I can’t remember where I saw it, but recently someone posted a picture of some ancient Greek artwork where a centaur is putting a soldier in a heel hook. Just awesome. Nothing is ‘new’
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Do your set annual goals, or do you only focus on the current training plan and daily execution?
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@kleinhound Means a lot you were listening to me on duty, and hopefully your partner was entertained! And good find on that heel hook! Wrestling, boxing and Pankration have been around FOREVER. WE’RE not gonna find new ways to hurt people, haha.
@geologist Good to see you around dude! Chaos is the plan! Haha. I pretty much never have goals. I have vectors, but that’s about it. Certainly nothing annual. A year is arbitrary: life and nature are going to happen on whatever cycle and trajectory they deem fit.
Slept until about 0700, got up and got in 50 prisoner squats and pushups, had a fantastic breakfast and then got in 54 burpee chins in 5 minutes
Chores, great lunch, came home and put a new spin on Juarez Valley. Calling it “Valley of The Shadow of Death”
185lb front squat
20kg KBs
1-10-2-9-3-8-4-7-6-5 front squats, with 3 devil presses between each set. Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of death, I will fear no evil…devil presses. Yeah: it’s cute.
Gotta brag about my kid. We went out to dinner to celebrate a big accomplishment for my wife. Great local spot. My kid discovered their love for steak at Texas De Brazil and now it’s all they want. They’re at an age where they can still eat off the kid’s menu, but we told them they can order off either menu if there is something they want. As soon as we got it, my kid looked at the menu and said “OOOOh, they have ribeye!” My kid picked the $35 ribeye: the most expensive thing on the menu. I asked if they would share if they couldn’t eat it all, they said yes, so I was on board. Got myself the thick cut bacon cheeseburger with cheddar, knife and forked it, and my kid put away about half of a very well sized ribeye (14oz I’d estimate). They said “I’m a carnivore: just like dad”
Proud papa moment.
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As a guy who works in the nuclear field, I assure you that I take this as a challenge
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@atlas13 Hah! Love it.
Got up at 0545 for an early start, 100 push ups and prisoner squats, great breakfast, did this workout
“Carol of the Bells”
I have a 40kg bell, 2 24kg bells, a 20kg bell and a 10kg bell. On tabata intervals, I push up onto the handle and then do SOMETHING with the bell I’m no (snatch, devil press, swing, throw, etc), then, whatever bell I’m holding when time runs out, I do goblet squats
Took the dog for a walk immediately after that ala Easy Strength for Fat Loss, ran a bunch of errands and was generally active, light lunch (3 burger patties at Culvers), then got in a 3-ish mile walk before a family dinner/carb refeed, featuring “farmer’s casserole” with bison and some homemade sourdough for dessert.
Second week of the famine starts and I’m more than ready, because it means the feast is coming…and I am MORE than ready for that. If all goes while, the kiddo and I have a lunch date at Texas de Brazil on the 22nd, we do our Christmas Eve feast, leftovers on Christmas Day, and then the cruise. It’s a GOOD time to be alive.
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You might like the philosophy of the 12 week year, which discards annualized thinking and focuses on 12 week blocks of time. The emphasis is on daily/weekly execution.
Same bomb different tonnage
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@geologist Appreciate the nod there. I’d find a 12 week block just as arbitrary, haha, but I understand the principle behind it. I’ve truthfully embraced “Chaos is the Plan”. It’s honestly been very liberating. Empowering even. Much like the myth of Sisyphus: it’s going to be absurd no matter what, but we can at least choose the absurdity.
AM WORKOUT (0424 wake up via dog)
CHAOS IS THE PLAN: THE CIMMERIAN CHRONICLE Week 8, Workout 1
30 Minutes of Mainwork
1 burpee chins
2 Axle clean each rep and push press (103lb)
Each round, add 1 burpee chin and 2 presses
Finished my 10th burpee chin and 7th press before the timer ran out
10% Corollary
Breathing Squats w/pullovers
20x255+chains
50 pull aparts
25 conan curls
BREAKFAST
Walk w/wolf while wearing 50lb vest
Notes:
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Settled on this after slumming on Wodwell for some inspiration. Push press is something I’ve neglected, and with me doing 20 rep squats later in the workout I didn’t wanna do thrusters or anything too lower body intensive, so this worked out well. Good way to come back from the weekend/carb up as well. If I really pushed the pace, this would be a monster conditioning workout, but this was more about rep quality and getting in the time. The burpee chins allow for a solid enough break, and cleaning each rep means I can rest as needed to hit the goal. I had an idea to go 21-15-9 as well, but wasn’t sure if that’d really fit into the 30 minutes.
