Fantastic review, and I appreciate the nod dude. Interestingly enough, Dan has prescribed Easy Strength in a 3 day a week protocol as well, typically for folks that are engaging in other athletic endeavors on those other days a week, but for a pure gym rat looking to train ONLY 3 days a week in total, I can definitely see that running into issues. It sounds like you had some good self-discovery through the process in that regard. This was definitely a “teaching program” for me.
EDIT: Oh yeah, lemme throw in a plug for Dan’s recently released “Easy Strength for Fat Loss” e-book. $15 and more just solid gold from Dan, going into the specifics of how to manipulate the protoocl for fat loss based goals.
For sure it was a learning experience, and as often is the case for me I learned the same lesson I learned when I ran CTs Bulgarian training program (high freq low intensity works for strength for me)… maybe one day it’ll only take me learning something once before I actually learn it
Current plan is to do a 2 week mini-cut to get rid of some of the flab I put on during the last 6 weeks, and then start Mass Made Simple. Dan says it’s a good idea and I tend to agree. I got up to 191-193 and I would like to start mass made simple under 190. It’s so easy for me to put on weight/fat that I don’t want to end up a flabby mess by the end of the program haha.
I did end up buying a sandbag so I’m gonna take the next few weeks learning how best to use that thing too. I might do a video review because I didn’t see very many online that addresses the bag like I want
Weeeellll I did my first “easing into high rep squats” workout yesterday… just an SSB bar empty for sets of 15-30 to start getting used to something more than sets of 5 and one day later I can already feel the soreness setting in.
Hopefully I can build that up over the next two weeks so the actual Mass made simple program doesn’t actually kill me
Got a bit of sandbag work in, trying to figure out how to use the duffel bag style like a “stone” and I think I’ve got it for the most part. If I can make it presentable I’ll put together a 5 minute video on it for the tubes
Ugh day 3 post squats and the DOMS is crippling. My 4 year old daughter like to play “pick me up” where she lays on the floor and it was hard to bend down and get her today
Lame as it may seem, I Might have to consider box squats for this program cause this is exactly why I switched to full body stuff a few years ago… keep full ROM stuff in the complexes but for the brutal sets do box squats to keep the rom a tad higher and the groin doms less crippling
Got everything printed and ready to do right here. Got down to an even 190 so that’s good enough for me. I’ll plan for a cut afterwards. Starting pics forthcoming tomorrow as this is a size program so the whole point is visual change.
I always find it interesting, the high rep squat pain.
You could be hammering away on a 5x5 or something with decent volume…then do ONE session of 20 reps, even just one set, and want to end everything a few days later.
Week one is in the books, and as I suspected the overall sense of “dread” is building up as the workload creeps up.
Day one is easy enough… Then the complexes get to sets of 5 instead of 3, and you add more sets of high rep squatting and you really get that sense of “Oh god here we go”
But nothing has been undoable yet. I am using an SSB bar for the squats which helps to “just do it” and not worry about holding the bar in place, and the use of the box (which I just use my weight bench for) is saving my legs from get incredibly sore in the upper groin area… I also added 10 pounds to compensate for the slight decrease in range, but no doubt its an easier way to do the program. It is what it is
I am now seeing clearly that those first few workups were actually just the warm up phase of the protocol and now the real work is starting to begin.
Up to 3 sets of 5 on the complexes, which had my questioning my will to finish the program
But then something terrible happened. Truly horrific. A horrid joke only Dan John could come up.
In the Day Four workout write up Dan writes 3x25 on the squats… but in the printable template he has 3x30 written… And as we all know the last 5 reps of a high rep squat set are obviously the easiest…
I had to really, really head-talk myself into the fact that Dan meant 3x30… not 3x25. As badly as I wanted him to mean 3x25 I am confident Dan wants me to grow, and obviously 3x30 is what he really meant, not that typo on page 75 that says 3x25
Curse you Dan!!!
Oddly enough somehow the 3rd set was the hardest to finish but the easiest to recover from… No idea what to make of that, but there it is.
Huh, decided to step on the scale today to see if things were moving up (started at a depleted 190 after a 1 week low carb unslopification velocity diet type thing down from 193) and it’s up to 197 already after 2 weeks… yikes.
I added a bit of food but I certainly don’t think it was 3lbs a week of food. Which is multiple thousand calories a day of surplus cals. Let’s hope the pictures at the end don’t make me regret doing this haha.
Did workout 6 which I believe puts my right about half way done with the program. Woke at 193 today which seems much more realistic at 1lb/week
My initial impression of the feeling of dread reading the book imposed on me really came to fruition this week.
Did the first “to 50” set and while it was daunting thinking about it and leading up to it at the end of the workout after the 5x5 complexes (and like 10 sets of bench) the actual set wasnt as horrible as I built up In my mind. I did 30 (the last 5 were all singles of varying difficulty) and then a small rest and pounded out the other 20
The difficulty is ratcheting up though so I’m not super excited about the next half of the
Last workouts were 135 to 50, and the 185 for a few sets of 5, so I figured when I got to another “to 50” it would be mildly heavier but nope, he jumped it right up to 185x50
Honestly not as horrible as I was imagining it but the 50lb jump was surprising. Did it across 4 sets, and honestly if it wasn’t box squats it probably would have been 10 sets because 185x50 is ridiculous with free weights ass to grass for me. Probably would have taken 2 hours haha.
All in all not as hellacious as I thought but pretty damn tough.
