PROGRAMMING AS I SEE IT: PROGRAMS VS ROUTINES

**INTRO**

 

Typically, I write these things from start to finish, to include the intro, but this time I save it for last and I’m glad I did, because this grew into a BEAST of a post.  My original intent was to just jot down a very basic understanding of programming as it relates to training, ultimately demonstrating the difference between a program vs a routine (a quest I’ve undertaken on many occasions).  However, as Dan John has observed in his own writing, the more you try to simplify things, the more complicated they get, which is why he’s written 3 books (over 600 pages total) on Easy Strength, which is a workout that was given to him in 6 sentences.  And I actually ended up cutting this short, because I could see it still running away from me as I was writing it, but I feel like this is a good enough baseline for the “common man” to be able to understand what programming is and is not.  This is not a manual on HOW to program, as I am not a coach and I have trained no clients.  Instead, this is more an explanation for what makes a program a program, and how to recognize the facets within a program for what they are and what they do.  With that, let’s start at the beginning, as that’s often a good place to start.

The stories are cooler in the Old Testament vs the New anyway

 

**STIMULUS AND FATIGUE**

Yeah, it's pretty much this

 

Fundamentally, all a program has to do is balance two variable: stimulus and fatigue.  All other elements of a program serve these two masters.  Stimulus is necessary in order to promote growth (from here on out, this will refer to growth of muscles, but this honestly applies to all manner of growth, to include conditioning, GPP, speed, power, strength, etc), and fatigue refers to the accumulation of damage/exhaustion one encounters through the pursuit of that stimulus.  These two forces are on opposite ends of the scale: the more we stimulate, the greater fatigue we accumulate, and as fatigue accumulates, unless we find a manner to recover from it, we lose our ability to stimulate any further.  Because it’s not the training that causes us to grow: it’s the RECOVERY from the training that results in growth.  If we just keep mashing that stimulus button and don’t ever find a chance to recover, we train ourselves into the ground and get smaller and weaker.

 

So we understand the intent of a training program: find a way to generate the necessary stimulus to trigger growth while ALSO finding a way to manage the fatigue that is accumulated so that we can continue the process of stimulate/recover in order to continue growing.  We are trying to find that goldilocks of total training volume.  It is this understanding that drives the structuring of a training program.  One can train 1 day a week or 7 days a week, so long as they are balancing stimulus and fatigue, which is why protocols like HIT can exist alongside the Bulgarian Method.  So what variables do we have in order to trigger stimulus?

 

**FREQUENCY, VOLUME, AND INTENSITY**

Just not all at the same time

 

We have training frequency (how often we train), training volume (how much we train within a given session) and training intensity (in this instance, how heavy we train, rather than “perceived intensity”, which is to say, how hard the training feels).  Much like stimulus and fatigue, these 3 dials must be properly adjusted in order to allow FOR that balance of stimulus and fatigue.  If you turn all 3 up to max, you get max stimulus AND max fatigue, which means no recovery, and ultimately burnout.  If you turn all 3 down all the way, you get no fatigue AND no stimulus, so you still don’t grow.  Once again: finding the balance is part of what makes a program a program, rather than a routine.

 

Breaking things down further, we can understand stimulus through the lens of volume on multiple levels.  Above, I wrote “within a given session” just to give vector to the conversation, but ultimately, with a program being a program, we’re going to understand volume from a wider perspective, to include weekly training volume and training volume within a training cycle.  Is it possible to “overtrain” in the span of one day?  We can call that “overreaching”.  We’ve seen/heard the stories about people doing their first crossfit class and developing rhabdomyolysis, and you can certainly do something like the 10k swing challenge in one day and push yourself too hard, but typically, in the discussion of “overtraining”, we’re referring to pushing beyond the bounds of recoverable fatigue for a long and consistent timeframe to the point that recovery is no longer possible without SIGNIFICANT intervention, such as multiple weeks away from training.  Which, in that regard: an intelligently designed program will seek to mitigate this, ideally through intelligent application of training volume across the duration of a training cycle.  So what are ways to effectively manage volume?

 

Herein we have the other 2 variables at play: frequency and intensity.  If we determine how much volume we need in order to trigger the desired stimulus to grow, we now have to determine how we want to divide this volume in order to effectively trigger stimulus without overcoming our body’s ability to manage the fatigue.  This is how you see programs that can be so wildly different yet still effective: they’re finding the volume needed to grow and parsing it out as necessary.  HIT style training may only have “one” workset, but it tends to include a lot of ramping up TO that one set, and once that one set is done, it’s followed with a bunch of intensity modifiers to eek out even more reps, pushing way into the recovery well of the trainee and absolutely obliterating them with stimulus…which is why the training is so infrequent.  Contrast this with more traditional higher volume training, which employs more worksets and tends to leave reps in reserve, which allows a better opportunity to recover from session to session, allowing for more frequent training in order to continue to trigger the same amount of stimulus.

A pretty good demonstration of the effects of both methods

 

And in all this discussion about fatigue, I haven’t even discussed the OTHER element of a program that makes a program a program: fatigue MANAGEMENT.  Because as we’ve discussed: if we overcome the body with fatigue in the pursuit of stimulus, we ultimately regress.  An intelligently designed program needs to find some way to deal with all of this.  One of the simplest ways to do so is a prescribed deload: a period of time with reduced, if not completely eliminated, stimulus, in order to allow fatigue to mitigate.  Matt Wenning talks about incorporating these into Westside style conjugate, and Jim Wendler includes them in 5/3/1, Tactical Barbell refers to them as “Bridge Weeks”, and I honestly first learned about the idea from Pavel Tsastouline’s book “Beyond Bodybuilding”, but John McCallum wrote about downtime in “The Complete Keys to Progress” and really, the precedent exists in a LOT of other places as well.  Like getting an oil change BEFORE your engine blows up, the idea of a deload is that it’s PREVENTATIVE maintenance: you take the deload BEFORE you need it.  Because as we’ve discussed: when we push too far into fatigue, we overwhelm our ability to recover so much that we require significant intervention.

 

However, for some trainees, “deload” is a dirty word.  Some believe that you can effectively manage stimulus and fatigue simply with intelligent programming, and that an intelligent program, by definition, is one that does not NEED a deload.  There’s enough people out there that can make this work that I believe it’s true, and ultimately it’s going to require a solid understanding of your own body, fatigue indicators, and an ability to only push as hard as necessary to generate stimulus in your training.  I know some dudes even make use of specific fatigue tracking software, to include monitoring of resting heart rate increase and the “pen tap test”, as a means of monitoring fatigue status.  In either instance, once again, we observe what makes a program a program: it has SOME form of fatigue management in place.

