RECREATIONAL SUFFERING

  

Dave Tate pissed off a lot of people when he wrote that, if you can text between sets, you’re not working hard enough at the gym.  I do not work hard enough at the gym, because the inspiration for this post came as I was cruising reddit between sets and saw some dude lamenting the fact that he “literally did not have time to eat”.  You see, this individual was VERY busy: they had school AND a job.  I extended the greatest degree of sympathy I could at 0330 in the middle of my workout and offered a solution of PBJs (thanks Dan John!), but like many of my posts, this got me thinking in the middle of my workout and it dawned on me that there seems to be a misunderstanding among the younger training population.  Specifically, the misunderstanding is this: just because you experience suffering in your life doesn’t give you a pass to avoid suffering in the pursuit of your extra-curricular goals.  Quite the opposite: on top of your day-to-day suffering, you’re going to need to engage in a little RECREATIONAL suffering as well.

Most of these men have torn muscles right off the bone, but soft shell crab is what did them in

 

What do I mean by recreational suffering?  I’m talking about ELECTIVE suffering: suffering that you CHOOSE to experience.  Day-to-day, everyone suffers INVOLUNTARILY.  And look: we all fight our own battles and everyone is having the hardest day of their lives every time you meet them, so playing the “suffering Olympics” is stupid.  Someone is working 2 jobs to make ends meet and support their family , meanwhile, someone is living in a war torn destitute location and hasn’t slept in days for fear of being murdered, meanwhile someone had to skip their morning coffee because their alarm didn’t go off: all of us are suffering.  But, in turn, no one chooses this suffering.  And yes, Sartre would argue that everything is a choice and we are all burdened with freedom, and others can argue that there is no such thing as free will in the first place: quit being so academic for a second and to quote Joe Dirt “quit focusing on the wrong part of the story.”

 

RECREATIONAL suffering is when we actually choose to go out of our way to suffer for our goals.   When we’re forced to suffer, it’s really nothing special when we endure it: what other choice did we have?  It was either that or lay down and die, and there’s something of a “survival bias” in place regarding that one.  But since everyone suffers every day, to simply suffer involuntarily is to be average.  To be ABOVE average, one engages in recreational suffering.  They go out of their way to experience discomfort and make sacrifices such that they are able to do things that other people don’t do.  They wake up early to get training in, or sleep less, or meal prep rather than eat a bunch of junk, or they watch less television, or they don’t drink, or etc etc.  There are millions of ways to engage in recreational suffering: the point is, it has to be engaged IN if one wishes to achieve the benefits of it.

Not pictured: fun

 

The other thing to keep in mind about recreational suffering is this: it makes NO difference what your baseline of suffering is.  Your body flat out doesn’t care.  You don’t get a pass simply because you’re already suffering enough in your daily life: you have to CHOOSE to suffer to get above and beyond your current station.  You have NO free time because you go to school and work?  Sucks for you man: sleep less.  Or get a slow cooker.  Or learn how to sneak away on a break and speed eat a snack.  Or just f**king get to YES somehow (reference my previous work on that). I saw a dude who wanted to gain weight, and when told they’d need to engage in heavy physical exercise immediately wanted to talk about how they had no gyms nearby and when asked if they could buy equipment replied they “had no space to workout”.  You have no space to do a kettlebell snatch?  You need to go do some recreational suffering my dude. 

 

There’s a myth out there that, if at any point in your pursuit of physical change you experience ANY sort of discomfort, you are doing something wrong.  This primarily stems from a bunch of corporations and talking heads that want to promote this VERY idea so that they can sell you their garbage product that won’t work, primarily because you CAN’T sell hardwork and suffering: no one will buy it.  No no: we all wanna buy the “20 minutes a day, 3 days a week for INSTANT results” bunk and the pills and powders and magic formulas.   Folks: if it was easy, more people would be jacked.  That’s WHY we find physically impressive people so physically impressive: they are living manifestations of recreational suffering and toil.  When you see someone really physically accomplished at something, you are observing someone who is REALLY good at subjecting themselves to misery and, in turn, someone who has spent a LOT of time BEING miserable.

