Coach Thib's Training Log #1

Training
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Friday, July 16th

This is the start of the last microcycle on my current block (remember that my microcycles include 5 workouts, which can be done in 5, 6, or 7 days depending on my schedule and how I feel).

I did less volume today because I had a poor night of sleep. I’ve been sleeping poorly for the past 4-5 days but oddly enough it doesn’t affect me the next day (yet).

The reason for the poor sleep is a lingering flu that both my wife and I have, although she has it much harder than me. In my case it’s mostly deep cough and stuffy nose (which is what makes it harder to sleep).

Strength leaks & aesthetics unit
A1. Neck flexion 3 sets of 6 (gradually increasing weight)
A2. Wrist extension 3 sets of 6 (gradually increasing weight)

B1. Leverage lift/radial deviation 3 x 8-10
B2. Single KB hammer curl 3 x 8-10

Strength unit
C1. Bench press 3 x 5 @ 85%
C2. Snatch grip high pull from block 3 x 3

D. Deadlift 3 x 5 @ 85%

Assistance
E. Dips 2 sets of max reps with 30lbs weight vest

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124

Saturday, July 16th

First a life update.

Finally got some more work done on my tattoo project. I had to postpone my last 3 appointments for various reasons and did a long 6 hours session to try to make up for some of the lost time.

Again, slept really poorly the night before and I actually fell asleep on the tattoo table for more than 3 hours.

The sleeve tattoo is about 2/3rd of the way done. I have the “inner” part of the arm and the trap left to do.

B08D59C9-7456-4D39-8879-3C186264362A
B08D59C9-7456-4D39-8879-3C186264362A1440×810 79.8 KB

On a whim, which I may regret eventually if I want to run for the Supreme Court, I also had my kids’ name tattooed on my knucles.

kuckles5

You only get one midlife crisis after all!

Strength leaks & aesthetics unit
A1. Neck flexion 2 x 15
A2. Behind the back wrist flexion 2 x 15
A3. Gripper squeeze reps 2 x 12-15

B1. Neck extension 2 x 15
B2. Wrist extension 2 x 15
B3. Gripper squeeze reps (harder gripper) 2 x 5-6

C1. Trap bar shrugs 3 x 8-10
C2. DB hammer curl 3 x 8-10
C3. Gripper hold 3 x 15-20 seconds

D1. Barbell shrugs 2 x 8 (had planned on doing 3 sets, but felt a little pull, likely in my brachioradialis, so I stopped just to be safe)
D2. Preacher curl 2 x 6-8

Strength unit

  • I was supposed to do snatch-grip high pulls and deadlift but I decided to skip them for the same reason as I stopped after two sets of shrugs. It honestly it not injured, but I didn’t like what I felt and prefer to skip some work for a day than be worked to dramatically alter my workouts for 1-2 weeks.

E. Bench press 4 x 5 @ 75%

F. Dips with a 30lbs weight vest 50 total reps.

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125

Sunday, July 17th

I’m considering a change in program structure.

This, in part, why I don’t like doing a training log: as an expert I should be immune to sudden changes of plan or even what some might call program hopping. And by running a log I can’t hide my natural tendency to shit my training quite often.

In my defense:

  • I never feel the need to change things up because I’m impatient about getting results (which is the main reason why people hop from one plan to the next). In fact, my tendency is to want to change when something is working well. Why the hell would I do that? Because when I have the confirmation that an approach works, my brain wants to find out other things that work.

  • I feel that this is what made me a solid coach. It allowed me to learn a lot more about how to body responds to various training approaches.

  • My changes are normally not something that takes me away from my core beliefs. I generally stick to the same principles but just apply them slightly differently.

Anyway, the changes I envision doing are not big.

  • I will be reintroducing golf-specific work now that my hip flexor feels better
  • I want to keep focusing on building-up the neck, traps and forearms. Mostly because they look badass
  • I want to really push dips performance up, mostly maximum reps with a 30lbs weight vest
  • I want to do more conditioning work
  • I want to start squatting again… my adductor feels a lot better

The reintroduction of the specific exercises and more conditioning work requires me to take something out of the daily schedule.

