Nutrition Recap
Fasted until dinner. Did pork chops, alongside 2 tins of sardines, 3 whole eggs and 5 whites. I had 2 porkchops for myself, and finished off about half of one off the kiddo’s plate. I strategically went with the sardines to up the omega 3 content of the meal, as pork can be a little high on the 6s.
Holy cow, so sorry I missed this post. It means the world when you swing by.
The adventure into cooking has been a blast! A new challenge
And I am 40 now, haha
AM WORKOUT (0400 wake up via alarm)
TACTICAL BARBELL MASS PROTOCOL SPECIFICITY BRAVO Week 1, Workout 3
(3) Texas Deadlift Bar Mat Pulls
11x455
DB rows
4x12x120
Axle curls
4x12x71
GHRs
4x12x55
ASSISTANCE
GHR sit up
30
Reverse hypers
3x15x360
Band pull aparts
3x25
Notes:
Nutrition recap
Breakfast was a repeat of Monday. Dinner was an incredible leftovers night of corned beef, smoked beef cheeks, 3 whole eggs and 5 whites.
Curiosity question…why weight in kg not pounds?
@imbubber My bathroom scale reset itself to kg at some point and the app needed to change it back is no longer supported. I COULD do the calculations, but honestly it’s interesting how I sorta “detach” myself from the number when it’s in KG vs pounds.
AM WORKOUT (0400 wake up via alarm)
TACTICAL BARBELL MASS PROTOCOL SPECIFICITY BRAVO Week 1, Workout 4
SSB Squat
4x12x265
Look for lungs on the floor. 404 Error: Lungs not found.
Lever belt squat
12x200 (misload, called it a warm up)
4x12x245
Axle strict press from rack
2x12x123
10x123
8+4+2x123
(3) DB Incline Bench
3x12x65s
10+2x65
Dips
12,11,10x45
9+4+2x45
ASSISTANCE
Hanging leg raise
2x10
Notes:
I dig that “superhero” pose that the thumbnail caught.
This is EXACTLY why I only ever run Specificity for 3 weeks: it is absolutely brutal. Elements of Deep Water/Building the Monolith, wherein you complete the first workout of the week and think “How the f–k am I going to get the NEXT workout done?”, and then somehow you do it.
It was fitting that “Terrible Lie” was playing during the SSB squat, because I kept lying to myself saying I was going to rest longer than a minute between sets. It was the lie that allowed me to get the set done, and then 45 seconds would roll around (I rest that long to allow me 15 seconds to get up and unrack to make it a full 1 minute of rest) and I’d get back under the bar again, telling myself “you knew this was the only way this was ever going to go”. And each set I kept falling for it.
Kept 1 minute rest on the lever belt, then went 75-90-120 seconds on the axle, 60-90-90 on the incline, and 1 minute on the dips. Recalculated the dips to get a more reasonable number to work with for the load.
Had to employ some rest pausing to get all the reps today, but in general very pleased with my performance. I think this is my most successful block of training to date. Body is feeling pretty decent day post deadlifts. My right knee hurts, but that’s primarily due to smashing it with a wooden staff in Tang Soo Do last night. Which, on that note: solid workout for 90 minutes. Lots of basics and hyungs/kata.
Weighed in at 82.2kg. Yesterday was NOT a fasting day, nor did I restrict (as evidenced by the photos of dinner), so this is an interesting data point. Must have been holding onto a fair bit of fluids. And I’m using a slightly different rhythm for nutrition, having breakfast today as well and moving the coffee fast to tomorrow.
Had a really awesome realization about this training block and future ones: now that I have a simple set-up for stone loading, I can actually include that in a regular training day vs an events day. Noise was the primary limiting factor before, BUT if I do the stones at the END of the workout, that’s the time that my wife is up and getting ready, so I won’t wake her, and my kid can sleep through a nuclear bomb going off, so that’s not a concern. PLUS, training stones at the END of a workout is actually closer to the conditions I’ll have to do stones in a competition, so there’s a bit of realism there as well. And then I can free up my Saturday workout to train other skills. I’m going to test this out tomorrow, making the “B” workout of Specificity a mat pull on the first day and stone load on the second, and then, when I transition to Operator, I can either do stone loads on Mon and Fri with deads on Wed, or just do stones on Fri, deads on Wed and keep Monday light to allow for recovery. Lots of options/potential.
Thanks
I wonder if this would be helpful to me… I might give it a shot.
Nutrition Recap
Breakfast was a repeat of yesterday, with blue cheese crumbles. Dinner was 7 burger patties and 4 packs of butter at Culver’s.
This is a really good idea. The progressive fatigue that comes with doing multiple events before stones can have a big impact as you know. Training it fatigued but keeping the volume super low is chaotic genius.
@simo74 Thanks man! I got to test it today and it was a success.
AM WORKOUT (0359 natural wake up)
TACTICAL BARBELL MASS PROTOCOL SPECIFICITY BRAVO Week 1, Workout 5
DB rows
4x12x130
Axle curls
4x12x76
GHRs
4x12x60
ASSISTANCE
GHR sit ups
20,15
EVENTS
Stone of Steel to platform
Notes:
Thought you could slip this in there without anyone noticing?
