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

[T3hPwnisher]

Doing some future planning, 1 thing being that I think I’m going to do Murph on 23 May. That’s not Memorial Day, but it’s a day I’m getting off from work. It’s my kid’s last day of school, so they have a half day, and the whole family has Memorial Day off, so moving Murph will allow me to train while the family is away and still be able to spend the holiday together. It also slots in on Friday, which is the day I traditionally do Cindy, so it fits into my training schedule that way. And the 23rd times out to exactly the part in the cycle where I was going to wear the 20lb vest anyway, so I’ll bump it up to 10kg with an extra 2.5lb plate and get to it.

I’m thinking I’ll skip the lifting workout that day, or move it to later in the day. And since we’re all meeting for lunch later, I’ll Murph fasted and ride that out until lunch.

For more far off planning, I’ve got the shell for my next run of Grey Man, performed in a perpetual A/B/A format

Day A

Main Cluster
Squat
Press

• Chins between sets

Supplemental Cluster
Incline DB bench (possibly alternate with weighted dips)
GHR
DB row

Assistance
GHR sit up
Band pull aparts
Lateral raises
KB swings?

Day B

Main Cluster
Bench

• Chins between sets

Mat pull ROM Progression

Supplemental Cluster
Behind the neck press
Lever belt squat
Lever rows

Assistance
Standing ab wheel
Reverse hyper
Band pull aparts

• Logistics are the driver of decisions. Because of how my garage is set up, along with where my GHR is located, I favor certain approaches.

• I have KB swings with a question mark because I’m not 100% sold on if I’ll do them or not. I always like having swings in a program, but it’s a question of bandwidth.

• Having the lever squat on the deadlift day has me training some sort of squat 3x a week, and having GHR on the squat days has be training posterior chain 3x a week.

• I’m pressing overhead 3x a week with that BtN press on the deadlift day, and I’m horizontal pressing 3x a week with the incline DB bench.

• I’m on the fence about including dips. I really PREFER dips to incline DB benching, both from just liking the movement more and how it’s logistically easier to deal with, but I can’t ignore the fact that incline DB benching just flat out makes me stronger in general. Pat Casey had it figured out.

• Simple logistics again, I do the DB rows on the day I do the DB bench, since the DBs are already out and ready, and I’m doing lever rows on the lever squat day for the same reason.

• I’m doing GHR sit ups on the GHR day because duh.

• I like to do supersets of reverse hyper and ab wheel, although I suppose the hanging leg raise is actually a great antagonist to the reverse hyper.

• Band pull aparts are always cool.

• I’ve considered some sort of shrug, but I’m already pretty heavy on assistance here.

• Not planning on doing heavy weighted chins, as I don’t really seem to get much from them: just going to stick with chins between sets and let rows drive back growth.

All this said, now I need to figure out how I’m going to train between this and my current Operator approach, when I return from my cruise…

[whiplash1]

As always, awesome work here dude. You’re a machine! I’ve always been tempted to try Murph, but I have never actually pulled the trigger on it. I always do something for 9/11 and I have done a few other hero workouts…but murph is one I haven’t tried yet.

[T3hPwnisher]

Appreciate you swinging by dude! No time like the present to give it a go! It’s scalable: can do it without the vest, can kip on the pull ups or use bands, etc. The spirit is what matters. My wife did it one year using some bands on the pull ups and a slingshot on the push ups, and it was still a total smokeshow.

