@jdm135 thanks man! In terms of federal work, thinking along the lines of law enforcement or intelligence field. DHS, FBI, state dept, something like that. Have a lot of contacts in a lot of those fields, going to throw my hat in the ring and see who bites.
@KonsuTheTraveller brother, I need you to know that was 1000% your fault. I had not had biscuits and gravy in years, then I saw you post about it, and I’ve been craving it ever since! Lol
Work for today;
Pull-ups: 3, 3, 3, 3, 4 (done sporadically while meal prepping)
Side note, changing diet plans up a bit. Above I mentioned running vertical diet and then going into carb cycling. Decided to reverse that order. Starting the carb cycling tomorrow. Main reasons being 1) vertical diet works insanely well for me, so i kind of want to save it for when my cut stalls 2) I want to drop about 30lbs, so I expect it to take a while and don’t want to go too long on mainly protein shakes. Good for fitness, but I do pause on the health considerations. 3) there’s a challenge to the carb cycling that kind of excites me, and if I can get nutrition to be exciting, that’s good enough for me 4) @TrainForPain is sending me some Surge for winning the challenge and I honestly just want to use it lol.
Plan is basically vertical diet non training days, adding a carb heavy meal and a banana/surge on my training days. Also means macros are back to being tracked.
Deficit dead stop deadlift: 340x6, 340x6, 340x6, 340x6
Spoto Press: 160x6, 160x6, 160x6, 160x6
Front squat: 185x8, 185x8, 190x8
Hamstring curl: 90x15, 90x15, 90x15
Leg extension: 130x15, 130x15
GHD sit-up: 18, 18
Am weight: 217.2
Notes:
first set of deadlifts felt like death, and I have no idea why. Rest moved better. Maybe just tired. Haven’t done well on the “getting more sleep” goal.
front squats felt good. 8 reps is too many for this movement lol. I feel like these deserve a place on every “best evercises for BJJ”, just because they get you extra practice on being choked tf out lol.
spoto pressed moved fast. Lighter weight today, going for an RPE 10 set tomorrow.
carving up had the belt feeling tight, definitely used to being fairly empty when I go to lift. Also, curious to see what my weight does and the day to day. I think I will have to judge weekly trends, as I’m sure glycogen alone will have me a bit heavier the days after I carb up.
Good morning: 175x8, 175x8 (reset), 135x8, 135x8, 135x8
Lat pulldown: 130x15, 130x15, 115x13
Db lat raise: 15x20, 15x20, 15x18
Db overhead ext: 70x20, 70x16, 70x15
Cable curl: 30x18, 30x17, 30x17
Conditioning: 30 min LISS elliptical
AM weight: 217.2
Notes:
god damn my bench loves Juggernaut training. Not sure on lower body, fairly certain it likes it, maybe not as much as 531, but seriously bench just responds so well. Down 15lbs since starting this, 185x10 on spoto honestly moved pretty easily, and I def would have struggled with 185x10 on paused regular bench prior. Chad Wesley Smith is onto something.
got damn that’s a lot of volume on bench though.
took a video of my good mornings…. Glad I did. Just butchering these. Time to learn these again.
gym has two lat pulldown machines, the one I like is busted. This one feels heavier for some reason.
for some reason a lot of people were feeling chatty today at the gym, and I was struggling to get out of the conversations without being a dick.
Finished the day off with some sporadic pull-ups whenever I walked by my garage while doing yard work.
Macros for today: unknown, cheat day.
some thoughts here
I say “cheat” day, but idk if that’s really accurate. I thought long and hard about it, and didn’t feel like I needed a diet break or anything, but felt like I SHOULD do it for a couple reasons. Mainly, I want to be eating as MUCH food as possible throughout the week while still dropping 1-2lbs a week. If I reduce calories super low to start, I don’t have anything to fall back on. That’s been a mistake of mine in the past, so I’m trying to learn from it. Keep doing the least amount of “work” (calorie restriction) to get the results I want for as long as it works.
this feels less cheating and more akin to @T3hPwnisher s “rampage” meals. Beef trips, fajita chicken, pasta. I’m just eating a ton of nutritious, off plan food, generally about once every 8 days.
now, this is somewhat of an experiment. The carb cycling and the cheat meal while keeping velocity diet on non training days. It may totally fail. But, I’m trying something new, so if it fails, I’ll learn what doesn’t freaking work, and go back to things I know do.
also, throwing down the gauntlet here. I keep saying 190, but that needs a timeline. I’m going to say September 16th. That lines up with both the end of my juggernautAI powerlifting cycle, and a week before a wedding I’m supposed to go to. Gives me a little over 3 months to drop 27lbs. Seems doable.
deload week, but wanted to keep it interesting. Did this in my garage, just set everything up and then let myself run with it. Did all the weights that I was supposed to do for a deload, but made it into a conditioning challenge.
THIS. WAS. EPIC. Absolutely answered the bill for what I wanted. Really, I just need to meal prep and was kind of crunched on time, but didn’t want to skip my planned conditioning, and this was my compromise. Hell of a workout in under half an hour: 18 sets, not heavy for me but still decent weight, 90burpees, blood flowing, heart racing. Will probably start training more METCON stuff once I start going out to sea again, but this was an epic way to tip my toe back into it.
Time: 19:04
Immediately ran out my garage and ran 1.25 miles, time 11:03
Notes:
first and foremost, a huge thank you to @TrainForPain. My surge came in today, and seriously, this stuff rocks. Energy levels felt fantastic throughout this, and those following carefully know how rare that is for me.
I’m going to make these conditioning circuits my new go to for deload weeks. I hate to deal of because it feels like I’m just wasting time, this way I can still feel like I’m putting in quality work while letting my muscles recover a bit.
jump ropes and KB swings are much easier than burpees for a fat man lol.
run went well. Not really trying to push speed here, more just a decent jog to keep my heart rate up.
AM weight: 220.5. No way I have actually gained 3lbs of fat in 3 days, pretty sure this is just retaining more water weight from eating a decent amount of carbs again. Mirror test actually looks a bit better, muscles seem less flat. Not gonna worry about it, will track weekly trends now that it seems I’ve refilled glycogen reserves.
Thinking about it, I honestly really enjoy this type of training. Feels exciting, athletic, energy is high throughout. I get the appeal of CrossFit workouts. Still keeping with the plan and all, but I can definitely see myself transitioning into some type of program down the road where I do 1-2 main lifts for the day, and then have a big circuit like this for the remainder of my accessories. Feel like it would fit in well with 5-3-1 programming.
I’d highly recommend checking out some of Brian’s stuff. Giant sets and short rest time with a lot of different movements. The programs are inexpensive, too.
@boilerman I have ran a LOT of Brian’s programs before, always with pretty awesome results. I think the longest Program I’ve ever run was actually his linear progression program. Absolutely love it. My only issue with them is, they take some damn time, and have me doing some weird movements that I don’t always have the setup to do. Still, some high quality stuff that I’m definitely going to play with again in the future.
@TrainForPain ill have to check this out, thanks for the recommendation!
Work for today: Navy PRT
Push-ups: 75
Plank: 3:20 seconds
1.5 mile run: 11:12
Notes:
completely forgot this was today. Command PRT was when I was on leave, so today was a makeup.
maxed plank, scored pretty high on push-ups
had absolutely no business running an 11:12 mile and a half. One of my sailors also took it today, and him and I were in competition. I always have pretty drastically better times on actual game day, but this was killer lol. Essentially didn’t breathe the last quarter mile. My lungs still hurt. My knee is going to be yelling at me for the next week. But I beat him by 5 seconds, and that is what matters
