YOU ALREADY HAVE THE TOOLS

 

A phrase taught to me by one of my mentors was “learned helplessness”, which effectively describes a phenomenon wherein a group of people, fully capable of solving their own problems with resources already available to them, find themselves in a state where they feel powerless to proceed.  They have, ultimately, learned how to shoot down their own approaches before they have a chance to succeed and, unless hand-held and stepped through the problem solving process, believe themselves to be powerless to being the masters of their own fate.  This is a situation that I frequently observe among trainees in the realm of physical transformation: this self-fulfilling prophecy that they lack the skills, tools and resources to be able to overcome whatever obstacles they face on their quest for transformation.  What I hope to be able to establish here is that we all already possess all the tools we need in order to achieve success: we may simply need to go about applying them in unconventional manners in order to obtain the results we seek.  Much like how one may find themselves screwing in screws with a butterknife because their screwdriver is MIA, or how they leave up their Nightmare Before Christmas Halloween decorations because they realize they can also double as Christmas Decorations (and if it’s Jack and Sally, you can leave them up through Valentine’s Day too!), or how Wendy’s figured out that it can make chili by taking unsold burger patties and letting them stew for a day, sometimes all it takes is a little creativity in order for us to effectively utilize the tools we ALREADY have in order to solve what appear to be “new” problems.  Allow me to demonstrate.

Hopefully with fewer mistakes

 

One of the earliest barriers to entry in the realm of physical transformation is, quite literally, the barrier to entry: the actual entering of the gym itself.  This is primarily because new trainees often find themselves intimidated at the prospect of physically entering the gym and being among a group of people that are advanced in the ways of physical transformation.  People that are bigger, stronger, leaner, fitter, and ultimately far more comfortable in the training environment are off-putting and intimidating to the new, soft trainee standing there in their Walmart mesh training shorts and bright white New Balance sneakers looking up “how to” lat pulldown videos on youtube.  Often, trainees want to train BEFORE they train: aiming to actually get in shape and comfortable with lifting weights BEFORE they actually join a gym, so that they can “be ready” to join a gym.

 

But folks, we already HAVE the skillset to overcome this anxiety.  I imagine the vast majority of my readers have received SOME manner of formal education (but I do allow for the possibility that some of you were raised by wolves and learned how to read through the help of missionaries, so good on you).  Think about the process of attending a school: when you show up, you are, quite literally, the STUPIDEST person there, SORROUNDED by people that are much smarter than you, because they’ve been going to that school for longer than you have.  You are completely out of your element, the lowest on the totem pole, starting from zero.  How did you overcome the anxiety of this situation?  What coping strategies did you employ?  Would that same strategy not work here, in the gym, under the same circumstance?  All these people that are fitter than you are no different than all those upperclassmen from before: they’re simply people that have been attending for longer than you have.  No one is a superhuman, no one was born that way.  SURE, there are some genetic outliers that had things come more NATURALLY to them, in much the same way that some folks are simply more intelligent than others, but in general: life grades on attendance, and so far yours is minimal.  Rack up a solid streak of no absences and you’ll be in a good way.  As Hank Hill said about Bobby “My boy here might not be the best test taker, but he’s got near perfect attendance”.

Plus he's got nutrition locked DOWN!

 

Note that I’m not saying WHAT that specific strategy is…because I genuinely don’t know how YOU overcame that.  I just know that, somehow, most of us did.  Very few of us showed up to day 1 of Kindergarten, completely melted down and got locked in a psych ward until we turned 18 (and those that did most likely aren’t reading a blog about physical transformation written weekly by a lunatic).  Or, for those of us that got an undergrad degree, show up on campus the first day, observe PhD students, and decided to just go quit and become tattoo artists instead.  And same with those of you that have every played some sort of organized sport (possibly as part of a team OF the very school we’re discussing): you showed up to practice on day 1, not knowing how to do anything, surrounded by people that were better than you, but somehow managed to keep attending and get better.  For me, it was the sheer enthusiasm of the prospect of self-improvement that compelled me forward: how awesome that I’m going to get to learn and do new things!  How awesome that I’m going to become better each and every day!  If that wasn’t what helped you succeed, just think about what you DID do to get there…and do that.

 

I find a similar situation occurs when it comes to nutritional compliance.  First, a discussion on language, because we talk about “cheat meals” or “cheat days”, in reference to “cheating on our diet”.  So here’s the thing: when we cheat in sports or a game, we refer to that to mean “breaking the rules to gain an advantage”.  When one cheats on their diet, they break the “rules” of the diet, but gain no advantage: they actually set themselves BACK.  They regress.  It’s more like cheating and getting CAUGHT: you get penalized.  So, instead, we must understand that a dietary “cheat” is more to be understood in the same manner as cheating in a relationship: it’s a violation of the sanctity of the bounds of the relationship.  It’s unfaithfulness.  One is not remaining faithful to the bounds of their way of eating.

I am SO proud of myself for thinking of this image to tie that whole paragraph together

 

So, in THAT regard, let’s dig deeper there and talk about skillset.  Now, here, I AM being presumptuous of my readers, but I am hoping that many of you have had some manner of long term relationship with another human wherein there was an understanding of faithfulness shared between you.  It doesn’t have to be marriage, or even anything named, but simply an understanding.  Within this relationship, HOW did you manage to “endure” the temptations out there to cheat?  All the other beautiful people that exist in the world, all the other people that you could share a bond with, all the other people that you could have this similar relationship with, what strategies did you employ to SOMEHOW manage to remain faithful in spite of it all?

