Picked up a little cold, but it’s a man-cold so it’s way worse than anything you ladies could possibly understand.
Trick or treating was fun, but I think we’re on our last year. My daughter was super annoyed I went with (I even stayed a block behind!) and just wanted to walk around with her friends.
Today was another tough one. I’ll blame the congestion, but really these supersets are just killing me.
@barley1 it is! Each week has a different method, and this week is the GBC. I’d never done it. It’s brutal. You get a little lactic acid going upper and lower body every round.
@T3hPwnisher haha thanks! I had to look that one up; I sincerely appreciate the compliment.
I was a drainage mess last night. Hopefully that’s about the end of it.
Sorry for the long delays between updates. I’m still a bit sick - looks like it was Covid (again! 3x in 12 months). This one really hit me. I squeezed in a one-day trip in the middle of it before I really thought about it… so sorry if you’re in the US and I got you sick, I’m a zombie movie over here. I did bump into a guy with whom I’d attended college (he recognized me - very impressive), so that was kind of cool.
I went to the gym this morning, but felt terrible warming up. I decided to go home rather than keep getting people sick/ ruining my pants.
My son has started wrestling conditioning. I told him the whole goal the first few weeks is to make people quit, so just focus on getting through each day, recover in between sessions, and accept being sore. He’s been absolutely disciplined around the clock, eating and sleeping and keeping his blood flowing. Super proud of him! They start drills next week, so that will be another big step for him.
Hopefully tomorrow is a gym update! I’ll be restarting the pendulum program, but I think flipping to the muscular gain first. This is the eating season, so I may as well lean into that, then flip to the fat loss focus in spring. I do like these programs, where my ADHD is the feature.
I am totally on board with this! …although summer is ALSO eating season with BBQ…
I’m so excited for your son too! Wrestling was THE most positive thing I ever did for myself physically. My only regret was not starting it as a freshman: I was a sophomore when I discovered it. But the foundation it establishes is unprecedented.
Ugh! I’m so sorry and I hope you feel better soon!! Since you’re traveling so much, maybe start taking vitamin C and zinc during this flu and plague season - just as an insurance policy. Oh, and more veggies never hurt either…
This makes my heart happy for you and him!
If you feel like hot garbage, more rest is better than more stress on your body. Don’t feel bad about a couple extra rest days. Getting better is priority #1!!
Thanks man! He’s really embracing this, which is totally new for him. I’m super impressed with how he’s getting after it. He’s nervous about losing, but I can share some real-life experience with him on that front - ha! I was telling him I remember my senior night in high school and I was begging them not to introduce me with my record because I’d lost so many and I was embarrassed… but you get better, which is the whole point.
Absolutely! If anything, I guess it’s a bonus I haven’t been sick more with all the travel. This one just took me out.
This came in blurry and I can’t read it for some reason…
Thank you!
He’s in 8th grade - starting younger than I did
Thank you, sir. I know you know exactly this journey. It’s so exciting to see him want to do something on his own. Yesterday the mail came and my old school sent one of their weekly requests for money, as alma maters do. He saw it and asked “do you think I’d like West Point?” Shocking turn of events, but one thing at a time, son… and, no; nobody likes West Point - that’s their whole thing.
I slept like the dead for 9 hours last night, which is pretty unusual for me. Still a stuffy head this morning, but I feel like something north of a zombie so we’ll take it!
I feel like your son and I may have a bit in common, from the little bit I’ve heard you describe. In that regard, I’ll share MY strategy for this, which I’ve shared before, and will say feel free to tell your son “Some nutty guy I know online does this”
Before I went into a match, I’d tell myself I already lost. The other guy already won. I wasn’t going out there anymore to win: I was going out there to give the guy a HELLUVA fight and to make him EARN that win. I was going to make him stagger away from the match, winded, singlet ripped, bloody going “What the f**k was THAT?!”
Honestly, this summed it up pretty good
It’s a way to positively leverage nihilism. When there’s no longer anything at stake, we can REALLY let out our best performance. And there’s actually historic precedent (by myth perhaps): I was taught that the Samurai considered themselves “already dead” before heading into battle, so they had nothing to lose and could just fight as hard as they could for their lords. We also saw in Sun Tzu’s Art of War the advisement to NEVER leave your enemy without a path to surrender, because when backed into a corner, they’ll fight MUCH harder than when escape is an option.
Shawn White had a more positive experience, when he already secured a gold medal performance and ended up putting on an even BETTER run afterwards because the pressure was off. Which yeah: if you can guarantee a WIN, go ahead and do THAT to take the pressure off. But it’s much easier to guarantee a loss, haha.
that’s great to hear about the boy wrestling, there’s no high school sport that compares . . I’ve been having some similar conversations with my boy this week as well as he’s only in 2nd grade but is in a legit elementary program here in central PA where they really push them . . he’s excited for when he’s old enough to start lifting with me . . does your son lift at all in the off-season?
I really appreciate all of this, man, and I share your thoughts/ our interactions around the house from time to time as it is.
Everything you wrote is likely very helpful to him. I’ll definitely share it. It’s really interesting how much differently we can all think and arrive at the same place. I used to say “plan B is for losers,” because having a plan B always made it easier for me to bail on plan A when the going got tough. I legit broke a lease and sold all my stuff before going to a school one time just so I had nowhere to go and took away any option to fail… flip side: that strategy ahead definitely bitten back a time or two.
My wife was totally the opposite. If she didn’t have a backup plan, she was too scared to commit to the goal. Having a plan B, for her, gave her a safety net so she could get out there and attack the tightrope. Just totally different mentality.
