I used to eat them mixed with honey as a pre-training meal, but have now taken to eating them post training with greek yogurt, cinnamon, naked PB powder and some fat free whipped cream. It’s quite enjoyable.
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BUILDING THE MONOLITH Week 1, Workout 2
AM WORKOUT (0530 natural wake up) FASTED
Tabata 45lb KB workout (1 armed snatches for the 20 seconds on, 1 arm swings for 10 seconds off, alternate arms each rep)
BREAKFAST
80lb weighted vest walk outdoors
2 miles in 43:08
2.1 miles in 45:29
Notes: Got the tabata work in because I really dig doing SOMETHING before breakfast. I feel like it improves nutrient uptake. Got in the walk. Mrs let me have on old GPS watch so I can actually track distance and time, so that’s cool. 2 miles was the goal, but they legit closed the sidewalk down for road construction on my way back so I had to take an alternate route. Leisurely pace: just getting in the reps. Still owe daily work and wanna get in some sort of quick conditioning workout before work.
Much like BBB Beefcake, I will do the absolute minimums of this program for sure, but also allow myself additional work once that’s done. The workout is the main course, everything else dessert, and you don’t get dessert if you don’t clean your plate.
On that note, figuring out where to slot things in. Since BtM has a 20 repper in it, I’m going to cut that out of my Juarez Valley workout and instead slot the belt squats in there. Lateral raises need to find a home: I’m thinking day 1, just because it’s a little lighter on shoulder work. I’d like to put it on day 2, but I’m going to do Poundstone curls for my curl work there, and after that my arms tend to be dead.
With me doing daily neck bridging, I may cut out the neck harness work. I’m doing far less rows than I was doing before, but I’m not too torn up about that. I think working on cleaning reps from the floor will answer the mail there.
Schedule is going to be crazy. I work from 1400-2200 today, and then come back to work at 0600-1400 tomorrow. Swapped shifts so I could make my first Tang Soo Do class. Packing food is going to get interesting.
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PM WORKOUT (1300)
Tabata 20lb DB thrusters for 10 rounds
Notes: Wanted to try something different to get some blood into my legs. The DBs are light enough that I can make it through all the rounds. I was breathing pretty hard when it was all done. This works well enough.
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BUILDING THE MONOLITH Week 1, Workout 3
AM WORKOUT (0310 wake up via alarm)
Once again, will write out the work, then detail it in the notes
DB rows 90
1x20
1x18
1x16
1x14
1x15
Texas Deadlift bar Touch and Go deadlifts
5x135
5x225
5x365
5x420
3x5x470
Axle bench press
5xAxle
5x136
5x206
5x231
5x5x261
Poundstone curls
101xAxle+5lbs
Total time: 1hr 5min
POST WORKOUT SHAKE
30 GHRs
10 neck bridges each way
Notes: Here’s how this shook out: start the workout with the following giant set with only plate change rest
Row-dead-bench
Once I finished the 4th set of rows, I was at the work sets for deads and bench and didn’t want to come into them with any fatigue from rows, so I moved the final set of rows to the end and switched to a superset of
Dead-bench
With about 2 min rest between giant sets, but no rest between the two movements. Hit the dead, go straight to the bench. Once the third superset was done, I was definitely feeling the fatigue, so I kept it to sets of bench with about 2 min rest between sets to finish the last 2 sets.
After that, I originally planned to do a set of Kroc rows for the final set of rows, but figured that’d put me in a poor place for Poundstone curls. It also let me wonder if I should have a rule of only ONE named exercise per workout to keep me honest (Kelso shrugs, Yates rows, kroc rows, meadows rows, Poundstone curls, Z-press, etc etc). Might be an interesting policy.
But anyway, hit the final set of rows, cleaned up the weight room for a rest period, then hit the Poundstone curls. Final time was 1hr and 5min.
NOW, I was dragging during this workout, and for good reason: I worked an 8 hour shift from 1400-2200, got home, got in bed around 2240, saw my alarm clock tell me I was getting 4hr and 29min of sleep at that point, got up when it went off, pounded 2 eggs/1egg white, a 4oz elk burger, half an avocado and a keto waffle with sunbutter and got after it. It was one of those workouts that you just hold on and try to survive. The deads were the most daunting, and I treated it like a distance run: telling myself little lies along the way to keep me going.
Gotta get in the daily work, and then got my first Tang Soo Do class later tonight. Perhaps some sort of Tabata something along the way, and then Juarez valley tomorrow morning at way too early to start it all over again.
“I wake up/on the floor/start it up again/like it matters any more/I don’t know/if it does/is this really all/that there ever was?”
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Sure, there’s that, but you’re looking good!
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Thanks @EmilyQ ! Always means a lot from you. Little Nine Inch Nails never hurt anyone though.
…actually, I imagine Nine Inch Nails would hurt a LOT of people come to think about it…
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Sounds killer man.
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It was definitely the opposite of fun, haha. Anytime you pair something big with deadlifts it’s bound to be awful. And it dawned on me in the middle of the workout that this is definitely the “heaviest” day of the program. It’s an interesting programming choice by Jim, and the more I reflect on it the more I appreciate it.
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Yeah deadlifts plus something else can get pretty wild. I have squatted and deadlifted many times in the same workout and it can be brutal
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F**k me I just read an awesome quote from Nietzsche that just about sums everything up. This comes from “On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life”
“try sometime to justify the meaning of your existence a posterior, as it were, by setting yourself a purpose, a goal, a “for this”, a lofty and noble “for this”. And perish in the attempt-I know of no better life’s purpose than to perish, animae magnae prodigus (translated: having expended all one’s mental energy), in attempting the great and impossible”
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Nietzsche might’ve lived that a bit too hard
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In fairness, had he not, we’d most likely not know his name or the quote.