 

Can we not employ that exact same strategy when it comes to nutritional faithfulness?  Does that sound whacky?  Then maybe you’ve had some poor relationships, either with people or with food.  Think about it: if you have to “white-knuckle” your relationship (with food OR with a person), you KNOW it’s not going to last.  We’ve all seen OR been part of those relationships that are hanging on by a thread that EVERYONE else knows aren’t going to last, where it almost seems like an endurance race of spite between the two entities to see who is going to crack first.  In such an instance, cheating isn’t cheating: it’s an escape hatch.  It’s a way to get OUT.  The only REAL issue with cheating here is that it demonstrates a lack of maturity: an unwillingness to confront the REAL problem and to resolve it by officially terminating the relationship.  Instead, cheating is just seeking MOMENTS of escape before returning back to the failed relationship.

For anyone else, this is a cheat meal.  For Joey, this is remaining faithful.

 

In turn, we discover that the skillset for nutritional compliance is no different from the skillset for relationship compliance: picking the right partner.  Ultimately, we need a compatible relationship: we need to have a relationship with someone/something that we actually RESONATE with on a deep enough level that the prospect of cheating is undesirable, NOT because of the consequences of cheating (ala cheating in a game) but because the relationship itself is so rewarding that we gain NO advantage FROM cheating.  If you’ve ever been in a good human relationship, you understand the positive feeling associated with having another person in your life that is a joy to be with, who makes you better by nature of simply being with you, who evens out your odds and brings you balance as a person, such that your mind exists in a harmonious state wherein the notion of cheating never even enters your thoughtspace.  Much like those who fail diets speak of “food noise”, you have no “cheat noise” when you are in a GOOD relationship: it simply isn’t on your mind.  How we eat needs to model such a relationship: it needs to be an approach that is so infinitely sustainable and natural that we do not exist in a constant anxiety ridden state worried about “going off path” or living in a state of consistent FOMO and regret from restriction.  And much like how not everyday of a human relationship is sunshine and puppies, not every meal of a good way of eating is going to be the best food we’ve ever had in our lives, but it SHOULD be an approach wherein we exist with such inherent contentment that we feel no temptation TO cheat.  The successful strategy for relationship compliance isn’t some sort of psychological trick or biohack to prevent us from being hungry (looking at you GLP-1 agonist): it’s to have a relationship that is so right for who we are that we have no desire TO cheat.

 

And hey, let’s just keep this analogy going, because honestly this could be it’s own entire blog-post but I know that the ones that are just about nutrition tend to go over poorly.  But it’s true that we CAN sometimes intentionally enter into relationships that we KNOW aren’t going to work out for us.  On the human side of things, we refer to these as “flings”, or they could also be hook-ups or one-night-stands, but whatever we’re calling them, these are very much transactional/functional relationships where you’re effectively just extracting as much enjoyment as you can out of another person before you go your separate ways, knowing full well that whatever it is that you have is never going to go the distance.  We see these same things in the world of nutrition.  This is a bodybuilding prep diet, or a gallon of milk a day gaining diet: EXTREME nutritional approaches meant to accomplish a specific goal in a finite amount of time before moving on to the next new thing.  But in either case, we STILL need to employ the same strategy: we need to know when it’s time to call it off, move on, and not look back.  Because much like it’s painful to see one person in a relationship who never got the memo that it was just a fling and nothing serious, it’s VERY hard to observe the trainee who is STILL eating like it’s prep-mode months after the show has ended.  Or the dude who is PERMANANETLY in “gain mode”.  All of these approaches are going to have some short and long term damaging effects to one’s health: psychological or otherwise.  If we engage in these flings, we have to know them for what they are, and know when it’s time to call it quits. 

Because even the strongest men in history knew when to walk away from softshell crab

Holy cow this spiraled on me, and I actually feel like I can keep writing on it, so maybe that’s what I’ll do in the future, but I’ve already written twice as much as I usually do, so let me give you some short words of closing wisdom here.  Much like how the Greeks postulated all narratives are built upon a limited number of universal themes, the obstacles that we encounter in life aren’t nearly as unique as we would like to believe that they are.  Most likely, we have encountered SOMETHING similar before, much earlier in our lives, when we weren’t NEARLY as well equipped to deal with them as we are now, yet somehow we were able to triump THEN.  If we take those same skillsets and strategies and employ our even larger experience and knowledge base, we’re sure to come up with even more superior solutions.

