“CHAOS IS THE PLAN”: A 3 SENTENCE TRAINING MANUAL

Any of my regular readers know just how big a fan I am of all-inclusive training books: one stop shopping that covers everything you need in order to get training and eating right.  Paul Kelso’s “Powerlifting Basics Texas Style” does a fantastic job of providing a wide variety of programs AND a fantastic discussion on the 3 main food groups (Tex-Mex, BBQ and Cajun) to get a trainee eating and training right, and even dives into coaching.  5/3/1 Forever quite literally gives you all the tools you need to train, well, Forever.  Marty Gallagher’s “Purposeful Primitive” is an insane value with how it covers lifting, eating, and cardiovascular training, “The Complete Keys to Progress” is exactly that, “Super Squats” and Deep Water, etc etc.  And this love for all-inclusivity also corresponds with a love for all things “high speed/low drag”.  I don’t need fluff or presentation: I want to get to the point and get out.  Heck, people that have observed my bare bones nutrition of meat touched by flame can see it unfold, alongside my strongman equipment cobbled together out of gorilla tape.  It’s also why I’m such a fan of Dan John vs some of our more “science based” authors out there, or why I care more about a good story vs a good study.  And, in a true display of irony, this longwinded bloviation of an intro was put here to introduce the idea I have for a 3 sentence training manual which may, in fact, become my second e-book:

 

“Eat meat and eggs when hungry until no longer hungry.  Spend 180 minutes a week picking something up off the floor and putting it over your head.  Don’t repeat the same meal or workout twice in a row.”

 

Oh my god it was right there in front of us all along

EAT MEAT AND EGGS WHEN HUNGRY UNTIL NO LONGER HUNGRY

We've seen this before...

There’s no perfect diet, sure, but man, if everyone ate JUST meat and eggs when hungry until not, think of all the junk they’re NOT eating, all the damage they’re NOT doing, all the good stuff they’re putting into their body (protein and monounsaturated fats). And this doesn’t require a sliderule and degree from Harvard to figure out (although I AM shocked at how many people don’t seem to know what is an animal vs a plant…)

 

One of the “high speed/low drag” benefits of “eat meat” as a dietary prescription is how it avoids many of the issues trainees tend to have with food allergies and intolerances.  There are SOME meats out there that people can have allergenic reactions to (shellfish is notorious for this, and some folks can have reactions to pork and other animals), but beef, in particular, tends to be one of the least allergenic foods out there.  This is a boon because SO many times a trainee will ask for advice on how to eat and I’ll mention a wide variety of foods only for them to zero in on ONE of them and say “oh, I can’t eat peanuts, so peanut butter is out”. And rather than hold their hand and walk them to the MILLIONS of other choices available I tend to just get frustrated with the experience and wish them luck, as they’ve demonstrated just how much they fixate on the negative and refuse to engage in basic problem solving.  With our choices cut down, we earn MORE freedom, because we’ve eliminated SO many options that might trigger a negative biological response that there are only good choices available.  I say “meat” and you go from there.  There are SO many animals on the Earth that you’re bound to find one you can eat.  Yes: this will preclude vegans and vegetarians from succeeding.  You have the deepest condolences I can offer: you’ll have to walk your own path.

You aren't without your own role models

 

Eggs occupy an interesting space in the allergysphere as well.  Eggs tend to have higher instances of an allergenic response compared to meat, but, often, it’s the egg WHITES that people respond negatively to vs the yolk.  In turn, one can attempt to abide by “meat and eggs” and simply opt for the yolks vs the whites and see how they suits them.  There’s a LOT of good stuff in those egg yolks as it is, so eating them isn’t a bad idea at all.  BUUUUUT, if worse comes to worse and eggs are taken off the table, it just means eating more meat.

 

As a final aside to the aside, Dr. Ken Berry is a big fan of “Beef, Butter, Bacon and Eggs” as the answer to “what to eat”, with the helpful pneumonic of “BBBE”.  There’s methods to the madness too: beef remains one of the least allergenic meats out there, butter is a dairy product that few have a histamine reaction to as a result of the rendering out of proteins/lactose (which, if there is STILL an issue there, ghee can resolve it), bacon is simply magical, and whole eggs/egg yolks contain SO many awesome vitamins and nutrients.  And again, if we wanna talk high speed/low drag, boiling the list down to 4 foods definitely accomplishes that. 

I feel like it's self-explanatory...

 

And then there’s learning about hunger cues: not eating based on a schedule but because we’re hungry, and then eating until we’re not (not until we’re “full”, not until there’s no more food on the plate, just because we’re not hungry). We also get to learn about the difference between “hungry” and “bored”. When ALL we’re eating is meat and eggs, if we’re hungry: we’ll eat it. If we’re not, we won’t. Caveat: there would be no sauces or seasonings, outside of salt. If we have to trick ourselves into eating the food, we aren’t hungry.

