I feel you on the benefits of a diet break, and hassle of constant cooking. I guess it’s because of my constant state of traveling over the years but with food prep I tend to gravitate towards simple and repeatable. Especially with the quantities of eggs and beef required for BTM. I’m simply just drinking the eggs raw with some chocolate almond milk. Voila no cooking necessary and I can get these items fairly easily wherever I may travel for work. Trying to figure how to prepare the beef. I’m doing 93% lean mostly. So far I’ve done burgers, hamburger helper-stroganoff, and lots and lots of tacos. Might throw some pasta with meat sauce in the rotation but trying to keep it simple, yet repeatable!!
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Big fan of that when traveling. For me, my heart health issues drove me to have to start employing variety, and along with that is me attempting to model good food habits for my kid. My father was my hero, and still is to this day, which, in turn, meant I wanted to be JUST like him growing up…which included eating an entire bag of chips in front of the TV, whole sleeves of sandwich cookies, etc etc. I know I’m always being watched, and I want my kid to have a MUCH better relationship with food than I ever did, which means I have to drop robot mode and eat like a human, haha. Left to my own devices, I’m too good at just doing the same thing all the time. I had the same lunch for all 4 years of high school: 2 PBJs, a protein bar, a tin of fruit, a bottle of water, and a cereal bar. I looked forward to it EVERY day. The only thing better than a PBJ is the second one.
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Dirty, as in “dude that is nuts”. I’m in the exact opposite boat as you. I feel much better when I’m lean and my strength shoots up and naggging shoulder issues all but disappear, but I can bulk up quickly.
I guess a better question then, is did you purposely get lean before the Bulk up?
This log has been like an interactive re-reading of all my old training books, I appreciate it!!
Ah. I dunno, it seems to track. Hardgainers is 6 weeks. I do a 7 week diet break. Then Beefcake to BTM will take 13 weeks, so that’s already 26 weeks. At that point, I could try to lean up or do another diet break and roll into Deep Water.
Well, lean yeah, but we were talking “super lean”. I’ll keep some degree of abs/not get sloppy, but I don’t need lat and trap veings, haha.
Not as lean as I ended up: THAT was an accident. A byproduct of a lot of traveling. I was dropping weight to make weight for a weight class in strongman, which I accomplished, but after that my weight free fell.
Been glad to have you along dude!
Coming up with a plan, for tomorrow, if my body can get a 400lb pull off the floor, I’m gonna Malcolm X 405 on an axle for 50 reps. If it’s not playing right, I’m gonna spend 60+ minutes doing something really stupid with axle deads and SSB squats.
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I had two pbj’s last night because I was still hungry after all my tacos, like an hour later. Natural peanut butter, Strawberry jelly, whole wheat bread, glass of whole milk. I’m getting the calories up that’s for sure!!
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Well done on the extra stripe sir.
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@simo74 Thanks man!
@jwlake06 You are absolutely getting after it there dude! Great fuel for the machine.
Ended the night with 27 100lb log vipers in 3 minutes. Bicep ached a little but held out. Continuing with my typical injury protocol of frequently nagging at it to let it know it still needs to be ready to perform.
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AM WORKOUT (0320 natural wake up)
CHAOS IS THE PLAN: DAY ONE OF MANY
10 rounds of:
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10 axle deadlifts w/301bs
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10 SSB Squats w/205lbs
Close w/20 burpee chins
POST WORKOUT SHAKE
30 GHRs
40x360 reverse hypers
30 standing ab wheels
31 axle shrugs against strong short bands
50 pull aparts
25 pushdowns
Notes:
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Once again, worked up to 400lbs on the axle and it wouldn’t break the floor. The strength is there, but my body has enough small injuries that the internal governor shuts everything down when the time comes. I came in with an alternate COA and executed it. In full disclosure, the alternate plan was what I wanted to do, primarily because I gravitate toward this style of training these days, so part of me wonders if there was an element of self-sabotage there.