[whiplash1]

I might not comment much but I always am keeping up with a few of the logs on here. And yeah scaling things is not a bad thing to consider…my elbows can be cranky sometimes so a slingshot or elbow sleeves are are definitely worth thinking about

[T3hPwnisher]

OPERATION PLANET MONGO

AM WORKOUT (0400 wake up via alarm)

Tactical Barbell Operator Cycle 1, Week 4, Workout 3

TACTICAL BARBELL OPERATOR (New Cluster): Cycle 1, Week 4, Workout 2

MAIN WORK

Buffalo bar squat (low bar)
3x5x295

Axle strict press from rack
3x5x153+1 push press rep per set

5 chins between sets (60 total before mat pulls)

(3) Texas Deadlift Bar mat pulls
15+6+5x405 (rest pause: 12 breaths between pulls)

ASSISTANCE

5 round circuit of

• 10x80lb DB rows
• 10x270 reverse hyper
• 6 standing ab wheels
• 20 axle curls

Notes:

• Put the bar low today. Thought process was, with mat pulls in this workout, I wanted to stay fresh, and the low bar is more mechanically advantageous for me. It feels so much better to squat that way, just a matter of taking care of my forearms. Had the x-factor of sweat making the bar slide down today, so even when I tried to make it NOT stupidly low bar, it ended up there. The spot on my traps from Monday where I had the bar is pretty tender, which is a sign that area isn’t conditioned for the load yet. Lots of room to play around, but I kinda like the idea of making Mon and Fri higher bar and Wed lower bar, similar to how I made Wed the lower volume workout on the previous cycle. As always, when you introduce limitations, you introduce creativity.

• The mat pulls felt amazing today. I’m really focusing on breaking off the floor by getting my hips underneath me and leg pressing the weight off, and from there transitioning to a hip hinge, whereas before I was just hip hinging the weight right off the floor and ending the set in agony. The initial break is, of course, slow, but once that’s done it’s a smooth transition between the two and I feel a lot of power. I feel very in control of the weight, which is great for 405lbs. I lost a rep here compared to last week on the final rest pause set, but it’s one of those where I know it was there if I wanted to fight for it, but the cost of that fight wouldn’t’ be worth the reward.

• First workout where I got through all 5 rounds of the assistance work. Debating on if I want to up the weight and go back to 3 rounds or keep trying for 5s.

• I had the time to get in a quick conditioning workout at the end, but decided against it. We’re doubling up on Tang Soo Do tonight, so I should get plenty of additional activity. Last night was a solid workout: 60 minutes of non-stop moving, with a LOT of push ups.

• Kept meaning to log this, but I hit a new PR on the weekend: I sat through the full performance of “Hamilton” at our local theater WITHOUT my right knee being in agony the entire time. This time moving back to low bar with a wider stance has been good for me. It’s good to know that the damage I did to myself wasn’t irreversible.

• Got in the sandbag yesterday. With how the schedule is shaping up today, not too sure if it will happen, but I’m doing it often enough that I can miss a day here and there.

• Realized in the middle of my workout (specifically, the curl portion) that I forgot to include curls in my plan for Grey Man. Have to decide if that’s going to be on A or B day. I’m leaning toward B so far.

[Chris_Shugart]

[T3hPwnisher]

OMG I love it!

[Chris_Shugart]

I have to amuse myself while reading academic texts and writing articles all day. Usually, I annoy Dani with these AI creations. Not sure what happened to that barbell though. AI isn’t so intelligent when it comes to workout equipment!

[T3hPwnisher]

@Chris_Shugart

AI isn’t so intelligent when it comes to workout equipment!

Reminds me of this AI foulup

And this one

AI Robot Arm Fails at Tic-Tac-Toe | Funny Tech Fail #AI #Robot #TicTacToe

Buuuut, in all fairness, I’m sure I’ve used something like that at a strongman competition at some point, haha.

[Frank_C]

@Chris_Shugart

Not sure what happened to that barbell though

I’m looking on my phone and I initially thought it was a weight plate tree.

[T3hPwnisher]

Maximum Definition Diet recap

Breakfast is unchanged, and dinner was basically Breakfast again. 13oz chuck roast, sunny side up eggs, egg white omelet with tallow, and then some leftover chicken meatballs.

[Frank_C]

I’m intrigued by this Max Definition Diet. I looked it up and stumbled across a site that said it was bodybuilders prepping for a show so I kind of stopped reading there. But I see your meals and wonder if I could pull it off. I’d be eating too much with three meals like that but two might work.

