Thanks man those are nice things to say. 
A mate of mine (the gym owner) has essentially perfected the vertical pick up of the bag. I’ll see if I find a video of him doing that because he’s a very technical lifter. Not a small build per se but 25 kg less than me.
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1/1/23 Sunday
Per plan, 1.1 ish mile easy run. Thats “around the block” in my neighborhood. 11:06.
I’ll do this daily in January and see what it does. Not looking for speed records or max effort, just putting in the work.
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1/2/23
Predawn easy 1.1 mile run pushing stroller. Untimed.
Bench day. 5/3/1 c2w3
5x155, 3x180, 8x200 rep pr
Incline bench 3x8x145 pr for getting all 3 sets without dropping reps or weight at the end? I think so.
Barbell row 6x10x155 superset with the above
Ab rollouts 3x4, from toes until dropping to knees close to the end, popping back to toes partway up. Cool progression. Sucks the soul like heavy squats!
Superset that with 3x8x+25lb dips.
BS pump work for lats, pecs, bis and tris.
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Quick note on the 2023 plan. Short on time.
The focus right now is the #t-ransformation2023 and I need to avoid chasing too many rabbits. Absolute numbers on the barbell have been the only focus for a long time, changing that mindset will be tough. That’s another reason why changing program could be appealing - it would mentally un-anchor me from specific numbers; but the wise course would seem to be, keep the 5/3/1 overall approach I have, and don’t change it for the sake of changing; but STOP FOCUSING ON NUMBERS.
Man that’s gonna be hard.
So for example, not raising the TMs, and possibly setting them back a bit.
I don’t want to rush into weight loss either - we have 120 days (I think. is it 4 months or 5?) and I know I can drop 10lbs pretty easily. But I’ll put a chart on the wall above the scale and start to watch the trends.
The daily runs in january are likely to have an effect if everything else holds constant. So let’s watch this for a couple weeks before trying to make many more adjustments.
For today: I have a beef roast on, will be ready tonight. Have ground beef ready for lunch. I’ll cook some rice to go with both of those meals, and then the leftover rice and roast should hold for the next lunch and dinner or two. Breakfast has been 4 eggs plus a bit of bacon, without fail for quite a while now. Snacks are generally quality (greek yogurt; protein waffles; an orange; jerky) and I have protein shake every lifting day with extra milkfat in an eggwhite base.
Off to a good start. Measure, modify, iterate…
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1/3
Easy 1.1 mile run predawn.
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1/4 Wednesday
1.1 mile run right out of bed.
Squat day, 5/3/1 C?W1 5s pro. Keeping the same numbers as last cycle for reasons given above.
5x185, 215, 245; 1x275 bonus rep.
Changed the assistance work, see how it goes:
Front squat, 3x8x135 (Was scared of this, haven’t front squatted much in a long time, but this was OK. Can go up next time, at least on one set)
Leg Press: 3x10 - 225, 315, 315. Used a “low” foot position. Which seems more disadvantaged than the “high” position.
Leg curls, 3x12 with pauses at the top
Leg extension, 3 sets of pain
Knee-spread-apart, one long set
Back extension, one long set
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The daily runs have been good for my brain. I find my mind wandering freely during them, rather than going over “important” things and making to-do lists and remembering urgent deadlines I’ve missed.
During yesterday’s run I had a little epiphany: I’ve never trained for size, and I should. I’ve always made my goals around specific numbers on specific lifts, and never about size; every training session has been in support of those goals. It had me thinking that after this fat loss phase, rather than chasing numbers, I should train for size.
Then I read @T3hPwnisher 's latest blog post, which really should be part of his eventual book, and it only reinforced this.
-Fat loss - train to maintain; do conditioning, do other things in your life, eat less
-Accumulation - train for size, eat tons; I’ve never truly done this - even when focusing on food intake, and I did a couple rounds of 20lb gains, my training mentality was strength-focused.
-Intensification - after 12 ish weeks of accumulation, shift the training mentality back to strength and set new PRs in the 1, 2, 3 rep ranges.
I think that should set me up for the rest of the year. I’m committed to the T-ransformation challenge, so a phase of fat loss and conditioning is beginning now; once it’s over, I should commit to training and eating for size for a decent amount of time. Then return to “chasing numbers” and see how much better I look and perform.
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You say that like you can’t do both
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Well, its just that mentally, ive been chasing 1rms for 2 years. I think a proper mass phase is less focused on 1rms and more on effortful volume, generally at 8 reps or higher.