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Big W on those breathing squats. I’m definitely reaching some limits there. LOTS of breathing on those last 4-5 reps. Never had that experience with low bar: I was always in such a rush to get the bar off my back. This has been a positive experience. It’s also been 8 weeks of Super Squatting, which is pretty nuts. I’m seeing my physique really fill out while staying pretty lean. But I’m also now halfway through a famine, and I can feel the mental fatigue hitting. Amazingly enough, the squats are about the only thing I care to do: I’m getting a bit burnt out with the other stuff. A deload would solve that, but that’s what my upcoming cruise is for.
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Recovered enough to get in the weight vest this morning. That’s been a positive change.
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You can’t spell Pwnisher without the W.
Good job dude.
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Ah yeah, duh! I’ve even posted in that thread. Thanks for the reminder dude!
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@tlgains Much appreciated dude! Always means a lot from a fellow Super Squatter.
@mr.v3lv3t No problem dude! And no worries: I’m writing all over the place these days.
AM WORKOUT (0421 natural wakeup)
CHAOS IS THE PLAN: THE CIMMERIAN CHRONICLE Week 8, Day 2
45 minutes of mainwork
SUPERSET (press-chin)
Log clean and strict press away
3x175
1x185
1x190
Chins w/chains
1x8
2x7
GIANT SETS (press-assistance-pull)
Log clean and strict press away
2x3x175
8x2x175
Chins
3x9
2x8
Standing wheel of pain
3x9
2x8
Band pull aparts
5x17
12 minutes of Dan John’s ladder w/ prisoner squats and push ups (170 reps total of each)
BREAKFAST
Walk w/wolf (no weight vest)
Notes:
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Definitely feeling the famine. Training burnout hitting hard. Absolutely did not want to train this morning, remembered how last week when that happened I was at my strongest so decided to give it a go. Turned out: I was wrong. Biggest issue was headspins: just kept blacking out on the heavier weights. But even once I dropped to the triples I could tell that doubles were the right move. Put in the hard work and moved through it as strong as I could. Pleased to get that topset of 190 for a strong single.
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Went without the vest, just because I was feeling so beat up. Also, I’ve got Tang Soo Do sparring later tonight, so that’ll be some more activity.
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Really worked to push fast/hard on the bodyweight work at the end there and turned it into some conditioning. That felt good to be able to do.
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After a few weeks, I’m gonna say that the Slingshot knee sleeves are awesome and get my stamp of approval. My knees are really feeling solid, I can wear them all workout, they’re warm, compressive, don’t move around. They feel like strongman shorts for the knees.
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Physique is really looking sharp these days. The whole system coming together is honestly pretty amazing. The famine, along with priming the body, shaves away with little fluff gets accumulated from the feast, and the family meal/carb refeed helps fill back in some lost glycogen. Learning how to balance it all has been enjoyable, and the feasting weeks are just absolutely awesome. But the big thing is learning how to predict the pattern. The first week of the famine is the worst: everything looks and feels wrong. But the second week is where it pays off. And I may drag it into a 2.5 week run, just because I have so much awesome feasting coming up. The training burnout is the only thing I need to keep an eye on.
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This is what I need to hear man
I’m 3 days into my famine. It’s tough man make no bones about it
All part of the adventure my man
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@ChongLordUno For sure dude! Once you get enough of them under your belt, you honestly get “good” at it. Really, it’s about getting more time with the meat and eggs when hungry until not protocol. I used to eat something every 30 minutes: now I can go VERY long stretches without food, to include single meals in a day. It’s about getting the body’s hunger signals re-calibrated, and understanding REAL hunger vs fake.