LIKE A DOG WITH KIBBLE

Dogs are amazing.  I grew up with a Dalmation, a total sweetheart that my brother and I named “Zelda”, for obvious reasons for anyone that has read this blog and knows how big of a nerd I was growing up…and presently, as this trend continued with dogs named Kirby, Yoshi, Toadette and a soon to be welcomed into the family Luigi.  We, as a species, do not deserve dogs, and, in turn, we can learn a LOT from them.  They teach us unconditional love, they have a zest for life that is compelling, they know how to play hard, and they tend to be incredible judges of character, because, quite frankly, if my dog doesn’t like you, then I don’t like you either.  But one of the most admirable qualities of a domesticated dog is displayed when you feed them.  Now, before I tell this story, I’m going to warn my readers that I DO feed my dogs kibble, so I apologize if that triggers those of you that ONLY feed your dogs a raw diet of berries and figs that were massaged by virgins from Nepal before blessed by at least 4 different Popes: that’s just not my situation.  But, anyway, if you’ve never owned or fed a dog before, there’s something really incredible to observe whenever you feed them their bowl of kibble: the dog is ALWAYS excited for it.  We feed our dogs twice a day, and as soon as you say “breakfast” or “dinner”, their ears perk up, their eyes get big, they start drooling, and as you walk over to the foodbowl, they are ALL up in your business.  Our female pug, Yoshi, used to do a little prance on her way to the foodbowl, and it got to the point that, if it was even REMOTELY close to food time and you were walking ANYWHERE in the house, that dog would follow you the entire time,  prancing, as if to give you a subtle reminder that it may, in fact, be time to feed her.  Yet, there’s never anything NEW on the menu: it’s ALWAYS the same kibble.  It’s the same kibble it was yesterday, and it’s the same kibble it will be tomorrow…and the dog is SO excited about it.  It cannot WAIT to get that kibble: this is THE highlight of the day, as far as the dog is concerned.  Why can’t WE be like that?  Why can’t WE be like a dog with kibble?

I suppose some of us ARE like that...

Believe me: I get it.  I grew up with the Animal Pak ads of the early 2000s, where Frank McGrath was always slumped over in a hoodie and a pair of workboots in a morose black and white photo, looking like a broken shell of a man while a loaded barbell mocked him inside the confines of what appeared to be the set of a snuff film with one dimly lit dangling light blub adjacent to a water heater and a radiator.  It was a striking visual that told us to “embrace the grind”…but perhaps we focused too much on that “grind” part and not enough on the “embrace”.  We thought we were so cool to SUFFER through the day to day grind of training, but it appears that we completely missed out on what it means to truly embrace something.  Instead of enduring the grind, instead of suffering through the grind, instead of surviving the grind, we should very well WELCOME the grind.  We should be EXCITED for the grind.  Like a dog with kibble, every time that grind shows up, we should be able to think to ourselves “oh boy: I get this AGAIN?!  How many times in a row am I going to be so lucky?!”  It should not be “I HAVE to train”: it should be “I GET to train”.

Just in case you thought I was being hyperbolic describing the ads

 

And like a dog with kibble, the analogy very easily transcends to our own experiences at the dinner table.  WHY are you sitting there, choking down dry chicken breasts and rice with broccoli with no flavor whatsoever?  Because it makes you hardcore to do so?  Because suffering is how we progress?  Here we are flawed in many ways.  For the one: we display a SIGNIFICANT degree of ungratefulness: to be afforded the LUXURY of such an abundance of nutrition that we feel as though we SUFFER when we eat a highly nutritious meal in the pursuit of vanity while others must go without, subsiding on scraps or, simply nothing.  We overstate our own significance here.  And if we could rightly orient our perspective, we could learn to approach this meal like a dog with kibble: so amazed that, somehow, we get to eat AGAIN at a time of our choosing with the food that nourishes us.  But thirdly, we display that we’ve set ourselves up for failure by intentionally pursuing a nutritional strategy that is, flat out, unsustainable.  Any approach that requires willpower to succeed is an approach that is simply not indefinitely sustainable, for willpower itself is a finite resource.  And perhaps this IS a phasic approach to nutrition you are employing, perhaps the intent IS to only do this for a little bit to achieve a goal, but then, as Dan John points out, we must ask the question of “now what?”  What is our plan to move OUT of this unsustainable approach into something that we CAN approach like a dog with kibble?  An approach wherein, each and every time we are presented with the opportunity to partake, we don’t approach with resentment or ennui but, instead, a legitimate excitement.

And yes, I realize that for years I’ve written about how suffering is a necessary part of the process of growing, but understand what is being said here.  This is not to say that, as we are enduring the suffering of the training we must be jubilant, excited and happy. This is a call for that excitement when the time comes to engage IN the suffering.  That we are excited that we GET to train, that we GET to eat, that we are, once again, afforded an opportunity to further our physical transformation and become closer to the ideal image we have of ourselves.  That if we are approaching these situations with dread, with reservations, with resentment, we are simply on an unsustainable path that will have consequences with the rebound inevitably strikes once the willpower is exhausted.  That if we have handcuffed ourselves to a nutritional dogma because it’s “the right one”, if it results in us dreading the experience of eating and never feeling “right”, we will inevitably crash hard as our body claws and scratches it’s way back to what it KNOWS is right for itself.  That if we marry ourselves to a training protocol that just never gels with our psychology, irrespective of how backed it is by science, it will never allow us to realize our true potential, as we will simply never give to it the amount of diligence it is due.  That, if we do not approach our training and nutrition in the same manner a dog approaches it’s kibble every single day, we will be unable to exist in the same naturally blissful state as our canine companions, who never worry about achieving the right macros or getting the correct amount of exercise per day and, instead, are simply out there living a far more authentic life than the majority of us.

See: it's ok to smile

 

We don’t deserve dogs, and they love us so much that they’ll teach us these lessons in spite of that.

