1/27 Monday
Weekend update: Planted 2 bushes and 2 banana trees Fri/Sat. All the digging is a workout on its own. Took about a 3-mile walk Sunday, plus the normal family walks all weekend.
Monday’s routine disrupted by a family obligation, so I worked out from home:
-1 mile valley run
-20 minute EMOM at the playground:
First 10 rounds:
-4 pullups and 4 double-pump burpees
Next 10 rounds:
-3 pullups and 3 double-pump burpees
-Mile valley run/walk/run. (Walked the first half of the uphill section from bridge to park)
A pretty decent session all considered. Definitely not feeling great and haven’t been in a while. Lots on my mind and that’s a big part of it.
This is good stuff. You have good pullup endurance to last that long. The pullup/burpee combo isn’t that different than pullup/pushup/squat and that still gasses me even though I do it daily. Do you go 1 pullup > 1 burpee > 1 pullup and so forth, or do you do all the pullups then all the burpees?
Yeah man, pullups have always been my thing!
I’m never too far away from a set of 20 - which I feel is a solid benchmark. Meaning, if I don’t train them for a while, I maybe would need a week or two to build back up to a set of 20, but it wouldn’t be too hard. Every other performance metric, or movement, I suck at and my body hates, and when I stop for a couple weeks I revert to zero.
1 pullup - 1 burpee - 1 pullup would be OK, if you can stay right under the bar. My bar is on gravel though and it’s about 3 steps from the smooth spot I do burpees, so for me it’s
N pullups - N x-pump burpees - rest
every minute.
After today’s session, the next stage is getting 4 per minute for all 20 minutes.
I can also tweak it be doing, for example 2 4-pump burpees as a baby step (slightly less work than 4 2-pump burpees)
1/31/2024 Friday
My oldest son’s 11th birthday today. Took off work and having a family day.
Not going to drive 30 minutes to the gym on a day like this, haha.
1 mile valley run at an easy pace to the park
20 minutes EMOM:
-4 pullups
-2 4-pump burpees
1 mile valley run home at an easy pace but never slowing to a walk
That’s a pretty awesome session TBH: 80 pullups, 160 pushups inclusive of 40 burpees, all in 20 minutes. And those runs are STEEP.
I’m traveling all next week so:
-Haven’t been to the gym this week, doing all workouts from home
-Won’t be in a real gym next week
-But still getting what I need, and hopefully will get some decent sessions at the hotel next week too.
Mid-week update:
Sunday was a nice physical day - 2-mile valley walk with family, carried the 3yo on my shoulders the majority of that as usual; played “tennis” (or as close to tennis as you can get with 4 kids on the court) at the park.
Sunday night got on a plane, slept barely - but enough to not feel miserable Monday.
Monday morning went straight from the airport to work. The tempo of each day this week is:
-work a full day
-Go to the hotel and catch up with my actual job, remotely
Tuesday morning I actually did a mile on the hotel treadmill. But the other days it just wasn’t in the cards, too much to do, too little time or energy, and I’m not disappointed in that. It’s a week of travel. I’ll be back to the routine soon.
Sunday.
Mother in law is with us, I’ve ranted about her before so I’ll spare you all this time.
But at least she gave us a date, which we used to climb the Koko Head stairs - a mile and a half of stairs up a mountain.
Monday 2/10
I was expecting to have some soreness from the stair climb yesterday. I didn’t, but it had other effects.
Up at 0430, got to the gym by 0520, and as it has been a couple weeks since I’ve been, I planned a 5x5-for-all-big-movements approach.
It started out ok. Couldn’t get a squat rack at first so I started with upper body.
Bench press 5x95, 4x5x135
Pullups, 5x5
Chest supported rows 5x5x various.
Strict press, 5x60, 4x5x90.
One set of abs.
Squat 5X 135, 5x155, 5x155. Then I went under the bar and holy shit. My entire left thigh cramped up so bad I could barely hobble away.
I unloaded the bar and thought I would walk it off, but it never did walk off.
So I spent the rest of the session doing some brisk walking and a couple sets of biceps and triceps.
This is certainly residual from yesterday’s stair event but it is strange that this is how it manifested.
Wow I forgot to log yesterday.
My head wasn’t in the game at the gym, work taking up all my capacity, but I still got a lift in.
Wednesday 2/13/2025
Squat 5x5: 5x135 then 4x155
Still CRAZY sore from the Koko Head Stairs climb but no cramping.
Snatch: 3x3: 95, 115, 135. Did full squats on all of these - so the top set is powersnatch+OH squat
8 minutes on the rowing machine, averaged 2 minutes per 500M so 2,000M in 8 minutes. A good pace - not ballbusting but not lazy either.
Work shit be CRAY. As always it seems, there’s a lot going on in my life.
When I don’t have the mental energy to think about lifting at all, it gets really really simple - and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Deadlift 5x5 - 5x135, then 4x5x225. LOL I think I used to have 24 reps with 225 but not any more, this was heavy enough for 5s.
BTN Lat Pulldown 5x5 - and used the newfangled grip bar which is awesome, gives neutral wrists and is so natural to hold
Seated cable row 5x5
Seated strict press 5x5
Bench press 5x5x135
Biceps curls, 2x5
20 minutes brisk uphill treadmill walk, watching history videos.
