Thanks dude! It didn’t feel “real” until we had our first ultrasound and I saw the heartbeat and the little bugger was flipping around all over the place. A switch definitely got flipped there.
Nice! What’d ya get?
@unicornsandrainbows Always happy to share. And picking up dogs is never a problem: just make sure it’s not someone else’s! Haha.
@mr.v3lv3t Oh my goodness I know EXACTLY what you’re talking about. The day I heard that heartbeat, my life changed forever. Until then, it was just an idea, but at THAT point, I owed that little heartbeat my everything.
I ended up picking up this piece
Was a helluva deal. It’s STILL in the box, haha. Life has been crazy.
Weekend was full, and none of it was training. I got in a TON of walking with my puppy, and I’m so close to the comp that I just wanted to spend this time recovering. Saturday was awesome, because I got pork ribs for lunch with some pulled pork and then a turkey leg for dinner. Today, I had burger patties from Culver’s for lunch, and whipped up a tailgate dinner to celebrate the Cowboy’s first game. For myself, that included piedmontese beef ribs and some carnivore deviled eggs, made with pastured eggs, grassfed sour cream, grassfed cottage cheese and some salt
I think I’ve settled on a Grey Man template for Mass Protocol. Going to have clusters of Squat/Press and Bench/Trap Bar deadlift (similar breakdown as Building the Monolith), with a S1 cluster of incline DB bench, weighted chins and GHRs, and an S2 cluster of weighted dips, BW chins and axle curls.
My wife got a new fitness tracker/Garmin, so I got to inherit her old one. I can’t wear it to work, but I’ll see what wearing it around for the other parts of my life are like.
Going to get in a carb up tomorrow. I’m super due for it. Last week was real light.
This week is going to be recovery and testing for the next phase of training. As long as I can keep my right hip in a good way and my weight where I want it, things should be good.
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AM WORKOUT (0410 wake up via alarm)
PRE-COMPETITION DELOAD
2 minute hang from bar, pull up every 30 seconds
3 mile treadmill walk
-First mile at 3.5 pace and 6 incline, Second at 7 incline, final at 8 incline
50x320lb reverse hypers
50 band pull aparts
BREAKFAST
Longer walk w/dogs
Notes:
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Continuing my process of recovering and healing my hip. I’m feeling real good, especially after those reverse hypers. I can still twinge it every once in a while. There’s definitely some sort of nerve issue going on. But I should be good to compete at the end of the week if I keep playing it smart.
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…which I’m not good at, as I plan on using tomorrow to do some max testing to prep for Mass Protocol. That said, I’m not going for 1rms: I’m going to get some rep maxes established and use a calculator. I’m stupid, but in a smart way. If I’m feeling froggy, I’ll see how my 225lb squat is feeling as well.
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That new fitness tracker I got is addictive, which I already knew coming in. My resting heart rate is 40, and I got in 12683 steps before 0800 today. I can’t wear it at work, so I’ll lose some of that data, and I can’t wear it at Tang Soo Do, but otherwise, I’ll gather some metrics.
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Carb up meal tonight: tuna casserole and some homemade pumpkin cookies. I have to remember to NOT eat the cinnamon honey today: think it’s built up too much toxicity inside of me. I may treat myself to an apple from our local orchid.
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You know, if you manage keep all this up for decades to come you could end up becoming the first person to die from nothing.
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@twojarslave Hah! A fun fact: we have NO data on the lifespan of males in my family. My grandfather passed away from cancer, his 4 brothers died of alcohol related illnesses (one technically got drunk and fell asleep on the train tracks, but I think that counts), and my dad is still trucking along but is a cancer survivor who lived pretty hard and is now living pretty big. It’d be interesting if age finally caught me. But with the rate I receive surgeries and replacement parts, I’m aging backwards! Most of me is 38, but parts of me are newer!
