Calvert and Milo Barbell

Training Training Logs
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In light of some other discussions around the training logs, some goal stuff.

I think I’ll probably enter the t-transformation challenge this year. Pretty modest goals of: go from 151 to 168-172 with similar leanness. Also to get to a 100# x 20 hand-to-hand kettlebell swing. Specific goals with no specific methods/plan. I want to let the strength and physique changes fall out of that, rather than be the main driver.

As far as other life goals:

  • become more morally and ethically upright
  • continue to become more well rounded in my knowledge and skills

Ancient Greek/Roman/Chinese ideals.

There’s some specific directions for this year, and I think they appear odd at first glance:

  • continue learning Classical Chinese and Mandarin
  • continue studying Traditional Chinese Medicine, and herbal medicine specifically
  • continue learning neigong and baguazhang
  • learn at least one piece of music for the guqin every quarter

The oddness is that everything is “Chinese”.

Do you have to be Greek to run a marathon or wrestle? Italian to read about Marcus Aurelius and study stoicism?

Currently I’m looking toward China (I’ve spent many many years learning from Western ideas, ancient, medieval, and modern. I’m not abandoning anything.)

When the “barbarians” conquered China (mongols, khitans, manchus) they ultimately assimilated into Chinese culture, not the other way around. It’s pretty fascinating. Japan, Korea and Vietnam all have unique and distinct cultures but all borrowed major ideas from China.

Fundamentally I’d like to live a long and vibrant life. Understanding how to do that, and making my body and mind work better is really what those goals are about.

I’ve made it 40 years. I plan on making it at least another 40, if not 60 or 80 more. I want my overall quality of life to be as good as possible over that time. Seems like it makes sense to start figuring that out sooner than later.

Here’s an analogy. In the rush of torrential floodwaters, there’s three main strategies. You can build a rigid support to protect yourself (say, reinforced concrete). It might hold up in most cases, but when it fails, it fails catastrophically and might even end up injuring you. You can hold onto something like bamboo; it flexes, changing shape in the immediate onslaught but mostly bounces back after. Or you can hop in a raft and get taken along for the ride, completely abandoning any sense of control.

Right now I’m trying to figure out the bamboo part. Rooted but flexible. Stop fighting everything, and also stop getting taken along for a ride.

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This;

and this…

Do not compute, 5 months to add 17-21lbs with little change in body fat, that doesn’t seem that modest - particularly given you’ve gained about 3lbs since May this year, from what I gather from your journal.

Not saying this to discourage, but I’ll go back to my previous comments, I really think you need to spend some serious time gaining weight without worrying about leanness, but I’ll add something this time, I think you need to find and hire a really good trainer, someone to take the overthinking out of your scheduling, and maybe bring some of it forward into this century :wink:.

Also I’m curious about this:

What areas of your life are you not currently morally and ethically upright? And by what standards are judging these?

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I mean it’s more modest than adding 100 pounds to my 1RM press and turning it into an 8RM…

I was probably 148 (?) when I first started logging my weight here but I did actually start at 138 in May. I do think it’s a modest goal in terms of the weight gain, 3-4 lbs/mo; a bit less so about the leanness sub-goal.

As for the other part, this is why I’m currently doing his actual course as written and

If I happen to also get a better press and deadlift out of it, cool. If I don’t, also cool. From what I can tell it functions as a nonspecific powerbuilding routine, but mostly I’m seeing where it goes, and working on the discipline to just not touch anything. I mostly expect to just gain weight/muscle while following it.

After that 8 weeks, I’ll go from there.

I appreciate you taking a look and the advice. I’m holding it in reserve pending how that goes.

That’s not entirely the right phrasing either.

But there are things I could do better as a father, husband, son, friend, coworker, employee, citizen. Handling stress better and being better engaged in certain things.

Also just getting a better understanding of what and how I could do those things better. Figuring out what the goals could even be. What were those expectations in various cultures and points in time?

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Ah ok that’s clearer, just stuck out to me and made me curious before, those are things I think most of us men can get on board with as goals/aspirations in life!

Hmm I scrolled back to when I started interacting in the journal and thought you were 148 then, must have misread.

Yea the weight goal is no problem, and I’d definitely encourage that, and I’m not saying completely ignore the leanness side but don’t be too concerned when you get a little fluffy.

How long is the course?