1 YEAR OF TACTICAL BARBELL: THOUGHTS AND EXPERIENCES

INTRO

You could definitely pick far worse trinities to follow

Despite training for 25 years, I have had the attention span of an ADHD addled ferret on triple espresso when it comes to training methodologies, as I seem to only stick with one for a few months at a stretch before something shiny comes along and I jump ship and do something new.  Oh sure, I COMPLETE programs, but I rarely ever stick with an actual methodology proper long enough  to REALLY see what it’s all about.  I’ve done Super Squats, but never did the follow-on 5x5 program, followed by another cycle of the squats, as the book recommends.  I ran Easy Strength combined with Mass Made Simple, but never did another cycle of Easy Strength afterwards.  I’ve run several 5/3/1 programs, but once the specific program was done, I didn’t follow it up with an “appropriate” 5/3/1 program, nor properly repeat the program in the leader/anchor style Jim Wendler recommends.  I’ve run DoggCrapp for a 2 month run and a 3 month run respectively, just long enough for some blasts and never for the cruise.  And I certainly never repeated Deep Water over and over again per Jon Andersen’s recommendation.  But here I am, having accomplished a full year of using the Tactical Barbell system, and I foresee no signs of stopping.  Something about this system just hits differently, and I want to take the time to discuss what, exactly, that is, my experience with it, changes I’ve made, takeaways, and forecasts toward the future.

 

BACKGROUND

No radioactive spiders necessary for this origin story

This is already going to be a long read, so I’ll try to be brief.  I currently compete in strongman, and have done so since 2013.  Prior to that, I competed in 3 powerlifting meets from 2010-2012, and have a background in martial arts and wrestling (I’ve done 3 grappling tournaments on a whim recently, despite not having trained grappling since 2006).  I’ve also run 2 half marathons, and a handful of 10 miler, 10ks and 5ks. All this to say, I like being big, strong, and capable.  I’ve been lifting weights since I was 14 back in 1999, and have trained with a lot of different programs during that time (reference the intro).  I’ve also experienced a handful of injuries from my time in athletics, to include a shoulder with a torn labrum after 6 dislocations and multiple subluxations, a left knee that was surgically repaired after a ruptured ACL, torn meniscus and fractured patella, and a right knee with an undiagnosed but most likely torn meniscus.

 

When I started Tactical Barbell, I was dealing with those kinds of injuries.  I had just finished up a strongman competition which, despite winning, the training cycle for it had completely destroyed me.  My right hip was in so much agony that I had to literally pull myself DOWN to the barbell to get set up for deadlifts because I couldn’t voluntarily lower myself, and one of my co-workers asked me if I had herniated a disk based on how I was walking.  Through sheer willpower, I could force myself to complete workouts and compete, but my ability to just simply locomote day-to-day was absolutely shot and I was concerned that I was going to need to give up lifting for good in the near future.

 

DISCOVERING TACTICAL BARBELL

An introduction I was not ready for at the time

Interestingly enough, I had already read Tactical Barbell books 1 and 2 well before this moment.  But, at the time, they just didn’t resonate with me.  In truth, I was too obstinate: at the time, I was obsessed with training as hard as possible, both in lifting and conditioning, and not really concerned with the outcome of that training.  I was too focused on what I was accomplishing within the workout, vs what the workouts were accomplishing within the training cycle.  But after finishing up that terrible training cycle before that strongman competition I mentioned above, I found myself the scrawniest I had been in quite a while, as my attempts to make weight matched with a poor training approach had me shed a lot of muscle and strength.  As I was trying to come up with a way forward to regain some mass, the “Mass Protocol” e-book popped up as recommended reading for my kindle, and being a lover of all things related to gaining weight (see my previous posts on the subject), I dove in.  If you’ve read my review of that book, you know what a big fan of it I turned out to be, and that got me started on this path.

 

WHAT I’VE DONE

I mean...you gotta stick with the plan

I’ve already written extensive reviews of my training blocks within Tactical Barbell, and to prevent this from running even longer I won’t repeat those here, but for an overview of my timeline, I started off with the Mass Protocol, running Grey Man specifically, followed by Specificity Bravo.  I found that Grey Man slid perfectly into Bravo, as I could take all the same lifts I was doing and just arrange them into a push/pull split rather than a 3x a week full body approach.  This was from Mid September all the way through the New Year, at which point I embarked on a VERY long run of Operator until the start of August.  This was a result of me wanting to train for 2 different strongman competitions, along with a 10 mile race, within that window of time, which required me to keep my bodyweight down and my strength up.  Once that season ended, I got back on Mass Protocol Grey Man (with the modifications I wrote about in my most recent review) and will be following that up with Specificity Bravo.  From here, I intend to really give “OMS” a solid shot, as I’ve got nothing significant in my horizon to train for.

 

WHY I LIKE TACTICAL BARBELL IN GENERAL (WHY I’VE STUCK WITH IT FOR A YEAR)

Not having to do any of this is part of the reason

·       It tells you EXACTLY what to do.  At this point in my life, I (clearly) needed that, because when I let myself design my own training program, I ended up incredibly broken.  HOWEVER, this also required me to be in the right head space to be able to RECEIVE this instruction.  If you’re the type of dude that, as soon as they get a training program, immediately goes about changing it before giving it a try: this isn’t going to work.  However, if you're open to the instruction, this does a fantastic job of balancing stimulus with recovery.

