More Trouble Than I Am Worth: Chaos Is The Plan (T3hPwnisher Log)

Training Training Logs
3193

@simo74 I appreciate that, but stones make TERRIBLE farm machines!

AM WORKOUT (0440 wake up via alarm) FASTED

“TO VALHALLA” Week 1, Workout 1 (2? Counting Yesterday): “Harald Hardrada’s Campaign”

100 Viking Thrusters w/90lbs on the axle, EMOM do 5 burpees onto the handle w/a Viking handle deadlift

Completed inside 32 rounds

OFF CAMERA

15 rounds EMOM of

  • 20 squats
  • 20 push ups
  • 10 swings w/24kg bel

Notes:

  • A Viking take on Kalsu, going with the theme this week, which I’m already going to alter (details on that later in the write up). Viking handle thrusters, and then Viking burpees. Viking burpees are burpees onto the handles, then Viking handle deadlift on the top vs a jump. The “trick” to those is no wasted movement, because these move slower than a traditional burpee due to a little required extra coordination. And then the Viking thrusters can’t allow any slack either. This has to be a pretty tight workout to make it all function appropriately, and though it didn’t hit quite as hard as Kalsu (what ever does?) it definitely met the objective for today.

  • This was honestly a pretty cleansing workout as well. Yesterday was a fantastic day of celebration, but after lunch I was DONE eating. I celebrated big, enjoyed myself and my time with my family, and just flat out did not want to think about food for the rest of my life. Packing lunch for work was rough, because I didn’t even want to see food. I actually made dinner and dessert for the family that night, had 2 bites of a 45 calorie hot dog in an attempt to be social and the smallest bite of birthday cake, but it was an outstanding pivot that this wasn’t out of nutritional martyrdom but simply out of being SO goddamn full from a lunch of cheesecake and appetizers. After fasting the rest of the day (although I still had my wake and shake last night) and into this morning workout, I was sweating pure Crisco and feeling myself coming back to life. And “sweating Crisco” really isn’t off the mark: my body odor was otherworldly from this. But it’s pretty awesome, in turn, to see how finely tuned my body is that it is responding to these harsh changes with harsh responses and attempts to purge/cleanse. After the workout was over, I felt reborn, and meanwhile I can see and feel in my body the benefits of the replenished carbohydrate stores after 2 hard weeks of “famine”.

  • In that regard, the Famine phase is over and this is the bridge between that and the feast, and I’m just such a fan of this phasic approach to nutrition. I’m going to bloviate more in full solipsistic glory very soon fully fleshing out how I’m eating these days, because it’s really fascinating to me, but in general this approach is making a ton of sense.

  • Little conditioning clean up at the end to hit the daily marks, as I’m gonna keep those up. Moving the walk to later today. It’s absurdly humid, and I didn’t want to spend the first part of my work day in soaked work clothes.

  • I’m planning on embracing the gimmick of this week, and in that regard, I may move away from Hero WODs specifically. I feel a bit caddish taking things meant to memorialize others and turning them into a game. Instead, I’ve got some ideas for some greatest hits that I can making Viking Appropriate. I’ll jot those down in a bit.

  • More animal foods this week. Upping calories. Woke up this morning looking absolutely peeled and huge. Gotta love the carb ups.

7 Likes
3194

Alright, got a lot of things I wanna write down, but to start with, 2 workout ideas for this week.

VIKING RAID

  • 10 viking rows w/light weight

  • 5 load and carry w/100lb keg (carry keg from start to platform, load it, unload it, carry it back to start, repeat)

Add 10 rows per round

Max rounds in 40 minutes

Wear a 10lb weight vest to simulate armor

Notes:

  • This one is as named, meant to simulate being a viking raiding party. We row the boat to the shore, raid, pillage, load the boats, then row on to our next location to do it all over again. We have to row further and further to find places we haven’t already plundered. Since we’re a raiding party and not a war-party, we wear armor, rather than be berserkers. Weight for the vest based off this data point

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BATTLE AT STAMFORD BRIDGE

  • Death by Viking ABCs (using landmine Viking handle, 2 cleans, 1 press overhead, 3 front squats). Rounds are EMOM. Round 1 is 1 rep, round 2 is 2, etc, keep adding a round until the clock wins.