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Some training among the words.

Barbell Curl: 60# x 9
Z Press: 60# x 10
Flared BB Bent Row: 70# x 10
BTN Press: 70# x 10
Pullovers: 26# x 14
Backbend Situps: 20# x 5
V Squats: 80# x 20
Jefferson Squats: 80# x 20 (10 per side)
DB Side Press: 35# x 5 (per side)
H2H KB Swings: 60# x 14 (28 total) - maybe?

Notes:

  • I slept 12 hours. I’ve had a bit of sinus/ear stuffiness and a bit of coughing in the morning.

  • But it turns out my lungs were not ready for this. I was pretty winded after the two squat sets, and had to stop the swings mid-set. Collapsed to hands and knees and stumbled upstairs, coughing. Took at least 10 minutes to return to normal. Probably longer. Still somewhat floaty and lightheaded even a few hours later.

  • There’s a point where it feels like “That was really hard, felt good, and my breathing and heart rate will recover soon”. And then there’s a point past that. I hit the second one.

  • On a positive note, nearly everything will be easier next time because I hit the end of their respective progressions. Heavier but fewer reps.

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So I’m studying Classical Chinese, and for better or worse, you can’t do that without also studying Confucius. It annoyed me at first because I couldn’t get away from it, but it’s fine.

There’s a few ideas that are interesting though. One is an ideal model to strive for, the 君子 which is often translated as “scholar-gentleman”. Lots of dimensions, but one was that of mastering the “six arts” (earlier) or “four arts” (later). Reinterpreting a bit: math, music and painting, strategy, reading/writing/literacy, and archery and charioteering. A well-rounded education. There’s a rough parallel with the western, trivium and quadrivium, mostly covering math, music and literacy.

Another core part is treating society as a set of relationships: parent/child, husband/wife, ruler/subject, friend/friend, older/younger siblings. If everyone does the right things across those relationship lines, society operates well and harmoniously. I’d never really thought about it like that, but it seems like a useful model. One takeaway is “how can you manage the state if you can’t keep your house in order?”

I’m just thinking about this stuff a bit more than normal. Probably some good lessons in all this.

It’s not super fixed, but: minimum 2 months, ideally at least 3 months, and then you just start alternating with exercises from “the second course”. E.g., start rotating deadlifts in.

The clean → jerk → behind-the-neck presses have a stated “once you can press 100 pounds for at least 2 reps”. The swings have a “you should work up to 100 pounds”.

By the second course, he’s a lot more “by now you should have an idea of how quickly you can progress, but send us a letter if you have questions”. It seems people ran the mix of first and second course exercises for 18 months or more.

Anyway, the 8 weeks without touching it goal is mostly my own.

This is already long, but:

  • My original Super-Strength based program was good. Physique changes were good. Joints felt fine. Time commitment was good.
  • But then I remembered old my press goals, and added in too many exercises, and it was no longer sustainable.
  • The press/deadlift focused Easy Strength with Sheiko was fun, took the right amount of time, but was ineffective.
  • The press/deadlift focused PttP was effective (for my press), but not with physique goals, and joints were feeling less fine.
  • So now I’m using Calvert’s actual courses, and it actually is press-focused, seems to take the right amount of time, and also seems to be more physique oriented. Joints still hurt, but seem to be trending better.
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Did it.

Almost the first thing after waking up. Heart rate and breathing spiked but came back down like any hard cardio. No asthma weirdness. Don’t know what happened yesterday.

I had changed the progression on this: increase 1 every other day to 2. Maybe that was a mistake.

To 65# x 10 next time.

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Barbell Curl: 60# x 9
Z Press: 65# x 5
Flared BB Bent Row: 75# x 5
BTN Press: 75# x 5
Pullovers: 26# x 16
Backbend Situps: 20# x 6
V Squats: 85# x 10
Jefferson Squats: 85# x 10 (5 per side)
DB Side Press: 35# x 6 (per side)
H2H KB Swings: 65# x 10 (20 total)

Notes:

  • Curls required the most absolute concentration. Pretty much at my limit.

  • The drop in volume with everything else felt good.

  • Of all the things I’m doing, I think the ab work is the only thing that’s remained consistent. Worked up from bent leg situps to straight leg situps with 50 pounds to now backbend situps with 20.

