures beyond their “reasonable” periods of implementation (these quick fixes tend to at least have sanity in their prescribed durations), we end up with a BROKEN physiology.  In the training world, this is entering a state of being “overtrained”, in the nutritional world, it’s being “overdieted”, but in both cases, you have a BROKEN trainee now, and it’s going to take several months, if not YEARS to put humpty dumpty back together again.  We now need to rebuild the metabolism after months of running a 1500 calorie diet trying to FINALLY get abs, or we need to reduce our training volume and intensity down to bare bones to be able to FINALLY recover from fatigue enough to actually be ABLE to train.

The goal physique/strength of many of these trainees

 

So what option do we have?  Well, once again, for those of you that bought a set of original jump stretch bands, you may have noticed that, over time, they seems to LOSE some of that elasticity.  When we try to race against the band, it snaps right back, but when we just sort of gradually expand it, slowly, intentionally, we get the rubber band to accommodate to the new shape we’ve imposed upon it.  The rubber band is able to relax its contraction and stretch less and, eventually, it’s wider than we originally intended.  And if we were to take this rubber band to its logical extreme through this practice, on the day it DOES snap, it will not snap with a whiplike retraction and smack us back on our flesh, but instead more just sort of fizzle and dissolve.

 

This is one of those inconvenient truths about physical transformation: it simply can’t be rushed.  But not in the sense that “if you try to rush it, you won’t get results any faster”, but more “you won’t get results any faster AND you’ll end up worse than when you started”.  There are CONSEQUENCES for rushing.  In the case of crash dieters, due to bodyfat set point, after they end up crash dieting and losing a lot of weight through a combination of fatty AND lean mass, the body will try to rush itself BACK to its original bodyweight, and it's agnostic about how it gets there.  It wants ANY sort of mass, and this is why yo-yo dieters struggle so much.  They come back from the crash diet with more fat and less lean tissue, and then they try to crash diet again.  And since they have less lean tissue, they need to eat even FEWER calories than before to get the same results, so they’re MEGA starving, only to shave off what little lean mass they have, just to put back on even MORE fat and repeat the cycle until it can’t be sustained and now they’re in the worse possible place they can be.  The dude that just keeps chasing the intensity dragon, running peaking program after peaking program, just fries out their central nervous system and loses what little muscle they had due to a total lack of accumulation phases in their training, and eventually they find themselves trying to peak to a 1rm that is lower than their warm-ups when they first started training.  The consequences of trying to rush are that they make us go BACKWARDS.

Yeah pretty much

 

Instead, a gradual and sustainable approach needs to make up the majority of our time in the world of physical transformation.  Which, upon review, I basically took a long time to come to Dan John’s “Park bench/bus bench” concept, but it’s a good concept.  The majority of our time, in pursuit of physical transformation, we need to be just slowly stretching this rubber band of ours so we can sneak up on our biology and not even let it know that we’re transforming.  We make the process gradual and gentle so that the body gives way to the changes and finds it an acceptable state of homeostasis.  When we undertake those BRIEF moments of intense rubber band stretching (think Super Squats with a gallon of milk a day or a 28 day Velocity Diet run), we take that runway we gained against the rubber band and resume the GENTLE stretching of it, fully understanding that the body is going to try to snap that rubber band back at us, and the “gains” we made during that time AREN’T going to last.  But, perhaps, they’ll be a slight head start that we can work from, so long as we give the rubber band a moment to adjust.    