 

 

There is also room for discussion for ACTIVE fatigue management.  Which is to say, the elements of recovery.  Ignoring non-training ones, such as sleep and food (to which the Barbarian Brothers are famous for saying “There is no overtraining: only undereating and undersleeping”), along with things like ice baths, massage, etc, one can actually slot into their program training that has a restorative function rather than a function of stimulus.  Dan John refers to these as “tonic workouts”, and we’ve also heard of feeder workouts (not the same thing as feeder sets) and simple recovery workouts.  Here, the intent is to just get some light, restorative bloodflow to the muscles that were trained, in order to promote quicker recovery between workouts and alleviate soreness.  Light conditioning can also have this impact, with walking being one of the best examples.  One is not going to recover themselves out of a state of overtraining with these approaches, but they CAN be a useful means of immediate fatigue management in the scope of one’s overall programming, and they also tend to be a missing variable in many of the “programs” that are created by those lacking awareness of these principles.

 

**THE OTHER STUFF: PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD, SETS, REPS AND MOVEMENTS**

All the small things...yes, I'm really dating myself here

 

Notice how I haven’t even discussed progressive overload, sets, reps or movement yet?  Yet, when a new trainee wants to discuss their “new program”, ALL that want to talk about are sets, reps and movements.  This is why program design is best left NOT to new trainees.  Which, on that note, they tend to overfixate on progressive overload, as though THAT is the answer to all programming concerns (or, more specifically, the answer to “what makes this a program and not a routine?”)  And yes, there is a significant issue of wheel spinning amongst the general populace, wherein they just go to the gym, move around a bunch, go home, and repeat for years on end, without producing any actual results because they’re not actually challenging themselves to IMPROVE during their sessions at the gym, but progressive overload is NOT the silver bullet it’s made out to be: it’s simply A manner of generating stimulus.

 

 

We’re going to get into “no true Scotsman” territory here, because technically what I’m about to say can be understood to mean “progressive overload”, but let’s appreciate what they layperson means when they say it: doing MORE than you did the last time you were at the gym. Super Squats makes this simple by keeping the sets and reps the same on the big set of squats (1x20) and telling the trainee to just add 5-10lbs to the bar each time they squat: that’s as basic as it can get with progressive overload.  You can also do this with a classic “double progression” approach: you pick a rep range (8-12), start at the bottom of that range, work up to the top of it over a series of sessions, then add weight and start the whole process over again.  There are other methods as well, but ultimately, all these methods accomplish is creating the STIMULUS we discussed earlier in order to trigger a growth response from the body.  In turn, commonly defined “progressive overload” is NOT necessary as a means to grow: it’s simply A way to grow.

 

John Meadows was notorious for never repeating the same workout twice: he’s always change things from workout to workout, and this was by design.  This allowed a natural form of autoregulation for the trainee, preventing them from becoming too skilled at a lift to the point where they were more improving their ability to RECRUIT motor units into the lift to maximize poundages lifted (which, in turn, can elevate the risk/consequences of the lift) and, instead, forcing them to focus on generating the necessary degree of strain in order to create the stimulus to grow.  The old adage “the body doesn’t know how much you’re lifting” holds quite true: one does not need to lift more weight from training session to training session, NOR do they need to increase reps/sets/volume/tonnage, etc: they simply need to generate the stimulus necessary to trigger a growth response.  What this DOES require is for a trainee to be in tune with their body enough to know when they’re actually pushing it to the point of triggering growth, which is why progressive overload tends to be the more preferred approach to “guarantee” results, but we say all this to acknowledge that this is simply A manner to achieve stimulus, with stimulus itself being more the primary concern of the roots of a program.  And, of course, I bring up Meadows, but he’s not alone in this approach: Jon Andersen also employs it, as did Ivan Putski, and if you read Jamie Lewis’ “365 Days of Brutality”, you’ll find that MANY old school musclemen were far more “ad hoc” in their training, choosing movements that DAY and just going hard on them until they were done.

 

Polish power BEFORE Mariusz

 

While on this discussion, some other methods we can employ to progress training include increasing training density (getting the same amount of work done in less time), increasing the speed that the bar/weight moves, improve our control over the weights, lift the same weight for the same reps while under a greater state of fatigue (Pavel Tsastouline had a great program based on this where you’d do the same exercises every day but switch the order of them), etc.  These metrics become helpful when we discover that we are, in fact, human and not necessarily always capable of adding weight to the bar every session.   

 

 

What else do beginners fixate on when it comes time to “write a program”?  Sets and reps of course.  And really, it’s just reps, because most beginners only the numbers 3 and 5 when it comes to sets (no one does 4 sets of 4, ever).  Beginner trainees tend to believe that rep range ultimately determines outcome of training, wanting to know what they strength rep range is vs the hypertrophy rep range vs the endurance rep range vs the cardio.  With just the briefest of scrutiny, all of this falls apart: we’re told that 8-12/15 is the “hypertrophy range” and anything above that is endurance/cardio…until you do Super Squats and live your life around a 20 rep squat set that makes you grow like an absolute weed for 6 weeks.  Or Dan John’s “Mass Made Simple”, which has you do a set of FIFTY reps with your bodyweight by the end of the program and, once again, triggers a LOT of growth.  Where else have we seen programs that trigger growth?  10x3 was very popular in the mid to late aughts, because it took the 3x10 convention and turned it on its head…and it STILL worked for creating hypertrophy.  Although we also found out we weren’t nearly as innovative as we thought, because Bruce Randall pitched the idea of flipping sets and reps in order to get in more reps with heavier poundages back in the 60s.  But it’s also interesting how that same 10x3 that promotes hypertrophy can ALSO promote speed when executed per Westside Barbell’s “Dynamic Effort Method”.  Heck, I always get frustrated when people see the 10x10 of Deep Water and assume it’s the exact same thing as German Volume training, because it’s a testament to how much folks only look at the sets and reps and never the actual PROGRAMMING of a program. 

 

What am I trying to get at with this diatribe?  Sets and reps are merely mechanisms available to determine/control the VOLULME of the training, which, in turn, is simply a mechanism meant to achieve stimulus without overexceeding the fatigue threshold.  The body isn’t a computer that you program with a certain formula of sets and reps and it spits out a predictable outcome: we’re simply employing these sets and reps with an intent of achieving the outcome of enough stimulation without too much fatigue.  In turn, sets and reps WILL vary by individual and can very well vary from day to day based off the needs of that individual in the moment.  Do “cookie cutter” routines work?  Absolutely: I’ve employed plenty of them myself, but the ones that DO work tend to be designed by someone with enough coaching experience that they CAN extrapolate a very GENERAL approach to training that will work with the majority of people.  When you’ve coached a few thousand athletes, you have a pretty good grasp of what generally works, and you can scribble that out on paper and give someone something that will get them some results, similarly to how a decent dietician can guesstimate the general amount of calories you should consume along with the foods that will trigger the least amount of inflammation/gut issues and promote the most general health (Hell, I suppose Stan Efferding can do both of these things, and so did John Meadows, and probably Justin Harris is a good pick, and Jon Andersen seems to be knocking this out too).  However, a brand new trainee, trying to extrapolate FROM the extrapolation, is setting themselves up for failure.