Which, on that note
Meant to log earlier, but my decision to reduce my consumption of chicken, cheeses and my other “vices” (primarily Egglife wraps) really seems to be doing me well. Bloating and inflammation is really down, definition is sharp, and I just generally feel better. I remember @Frank_C mentioning that his blood lipids would become poor when he increased his intake of chicken, and I’m starting to think that, with the monogastric stomach and higher Omega 6s, they’re an inflammatory meat, which would make sense that it elevates LDL. It triggers inflammation, and the body produces LDL to heal it. I’ve also looked to consume a little less pork than usual. Despite my love of my local BBQ place, I note that I always feel a little sluggish after eating the pork ribs, whereas when I make beef ribs at home I don’t run into that. Crazy the things we discover as we dial things in more.
Also, for @unicornsandrainbows : some more puppy pics
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There are those innocent, amazing eyes again. Dogs are just love and fur…
There is a puppy available in my area that I keep looking at. I even got permission from hubby… well, his words were, “More often than not you want the experience of having a dog, so you should just get the dog.”
We would have to move, and figure out what to do with the poor girl while at work. But these photos are making me want to figure that out…
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If you listen to certain people smarter than I am, they will tell you that AI-enabled advancements in medicine could allow many of us alive today to live past 130 years old. Apparently a technological singularity may be right around the corner.
Imagine being able to go to work until you’re 110 years old.
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Awesome to see you’re starting this. I’ll definitely be following along!! I think I’ll do a run of general mass then specificity as suggested in the book, after I finish up this John Meadows program. The book truly does layout so many options and gives an AWESOME long-term training plan, I find myself re-reading it. One could theoretically run through these templates in perpetuity. Whether you want simple or more complex programming, the book has something for you to use.
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@twojarslave As long as you figure out how to Office Space it early, that can be just showing up and spacing out until we’re 110, haha.
@Stormblessed Hell yeah brother! Be great to run alongside you.
AM WORKOUT (0410 wake up via alarm)
PRE-COMPETITION DELOAD/FUTURE PROGRAM TESTING
(3) Incline DB bench
Worked up to 9x80lb
Underhand chins
1x15
Axle bench press
Worked up to 7x226
Axle curls
8x66
Breathing Squats
40x225
BREAKFAST
Longer walk w/dogs
Notes:
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This is legit the first time I’ve done some testing for a program since about the first time I ran 5/3/1 back in 2010. Goes to show that I’m actually legit excited about taking this on. I have an awareness of my abilities on the squat, trap bar dead, weighted dip and weighted chin so no need to test there. I may do some axle press testing at some point, since that’s of minimal stress on my recovery: just wasn’t fit for the schedule for today.
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It’s legit hard to come to terms with being so weak on my pressing…but I suppose that’s the whole reason I’m going to change up the training and gain some weight. My pressing always responds to bodyweight gains.
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It’s also legit hard to come to terms with the fact that squatting felt REALLY great today, most likely because I took the time to really warm up for it. I did a LOT of sets of squats with just the bar while I was knocking out everything else today, and did some sitting at the bottom of the squat as well. Really seemed to help. No hip issue: just the right knee. One of these days I should get that meniscus repaired.
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Carb up was a smashing success yesterday. Generous servings of tuna casserole and 4 of the Valkryie’s pumpkin oatmeal cookies, topped with some honey from Cabo from their stingless bees and some fairlife skim milk. Zero reaction to the honey: it’s that cinnamon honey I was eating that caused the issue. Good experiment. Funny enough, we were on a time crunch last night: Mrs was working late and we needed to eat quick to get to a function my kiddo was having, so I took to boiling the noodles and getting out all the ingredients. It was like Superman handling kryptonite. I then started digging through out cookbooks to see if I could find my mother-in-law’s Tuna casserole recipe, because I had no idea how to make it. Valkryie comes downstairs and sees me doing all this and says “Just when I thought you couldn’t get any sexier”. It’s the little things.