I’ve settled into a late breakfast or early lunch routine and then dinner at 5 or later on days I train. I did a little V Diet protein shake only fast today and then hit the chicken and cheddar cheese when I got home. I followed that up with my flat iron steak experiment where I probably ate .6 of the 1.79 lbs.

I love carbs but I hate my love handles. Something has to give.

Where do things like nuts and peanut butter fall?

[T3hPwnisher]

@Frank_C

I’d be eating too much with three meals like that but two might work.

That’s exactly what I’m doing. My recaps are all my food for the day, minus my 1 scoop protein shake in the middle of the night. The Maximum Definition diet actually DOES prescribe 3 meals, but I just don’t care to eat that much.

Here’s what Vince wrote about it

@Frank_C

I love carbs but I hate my love handles. Something has to give.

It actually doesn’t. With the Maximum Definition Diet you DO get carbs: 1 meal every 3 or 4 days. I do it once a week, because that’s I care to eat for carbs, but more frequency is the recommendation.

@Frank_C

Where do things like nuts and peanut butter fall?

Completely outside the diet. Same with the cheese. It’s meat and eggs (typically referred to as the steak and eggs diet), with only butter and cream permitted from dairy. That’s what I enjoy about it: so incredibly simple. And Gironda didn’t count any calories either.

Definitely worth giving a go! For me, I have a breakfast post training in the morning and then don’t eat again until the evening, which boils down to about an 11 hour gap between those two meals, and then a 13 hour gap again, with that protein shake breaking it up in the middle.

Oh yeah, and I’m not taking the truckload of supplements that Vince recommended, but I’m eating a good amount of liver with each breakfast to satisfy those liver tabs, and I have a good stuck of Biotest supplements.

[Frank_C]

I’m not one of those people who think saturated fats are bad, but I do think unsaturated fats are important. I’ve had some bad (or at least not ideal) cholesterol results including just being high overall or being close to the top end of ‘normal’ with low HDL. How is that covered? Is it something that gets covered by the long list of supps?

Another inspiration from your diet is seeking out red meat. I’ve been living off 1/3 pound sirloin patties from Sam’s and really nothing else from the red meat department. I went to one of our local stores who purchase everything from local farmers (or at least the midwest). I picked up a flyer to order a quarter or half of beef. My next decision is to decide if I want the front quarter or rear quarter. The main difference is sirloin vs t-bone steaks and the quantity of a couple other things like ground beef.

Edit: Right on cue, T-Nation!

How to Really Control Cholesterol

[Cholesterol in Food] Does Cholesterol in Food Matter? People worry whether eggs or other high-cholesterol foods negatively affect blood chemistry, but they're focusing on the wrong thing. Google the word "cholesterol" and most of the info you'll find is about lowering it. The most common questions? Can I eat eggs? How about shrimp and other high-cholesterol foods? Are they "safe?" Well, the amount of cholesterol in the food you eat doesn't appear to matter much at all. Your body makes choles…

@T_Nation

Carbs and Cholesterol

If someone regularly eats a lot of simple carbs, they often develop insulin resistance, leading to increased blood sugar levels. Along with this comes an increase in the rate at which fats are broken down. This leads to elevated levels of blood fats or triglycerides. You also find a decrease in good cholesterol (HDL) and an increase in bad cholesterol (LDL).

[T3hPwnisher]

@Frank_C

How is that covered?

From the same book

Also worth considering the impact of these fats in the presence of carbohydrates. Saturated fats may be inflammatory in the presence of carbs, but in the absence of their intake we tend to observe an opposite effect. This most recent t-nation article talks to it pretty well, and if you read the comment I wrote at the bottom, I go into a bit of detail that’s relevant to here

How to Really Control Cholesterol

[Cholesterol in Food] Does Cholesterol in Food Matter? People worry whether eggs or other high-cholesterol foods negatively affect blood chemistry, but they're focusing on the wrong thing. Google the word "cholesterol" and most of the info you'll find is about lowering it. The most common questions? Can I eat eggs? How about shrimp and other high-cholesterol foods? Are they "safe?" Well, the amount of cholesterol in the food you eat doesn't appear to matter much at all. Your body makes choles…

Ultimately, my question is: are you concerned about cholesterol, or are you concerned about heart health? If it’s a matter of the latter, I’d say the concern is more about plaque rather than cholesterol. When they find arterial blockages, they don’t find it full of cholesterol: they find it full of plaque. To me, this would mean that a CAC score would be far more relevant data, as, in the videos I linked in that post, you can LOWER your cholesterol by introducing Oreos into your diet, and they’ll actually be MORE effective than statins.