 

Stand on their shoulders, or else you'll get trampled

 

And from here, we have the discussion of movements, which, once again, those without experience simply sees as a means to train a MUSCLE, not understanding that the intent of the training is, once again, to generate stimulus to grow.  “Isn’t it stimulus of a MUSCLE to grow?”  No: stimulus of THE BODY to grow.  That seems like the same thing at an initial glance, but in the case of the former we observe trainees develop what Dan John refers to as “Frankenstein’s Monster training”: leg extensions for the quads, leg curls for the hamstrings, glute bridge for the glutes, flyes for the pecs, raises for the shoulders, etc.  There’s nothing wrong with isolation exercises, and focusing on a muscle is a great way to ensure that it grows, but herein we’re understanding two different types of stimulus: local (the muscle being targeted) vs systemic (the entire body).

 

This is why big heavy compounds are so prized in the world of physical transformation: yeah, they target a lot of muscles, but they also put the entire BODY under load, which, in turns, triggers that stimulus FOR the whole body to grow.  The squat will have the trainee place a heavy bar onto their spine and stand there for the duration of the set: signaling to the WHOLE body “we are going to need to get bigger and stronger so we can hold loads across our frame”.  This is how we get that wonderful hormonal response to training, what Dan John refers to as “The Hormonal Cascade”, which he admits he lifted from someone but I can’t remember who that is at the moment.  Consequently, it’s also why these movements are also quite uncomfortable and, in turn, frequently avoided by new trainees, much to their own downfall.  Their hope is that they can carefully curate the perfectly selected collection of movements that expertly targets each individual muscle they wish to train while avoiding anything that causes pain, discomfort, or awkwardness in order to achieve an awe-inspiring physique…but if it were that easy, EVERYONE would be jacked.

 

**ON TRAINING TO FAILURE, SPLIT STRUCTURE AND REP RANGE CONFUSION**

Let's not pretend that we all understand what it means to "train to failure" the same

 

Further into this pitfall, these trainees misunderstand what the stimulus to grow ACTUALLY is, hyper-fixating on the need to go to failure in order to trigger said stimulus.  Yes, training to failure CAN signal the body that it needs to grow, but it is not NECESSARY to do so, nor does it necessarily do so as well, AND, it can in fact have the opposite of intended effect, wherein it generates too much fatigue to be able to recover, resulting in REGRESSION rather than progress.   If we take High Intensity Training (HIT) as an example of “to failure” employed effectively, we observe how significant appropriate recovery is to the HIT protocol, with very infrequent training necessary in order to be able to recover from the very hard training.  We saw the same thing with Stuart McRobert in Brawn, and with the infamous “Super Squats” program.  Along with that, we see that these protocols make use of HARD compound exercises ALONG with training to failure to generate this stimulus.  Meanwhile, new trainees with hyper-fixate on training to failure and will intentionally pick movements that make training to failure EASIER to accomplish, because they are more concerned with the “to failure” aspect than the “hard movement” portion of “hard movement to failure”.  Lateral raises to failure, leg extensions to failure, curls to failure, etc.  Because they’re so concerned with achieving failure, they select no movements that put them under a total systemic load, and they short themselves on their results.  Meanwhile, they’re obliterating the muscles they CAN train, pushing beyond the point of their own recovery ability, and end up just spinning their wheels, training stupidly easy movements stupidly hard.      

 

This has already grown into a monstrous tome, and I still have some ideas that I want to throw out there and don’t have the patience to find a way to weave it in, so I’m just going to spit them out and then try to summarize.  Another dead giveaway of someone just Mad-Lipping their way through a program is not considering the impact of one’s day’s exercise to another.  I also get a great chuckle when I see a chest/shoulder day right before leg day, because this tells me this trainee has never tried to hold a barbell across their back when their pecs and front delts are SCREAMING at them from yesterday’s workout.  The other is on rep ranges: the notion that certain rep ranges have certain impacts tends to ignore the reality that certain movements simply benefit from certain rep ranges.  Instead, we get myths like “the rear delts need high reps to grow”.  No, it’s not that: try doing a heavy triple for a face pull: it’s not going to work.  It’s going to become a row.  To actually be able to hit the damn muscle, you have to take the weight down, which makes the reps go high.  In turn, you’re not training ineffectively if you end up doing a few hundred reps of band pull aparts: that’s about the only way you can get volume there.

 

**CONCLUSION**

Is anyone still there?

 

In summary, programming is a matter of balancing stimulus and fatigue: we must generate enough stimulus to promote growth while not generating enough fatigue to hinder/regress growth, cause injury, or enter a state of overtraining.  This represents the ideal total volume of training: balancing that razor’s edge.  To manipulate/control that volume, we can control the frequency of training, the volume within individual training sessions, the intensity of that training, and the implementation of fatigue recovery via a deload.  From there, the training plan itself is a matter of selecting movements that will generate stimulus on a systemic level, in order to promote whole body growth, along with on a local level, in order to provide targeted growth.  Sets and reps are merely a mechanism in order to achieve that desired total volume: there’s no wizardry with rep range equating outcomes.  Instead, it’s more the case that certain movements simply lend themselves to certain rep ranges.  Similarly, progressive overload isn’t the panacea it’s made out to be: it’s simply A method of ensuring that the desired stimulus to grow is utilized, typically in the instance of a trainee who lacks the body awareness to be able to push hard enough irrespective of the exercise being implemented.  In that regard, training to failure is also not necessary in order to generate this stimulus, and the pursuit of failure above all else can frequently result in ignoring the real variables necessary in order to grow.     