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Tang Soo Do is on my schedule for tonight. Yesterday I ended with 19600+ steps, as I managed to get in another walk while my kid was at their function. Going to spend some time fleshing out my future training plan.
@simo74 Just imagine getting to rep 20 of breathing squats and thinking “Halfway there!”, haha.
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FUTURE PLANS
The next competition I have coming up is a grappling comp on 8 Dec, which has me in the 171-185lb weight class. I’m not concerned with making weight there. I have a cruise coming up post Christmas (around 26-27 Dec through the new year), which I’m not too concerned about needing to be absolutely peeled for. I’ve spent the entire summer leaning out, and I feel like, per Dan John, I’m in an excellent position to start gaining.
Thus begins “Operation Conan”
THE METHOD
I’m going to use Tactical Barbell’s Mass Protocol. Reading the book got me excited about training, and I’ve learned over the years that, when that happens: I should pursue it.
Specifically, I’m going to employ the “Grey Man” program for my general mass gaining program, and the Alpha protocol for my specificity phase. I was torn between Grey Man and General Mass, but settled on the former because I wanted to be able to include overhead pressing and I felt that alternating between squats and deadlifts will allow me better recovery, and altnerating between bench and overhead press will improve my strength.
For the Supplemental Clusters, my plan is Incline Bench, weighted chins and bodyweight GHRs on the squat and press day, and weighted dips, BW chins and axle curls on the bench and dead day.
I’ll be including the low intensity conditioning through out as well.
THE DEVIATIONS
I’ll be employing the trap bar for the deadlifting portion of the Grey Man program, rather than a barbell/axle. I feel like this will help a bit more with my recovery, and truth is, I’m WORSE with a trap bar than I am with a straight bar, which should allow a better hypertrophy response.
Along with that, I WILL be including straight bar deadlifting in the program. I’m going to continue my weekly ROM progression work on Saturdays. This is a very positive thing for my strength, and whenever I stop doing it, I regret it. I’m willing to accept the consequences of including it. I may also occasionally include some sort of high intensity conditioning session when the mood strikes.
I suppose pairing the squat with the press vs the bench and the dead with the bench vs the press is technically a deviation as well, but depending on how you read the instructions in Mass Protocol it’s fine. This is how Building the Monolith is set up, and it works well. For my training space, this set up makes more logistical sense.
And, of course, the biggest one: I’m going to continue my carnivore nutrition approach, rather than employing the calorie counting high carb approach advocated in the book. In the book, the author frequently says he does not recommend a low carb diet, but he also includes “maybe you are different”. Yes I am K Black: yes I am. I’ll be focusing on upping the content of meat and eggs I’m consuming, rather than falling back on dairy and pork rinds, as I’ve done in the past. I’ll include those latter items, sure, but they’re not going to be my default variable to manipulate. And that’s what is making this “Operation Conan”. We’re taking on the operator mantel of Tactical Barbell while eating in a Conan approved manner.
I AM considering going back to Feast/Famine/Ferocity as far as my overall nutritional structure goes: going back to 2 week famines and 4 week feasts as a means of keeping bodyfat in check through the process. That one I’ll figure out as I go.
EVEN MORE FUTURE PLANS
My leaning out over the summer happened on accident. I went to visit my in-laws in May, which become a “cruise” from DoggCrapp, and when I got back home, I had 6 weeks until a strongman competition, so I decided to put DoggCrapp on hold, start more strongman focused training and lean out so I could make the 181 class. That was how Phryrexian Dreadnought got started, with the first phase focusing on getting back into “strongman shape” and the second phase focusing on competition lifts. The Jul comp got canceled, I signed on for a similar comp in Sep, and then had a grappling comp in Aug that still required making a weight class, so the Dreadnought got extended through the end of the summer. That said, I honestly liked how this shaped out: I had spent the academic year follow programs, gaining weight, getting bigger and stronger, and then spent the entire summer training my own way, leaning out, and not having to eat so much goddamn food all the time.
