OPERATION CONAN SITREP 2: TACTICAL BARBELL MASS PROTOCOL 12 WEEK CHECK IN

**INTRO**

This captures so much of the awesome in just one shot

 

My love affair with the Tactical Barbell Mass Protocol continues, and I don’t foresee any stopping in the near future.  In fact, I’ve already planned out my training until my next strongman competition on 12 Apr, and it’s all Tactical Barbell, and even after that I genuinely don’t see any reason I would pivot (although, fair warning, I’ve been listening to a lot of Matt Wenning recently, and the idea of Wenning Warm Ups and conjugate is sounding cool, so who knows).  And with that understanding, I figured it was appropriate to do another “check in” rather than a program review, because I’m not done yet, but I’m approaching the conclusion of the 12th week of running the Mass Protocol, and given that so many of my program reviews were on 6 week programs, writing at the 12 week point seems fitting.

 

**WHERE I AM RIGHT NOW**

Honestly a bit dramatic

 

If you recall from my previous check-in, the Mass Protocol contains a base building section, which transitions into a general mass section, and then into a specificity section.  I skipped the base building (at my own peril) as I felt I was in a good enough place for that before starting, and ran the general mass protocol of “Grey Man” for 3 cycles (9 weeks).  From there, I made the transition to the specificity programs, selecting Specificity Bravo (for reasons I will detail momentarily).  Traditionally, one would do a bridge week between the programs here as a transition, but I opted not to PURELY due to scheduling: I have a cruise (like, buffet on a boat kind) coming up between Christmas and New Years that will time out PERFECTLY with me completing 2 3 week Specificity cycles at this point, which will serve as an EXCELLENT bridge week before I return home and start back into training/eventual strongman prep.

 

With this being the 12th week, it means I am finishing my first cycle of Specificity Bravo and prepping to start my second one.

 

**FROM GENERAL TO SPECIFICITY: WHY I WENT FROM GREY MAN TO SPECIFICITY BRAVO**

The B game is always the better choice

In full disclosure, my original plan WAS to do Specificity Alpha rather than Bravo.  The former is similar in structure to the ever popular PHUL program (which I’ve never run myself, but am familiar with) it that it’s 4 days of lifting with 2 days dedicated to lower reps with higher weight (strength days) and 2 days dedicated to higher reps and moderate weights (hypertrophy days).  Bravo, meanwhile, is pure hypertrophy days, still 4 days a week, with a A/B/A/B alternating approach, with the percentages ticking up each workout.  For the sake of preserving the content of the book, I won’t go into further detail, but you see the difference: once had all hypertrophy days, one had a mix.

 

Alpha appealed to me, HOWEVER, on the final week of 3 cycles of Grey Man, I found myself unable to complete a single trap bar pull at the prescribed weight, let alone a work set.  My lower back was incredibly overtaxed, and in dire need of fatigue dissipation.  I’ll address WHY I was experiencing that fatigue later, but to assuage your fears: it was not a fault of Grey Man/Tactical Barbell programming.  I COULD have accomplished fatigue dissipation with a bridge week, but as I noted earlier: my schedule didn’t support that.  I realized my other option was to select Bravo instead and let the time with the lighter weights give me some time to let that fatigue dissipate. 

 

However, the more I looked into it, there was one other thing I really appreciated about transitioning from Grey Man to Bravo: I could use ALL the same exercises.  When it comes to the specificity phase, you’re supposed to select a certain amount of movements to train depending on the protocol, with the strength cluster of Alpha being pretty rigid on the squat, bench press, weighted pull up and deadlift, and the hypertrophy cluster being in the 4-8 range of TOTAL movements.  Bravo, being absent of the demand for a strength cluster, allots for 6-12 movements to be selected.  If you recall from Grey Man, there are a total of 4 strength movements each day (2 trained on day A, 2 on day B) and 6 (max) supplemental cluster movements (3 on day A, 3 on day B).  This results in a total of 10 movements…which meant, when it came time to design my hypertrophy clusters for Bravo, I could just select all 10 movements from Grey Man and call it good.  Not only did this require no thinking/tinkering on my part, but it ALSO meant that whatever I did on Bravo was going to have direct and immediate carryover for whenever I transitioned back to Grey Man.

 

**HOW I STRUCTURED THE TRAINING**

Hah!  As if I have monkey/typewriter funding

 

With Grey Man, my day A was Squat, Axle Strict Press (overhead), Incline DB bench, chins and Glute Ham Raises.  My day B was Low handle trap bar lift, axle bench press, dips, lever belt squat and axle curls.  Because Bravo trains 4x a week, there was no way to allow for a minimum full day of rest between days while staying within the 7 day structure of the cycle, which meant the same muscles could NOT be trained on Day A and B (according to the rules of the program).  To make this happen, I effectively created an “anterior chain/posterior chain” split, or a full body push/pull split.  My day A for Bravo was Squat, Lever Belt Squat, Axle Strict Press, Axle Bench Press, Incline DB Bench, and Dips.  This left a Day B that was Trap Bar Pulls, Chins, Curls and GHRs…which WAS 10 total moves, but somewhat imbalanced between the two days.  I contemplated removing flat bench from day A, as it felt redundant with all the other pressing on that day, but after running day A the first time as written and seeing how outstanding awesome it was, I settled on throwing in reverse hypers on Day B.  I had been doing them on my non-lifting days when running Grey Man, so now they were legitimately established into the protocol.

 

Because you’re allowed 1-2 minutes of rest between sets, and because the workouts repeat twice in the week but with higher percentages on the second workout, I tried as hard as possible to stick with strict 1 minute rests for the first two workouts of the week.  This way, I had some leeway to creep into that 2 minute mark later in the week when the weights were heavier.  If I took max rests at the start, I had nowhere to “hide” on those second workouts. 

