What's the Craziest Thing You've Tried?

What’s the nuttiest idea you’ve tried with training or diet? And did it work?

Here’s mine:

Craziest Thing, Bad Idea: Tried to wear a 65-pound weight vest all day while doing my normal activities to burn more calories. It’s not a terrible idea and there’s some science behind it (see the 21-Day Weight Vest Diet), but 65-pounds just wrecked me. The study linked above used a max of 24 pounds.

Craziest Thing, Good Idea: I might do this again. For GPP and core strength, I sat a kettlebell at the bottom of my staircase. Everytime I went upstairs and back down, I’d do a one-armed KB carry. It’s sorta like the “paying the toll” idea with pull-ups where people set up a doorway pull-up bar and do one rep every time they go through it.

What have you tried?

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used to have a tradition of doing an nutty pre-exam workout before finals.

Among the “worst”

  • 10 mile run+400m walking lunge w/20lb dbs (40lb total)
  • 10x10 deadlifts at 100kg (75% of max at that time) + 10x10 leg extensions

I give this up after junior year in uni

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Bad Idea
When I first joined the gym I was drinking 5 nights a week. Many a time I would down extra beers at last orders just to reach my required surplus. #health, right?

Even more of a bad idea
Did a heavy squat session back in a similar time frame (at the beginning of my journey), a couple of hours later I was asked to play 5-a-side football (soccer) and said yes. 5mins after play started I severely tore my adductor and it still gives me big problems years later.

Good idea
Starting coaching girls’ football. Having responsibility on a Sunday morning makes me not get involved with anything stupid on a Saturday night and makes my weekends also about health & fitness.

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These have an uncanny way of impairing cognition

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There was an old Tnation article by I believe Dan John talking about doing a 40 rep squat set using your bodyweight +|- 5lbs as your loading on the bar.

I have tried looking for this article again but haven’t found it. Anyway the article somewhat comically outlined that the first 10 reps you are thinking this is gonna be so easy, then you get to 20 and your like “I got this, no problem”, then you get to 30 reps and the voice in your head starts to panic, by 35 you are ready to quit and at 38 reps you do t know how but your going to get it done.

At the time I tried this I was restarting my strength training journey after a long spell of focusing on starting a family and beginning a new career etc. I was very much into linear progression schemes like 3x5 and 5x5’s so not really been doing any high rep work.

At the time I was using 205lb and although I got all 40 reps I ended up with a pounding headache from straining so much and my legs felt like the muscles were going to split open my skin I had such a massive pump. I fell to the ground, in a commercial gym setting after that set and gathered myself back up a few moments later and left calling the workout a day as I didn’t have anything left in me. If I recall correctly it pretty much ruined the rest of my week for workouts as I was so damn sore.

The take away for me then was a very humbling one. I need to work both ends of the strength spectrum doing 5’s, heavy singles, AND high reps.

I don’t think a body weight 40-repper would have the same impact on me today years later as it did then, but that set sucked so much that I am not ready to try again any time soon.

So when I see people like the punisher doing ridiculous sets, with heavy weight, well past 40 reps I just laugh to myself and realize how much better some folks are at this thing and it’s sort of like climbing Everest or running a marathon for me. I can appreciate the work it takes to do it, on some level, but I realize I just don’t care enough to really go after it as my priorities are currently elsewhere. No shame in admitting that if you ask me.

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CRAZIEST BAD IDEA NUTRITION:

Eating a 4.5lb cheeseburger and order of fries in 31 minutes

Stella

Peep me repping the brand!

To accomplish this, I took the day off work, lifting weights fasted in the morning, went on a weighted vest walk for 2 miles, then mowed my lawn for 90 minutes with that weighted vest on, went on an unweighted walk for 3 miles, then got in ANOTHER lifting session, and the only nutrition I took in was about 2 Metabolic Drive shakes to keep from blacking out and keep my protein high (protein sparing modified fast style)

I did all that just so I would show up empty and hungry. It worked! I became one of 46 out of 900+ people to ever succeed at eating “The Stellanator”…and I was still full WAY beyond capacity. I did not need to eat for a full 24 hours after that, and spent many days in gastrointestinal agony as my body tried to figure out HOW to digest about 1 solid pound of fried onions alongside the rest of what I consumed.