That’s a very frequent mistake that I see (and have done): adding more work when you want to develop more elements, but not compensating by reducing training stress elsewhere.

When you put something in, you must take something out.

Anyway, what I decided to do on the “taking something out” front is to reduce the frequency at which I’m doing my main strength lifts (bench, deadlift, high pull). At the moment I am essentially doing all of them at every workout (so 5 times a week).

I will move toward having only one dominant strength lift per workout (High pull, squat, bench, deadlift).

And I’m contemplating utilizing the 5/3/1 periodization scheme for those lifts.

With that in mind, my workout this morning assessed what my training max on the high pull and squat would be (I already know what it is on bench and dead).

The session looked like:

A1. Cable lateral neck flexion 3 x 15
A2. Thor’s hammer 3 x 12

B1. Standing neck and abs crunches 3 x 10-12

B2.Wrist roller 3 x roll-up, then 8-10 wrist extension, then roll down

C. Assess high pull training max

D. Assess (safety bar) squat training max

E1. Trap bar shrugs 5 x 10
E2. Gripper drop set (max reps at 200lbs, max reps at 150lbs, max reps at 100lbs)

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126

Monday, July 18th

I had to cut my training short this morning.

First, I woke up 30 minutes later than usual and had to start my workout at 5:30am instead of 5:00am. Then my son woke up almost an hour earlier than his regular time.

On the upside, he wanted to train when he woke up!

So I skipped my sport-specific exercises (and did 2 sets less on bench press) and will do them later today.

Strength leaks
A1. Neck flexion 1 x 20, 2 x 15 (adding weight on each set)
A2. Wrist flexion 1 x 15, 2 x 12 (adding weight on each set)

B1. Standing cable crunches 3 x 10
B2. Wrist radial deviation 3 x 10-12/arm

Strength
C. Bench press
Here I am using the 5/3/1 scheme. This is the first week and I did 205 x 5, 225 x 5 and 250 x 9. I was supposed to do 3 down sets of 10 reps with 225 but only did one (that’s when Jayden woke up and came down to the gym)

Assistance
D1. Wendler row/Landmine shrugs 3 x 8
D2. Band pull apparts 3 x 15

E. Dips 50 total reps with 30lbs weight vest

I’ll post the sport-specific stuff this afternoon.

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127

Here’s something I’m working on… it might become an article, an ebook or a training program. Don’t know it yet.

But it’s a good peak at my principles.

1. Do the least amount of work to get solid results. When in doubt, do less, but harder.

2. Build strength on the big basic lifts. This doesn’t mean maximum singles, strength is best built with 3-6 reps/set.

3. Carry weights. Various forms of loaded carries and sled work should be a significant portion of your plan. Both short/heavy and long/lighter carries.

4. Emphasize the neck, traps, forearms and core. Being thick and strong in those areas is what will give you that powerhouse look. The grunt/power look is not about having the best shoulder-to-waist ratio, round muscle bellies and separated arms It’s about looking like a block of concrete.

5. Get in great physical condition. You should be able to stay relentless for some time, not fizzle out after 20 seconds of hard effort.

6. Do something athletic in your program. Jump, throw, sprint or do complex movement skills. The goal is not just to build a physically intimidating physique, but one that (to quote Mark Rippetoe) is “more useful in general”.

7. Work on your limitations. In what physical area(s) do you suck? Mobility? Endurance? Movement control? You must not accept sucking at anything. While I don’t want you to become a marathon runner or a Cirque du Soleil artist, you should be able to do any basic thing at an acceptable level.

8. When you put something In, you take something out. This goes back to point #1. Every time you add some more training or conditioning stuff in a training day, you must take something out. We love training, it’s easy for us to just add more and more stuff. But it quickly becomes more problematic than helpful.