@unicornsandrainbows I’m always delighted when people catch the little easter eggs I include in the log, haha. Thanks for reading so attentively!
I’m just really tickled with how my schedule is working out on this program. As much as Specificity is a complete and total nutkick, this schedule gives me a structure that makes it about as sustainable as possible.
MONDAY:
Day A1 lifting (morning)
25 min walk (lunchtime)
2 meals (post training and dinner)
TUESDAY:
WEDNESDAY:
THURSDAY:
FRIDAY:
SATURDAY:
SUNDAY:
DAILY
Just really a great game of tetris there. The recovery workout on Tuesday sets up for the heavy pull on Wed, and being able to train the stones on Fri allows for the bandwidth to do the prowler on Saturday, which means I’m able to train 2 high value events in the week and still keep in the spirit of Specificity by keeping the conditioning short and focused. And when Operator Rolls around this will really be dynamite. Might actually bring back the ruck here and there.
Do you ever get scheduling anxiety from having to adhere to this, or do you find comfort in the routine? I ask because I seem to oscillate between the 2 extremes. Sometimes I like having everything planned out because then I can just shut up and get down to business, but then other times I’ll feel a little trapped and wish that I could just shoot from the hip. I can’t seem to figure out which person I truly am…
@BrandonCrawford The short answer is: I don’t see this as “I HAVE to adhere to this”, but “I GET to”
Overshare: the first 15 years of my career had me working shifts. And not traditional shifts. I had one job where I would spend 30ish hours onsite, come home for about 60 hours and then repeat in a GOOD month, but often times the spacing between going out and coming back was more random than that. I then “upgraded” to 9 hour days but during varying times based on the needs of the customer, rather than a traditional style of “3 days swings, 3 days mids, 3 days days” sorta approach. And during COVID, I’d work a week at a time on the mid swing shift, then have a week off. I always had to train “when I could”, and I’m fairly certain this lifestyle was a major contributor to my illness. These days, being able to have a fixed schedule is a privilege that I earned, and I enjoy it very much.
However, “chaos is the plan”. I adopted that philosophy BECAUSE my life was so unpredictable that attempting to ever have a plan was foolish AND I would get REALLY upset when I’d put one together just to have it blow up. It’s a “you can’t fire me, I quit!” to unpredictability.
And the final nail in the coffin is I have more than enough evidence to demonstrate that, when left to my own devices as far as training goes: I self-destruct. Lots of torn muscles and injuries to point to there. Someone telling me exactly what to do and when to do it is good for me. But IN that regard, there’s planned chaos in Tactical Barbell. If I’m ever feeling stale, I tell myself “It’s cool: the next phase is around the corner”. And if I’m feeling REALLY itchy: there’s the conditioning workouts. Those are my wildcards.
Nutrition Recap
Fasted until dinner, and it was another late dinner, so a true 24 hour fast. And I enjoyed it. My favorite BBQ place was out of ribs, so I HAD to get a double order of sliced brisket, pulled pork, and the chopped brisket from my kid’s meal that I traded my corn bread for (we’re both winners there). Threw 3 scrambled eggs with butter on the side, and had some sour cream in place of BBQ sauce.
Appreciate the reply, good food for thought.
Wanted to tell you I enjoyed the latest blog. Really reminded me of the “make the method the goal” entry, probably because that’s been on my mind lately. I’ve been beating myself up because I just can’t get excited about concrete goals like “shoulder the 250lb sandbag” or whatever. Instead, I’ve just focused on “exercise Mon-Fri, take a 30 minute walk daily, cook the majority of my meals at home”. There’s no ambiguity or qualitative factors there, I either did them or I didn’t. And what do you know, good things have been happening.
@BrandonCrawford Hey thanks so much man! I’m doing my typical thing where I get hyperfixated on one idea and find 400 ways to write about it in the blog, haha. But it’s true: we don’t need to do anything perfect: we just need to do something DIFFERENT. And once we pick our different, just stick with it.
PM WORKOUT (1300)
TACTICAL BARBELL MASS PROTOCOL SPECIFICITY BRAVO Week 1, Cycle 6
“PROWLER SPRINTS”
4 rounds of sprints w/90lbs loaded
Notes:
Nutrition Recap
Breakfast was a little larger. Still 2 omelets with 3 whole eggs, some 93% lean ground beef, beef tallow and reduced fat swiss, topped with sour cream, alongside 3 strips of beef bacon, some beef liver, a Teton Waters grassfed beef polish sausage and 2 scrambled eggs.
Went to my wife’s favorite Hawaiian BBQ place for dinner. I had a loco moco (pictured), which is a hamburger steak topped with an overeasy egg and beef gravy, alongside some kalbi ribs and BBQ chicken from the Valkyrie’s plate. The rice and mac salad went to the family.
Hey, just sharing a method I picked up regarding sled/prowler.
So I like to push my sled early morning in my driveway. Too loud for the neighbors so I went to Menards and grabbed a roll of outdoor carpet runner which has a rubber bottom. I now can quickly roll this out in my driveway and I have a completey silent sled. Its a nice consistent surface too. Just sharing!
Brilliant