HAH! As I was writing this post I saw your edit, but I’m going to keep this.

Excited to hear you’re on the red meat wagon there. Ruminant animals are an awesome choice as far as nutrition goes. Their ability to digest their food and break it down so much spares us from having to endure the soy/corn/whatever garbage that is fed to monogastric animals like pigs and chicken, and we tend to get a lot of great fatty acids from it.

---

OPERATION PLANET MONGO

AM WORKOUT (0355 wake up via alarm)

Tactical Barbell Operator Cycle 1, Week 4, Workout 5

“GO RUCK YOURSELF”

Treadmill walk w/45lb vest

• Speed: 3.5mph
• Time: 90 minutes
• Distance: 5.25 miles
• Incline: 4.5 for first 2.5 miles, 5.5 for remainder

Notes:

• We’ve experiencing a heat wave right now, and some decent humidity, so this was pretty miserable as far as general suckage goes, but wasn’t taxing to my cardiovascular system or muscles, which is good. I wake up an extra 5 minutes earlier to get in one more quarter mile and be able to get in exactly 90 minutes of rucking. It seems like a worthwhile trade.

• I think I’m going to continue my strategy of NOT doing my daily chins on this day to spare myself for tomorrow’s Cindy workout. I also had to skip the sandbag yesterday due to a very tight timeline, but we got to Tang Soo Do on time and got in 2 full classes. Neither individual class was as tough as the class on Tuesday, but combined they were exhausting. I’ve got another single class tonight, and then we’ll be done for the week.

• Weighed in at 79.8kg, which was post walk/shower, meaning there is a water loss element there, but I’m also just seeing a general downward trend, that is thankfully moving gradually. This is a 1.1kg drop from last week’s Thursday weigh in. I’m appreciating the twice a week data points.

• On the supplements front, I started using a K2 supplement yesterday. It was 200mcg, which is 2x the recommended dosage, so I may go with an every other day protocol. Crazy inexpensive.

[Frank_C]

@T3hPwnisher

Ruminant animals are an awesome choice as far as nutrition goes. Their ability to digest their food and break it down so much spares us from having to endure the soy/corn/whatever garbage that is fed to monogastric animals like pigs and chicken, and we tend to get a lot of great fatty acids from it.

I’ve shared it before, but my personal experience in messing with my cholesterol was all chicken breast. More chicken > higher cholesterol. Cut the chicken > back to my old levels.

I recently saw a social media post stating the ‘normal’ cholesterol levels used to be 300. I didn’t fact check it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was true. Americans definitely used to eat more red meat, eggs, bacon, butter, milk, etc.

And I guess I’d have to say my health concern is heart health. I still think cholesterol is important in there somewhere. When I decreased my total cholesterol, I also decreased my HDL levels so that they were low. Any personal experience or tips for raising HDL - commit to the red meat diet?

[T3hPwnisher]

@Frank_C

I didn’t fact check it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was true.

It’s absolutely true, and we had much lower rates of heart disease at that time. There is a relationship between the introduction of statin drugs and the lowering of acceptable cholesterol levels, and we also see heart disease INCREASING during this time.