 

         

BEGINNERS DON’T PROGRESS FASTER: THEY’RE JUST BAD AT TRAINING (A DISCUSSION ON BEGINNERS, INTERMEDIATES AND ADVANCED TRAINEES) PART II

I actually already wrote the end to this earlier, but the more I think about it the more I want to continue writing on it, so if these next few paragraphs come out of the blue, it’s because I wrote them AFTER I thought I was done.  And, in fact, now I’m just making this “part II”.  But stick with me here: we’re learning that our attempt to shortcut language has limited our dialog on the discussion of training.  By classifying trainees as “beginner, intermediate and advanced”, we, unfortunately, made it a COMPETITION to STOP being a beginner as soon as possible and try to ACHIEVE being intermediate/advanced.  But really, what we understand here is that these classifications were simply meant to identify PROFICIENCY in the skill of lifting: NOT achievement.  It was not “congrats: you trained hard/long enough that you’re now lifting some REAL intermediate/advanced weights and have earned the right to use an intermediate/advanced program”, it’s “congrats: you’ve learned how to more effectively recruit your nervous system toward the task of these SPECIFIC movements and can now exhaust yourself harder/faster than a less proficient trainee”.  Which, honestly, is kind of a terrible prize to win, because it requires us to NOW employ advanced TECHNIQUES to be able to achieve the same kind of results we witnessed when we were using a more basic protocol previously, but let’s keep diving in as far as pros and cons go.

We should have the same reaction for winning this prize

 

We’re establishing exactly what newbie gains are: it’s the rapid growth that occurs simply because improved proficiency moves in an exponential rather than linear pattern, and the further away we are from our maximal potential, the faster along the line we move.  With that, we can use that to our advantage as an advanced trainee by selecting to train movements in manners that we do NOT possess an advanced level of proficiency in.  And, in fact (sorry, my mind is all over on this), this explains why Maximal Effort lifts are rotated in the first place in a conjugate training system, and WHY they’re rotated more frequently for more advanced trainees than junior ones.  When we rotate in a brand new lift, proficiency is poor and we aren’t able to actually get all that close to our REAL “100% of 1rm” on the movement, so we train it hard that day, put in a lot of effort, but don’t dig as DEEP into our recovery well as we could if we were better at it.  But when we come back to it NEXT week, we take those skills we developed and find ourselves in a position wherein we CAN dig deeper AND, in turn, impose a greater recovery demand on ourselves.  A more advanced trainee is going to develop those skills faster than a novice one, simply from having “been there/done that” over the course of their training history: they’re better capable of developing the skills to maximally recruit their nervous system.  This is why a more novice trainee can stick with a max effort lift longer than a more advanced one, with 3 weeks with 1 lift being possible for a novice while an advanced will either rotate in a new movement each week OR make changes to the parameters of the lift (go for a 3 rep max on the first week, then a 1 on the next week, for example).

 

But back to newbie gains: this means that an advanced trainee can use this principle to their advantage OUTSIDE of the max effort lift example.  From a mass building perspective, this is the genius DoggCrapp, because having 3 different workouts you rotate between limits the ability to acquire skill rapidly in the lift AND there is a protocol in place that, once a lift stalls, you simply swap it out for a new one and repeat the process.  But we even see this in the strength building world as well, with Dan John’s “No, Mild, Wild” movement variation protocol in “Easy Strength”, wherein a trainee either makes NO change to movements between cycles (or after 20 workouts, depending on their approach), a Mild change (from flat bench to incline, for example) or a WILD change (from strict press to dips, for an example).  Funny enough, many would consider these programs and protocols to be ADVANCED programs (Dante himself advised no trainee under the age of 26 with less than 3 years of training experience take on his program), but they’re advanced programs that endeavor to generate a BEGINNER response to training.

You say that like it's a bad thing!