To the point that we blatantly villainize the lazy and make heroes of those who suffer 

 

And allow me to alienate some of my audience here, because I’m going to talk about the strongest example of recreational suffering I know of.  It’s not lifting weights: anyone who thinks that is most likely in terrible shape.  It’s not swimming.  It’s not martial arts.  It’s RUNNING.  Why?  Because at any given point while running, you could just stop running…and experience no consequences.  When you’re squatting, you get the bar on your back and squat down, and at that point, you can either dump the bar or finish the squat.  And honestly, finishing the squat is a far better prospect: you can just rack the bar and THEN be done, vs having to clean up the mess of a dumped bar.  When you’re swimming, if you decide you’re “done”, you either complete the swim or you drown.  But when you’re running, you have to choose to run for EVERY step of the run.  At any point you could just NOT run.  At worse, if you’re on an outdoor run, you now have to take LONGER to get to where you’re going because you have to walk, but hell, you could always order an Uber if you’re really in a bind. 

 

So hey, if you decide you need to learn about recreational suffering, get up at 0300 and go for a LONG run sometime. 

 

 

NPC STRONG: MORE LIFTING AND DND

This post is a logical continuation of my most recent DnD post along with something that’s been brewing in my head for a while, so welcome kismet.  Observant readers are familiar with the fact that I absolutely despise the pursuit of optimal, as I find that chasing after optimal results in such sub-optimal results that a trainee would actually be better served to settle for “good enough” and keep racking up those small wins over a long enough duration that they add up to something big.  You know who was good at placing second and third a lot in individual events?  Mariusz Pudzianowski. Often, in our pursuit to be the absolute best at something, we sacrifice being pretty damn good and end up mediocre.  Funny that.  So anyway, about Dungeons and Dragons…

I am SO happy this image exists

Once again, a crash course for you philistines: you play a “hero” in the game of Dungeons and Dragons.  And yeah, you can be a villain too, but in either case, you are a standout among the crowd, for you are a player character (a character played by the players of the game).  In the world, you will encounter inn keepers, blacksmiths, constables and all other manner of background character to flesh out the world: these are referred to as “non-player characters” (NPCs).  Since you need to stand out among the crowd, you are simply “better” than these NPCs when matched on an even level.  The Player Character can be a fighter (master of warfare), paladin (holy warrior with spiritual magic) or barbarian (intuitive warrior with rage abilities), whereas an NPC, if they’re a fighting type, is relegated to the “warrior” class, which has none of the tricks of the fighter, the magic of the paladin or the rage of the barbarian: they’re just pretty good at swinging a sword.  You go to the magic shop to buy some potions and there’s no wizard or sorcerer behind the counter: just a magic adept who knows a few spells.  You’re the hero and they’re not.

Well here’s a reality breaker for you: YOU’RE the NPC in someone else’s story.  I’m sure that stings, but it’s the truth.  We can’t all be heroes, or else the story is boring (although they DO keep making Expendables movies…), and some folks have to be the denominator.  How do I know you’re the NPC?  Because the heroes are out there getting gold medals, winning World’s Strongest Man or the Arnold, or getting their face plastered on supplement bottles and advertisements.  And the vast majority of these folks AREN’T reading about training, because for these folks they were so naturally blessed with talent that they never needed to think about what they were doing: they just did it.  And for those that DID have to study, they certainly weren’t reading a free blog about DnD, so let’s be honest with who is reading this and where they rack and stack: they’re NPCs, not heroes.  

But I could be wrong...

What are the ramifications of being an NPC?  They simply cannot do the things a player character can do.  That’s what makes them NPCs.  This means that the pursuit of optimal, as it relates TO a Player Character, does NOT translate to an NPC.  “Optimal” methods only work for optimal individuals living optimal lifestyles: this is what we “learned” from Soviet studies.  When you can hand select the best athletes based off genetic pre-disposition (hey look: heroes) and then control ALL the variables in their lives as it relates to training and recovery, you can discover and implement the optimal programming and nutrition approach to elicit the optimal gains.  For the rest of the world (NPCs…it just keeps working), things are going to need to take a decidedly SUB-optimal turn in order to accommodate all the sub-optimal variables at play.  Poor physical structure, brittle frames, predisposition to hold onto bodyfat, irregular work schedules, food allergies, etc etc, all of these can impact the NPC such that they simply cannot keep up with the heroes, and attempts to emulate them just result in disaster.