I feel like this wasn’t a bug but a feature. I’m now in a great position to gain through the holiday seasons, which are, coincidentally, great times to eat. I’m already 5 turkey legs deep, according to my kid’s tally, with plans to take on several more, with a birthday coming up in Oct and an opportunity to gorge at Texas de Brazil, followed by Thanksgiving, Christmas and the cruise. And now I know that, when summer rolls around, I’ll have zero issue stripping off whatever adipose tissue I put on and getting myself back down to anatomy chart lean. It’s ZERO struggle doing that with this way of eating: it’s actually EASIER for me to fast than the eat in most cases. So I may actually look to make this the annual plan: 8-9 months of following programs and building, 3-4 months on my own and leaning out.
I’m sure I’ll have more to follow, but I’m excited to keep going with this. I’d love to take some before photos and make this a for real documented journey, but I only have so much bandwidth. We’ll see what happens.
I feel like I’ll spend the 2 weeks post competition screwing around a little and getting myself ready, and then start in earnest at the end of Sep/start of Oct.
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Looking forward to seeing how this goes for you!
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Sounds like a great plan going forward, and I came to that conclusion even before reading your entire breakdown just from the name “Operation Conan”.
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Really curious to see the progress you will make on TB: Mass Protocol!
I’ve run Operator from TBI coupled with Black Protocol (conditioning protocol) from TBII. It worked really well to improve strength (squat, bench and wtd pull ups cluster) and conditioning at the same time. It worked so well, I plan on running Mass Protocol when I have more time and the desire to eat for mass.
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@whiplash1 Thanks so much man!
@PowPowPunishment Hell yeah dude! I knew something like that could swing your vote, haha. I’m genuinely considering getting the soundtrack to “Commando” to play for this one, since I’ve already got the Conan soundtrack. I was also thinking of getting everything from “Contra”. Mainly because youtube is SUPER restrictive on my background music these days.
@Hugo_Fillion Hey thanks man! Good to get that feedback. I definitely need to re-read those books as well, because I feel like it’d be really simple to link all the systems together into something VERY sustainable, similar to 5/3/1.
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40 x 225 on squats. Damn. Idk what I am more impressed with the number or the fact that you did squats for damn near 7 minutes straight.
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@shaneinga Thanks so much man! Breathing squats just make everything suck SO much more, haha. Really extends that time under the bar.
Going to lay out the maxes I’ll be using for the program, using Jim Wendler’s 1rm calculator
Bench: 275
Squat: 420
Trap Bar Dead: 565
DB Bench: 105
Weighted Dips: 325 (this is bodyweight PLUS added weight, per the instructions)
Weighted NG Chins: 260 (as above)
Axle curls: 85
BW Chins: 15
BW GHRs: 30
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That genuinely gives me week 5 SS anxiety just thinking about it. It was bad enough getting to 15 and having to talk myself into 5 more. 
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I’m hoping you can sneak in a few BJJ open mat classes prior to this. As per @twojarslave discussion points, you’ll benefit to no end attending some classes prior imo also.
And a resting HR of 40… this is a massive testament to your workrate over many years with so much conditioning and strength training. Coudos sir!
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I’m thoroughly intrigued by this grappling experiment. It is THE THING BJJ purports to train for. Here’s a more athletic guy than you are with aggression and some wrestling, can you contain and submit?
Still, I would love to see what a bit of coaching could produce at the next event. You’re strong enough to get away with quite a bit of slop on escapes, technique-wise. It is hard to get someone in a position where strength can’t make at least some space.
Creating space with your hips is one of those things you can almost ALWAYS do, even from full-mount superman with grapevines in. Buck, buck, BIG BRIDGE, then run around in a circle and you can at least get to a scramble. Technical micro adjustments are great and all, but so is power on-demand.