 

 

LESSONS LEARNED FROM SWIMMING: KEEP YOUR EYES ON YOUR LANE

My regular readers will know this spiel I’m about to lay out, but for those unaware: I grew up as a fat kid.  It was very recently I learned that I was set up for failure from the start, discovering that my mom followed the conventional 1980s parenting wisdom of putting cereal in my bottle at a young age so that I would fatten up and sleep through the night better, and then a steady “diet” of commercials targeted at children revealing all the latest inventions of Poptart flavors (smores is still my favorite), toaster strudels, Sunny D’Light and the coolest and latest toys in the cereal box (I’m still kind of gutted that’s not a thing anymore) had me totally primed to achieve “90s fat kid” status.  Because it’s worth appreciating that, even as “the fat kid”, I wasn’t nearly as obese as most kids are nowadays, and it’s also worth appreciating that I was “THE fat kid”: a testament to the fact that most kids back then WERE decently fit and being fat was the exception, compared to today where fat is effectively the default setting.  I was “husky”, rather than obese.  All this said, my parents were also involved in many interventions to attempt to rectify my fatness, and since we existed in an era where nutrition was, once again, something television told us to eat, we all believed in the “no pain/no gain” mantra that we had to EXERCISE the fat away.  So I was enrolled in MANY youth sports (again, a difference between my upbringing and what we observe in modern adolescence), to include t-ball, soccer, ice hockey, martial arts (which I eventually stuck with, but that’s not what today’s post is about), and, at one point: swimming.  My parents observed how swimmers had a “swimmers physique”, we had constantly heard that swimming was “the BEST exercise you can do” (a myth that is still out there), and we had access to a local high school pool/swim program at a relatively low cost.  I only lasted one season, competing in a handful of meets, and when I tried taking a swim course in undergrad as a means of getting some easy credits, I was referred to by my instructor as “negatively buoyant”, so much of the time spent swimming was wasted, but I DID walk away with at least ONE valuable piece of information: keep your eyes on YOUR lane!

 

Yeah, this is me in pretty much any pool

 

Anyone who HAS swam competitively in some capacity completely understands that phrase, but for those of you not in the know: when you swim in a meet against other swimmers, you’re each assigned a lane to swim in, marked off with a floating divider.  It’s similar to racing on a track, just, you know: in water.  You’ll all start at the start time, with a goal of completing the assigned swim distance the fastest among other swimmers.  BECAUSE you are among other swimmers, it’s tempting, while you are swimming, to look at the other lanes and see how the other swimmers are doing, in order to gauge where you are in the competition.  However, an interesting phenomenon occurs here: when a swimmer looks into the other lanes to check the competition, they slow down!  The body tends to follow the eyes, and when we start looking off center, we start moving off center.  AND, along with that, time spent trying to watch the competition is time NOT spent giving 100% of our effort into the act of swimming.  Heck, we observe this same situation with traffic accidents: rubberneckers will cause FURTHER traffic delays because they drive SLOWER when they’re trying to observe the traffic accident, even if they swear it’s just a “quick peek”.  A good swimmer keeps their eyes on their own lane.

 

 

Which is SUCH a valuable lesson in the realm of physical transformation, because SO many trainees keep trying to watch the other lane while they’re swimming, and all they end up doing is slowing down their own work at the time.  The classic example of this (which inspired this post) is the trainee that SAYS they’re engaged in a “muscle building” phase of training…but that they want to minimize fat gain.  Why?  Because they don’t want to spend much time in a cutting phase (to the point that many claim they want to NEVER enter one, which is patently absurd for reasons I’ve written about on many occasions and this is already going to run too long for me to bloviate on that today).  Here, the trainee is looking at the cutting lane of transformation WHILE they’re still in the muscle building lane.  And in doing so, they compromise their success in muscle building: the very thing they’re SUPPOSED to be accomplishing!  These trainees are so concerned with minimizing fat gain that they ALSO minimize muscle gain: trying to eat on the thinnest of margins and gain the absolute barest minimum of weight on a fixed, linear and predictable weekly pattern in order to ASSURE themselves that the weight they’re gaining is 100% pure muscle with no fat at all.  And then, if they actually DO enter that fat loss phase, it sure is a short one…because they gained NOTHING during that muscle building phase.  They managed to successfully accumulate water weight from the inflammation of training and some food mass in their gut from increased intake, but their body simply upped its non-exercise activity thermogenesis to match the paltry 100 calorie “surplus” they implemented and burned off everything with no discernable gain.

Yeah, he's fast, but he's gotta eat about a billion calories to STILL not be The Juggernaut

 

This trainee needed to LEAN IN to that muscle gain phase and give it the 100% full effort that wins swim meets.  Am I saying they need to go full Bruce Randall and get up to 400lbs bodyweight?  No: but it sure worked for Bruce.  I’m saying they need to enter a muscle gaining phase with an intent to GAIN MUSCLE.  “Overeating” should be the goal.  Seeing that scale tick up should be rewarding!  If we’re gaining fat, that ALSO means we’re gaining muscle: we’re SUCCEEDING!  And since we’re dedicating 100% of our efforts to muscle gaining, it means, when it comes time to cut away the fat, we can focus on THAT with 100% of our efforts and REALLY reveal something pretty awesome in the end. 

 

And training is no different here.  No one wants to employ periodization, because trainees want to watch EVERY lane at the same time.  The idea of letting the bench press numbers take a quick dive while we build up our conditioning is abhorrent to many trainees: it’s like blasphemy to them!  The idea of giving up a favorite pet lift in order to spend time prioritizing a weakness is unacceptable.  Training can never be phasic: we have to do all the things all the time…and, in turn, we get good at nothing all at once.  You watch every lane, you end up last.  Hell, even swimming figures this out: you don’t try to do every stroke all at once.  They have a medley for that!  A time for freestyle, a time for breast stroke, and a time for butterfly.

And those who figure that out can do pretty good for themselves 

 

When the whistle blows, dive into the water, take off like a shot, and keep your eyes on your lane.  You’ll get where you want to go much faster, and may even find a medal around your neck when you get there.     

“FOR WHAT?”

I frequently write about the value of context, and today will be no exception, because after writing 1000 words once a week for nearly 12 years now, I’ve discovered that I basically just write on 4 basic themes and remix them over and over again.  So, essentially, I am the Taco Bell of physical transformation blogs, but just like Taco Bell, you know I’ll always be there when you have a craving and you’ll most likely hate yourself when you’re done.  And for a post about context, I’ve already completely lost the plot by talking about Taco Bell, so let me reign this back in: “for what?”  What do those two words signify?  They are the two words I use VERY frequently whenever I am asked a question on the realm of physical transformation: “for what?”  Why do I ask this question?  Because the question asker does not see fit to provide that information IN the question…most likely because the question asker themselves has not bothered to ask this question to themselves.  And until we ask “for what”, we will never be able to actually HAVE an answer to this question, and anyone who professes that they have the ability to do otherwise is just a huckster interested in fleecing you of your money…and the question asker, in a desire to avoid having to employ nuanced thinking, will GLADLY accept that answer, vs my asking for more.