This is why there are NPC classes in the first place: an NPC can’t hope to be a fighter, paladin or a barbarian, so they settle in and become a warrior.  They make do with learning how to swing a sword, swing it pretty well, and then just get strong and touch enough to clear out the goblins that have infested a local farm or go to war under the banner of their lord.  They make the most out of the potential that they have.  We do the same as NPCs in the world of training.  It’s fine to believe that “optimal” is out there, but we settle for “good enough”.  Why?  Because good enough gets the job done, and when you rack up enough “good enough”, you suddenly become a threat to heroes that have underestimated you.

This scene is practically my religion

Storytime: my friends and I once got killed by an Inn Keeper.  We were a high level adventuring party, in a tough campaign, and we wanted somewhere to set up camp.  We figured killing the Inn Keeper and squatting in his inn would be a great base of operations.  We did NOT factor in that, since this was a high level campaign, this Inn Keeper had lived long enough to see some serious sh*t, and despite being an NPC, was WAY higher level than our party (reference my previous post regarding leveling up vs min/maxing).  Our entire party was wiped out, despite our superior tricks, skills, feats, magic and equipment: because this Inn Keep was just plain STRONGER and higher leveled than we were ready to deal with.  YOU, as an NPC, can BE this Inn Keeper.  You can find A method that works and stick with it for a few decades and grow to be something incredibly formidable, even IF you’re not the hero of the story.  There can only be so many heroes in a story, otherwise it gets boring, but the story ALSO gets boring if every single NPC is a pushover that gets instantly slaughtered at the whim of the adventuring party.  Some NPCs are going to be like Clint Eastwood in “Grand Torino”: “Ever notice how you come across someone, every once in a while, that you shouldn’t have f*cked with?  That’s me.”

The world NEEDS NPCs: in their absence, nothing is significant, and things are boring.  And hell, even adventuring parties are going to be comprised of SUB-optimal characters, because again, “good enough” is good enough.  One of the original catalyst that started the brainstorming on this post in the first place is my love of comic books and super heroes and, specifically, super hero teams.  And knowing me, you know that the only character I really care about ON a super hero team is “the muscle”.  Any good team has some dude that is just there to be super strong.  The Avengers have “The Hulk”, Fantastic 4 have “The Thing”, X-Factor has “Strong Guy”, X-men has both Colossus AND Rogue, etc.  And what’s interesting is, if you look at the characters I mention, some of them are actually STRONGER than others.  Hulk is “strongest of them all”, which of course makes him pretty damn boring, and they actually have to write him out of the story often because, otherwise, it wouldn’t be interesting to just watch someone who is the strongest beat people that aren’t.  Rogue has beaten Strong Guy in a fight before, Colossus and Thing can’t match The Juggernaut, etc.  But these dudes are still ON the team, because even though they aren’t THE strongest, they’re still “strong enough” to be able to fulfill a VERY needed role ON the team.  When you’re picking teams for your mutant kickball league and you need a strong guy…you pick “Strong Guy” if he’s available, because he’s at LEAST going to be stronger than Cyclops…and also because no one likes Cyclops.  

We all cheered

Only a few people get to be heroes.  That’s their role in the story.  Everyone else gets to be an NPC.  But you can STILL be a handful as an NPC, as long as you settle in and maximize yourself IN that role.  The NPC that keeps trying and failing to be a hero winds up a pretty pitiful character, whereas the NPC that is at peace with being, at most, second best, can end up being a pretty damn powerful second best.