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Yea, that’s the rub with a lot of the greats. What they did made them memorable but also broke them, Ronnie Coleman is the first that springs to mind. It’s a calculus that has to be nearly impossible to make. Become one of the all time great philosophers but also spend the last 10 years with a completely broken mind. Not that we know enough to establish a causal relationship between his philosophical status and insanity but how can one make that decision without knowing how it feels to be insane?
How did this go? I studied Tang Soo Do a very long time ago. Enjoyed it but being young and stupid other less important things got in the way and I stopped. My daughter (11) does karate and she loves it. She is about 1 year away from back belt and is part of the leadership team at the gym which means she helps out with the little kids training. My son (8) has just started too and I am hoping he will like it as much as his sister. I always think one day I will go back to studying a martial art but never seem to be able to make the time.
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I really like this approach. My daughter has been doing kickboxing, it’s part of the brown belt and above grades programmes to instruct the lower belts at her school. She loves it and seems to really engage well when the younger students are helping to coach.
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@heretolog I’ve been “blessed” with a lineage where I’ve NEVER seen someone die peacefully of nothing in my family. Almost everyone has gone from some sort of terrible terminal disease or malady such that, to me, it seems that no matter what my fate is to die in pain after a long struggle. There’s a significant degree of freedom in that knowledge, because in knowing it there’s really little incentive for self-preservation. For my family’s sake, I wanna be here as long as possible, but being pain free at the end seems like such a pipe dream that I’m not worried about it. If I can either die in pain having deadlifted 700lbs or die in pain having never touched a weight, I’ll pick the former.
@simo74 It’s nice to dip back in. It’s interesting being with adults. I trained Tae Kwon Do as a kid up until 17, then got into the MMA scene for a bit in college, but being with real grown adults is a bit different. A lot more casual, which is good for me: I need times to throttle back. I am glad my kid is in it right now, and I’m hoping I can model well for them. Martial arts was absolutely one of the best things I ever did for myself. You getting your kids into it is awesome, especially with those leadership opportunities.
Ok, lots to log. First, the rest of yesterday
PM WORKOUT (1400)
Fran+ (95lb thrusters, strict chins)
21
15
9
Time: 4:18 (PR or close to it)
Lateral raises (no rest)
20x10lbs
20x5
20x2.5
20xUnloaded
Tang Soo Do class at 1915
Notes: I’m shocked at that time with Fran, because I was sucking wind and misgrooving reps, but apparently I brute forced my way into a fast time. I’m really digging the shape I’m in these days.
For Tang Soo Do, they were really cool with the wife and I, and actually made the class a focus on basics for us. Went over low block, middle punch, high block, front kick, clinch and knee and side kick, along with front stance and “fighting stance”, which I’ve known as back stance.
My background shone through and I got asked “do you have any previous martial arts experience?” I just said “yes” and left it at that. I’m trying really hard to get the white belt experience here: I don’t want to be treated special.
I’m moving WAY too stiff. I’ve had this issue for a bit. In lifting, you want to keep your whole body as stiff and tight as possible to transfer as much power as possible and have no leaks, but in martial arts you wanna save that tightness until the very end and otherwise move fluid. My muscles were tense as hell during the whole thing, like I was posing. Something I gotta watch for.
We learned our first form all the way through, so I got that to work on.
Beginning of class warm-up was a nice circuit of some push ups and ab work. Not much stretching, which was nice.
Now onto today
BUILDING THE MONOLITH Week 1, Workout 4
AM WORKOUT (0310 wake up via alarm)
Juarez Valley front squats 255 w/5 six count burpees between sets
8
1
7
2
6
3
5 (bar slipped on rep 4, had to re-rack briefly to get rep 5)
4
Time: 16:35
Transition immediately to 10 rounds of
5 chins
2 standing ab wheel
5 dips (25 pushdowns after final set)
4 reverse hypers
50 pull aparts
Belt squat stripset (no rest/no lockout)
30x150
5x125
5x100
5x75
5x50
7x25
7xAxle
30 GHRs
10 neck harness each way
Notes: I’m calling this the bike work that Jim suggests, simply because I sold my airdyne. 255 is a weight reaching the “just because you can doesn’t mean you should” sorta level. I think next time I’m gonna keep the weight at 225 and try to absolutely blitz the workout. I wanna keep the reps on the lower side still so that I’m not pushing recovery hard right before my final lifting workout of the week. Goal is to use this workout to recover before the next one: not tax myself. Still, got it done, and then used my daily work to keep heart rate up.
I’ve got most my extra assistance work slotted. Would still like to get some heavy reverse hypers in at some point. Maybe on my prowler day.
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The tsd class sounded really good. Makes me think more about dipping my toe in the water.
That’s incredible!
This was the HARDEST thing to try and teach as a coach, especially with kids. I sometimes spent entire classes just practising this discipline with more advanced teen/adult classes. Much to the chagrin of the studio’s manager.
For me (not that I’m trying to add more things to your training) the olympic lifts and Hungarian plate twists have been the perfect tools for practicing the transition from relaxed-to-tension. There’s other drills I used to do too unrelated to lifting.
@kdjohn I was JUST about to ramble about how kettlebells and olympic lifts tend to be the kind of lifting that blends that middle ground of relaxed but tight, but thought I was already going too far off on a rant, haha. Some strongman stuff helps there too. Bag over bar and contintentals can help. But concur: it’s a struggle. My kid is the opposite: too loose and floppy. They’re a kid that has never known violence: it’s an interesting situation.
@simo74 It was definitely pleasant. In non-COIVD times, I’d like to get back into some combat sports, but this is answering the mail for sure.
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