Rebirth of the Juggernaut: Brute Force and Ignorance (Part 1)

Training Training Logs
6698

Oh man I have soooo many pig out stories… might as well just call it bad diet choices, haha.
Anytime I eat sushi it gets crazy for sure. 40+ plates (not pieces) is the norm.

I also had to take systemic cortisone for a period of time as a kid. That has some crazy side effects (most noticeably the puffy, round face and hair loss) among which is a huge change in appetite, taste and hunger. I had the craziest appetites like a pregnant woman in any comedy and to the weirdest times of day. Not easy at all on the parents if your kid is up at night and demands a dish of crazy food, I tell you that.

6699

@zeptrey Following your log always gives me envy. You find some great spots for grub. I’m down for a huge steak like that sometime soon…hopefully, haha.

@simo74 happens EVERY damn time I do it, haha. Always check the order before you leave.

@kleinhound Sbarros would do a “stuffed pizza” that was basically what you described: two pizzas on top of each other making a calzone. That was definitely one of my downfalls as a fat kid.

@voxel I’ve been the designated garbage disposla before. It’s an honorable posting.

@Koestrizer It’s why I’m not a fan of sushi: takes SO much to get full, haha.

These gigantic meals are cool guys, but let’s hear some BULKING stories. Not just some one off meal that was epic, but the dumb things you did over and over again in the pursuit of gains. Who here has done the gallon of milk a day? Ran that for 6 weeks in college doing Super Squats. It was crazy feeling myself get stronger while I drank the milk. I had actually JUST finished the program when I started posting on t-nation, as there was a topic asking how much milk people drank in a day and I was more than happy to reply, haha.

EARLY AM TRAINING (0300 wake up due to morning shift)

ALTERNATING SETS (incline/flat)

Close grip incline bench 205
2x10
1x8

Axle Bench Press 231
2x10
1x9

(2) Incline DB bench 105
1x5

DROPSET
5x105
2x105 w/reactive slingshot
2x105 w/metal catapult
7x50
7x50 w/reactive slingshot
4x50 w/catapult
12(?)x25
7 push ups

19x50

Chins (underhand) between sets of benching
8x12
1x11

Dips w/rest pause
50+23+a bunch more to get to 150

Poundstone Curls
139xAxle

Notes: 3:00 between sets of bench. Strength was solid for so early in the morning. Breakfast was “keto waffles”, pre-made by the Mrs. Almond flour base. I’m still eating science experiment food. I’m going to blame it on being born in the 80s. I’m still a fan of the close grip incline bench: one of those movements that getting stronger on it makes me feel like I’m getting stronger in general. Focused on leg drive in the bench and it made a significant different. Helped to think of it less about driving into the bench and more about just creating a stable base to bench from. Contemplating doing some reverse band benching now that I have the band pegs set up. Dumbbell benching is getting more circus act-esque with the incline. Contemplating doing a mechanical advantage dropset on top of the slingshots and dropping the incline while keeping the weight the same, but this set can easily just get insane if I keep throwing modifiers at it.

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6700

I have yet to have a problem with gaining weight. In more recent history, my body has been pretty good at maintaining close to a given weight but historically, weight gain was always something I had to actively prevent and never chase. Which is a pity. I know you feel different about that but you probably always want what you can’t have.

But on the topic of dumb things to in the name of gainz: When I first moved out from my parents at 18/ 19 I was fully convinced that you had to eat like you hate yourself to look good. So I ate tons of boiled(!) chicken breasts, veggies and “clean” carbs. The “sugariest” (is that a word?) food I had in my fridge was skim milk. I did not make nearly as much gainz as I could have, I’ll tell you that. Mainly because I had no idea what I’m doing and and didn’t eat nearly enough fat but also my way of eating caused me to hate that part of the process and I would find myself binge eating more and more as a result. Which in turn made the clean eating part all the more absurd. I did look decent though. A lot less big than I do now though.

6701

It’s worth clarifying that I feel very much the same. I think weight gain is easy. I also think weight loss is easy. What I think is hard is MUSCLE gain. My voracious appetite makes gaining weight incredibly easy for me and, if left unchecked, I will gain a lot of weight. But losing weight is also easy for me: whenever I think about eating, I don’t do it. Gaining muscle is the tough part, because I have to train so stupidly hard to create the stimulus on my body to develop muscle and THEN I need to also eat right to make that occur, and often the hard training can be so intensively that it requires an immense amount of calories just to recover from the training, let alone add muscle on top of that. But were I to just be sedentary, I can very easily eat the amount of food necessary to put on weight.