ACCUMULATION, INTENSIFICATION, LEVELING UP AND MIN/MAXING: ANOTHER DND POST

 My nerd fanbase has already lit up like a Christmas tree, and I don’t blame them, because I honestly love writing about DnD stuff when I get a chance.  To really emphasize the nerd aspect here though, I’m writing this because people TYPICALLY use cars and engines to explain this stuff, and I am SO far removed from being a gearhead that, if I try to implement such a metaphor I know I’m going to screw it up, make zero sense and get corrected by some glasses pushing up the nose “ACKUALLLLY” mechanic nerd, so I’m going to beat that to the punch and go into the nerd realm that I actually understand.  I find people STILL struggle to understand and appreciate the differences between accumulation and intensification as it relates to the pursuit of getting bigger and stronger, so why not explain this with some DnD.

 

Yes, I DO own this book and it's...ok

So storytime: I have a buddy that is just a genius when it comes to DnD.  He’s a smart dude in general actually: chemistry degree, worked as a chemist, big brain.  When he plays, he can expertly craft his character to just absolutely and completely maximize benefits and minimize penalties (min/max, for those unfamiliar with the vernacular) through a combination of stat manipulation, picking the best feats that play off each other, using the right spells, etc etc.  It’s legit just beyond me.  I frustrate this guy because of how simple I am when I play: I build characters that are just fun for me, and, in turn, typically quite flawed, as I find the flaws to be the fun part of the game.  But I digress there.  The point I’m making is, this guy can take a level 1 character and make him WAY more powerful than he has any right to be…

 

…BUT it’s STILL just a level 1 character.  In our party of level 1 adventurers, his character will absolutely stand out head and shoulders and we will lean on him in times of stress…but we’re STILL all a bunch of level 1 weenies no matter how you slice it.  Fact is, a level 10 ogre barbarian with 4 intelligence will STILL eat our lunch, even with the dumbest feats, poorest skillset, and awful stats.   That monster is just too damn powerful for us at our current level.  And if his level 1 character joined a level 5 adventuring party, he’d just slow them all down.  Despite being the coolest level 1 character on the planet, he’s STILL just a level 1 character.  He needs to go get some experience to REALLY start mattering (holy sh*t, this metaphor is actually getting better on a lot of levels).

This is how you fit in with the party

 

When you level up your character, EVERYTHING gets better.  They get more hit points, their saving throws (resistance to spells) improve, they get more skills, abilities, feats, and occasionally their stats even get better.  It’s a global improvement, and quite frankly you can overcome any well built character by simply being a much higher level than it, no matter how poorly you’ve constructed your character.  Anyone that has ever played “New Game+” in Chrono Trigger recognizes just how comically easy previously challenging encounters can be once you’re massively over leveled, even if you intentionally use the worst equipment and terrible tactics.  At one point, your base power is simply so great that it genuinely doesn’t matter how good you are: you’re just too damn strong.

 

This brings us around to the discussion of accumulation and intensification.  When it comes to training, intensification is the min/maxing process, whereas accumulation is leveling up.  Both result in a stronger character, but one is about improving POTENTIAL while the other is about maximizing said potential.  When we engage in an accumulation phase of training, we’re leveling up, and as any RPGer knows, the process of leveling up is “grinding”.  Sure, occasionally you get into one really big fight and it gets you a ton of experience, but for the most part you’re just killing the same group of goblins over and over again until you’re strong enough to start fighting hobgoblins and bug bears, repeat until you’re seeking out dragons and liches just to get your fix.  And to a level 1 adventurer that might sound like a big deal, but to the dudes that fighting dragons every day, it’s just getting the work in.

 

When your lifetime PR goal is a workset

That’s an accumulation block right there: it’s not sexy, you’re not hitting 1rm PRs, nothing is social media worthy, but it’s doing what needs to get done in order to get stronger.  This is base building, this is the majority of 5/3/1, these are you 3-5x10 sets, band pull aparts, dips, chins, etc etc.  Those meat and potatoes classic staples that get you bigger and stronger.  Eventually, after you do enough accumulating, you can do some intensifying.  This is where we min/max: we slash the volume so we can up the intensity and get REAL good at handling heavy loads.  We’re maximizing our skillset here and realizing all that potential we built up from accumulation so we can go set some crazy 1 rep max and move big weights in training.  Our social media feed gets lit up, we get the trophy at the meet, praise and accolades come our way…and then on Monday, it’s back to leveling up again.