But I’ll say, along with Americans eating MORE red meat, butter, milk, etc etc, we also have to look at what they WEREN’T eating: hyperprocessed junk. There were no snack foods: period. Snacking, itself, wasn’t a thing. You ate your meal, went about your day, ate another meal when it was meal time, and, quite often: those were your meals. MAYBE you had a third meal if you had a factory job with a lunch break. And the foods you ate were real food: there was no Captain Crunch of Poptarts. And the scientist that create this junk are the same scientist that worked to market cigarettes to kids and make them as addictive as possible, and they use the same technology to make the food beyond palatable and addictive (look up how many food companies are owned by tobacco companies). It’s a losing battle for many, and the cost is chronic inflammation, which is where the heart health comes in.

Which is why I bring up the cholesterol thing is a bit misleading. Elevated LDL in the presence of elevated inflammation is certainly concerning, because your body is using that LDL to patch up the inflammation, which can result in blockages via plaque. But LDL itself? Without inflammation, it’s not doing anything harmful. As a (former?) Police Officer, you can appreciate the analogy that LDL are like police. The police are there whenever bad stuff happens. Does that mean that police CAUSE bad stuff to happen? No! They show up to FIX the bad stuff. Just because you have a bunch of police hanging around doesn’t MEAN bad stuff is happening: it just so happens that, when bad stuff DOES happen, you’re gonna see a lot of police.

I honestly can’t speak on HOW to raise HDL: I’m genetically blessed with elevated HDL. My mom’s blood has been studied by Princeton, because even with a less than ideal diet and alcohol consumption, she clocks in hear triple digits on that, and I’ve had readings in the 90s as well, which pushes total cholesterol into the 300s easily. The things I’ve heard that help are omega 3s (like FlameOut), regular exercise, and avoiding alcohol. That also helps with triglycerides, which is helpful, as the ratio of LDL to HDL to trigs tends to be what really matters.

[Frank_C]

Thanks for the rundown and of course I appreciate the police analogy. So now I know why LDL can be cause for concern. I have to admit that my diet this schoolyear has been terrible even when I kept calories in check. I need to clean it up and it’s glorious that eating red meat more often accomplishes that.

I have a lunch duty in front of the school with the food trucks. They are awesome humans and give me food every day if I want it. I try to only take leftovers, but they’ll warm up some fresh food for me. I say warm up because they only serve fried chicken sandwiches and chicken tenders with fries that you can by in bulk at Sam’s or Costco. Tasty, but poison.

[T3hPwnisher]

Always happy to chat dude! Just sharing what I’ve found along the way. And I can totally relate to the diet getting out of hand despite being “on point”. By metrics of calories and macros, I was taking GREAT care of myself, but at one point I realized that NOTHING I was eating was actually food: it was all hyperprocessed frankenfood/food-like-objects. Velocity Diet helped me just completely wipe the slate clean from a paradigm perspective and then a carnivore approach got me off the processed stuff.

@Frank_C

I have a lunch duty in front of the school with the food trucks. They are awesome humans and give me food every day if I want it. I try to only take leftovers, but they’ll warm up some fresh food for me. I say warm up because they only serve fried chicken sandwiches and chicken tenders with fries that you can by in bulk at Sam’s or Costco. Tasty, but poison.

We’re all still suffering the effects of the “clean plate club” and the notion of “wasting food” being a mortal sin, so I can totally relate here. When you’ve got a hook up like that, it’s hard to turn it down. But poison is the right perspective, and, in turn, some poisons can be tolerated in small dosages. This might be something to have on occasion, but living off it is more like dying off it. Honestly kind of a good reason to skip lunch in general and just be a breakfast/dinner man. I actually feel bad about it as well, because our favorite local BBQ place has a food truck where I work on Wednesdays, and I used to make it a point to go visit them and give them some business, but at this point I just prefer to keep fasting through the meal. I try to see them on weekends instead, haha.

[Frank_C]

If I do go get leftovers, they load me up. “You want more? Here take 3 (containers of chicken tenders and fries). You want more fries?” as they add them to my container.

I share with co-workers but I’ve definitely eaten too much of it. Last week they gave me a container with just chicken tenders. It’s usually 3 per container and they gave me a dozen. I asked for a second container and said I’d share with my wife. They added more to the second container and then added fries .