·       But to continue riffing on the above, Tactical Barbell struck me as what I always wanted 5/3/1 to be.  In truth, you can see Jim’s influence in K. Black’s writing, but whereas Jim (rightfully) leaves a lot of room to the reader to make 5/3/1 work for them, Tactical Barbell provides much tighter bumpers that remove any ambiguity and gives clear marching orders.  Yet, at the same time, there IS room to play within the programming, as for one, K. Black will continue to re-iterate “this is what works for me and the people I train, but feel free to do what works for you”, but along with that, within the TB structure itself there is still some room for variance.  All the conditioning workouts in TBII are scalable, the workouts in TBI often include rep and set ranges to allow for some auto-regulation, and Mass Protocol allows for an either very streamlined approach or the opportunity to throw in some extra work and movements as needed.

·       I love how the whole thing is a SYSTEM.  Once again, I’ll contrast with 5/3/1, wherein Jim does a fantastic job outlining the conditioning requirements of his programs (3 hard conditioning workouts, 5 easy ones, for example) and he provides examples of what conditioning workouts exist, but beyond that, the trainee determines their fate.  With TB, you have specific conditioning protocols (Green or Black) which slot into your training protocols based off the goals of the training block.  Shorter, high intensity efforts are black, longer lower intensity efforts are green.  From there, we go to the collection of prebuilt conditioning workouts and select the ones that fit our schedule and equipment allowance and are all set.  It’s all plug and play and requires minimal thinking or planning.  The same is true of the lifting: ones the weights are figured out, plug in the percentage and go.  There are no PR sets to content with: progress is measured simply by sustained compliance.

·       The system aspect continues when you read through the Mass Protocol book and are given VERY CLEAR instructions on how to program block training.  Again: this DOES exist in other training systems (5/3/1, Westside, Deep Water, the works of Dan John, etc): K. Black just manages to break out the crayons and make it all dummy proof.  His “O-M-S” protocol (for “Operator-Mass-Specificity”) provides you with a very simple way to periodize your training, with a focus on maximal strength development, general hypertrophy training, and then a lighter weight/high rep follow-on phase.  And since the conditioning requirements change with each phase of training, the periodization continues in that manner as well, irrespective of what you’ve selected as your Operator conditioning protocol, because Mass REQUIRES the green protocol while specificity requires Black, so no matter what you get variety.  Additionally, there’s a bit of genius in the loading structure of this approach, as loads will be their heaviest on Operator, then get lighter during Mass, and even lighter during Specificity.  It prevents the trainee from grinding themselves into dust in any one particular modality, and by the time they come back round, it’s a breath of fresh air.

·       It’s incredibly adaptable.  I’ve used it to prepare for 2 different strongman competitions, a grappling competition, and a 10 mile race, along with simply getting lean for a cruise and putting on size, and within the framework is everything I need to succeed.  This DOES require some creativity in interpreting instructions or a willingness to allow yourself to go off the reservation at times, but sticking with the principles outlined allows it to all fit well.

 

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT TACTICAL BARBELL I’S OPERATOR SPECIFICALLY

It's like the ultimate team up

·       This program was an excellent choice when my goals involved athletic performance and reducing bodyweight to meet weight class requirements.  Per my final bullet in the above paragraph, it was easy to plug in strongman lifts as my main lifts during the lifting workouts, and include strongman events or distance training for the conditioning portions.  And then, along with that, since the lifting was all about practicing and keeping things sub-maximal, I could run this program while my food intake was reduced without any concern for recovery. 

·       You really “own the weight”, ala Jim Wendler, with Operator.  You have 3 opportunities per week to lift the same weights on the same lifts, and by the time you get to the third workout, you’re cruising.  I really enjoyed how gradual the progression scheme worked, as a result.  Progressing weight week to week rather than day to day felt far more sustainable, especially, once again, in a state of reduced food.  It’s the opposite of that “oh sh*t” experience you get from programs like Building the Monolith or Deep Water, where you feel a sense of doom for the next workout.

·       It honestly feels like magic how, if you have the right maxes selected, each training cycle you hit the lifts exactly as laid out.  No guesswork.

·       As a home gym owner, it was nice that I could leave my gym set up the same way all week, vs having to change the configuration from workout to workout.

·       Even with the strict rules of the program, there’s ways to play around and introduce novelty.  I took to making the days that I deadlifted to be the days I did as few working sets of other movements as possible (3 instead of 4 or 5), and have contemplated runs where I play around with the sets the whole week, starting with 4, dropping to 3 in the middle workout, finishing with 5, in a “medium-light-heavy” approach.

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT TACTICAL BARBELL II

At least NOW I won't be tired if I run

·       The creation of “conditioning protocols” just answers so many questions, clears up so much ambiguity, and creates the ultimate “plug and play” approach to conditioning.  Even if I wasn’t running a Tactical Barbell strength program, I can easily see myself just stealing from TBII or Mass Protocol’s conditioning protocol ideas.  I actually was kicking around that idea with Mass Made Simple, combining it with the Mass Protocol conditioning recommendations to fulfill Dan’s “recharge” workouts.

·       The vault of workouts just further reinforces shutting off your brain and getting work done.  The fact that each workout can be scaled to 3 different levels provides a LOT of options, and from there one can easily figure out “the pattern” of these workouts and find a way to fit in their own (as I did with strongman stuff).

·       The idea of mixing the hardest week of lifting with the lightest week of conditioning is just more genius from K. Black as far as basic periodization and structure goes.

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT MASS PROTOCOL GREY MAN

He's not wrong

·       After squatting with a bar on my body 3x a week with Operator, cutting it down to 3x every 2 weeks (if employing the A/B/A, B/A/B style) or twice a week (If employing A/B/A repeating) is refreshing.  And because of my supplemental movement selection, I’m still SQUATTING 3x a week: just one of those days is a belt squat rather than a barbell squat.