This clumsy dialog was a warning sign we all missed

 

What do I mean about “for what?”  How about this: “Is the prowler twice a week enough conditioning in 5/3/1?”  Enough conditioning…for what?  “Am I lean enough to start bulking?”  Lean enough…for what?  And no: “to start bulking” is NOT the answer to that question.  “Is 1lb a week too fast for weight gain?”  Too fast…for what?  Is 3x a week lifting enough for hypertrophy?  Are 3 sets of GHRs enough for hamstrings?  Is 50g of fat enough?  Etc etc.  These are lazy questions: the hope for the question asker is that they can throw out some sort of conversation lure and some sucker will bite onto it and give them all the information that they need.  OR, often, it comes from a place of shame: we don’t want to admit what our REAL goal/intent is, so we leave it ambiguous in hopes of someone being able to fill in the blanks and leave what’s best left unsaid…unsaid.  In either case, this is a lack of ownership on the part of the question asker: you’re still ultimately responsible for the outcomes of your decision making and actions, even if you attempt to crowdsource that as a means to absolve you OF said responsibility. 

 

But when we actually take the time to ask ourselves “for what”, we learn a bit ABOUT ourselves in the process.  Enough conditioning…for what?  WHY am I doing conditioning?  Because I HAVE to?  That’s stupid, but if it IS the reason, then just do what the coach says and quit thinking about it.  That IS a valid approach.  But if we ARE going to be a bit more cerebral, let’s look into why we’re doing conditioning in the first place, what the goal is, and what the cost is.  Oh my goodness, yes: let’s look at the question about “enough” conditioning and consider the IMPACT that conditioning will have on the rest of the programming, and then let’s consider if our goal right now is the focus ON conditioning and let the other physical qualities slide/hold or if the conditioning is there just to meet a minimum threshold of staying in shape/recovering from training while we really push the strength and hypertrophy work.  And look at that: when we ask ourselves “for what” we actually learn the answer to our initial question: it just took a little bit of thinking.

The horror!

 

Nutrition questions go the same route.  Lean enough to bulk…for what?  What is the goal OF your bulk?  This question fundamentally stems from egocentrism: we presuppose that all individuals think exactly as we do and prioritize the same priorities we have.  And for so many young trainees that have grown up with social media, the goal is to be as lean as possible ALL the time because you’re always going to have your physique on display, and they want to be in a state so lean before they gain that they can minimize the appearance of fat on their physique and reduce time spent cutting (ultimately hoping to NEVER enter a cutting phase…which reminds me that I want to write a post about people who end up working MUCH harder in an attempt to not work so hard, but I digress).  And sure, there’s something to be said about the notion that being in a certain state of leanness will mean being more insulin sensitive and having a better response to training and nutrition as it relates to muscle building, but wanna know who didn’t consider that?  Bruce Randall.  And Hugh Cassidy.  And Eddie Hall.  And Glenn Ross.   And Paul Anderson.  And JC Hise.  And Pat Casey.  And Doug Hepburn.  Man, I can keep going, but you get the point: there is a LOT established history of individuals who, in the pursuit of the greatest most absolute maximal strength, completely and totally ate their faces off in order to get as big as physically possible, with zero regard to their starting leanness.  There is no predefined starting point of leanness required to bulk: you can do it WHENEVER you want, UNLESS you have a “for what” that creates parameters that we need to plan around when describing when the appropriate time to bulk is.  You need to establish your “for what” before you can ask the question.

 

 

Don’t force the question answerer to ask you “for what” because it’s wasting time for both of you.  Once you answer the “for what”, you’ll most likely have the answer to the original question.  Your method cannot exist in a vacuum: it will always operate within the context of your goal, and without a GOAL that is clearly established, you can’t possibly know what method to employ.  “If we don’t know where we are going, we can’t possibly know how to get there” is a sentiment I frequently express which somehow people consider to be a profound thought, but it’s just simple reality.  It’s not a metaphor of pithy witticism: it’s a literal truth.  If you get in your car and turn your GPS onto “nowhere”, there’s no direction you can drive.  As soon as we tell it to get to Taco Bell, we now have a destination, and can NOW come up with a method to get there.

 

I dig how this image is offensive to Mexico AND pizza

 

I’m gonna admit: I’m proud of myself for tying Taco Bell back into this post at the end.         

BOOT CAMP VS SELECTION

Apparently, Tactical Barbell has infected me, because I’m going to keep going military mode in these posts.  I intend to compare two instances of military training that, upon initial glance, may APPEAR to be similar, but once you get to understand them you realize that they’re very much on opposite ends of the spectrum and representative of our own journeys through physical transformation.  If you’ve ever watched a military movie/series OR, of course, if you have SERVED in any manner of military (thank you for your service, btw…assuming you’re an ally…), you’ve most likely witnessed scenes of Boot Camp/Basic Training and scenes of military special forces selection (Navy SEAL BUD/S, Ranger School, Recon Marines, Green Beret, etc).  Again, at initial glance, they appear similar: terrified recruits getting yelled at, enduring much physical turmoil and trouble, minimal sleep, uncomfortable eating situations, etc.  However, it’s worth appreciating how the INTENT behind these two environments is very much different and, in turn: so is the outcome.  Many of you out there in the world of physical transformation may find yourself in a selection process when, in reality, you need to get yourself to Boot Camp.  Let’s explore.

 

It's not like you have a choice really

 

“Boot Camp” (which I do want to want to clarify belongs EXCLUSIVELY to the United States Marine Corps, whereas all other branches have “Basic Training”, but I already digress) refers to the initial phase of military training wherein civilians are brought to a singular training facility and undergo the process of transformation from civilian to soldier (“Marine” technically, but stick with me).  It is a 3 month process, wherein recruits are stripped down to their most raw state and then completely and totally rebuilt into an effective fighting unit.  They are told and taught how to dress, how to cut their hair, how to eat, how to shower, how to walk, how to fight, how to talk, etc etc.  There is A right way to do everything, and learning, mastering and executing it is key to survival and, ultimately, transformation.  Because that’s the key here: this is a TRANSFORMATIVE process.  We take a civilian and transform them into a Marine/weapon.

 

 

Selection, meanwhile, clearly identifies its intent with its name: it is there to SELECT the recruits who are best fit to join the special forces unit.  Selection does not MAKE SEALS/Green Berets/Recon Marines/Delta Force/Ranger/etc: it FINDS them.  Much like Boot Camp, a whole busload of terrified looking individuals are dropped off at some hell on earth, screamed at, subjected to mind games and physically exhausted.  However, unlike Boot Camp, there is no intent to MAKE these recruits into something: the cadre are interested in DISCOVERING who among them has “what it takes” to be part of the team.  Whereas Boot Camp equips you with the skills to success, here, at selection, you needed to already show UP with those tools.  If you hoped to acquire them AT selection: you’re hosed.