  • Between rounds, SOMETHING. Ideally sledge/baseball bat strikes/swings, but KB otherwise

Notes:

  • Like the lone berserker who took down 60 British soldiers at the Battle of Stamford, we’re going to hold our ground and Build Armor until we die (because I assure you that dude was building up a MASSIVE supply of armor around him). We have to swing our weapon a LOT to rack up so many kills.

Viking raid is on the agenda for tomorrow, and Stamford may be the capstone for the week. I’m excited for how this is shaping up.

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3195

That depends how far back you go :wink:

3196

Ok, now you got me curious about stone age farming

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3197

I don’t think they used much other than some simple stone tools for tilling the earth, like a stone hoe. Certainly in more modern times and even today, stones were used for milling an also stone wheels used for apple crushing to make cider.
I am not sure any of these would be classed as farm machines in the context you used it though.

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3198

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Breakfast for dinner is always worth bragging about

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3199

I love having egg, bacon and sausage for dinner. We call it a cafe tea, because when I grew up in the UK a cafe was a place where you went for a big fry up and a mug of tea, not like the fancy cafe’s of today.

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3200

@simo74 That’s my kind of tea for sure!

AM WORKOUT (0420 natural wake up, rougher night of sleep, legit too excited about training to sleep) FED: Wake and Shake at night and Egg Whites in the Morning

“TO VALHALLA” Week 1, Workout 2: “Viking Raid”

  • Viking row 20 reps w/25lb on the axle

  • 3 keg carry and load w/100lb keg

  • Add 5 reps to the row each round

  • As many rounds as possible in 40 minutes

  • Wear a 10lb vest

I made it through 60 reps of rows, so that boils down to 8 rounds

OFF CAMERA

150 swings, 300 squats and 158 push ups in 10 minutes, going

50 squats-50 swings-50 squats-50 swings-50 squats-50 swings-50 squats-50 push ups-50 squats-50 push ups-50 squats-58 push ups (time’s up, get in the remaining 42, owe 100 more before day is over)

BREAKFAST

Walk kid to school/walk dog for combined 2 mile walk

Notes:

  • This is total LARPING here and I love it. We row to the shores, disembark, steal all their mead, load it onto the boat, and row to the next village to raid. Because we’re a raiding party and not a war party, we wear armor, rather than go berserker (bare-shirt). And we have to row further and further to find new places to pillage.

  • This is a total keeper. No question. Folks: get on the Viking raid. You can absolutely adapt it as needed. Ideally, I’d use an actual rower vs the Viking handle, but you could also do barbell rows, dumbbell rows, KB rows, KB swings, etc. The loading cold be ANYTHING. I picked the keg purely from a role playing perspective. No: I’m NOT joking about that. I got SO into character with this and it made it so fun. I wish I had a grappling dummy so I could have been taking captives. But you could just as easily move sandbags (call it grain/feed if you like), KBs, DBs, stones, etc. The formula is too easy. And if you don’t have room to carry, simply lading in place or shouldering would do just fine as well.

  • My forearms are absolutely torched from the KB farmers I did on Sunday and all this Viking stuff. Something to watch on.

  • I played around with the keg carry style for this workout, and ultimately settled on cross carry shoulder on the way up and horizontal front carry on the way back. Getting the keg into position on the way up was good cross body stabilization. Might consider a “waiter’s walk” approach next time with a fully locked keg.

  • The vest was a good little cherry on top for the intensity, and another easy to scale variable for this. It just slowly kills you through out. Keeping a good torso angle on those rows with it plugging down sucks.

  • I think this exact week I’m developing might become a semi-permanent modification to FFF for me. It’s a solid deload protocol between the two. But Chaos, of course, is the plan.

  • Possibly some Tang Soo Do tonight.

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3201

General question as to why you have settled on this extremely high volume approach to your training?
You are doing higher volume than probably 99% of people “training” (I use that term loosely because many don’t train - just exercise).

Do you just respond better to this volume or is it something more psychological?

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3202

I see it more as high density vs high volume. This is only a 40 minute workout, but there’s a lot happening there.