Like, ive never said “I’m going to make my chest bigger this year”, for example.
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Really glad you dug the blog dude! I like what it has set up.
I do like to clarify that, at least for my approach, it’s “train for size: eat to recover from the training”. Tons isn’t a bad approach IF we focus on quality nutrition, but a cheesecake bulk is going to get the results that come with a cheesecake bulk.
I think you have a solid idea here.
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1/6/23 Friday
Press 5/3/1 w3 5x95, 3x105, 5x120 Press continues to disappoint
BTN press: 75lb. 20, 15, 13 - holy moly that was intense. Absolutely did the right thing there.
The above was superset with: regular pullups, unweighted, 3x10; BTN pullups, unweighted, 3x10. Been hitting WPUs hard last few weeks time to give it a break.
Delts were totally wiped out from the BTN pressing, but did a couple sets of side raises - into - upright rows with 20lb DBs.
Some biceps and triceps. Tried to find my groove on the cables, didn’t work out, did a bunch of DB curls and standing skull crushers.
A good session - simply due to the BTN pressing. The 5/3/1 performance felt like crap, the pump work doesn’t ring my bell, but damn I’ve never felt that before. There’s no break in a BTN - no real resting at the top, because the wide grip sucks, no resting at the bottom, because if you let it sink onto your back you’ll never lift it off again, so you just… keep… going… and I’ve developed there a bit, because a few months ago I couldn’t get BTN to even feel right.
As the T-ransformation is in full swing now I believe it’s time to ease off the snacking, let calories go down on their own, and start shifting the accessory lifts toward conditioning rather than strength or even volume. Will figure this out over the next week or so.
1.1 mile easy run yesterday afternoon. I greatly prefer morning runs though.
Edit: Got my 1.1 mile run in this afternoon too. Energy was LOW, run was SLOW.
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1/7/23
Saturday. 1.1 mile run pushing stroller predawn, then a mile walk with family, then two 10-minute sessions:
Deadlift, 3x185, 3x255, 8x3x305, going EMOM.
This was more than i can do. Did it anyway, was freakin hard tho. Had planned to focus on technique but ended up just being brutal the last 8 minutes.
Sandbag picks and front heaves, 1 per minute EMOM 10 minutes. 5 sideways and 5 straight on.
Great session.
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1/8/23 Sunday
1.1 mile run - thus far, 8 consecutive days of this! Today I had a good energy level, but still didn’t time it.
Back is sore from yesterday’s session. Even my hams a little bit. Of course, no glute soreness at all - why would they be, they don’t exist!
Weight is 191-193lbs, depending on what time of day. That’ll need to come down to 178 or lower, realistically, by end of the T-ransformation, to look the best I have in my life. Losing 14 lbs in 5 months doesn’t sound too hard, but I think staying with it for 5 months is harder than just losing 14 pounds, perhaps more quickly.
So how about this: end of January, target weight is 188lb. Re-assess and set a target for end of February at that time. Don’t want to do too much too fast but the first few lbs may just be water anyway; 2 or 3 weeks low carb is all it takes.
I still haven’t really come up with a way to transition my assistance work toward conditioning. @simo74 any suggestions?
I know “everyone has 5 minutes” but as you can understand, it is very very difficult (selfish) for me to pull away even for 5 minutes in the afternoon/evenings; my morning workouts Mon-Wed-Fri and my saturday session are all I can count on regularly having. So they need to do double duty - hit the movements and muscles I need to maintain, but stimulate fatburning as well.
If I could set aside 10 minutes every evening for burpees and KB swings that’s probably the ticket. Heck if I can keep all other variables equal and just get time allotted for that, I’d be good! Maybe after January I can pull that off.
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Going to tag @T3hPwnisher here as he is better at getting a lot of work done in a short time than I am. Also @SvenG because he understands 531 and manages to include a heap of conditioning work.
From your post I am reading that your a very disciplined and committed to your 4 gym days and that training on these days is not an issue. But you do not have the same discipline or commitment to train on the other days (please correct me if I am wrong).
I am also reading that you want ideas on how to free up some time to include conditioning in your gym session or change the assistance to make it do the job of conditioning.