Oh the puns!

 

From the outside observer, these environments APPEAR the same, but upon closer examination we realize how much they are opposites.  Similar approaches with radically different intents and outcomes.  This occurs in the world of physical transformation as well, which is why the observant trainee must ensure that WHILE they are observing they are also understanding the context OF the observation.  They may observe what they THINK is someone taking the steps necessary TO transform but, instead, they are simply in the process of “selection”, and attempting to emulate their approach will simply lead to them washing out and ringing the bell.

 

What do I mean here?  I’m talking about the fact that most trainees need to get in shape BEFORE they try to get in shape.  Most trainees are jumping STRAIGHT to selection when they haven’t even gone to boot camp yet!  They’re trying to become SEALS when they still civilians: not yet soldiers.  Think about what Boot Camp is all about: the BASICS (it’s why other services call it “Basic Training”, which I really should have just done from the start of this blog post, but I’m in too deep now).  Now reflect on how many trainees don’t even have “the basics” due to a life of physical neglect.  We actually see this IN the military for real, so the parallels are now life imitating art: new fresh faced recruits will show up after a lifetime of literally NO physical activity whatsoever.  No sports, no playing outside with their friends, no “play” whatsoever, to say nothing of simple regular physical exercise.  They have bodies that no human should have: undermuscled to the point of appearing scrawny yet overfat to the point of resembling a melted candle when they have their shirt off.  The instructors at Boot Camp have their work cut out for them, as does the new trainee in the realm of physical transformation who seeks to make a change.

This is about right

 

Is this trainee READY for basic barbell work?  Hell no!  They’re most likely not even ready for bodyweight work.  They lack basic body awareness, coordination, mobility, flexibility and general strength, along with any sort of conditioning base, meaning they’ll quickly get exhausted in simply attempting to LEARN how to build any of these things.  These folks are already stripped raw and ready to be rebuilt, which is one of the benefits of being at rock bottom: the only place to go is UP!  Just like Boot Camp, we’re about to learn how to do EVERYTHING: now is NOT the time to specialize.  Here was are in the land of GPP: trying to build that wide and broad base of physical abilities so that, if, somehow, we actually make it TO selection, we have the skills and capabilities necessary to BE selected.

 

And this is just from the physical fitness side of things: don’t think you get off easy with nutrition either.  I observe this with trainees all the time: they’re attempting to employ a “selection” diet when they haven’t even gone to diet boot camp.  “Should I bulk or should I cut?”   Dude: you should eat REAL FOOD first.  Because you’ve been living off of hyperprocessed garbage for so long that your metabolic system is broken and nothing is responding the way it’s supposed to.  You’ve been slamming your insulin so hard for so long that your glucagon has effectively waved the white flag and you’ve become “insulin resistant” and on the verge of type II diabetes.  “Calories in/calories out, If It Fits Your Macros right?!”  No!  That is “selection” nutrition.  You have to EARN the right to eat that way by getting through nutritional boot camp first!

And once again, life imitates art here with some steaks for Marines

 

A body that is damaged is going to prioritize healing over everything else.  A body that is damaged is going to prioritize STORING fat over anything else: because fat is FAR more crucial to survival than muscle is, and it’s not nearly as metabolically expensive to produce or maintain.  And a body that is damaged is simply not going to RESPOND to food the same way as a healthy body.  “Calories in/calories out” may determine WEIGHT gain and loss, sure, but if you wanna start talking body COMPOSITION, we suddenly find that other variables matter.  Same with your magical macros.  1g of protein per pound of bodyweight might seem good for gaining…unless your testosterone is clocking in at double digits for a male.  Suddenly, all these calories and all this protein just isn’t have the same effect.  Post workout carbs are probably really cool…unless you’ve given yourself type II diabetes from a lifetime of living off of high calorie processed junk, in which case now we’re monitoring that carb intake and chasing after it with a syringe.  Before you start worrying about the perfect ratio of your macros, see if you can go 7 days WITHOUT eating something that comes out of a box.  See if you can actually survive a whole foods diet.  I don’t care if it’s carnivore or vegan or keto or paleo or Mediterranean or pescatarian or Atkins or Zone etc etc: just see if you can actually eat real HUMAN food for 7 full days.  ONCE you can start doing that, and once you can REPEAT that feat when it ISN’T a dare, THEN we can start talking about nutritional selection programs.

 

Once we graduate Boot Camp, THEN we can start considering selection.  We can pursue those programs like Super Squats, Deep Water, Mass Made Simple, Building the Monolith, BBB Beefcake, Feast/Famine/Ferocity, etc, which, yes, I HAVE referred to as “transformative”, but ultimately we needed to show up READY to transform with all the physical skills and tools and abilities before we could let the programs “select” us FOR transformation.  Because just like military selection, if you show up unready for Super Squats, it’s not going to LET you get ready in the middle of the program: it’s going to wash you out.  Hell, once again, this really happens in the world of physical transformation: “Bulgarian training” wasn’t a protocol that PRODUCED champions but SELECTED them: those that could SURVIVE that style of training were the kind of athletes that were going to BECOME champions because they had “the right stuff”.  Unready trainees that take it on get “washed out” with injury and other maladies.  And once you’ve mastered cooking and eating on a regular schedule and got your body in a generally healthy, THEN we can start trying to manipulate the variable to impact our body composition.  Otherwise, you’ll “wash out” of your bulk and just get fatter, or wash out of your cut and just get skinny-fatter.

Here we see both outcomes

 

Don’t waste the cadre’s time: get yourself through Boot Camp FIRST and THEN show up for selection.

"OPERATION CONAN" SITREP: CURRENT UPDATE ON MY TIME WITH TACTICAL BARBELL MASS PROTOCOL

Already full apologies for those of you that hate when I go “in character” with my training and lifestyle, but with this being my foray into “Tactical Barbell” I’ve totally embraced “TactiCOOL” and have been militarizing everything with this training protocol.  A few months back, I reviewed the Tactical Barbell Mass Protocol book and basically said it was THE book I wish I had started with and I regretted everyday I hadn’t read it up until that point.  Needless to say, I soon after started following one of the programs listed in the protocol: Grey Man.  Along with that, I’ve been VERY diligent about complying with the instructions laid out by K. Black…with the exception of one area: nutrition.  Mr. Black is very much a fan of carbohydrates to drive up bodyweight, and, in the discussion of low carb approaches to mass gaining, though not explicitly forbidding it, he notes that he does not recommend such an approach.  I, however, have decided to completely ignore that advice and, instead, pursue weight gain while undertaking a carnivore style diet, which is what “Operation Conan” became: Tactical Barbell Mass Protocol training with carnivore nutrition, a blending of soldiering and barbarism.  It’s been 7 weeks so far, and I want to share my thoughts and experiences as they currently are, with room to continue to update.