Oh - guys - Valentine’s day is just another calendar day, subsidizing the hallmark and flower businesses, etc etc etc but you know what?
Women love it.
Every year for 15+ years I’ve gotten my wife something rose-related on V-day, be it real roses (early on), glass roses, “dipped” roses (highly recommend, until you run out of colors after 10+ years) and this year, I got her Lego roses.
Start a tradition now if you’re in a serious relationship, and in a decade or so you’ll be glad you did!
-Up at 4:30
-On the phone (for one of my side jobs) before 5:00
-Back to back to back calls for two different departments of said side job up until 7:30
-7:30 started throwing up. Took a tums and a shower.
-8:00 started my day job.
-11:00 lunch with a colleague who has offered to hire me
-12:00 back to the rest of my day job
-3:30 ish done for the day.
I think the reason for throwing up was because I had my first cup of coffee at 4:35, then an energy drink at 5:30, then another cup of coffee at 7:00 and my body couldn’t handle it. But yeah I’m also burning the candle at both ends. I know it. This is how I live since the move.
The work isn’t difficult, but the side jobs (not the day job) are mentally very very taxing. Like rolling out of bed and into a sprint, then at the top of the hour switching from sprinting to boxing, then after 30 minutes switching from boxing to swimming - it’s the gear shifting that really gets to me, I have to be “fresh” for each of these calls because they’re often with different people and for them, the subject of the call is the only “thing” whereas I’m juggling like 5 different things.
2/19/2025 Wednesday
Actual log for today’s session lol
Due to yesterday I decided to do a classic non-ball-busting workout today.
Leg Press 4x10
Glute machine 4x12
Leg Ext 3x?
Bench press 3x8 135, 155, 155
Chest-supported row 3x8
6 rounds EMOM:
75lb DB
3 goblet squats
1 clean and press left
1 clean and press right
10 minutes stairmaster - and btw absolutely POURING sweat on the stairmaster, I guess it’s the combination of the above because I don’t often sweat that hard.
Now to the day job and intermittent communication with my side jobs.
1 mile valley run home NOPE, legs (and willpower) gave out during the uphill, so I walked about a quarter mile and then finished strong.
Great session though. Has me thinking I should work up to a bodyweight Murph. Wouldn’t be much more on the pushups and pullups, would add a hellalotta bodyweight squats but those would be good for me anyway.
Weekend update
Surf session Friday night.
Sat/Sun had a cripplingly sore/stiff/tweaked lower back.
Was it from Friday’s session, or the surfing, or something else?
I hate that I’m feeling so old and fragile.
Saturday had a blowout on the freeway, with the whole family loaded up for errands/activities. Cancelled all of those. But luckily I had a spare and helpful strangers stopped on the roadside to contribute (one of them had an inflator which I needed because the spare was deflated. One of them figured out the secret way to access the spare which was amazingly tricky.)
And Thursday, I lost my wedding ring. 15 years this summer and I lost it.
Took it off when doing pullups at a playground with the kids. Must’ve fallen out of my pocket.
And finally, Sunday, I got so disgusted with myself for a) being old and fragile and b) not having lost any fat since 1/1, and c) feeling too overwhelmed with other aspects of life to control my snacking, so I decided to hold myself to account and clean up my eating again.
(This is all relative. I can do 20 pullups so I’m hardly weak or fat. But what I see in the mirror isn’t what I want to see.)
Monday 2/24
Pursuant to the above, and acting on my wife’s advice about the lower back, today’s session was:
-2 mile treadmill run
-Light lower-back/core activities
That’s it.
Running will need to take a more significant role in my life. It sucks but it’s the only way.
I live and die by cheap wedding bands. Probably go through 2-3 a year. The nice one gets brought out on fancy date nights, then safely back to the nightstand. A tattoo also solves this problem, but I’m a coward about hand tats.
A blowout is legitimately one of the most infuriating non-emergency events that can happen lol. Just immediately ruins the day. That sucks man, glad you got it handled.
Ever look into TRT? I know next to nothing about it, other than it seems a ton of guys 35+ swear by it, seems like it may be something to look into if you think your habits and routines aren’t getting you to respond like they used to. (This is the closest to recommending drugs I’m gonna do lol. Unless you count caffeine, because I will 100% push that on anyone haha)
Dude. For now at least, I’ve solved the problem with exactly that: you know those bubblegum machines that used to be at the front of stores, with little egg-sized clear packages with crappy prizes in them? My kids bought one and it had a ring in it. Perfect fit, I don’t even have to take it off for pullups like the old one
Still haven’t looked into it, I feel like i’d qualify, the symptoms are largely there.
I’ve spent my whole life so drug free (never smoked a cigarrete) that it feels like a weird area for me to get into. Not saying I never will, I can see value in it, but…
Not yet anyway.
Now on this one - look, I got up at 4:30 this morning, cup of coffee and straight to work calls 4 time zones away, energy drink around 6:30, “mild energy” drink (90mg) around 7:30, double shot espresso around 9:00…
Laid off the caffiene since then to avoid killing myself. But currently drinking a cup of black tea at nearly 5pm so…