 

It's worth observing that in no way am I advocating a means of achieving optimal health here.  That’s between you and your medical provider.  I am simply coming up with A high speed/low drag solution to the question of “what do I eat?”  If you have a BETTER approach: use it…but then, why did you come to me for answers?

 

SPEND 180 MINUTES A WEEK PICKING SOMETHING UP OFF THE FLOOR AND PUTTING IT OVER YOUR HEAD 

Yes; that will do nicely

Man, that just says it all. Much l like how the food is “when hungry, until not”, the pick the thing up and put it over your head can be “Do it until you can’t, wait until you can again, then do it again”. That answers the question about sets and reps. And if people REALLY want an answer, we could prescribe a time limit. And as I wrote that, I thought “how about a “per week” time limit?” That would REALLY streamline things. An hour a day, 3x a week is a very standard amount of “average human” training, so say we do that. 180 minutes. Split it up however you want now. You wanna train 7 days a week? Great: 25 minutes a day. Dan John would be proud. Can only train twice a week? 90 minutes each time. Man: imagine how goddamn strong you would get if, twice a week, you spent 90 minutes putting something over your head? That is a SCARY motherf**ker: especially if, after those 90 minutes, he puts away a dozen eggs and some steaks or ribs.

DON’T REPEAT THE SAME MEAL OR WORKOUT TWICE IN A ROW

Agree to disagree here Tyler

Forced variety/periodization. Don’t eat ONLY ground beef and eggs for every single meal: one meal, yes, the next steak and eggs (and hey, maybe chicken eggs for one meal and duck eggs for another, we can switch that up too), then ribs and eggs, pork chops and eggs, salmon and eggs, etc. For the workout, if ALL we have is a barbell, we’ll change the weights OR the way we got it over our head (snatch vs press), but if we have multiple objects, the world is our oyster. Kegs, stones, logs, sandbags, etc etc.

 

The nutritional variety will cover our nutrient bases. The implement/movement variety will cover our imbalances.  It also dawns on me that, if I wanted to be cute, I could change that sentence to simply “Chaos is the Plan”, so that it reads “Eat and eggs when hungry until no longer hungry.  Spend 180 minutes a week picking something up off the floor and putting it over your head.  Chaos is the plan.”…but you’d have to “know” me to know what the hell that final part means.  But it also DOES communicate more than JUST “don’t repeat the same meal/workout twice in a row.”  Now we can use that third sentence to mean that, not only are we not repeating meals and workouts twice in a row, but perhaps we won’t repeat weeks in a row either.  Think about that: now we just created a training cycle. 

 

When we employ the “Chaos is the plan” corollary to training, it means that some weeks our 180 minutes are divided between 2 workouts, sometimes 4, sometimes 7, etc.  And the change in amount of training days would result in a change in training time, which would naturally cause a waving of training volume by changing the training density or load employed to meet the training time.  Hey, isn’t a weekly change something we saw in 5/3/1, the Juggernaut Method, Dan John’s “1 lift a day”, basic western linear periodization, much of Alex Bromely’s programs, etc etc?  And what if we really DID make chaos the plan and used the roll of a die to determine how many days a week we were going to train THAT week?  Oh my god I’m loving this.

 

And heck, we could even boil this down WITHIN a week.  Just because I’m training 180 minutes over the span of 4 days doesn’t mean they have to be evenly divided workouts.  Rather than 4 45 minute workouts, what if I had one 90 minute workout and 3 30 minute ones?  Or 2 75 minute workouts and 2 15 minute ones?  30-90-15-45?  The possibilities are limitless!

Holy cow: I got 2 memes out of this movie!

 

And Chaos can be the plan with nutrition too.  Eat meat and eggs when hungry until no longer hungry.  Simple enough.  Don’t repeat the same meal twice in a row.  Simple enough.  Chaos being the plan means that some days we may simply just plain not eat.  If we’re not hungry, we’re not eating.  Or maybe we employ a protein sparing modified fast ala the Velocity Diet/Apex Predator Diet, or keep it full carnivore and rely on egg whites, chicken breasts, lean fish, etc and then do a day MUCH heavier on the fats.  I’ve heard some folks employ “fat fasting”: why not give it a go and see what happens?  A surefire way to take in a variety of nutrients is to eat a wide variety and methods of food, and through that we’ll learn just how our body responds to these foods to best maximize performance AND gain a little bit of metabolic flexibility to go along with it.