9. Learn the difference between training to stimulate, training to maintain and training to recover. When you want to change your body, you must train very hard. It must be challenging and even suck to some extent. But you can’t always train that way. Lower effort work can be useful to give your body a break without losing your gainz and to resensitize your body to the training stimulus once it becomes non-responsive. Training exclusively in Beast Mode might sound good on social media but it’s the best way to progress fast for 5-6 weeks and then stop progressing almost forever.

10. For every workout have a skeleton plan. The skeleton plan is the bare minimum you can do and still get gains/improvements from that session. It can be as little as one exercise, but more likely 2 or maybe 3. If you “don’t have it” on one day, make a deal for yourself: only do the skeleton workout but do it as if your life depended on it.

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128

Tuesday, July 19th

My son once again woke up very early (5am). He did come to watch me train but I still cut my workout short because a kid’s attention span has its limits.

So I ended up doing like 2/3rd of my workout at 5am, finished it at 8am. Then brought the kids to the daycare and walked 40minutes to the grocery store and finally went hitting some balls at the range for about an hour from 10:30 to 11:30.

I crashed once I got once and took a nap, which explains the late update.

Workout no.1

Strength leaks
A1. Neck extension 1 x 12, 1 x 10, 2 x 8 (increasing weight)
A2. Wrist extension 4 x 10

B1. Neck crunches (posted a video of this earlier) 3 x 10-12
B2. Wrist flexion 3 x 12

Strength
C. Safety bar squat (using the 5/3/1 approach) two easier sets of 5 reps and 1 x max solid reps (9) at 325lbs. Yes, this is very conservative, still recovering from an adductor strain.

Specific
D1. Strap hip twist 3 x 6
D2. KB jump squat with 180-270 degrees turn 3 x 6

Workout no.2

Assistance & aesthetics
A1. T-bar row 3 x 8
A2. Reverse cable curl 3 x 8

B1. Trap bar shrugs 3 x 8
B2. Preacher curl 3 x 8

C. Gripper drop set; max reps with 200lbs gripper, max reps with 150lbs, max reps with 100… 3 sets per hand

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129

The posts on your forearm and trap training has got me inspired to bring up those body parts. I’m on the 10th week of your Eternal Warrior program (great results so far) and planned to add forearm and trap work as a 2nd workout later on in the day.

I know with Rule # 8 that I must take away something so I plan to cut the Saturday Barbarian workout in half.

I have almost zero life stress ( practically retired, no kids etc) and my question is how often traps and forearms can be trained. Was planning on doing them on every workout day( 4 days) in the program with 1-2 exercises for traps and forearms.

Been playing around with traps and I want to keep the 2nd workout like the theme of the Eternal Warrior Program so I’ve been doing these on different days:

Zercher Shrugs for reps then walk with weight shrugged then more reps as one set. 3x

Trap Bar Shrugs for reps then walk with weight shrugged then more reps as one set. 3x

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Just caught up on your log and I have to say, feeling like Goldberg after working traps can pretty much ONLY be a good thing haha he was one of my big inspirations to start lifting. Appreciate all the insights into training that you drop in here.

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I do have a series of articles on traps, neck and forearm training. Small muscles that can have a huge impact on looking like a badass

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I noticed that you use a high frequency on these muscle groups (almost every single day).

I understand the benefits for strength adaptations but is the high frequency equally beneficial to stimulate more hypertrophy?

Are these muscle groups able to repair, grow and ready to be hit again in such a short time span?

Is this series that you’re mentioning already online or is it coming soon? Very interested to read it!

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  1. Muscle damage is not a driver of hypertrophy like it was once believed (even by me) even though it is still thought in university classes. In fact, muscle damage can hurt the hypertrophy process as the protein synthesis triggered via muscle damage is independent to the one stimulated by mechanical tension and the synthesis attributed to repairing muscle damage is not used to grow additional muscle.