Just pointing out that "TactiCOOL Conan" IS a thing

 

WHY DID I PICK GREY MAN?

 

Because sometimes grey is the only color you need

The go to recommendation in Mass Protocol is General Mass, which is about as bare bones as it gets.  3 days a week you squat, do a weighted pull up, and bench press, and then on a 4th day you train the deadlift.  I am more than certain this approach would be awesome for many trainees.  However, coming into Tactical Barbell I was coming off my most recent strongman competition, wherein the training leading up to it had me really junk up a nerve in my right hip, and whenever I tried to squat heavy it would force me to regress even further into pain.  Grey Man has the trainee alternate between squats on 1 day and deadlifts on another, still training 3 days a week (so in 2 weeks, you squat 3 times and deadlift 3 times).  Deadlifts were NOT bothering my hip in a similar manner, and this meant I actually had time to recover between squat workouts and heal up.  Additionally, Grey Man rotates between the bench and the overhead press, and as someone with a few strongman ambitions left, I wanted to continue to train my overhead press.  Beyond all this, Grey Man is legit 3x a week, vs that sneaky 4th day of General Mass, and I really wanted to keep the lifting at 3x a week, and the supplemental movements allowed in Grey Man had it so I felt like I was covering all my bases programming-wise. 

 

There are plenty of good programs in Mass Protocol.  Grey Man isn’t the best: it was just the best for me.

 

MY SUPPLEMENTAL WORK

 

No, not this kind

As previously mentioned, Grey Man allows the trainee to pick up to 3 exercises to form a “supplemental cluster” to train alongside the two main lifts of the day (in my case: squat and press, or bench and deadlift).  On the day that I squatted and pressed, I picked the incline DB bench press, neutral grip chin (weighted on the final 2 weeks, bodyweight on the first) and glute ham raises (bodyweight only).  On my deadlift and bench day, I did lever belt squats, weighted dips and axle curls.  I trained each cluster in a giant set format: going from 1 exercise to the other to the other before resting a minute and starting again.  I prefer this approach, as it’s faster, and tends to generate a decent metabolic hit. 

 

A quick overview of the logic in my exercise choices: since I train in a home gym with a small training footprint, I can’t do lever belt squats and incline DB bench comfortably (I’d have to move equipment between exercises, making giant sets less viable), so those two don’t occur on the same day.  On the day I train deadlifts, I want something quad focused in my supplemental work, whereas on the day I train squats I want something posterior chain focused.  My back is getting heavy training on the deadlift day, so I don’t need to hammer it again with chins, and can instead focus on arms, and I’m focusing on arms/biceps because ever since tearing my left bicep I’ve felt like it’s worth keeping them strong.  I also figure that it will help contribute toward my chinning ability.  It’s honestly a bit like a Sudoku puzzle.

 

 

MY CONDITIONING

 

Not this...at least, not yet

I kept this incredibly vanilla and listened to K. Black’s recommendation: twice a week, I’d engage in a 60 minute walk on the treadmill at an incline.  4.0 was my default incline, and 3.5 was my default walking pace, but I’d play around with both of those depending on the day and my level of excitement.  Ultimately, these were recovery workouts, ESPECIALLY after the squat workouts.  The squat workouts aren’t particularly brutal for many, but with my junked up hip and a torn meniscus in both knees, training first thing in the morning, I’d always finish those workouts pretty stiff, and these walking workouts in between (along with some reverse hypers and hanging from a bar) would always have me feeling ready to roll come the next workout.  They really fell into Dan John’s recovery workouts that he talks about in “Mass Made Simple”.

 

On weekends, I’d engage in as much leisure walking as possible, simply because I feel like it’s the best physical activity we can possibly engage in, especially if done outside in the sun.  On my birthday, I racked up 29.6k steps, just doing what I found fun.  Also, 3x a week, I’d attend an evening Tang Soo Do class, which, now that the whole family has moved up to the advanced class, IS a bit of a workout in it’s own right, and I had a few nights where I came home having broken a good sweat in the Dojang, but I don’t feel as though these detracted from my recovery…minus the time I got kicked in the knee in a sparring match, woke up the next morning unable to extend my leg, and had to postpone training to the afternoon.

 

There was only 1 time I deviated from the plan, and that was after getting a wild hair and deciding I wanted to see how well I’d do on my “5 minutes of burpee chins” protocol.  After 6 weeks of just walking on a treadmill, I came within 1 rep of my PR, getting 55 burpee chins in 5 minutes.  I felt like that was a good sign of the conditioning holding up.

 

PROGRESSION

 

Gotta appreciate a leveling system where you lose your hair AND your pants as you get stronger

Another thing I dug about Grey Man was how I could approach the progression on it.  K. Black lays out “4-5 sets” for the main work.  I took this to mean, do 1 cycle with 4 sets, the next cycle, do 5 sets, THEN up the maxes, start over at 4 sets, repeat.  I like this, because it allows me to progress for a long time on the same maxes and really “own the weight”, vs racing to a stall.  For the supplemental clusters, no such option exists, so I would just up the weights on the maxes each cycle (5lbs for upper body lifts, 10lbs for lower body lifts).

 

HOW I DEVIATED

What?  Me?  A deviant?!

 

Surprisingly: not by much.  Unlike many of my other program reviews, where I twist programs into horrible mutations of their former selves, I remained VERY compliant with Tactical Barbell, which honestly may just speak to the fact that I genuinely found the right program for me at the right time that I needed it.  I DID attempt to employ a mat pull ROM progression day on weekends, using a barbell, since I’ve experienced success with that protocol in the past, but that honestly became a pretty hit or miss approach, as many weekends my training time was compromised and, in other cases, my hip pain was flaring up and I decided against actions that would make it worse.  In regards to that schedule, there were 2 weeks within the past 7 where I was only able to get in 2 lifting workouts in a week vs 3, so we can call that a deviation. 

 

Otherwise, I added ab work to the end of every workout (3x10 standing ab wheels), which K. Black DOES say you can do, and, on bench days where I had extra time, some lateral raises (which CAN fall into the realm of shoulder health exercises).  Also, all of my “deadlifts” on the program are done with the low handles on a trap bar vs a traditional barbell.  I’ve a VERY good barbell deadlifter, and I’m not very good with the trap bar, so I felt like it was worthwhile to spend time focusing on that (reference my previous writings on how training what you’re bad at is good for hypertrophy).  This was another reason I wanted to include that weekly mat pull workout: to maintain skill with barbell deadlifting…but it’s not the biggest deal.

