Oh yeah, I think your way forward is excellent. For me, the upper body programming of MMS always gave me anxiety, so this is one of those where Easy Strength answered a question about MMS and MMS answered a question about Easy Strength. Very complimentary.
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You also seem to thrive on extreme types of things, and while I love the idea (and even the execution and experience of it) I think looking back I havenāt made the best progress when I give in to my temptation to add or do more and more and more (if anything I get injured and take several steps back)
The Dan John experiments are an attempt to be wiser in my older age haha, letās see if I can follow āthe goal is to keep the goal the goalā
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Finished the last swing workout tonight. Tomorrow is my last opportunity to do a cheat meal/rampage day on the velocity diet (conveniently) im combining with the swings so I doubled the reps on all my swing sets today for a total of 1,000 swings. It was about as fun as it sounds haha. Got the forearms and lower back burning for a few reps of some of the sets though, so it was a good way to ramp up the āintensityā a bit on this program, which is quite low as the volume is brutally high
If you can believe my apple watch I burned 285 cals in 45:25 and had an avg heart rate of 119, sounds about right as the swings dont really start getting me huffing and puffing until a few sets in and by the end I think I was up in the 130-140 range.
Pics incoming on July 4, which will also be my offical V-diet end and final weigh in. Looking to hit 182-183 down from 190
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Diet update: Pics and āreviewā of 10,000 swings coming later, but weight is down from 190 to 184 and waist is down from 37 to 36.25
Iāll ease out of the v diet into a tad more calories but overall I am happy with that. I think with another day or 2 of eating light I could get to 35ā and 182-183 which is usually pretty lean for me
Workout: heading into the 40 day Easy Strength workout. I think Iām going to the this version from the OmniBook @T3hPwnisher got me
Mostly the same but has enough variety to keep it interesting, and I like the āchecksā along the way with the 5/3/2 and singles
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Before and afters here. I could probably go another few days and get some teeny tiny bit more improved ones because Iām not just jumping back into a full on āregularā diet but this is at least 90% of what Im gonna end up with.
Weight is 190 ~> 184 in just a touch over 30 days. Not real dramatic but I wasnt exactly fat to begin with and it was easy enough so Iām happy with it. A couple of tiny off menu items over the month but nothing that I look back on and go āOh darn if only I hadnt eaten that chicken tender or those 4 pepperonis!!ā
My perception: Nothing changed too too much, but there is a noticeable drop in the love handles (and a near 2" drop on the tape measure, so thats āobjectiveā), and I do feel like my blurry kinda-2-kinda-4 pack is now officially a 4 pack ad my delt/bicep ātie inā is a bit more pronouncedā¦ Tough to ask for much more than that on a 4 week diet.
10,000 swings program review: This was a good program to kick off my summer programming and get me into Dan Johns mentality of ājust do the workā ā¦ I cant say it was the most exciting or difficult program I have ever done, but Dan does have a very āpunch the clockā kind of philosophy that permeates his writing, and this was certainly not. I dont feel I stagnated on anything, and the swings got easier (both in terms of cardio effort and fatigue on the forearms/low back) so there was definite improvement there.
Overall not something I would have come up with on my own, but I could see myself doing something again if I didnt want to think about training and just wanted to make sure I was doing something productive towards the goal of general fitness or fat loss.
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Setting up my Easy Strength program:
At an average of 4 workouts a week, this program could last the majority of the rest of Summer for me (10 weeks)
Current plan is to do the following, based on my (so far excellent) reading of The Easy Strength Omnibook so generously provided to me by @T3hPwnisher :
Warm up
- 15 swings @ 50lbs
- 5 goblet squats @ 50 pounds (Dan John says he hasnt gotten squats to work in the main program and to just do them as a warm up, so here they are)
- 5 high quality push ups (this is just here so I dont go months on end not doing a horizontal push movement)
- Ab Wheel x 5 slow, controlled
Repeat 2 more times (total of 3 rounds through)
Easy Strength:
-Military Press
-Lean Back Pull ups
-Snatch Grip High Pull
-Dead Lift
(I moved the ab rollouts to the warm up so its just the 4 lifts)
15 minute weight vest walk
Goals:
I almost hesitate to post these because my numbers are so low compared to what some people on here lift and how long I have been doing it, but it is what it is.