  • I genuinely wonder if the ab work remained consistent because 1) there was a clear plan, and 2) I don’t actually care about abs, so I felt no need to mess with the plan. And probably 3) the “roman column” work is a ridiculous goal at the end of this.

  • I’m at six months of consistent lifting. Didn’t do anything too bad but made some mistakes with programming, and haven’t quite figured out where I want to be diet wise. However nothing has backslid and everything moved forward strength and endurance-wise.

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I’m doing some reverse-engineering and forward-engineering with my diet.

There’s an experimental idea from music theory called the “tone row”, where you take every note in the scale (12) and arrange it in some order. Then when you’re actually composing the music, you follow that order, and you don’t repeat a note until you’ve used all of them. It’s “interesting” but not exactly pleasant to listen to, most of the time. Shoenberg and Berg.

I say that because I’m thinking of a similar idea to try and get a little more predictability diet-wise, mostly around weekly shopping and answer the nightly question of “what are we going to eat? what should I make?”

So I’m going to build it around 6 proteins:

  • lean poultry (chicken breast)
  • fatty poultry (duck, thigh, drumsticks)
  • lean pork (tenderloin, some chops)
  • fatty pork (ground pork, shoulder)
  • beef
  • seafood (fish and shellfish)

Then on a weekly-ish basis, put those in an order and just work through the list between the meals my wife and I make. Should simplify some shopping and planning, without being too restrictive in terms of actual foods.

In just the past couple days, we’ve already gone through lean pork, fatty pork, beef, fatty poultry and seafood (shrimp). Kind of feels like lean chicken is up next…

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Have you tried something like the vertical diet? I eat pretty similar to that and enjoy it. Easy to digest and tastes good

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I actually wasn’t familiar with it. Now, I’m about as familiar with it as everyone who read one article by Wendler and think they understand 5/3/1…

The low-FODMAPs stuff is very different.

But since I’ve never been that transparent about it, and it might be useful for comparison. This covers 90% of what I eat at home.

Every meal: 1 meat dish, 1 vegetable dish. Carbs maybe a bit more than half the time.

Proteins are basically as above. Chicken: breast, drumsticks, thighs; Beef: ground, shaved, chuck roast; Pork: ground, tenderloin, loin chops, ribs; Seafood: shrimp, swai, wild-caught salmon (usually sockeye), wild-caught cod, mackerel (rarely)

Vegetables: zucchini, broccoli, broccolini, cauliflower, asparagus, shanghai/baby bok choy, bell pepper, tomatoes, spinach, youcai (the canola oil plant), silkmelon/luffa, swiss chard, green beans

Carbs: white rice (very common, but not every meal), wheat noodles (common), bread (rare), potatoes (even more rare)

Every meal is seasoned with alliums though: garlic, onions, or shallots.

The main thing that I’ve changed from a bulking standpoint is to add whole milk between meals, and eggs sometimes for breakfast.

To go in a more pure vertical diet direction, it looks like I’d have to cut out a number of things (for “digestive reasons”, though I don’t have problems with them), and significantly bias my protein toward beef/lamb/bison. I also don’t really eat many fruits or sweet potatoes. My kids do, and wife sometimes.

I pretty much only like my sugars in liquid form.

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I did go with “lean poultry” yesterday, so I covered that whole list of proteins in 4 days or less…

Used up a couple leftovers: I had some homemade chicken broth, lots of gelatin and a nice fat cap. I also had a failed “roasted okra” recipe.

I made it into a gumbo.

Made a peanut butter-color roux and cooked down some chopped vegetables. Should have been the “trinity”: onion, celery, bell pepper. But I’d made soffritto recently and forgot about the bell pepper, so used carrot instead of bell pepper.

Seared the chicken breast in the chicken fat then chopped it up. Deglazed with some broth. Added everything to the big pot along with the chopped okra (already seasoned with salt and oregano), the rest of the chicken broth, and some sprigs of thyme from the herb garden.

Let it simmer for a couple hours, and served over long grain rice.

Ended up pretty good, despite the carrot faux-pas.

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How is the power clean going? Not gonna, lie, I can’t go through your log to find out. But I’d like to see an up-to-date video to see how I can keep helping.

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(For those following along: I did send a video and update in my original “power clean advice?” thread.)

Yesterday’s food: Lunch was gumbo leftovers. Dinner was pork ribs, bok choy, wintermelon. At least two shaker bottles worth of whole milk.