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As for this workout itself: OH MY GOD. It’s been a long time since I’ve lied to myself that much in a single workout. I have too many names to pick from. Part of me was thinking “Vision Quest” or the logical “Lunatic Fringe”, just because you really go on a journey through it. The other part of me is thinking along the line of “Prince of Lies”, and picking from several deities there. There’s also the line in Disturb’s “Pain Redefined”, that goes “in the realm of pain I am the deceiver”, which would make “Pain Redefined” an outstanding name. But all of this to say that this is a gut check.
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I have no sweated that much in a LONG time. We’re out of the heatwave, but this workout is crazy. It was like I had jumped in a pool when it was done.
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All my nagging injuries felt fine through out. On top of everything else, a little bit of tendonitis is in the left elbow. The whole left side is a horror show.
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This is the last workout for BBB Beefcake. Moving forward, I have a few ideas. If I stick with 5/3/1 for Hardgainers, I think I’m actually in a good place. I CAN pull lighter deads without an issue: heavy stuff is the problem. So what I could do is heavy good mornings to answer the mail there, then deadlift supplemental. It’s the holding the weight in the hands that is impacting things, so removing that will put me in a good way. I suppose that means zerchers might be good, but I can see that having an issue with my bicep. I DO have a zercher harness, so there’s a thought. Idea would be to treat the heavy work more like a max effort workout and then finish out with 5/3/1. If Hardgainers is a no go, there’s always Mass Made Simple or Super Squats; squat focused and deadlift on the backburner. If I do either one, I’d keep deads in for conditioning work to keep it grooved. And if all of that is no go, Chaos is the Plan.
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On the nutrition front, for the deload week I plan to train fasted, as it’s a week of conditioning workouts. Once that is over, if I get back on the Surge, I’m gonna do like I did here: 1 serving for the first 3 weeks, evaluate, and up the dose if need be. I didn’t really notice much difference going from 1 dose to 2 in a workout, and if that means I can move those calories somewhere else in the day, I’ll take it.
EDIT: Totally forgot to document what the deadlift area looked like after the workout
Like an awful crime scene, haha.
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PM WORKOUT (1720)
Tabata KB front squats w/24kg bells
Notes:
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Brought back a classic here. Because of my bicep, I was keeping the rack position for as long as possible. That made it pretty tough. Good to have this rotation going.
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Tang Soo Do was a little rough on my tendons. Worked a lot of grab defense.
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Slept until 0530. Mrs needed to get up early to work on a paper. Opened the day up with a fasted TABEARTA. Once again: 3 complexes in 20 seconds is honest work. I was gassed in 4 minutes. Scratches that ABC itch for sure.
Weekend plans got borked, but not in the worst way as far as training goes. Schedule is opened up, so I’m anticipating a lot of micro workouts through the day. Will probably just log totals at the end.
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Yet another day of absolutely crushing it. It’s currently 2050, Mrs is getting in a run, I just finished my pre-bed meal and this is the first time I’ve sat down all day and had a moment, which is a testament to how awesome things are. A lot of the time was filled with chores (did all the grocery shopping and a LOT of meal prep, to include a ground turkey breast and beef liver chorizo that I’m quite curious about), but let me lay out the training
At 0850, I did 50 burpee chins in 5:25. THAT is the pace I need to do them at. I’ve been sleepwalking through them, and it’s been showing. THIS was a real burner.
After groceries and lunch, it was time for
MONUMENT TO NON-EXISTENCE: UNSTABLE MUTATION
15x225 front squats
20x225 squat
25x225 SSB squats
30x225 Deadlifts
Straight into 90 minutes of lawn care
STRAIGHT into 20 Thrusters w/135lbs in 2:30
And at some point, I got in my daily work.
