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.

 

 

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.