Today: seafood (saba/mackerel). Tomorrow: beef (ground). Friday: probably pizza.

Planning the proteins in advance is actually really helpful.

Barbell Curl: 60# x 9
Z Press: 65# x 6
Flared BB Bent Row: 75# x 6
BTN Press: 75# x 6
Pullovers: 26# x 16
Backbend Situps: 20# x 7
V Squats: 75# x 12 - ugh, misloaded
Jefferson Squats: 85# x 12 (6 per side)
DB Side Press: 40# x 3 (per side)
H2H KB Swings: 65# x 11 (22 total)

Notes:

  • Curls continue to be hard. What was “pain” is shifting to “uncomfortable”, so a good sign. Right biceps tendon at both ends: shoulder and elbow. Both wrists.

  • V squats felt great and then I realized I forgot to increase the weight… But my knees were pretty good with it.

  • T-ransformation photos are helpful to see side by side with my own. Seeing how skinny I am shows me how far I have to go.

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Saba shioyaki: rinse, filet, salt both sides, rest 15+ minutes, wipe off, pan fry skin side then flip

Miso soup: boil a few pieces of kombu seaweed for a few minutes, turn off heat, toss in a handful of bonito flakes, rest for a few minutes, strain, whisk in white miso paste

Bok choy: rinse, chop, boil in heavily salted water, cook stems first then leaves until al dente. Sauté sliced garlic in oil for a few minutes, add bok choy and cook on high to cook off the liquid

White rice is rice.

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I’m going to take today’s 153.4 as my starting weight for the t-ransformation.

I will track it regularly like I was before; morning and evening. And I’m going to generally work on the “scale-based diet”. Roughly, evening weight should be 2+ pounds over the morning weight, and if not, more food. (Exact numbers will be determined once I have some data.)

This time I want to err on the side of too many calories than not enough. Outside of “more milk, more eggs” there’s no intent to change what I actually eat.

One of the big problems I’ve had with Calvert’s exercise selection and programming is that it’s “unconventional” (which is funny, a bit, because his routine actually was the convention…)

Where I run into problems is it that I read through other people’s logs, where they’re setting PRs in squat, bench, dead, press, and I’m not. It makes me feel like I’m doing the wrong thing.

Yet I am absolutely getting benefits from what I’m doing, several of which are above and beyond what I got when I trained more conventionally. Especially in terms of balance, mobility, and strength/control through that mobility. Even cardio and grip development.

So I think it’s a mix of the exercise selection is different (but works for me), and the double progression system just doesn’t have the same kind of satisfaction. Even though, technically, it’s PRs [almost] every session by definition.

I’m writing this out so I remember why I feel this way. And so I don’t actually change anything.

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Barbell Curl: 60# x 10 - PR
Z Press: 65# x 7 - PR
Flared BB Bent Row: 75# x 7 - PR
BTN Press: 75# x 7
Pullovers: 26# x 16
Backbend Situps: 20# x 8 - PR
V Squats: 85# x 12 - PR
Jefferson Squats: 85# x 12 (6 per side)
DB Side Press: 40# x 4 (per side)
H2H KB Swings: 65# x 12 (24 total) - PR

Notes:

  • 6 PRs… technically.

  • finally feel like I’m past the breaking in period with this routine. Steady progress, decent work.

  • I upped my milk intake quite a bit. I’m noticeably hungrier especially before lunch. Trying to replace some habits: thirsty? Milk. Want caffeine? Milk. People seem to respond so differently. I guess many people have bloating and “fullness” and constipation/diarrhea. My body just seems to work better.

  • kids ate almost all of the zucchini last night, leaving barely any for us parents. Success and failure at the same time.

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You log so prolifically, it’s hard to keep up. But I for one appreciate the open window into your stream of consciousness. We all have our own inner monologue and seeing your occasional doubts and confidence alternate encourages me, because I’m similar.
Further, I really like the depth of your thought on navigating life in general.
I need to put time into it as well. We live in an era of inundation of unqualified voices, who are algorithmically trained to present as if they KNOW the answers. But the truth is they don’t, and listening to too many of them can be counterproductive even if it is intended as research toward… Oh for god’s sake I’m rambling too much to continue this word salad.
I’ll talk to you later. Rather than delete this, I’ll post it as a reminder to myself to talk to you more about it.