 

And this isn’t a deviation, since it’s allowed, but it’s worth noting that, along with Giant Setting the Supplemental Clusters, I ran the main work in a superset style.  In this case, I would rest 1 minute between exercises, but still alternate them (Squat, rest 1 minute, press, rest 1 minute, squat, etc).  Between this and the giant sets, training never lasted over an hour, and often I’d complete the required work in under 40 minutes, taking the extra time to train my abs.  And I got in a little sneaky grip work by hanging from a bar after my press set before my squat set, but this was less for grip and more for spinal decompression.  Which, on that note, I DID also include reverse hypers into my training, but as a warm-up exercise, rather than an actual exercise.  I found they were quite restorative to my hip.

 

 

NUTRITION: INTERMITTENT FEASTING

Seems legit

 

Now here is where things go totally off the rail and brings the “Conan” into Operation Conan.   It’s no secret I’ve taken on a carnivore approach to nutrition (and my frequently declining readership numbers have alerted me that this is an unpopular choice, but I’ve always been myself since the start of this blog, so here we are) and I had no intention of interrupting that for this program.  K. Black effectively says “good luck” if you try to do a low carb approach to gaining, so I took that as a blessing and went for it.

 

However, an even more interesting pivot occurred around week 4 of the protocol, where I decided to experiment with another unique approach to nutrition: protein sparing modified intermittent feasting.  Yes, that’s a mouthful, but let me explain.

 

One of the big reasons I took on a mass gaining protocol in general was that I was coming out of summer, wherein I had leaned out to the point of feeling kinda stringy, and there was an upcoming holiday season in front of me, starting with a late Oct birthday, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas, and after Christmas, we go on a Disney Cruise, wherein I intend to continue eating my face off.  It was THE most ideal time to start leaning into heavy eating and feasting.

 

Well, as I got closer to my Birthday, and after spending some time traveling and living off of restaurant cuisine (still sticking with meats, but didn’t have the quality control I wanted), I felt like “drying out” a little.  Before this, I was eating 2 solid meals a day: a lunch and a dinner.  The rest of my nutrition came by way of Metabolic Drive protein powder (I don’t say “shakes”, because I actually eat them, by mixing in a little bit of beef gelatin and hot water to create a sticky pudding substance).  Well, I decided to replace that middle meal with more Metabolic Drive and ONLY have 1 meal a day at the end of the day, effectively re-implementing the Velocity Diet/Apex Predator diet.  In the week following travel, I was able to keep that end of day meal a little lighter to re-establish my baseline, and from there I REALLY started leaning into the “feasting” portion of intermittent feasting.  Since I was only eating once a day, I got to eat a TON at these meals.  And I found out I REALLY dug that style of eating.  With 2 meals a day, I was eating a reasonable amount per meal, whereas now I could just absolutely gorge myself and eat until I was satisfied both from a satiety level AND a hedonistic level.  It was, actual, legit feasting, and it happened daily.

 SAMPLE MEALS

Ok, that's probably enough food porn, but check out the variety I'm getting despite the "limitations"

 SCHEDULE

A simple breakdown of my weekdays would be

 

* 0400: wake up, train

 

* 0615: 2 scoops of Metabolic Drive with 1 tsp of gelatin

 

* 0930: Same as 0615

 

* 1230: Same as 0615

 

* 1730ish: FEAST

 

* 2030: Same as 0615

 

* Sometime in the middle of the night: a 1 scoop Metabolic Drive shake in water

 

 

On weekends, I would do 2 solid meals a day: a breakfast and a dinner.  Both of these tended to be on the larger side, and I’d still have the evening Metabolic Drive serving and the middle of the night serving.  There was no training on weekends: I’d sleep in, and just engage in regular physical activity/walking.

 

 

I will note that I do have ONE meal a week wherein I break completely from carnivore, and this meal tends to have a gracious amount of carbs.  Previously, I would use this as an opportunity for a “cheat meal”, but the truth is, I legit love eating meat so much that there’s nothing out there in the realm of junk food that compels me to “cheat”.  I’d have to actually force myself to eat that.  However, if my wife makes something at home, I’ll definitely eat it, because I enjoy the family bonding of the shared meal, and we use some very quality ingredients in the stuff we make, compared to what you get when you eat out.  Often, these meals are pasta or casseroles, and I’ll have some homemade cookies and some raw local honey to top it off.  This creates a cyclical ketogenic approach, which is, once again, very much in line with “Apex Predator”.  I imagine many people are going to read this and go “SEE!  You NEED carbs to gain weight!”, to which my rebuttal is, if the ONLY carbs you need to gain weight is 1 meal a week, then we REALLY don’t “need” THAT many carbs to gain weight.

 

 

RESULTS SO FAR

 

Can't argue with results

I have recorded every single workout and uploaded it to youtube if you want to watch the live progression.  

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfcuGAffLlSc-iaZX2bPBhdDZaqT4aMEw

But I’ve been able to progress on all of my lifts per the progression scheme I’ve previously outlined, and haven’t missed any reps.

 

I’ve also grown in bodyweight, despite K. Black’s opinion on a low carb approach.  I’ve done my best to weigh myself every Monday morning, but sometimes it just plain slips my mind (I’m not one to weigh myself usually), so I only currently have data between weeks 1-6, but in that time I went from 79.1 kg/174lbs to 81.9/180lb.  

 

And then, of course, the things that really matter: my wife says I look bigger, I’m filling out t-shirts more, but my lifting belt still fits the same and my abs are still visible.  I feel like the combination of the walking for conditioning, being zone II cardio that relies on fat as a fuel source, alongside the hard but brief training and my approach to nutrition have all been instrumental in allowing me to feast hard and stay lean through the process of gaining (feel free to watch the training videos for a reference point to level of leanness I’m maintaining while eating my face off each evening).

 

 

THE FUTURE

The more things change, the more they stay the same

 

I legit see no reason to stop training this way.  This is honestly the most content I’ve been with a training protocol in a LONG time, and I STILL have the “specialization” phase to do!  There may be a time that I take on more of the traditional Tactical Barbell work to emphasize strength and conditioning, or get re-bit by the Deep Water bug, but I feel like this is going to be my baseline approach for the foreseeable future.  If nothing else, I plan to at least ride this out until my cruise around the new year, which I will treat as a “bridge week” and roll from there.