 

But on that note, let’s also discuss some of the advantages that COME with being an advanced trainee compared to a beginner.  Because, as previously established, it’s a game balancing stimulus, fatigue and recovery, and the advanced trainee runs into the issue that they’re so GOOD at lifting that they can generate more fatigue than the beginner trainee despite doing the same AMOUNT of work.  But we have to understand that, BECAUSE of the differences of abilities between the two trainees, what is prescribed vs what is performed differ.  Where this shines through is in the instance of “single set work”.  This is something that an advanced trainee can actually excel in, whereas a beginner will most likely flounder.  An advanced trainee, so capable in recruiting their nervous system to the task of lifting the weight, can, in ONE set, generate sufficient stimulus such that they WILL get a growth response.  They’ll also, in that one set, generate enough FATIGUE that they, most likely, will get minimal benefit by adding an additional set, as the fatigue they generate will outpace the stimulus benefit, meaning they’ll be forced to recover MORE while receiving FEWER gains.  A beginner, however, will most likely NOT be capable of generating much stimulus OR fatigue in one set of work.  The solution?   More sets, of course.  We can’t dig as deep, so we, instead, dig many shallow holes so that we achieve the same AMOUNT of stimulus and comparable fatigue.

 

So then the question comes up: why aren’t ALL advanced programs simply single sets then?  In fact, why is it that, frequently, we see instances of advanced trainees performing training programs with volume that we say is TOO MUCH for a beginner?  Doesn’t that work in opposition to the previous realization?  Not quite, because we previously established the notion that recovery ITSELF is a multifaceted attribute, influenced by a variety of variables which, in themselves, can be manipulated.  The obvious answer is “drugs”, and yes: those CAN impact recovery, but so can simply general fitness levels, nutrition, sleep and age.  Someone who has maximized their recovery capabilities opens themselves up to the potential of being able to endure greater degrees of fatigue than other trainees, and what this means is that they can continue to generate stimulus beyond levels most trainees can WITHOUT generating an unrecoverable amount of fatigue.  From a practical standpoint, the issue here is the law of diminishing returns, in that the amount of fatigue generated from each additional set of training does NOT return an equal amount of stimulus, but, instead, the stimulus tends to drop off exponentially while the fatigue increases linearly.  HOWEVER, for those that ARE in pursuit of the absolute peak of physical achievement, diminishing returns ARE STILL returns.  While most folks can get 80% returns with 2 sets of hard work, if you can get 90% returns with 10 sets AND you can still recover in the same amount of time as the guy that can only manage 2 sets, you put yourself in a position to be able to outpace that individual over a long enough timeline and stand out as a “freak” amongst normal people.

10 sets of 10 may be called "junk volume", but it sure seems to have some non-junk results

 

Which is an argument for the benefit of physical preparation, nutrition, sleep hygiene, etc.  People wonder the “why” behind that, and there it is.  And, in turn, it also shows that all of that stuff is irrelevant if you’re not willing to actually CAPITALIZE on it once it’s present.   If you’re the recovery master but you’re just putting in the bare minimum, you’ll get those returns.  But if you’ve mastered recovery and LEVERAGE it to eek out those diminishing returns, you’ll see the benefits of your efforts.

 

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Folks, in truth, I wrote this post more for me than for you, because I was learning AS I wrote it.  But that said, I hope my ramblings proved beneficial in some way here.

BEGINNERS DON’T PROGRESS FASTER: THEY’RE JUST BAD AT TRAINING (A DISCUSSION ON BEGINNERS, INTERMEDIATES AND ADVANCED TRAINEES) PART I

 

I’m completely late to the party on this one, but it’s one of those things that sorta dawned on me while I was thinking to myself (because, again, something is broken in my brain and this is what I default to) regarding the way we perceive beginner trainees vs advanced.  Beginner trainees are constantly provided a basic linear progression program as a novice program in order to “get their newbie gains”.  These programs will use a limited number of movements, to give the trainee less to screw up and more to focus on, along with a limited number of sets and reps, because the effective dose to get a beginner to progress isn’t significant.  As we’ve observed in the sphere of physical transformation: pretty much ANY physical intervention will result in progress, something that Alexander Bromely highlighted well in his “Base Strength” book discussing a trainee who undertakes 100 push ups a day in an effort to change.  And along with this bare bones approach to training, the trainee is instructed to add weight to the bar every time they train.  Keep the sets and reps the same: just keep adding 5lbs total per workout.  If you’re training 3x per week, in 6 weeks, you’ll have added 90lbs to each lift (in theory).  By about week 12, you’ll have “milked your beginner gains” dry, and be ready to progress to a REAL program: one that does things like balance fatigue against recovery, employ a variety of exercises, a range of sets and reps, etc etc.  But when asked why only beginners use these programs, we’re told the same line: “beginners can progress faster than advanced trainees/advanced trainees need slower progression”.  And we believe it, because it certainly APPEARS this way.  However, upon review, I think we have this wrong.  I don’t think beginners can progress faster than advanced trainees: I think beginners are so much worse at training than advanced trainees that they never generate significant enough fatigue in the first place to NEED more time to recover.