In that regard, improving density makes me better. In and of itself it’s a metric of success. Did I get 6 sets done in 40 minutes vs the 5 I did last time? Then I improved! I irrespective of if the weight, reps or sets increased.

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3203

That makes sense.
The results you get I don’t think anyone can question your methods as not working for you.

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3204

I appreciate that man. Solipsism is a major guiding principle for my training and eating (doing a big write up on that). It doesn’t matter if it works for anyone else: just so long as it works for me.

A big part of this is something I’ve written about before: “Being that which does”. In an Aristotelian, we are the product of our habits, and, in turn, we become that which we do. I want to become the thing that rows to shore and carries away the loot, so I do those things.

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3205

I agree more people need to take this approach to training (even other aspects of life). Great programs are out there that eliminate the thought (such as 5/3/1, DoggCrapp, etc…) but choosing one of those programs just because it’s what someone else does has never made much sense to me.

Personally, I have had more fun working out the last few months just doing my own thing on the fly. For my current goals of not getting fatter and controlling metabolic markers - it’s working well. Many get stuck in dogmatic mindsets (i.e., doing the big three even though they may hurt and one is not a powerliter).

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3206

Watched this horror and have so say Salute for getting through that. I thought your arms were going to explode through your skin on the last round of rows. You really are different mate.

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3207

We need to extract his blood and isolate the X gene…this guy is clearly a mutant.

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3208

@cyclonengineer You have NO idea how much time I have spent combing the Marvel databases studying the mutants with super strength, haha. But Juggernaut is still supreme, because he ISN’T a mutant…although NOTHING will top the total nerdgasm I had when Colossus became the Juggernaut

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And you’re absolutely spot on about the value of doing what it is we are compelled to do vs the “best” choice. The difference in outcome between the two is so insignificant it’s not worth the toil.

@simo74 Much appreciated dude! I noticed it as well in the middle of the workout. This was AWESOME for getting some blood into the arms.

TSD was a bust, but I used the extra time/opportunity to mow the lawn out in the sun without the shirt. Really trying to maximize sun exposure, and it seems to be having some benefit.

@flappinit Per our prior discussion, for dinner tonight I made tacos using those egg wraps alongside all the leftover meat for the week. You’re looking at a combination of venison and bison sloppy joe mix (I use grassfed beef bone broth as the fluid), leftover korean BBQ grassfed sirloin (washed off the sauce) and smoked gyro seasoned rib fingers, with some grassfed sour cream and grassfed shredded cheese, and then served alongside some egg whites with more of that meat mixed topped on. Great way to use the wraps and the leftovers.

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And then a packed lunch of more rib fingers, korean BBQ and egg whites

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3209

AM WORKOUT (0430 natural wake up) FED

“TO VALHALLA” Week 1, Workout 3: “Carried Away By Valkryries Linda and Cindy”

“Valkyrie Linda” is as follows:

  • 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 of
  • Viking deadlift: 270lb loaded onto axle
  • Axle bench: 181lbs
  • Keg clean: 155lbs

“Valkyrie Cindy”

  • 5x40kg kb swing
  • 10 push ups
  • 15 squats

Linda was done in 26 minutes and some change, then 15 rounds of Cindy for a 40 min workout

And this was bodyweight this morning, so Linda was stupid heavy

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Notes:

  • Just an absolute fantastic morning of training. Linda has been on my list for a while, and this was a great twist on it. Logistics was always the limiter, and opting for the keg was a great solution. If it wasnt so damn loud, stone would be great too. But KB cleans are an option next time too.

  • Took a few rounds of the deadlift to figure out what ROM felt like. Used smaller diameter plates to get in a longer stroke.

  • Ideally Cindy would run the full 20 minutes, but time was short. Great way to get in some of my daily training. About to go get my walk in while my truck gets an oil change.

  • That is the lowest I have weighed in 20 years. I am a pound lighter than I was 3 years ago when I was at my leannest, and I am living SO much better now than I was then. Still not even trying to lose weight; just absolutely wild.

6 Likes
3210

These workouts are dope dude! Did you have a post explaining what “To Valhalla” is about that I missed, or is this just a fun name for a deload week? I haven’t been following anyones logs very closely for a few weeks so I’ve definitely missed some details.