That clean eating trap you describe is so common. Paul Kelso did a great job disuading that in his writing, and it’s a message that needs to get out there. It’s why I loved that clip from Pumping Iron: dudes are eating steaks and burgers and whole eggs. No posing or posturing for instagram back then. In fact, it was the opposite: they were trying to sell bodybuilding as a superior lifestyle, so of COURSE you weren’t eating egg whites and chicken breasts. You were eating whole steaks and drinking beer post workout! Haha.

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6702

I work at McDonalds, my life is pig eating… Even this noon, two boxes of sushis…

Unfortunately my bulking stories are not fun. Eating when you want to puke already but still have to eat more was not fun. I’m poor, always has been. So when I was bulking, it was bland, boring meals usually, nothing exciting like the pics you posts.

There were a few months when I ate twice a day at my job for free. Not because I wanted to bulk, but because it was free.

I’ll be the unfunny one. I don’t like bulking. I have tried 4 times. it worked only the first time, with nooby gains (also lots of fat). I just get fat when I bulk. Even the time I counted calories. In 4 years my lean mass must have changed by maybe 4-5 kilos? What’s the point of bulking to me. I don’t even (or barely) get stronger when I do anyway

6703

Getting fat is definitely part of the process. I never really let it sweat me. My idols were big men, and many were fat. Paul Anderson, JC Hise, Doug Hepburn, Louis Cyr, etc etc, to say nothing of late 90s-Early 2000s powerlifting. I feel like embracing that was a boon for me as far as growth goes. But part of it too was engaging in “bulking programs”. Super Squats was the first real experience I had with bulking, and it was so eye opening. I was in college and just eating everything that wasn’t nailed down in my dinning hall. My (future) wife also had a lot of meal credits, and I’d sweet talk her into buying me chicken strips at the on campus diner as well, and I had a few other “sponsors” too, haha. The other big time was after having just gotten married, I was using (what I interpreted to be) the Westside Barbell system, and Louie was SO big on gaining weight while you did it. I saw my numbers fly for so long: it was super motivating.

It may have helped that I grew up a fat kid. I had lost the weight before and knew I could do it again.

I do remember the day I decided to do that too. I was working a job where we slept on site and had a chef that prepped us meals. I had my usual dinner of 2 quesadillas (just chicken and cheese, and a LOT of sour cream), 2 orders of broccoli and 2 apples (see: I’m being healthy!). This was after my lunch of 3 grilled cheese sandwiches. I was laying in the bed on my side just feeling absolutely disgusting and miserable and wondered “Why am I doing this to myself?” I was 207lbs at 5’9, and decently strong, but not competing in anything at the time. I ended up dropping down to about 180lbs, and then slowly built back up to the mid 190s to compete in my first powerlfiting meet.

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6704

I completely get your point, but I really didn’t like it when I was fat. I have zero hair anywhere, no beard, I just look like a fat kid. And it’s not like I’m getting much stronger when I get fat. Barely.

Well mine didn’t so that really didn’t motivated me… I had PRs not long ago and it’d been years, it felt so great. But I got them by getting more efficient/technical, not really stronger per se.

Maybe I have a of a distorted view because of my experience. I became better at football when I leaned down. Changing weight up or down didn’t change much in the gym. Only last winter I did get my best squat at the time, but was it because I was doing a mild bulk, or because I was squatting, snatching, clean and jerkin 4x a week and doing crazy core work like 3x good morning per week along 100 kgs 45° back extensions?

6705

Yeah, I’ve noted you and I tend to be on opposite sides of the training spectrum. I go far and away from technical improvement, which is most likely why Westside appealed to me so much: changing movements frequently, no real opportunity to get skill at it. Just making things stronger.

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6706

This would be an easy coping out and an excuse, but I believe I don’t have a resilient structure/body as yours (as could be proven by my knees and wrist surgeries, frail and tiny articulations compared to my size, tendinopathies etc) so brute forcing doesn’t works that well with me

6707

I am a frequent surgery visitor myself, haha. Getting LASIK was a trip for me because it was the first time I got ELECTIVE surgery.

