I’ll look out for them, just checked the prices on my usual site, about $35 equivalent per stick, on what I gather is about a $10 stick in the states?
Unfortunately not, tobacco sales are very tightly regulated (so they can slap on crazy taxes).
I am planning to go to Canada again at some point in the not too distant future, will just have to stock up there as well!
I pay $5-$6 usually.
$35 for a cigar is nuts!
Crazy good value.
Yup that’s about the price for a sorta decent cigar round here! Hence stocking up when out the country, the RyJ short Churchill’s I bought retail for £45/$60 each in the UK they were about half that in Spain fortunately!
02/06/25 - 207!
Haha I have never gained weight so quickly, part of it was carrying on eating like a douchebag yesterday, part of it is also probably cruise still catching up, another part will be post cut rebound, but that puts me up by 10lb in 10 days, mad.
BtM - W1 D1
Chin ups: 5 x 10 sets (first 10 sets done during warm up sets of squats and clearing space in my messy garage).
Squats: 60, 80, 100, 115kg x 5, 130kg x 5 x 5 sets
OHP: 45, 50, 57.5kg x 5, 45kg x 17
A1) chins x 5
A2) dips x 10 x 2 sets, push ups x 10 x 8 sets
A3) band pull apart x 10
10 sets
Sweat absolutely pouring off me, that extra weight is having a pretty negative impact, my breathing is heavy and my lungs actually hurt, recovery between sets slow. I’d guess some of that weight will drop off before quickly before BtM kicks in. The first set of squats at 130kg felt like a truck, didn’t exactly get easier but it got done. I absolutely detest top end volume work, much prefer working up to a top set then doing volume on the back off…which means this will probably be very good for me.
Took about 40 mins just to get 50 chin ups and the squats done, this needs to come down! Total time was almost 1 hour 50 (I slowed right up at the final giant set, could have pushed harder here).
Dips annoyed the crap out of my shoulder, so, I did 2 sets then chopped them for push ups, everything else was fine. Given that dips are in the optional extra portion and press ups feel like a reasonable alternative I’m happy with that, hopefully it’ll magically get better.
Speaking of magically getting better, I didn’t realise until getting out of bed this morning that I haven’t experienced any lower back stiffness whilst away, sleeping on cheap cabin beds, a couple of nights at home and boom, getting out of bed like a geriatric, stupidly expensive mattress is ruining me, going to have to replace it but having just come back off cruise and having a kitchen refit (including a sizable electrical alterations bill) I’m not feeling flush!
OHP vids:
T-shirt at the end of the squats:
Soaked! Legs at the end of the squats:
Pumped!
Good to see you getting after it dude, and glad the shoulder is holding up to the pressing. Funny how the “good” mattresses can be so bad for us. We need more hard living.
Holding up is probably the word, but using a wider grip I didn’t have any pain, if I do I’ve got the landmine in my back pocket!
True, we’re so good at adapting that when we have it easy and soft we adapt and become soft.
First day of eating done (well minimum standards, might eat some more later).
Did it in 3 meals, meal 1 - 6 eggs scrambled and put in a flour tortilla, meal 2 - 6 eggs scrambled and put with a tin of baked beans (easier to eat than meal 1), meal 3 chilli - 750g mince eaten as 3 massive burritos (that 20% mince was a big mistake awful quality, grizzle in every mouthful, really hard to eat, but not from a satiety point, just stopping every few seconds to fish grizzle or even bone out your mouth, ruined the eating experience - good job I’ve only got 4.5kg left to eat 
).
I also didn’t bother with my usual beans in the chilli, I need to make the minimum eating standard and beans would fill me up. Wasn’t massively challenging, could have made it easier and split the chilli over 2 meals, that was the plan but life came up and my time ran short (literally had a tortilla on the plate that ended up going stale!).
I wonder if you could further process it. Like run it through your own meat grinder, or perhaps mix it with some broth in a blender, although then it would become more of a soup when you try to cook it.
If I feel really fed up of it, this might be the way, hoping to just grit it out, it’s unpleasant, but I’m sure the 10% of the world that literally go to bed hungry would be happy with it (yup using the “there’s kids starving in Africa” trope on myself).
Beef mince soup might be easier to eat though!
Agreed.
I don’t smoke often, but I’d like to 
My favorite cheap cigars are Rocky Patels.
That said, i don’t smoke enough to notice the difference between a 8$ and a 20$ cigar
I’m the same, left to my own devices I’d definitely smoke more, but that’s probably a good thing.
I’m not a snob, but definitely notice the difference, but moreso in region, wrapper types, filler types etc than cost.
03/06/25 - 206.75
Some noticeable DOMs and fatigue. Lats, quads and hams. Will get a weighted vest walk in, keep up the full program.
Speaking of:
First meal of the day, 6 eggs and a tin of beans, second meal was this chilli con huevos! Decided to combine the second meal of 6 eggs with the first mince meal (splitting the mince meal in two today, should make my evening meal a little more comfortable - the total weight of food was 1.1kg, which sits heavy).