Granted some beginners DO have supernatural recovery abilities...

 

That was a long climb for this slide, but I don’t think it’s going to get any better, so strap in.  As I previously mentioned, training is a game of balancing stimulus with fatigue with recovery.  We have to generate enough stimulus to trigger a growth response, but doing so necessitates accumulating fatigue from the stimulus triggering (training), and we have to ensure we’re able to recover enough from the bout of training to be able to train again and generate the stimulus.  If we’re too fatigued from the previous bout of training, when we go into the next round, the body won’t be able to divert recovery resources to IMPROVEMENT: it’s going to still be working on recovery from the previous session.  And so now, we’ve dug the hole of recovery even DEEPER, and we just keep going further and further into recovery debt until we eventually burnout and crash in some sort of horrific manner and are FORCE to just plain take time away from training and focus SOLELY on recovering.  We can employ recovery interventions as safeguards to mitigate against this withing a training block (ala a deload/recovery week, increase sleep/food/make use of drugs/etc), but that’s just getting into more advanced methods of recovering against the fatigue.  Regardless, we understand the interplay between these systems as it relates to training.

 

Alright, cool, so what?  The “so what” here is that we acknowledge that training itself is what generates the fatigue, but we must ALSO acknowledge that you have to be GOOD at training to be able to generate a LOT of fatigue.  Similar to how anyone can throw a punch, but a trained boxer (following under the instruction of Jack Dempsey) understands how to actually put their weight into their punch in order to have more devastating effects, someone who is capable in the ways of training is able to generate MORE fatigue THROUGH training than someone who is new to training.  We refer to this as “neurological efficiency”, the notion of someone being better able to recruit available motor neurons to more effectively express available strength/strength potential in an effort, and consider this to be a FEATURE for an advanced trainee…but it may, in fact, also be a bug.  A powerlifter who is more neurologically efficient at the powerlifts is going to be able to dig much deeper and access further levels of strength when it comes to executing the big 3 lifts compared to a newer trainee, but, in turn, that means they will generate greater FATIGUE by digging so much deeper in the process.  This is why the advanced trainee is unable to follow these novice programs as written: the fatigue they generate in one training session cannot be recovered from in the time allotted for the next training session.  They will either need a longer gap between training sessions OR to train at a lower percentage than the true novice does, such that their training does not generate unrecoverable amounts of fatigue.

Just because you SAY it's light doesn't mean it is

 

But why this is enlightening is due to what it points out about our assumptions on the realms of training.  When discussing percentage based systems, it would appear that the percentages of a novice do not match up to the percentages of an advanced trainee.  An advanced trainee’s “90% of 1rm” may actually BE something like 90% of their 1 rep max, but a novice trainee’s 90% may actually end up being more like 60% of their 1rm, and that’s because they can’t generate enough force when attempting 1 rep to actually get WITHIN the realm of their 1 rep max potential.  The strength is there, latent in their system: they simply lack the tools to realize this.  It explains why training maxes are a necessity for some while an obstacle for others: some folks actually CAN achieve close to their maximum potential when they try and, in turn, training can be incredibly fatiguing when training around their max loads, while others are near their max loads simply because they’re so bad at training that their “max” isn’t anywhere NEAR their potential max.