  2. I don’t find forearms and neck to be susceptible to muscle damage. Maybe because of the resistance curve of the exercises used or the muscle fiber makeup of those muscles. Traps are a bit more susceptible though and will admit to maybe doing them too frequently for optimal results, although the daily volume is low. But when I competed as a weightlifter my traps would get hit hard every day, sometimes twice a day and I reason that I adapted to that.

Anyway, in my article I give an ideal frequency of:

Forearms & grip: up to 5-6 times a week
Neck: up to 3-5 times a week
Traps: up to 2-3 times a week

Those recommendations are based, in part from experience, but also from the work of Dr. Fred Hatfield.

  1. For my neck I started reducing frequency by only doing one pattern per workout. For example, today I’m doing lateral flexion, yesterday I did neck extension, and tomorrow I’ll do neck flexion. These all hit different muscles so it becomes less of an issue (kinda like training biceps one day and triceps the next)

  2. Even with forearms I’m starting to do the same. Yesterday I did wrist flexion and extension, today I’m doing pronation/supination and tomorrow radial deviation. Again, even though these work “the forearms”, in reality they work different muscles.

  3. Sometimes I do things that are illogical because they make me feel good. That’s another reason why I don’t like posting my log: people will assume that it is what I consider to be optimal programming; it isn’t always the case. At this point in my life I’m doing training almost as much as a hobby/pleasure moment as for the gainz. I still want to progress and most of what I do is to progress as best as I can in the goals that I select. But some of the stuff I do is there only because I enjoy it.

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134

Very interesting. To be honest, I actually started incorporating more eccentric work into my training regimen AFTER I had attented online specialisation courses (your courses for example) and had received my certificates from accredited training institutes. I used to do traditional bodybuilding training first and focused mainly on concentric movement with some isometric contractions worked in here and there. My main focus was contracting and fatiguiging the target muscle as much as possible.

What is the key take away here though if I may ask? That you should not use eccentrics when the main goal is hypertrophy but focus on concentric and isometric work instead because it is easier to recover from and drives more hypertrophy via mTor activation, growth factors and complete muscle fiber fatigue? I thought eccentric work activated mTor as well and improved distal hypertrophy (like tendons for example).

That is a very good point, I overlooked the fact here that you can train muscle fibers within a
muscle differently by switching up movement patterns. Excellent explanation.

I completely get that and I don’t want you to explain every single thing that you do in your training. Sometimes when I read through your training log, thoughts and questions come up in my head. Since you invited us to share our thoughts and comments on your log to make things more interesting for you, I sometimes ask questions that imo people (myself included) can benefit from.

But it’s not that I want to make it feel like you need to explain yourself, Coach. I’m simply fascinated by your style of training and want to listen to what you have to say about it. If there’s nothing to learn and you tell me that you’re doing stuff just for fun, then there’s nothing wrong with that.

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No, the eccentric action leads to more distal hypertrophy and can increase muscle volume by increasing the length of the muscle fibers (hypertrophy via an increase in sarcomeres in series) whereas concentric increases muscle volume muscle by increasing the thickness of the muscle fibers (hypertrophy via an increase in sarcomeres in parallel). So skipping eccentrics will lead to less total hypertrophy

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Oh ok.

So modulating rep range (6 or above) is important when using eccentrics for hypertrophy?

There’s always going to be some muscle damage occuring when you’re taking a set close to or to complete failure but am I correct to say that the rep range (and the associated relative loads used) determines whether eccentrics are beneficial for hypertrophy or not?

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For example you could do 10 sets of 3 to accumulate enough effective reps for hypertrophy but when each rep is done with a 4010 tempo, that will probably induce a lot of muscle damage because you can use more load than when you’re using a 6010 tempo for example.

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Yes, but maybe not in the way that you think.

The main stimulus for muscle growth being mechanical tension imposed on the fibers, leading to an activation of the mTOR pathway which leads to an increase in protein synthesis, the number of repetitions actually matter a lot more than time under tension.