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3211

@mr.v3lv3t Always awesome to have you swing by dude!

I gave a quick sum of where I was planning on going with this when I started, but I’d love the opportunity to bloviate here. Hopefully you didn’t just bite off more than you can chew! Haha. And that will turn out to be a pun here in a second.

BACKGROUND INFO

To start, I’m running Jamie Lewis’ “Feast, Famine and Ferocity” protocol. First: I cannot recommend it enough. Please get his newly released e-book on it, as it’s fantastic and has literally been life-changing for me. But that aside, it’s premised around the idea that, historically, man has existed in alternating periods of famine and feasting, and it’s only recently we’ve achieved a sustained period of abundance.

Alongside that, he speaks to how war-like societies would, in turn, have campaign seasons and at-home periods. Basically, they experienced famine when they were out waging war, conquering and pillaging, and then, upon successful return home, the feast would begin. He absolutely referenced vikings in that regard: rowing away from home during the harsh winters to go pillage and raid, then returning home to feast and celebrate.

He builds the training AND the diets together to simulate this. Famine is bare minimum calories (pure protein, to spare the muscle) and the training is just a short burst of strength work followed by lots of higher rep endurance work, whereas the feast is eating in abundance and heavy lifting. I ran them both as written when I first ran them. I’m now on my second run of it, and, in turn, I created a theme.

THE ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION

Going from the first feast into the second famine, I decided to make my training tell a story. I went from the feast to “Famine: Ragnarok is here”. So the story goes; there we Vikings were, feasting in Valhalla, as was our reward for dying valiantly in battle…but now, Ragnarok has arrived and it’s time for us to earn our keep. What made “Ragnarok is here” different from the initial Famine training block was how I made the majority of the training into giant sets/circuits with minimal rest. Every training day was an intense battle. Whereas the first Famine was about surviving the famine, this was about giving every last ounce of us in battle.

And initially, I was going to go straight into the feast after Ragnarok: back to Valhalla we go. BUT, through happenstance, my schedule pivoted and it was Memorial Day, I ran Murph and thought “We should continue to honor the fallen”, and it turned into “To Valhalla”: a transition phase BETWEEN the famine and the feast. “Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die”. Here: we die. Initially, it was going to be a solid week of hero WODs with a Viking twist…but I really didn’t feel right doing that to heros. So outside of my viking Kalsu, it’s been more just WODs in general with a Viking twist, and nutrition is straddling between famine and feast (as evidence by that big weight drop).

It’s definitely functioning as a deload at this point, as I WAS feeling pretty beat up after that second Famine, and when this is done I think I’ll be primed to feast again. It’s also shoring up some weaknesses AND giving me a chance to shine with some of the ability I’ve built. But once “To Valhalla” is done: We Feast! And I have a few bad ideas in mind on how I will tackle that as well.

Hope that helps!

EDIT: Oh yeah, lemme give a quick overview on the workouts.

Harald Hadrada’s Campaign: A modified Kalsu, wherein we united the 2 kingdoms of burpees and thrusters. And everyone is dead at the end.

Viking Raid: Row to the shore, disembark, steal the mead/goodies, load it on the boat, row further to the next shore and repeat, wear your armor because we’re a raiding party, not a war-party (no berserkers here)

Carried Away by Valkyries: Take “girl WODs” and make them Viking. Based on time, there as potential for a Viking Fran, Grace, etc.

Going to finish it out with “Battle of Stamford Bridge”, which is how Harald’s campaign ended, and, with it, the viking era itself.

Got in my 2 miles while waiting for my truck to get some maintenance. I actually specifically packed a change of clothes just for that. I’m really digging the opportunity seeking I have here. I still owe 75 swing, 150 push ups and 75 squats to close out today, but that shouldn’t be a big ask.

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3212

As well as the insane workout ideas (which as I’ve got a Viking press attachment I’m going to try) I’m loving the history titbits. I’ve just finished a book about the Norman conquest of England of which there was an hour long chapter about Haralds invasion and learnt a great deal I didn’t know. Might think of a Saxon themed Harold Godwinson version, go into battle prematurely and end up getting shot in the eye (although this ending is somewhat contentious as I’ve recently learned)

1 Like