Military press - Strict push of 165 would be nice, āstretch goalā of 185 would have me over the moon
Pull up - Lets say a set of 5 with BW+ 75lbs hanging (this is ambitious), and a stretch goal of 90lbs hanging (super ambitious)
High pull - Triple of 185, stretch goal of 225
dead lift - Goal of 365 with stretch goal of 415 (life time best is 395 I think, I rarely train this lift for more than a few weeks before I pull a groin it seems like so I almost never have it in my program for months and months)
Some of these numbers are kind of ambitious as stated, but I had really good experience on something similar (CTās bulgarian training simplified) so maybe this will be in line with that.
See you on the other side!
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Please donāt leave us hanging until then! Iām excited to see how this goes for you. Glad you are enjoying the book man: it really is a treasure.
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Oh I will still be popping in with mini updates, Iām just not prone to doing a āI lifted exercises ABC for 3x5 todayā every day type of log. I usually do more of a qualitative recounting of how things are going and feeling vs a quantitative, which I save for the end
Loving the book. The book kind of reads like a combination of a book and a blog. Some entries are just ādo thisā and others are little classic Dan John wisdom bombs you could ruminate on for the rest of the day.
Only half way still but Iām really enjoying it.
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Devils Taint Barbell Club lives. Had a very very mild June this year but July has brought the heat back. This was taken at about 1030pm which is when about a i workout these days (either starting or finishing) so itās actually down a bit compared to earlier in the day. I think it was up to 113 today
The easy strength workouts being quite short is a nice bonus when collapsing in the heat isnāt a wholly unlikely possibility
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Thinking about the 5-3-2 day
@wiseman83 and @T3hPwnisher (or anyone else who has run this program) would like to hear your thoughts here. Maybe its addressed in the book somewhere like this but I havent run into it yet. Dans advice is mostly āadd some weight, DONT MISS THE DOUBLEā which I have absolutely no plan to do
just completed my first 5-3-2 day on easy strength and was kind of thinking of the followingā¦
-Do the 5 set just as a regular olā 5 set, same weight as the other 2 days.
-Use the set of 3 as a āshould I make this my new weight for the sets of 2x5 friom now?ā kind of test run and see if its āeasy (strength)ā enough
-Use the set of 2 as a āspeed testā to see how a heavier weight is feeling and moving. Not something I would use for my set of 5 now but something I could load up and see how its feeling to gauge how my strength is going up. Like maybe a Wendler Training Max kind of number (A weight I could 100% do for 5 good reps)
Thoughts?
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Nah. Just keep the 5ās as easy man. You can add little bits to them over time of they get Too easy.
The triples and doubles should be decent jumps in load. He does cover this in the book yep.
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It could certainly work. Itās worth appreciating that Easy Strength weight selection is more based on how you feel THAT DAY vs trying to project into the future. āWhen the weights feel light, go heavy,when they feel heavy, go light, and never miss a repā are the solid guidelines laid out. But if you keep on hitting a certain weight and it keeps feeling light each time, probably means you can go even heavier.
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Iāve done this Dan John program. I do the 5-3-2 weights starting a bit heavier than the 2x5 day. I would do the 2x5 at the last warm up set weight for a 531 workout, while I treat the 5-3-2 weights as the working sets of a 531 program on the 1ās day.