With every repetition you have the chance to stretch and shorten your fibers under load. The number of those “event” along with the intensity of the tension imposed on the fibers is what determines growth stimulation.

For example, if you decide to emphasize the eccentric and perform 6 reps at 100kg with a 5010 tempo (although I don’t like to deal with precise tempo anymore) it gives us a theoretical TUT of 36 seconds (in reality it would be anywhere between 30 and 42 seconds, give or take).

And in another case you use the same 100kg for 4 reps at a 8010 tempo (so a theoretical TUT of 36 seconds too) the first example would be more effective than the second as you have more “events in which you stretch then shorten your muscle fibers under load”.

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Thank you for making your point by giving an example, I learn better that way.

Off course higher repetitions will automatically reduce load but does TUT not do the same?

I can imagine that if you were to perform 4 reps with 130 kg on a 3010 tempo, the muscle damage would be greater than if you were to perform 4 reps with 110 kg on a 6010 tempo?

Maybe I am missing something. I understand now that rep range is key because rep range dictates load and the load used determines the training effect (off course there are other parameters that influence training effect as well like rest periods etc.).

My question is: does TUT not also determine the training effect because it, in a way, dictates what load you are able to use?

By the way, the purpose of my questions is to enhance hypertrophy results by modulating training parameters to minimize muscle damage because you said it already, it is not the best approach for muscle growth.

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Wednesday, July 20th

Sometimes you just have to mail it in…

First day in a long while that I didn’t “have it”.

Surprisingly I actually slept better than the past 4-5 days. But I was a bit more active yesterday, especially with a long range session.

In the past, I would have stuck to the plan and dug myself into a deeper hole.

But I’m getting smarter with old age (and a white beard) so I followed my own principles, #10 to be exact.

I did my neck and exercise and my 3 sets of deadlift (5/3/1 programing) and called it a day.

The old me would have been obsessed about whimping out, the smarter me can’t wait to lift tomorrow while more rested.

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141

CT, what are your thoughts about daily training for middle aged dads with kids/desk jobs/living in north east with long winters/not a lot of sports activity due to injury history? Idea might be to make daily ritual of walking/mobility/possibly one movement or strength pattern such as hinge or press, etc. There are sometimes long stretches of life that training early mornings before the kids get up is the only physical activity to be had. Rest of the day is office/driving to kids activities/sitting and watching kids activities/dinner/sleep.

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CT, what are your thoughts about daily training for middle aged dads with kids/desk jobs/living in north east with long winters/not a lot of sports activity due to injury history? Idea might be to make daily ritual of walking/mobility/possibly one movement or strength pattern such as hinge or press, etc. There are sometimes long stretches of life that training early mornings before the kids get up is the only physical activity to be had. Rest of the day is office/driving to kids activities/sitting and watching kids activities/dinner/sleep.

I’d be kind of a hypocrite if I told you not to do it as I am training almost that frequently myself and I’m in a similar situation.

However, let me tell you that you need to be careful as it becomes very easy to overdo it.

I see no problem with daily mobility work and walking.

Lifting daily or 5-6 days a week can be done but you must program very carefully. Even if you are not really active during the day, it doesn’t mean that you suddenly can do a ton more weight training.

I personally can do it because I have been training for 34 years, 25 of those I consider to be high-level training. Most of my training was rigorous and focusing on pushing hard (sometimes too hard) on the big basic lifts.

To give you a broad idea of my training history:

  • I started doing daily calisthenics (push-ups, wall squats, body weight squats, abs) when I was 10. I would actually do sets at every TV commercial that would come up. So I’d do a lot of daily volume.