AM WORKOUT (0425 wake up via alarm)
CHAOS IS THE PLAN: THE CIMMERIAN CHRONICLE Week 8, Day 3
(2) Axle mat pulls w/rest pause
5+4+3x406
20 minutes of
- 10 Klokov presses w/66lbs
- 10 dips
- 10 full ROM lateral raises w/10lbs
- 15 pull aparts
6 rounds completed
Breathing squats w/pullovers
12x260+chains
8x260
Poundstone curls
100xAxle
BREAKFAST
Walk w/wolf while wearing 50lb vest
Notes:
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Mixed bag today. That was the best performance I’ve had on the mat pulls. I actually coulda hit 6 on that first set, but the straps slipped, so I got the extra rep on the follow on instead. Meanwhile, my lower back was totally overtaxed on the squats, and I ran into fatigue way too soon. However, in both cases, minimal pain in the right hip, which is a victory. I feel like both results are speaking to the weight loss: belt fit better and I could get into a better position on the pulls, but the cals are low and the waist is smaller, making the squats suck. I may give the squats one more effort to see how it goes and evaluate how to close out the program from there. I’m not eating to support growth in 20 rep squats, but I’m close to the finish.
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Using a kettlebell handle for pull overs is really awesome. Gotta remember that for the future.
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That press circuit is a modification of what I was doing back when I had my best pressing results. Just a classic circuit. My shoulders were blown up when it was done.
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Happy that I went with the vest today. I was feeling beat to hell, but it was for the best.
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As of last night, I am the dojang sparring champion. There’s not much victory there: the majority of the class is children. I DID beat the senior student, which is a high school kid with and attitude problem, and that was rewarding. For everyone else, I hamstrung myself as much as possible. Only 3 hand techniques are allowed in sparring: front punch, reverse punch and side punch, and there’s no striking to the head allowed. So I restricted myself to hands only and crouched REALLY low so I could present my head as a target. Basically went back to my boxing roots.
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Weighed in at 172lbs this morning. Down 2.5lbs from last week. Give or take. Bathroom scale is set to kilos for some reason.
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This isn’t the flame-free confession thread, but that seems to have died a bit anyway and I wanna confess that I’m currently 3.5k words into a post where I describe nutrition through the lens of DnD and it’s some of the most fun writing I’ve had in a long time…and I’m nowhere close to done. I ascribe proteins as warriors, fats as clerics/healers, and carbs as arcane spellcasters/wizards. And if you know me, you know my thoughts on wizards.
And it’s because of this that my e-book’s release date is indefinite: too many fun sidetracks. But maybe I’ll include this an an annex.
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AM WORKOUT (0420 natural wake up)
CHAOS IS THE PLAN: THE CIMMERIAN CHRONICLE Week 8, Day 4-“Drunken Tribute”
50 minutes of
EMOM
- 5 burpees
- 2 keg one motions overhead w/100lb keg
8 minutes of various assistance work
BREAKFAST
Walk w/wolf (no vest)
Notes:
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Took video, but something is gumming up the upload.
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This is effectively Kalsu with a keg. 100 reps of getting the keg from the floor overhead, but EMOM do 5 burpees. I paced it for an even 50 rounds, which netted me 250 burpees as well. This didn’t hit quite as hard as a full on Kalsu, but I imagine it’s because of that pacing. I’d finish each round without about 20 seconds to recover if I was motoring vs my typical strategy on Kalsu of “go until the whistle”. I’ve always wanted to give this a try, and it’s nice to know it’s viable. The weight of the keg is also not scaled appropriately, but was still plenty challenging. In general, worth pursuing again.
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“Drunken tribute” because of the keg. I don’t want to embellish the name of a hero WOD, so I’m not going to include “Kalsu” in the title in that regard.
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Was fairly smoked after it was over, so just got in some light assistance and a no-vest walk.
EDIT: Another awesome bit of art worth saving
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Video finally posted. This is right up your alley @ChongLordUno . If @flappinit ever swings by, this is your jam too.
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Fingers crossed it becomes your profile pic one day.
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As much as I dig it, I am VERY big on my profile pic being a photo of ME vs anything else. I see it as a part of having skin in the game. Goes back to about 2 decades of being online: have to be willing to put my face out there if I’m going to say stuff.
Just means I have to work hard to look like that image, haha.
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Yeah I seen this
50 minutes is no joke bro. No joke at all
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