I actually did continentals, since I was using an axle. Always a solution for bad cleaners.
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I just finished off watching this years WSM this evening (I know you don’t watch it) - had a minor epiphany, the reason I got into lifting (like cheap bench and sand weights at age 10) was WSM, watching insane units of men doing incredible things with heavy awkward stuff and overcoming with crazy things like continentals, honestly makes me want to get into strongman.
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I was able to watch this year’s finals. Strongman is great for competition: really drives you to push hard. It’s a TM someone else picks, haha.
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Very true, I’m generally pretty competitive as well. Will have to look into actual comps post Covid, better start attempting to pull conventional as well.
(Sorry TTT I’ll stop clogging your log up with my segue)
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Finally, you’re actually going to learn how to deadlift properly 
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Hahaha nah it’s all good, feel free to do so whenever the mood takes you
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Thanks and same to you, my journal is 98% segues 2% me training (or maybe less).
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First session of BtM, from yesterday. Report and notes below.
14/02/21
Squat
20kgx10, 40x5 (warmup)
63.5x5 (5 @70%)
72.5x5 (5 @80%)
81.5x5, 5, 5, 5, 5 (5x5 @90%) superset with pullovers
Press:
20x5 (warmup)
38x5 (5 @70%)
43x5 (5 @80%)
48.5x5 (5 @90%)
38x10 (AMRAP @70%)
Assistance –
Superset: Chins 11, 7, 6, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 4, 4, 5, 4 (100 reps, 20 sets) with Dips 11, 9, 8, 8, 7, 8, 7, 6, 7, 6, 6, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 5, 5, 5 (132 reps, 20 sets)
(That stupidly long string of numbers does actually look quite funny typed out on my screen I must admit)
Notes:
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Firstly I forgot three things this session: forgot to power clean the barbell before the press sets, forgot to superset chins with presses, and forgot to do band face pulls… it seems my higher brain functions go out the window during a tough workout. Will remember them next time.
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Superset squats with pullovers to save time but still get in my pullovers. No better way to do them than with squats so win-win.
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Squats were reasonably challenging towards the end, press was nice and challenging too. Rest on the big lifts was relatively short, like 2 mins up towards 3 mins at the most.
Soreness today from squats is very limited, almost not there - then again after Beefcake I’m not sure if any amount of squatting is going to make me sore. Obviously pressing and dipping together did affect the delts a little, they are tired. -
The elephant in the room: that was a LOT of chins and dips. My chest and back, and to a lesser extent my triceps are fried today. Delts too. On the plus side next session the DOMS should improve. My strategy for the chins and dips: do as many sets as necessary to get 100 chins, keep supersetting with dips, and just stop doing dips when I stop doing chins. Rest started out at about 2 mins between chins, but then quickly rose to 2:30-3:00… and then dropped back down to about 2:00 or even less! No idea what happened, but I think it had something to do with me suddenly settling on 4 chins for like 10 sets straight. I’m not sure why that happened to be honest. In fact, around that time that I started constantly getting 4 or 5, I stopped even getting that fatigued… it was like I didn’t even need that much rest, whereas after the first few sets of chins, I felt like I needed more rest. It was sort of like I just went numb.
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Anyway about halfway through I thought about stopping because it was taking ages, then I told myself that if I reached complete muscular failure and I couldn’t do another chin, I would have to stop anyway. So I kept going, trying to get to that point, but I never did, so I did the full 100.
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Also index finger started tingling a bit during chins towards the end. Think it was down to the constant gripping of the bar.
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Total session time: near as makes no difference two hours, including everything at the beginning like jumps and random arm circling, and everything at the end like putting plates away. (For reference I usually do a few jumps at the start of the session just to fire up the old CNS). So a long session, but honestly I was expecting much worse with all those chins and dips. If I had remembered to superset the chins with the press it would have been a good 5-10 minutes shorter too, I’d say.
Summary: not the most fun thing I’ve ever done.
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Cardio update: change of plan, looks like I won’t be swimming for a week or two at least probably. Today, 15/02/21, I did 5 short 40m speed sprints, just to grease that running groove… but honestly I don’t know if that would really counts as conditioning. Sort of stuck for conditioning ideas for the next week or two now without my swimming.
For me, I only did cleans on Day 3 rather than Day 1. Day 1 has enough awful stuff in it, haha.
What has prompted you to include pull overs into the program?
For dips and chins, rest pausing might be a sound idea as well.
Understatement! I can still scarcely believe I did 100 chins in a session. That terrified me when I saw it written out in the program. Then again, before, I thought 50 chins in a session during Beefcake would be too much… one keeps pushing one’s limits I suppose.
I’ve been doing light pullovers right from the start of my training in pretty much every session. The idea is to try and cause some expansion of the rib cage, as taught by the old-school guys like Darden and Kelso. I personally think it works to some extent. If nothing else it’s a nice movement to stretch out a little and it doesn’t take up much time or effort, so no harm in adding it.
That could definitely be fun. How would you set that up? Go to failure and just keep constantly doing sets of 2-3 as soon as you catch your breath?