  • When I got into high school (at 12 here in Quebec) I wanted to play football and started training at the school’s gym every lunchtime (so 5 days a week). Because I wanted to play receiver, I reasoned that I only needed to run fast and only did legs, every day! I actually kept that up for 2 years (still kept doing calisthenics at home)

  • At 14 my parents got me my first weight set (bench, weight and adjustable dumbbells). I would actually do some pump work every morning, trained at the school’s gym at lunchtime (by then I was doing a bit more rounded program designed by our phys.ed teacher) and did some more at home in the evening. I kept that up for roughly 2 more years.

  • At 17 I got into my first “real” strength training program. That was designed by our football head coach who was also a great strength coach training pro athletes and Olympians (he would later become my mentor and I ended up both working with him with his athletes and coaching football). It was essentially something like this (that goes way back, but that i 90% accurate):

PHASE 1.

  • 3 set of 10 reps on: bench press, squat, deadlift, power clean from the hang (actually 5 reps on this one), lunges, barbell row, military press, chin-ups, dips.

  • It was divided into an upper/lower split 4x per week. So…
    Days 1 - 3: Power clean, squat, deadlift, lunges
    Days 2 - 4: Bench, row, military press, dips, chin-ups

PHASE II

  • 4 sets of 5 on the same exercises and same split

PHASE III

  • Using complex training
    Days 1 & 3
    Power clean hang (3 reps) / Deadlift (5 reps)
    Jump squat with 15% of max squat (5 reps) / Back squat (5 reps)
    Split squat jumps (5 reps per leg) / Bulgarian split squat (5 reps per leg)
    Each was done for 3-4 sets.
    There was a rest period between the two exercises in each complex

Days 2 & 4
Push press (5 reps) / Military press (5 reps)
Medicine ball throw from chest (5 reps) / Bench press (5 reps)
Medicine ball backward toss (5 reps) / Barbell row (5 reps)
Barbell power curl (5 reps) / Chin-ups (5 reps)
Again, each complex was done 3-4 times and there was a rest period between both exercises in a complex

PHASE IV

  • In this phase we only lifted twice a week (which I remember pissing me off). We kept using the complex format, but only once a week each. The other 2 training days were sprints/agility and plyos.

The lifting days were:

Day 2
Power clean hang (3 reps) / Deadlift (3 reps)
Jump squat with 15% of max squat (5 reps) / Back squat (3 reps)
Split squat jumps (5 reps per leg) / Bulgarian split squat (3 reps per leg)
Each was done for 3-4 sets.
There was a rest period between the two exercises in each complex

Day 4
Push press (3 reps) / Military press (3 reps)
Medicine ball throw from chest (5 reps) / Bench press (3 reps)
Medicine ball backward toss (5 reps) / Barbell row (3 reps)
Barbell power curl (3 reps) / Chin-ups (3 reps)
Again, each complex was done 3-4 times and there was a rest period between both exercises in a complex

  • That was the way I trained 6 months/year until I was 19. During the football season we could do a whole body workout twice a week. One day with sets of 10, one day with sets of 5. Then for the remaining 3 months I’d do typical “bodybuilding magazine pump training”.

  • When I turned 19 and stopped playing football, I slowly transitioned to weightlifting (olympic lifting). Which would be my main type of training for 5 years (with some short bodybuilding blocks thrown in there). During my weightlifting “career” I averaged 6 training days per week, often two sessions a day.

  • That’s when I started to train people. At 25 I had a dismal showing at the national weightlifting championships, despite having trained as hard as I could (even driving 2h back and forth 5 days a week to go train with a top coach/team). That’s when I realized that I didn’t have what it took to be a good weightlifter.

  • Then I started experimenting with several approaches, the main one being variations of the conjugate system. I also had a 3 years “bodybuilding period” but I got back to heavy lifting.

The rest you might be familiar with as it coincides with my past few years which is kinda documented on Tnation.

Anyway, I’m only saying this to illustrate the point that my body has gotten used to training a lot and often. But more importantly, I learned to understand my body extremely well.

But despite that, I sometimes still make programming mistakes that leave me drained for a few days,

That’s why I say that you need to be VERY careful when deciding to train daily.

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