One of the bad grappling habits my strength got me into was allowing people to pass from side control to mount. I had so much success with my hips that I could reliably get to a trap and roll or even a wild scramble if I just exploded with a well-timed hip bump. I rarely tried to replace guard with knee-to-elbow at first because the other stuff worked on so many of my training partners.
Getting better training partners remedied those kind of problems.
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@simo74 That “no man’s land” in Super Squats is so real, and you only know it if you’ve “been there”. But, in turn, it’s almost like re-watching a scary movie when you run it again: you know what’s coming, and can brace a little better for it.
@raven78 Hey thanks so much man! I was honestly curious how the HR would do now that I’m not being so psychotic about my conditioning, but I’m thinking that might actually be helping me there. I’m sure my cortisol is down quite a bit. And I have the same hope you do as well regarding getting in some open mat time, but I am also a fan of the saying “Hope is not a plan”, haha.
@twojarslave “Experiment” is a great way to sum it up: I dig that. It honestly reminds me of when I started off in strongman: typically, the first time I’d get to handle an implement would be IN competition: all I could do for myself was show up fit and strong. I’m pretty much applying that same thing here. And just like in strongman: a crew would definitely do me some good.
AM WORKOUT (0410 wake up via alarm)
PRE-COMPETITION DELOAD
2:05 hang from bar, pull up every 30 seconds
3 mile treadmill walk at 3.5 pace and 6 incline
50x180 reverse hyper
50 band pull aparts
BREAKFAST
Moderate walk w/dogs
Notes:
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Continuing the wind down and healing. I continue to feel better. I woke up this morning and saw my heart rate was at 36, so I’d say that’s a good sign that my recovery is on point. Once again, the danger of me having a fit tracker: I obsess over data. And in that regard, between the treadmill and the dogs, I got in 11k steps before 0800 today.
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Kept everything easy: low incline on the treadmill, low weights on the reverse hyper. I’m actually being intelligent about this deload/this competition in general. Growing up a bit. It feels good to feel good, and in particular I like this style of deload I’m employing: focus on walking/general movement. I think, next time, I’d like to get in a bit more bodyweight work, but the max testing helped serve as some resistance training. Thinking even more about it, I suppose this is really how I live when I’m on a cruise, which tends to serve as my deloads in life.
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Weighed in at 79.3 kg. This is the thing I DON’T like about competitions: I’m so focused on making weight that I’m honestly undereating. I have a LOT of leeway heading into the comp now, which is cool, as it means I can eat big, but it also means I left behind some strength compared to if I had kept intake higher through the process. That being said, last night for dinner I had 6 burger patties from Freddy’s, that I topped off with some grassfed ghee and ate alongside some pork crackling and grassfed cottage cheese…and then the rest of my kid’s leftover burger. So weighing in at this weight after SO much sodium is really a good sign. And the night before was the carb up night, and once again, last night, I went to bed looking absolutely peeled. I’ve really got a solid way forward on my nutrition, and I think I’ll lay out “the plan” for that rolling into Operation Conan.
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And on the topic of that, I was walking into work today thinking about how, between Mass Protocol and Book 1 of Tactical Barbell, I always have the option to take some time away from Mass and focus on some basic strength and conditioning, should I find myself in that situation. Which, yeah, 5/3/1 can afford me that too. No issue having too many ways to succeed. The big thing I’ve noticed is I’m really gravitating AWAY from lifting all the time. I like keeping myself down to 3 days a week, and shorter workouts. Dan John talked about how the amount of extra work one needs to do beyond the basics in order to see real benefits is so much exponentially beyond the latter that it’s not worth trying to work in the middle ground. IE: 3 days a week of moderate training will get you 80% of the results, but to get 90% of the results, you don’t do 4 days a week of moderate training, but instead 7 days per week of intense training. I’ve definitely lived that, and I don’t need it right now.
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Tang Soo Do last night was pretty low energy, which is what I needed. Focus on 1-steps. My hip is feeling better as I kick, which is a good sign. Doing it again tonight.
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