Got a call out and didn’t have time to do the weighted vest walk, but did get 2.5 miles in regularly walking with a backpack (no more than 5kg thought), walked to and from my evening meeting, wouldn’t have been practical to take the weighted vest. My legs are sore enough and this is light cardio/recovery so won’t sweat the detail here, the 2.5 miles covers the intent.
Now to finish that grizzly chilli!
We bought a cheap mattress from Amazon over Christmas break and it’s been awesome. It’s actually softer than anything I’ve had in the past, but it’s tough to get out of bed in the mornings due to its coziness. I’m sure it won’t last more than a few years, but I figure $300 every 4 or 5 years isn’t much different than spending $1500 on one and keeping it for 10 years. My daughter now has our old mattress and we paid like $1200 for it back in 2013. It’s okay, but definitely not something that I wanted to purchase again for that price point.
You can also find a lot of products advertised as “hotel” items so if that’s your thing, it’s out there.
04/06/25 - 207.25
BtM - W1 D2
A1) deads: 60, 100, 110, 122.5kg x 5, 137.5kg x 5 x 3 sets
A2) DB curls: 10kg x 15 x 7 sets
B1) bench: 60, 80, 90kg x 5, 100kg x 5 x 5 sets
B2) DB rows: 20, 25, 30kg x 10, 22.5kg x 10 x 2 sets
All deads were done double overhand up until set 2 of the 137.5kg - had a weird lat cramp on 60kg with mixed grip and decided to doh it got to 4 reps on the first set and had to reset, forearms smoked, so went mixed for the last 2 sets, no doubt the curls had some small impact there as well.
Set 2:
Rows felt like crap, elbow is slightly grumpy as well, joy, it’s been a while since that reared it’s head. Dropped it to focus on the movement not just hauling weights around for the sake of it. Bench felt awful as well, the empty bar felt hard, first set of 100kg felt bad in my buggy elbow, but for easier as it went through.
Also despite coming into this determined to move through it quickly I still moved at the speed of an asthmatic sloth. It’s almost like gaining 10lbs of water and fat rapidly has some sort of deleterious impact on your body.
Nevermind, no time to think about that, 1.5lb of mince to eat!
Thanks, appreciate the input pretty galling to buy such an expensive item, to rectify a problem only to have it make it worse, I’m currently thinking that I might just stick a piece of ply between the memory foam and the base.
05/06/25 - 208
if you get fat when you train like this, it’s because you simply aren’t working hard enough to support the calories - Jim Wendler
Be interesting to see where I shake out at the end of this, because right now weight gain is progressing a little too rapidly, won’t change anything yet because I fully expect my body to do what it always has done and slam the brakes on weight gain, but that’s now 11lb up in 13 days.
8 of it was vacation weight so I wouldn’t sweat it. Go build the monolith. 
Thanks Shane, good point, just feels uncomfortable at present, but time to make peace with being squishy and uncomfortable!
Tonight: prowler work 50kg sled x lactate threshold x 10
Tried pushing it on concrete, that didn’t work so had this little strip of fake grass on station and used that push high handles one way, jump over it, push low handles back, didn’t count number of times per set, went till the legs locked up rested 60-90 secs and went again.
06/06/25 - 208
Mrs made a comment as I stood topless in our room, she said she prefers me a bigger, so there’s a win.
BtM - W1 D3
Taking Jim’s license to change the order, squats last.
OHP: 20, 40kg X 5, 45kg x 5 x 10 sets done EMOM.
A1) weighted chins: 10kg x 5 x 5 sets
A2) band pull aparts: 20 x 5 sets
A3) DB shrugs: 22.5kg x 20 x 5 sets
Squats: 60, 100, 115, 130kg x 5, 65kg x 20
The OHP wasn’t too bad on the dodgy shoulder, and got a decent training effect doing that EMOM, the giant set worked well, by the end of that my shoulder girdle was lit up like a Christmas tree…which made my lower bar position awkward, and squats felt like absolute crap, 115kg felt like a max effort lift, like seriously what the heck is going on there, 130kg felt a little better but not much and it also caused my elbow to flare up - a message to my body: stop it!
My belt is also too tight now, need to adjust the buckle, threw it on in the normal position, at 100kg did two reps, racked it called myself a fat prick, adjusted the position so that it sat higher and I could actually move, then finished. Will adjust that when I can be bothered.
With the 20 reps I started low bar wide stance, but honestly it’s not great for rep work, so spent half my reps just repositioning the bar (on my back) and my feet and ended up high bar and narrow stance, got super upright and buried them deep, could have done more, probably a lot more, but it was still surprisingly challenging.
07/06/25 - 208
Was hoping to get the rowing cardio done today, but that was ambitious as I had a big task to do, big task took a long time and the cardio took a backseat, but the big task was physically active so I wasn’t slacking:
Ripped the kitchen out ready for a refit. Knackered now.
Managed to eat my 12 eggs and 1.5lb (well I actually eat more, because of metric sales - 750g/1.65lbs) of mince, and also a kilogram of mashed potatoes.
I just knew we were kindred spirits!
Kitchen looks… great? (That’s a big project.)