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I went a whole weekend without logging :slight_smile:

A lot of stuff I do at work is around iterating. Plan to do something, try it out, evaluate what worked, what didn’t, and see if anything new came out of it that might be useful.

Usually those iterations run pretty quickly, so it’s constantly “do something, review what happened, adjust, repeat”. The faster you can run through those cycles, the sooner you can tell if something’s going the right direction or if it’s going to be a dead end. Which is cool, and it works… at work.

When it comes to training, there’s probably no point doing it more often than every 3-4 weeks. But because I’m so used to reflecting and adjusting rapidly (minutes, hours, days, depending on what it is) it’s pretty hard to not let those habits bleed over.

So I end up mentally “reviewing” things daily or every-other-day, and reassessing everything, which comes out here. I let that part of the process happen and come out in this log, but I’m pretty slow to actually change things.

(I do tend to change things if something actually happens, like coming back from vacation, or a medical procedure, or starting PT or whatever.)

As far as the other thing, I really don’t put much stock in what anyone else thinks I should or shouldn’t think or do. Which also means there’s a much bigger burden on me for learning and understanding things. Nobody really has everything figured out (nobody ever did, either). But some people have some things figured out some of the time.

One of the things from history that sticks out to me is Aristotle’s legacy. I always assumed that he basically had everything figured out and held him up on a pedestal. But Aristotle was also the tutor of Alexander the Great. As a conqueror, Alexander the Great was extremely successful, obviously. He conquered an empire that spanned from Egypt in the west, to the Himilayas in the East. But he failed at turning that into a lasting empire. When he died, the empire collapsed, and major chunks of it reverted into cultural dark ages, especially Persia.

Obviously that’s a reflection on Alexander. But it’s also a reflection on Aristotle’s success/failure as a teacher. As the writer of Politics, you kind of expect his most-successful student to be better at it…

As an interesting contrast, Confucius went from kingdom to kingdom, trying to get his ideas adopted. He barely had success when he was alive. However, many of his ideas lived on to be a major part of several civilizations for over 2000+ years after his death.

That said, some ideas of Aristotle’s continue to stick around (for example, his taxonomic classifications of animals and plants).

I think it’s fair to treat everything with a healthy level of skepticism, including all the great leaders and thinkers of the past. But especially the unqualified voices of social media.

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The weather Friday is supposed to be really cold, so I thought maybe I could shift to Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday.

So Sunday I did some barbell curls, but they didn’t feel good. I did 7 reps and stopped. I’ll be lifting in the cold.

Today:

Barbell Curl: 60# x 10
Z Press: 65# x 8 - PR
Flared BB Bent Row: 75# x 8 - PR
BTN Press: 75# x 8
Pullovers: 26# x 18 - PR (maybe?)
Backbend Situps: 20# x 9 - PR
V Squats: 85# x 16 - PR
Jefferson Squats: 85# x 16 (8 per side)
DB Side Press: 40# x 5 (per side)
H2H KB Swings: 65# x 13 (26 total) - PR

Notes:

  • more technical PRs. More progress.

  • at the moment, the KB swings seem to be the hardest part of this.

  • nothing too notable, but noting it to have it written down. Front of my right shoulder feels bad on Z presses. It has since I started, and it still does. Likewise my whole right shoulder with the side press.

  • kids ate all the broccoli tonight. My wife got like 3 pieces and I got a tiny half a floret. Can’t exactly complain.

  • I’m still getting a baseline for diet vs weight gain. So far nothing is really moving in any direction. 10 days seems like the minimum to even begin seeing changes.

  • While I’m happy people have already lost weight in their t-ransformation and are motivated from it, I’m a bit skeptical there’s anything of substance to it besides a bit of digestive-cleanout and reduced water-retention.

  • I mean, Saturday alone I “gained” 6 pounds or so. All gone by Monday morning.

  • No desire to shift goals or approach. I want to be both bigger and stronger, and this is important foundational work. I mentally rearranged things to keep me on course.

  • However, I may do a once-in-awhile check on a few lifts, just to see where I am. No rush, just throwing out the idea.

Life stuff. Spent a ton of time last week and this weekend proving out a concept for work. It works. It works well enough we got the go-ahead from our managers up the chain. I’ll be taking this work-week a bit light to compensate.

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