Thursday - 24 June 2021
Workout: Vacation day 6
No workout
I’ve decided to take a real break—no workouts out any kind.
Based on my (paper) log, the last time I didn’t do any kind of workout was 31 Oct 2020, which was 235 days ago. Not a bad streak if you ask me.
Friday - 25 June 2021
Workout: Vacation day 7
No workout
Taking another day off, just because I can. I will likely take tomorrow off because I will have to—starting trip home in the morning.
Saturday - 26 June 2021
Workout: Vacation day 8
No workout
Made it home in about 12 hours, totally exhausted. Still have to unpack and restock groceries. It’s been a long day, and I’m not doing any work. Will pickup with new programming tomorrow.
Vacation 2021 - summary
Sunday - 27 June 2021
Metrics: 194.3/38.0/19.6% at 0605
So I knew it’d be bad, but… Wow! My body really does want to be fat still: up nearly 11 lbs in bodyweight, over 2 inches around my waist, and almost 2% body fat. I’m guessing most of that is just bloat, and I’m hoping I will rebound to something more reasonable pretty quickly, but there is likely some real fat gain there.
I am actually quite proud of myself for doing as much work on vacation as I did: only took the last 3 days off with no workouts whatsoever. Obviously didn’t keep the food in check as well as I could have, but I’m so much less stressed about it than I would have been this time last year. Or even just a few months ago, really.
Hopefully that fact reflects a real shift in mindset.
So I enjoyed vacation, but I’m now ready to get back to work.
Hey sorry I’m just now checking in here. Looks like good work. Vacation is vacation - who cares? We’re Vikings up in here - conquer the work and then feast and celebrate.
Looks like you’ve got your plan set with the Wendler piece. I see you still want to look good (who doesn’t??); my $0.02 is, as long as you’re hitting the weights and the conditioning like you are, high-quality foods seem to go a longggg way toward the look.
Hey Dire Wolf! 
Good job on taking a break on your vacation. I think most people find that their body needs these breaks from time to time to move forward and make progress.
Don’t worry too much about the metrics — I’m learning too that it’s almost never a direct line from A to B, but rather more of a meandering pathway. Enjoy the scenic route, and don’t forget to enjoy said scenery from time to time.
Think of the metrics as a reflection of your body’s way of stocking up on energy for the challenges to come. It’s what will make the next round of progress possible.
Welcome back! 
Hehe loving the new name, that’s a Dog of bad omen?
Honestly friend, you totally deserved these days of complete rest.
P&FLT - c1w1d1
Sunday - 27 June 2021
Workout: Easy conditioning
Weighted vest walk - 10 kg - 30 minutes
Forgot how much I like weighted vest work; even something as simple as a half-hour walk gets me fired up.
I’ll be doing these walks and some LISS bike rides for the easy conditioning workouts. I hate running, even just the 1-2 miles JW suggests, so it’s unlikely I’ll throw those into the mix…
And now that I’ve typed that out, I hear Pwn in my head:
Guess I’ll have to find a way to make it work.
Love this imagery, man. Thanks for checking in!
Finally beginning to understand this… Spent too long training to support my eating; going to flip that on its head and make some progress now!
Right on!
This reminds me: I’m not going to weigh-in for the next six weeks. Really just want to focus on doing the work, eating intelligently, and seeing results.
Yes, yes! I love this translation: a dog of bad omen!
Canis dirus is the scientific name of the Dire Wolf, a prehistoric North American predator, popularized in Game of Thrones.
Becoming Canis dirus—a big, strong North American predator hunting down and killing weakness—accurately frames my new headspace and my new goals, so I went with it!
A wolf’s gotta run, my dude.
Thanks for the tag in mate. I think this will prove to be a very positive change for you. From someone who was very body focused to someone who now only cares about strength and performance it has been such a freeing experience. I’ll be along for the ride, this is going to be good.
This is huge. You’ll go far with this.
Eat more, do more, be more.
Get after it brother!