Notes:
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Lemme talk about MTNE first. That front squat felt WAY heavier than it had any right to, and I thought for sure I was gonna underperform today, but I found 15, which it’s been a while for me. I may have even had a 16th in there. And then, after that…ennui. Yeah, I still wanted to quit during the SSB squat, but I basically speed-ran this workout. The transitions between movements were about as short as they could be and I was flying through reps. I found that 25th rep of the SSB squat much faster than I’ve ever done before. Looking like a tune up or overhaul is in my future.
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I no longer have a good arm to pat myself on the back with, so this is gonna come out rough, but allow me to celebrate my insanity. I squatted 5x10x405 on Monday. Since that time, I’ve done a few million front squats through a combination of tabata front squats and Bear Complexes, of which I did 70 something of them on Thurs and opened up this morning with another 24 of them. On Friday, I went on a 45 minute long vision quest to get in 10x10x301 axle deads and 10x10x205 SSB squats, capped off with 20 Burpee chins. And then I did this today. All while “injured”. By any reasonable stretch, my legs should basically be rendered into the filler goo they put inside of Stretch Armstrongs, and instead I am lamenting the BOREDOM I am experiencing from my nutjob psycho workout.
I like to take a step back and take it all in sometimes, because if I don’t appreciate the sheer insanity of it, I’m missing out.
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I’ve been meaning to say his, but I really like your headband dude. It really gives off a pro CrossFit/athletic look.
Well thanks man! You can get them here
I like how it keeps sweat out of my eyes but doesn’t give me really bad forehead acne like my cheap Walmart hats did
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Slept until 0630 and hit this workout fasted
TABEARTA 3 complexes per round
31 burpee chins in 5 minutes
TABEARTA 2 complexes per round
That was 13 minutes of honest work. I really dig bear complexes as far as mobility goes. Wanna get limber first thing in the morning? Get some bear complexes in.
I feel like I’m inevitably just going to replace ABCs with TABEARTA. The biggest limiting factor is loading the bar and having the crashmats out, and that’s really minimal time suck. In fact, given the ABCs were 5 minutes and TABEARTA is 4, it might be a wash. Chaos is the plan.
In that regard, an idea struck me for deload week of trying to do the 10k swing challenge in 7 days. Did the math and that’s about 1430 swings a day. Wondering if I could make it 715 for a workout, go for a walk, come back and do the other 715. Or perhaps 715-daily work-715. It’s honestly time that I think is the big suck factor there. I’ve gotten 500 inside of 30 minutes before while doing daily work in between sets of swings, so I could probably shave it down some from there, but that’s STILL just a lot of workout.
Ya know, maybe I’ll just make tomorrow a swing day and see what I can do and evaluate from there. Not a terrible idea. Well, actually, yeah, this is a really bad idea, but most of my best ones are. This is what deload weeks are good for…or, I guess deloading.
But where’s the fun in that?
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This is so nutty I’m once again at a loss for words. But if anyone can do it, it’s you!
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Thanks man! There’s no way to say this without sounding arrogant so I’m just going to sound arrogant: I know I could do it: it’s simply a question of “can I do it without disrupting my home-life”. I’m already getting up at 0330 to get everything done, and I don’t mind sleeping even less, but I do know that the Mrs (rightfully so) gets concerned when I start doing that, ESPECIALLY if it’s just to take on a self-imposed physical challenge.
Gloves would be an absolute must from day 1, haha.
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Oh my god I am so f**king stupid. I crunched the numbers and, to get this done, if I did 22 swings a minute for 65 minutes I would get 10010 done in 7 days.
Oh why did I think of this?
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My calluses are crying at the thought of this. I’ve never used gloves, but man I hope they really do protect ya!
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I mean this in the most positive way possible
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That’s tomorrows workout sorted albeit a bit lighter. As I’ve only got the one rack and thus one squat bar think I’ll have to change something perhaps low and high handle trap bar deadlift which I’ve seen you do with higher reps.
And to think i was feeling pleased with my effort to do it in 4 weeks, this is something else. Looking forward to reading about it