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Thatās actually something I had in mind too, like a 70-80-90% Kind of weight
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Cross post from @Meathead56 log because he mentioned David Goggins doing 2 hours at 85RPM on an Airdyne, which didnt sound all that impressive to me, and meathead said even 1 minute was tough, so I though Iād give it a shot:
Ooooookay I tried that 80-85 RPM pace and that is an ass kickerā¦ Im certainly no distance athlete or almost never huff-n-puff from cardio, but He must be in elite shape to maintain that as if its absolutely nothing (cause if youre doing it for 2 hours, it must be to you)
Going in I felt about 60RPM would be leisurelyā¦ 1 pedal every second, sounds easy enough
It reality thats about 45RPM for me. Then 60 is actually a pretty decent effort, as you said for even 1 solid minute it got my HR to 145! 80-85 is honestly a fairly herculean effort for 1 minute. That was very eye openingā¦ I might throw one of these 1 minute āfeeler ridesā on to the end of my workouts just to see how āeasyā I can make that minute because wow that was a wake up call.
Updates for me: I ordered an Axel finallyā¦ I have been eyeing one for years and years, but I tend to lean towards cheapness and frugality so it just never got purchased, but I have always liked thick over presses, and Dan John speaks so highly of thick bar deads I figured Iād splurge finally and add one to the mix. For $100 Iām sure it will serve me well.
Heading into day 4 the weight are kinda sorta starting to feel lighter, maybe? It seemed like it todayā¦ Will continue to monitor and adjust as needed but Iām gonna ride this out and see how far these light lifts can get me.
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Day 1 with the axel went well, Its a 22lb axel so I added 20lbs to the lifts I used it on (overhead press and deadlift) just to keep things similar and it felt good. I waffled on getting the 5 foot bar vs the 7 foot bar and Iām glad I went with the 7 foot as it fits in the rack just like a regular bar
As I get further into the Easy Strength E-book I am now at the part talking about loaded carries. I do like the idea of adding these in at the end of the workout just to start getting used to them, and to build work capacity and such because the āworkā in the ES program is so low from that regard, and it seems like ES is supposed to be part of a larger picture.
I already do a 15 minute weight vest walk, which is quite easy now with the 60lb vest so I might do something like add walking with a kettlebell āsuitcase walkā style just to start or some kind of medley where I do waiter walks, cross walks, suitcase walks, and farmer walks around my yard and just start easy and add some weight as time goes on. 3 days per week as per DJās recommendations in the book.
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I did a thing: š„ Community Challenge: OH Press/Front Squat - #5 by Lonnie123
Tried my best to keep it in line with the Easy Strength program (did this after my 5-3-2 for the day, used 20lbs less than my regular weight, and used a touch of leg drive to further separate it out), but a challenge is a challenge, and this wasnt exactly a barn burner so I dont feel like it was too out of bounds
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Okay well semi-predictably after a 2 week hiatus from reps over 5 and anything approaching failure, even the one set of light-ish weight squats had me in some soreness in my upper groin, enough that I had to add some extra light sets of dead lifts to make sure I didnt pull anything as I have done half a dozen or so times in the past weight deads-after-squat-DOMS. And even squats-after-squats in my higher frequency days.
Actually the reason I almost exclusively squat to a bench these days, it allows me to keep my frequency up a bit and avoid the crippling can-barely-use-the-toilet DOMS that I loved in my 20ās and am not so fond of now that my kids are here and Iām the designated punching bag most days. Straining my groin playing with or picking up my kid would be the opposite of what I train for I imagine.
Luckily It only proved to be 10% stupid because I was able to stretch and warm up the soreness/pain out mostly and got all my reps in with no issue.
ā¦ gotta remember that the Goal is to keep the goal the goal as Dan John would say. I will stick to the plan from here on out haha.
This was the start of week 3, AKA workout 11/40. I enjoy the program so farā¦ which is easy for most programs only 2 weeks in haha. I do enjoy the layout I am doing (the rotating 2x5 days, 5-3-2, the 6x1, etcā¦) as most of the days are āpunch the clockā and the other days allow me to test āis this working???ā
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Dan talks about including the squat in the warm up or as part of conditioning as a way to keep the motor pattern grooved during easy strength. Some KB goblet squats, for example. Anything like that in your current approach?