 

And while I have you here, let’s go ahead and have a rant about this: so many young trainees just want to do the min/maxing and skip the leveling up.  I get it: leveling up is boring and min/maxing is fun, but remember what I wrote about earlier: your maxed out level 1 super genius is going to get curb stomped by a level 10 ANYTHING.  Even a gelatinous cube with 1 intelligence is going to prove too hardy a foe for you.  And that level 5 adventuring party is going to laugh you out of the tavern when you ask to join their group.  Yeah: you may have figured out a way to get some +4 bonus against goblins…but you’ve never actually FOUGHT one before.  Meanwhile, the barbarian at the table might not have any game driven bonus, but he’s killed 400 of the little suckers and has developed his own tactics that prove QUITE effective.  If you’ve got the potential to hit a 100lb bench, and you min/max yourself so that you can bench 100lbs…you’re still benching 100lbs.  Meanwhile, if you’ve leveled up enough that you can bench 500lbs but you’re “only” benching 400 because you haven’t min/maxed enough, you’re STILL a 400lb bencher, with potential to get even crazier.  You are “value added” to any adventuring party. 

He has no armor, a terrible weapon, and by the looks of it about 4 intelligence...and I bet he STILL gets picked first for the kickball team

 

There’s nothing wrong with min/maxing, but a level 1 character is STILL just a level 1 character.  Go get some experience.

DEEP WATER INTERMEDIATE ROUND 2 PROGRAM REVIEW

 

INTRO: HOW WE GOT HERE AND WHERE WE ARE NOW

 

Whole lotta this

For those that haven’t been following along, Deep Water Intermediate marks the end of a 26 week long weight gaining training block I’ve been running that started off with 5/3/1 BBB Beefcake, then 5/3/1 Building the Monolith and then Deep Water Beginner.  I intend to do a separate write up of the whole process, but in sum, it’s been the most effective training block I’ve ever engaged in.  I’ve run Deep Water Beginner and Intermediate before, and at that particular time they were the hardest programs I had ever run in my life, so jumping back into them was a little intimidating.  However, I also had prior experience to use to my advantage, and knew what kinds of deviations I was willing to make in order to completely maximize the program to my goals and, in truth, make it even more challenging.  All of that will be detailed in the following.

 

WEEK 3-6 STRATEGY

 

We all know who the real hero of that movie was

Whereas beginner is about reducing rest times, intermediate is about reducing total number of sets to get the 100 reps.  For weeks 3-4, I stuck with the approach of doing a set of 12 and then 8 sets of 11 to get it done in 9 sets.  For weeks 5-6, I swapped to a set of 16 and then 7 sets of 12 until it got to deadlift day.  The previous deadlift day was HELLACIOUS, one of the hardest workouts I’d ever done in my life, and then idea of opening up with 16 reps then trying to hold on for 7 more sets just seemed like a poor strategy, so I decided to flip it and do 7 sets of 12, take a LONG rest period (as allotted in the book) and then do everything in my power to hit a set of 16 after that.  To include dead stopping and rest pausing: just get those reps in without taking an “official” rest.  I ended up using the same approach for power cleans with the barbell (more on that later).  Otherwise, I stuck with the traditional 1x16/7x12 after that, because the rest of these weren’t terrible compared to the deads.

 

NUTRITION

 

Pretty much this

My nutrition was about as dialed in and Deep Water as it could get.  I’m not going to do another “day in the life” thing because it was pretty much identical.  Big variable is I swapped out walnuts for pecans, as I was starting to develop intolerances to the walnuts.  My body seems to do that a lot these days.  Otherwise, the most “un Deep Water” thing I’d eat daily was a square of 92-110% dark chocolate, clocking in at about 60 calories, along with a dark chocolate peanut butter cup and a Reese’s min peanut butter lovers cup, both of which clocking in at 70 and 30 calories respectively, and those latter 2 options were only ever eaten while I was at work.  I actually WANTED to take in some carby cheat meals before the deadlift days…in theory, but in reality I just didn’t have any appetite for carbs at this point.  All I wanted was large quantities of meat.  My “cheat” meal was typically wings.