One way to shorten your gym time in order to create some time for conditioning is to reduce the rest times on the supplemental work. You may need to alter the weights a little but keeping a short time between sets will have a great training effect for fat loss and free up some time at the end of the session for more pain, sorry I mean conditioning, the other option which I cans ee you already did on your press day is to superset some of the assistance work with the supplemental work. I used to do pull ups with overhead, rows with bench and abs with squat and deadlift and it worked well.
In terms of changing the assistance to focus more on conditioning my only solution for that is to do the assistance work as one giant superset. Either just do the 3 exercises one after the other, short 30 sec rest and repeat. Or design a simple complex that will do the job.
The other option and probably my preferred is to keep the assistance work separate and free up 5 mins at the end of the session for an intense conditioning drill. tabata work, max burpees in 5 mins, 5 mins of skipping, sprints, abc’s, sandbag over shoulder to burpees (light sandbag), anything with thrusters in it. You get the idea, keep the assistance work to really focus on the muscles and get a good burn/pump. Then trash yourself at the end with something else.
Hopefully this gives you some ideas. But now lets talk about the other days and what is stopping you from finding time or being disciplined enough ? I have three kids that were once upon a time three toddlers and I totally understand about time pressures and balancing family. But anything else you can do on those 3 days in like a free ticket to looking and feeling great. I am not sure about your set up in terms of home equipment or what you can and cant do with the kids involved but you finding a way to get stuff done in those 3 days is going to make a big difference overall. So you tell us, what CAN you do ?
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@simo74 as always, thanks for the thoughtful reply. I do superset all the assistance work on upper body days and keep rests short, but i can absolutely drop the weight and keep rests even shorter. Agreed as well that by speeding up, i can make time for conditioning finisher at the end.
Aside from gym trips, its not a discipline issue its the facts of life with 4 kids and 2 jobs and when home, being present for wife and kids. “Excuse me while i tabata front squat” isn’t as welk received as “ill give him a bath while you get a shower”.
But i can probably add a little something! Just can’t be too religious about it.
@T3hPwnisher my chinning bar at home is the door frame grabber type, which is not conducive to grabbing from a jump, is that how you burpee chin? At my gym i absolutely can!
And in tge time it took to reply here i could have done 30 swings lol. Will do them now!
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I don’t want to sound like a hard ass or a lecturing old geezer, BUT if you really want to give this 5 months a red hot go you just need to make it happen. 10 - 15 mins after they go to bed, later at night when the wife is watching TV (in my house we literally have shows that are known and the wifes shows and when she is watching them she is happy for e to not be there). Get up 15 mins earlier, not sure of you work from home but do it in your smoko break. I am sure if you had a conversation with your wife and she understood why it was important to you, she would be supportive. It doesn’t have to be in place of being a good parent or partner and it definitely can not be an excuse to get out of any of that stuff, I totally agree with that. This was why the burpee was so useful for me last year because it was so easy to fit in around everyone else.
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Thank you Rob. Well received.
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Due to the height of my bar, I don’t jump to it for the chin
I’d say 5 minutes of burpee chins a day, going for a rep PR each time, would answer the mail. OR you can do like I’m doing and do burpee chins at the tabata and then a prisoner squat during the 10 seconds off, or if you have kettlebells, KB front squats or a cluster or something like that. Quick way to get in quality work. Swings would be great too.
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Thanks for the tag, @simo74!
@jdm135 - I superset assistance, I use short rest periods, I run circuits, I do tabata X, I do hard conditioning, I do easy conditioning, … Sometimes all in the same day! And it adds up, no doubt.
But I’ve already suggested that a 180 in training modality, even for just a relatively short time, might ignite the fat loss without requiring living in the gym or imposing hours and hours of mindless cardio.
For me, conditioning is about work capacity. That’s typically what I’m after when I: superset assistance, use short rest periods, run circuits, do tabata X, do hard conditioning, do easy conditioning, … I’m targeting my work capacity.
For fat loss, I’ve found I need something different. A different stimulus, a different challenge, a different threat. For example, I got my leanest—ever!—doing 14K swings in 12 days while falling into a 16/8 IF eating pattern back in October. I “followed” the 10K Swing Challenge protocol for the workouts—so swing/press, swing/dip, swing/squat, swing/chin, swing-only, repeat—but I did two 600 swings workouts per day, for a little over an hour’s worth of daily training.
So beyond the suggestions by @simo74 and @T3hPwnisher, I’ll just reiterate: Consider smashing your body with something entirely different, even for just a little while. Maybe it’ll work for you as well as it has for me!
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