·       The varying rep ranges each week are much more mentally sustainable.  It creates a novelty effect, and makes each week something to look forward to in it’s own right.  The week with the highest reps is the lightest week, which is a break from heavy lifting, but the heaviest week has the fewest reps and tends to go by the fastest.

·       Mass gaining phases are always the most rewarding phase of training, because you’re in a state of building and can very clearly observe progress.  Even though this isn’t a strength phase of training, I get quite strong when I do this, as I’m eating to support growing and feel incredible in each training session.  With Operator, when food was low, there were times that the training sessions were a drag.

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT MASS PROTOCOL SPECIFICITY BRAVO

Frank's got the right idea

·       This is a great time to really give the body a break with some lighter loads, because even Grey Man can get heavy toward the end of the run.  This is a great primer for a follow-on Operator run, AND, if you keep the rest periods tight at 1 minute, there’s even a bit of a conditioning element to it.

·       The high intensity conditioning, even though reduced in duration, is a refreshing break after so much time spent during low intensity work on Grey Man.

·       This program follows on perfectly with Grey Man, as you just take the same movements you were doing before, slot them into push/pulls, and you’ve got a “new” program.

 

THINGS I’VE DONE DIFFERENTLY

So I may have taken a few liberties...

I’ve covered this stuff in individual write-ups, so I won’t try to speak too much to it, but I’ve made a few adjustments and tweaks along way that I can cover quickly here.

·       Per K. Black’s allotment, I always include ab/core training at the end of the lifting workouts.  It’s either ab wheel, hanging leg raise or GHR sit-ups, and usually just dependent on what equipment/floor space is available.  I also include the reverse hyper as core training, and will train that 1-2x per week, also at the end of the workout, usually superset with some ab work.

·       I also like to include band pull aparts whenever possible.  After dislocating my right shoulder 6 times, I take all the rear delt work I can.

·       I never got much out of the heavy weighted chins, so I switched back to the 5/3/1 tactic of just doing a set of sub-max chins between my other exercises.  With Operator, I do it once the set ends and then start my 2 minute timer.  With Grey Man, for the main work I start my 2 minute rest timer and do the chins as part of the rest period, and then will do it between exercises for the supplemental and assistance work.  For Specificity, it’s just between exercises.  I also include it between sets of warm-up sets, just to get in more volume.

·       I swapped out conventional deadlift sets/programming at about the 8 month mark and went back to ROM progression cycles and have found that it just fits me better.  Thankfully, it’s very easy to slot in to Tactical Barbell.

·       My most recent run of Grey Man had me go A/B/A-repeat vs A/B/A, B/A/B-repeat, and this worked out well with the above bullet of ROM progression deads.  It’s very similar to 5/3/1 Building the Monolith in that regard. 

·       I haven’t done this yet, but I’ve contemplated running Grey Man in a similar manner as 3/5/1 from Jim Wendler, starting the cycle with the middle week, going to the first week, finishing with the third week, in a “Medium-light-heavy” approach.  I’m sure it would work, but I just haven’t had the need to do it yet.

·       And, of course, I never follow the nutritional instructions, but K. Black always says you’re free to try whatever you want.

 

THE FUTURE

The future looks intense!

I turn 40 in October, and I genuinely regret having taken this long to discover this approach, which is a sentiment I remember seeing a LOT on Jim’s 5/3/1 Forum on t-nation and thinking “yeah, sure”, but it’s true.  I feel like, had I found this at 30, I’d be in an even better place than I am now, but at least take solace in the fact that I still have quite a few more productive years ahead of me, especially so armed with the “Ageless Athlete” Tactical Barbell Book, which I didn’t even go into here, but is yet another incredible asset in the library.

 

For now, I intend to continue on O-M-S for the foreseeable future: training to gain and eating to supporting it for 9 week stretches with Mass and Specificity, then taking 4 weeks to “dry out” with a bridge week followed by a 3 week Operator block.  This is, of course, all assuming no competitions to prepare for.  If something comes along my way, I’ll most likely give myself 2-3 cycles of Operator to prepare for it before getting back on target. 

 

But, of course, chaos is the plan, and I fully account of occasional one-offs back to my greatest hits of Deep Water, Super Squats or Mass Made Simple whenever I want to chase a wild hare, but Tactical Barbell is so perfectly modular that I don’t really see an issue here.  Those programs are all 6 week blocks that I could easily slot in somewhere along the way, call it a Mass block, hit up a bridge week and get back to the program.  As it stands, I’m good with calling Tactical Barbell my core system and moving from there.

       

 

 

 

 

TACTICAL BARBELL MASS PROTOCL GREY MAN CHECK-IN: OPERATION MILO

 INTRO

Prepare yourself for a WHOLE lotta bull...

In an unprecedent display of whatever the opposite of ADHD is, I’ve managed to stick with a training protocol for almost a full calendar year.  16 Sep 25 will mark a full year of training under the Tactical Barbell system, and I’ll be sure to release a blogpost detailing my experience and lessons learned over that time, but suffice it to say I’m clearly a fan of the system and this is now my second time running The Mass Protocol, which was the original program that got me hooked in the first place.