 

But beyond this, it also explains situations wherein a trainee undertakes a novice program and stalls out much faster than another novice who achieves ABSURD levels of strength.  The individual in the former more rapidly progressed in their ability to realize true maximal strength within their training sessions and, in doing so, found a way to generate unrecoverable fatigue within the timeframe of the training program, whereas the latter is simply someone gifted with an abundance of strength while still struggling to maximally realize it.  If you think of an ape in the wild, they are significantly stronger than us humans, but they do not invest the types of efforts we do in learning how to maximally express their available strength.  Were they to undertake such training, they could progress for a LONG time adding 5lbs per session before they eventually finally started working within the realms of the max capabilities, generating too much fatigue to be able to recover and being forced to undertake a different training modality.

And if the ape is alone in the woods and no one is around to see it lift, does it still get +1/+2?

 

Which, in turn, means that the internet witchhunt that occurs when a novice trainee stalls out early in a novice program is even sillier than usual.  All we are observing, when this occurs, is someone having found a way to generate more fatigue than they have available recovery.  Now, yes, part of the intervention here COULD BE to engage in some manner of physical fitness improvement in order to improve one’s ability to recover in general (because many raw beginners in this era come into training incredibly unfit) but it can ALSO be to acknowledge that this individual simply outpaced their available strength with advancing neurological efficiency. 

 

When you think about “natural athletes”, these are simply people that are blessed in such a way that they are able to rapidly adapt to the demands of a new activity.  Their bodies are simply more aware and capable at learning physical skills compared to us of the more oafish persuasion.  If we acknowledge that such individuals exist, surely there is the case where one such individual could be naturally gifted as an athlete AND they’ve squandered their gifts through a sedentary lifestyle.  What we’d have there is the perfect storm for early novice burnout: a trainee with minimal strength potential that can be rapidly realized.  Within a month of the novice program, this individual has figured out how to more effectively recruit available motor units than the average trainee, and soon enough they’re just digging the recovery hole deeper than the next guy can.  This isn’t a failure at all: this person has graduated early!  The internet will chide this, saying that someone with a 135lb bench is still a novice and just needs to keep on eating more and doing their 3 sets of 5, but that’s absolutely slapping a bandaid on the problem (effectively just making the trainee heavier so that the weights they are moving a reduced percentage compared to their bodyweight, ala the “mass moves mass” mantra).  Instead, it’s time to acknowledge that this trainee needs to move onto a protocol that allows them adequate time to recover between training bouts WHILE shifting emphasis to improving their strength potential.  They’ve realized all the strength they have: it simply isn’t much.

Time to accumulate

 

And then the theory can get REALLY interesting when we consider how to reverse this and get an advanced trainee to employ a novice progression program.  Primarily because Dan John, by way of Pavel Tsastouline, already figured this out: Easy Strength.  Easy Strength looks a LOT like a basic linear progression program, especially when trained 3x a week (which is within tolerances of the program).  3 sets of 3 of a limited number of movements, trained 3x a week, for 40 total workouts.  HOWEVER, the load of Easy Strength is what makes the difference, for the trainee is told to NOT strain during this lifting (hence “Easy” strength), which, if we use percentages, can put the load around 50-60%.  However, again, with an advanced trainee, this is a REAL 60% load, which is a GOOD thing, because it means it’s enough to generate the STIMULUS to create change yet won’t cause such excessive fatigue that there is an inability to recover.  It’s why Easy Strength is set up the way it is and works the way it does: we took that same novice program and simply set up a training load that won’t floor the advanced trainee.  In turn, novice programs won’t work solely on novices because of some unique ability to progress faster than advanced trainees: they work on ALL levels of trainees, so long as the actual appropriate load is implemented.

 

I originally thought I was done at this point and wrote a concluding paragraph, and then I came back and wrote another 1500 words or so, so let’s call this “part I” and stay tuned for part II.