 

Similarly, because the plan called for 4-5 sets, I stuck with 4 sets for this first cycle.  It gave me the option to keep the weight the same and do 5 sets on the next cycle, or up the weight and stick with 4 sets.

 

**CONDITIONING**

Not as much of this as you would think

 

Conditioning during Specificity phases is a departure from general mass.  Whereas I was going 1 hour of walking twice a week, alongside getting in much leisure walking, specificity calls for 1-2 high intensity sessions per week.  These sessions do not exceed 20 minutes, and are focused on getting the heart rate high and then letting it return before starting the whole process again: interval training.  I took to doing hill sprints once a week and then “Reset 20s” on my Bas Rutten Body Action System (basically a free standing heavy bag) once a week.  The sprints were doing on Wed, between lifting workouts (trained on Mon/Tue/Thurs/Fri), while reset 20s were on weekends (typically Sundays).  I still engaged in leisure walking as often as I could, not for the sake of the program, but because it’s one of my favorite physical activities to do and it was imposing no recovery demands on me.

 

I enjoyed the higher intensity work as a departure from the low intensity stuff.  The workouts were short and I could squeeze them in a bit easier on my schedule.  It took a lot of self control to NOT try to push them harder/longer, but I’m trying REALLY hard to comply with the instructions and give this an honest approach.

 

**WHAT WAS UP WITH MY LOWER BACK?**

 

I don't understand why this is so hard to understand

I’d like to be brief here, but this check in is already getting out of hand.  Prior to even starting Tactical Barbell, my body was wrecked as a result of prepping for my most recent strongman competition, which I detailed in my last write up.  Biggest issue I was dealing with was some intense hip pain, which would, in turn, force me to squat VERY slowly, which ended up loading up my lower back quite a bit. I found a solution in the form of reverse hypers, HOWEVER, like many tragic stories, eventually the cure became the poison, and I was doing reverse hypers too often with too much load.  Along with this, when I first began eating carnivore back in Mar of 2023, I completely changed my squat form, going from low bar, belted, moderate stance width powerlifting legal depth to VERY high bar, no belt, close stance, rock bottom squats.  I did this because I was going to be losing weight, and I didn’t want to see my numbers on the squat fall, so I decided to use an entirely new style of squat so I could actually progress on that WHILE weight dropped.  However, this style of squat TOTALLY doesn’t suit my body, with a short torso and long legs, and I would end up loading up my lower back quite a bit to maintain form WHICH, without a belt, just compounded things.  There were a few other factors at play as well, but ultimately I was just slamming my lower back with too much stimulus and never giving it time to recover.

 

So what I did during Specificity Bravo was bring back the belt in limited dosages.  Since workouts repeat in a week while percentages increase, I would do the first week’s workout WITHOUT a belt, and the second week’s workout WITH a belt.  This gave me a chance to still groove beltless work and get whatever benefits are associated with that, while also allowing me to belt up and reduce lower back fatigue on the heavier workouts, right before my 2 day break on the weekend.  I also reduced the weight I was using on my reverse hyper warm-ups, and went from training the reverse hyper 7x a week to 4-5x.  One other change I made was, instead of using the ab wheel after every workout (more on that in a bit), alternated between ab wheel and hanging leg raise every other training day.  Switching up the stimulus seemed to go a long way.

 

**WHERE I DEVIATED**

I try to keep mine cheeky and fun

 

Minimally.  I am really trying to give this program a fair shake.  I included ab and rear delt training on every lifting day (ab wheel/hanging leg raise and band pull aparts), and I entertained the idea of using the prowler vs doing sprinting, but so far I’ve stuck with the recommendations.  I do train martial arts 3x a week, and I engage in as much leisure walking as I can, but that’s about it as far as the training does.

 

As for the nutrition…

 

**THE NUTRITION**

THIS is best in life

 

I am still sticking with the protocol I was using the last time I wrote about this: protein sparing modified fast on weekdays, leading up to one big meal in the evening.  On weekends, I eat two meals: a breakfast in the morning and an evening meal.  When I eat, its carnivore.  I’m eating this way because it’s been my favorite way to eat.  I love feasting, and I don’t care about eating frequently.

 

**RESULTS**

Pretty much like this, without having to send in box top receipts

 

In total, I’ve been following Mass Protocol for 12 weeks, and as of the start of the 12th week I’m up 9lbs, having started at 79.1kg and weighing in at 83.2kg.  I apologize for mixing pounds and kilos, but my bathroom scale is stuck in kilos for some reason.  And again: I have gained this weight WITHOUT macro or calorie counting, on a VERY low carb diet, with one big meal a day on weekdays.  Pretty much eating the wrongest way possible.

 

Along with that, I’m absolutely getting stronger.  When I first started Mass Protocol, I did 4x8x285 on the squat as part of a superset with 4x8 sets of axle strict press.  After the set of squats, I’d rest 1 minute before starting the press, and then I’d rest 1 minute from the press to start the next set of squats.  So I was getting well over 2 minutes of rest between sets, and by the end of those 4 sets, I legit thought I would have to quit lifting, as I was in so much pain and so exhausted.  On the start of the first workout of the third week of Specificity Bravo (12 weeks total on Tactical Barbell), I did 4x8x285 with 1 minute strict rests between sets with MUCH faster squats and rapidly transitioned to 4 sets of belt squats with the same rest periods.  My pressing strength continues to climb as well. 

 

Suffice to say: I’m a fan of this program, and excited to continue running it through April.