 

Since it’s my second time through, I’ve allowed myself a little bit of leeway regarding how I’m running it, and have also engaged in a fun side-project that I’ll be carrying forward (pun partially intended and you’ll see why) through my next few cycles as well. 

 

I don’t really write “program reviews” at this point because I don’t tend to take the diligence to fully establish “befores” to contrast against “afters”, and instead just offer “check-ins”, where I discuss how the program is going, what I’m liking, and what I’m learning.  And that’s what this is here now.

 

WHAT IS OPERATION MILO?

This is like the world's whackiest Charles Atlas ad

 

I totally go full “tacti-cool” when it comes to Tactical Barbell stuff, and will label my phases of training as Operations.  The very first Mass Protocol outing was “Operation Conan”, as it was all about gaining with a carnivore diet.  “Operation Planet Mongo” was my attempt to emphasize back growth after I had neglected it for so long.  So Operation MILO?

 

MILO is an acronym that stands for “Mass Increase, Lifts Overload”, because I needed to keep reminding myself of what the goal of the training was: get bigger and get stronger.  Which is primarily me telling myself “Don’t be stupid about conditioning: you can come back to that during Operator”, along with “Eat up!”  HOWEVER, MILO is also an inside reference to the side project I spoke about in the intro.

 

Taking the approach of Milo from Croton, who carried a baby calf everyday until it grew to be the size of a bull in order to become monstrously strong and one of the greatest wrestlers to ever live, I decided I was going to take my loadable strongman keg and carry it for 1 trip down and up my driveway everyday (about 80’ total) and increase the load by 1-1.5lbs.  I choose that load because I have an amount of spacers for the keg that equals a pound, and I have many 2.5lb plates, so I would just alternate between the two each session, meaning the weight would increase 8.5lbs each week.  I  started at 175lbs (keg plus a 25lb plate) and as of this writing have increased it to 225lbs.  I’ve noticed that the carry has actually gotten EASIER as time goes on. 

 

I figured, while I’m gaining weight, that’s the best time for the keg to gain weight as well, and ideally my strength will grow in proportion to the weight of the keg.  This also puts me on a trajectory to carry over 500lbs in a year…which we know won’t happen…but the real question is: when WILL it stop working?

 

HOW I SET UP GREY MAN

The instructions were so clear!

 

I’ll start by saying there is absolutely noting wrong with Grey Man as it is written.  K. Black writes awesome programs that work, and most people tend to screw them up by messing with that.  That having been said, I had specific goals I wanted to accomplish, and the framework of Grey Man suited them: I just needed to make some tweaks.

 

·       The biggest change is, instead of performing a rotating workout structure of A-B-A, B-A-B repeat, I stuck with a static “A-B-A repeat” approach, meaning workout B was ALWAYS the middle workout and workout A would be performed twice as much as workout B.

·       That big change was due to the second biggest change of the program: I cut out the deadlift protocol and, instead, swapped it with my (in)famous deadlift ROM progression protocol.  This is primarily because this approach ALWAYS works for me, and whenever I deviate from it, I regret it.  I’m willing to face the consequences of my actions here.  And in that regard, this protocol is a once a week deadlift protocol, so I needed to keep my deadlifting day to once a week, and slotting it right in the middle of the week worked out well there.  I COULD have accomplished something similar by just running Mass Template and having that 1 day a week deadlift week, but after 40-ish weeks of running Operator, I felt like I needed the supplemental clusters found in Grey man.

·       The third biggest change is that I eliminated chins/pull ups as main cluster work, and didn’t include them in the supplemental cluster as well.  Instead, I would just accomplish sets of sub-maximal chins during my warm-ups and in between sets of main cluster and supplemental cluster work. Similar to the ROM progression, I’ve noticed my best results from chins came when I was following this approach, and it didn’t seem to impact my recovery.  Diligent readers will recognize that I did the same thing during “Planet Mongo” 

·       I paired the squat with the press on Day A, and the bench with the mat pull on day B.  Part of that is logistics (I can set up the squat and press at the same time in my gym, and same with he bench and the deadlift, but bench and squat can’t happen because they both occupy the power rack), but the other part is that I prioritize the press over the bench, so I want to hit it more often.  Squatting only twice a week was a nice change compared to Operator’s 3x week.

·       For supplemental cluster lifts, Day A was incline DB bench, DB row, and GHRs.  Day B was Lever belt squat, dips and axle curls.  Once again: logistics were a partial factor here.  I wanted to do squats on the days squats weren’t in the main cluster and posterior chain work on the days they were, and when I have the lever belt set up I don’t have room for the incline bench, so I employed dips on those days.

·       For assistance work, I used GHR sit ups on day A (since I was already at the GHR) and a reverse hyper/standing ab wheel superset on day B.  If I ever had additional time, I’d include some lateral raises or band pull aparts.  And, of course, all the chins between sets.

 

CONDITIONING

Treadmills have always sucked

 

·       I abided by the rules somewhat with conditioning, but also re-read Mass Protocol and saw K. Black say we COULD use workouts from TBII if we had a solid grasp on our own recovery and conditioning, so game on!  This meant that, along with a 20 minute recovery row between workouts A and B, I would do a 90 minute treadmill ruck between workout B and A, and then 10 minutes of Stone of Steel over bar on the Saturday after the final A workout. 

·       For that ruck, I at least made it easier than what I was doing during Operator by using a lighter load and a lower incline.  I was just doing 30 minutes more than what was recommended.