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6708

I feel somewhat similar to @aldebaran. The past year I have been actively pursuing weight gain, went from high 190s to I think right around 215 at my heaviest a few months ago. I was expecting all of my lifts to explode, but was pretty let down. I did hit some PRs though. I felt like I can of had to relearn how to squat with my stomach in the way, which is a first for me haha.

I feel like it’s still way too early for me to have tried that. I’m not strong enough or in tune enough with “feeling good” or “feeling bad”, when to push, when to lay off the gas to be able to have expected more than what I got, if that makes sense. I personally like eating up to a weight and staying there for months at a time, getting stronger at that weight, then when I feel like I may start to plateau, adding more food.

I’m glad I gained the weight though. It showed me how much I actually have to eat, every day, in order to add weight, and then add on the binges on the weekends to jack calories up even more.

I think it becomes intuitive for me at a certain point too. I get used to eating to weigh 202, I add weight, then get used to eating at 208 etc etc. I’m at 210-212 right now and holding steady. Fat is slowly going away, and my weight is staying the same, so maybe not a real bulk by conventional standards but it’s been working ok for me.

6709

This is a very significant point as well. A lot of junior trainees will read/hear stories about bulking and just jump into the eating portion of it. To quote Hugh Cassidy, you have to “eat through the sticking points”. This means one needs to have a REASON to eat big before they do it. It’s a fantastic way to overcome a plateau, but if there’s no plateau to overcome, there’s really no benefit to pushing the food. It’s why I always like pairing high calorie nutrition with “out of reach” goals, and why I think strongman is such an awesome sport for getting stronger. If all you do is say “I wanna get stronger” and start eating big and “training hard”, there’s a fair chance you end up getting fat. If, however, you say “Crap, I have 3 months to add 40lbs to my press” because a competition demands that, suddenly the vector is much more clear, the training gets laser focused, and the nutrition supports that growth.

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6710

That’s exactly where I made my mistake. I was on just a general strength program, nothing crazy. I did get stronger, I did hit a few PRs but not anything more than I think I would’ve if I didn’t eat to gain that much weight.

All trial and error for me, which I why I keep defaulting back to what I have been doing.

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6711

Eat crazy, train insanely.

6712

Being sedentary also seems to increase appetite while hard training can decrease it to some extent

6713

Before my first comp in 2013, we stopped at Wendy’s after weigh ins. dun dun dun

For some reason, this idea cued into my head that I better pack in as many burgers as possible before running around in 90 degree heat all day. I ordered like 6 doubles and the kid at the register was like R U LIEK A FAMOUS ATHULEET, to which I replied “haha, I’m doing a local strongman show in the crowd” -proceeds to vaguely explain the sport of strongman in the proverbial yet obligatory manner in which we incite the most obscure event utterly confusing the plebe-

Anyway, finished the show, had to pull over on in a hooters parking lot to vomit liquid burger. My nose bled because I was fat and had terribly high blood pressure when I was 19. Good times man. I fuckin love Wendy’s.

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6714

Amen! We keep getting commercials for the Baconator at work and I lock onto them like a shark smelling blood, haha. One of the best trashiest burgers. Fantastic story of post weigh-in debauchery. I learned my lesson after my third comp to STOP doing that. Too much powerlifting influence. My second comp I hit up a Sizzler for the first time in years and tore up their salad bar…which tore me up in turn. At my second comp, it was a full Brooklyn style pizza from Dominos AND 2 double quarter pounders from McDonalds. …yeah. I’ll still go through a box of poptarts AT the comp, but leading up to it things are kept a lot more sane.

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6715

Were you guys cutting to make weight at the comp?

6716

Not for the strongman comps. But I did cut for powerlifting. I made the mistake on my second comp of loading up on pancakes after weigh in. It was around Christmas, and Dennys had some AWESOME seasonal pancakges on the menu. I had 4 of them with all the fixings, and since I had lost 9lbs of water that day, everything just swelled up in my gut and I felt miserable the whole night before the comp.

My third and final powerlifting meet, I stuck with “flat” food. Things that didn’t expand. Thin crust pizza and quesadillas were the solution.

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6717

Should’ve gone with the crepe platters, would’ve solved all of your problems.

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