I’ll absolutely share your thoughts with my son. We have such different baseline attitudes that it’s often hard for me to relate to what he’s experiencing. I can’t really be personally helpful, because my experiences were totally different just by virtue of how I experienced them.
In any case, I think he’s starting to see himself in a new light. He’s finally starting to accept he’s an actor with agency of his own, rather than an observer left to the consequences of some other director. Very exciting all around.
Nah, we’re not really there. He’s not doing this to be great at wrestling; it’s his first real foray into this type of competition… he’s really just practicing putting himself out there. He’s been running quite a bit to get his conditioning up, all on his own, which has been a great mindset switch for him - he’s seeing that he owns the preparation, which influences the outcome.
PA has great programs! Is your son enjoying it? I remember getting to college and being exposed to this whole new world of psychopaths that had been competitive for like 15 years at that point
@T3hPwnisher obviously I enjoyed this weekend’s blog post (although I must admit, I’m a much bigger fan of the Dungeons & Dragons series than I’d have guessed). The analogy was spot-on. I also started thinking about in terms of time-bounds: the selections/ programs have an end date (end of the school, competition, program, etc.), and they have to - they’re built to be something that you can’t do longer term.
Conversely, and I didn’t realize this until I saw it, young privates can actually go through basic multiple times if they haven’t hit the marks. As you point out, it’s about making them soldiers, and there’s certain criteria that come with that. If you show up over-fat, or too slow, or too weak, etc., 16 weeks might not be enough time and you need another 12. Those dudes recycled right back through to get that time until they hit the goal. How often do we see trainees post up a pic/ stats and say “how long should I diet/ eat in a surplus/ etc to be jacked?” And it’s always “long enough.” If you say I’m doing this for 10 weeks, but you’re still fat, you’ve set the wrong expectation… same as if I’ve finished my basic but still can’t pass a PT test, I haven’t completed basic and it’s sustainable enough for me to just continue.
Finally got back into the gym today. Today is all slow eccentrics, control stuff, which I didn’t hate as much as I normally do. Probably because I’m so out of practice and didn’t want the pressure of thinking I was going to do anything remotely heavy anyway; this lets me be Captain Excuse.
Work sets only
SSB Squats
5s eccentrics
135/7
155/7
185/7
Leg Extension
Hold flex for 15s before starting sets
3 x 10
Bench
5s eccentrics
135/7
155/6
155/5
Cable Flye
15s flex at start of sets
3 x 8
Seated DB Press
5s eccentrics
45/5 x 3
DB Lateral Raise
Hold top 15s before sets
15/8 x 3
Rope Pressdown
3 x 8
And now it’s off to take my boy to buy his wrestling shoes (pumped), and we’ll grill out and watch the Lule Combs/ Eric Church benefit concert (on tv - but excited to at least donate to my home state), and play some backyard volleyball because it is still weirdly warm out.
Holy cow, I LOVE this framing. That’s a fantastic observation and extension of the metaphor there. THIS is exactly why I write: so I can learn from others. Thanks so much for that dude! And I love that I’m turning you to the “dork side” with DnD, haha.
Ha! No gap there. I just liked ninja turtles and Batman when I was a kid.
Another of the “muscle control” days today. Starting to feel pretty good again and definitely ready to start being home and maybe try to build some muscle (or at least work capacity) again. Still on the road at least one night every week the rest of the year, but not with nearly as tight a schedule.
RDL
5s eccentrics
185/6
225/5
225/5
Seated Leg Curl
15s hold at top to start
3 x 8
MAG Supinated Pulldown
5s eccentrics
3 x 6
Rope SA Pulldown
15s hold at bottom to start
3 x 8
MAG Neutral Low Row
2-3s peak contraction
3 x 6
Machine Rear Delt
15s hold to start
3 x 8
Cable Curl
5s eccentrics
3 x 6
Then I did the bike for what I thought would be about half an hour to watch Carolina close out a game. They blew the lead and went to OT, so it was an hour ride. They won, though! First consecutive win in 2 years. Bryce Young has tripled his career wins the last two weeks. Now I’m taking my son to see Venom 3. It’s been a good weekend with him.
We might try to fit in a family vacation to somewhere warm right before Christmas. I’d like to tighten up a little, as always, but I just don’t think I’m in the headspace a V-diet type approach. This might be a “come as you are” trip. I’m enjoying lifting, and am fitting it into the travel. The V-diet is awesome, but the first week or so definitely takes a bit of a commitment. We’ll see, though; it’s certainly convenient.
Hopefully I don’t resemble a jelly donut quite as much as I think I do, but such is life. It’s right 5 weeks, which often is just at enough time to do something for a visual different, so we’ll see. I am pretty pleased with my look when I get around 195, and am actually lean at 190ish, and I’m about 207 or so right now. @davemccright, what would you do?
BOSU Crunch
4 sets
Decided to just use abs to warm up - old-school Arnold and I liked it
Belt Squats
5s eccentric
2pps/7
2.25pps/5 x 2
Leg Extension
15s hold at top to start
Only did 2 sets here. I used a different machine and my right knee didn’t like it at all
Dips
5s eccentric
BW/ 5 x 3
Shockingly hard!
Cable Crossover
15s pre-fatigue dealio
3 x 8
High Incline DB Press
5s eccentric
50/6 x 3
Cable Lateral Raise
Pre-fatigue
3 x 8
Decline DB Skullcrusher
25/6 x 3
Then my daughter’s school had a Veterans Day thing, which was very nice, so I had to hustle. Cardio later this evening.