·       I also still kept a decent amount of daily steps, aiming for 10k per day, often exceeding it, sometimes coming short.

·       On top of all this, I trained Tang Soo Do 3 days a week, typically after work, but occasionally we’d do a class on late Saturday mornings.  These weren’t terribly exhausting classes, but they could accumulate at times.

 

NUTRITION

Talk about paleo!

 

To the outside observer, my nutrition has remained completely the same throughout my time with Tactical Barbell, but the truth is that there HAS been some nuanced difference.  When I started, I was basically following Jamie Lewis’ “Apex Predator Diet”, where I lived off protein shakes through the day and then ate one solid food meal at night.  When I started Operator, I switched to Vince Gironda’s “Maximum Definition Diet”, funnily enough because BioTest had a shortage of Metabolic Drive at that time and I could no longer rely on protein powder as a staple.  However, I honestly really grew to enjoy having a large breakfast in the morning, fasting through the day, and eating again at night (reference by full detailed write-up on my experience with the diet), so I decided to take that approach with Mass Protocol this time around.

 

So how do you take a Maximum Definition Diet and turn it into a gaining diet?  You gotta turn the food volume UP!  Now, when I was running “Operation Conan”, I noticed that I was relying primarily on pork cracklin and cottage cheese to make up the bulk of my “augmentation” food: stuff I was adding on TOP of the meals in order to gain.  I don’t think there’s necessarily anything WRONG with these foods, but I do prefer to keep pork a little on the low side due to the higher concentration of Omega 6s in their fat compared to beef, and cottage cheese can get a little carby for my liking when consumed in large quantities.  Plus, I find cheese, in general, does not trigger my satiety signals, and with the presence of casmorphins, there is an argument that it can be addictive (I know I certainly enjoy it).  So I decided to still stick pretty strongly with the “Maximum Definition” guidelines of no dairy aside from butter (I use ghee, it still counts) and heavy cream (never found myself using that).  I WOULD occasionally permit myself cheese (my wife makes me omletes on the weekend, they’re amazing, and cheese makes a great binder, and occasionally I’d do a burger night where I made chaffle buns), but it was much more controlled compared to previous outings.

 

So, instead of relying on pork cracklin’ and cottage cheese, I engaged in a protocol of “side meats”.  I had my breakfast and dinner pretty clearly established: around 1lb of some sort of meat, 3 whole eggs, and 5 whites (both topped with ghee and cooked in beef tallow).  Breakfast would have some beef liver with it as well, and dinner could often go above 1lb of meat.  From here, in order to gain, I would add some sort of meat alongside this meal.  I have 2 big freezers in my basement, and had accumulated all sorts of meats through buying bulk sales, hunting, and my wife’s family farm in Iowa making generous donations to my cause, and decided to start cooking all that stuff up on the weekends for some meal prep.  This included smoking 2 whole chickens so I could have drumsticks with 4 breakfasts, then a thigh and a wing for 4 breakfasts, pork belly, pork shoulder, sardines, a bunch of chicken thighs, etc.  It was honestly straight out of the Bruce Randall playbook: just take what you’d normally eat, and then add more food to it and eat that as well.

 

A pretty standard breakfast

Surf and turf

Ribs and brisket (going out to eat)

But we also have ribs at home

 

For the “1lb of some sort of meat”, I always tried to make this some sort of ruminant animal.  I found that I just felt and performed better when I was eating that.  I lucked out and got some great sales on leg of lamb and a bunch of frozen corned beefs that I soaked overnight to wash off the brine, and I’d slice these into 1lb steaks and air fry them in the morning.  On weekends, we’d go out and I often would have a dinner of a full rack of pork spare ribs, a 26oz bone-in ribeye, a bunch of steak, eggs and seafood from a Hibachi buffet, or just a ton of burger patties. 

 

And, in keeping with the Maximum Definition diet, I’d have 1 meal a week with some carbs in it.  This was often some sort of American mid-west pasta based casserole dish my wife would make alongside some of her (amazing) homemade cookies with some raw local honey and a mug of fairlife skim milk.  

 

RESULTS AND TAKEAWAYS

I guess we know what phase II is going to be now...

 

My bodyweight is up 1.4kg, once again, without counting or tracking calories or macros: just eating big from my choice of foods.  Along with this, all of my lifts had gone up in accordance with the percentages set up in the program, and my deadlift ROM progression was successful, resulting in a 10x440lb pull, which is a 15lb PR from my previous best 6 weeks ago, and much easier.

I’ve continued to increase the weight in the keg everyday.  I also just plain FEEL good: not beat up, exhausted, strung out, etc.  This remains a sustainable and appreciable way to set up training for the long haul, and I’m honestly excited to continue down the Tactical Barbell rabbit hole with the “Operator-Mass-Specificity” protocol.  I’m effectively there: I did a LONG stint of Operator, am finishing up Mass, and will move on to specificity.  I intend to run that for 3 weeks, Operator for 3 weeks, then back to mass for 6 weeks.  The fall and winter are great seasons for gaining and I want to make the most of it, but I also feel like 3 weeks of Operator with lighter rations will give me a chance to resensitize myself to food.

 

I still intend to carry the keg until I can, at which point, I may just start over lighter, or find a new project to take on.

 

Thanks for reading, happy to answer any questions, and if you want to observe every training session, be sure to follow this link.

 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfcuGAffLlScJtcQTN0sAGNhNkV8_92pE