 

That even lends well to cyclical nutrition, something Jamie Lewis has written about among several other authors.  This could be a golden avenue to employ something ala the ABCDE diet, or take Justin Harris’ carb cycling and put it on its head by doing fat/protein cycling instead.  Therein, just like with training, we observe instances wherein the nutrition can be rotated on a weekly basis or within the week itself.  And this can be done while STILL keeping the nutrition simple: meat and eggs.  There is SO much variety within those two things that we can have limitless possibilities available.  A grassfed sirloin is going to have a much different breakdown compared to a grainfed slab of prime rib, to say nothing of comparing that same grassfed sirloin to some pork ribs, or a pot roast, or chicken thighs/wings.  And wanna compare some quail eggs to an ostrich egg? And while we’re talking about eggs, think about how you can eat the same eggs but PREPARE them differently.  Fried, poached, hard/soft boiled, omelets (steak and egg omelets are the meals of warriors), raw, scrambled, etc.  John Meadows spoke to the idea that we can reduce the instances of egg intolerances by varying the method in which we prepare them on a frequent basis.  Chaos is the plan, and chaotic nutrition can exist in the realm of restriction. 

 

EVERYTHING ELSE

I genuinely can't think of a more fitting image...

I had actually already shopped this idea out and someone pointed out to me the value of an adding a walk to the prescription.  It was the greatest contribution I had seen to any protocol in a long time AND completely overlooked by me because I subscribe to Jamie Lewis’ paradigm that walking isn’t a workout “it’s part of being a human being”.  That said, it wasn’t UNTIL I took on “Feast/Famine/Ferocity” that I started walking daily, so I was living a sub-human lifestyle for quite a while as well.  As far as walking goes, there are several outstanding prescriptions out there to follow.  There’s a lot of great science speaking to the value of a 10 minute walk after meals, and with Chaos being the Plan as far as our eating schedule goes, this allows for a chaotic walking schedule as well…but it also means on those fasting days we won’t walk at all.  But, perhaps, since calories will be on the low side, that’ll be a good thing.  Jamie Lewis prefers a set prescription of “2 miles a day, minimum, outside, rain or shine”, which is also a great way to get in some vitamin D…when it’s sunny.  And Dan John’s Easy Strength for Fat Loss tackles it by having the trainee have a set 60 minutes of training, lift weights at the start, and go for a walk for the remainder of the 60 minutes.  Given it’s an Easy Strength workout, the lifting can last anywhere from 10-25 minutes, so you can get in some decent walks, and Dan wants to trainee to legit put the weight down and head out the door while the heart rate is still up.  All of these are great prescriptions, and all rely on the trainee to do SOME sort of walking, which is the big takeaway.

 

Beyond that, I’d be a cad if I didn’t cop to still making use of nutritional supplements as part of a “safety net” for my carnivore based nutrition.  Everything I’ve read and heard says you can get all the required nutrients you need from animal products, and I find the position believable enough, but I also get my supplements for free from a high quality and high caliber company, so I see no reason to NOT use them.  So if you feel a need to supplement outside of the food to ensure all your bases are covered: go ahead.  The big takeaway with the nutrition prescription was to provide a VERY solid working foundation.

AND it's paleo!

 

For the training, if I HAD to add something to it, it’d be pushing/dragging a sled.  I’ve often written that my “desert island training” protocol would be log vipers and prowler pushes, and that still holds true.  The sled will build up the legs just fine with a concentric only movement that’s easier to recover from to allow for more frequent training, and it provides ANOTHER avenue of conditioning AND a potential for level changes in a workout as well if one goes with low handles/low crawls and drags.  But, I’ll also die on the hill that this is an unnecessary addition.  Is one doing to develop some Tom Platz looking legs from picking something up off the floor and putting it over their head?  No, but I’m sure they could develop some Milo of Croton or Farnese Hercules legs from doing that…and really, do you need more than that?

 

Another consideration I had was to either have a “dealer’s choice day” ala Jamie Lewis OR a caveat to take 10% of your training time each day and use it to train “whatever”.  I feel like this would do a good job of shoring up any issues trainees may have with imbalances, specific lifts that need bringing up, etc.  When we account for the fact that assistance work is responsible for 10% of our growth, it makes sense that we only spend 10% of our time on it.  So if you have a 25 minute training session, spend 2.5 minutes doing some assistance work.  Whether that’s an ADDITONAL 2.5 minutes or 2.5 minutes out of your 25 minute total training session is between you and your god: just get it done.

 

NOT THE END

 

I genuinely want to expand on this.  Look at how much could be done with just 3 sentences.  I can legit open up a book with those 3 sentences and then go on to list a jillion different “meat and egg” recipes in one portion alongside hundreds of “pick up off the floor and put overhead” workouts.  We could train our whole lives off these 3 sentences AND alongside the 3 principles of “Effort, Consistency and Time”.  The Freedom of limitation shines through yet again: give me 3 sentences and I’ll give you a book.