 

DEVIATIONS AND DIFFERENCES

 

Sometimes deviating from the standard can be awesome

* I used intuition to determine training weights on this one, primarily because reverse calculating my 1rm based off the weights I was using for sets of 10 across on beginner was resulting in “fantasy-like” numbers, like a 750lb deadlift.  I ended beginner with the following lifts:

Press-135, Push Press-155, Squat-325, Deadlift-385

For Intermediate, I used the following weights

Press-155, Push Press-175, Squat-350, Deadlift-405

About the only weight I should have pushed a little higher is the squat.  Big part of that is honestly just me not being at terms with how good I’ve become at squatting.  It’s still very new to me.

 

* Once again, I pushed conditioning HARD through this process.  Despite the fact that Deep Water in and of itself should be more than enough to put the body into a shocked state of recovery, I had a good thing going and didn’t want to let off.  I actually found conditioning to be VERY helpful in recovering FROM Deep Water workouts.  I’d try to turn the conditioning workouts into feeder workouts, and get blood flowing to the sore areas to speed up recovery.  Something I found particularly effective for squat soreness was thruster WODs.  My default was to just to 30 thrusters with 135lbs as fast as possible, similar to the Grace WOD, but I also made use of the Fran WOD, getting 100 thrusters with 95lbs as fast as possible with a 10 KB swing penalty for setting the bar down, etc.  Post deadlifts I’d do things like stone shouldering or something clean focused.  After pressing I’d do thrusters or the Grace WOD, etc.  Whereas the first time I did Deep Water I’d limp for 6 days after squats, soreness would be gone around day 2 with this approach.

 

* With cleans scheduled for every week, I took it upon myself to make 1 workout a log clean and the other a barbell clean.  I’d do the log clean on the same week as the 100 squats, as I find the log taxes my lower back and I didn’t want to absolutely obliterate it by doing 100 deadlifts and chasing it with 100 log cleans.  I made sure to apply the lessons I learned from clean pulls and cleans to the log and, for once, actually had a pretty snappy log clean.

 

* I never followed the prescribed core work.  On days that were supposed to be back extensions into sit ups, I’d do reverse hypers into ab wheel.  Otherwise, I let my daily work take care of core work.

 

* Instead of 5x10 curls, I’d do 1 set of Poundstone curls.

 

* Instead of multiple sets of lateral raises, I just did one gigantic dropset.

 

* On the bench day, I did incline dumbbell benching, and immediately after the final set I’d jump straight into my first set of dips.  After my final set of dips, I’d jump straight into my first set of push ups.  On my final set of push-ups, I’d do a big dropset by doing push ups to failure, then using the Reactive slingshot to do another set to failure immediately, then use the Metal Catapult to do one final set to failure.  I’d then go straight to a set of 25 band pushdowns.

 

* I frequently did band pull aparts between sets of the main work on training days, just because they make my shoulders feel awesome.

 

* I used my Juarez Valley front squat workout for about the first half of the program on the “active recovery” day.  At the halfway point, I started experimenting with a workout I named “Tower of Babel”, which was similar to JV.  I’d start with 1 front squat, do 5 burpees, 2 front squats, etc, typically working my way up to 8 reps, then working back DOWN to the 1 rep.  It was awesomely brutal but different than JV.  I still chased this workout with a belt squat stripset.

 

* Rather than do the technique sets for squats and deads before the main work, I would cut them out of the main workout and then later in the day do a WOD incorporating squats or deads wherein I got 30 total reps.  For squats, I took 300lbs (50 less than my work weight) and did 10 reps squats, 10 reps chins, 10 reps dips, 5 squats, 5 chins, 5 dips, 15 squats, 15 chins, 15 dips.  For deads, I took 308lbs (97lbs less than workweight) and did a similar workout, this time with reps being 12-9-6-3.