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I was curious if it was rib-box expansion. I did that during my run with Super Squats. Cool enough.
For rest pause, I steal from Dante of DoggCrapp fame: 12 deep breaths and then go again. Make them DEEP. Pull in a lot of air. You’re trying to recover.
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@aldebaran I wonder if you ever learned anything at school that could explain this?
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Goddamn so many chins and dips! Must have taken you quite a while!
In a vaccuum I would have said because of neural and post-potentiation activation (lifting heavy makes your body more reactive to things like calcium) but you were quite tired after the first sets!
So It’s either you needed some time for the fatigue to wear off so that you could benefit from the potentiation, or your phosphocreatine energetic pathway (used in very heavy, short set) coupled to the aerobic pathway that had the time to really be settled in made you better at this effort
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Today’s workout:
16/02/21
Deadlift
60kgx5, 75x3 (warmup)
87x5 (5 @70%)
93.5x5 (5 @80%)
112x5, 5, 5 (3x5 @90%) (first set dead stop, others TNG)
Bench
20kgx12 (warmup)
49.5x5 (5 @70%)
56.5x5 (5 @80%)
63.5x5, 5, 5, 60x5, 63.5x5 superset with BB rows 60x14, 13, 12, 13, 12
BB curls 20x10, 8, 8, 6, 8, 9, 7, 7, 7, 5, 6, 9 (12 sets)
3 sets pullovers
Notes:
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Total time 1 hour 35 minutes, much better than workout 1!
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Wasn’t sure how to set up my DLs, so I decided to do the first set dead stop and then touch’n’go the second and third sets. These were challenging, going to have to grow if I want to get those heavier weights later on in the program.
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Slightly messed up my weights on bench - changed the barbell to 60kg for the rows and forgot to add the 3.5kg back for the bench set, so set 4 on bench was a little too light. Bench sets were challenging.
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Rest was about 2-3 minutes on deads, and about the same between sets of bench presses. Rest was about 1 minute between sets of curls.
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On the topic of curls - that was a lot of curls. You know when you say a word too many times and it starts sounding weird? Well, the very action of curling a barbell seemed weird by the end of this workout, lol.
On the whole I am definitely liking BtM so far. Like BBB, it appeals to me because it’s exactly how I believe training should be - beat your muscles into a pulp by hitting them with set after set after set, until they have no choice but to grow. If anything, I like it even more than BBB because BtM is genuinely just outrageous in terms of how much work you’re doing, and it has a lot more heavy work, which I like.
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Cardio today 17/02/21: interval running a la Thibaudeau. 60 sec easy, 30 seconds hard, repeat 5 times.
I think my running ability has decreased from the end of last year, which I suppose isn’t surprising considering that towards the end of my cut I was running basically every day in one form or another.
Also, I’m worried that I’m just putting on fat and no muscle. I feel like my love handles are coming back and I’m up like 2 inches on the waist… usually each inch on the waist equals two kilos weight gain, and I’m up almost 4 kilos. The numbers just seem to fit too well. I might just be being paranoid though… just got to wait and see.
Edit: went and hit some angles in the mirror, feel better about my body comp now. Yes my body image is very variable.
Also, forgot to mention this, but my biceps are actually very sore today, which is something I haven’t felt in a long time. And I was only using an empty barbell yesterday… I guess 100 reps of curls will do that to you. Hamstrings are also a little bit sore, and I can sort of feel my lats and outer back, but upper back is not sore the way it used to be when I was doing 5x10 deadlifts. Chest is also surprisingly un-sore despite the heavy 5x5 benching yesterday.
Could just be bloat? When I was doing Leviathan I felt bloated as hell… Felt fat but strong. The sheer amount of food I was taking in constantly just wasn’t going through me quick enough for how much I was putting in.
Stay the course man, give it a few weeks and reassess IMO. BtM doesn’t seem like the type of program to try and stay skinny on. Just keep on kicking ass with the weights and it’ll come together
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It probably is. Pwn’s pointed it out before as well. I just freak out sometimes though, haha. I shouldn’t worry too much… as Jim Wendler says, on programs like these you shouldn’t be worried about whether “one night of eating big will make your skirt fit a bit tighter”.
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Your body plays tricks on you all the time.
That’s why the mirror is useful if you look at it on on some fixed schedule, AND you make sure the conditions at which you view yourself are more or less identical.
You probably are gaining fat- the entire point of BtM is to put on mass, with most of it hopefully being lean mass.
I recommend you do what Wendler recommended for cardio during BtM.
I don’t think you have a prowler or a bike, so go on weighted walks. Get a backpack and throw some gallon water bottles in that or something. The cardio you mentioned on 2/17 is probably insufficient. That is a total of 150 seconds of actual work. Walking 2 miles probably takes ~28-30 min for most people who are walking at a casual pace and Wendler is saying you should be doing them weighted on top of that.
If you don’t have the space to walk then you can just march back and forth for 30 minutes.
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Appreciate the feedback. Until my swimming starts up again, then, I need to up my cardio to stay within the principles of the BtM program. You’re correct that I don’t have a prowler or a bike so I will improvise some weighted walks.