EAT THE WEAK
P&FLT - c1w1d2
Monday - 28 June 2021
Workout: Press, 0810-0900 (50 minutes)
Warm-up
Throws + jumps
Begin: 0826; End: 0859; Duration: 33 minutes
Press - 45x5, 55x5, 70x5 | 80x5, 90x5, 100x5 | (80x5)x5
Band face pull - red - 25, 25
Bulgarian split squat - L/R - BW - 15, 15
Pull-up + chin-up - BW - 5+5, 5+5, 5+5
OA row - L/R - 40x20, 30x20
KB swing - 16kg - 25, 25
First lifting workout in Prep & Fat Loss Training today; this was fasted (just wasn’t hungry). Think I nailed it!
Goal is to complete the work in 45 minutes or less. I was moving pretty fast, and came in with a little more than 10 minutes to spare. JW warns against turning this into a conditioning session, and I was borderline today: I had no idea what to expect, so I just moved as quickly as I could, particularly early on. Could probably slow it down a bit—there’s time for more recovery, even with today’s assistance work that included some unilateral moves.
My HR was up in the 150s/160s after most of the assistance, so I started to rest a bit after each one during the FSL sets and let it recover to the mid-130s.
The press was moving smoothly and quickly, and everything else felt pretty good too.
Going to have to work on my pull-ups/chin-ups: they’re both weak, but I knew that going in. I did 5 reps of each (back-to-back) over the 3 sets, for 30 total reps—way too few.
Dropped the DB weight after the first set of rows, just to get quality reps. 35-lbs DBs might be the sweet spot here, to the extent that it matters.
Could probably move up to the 20-kg KB for the swings—again, just for what that’s worth.
Happy with today’s work, but feels weird to be done for the day. Don’t want to jump the gun—it may be that I’ll start to feel the higher volume tomorrow—but I might be able to handle some extra conditioning…
Thanks for the tag man. Glad to help in any way I can
Yeah man I think you need to drop the physique shit. It’s a busted flush for guys our age and strikes me as one last hurrah for youthfulness.
How you supposed to lead the pack when your priority is how you awesome you look in the fucking mirror. That’s actually sounds really pathetic when you think about it. It is completely incongruent with your lifestyle and it’s all for jack shit because your wife probably wants you to pack on some timber and the rest of the world couldn’t give a flying fuck
Us dads are built to perform.
To perform our family duty of protecting the pack, inspiring our kids by being healthy and using our physicality in order to have fun.
And the sweet thing is that once you flip your mindset, you’ll probably start getting the physique you crave.
Just push the conditioning fucking hard my man. Enter the dark place and slowly walk towards the light.
It isn’t fun and never will be however we put ourselves through hell so no one else can
Looks like a really good session, honestly I see no harm in doing these exercises on the quicker side. And no, these are nice pull-up numbers.
I think I have done pure aesthetic work only around 6 months in my lifting carreer ^^
I think there’s really truth to what you say.
P&FLT - c1w1d2
Monday - 28 June 2021
Workout: Supplemental
Pull-up + chin-up - BW - 5+5, 5+5, 5+5
So despite @aldebaran’s encouragement:
I really wanted to hit the recommended pull-up/chin-up reps for today—did 3 quick sets of 5+5, bringing the daily total up to 60 (which is at the upper end of the range).
Probably should have done those before dinner, but…
Also realizing I should probably just rest more or do some myo-style mini-sets to get the reps in during the actual workout; I’ll give that a try tomorrow.
Seeing, too, that JW recommends 60-90 seconds of rest between each exercise. I really liked my pace today: moving quickly but not forcing anything. However, given that I had 12 minutes to spare, I can definitely accommodate some myo-reps to get the work in (until I’m stronger).
I like this. Don’t be affraid to use different rep and rest schemes with pull-ups. They are a skill as well. If you do them every day you’ll become a master soon enough.
I think when I was the best at pull-ups was when I was doing either 50 pull-ups or 50 inverted rows every day.