 

* I used an axle for all pressing and benching.  I used a buffalo bar for all squatting.  I used a texas deadlift bar for the majority of my deadlifting (outside of the WOD deadlifts, wherein I used a Rogue echo bar).

 

* For deadlifts, I’d pull as many reps as possible touch and go, but eventually had to switch to dead stop in the later sets as fatigue built up.  Because, gain, dead stop is EASIER.  You get to rest. 

 

* I cleaned every set for all my pressing: push and strict press.

 

* I still kept up my daily work as well.  My GHR footplate actually broke off around week 2, so I cut out GHRs and got in 50 KB swings instead, violating the “bodyweight only” aspect of it.  Still, worked out to 50 chins, 50 dips, 50 pull aparts, 50 swings, 40 bodyweight reverse hypers, 25 pushdowns and 20 standing ab wheel roll outs

 

THOUGHTS, EXPERIENCE AND RESULTS

 

I am, flat out, the strongest I’ve ever been, and at a lower bodyweight than my previous bests. I still haven’t gotten a “true” weigh in, but I clocked in at 189.8 post breakfast midway through the program, whereas the previous time I ran this I was in the low 200s and deadlifting about 40lbs less for the intermediate week, and squatting around 290 or so.  A big part of that is how successful this whole gaining cycle has been leading up to this (which I will write about in full later), but once again Deep Water has been a fantastic program for putting something out of my reach and forcing me to do whatever it takes to be able to get to it. I haven’t been this dialed in in a LONG time.

 

THAT said, this experience was far less “traumatic” than the last time I ran Deep Water Intermediate.  Kinda like watching a horror movie for the second time: you already know where all the scary parts are, so it’s hard to have those emotions again.  I still walked around feeling beat to hell, but I wasn’t crippled like before.  I was excited about crushing the squat days vs dreading them for 13 days, I never needed to lie down on the floor between sets (although the temptation WAS there), I didn’t need to cheat my rest periods, I didn’t need cheat meals, etc.  I think this speaks more to just being more experienced as an athlete AND coming into this is SIGNIFICANTLY better shape than before.  Conditioning is magic, and by having mine so strong, I actually COULD recover within the rest periods allotted to me vs trying (and failing) to play catch up.  In Jon Andersen’s terms, I was thriving, rather than surviving. 

 

I also managed to keep my abs through this process, and not for lack of trying.  I also kept the same pants size the whole time and never needed to use a different notch on my lifting belt.  Look at that, I figured out leangaining: train as hard as possible and then eat your face off.  I’m still eating like it’s my job, but what I DID do different compared to the last time I ran Deep Water is actually emphasis the “organic” portion of the diet.  Before I was eating McDonalds cheeseburgers without the bun and other low quality meat sources feeling like that was “meeting intent”, but in truth, nutrition QUALITY matters here.  I also got a LOT of fresh veggies from our local farmer’s market AND my own garden, to the point that my meals were so full of veggies and Jon Andersen approved fruits (tomatoes, cucumbers, avocados, etc) that there wasn’t much room for anything else. 

 

Here's some bad before/after photos

 

BEFORE

AFTER

 

WHAT’S NEXT?

 

I’m signed up for a strongman competition at the end of Sep, which, depending on how the world handles the latest outbreak, may happen.  In either case, I need a break from gaining weight, so I’ve taken 5/3/1 and mutated it to my needs.  Going to be doing 5s pro for main work, widowmakers for supplemental, rotating implements each week, and pressing twice a week while regulating bench only to supplemental and assistance work.  Conditioning focus is going to be on bearhug keg carries to prep for a huss stone carry.  Assistance stuff is going to be DoggCrapp-esque single set work with lots of intensity modifiers.  Basically, I’m going from VERY high volume to very high effort with low volume.  Something that Marty Gallagher observed: the body likes balance sometimes by going from 2 different extremes.