CRAZIEST GOOD TRAINING IDEA

Taking on 5/3/1 “Building the Monolith” and getting the workouts done in an hour or less. This was my very first time tackling the program, and on week 1, day 1 I remember, once I was done, spending 15 minutes in the shower staring at my feet and wondering if I could just quit then and there. I managed to make it through to the end, and it set the stage for many more challenging workouts in the future. I’m actually on ANOTHER run of BtM right now, and coming in well under an hour on those workouts.

Honorable mention goes to the first time I did Jon Andersen’s “Deep Water” program, of which, on the beginner workout, week 5, between sets 7 and 8, I was laying on the floor in my gym and seriously considering selling ALL of my lifting equipment and giving up lifting for the rest of my life. Between sets, I would basically have to completely self-destruct and then become born again. I learned how to time my intake of excederin and an energy drink so that I could chase away the inevitable exertion headache that would ALWAYS happen after the squat workout.

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Just noticed the burger also had peanut butter on it. Because why not, right? :laughing:

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It was legit one of the best parts! Haha. You can hear me through the video just absolutely blown away by the taste of everything. I’d had such a strict/bland diet leading up to it, and hadn’t had “real” peanut butter (which is to say FAKE peanut butter, because it’s the GOOD stuff with the added sugar and palm oil) in about 15 years. But oh man those onions…and then when I got to the fries, all I could do was drown them in ketchup, since they had gone cold and my appetite was absolutely destroyed.

Oh yeah, another crazy idea during my Building the Monolith run: I didn’t have a fancy weight vest then, so I just wore chains around my torso…but since I lived somewhere that constantly had lightning storms, I had to just pace around my garage a bunch, like the Jacob Marley from a Christmas Carol.

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Worst was completing the mythical (in my little home in Idaho) “Devil’s Run” on a whim. Here’s how this goes: it’s an 8 mile climb up to a mountain lake by dirt road. Base elevation is approximately 5500. The top: just shy of 9500. MY goal was to NEVER stop or even walk on the way up. I threw on a light pack with 1 quart of water and bite size Snickers.

I completed the 8 miles up as planned and turned back. The first 3-4 miles down literally flew by THEN the impact and eccentric trauma kicked in.

Did I mention I told no one what I was doing or where I was? Cellphones weren’t a thing. I saw one car on the way up…going down. This is a remote location.

I completed it, pissed maple syrup colored urine for a few days, and was generally blown out. I will never do anything like that again.

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Craziest Thing, Bad Idea

1 mile of tire flips around a track, alternating flips with a friend. We did not complete that mile.

Craziest Thing, Good Idea

Running an ultra-marathon trail race. Unlocked an ability for distance running I didn’t know I possessed prior to that.

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Timely post, currently enjoying “The Comfort Crisis” by Michael Easter and it’s focused on misogi (well misogi challenge as a slightly different concept), and it’s got my brain thinking about stupid ideas, so I’ll come back to this thread at some point soon I’m sure!

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Mine is very similar to yours because I was inspired by your writings so I also had to run Deep Water and get all of my BtM sessions done in under an hour! Thank you for the bad ideas, they’ve made me a better man and a more jacked man!

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I like this!

I used to run 4-5 miles with my armor on in those little barefoot toe shoes that used to be popular - horrible idea.

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I hope you Imodium-ed pre burger.

Not at all, but I DID take my Indigo-3G! Haha.

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For diet - ABCDE, warrior diet, carb backloading.

Once I was in a cooking contest where they would weigh any leftover ingredients you had as part of your score, so I hid in the walkin refrigerator chowing down dirty organic carrots, raw quail, and lemons.

Workouts - Doing 1k crunches because of American Psycho, loading up an external frame backpack with rocks and climbing stairs in an apartment complex at 5 am. Ended up killing a possum and getting arrested. Not related incidents.

10x10. Nope. I don’t need to be reminded that I’m a pussy.

For diet - 1 lb red meat, 1 gallon whole milk, 1 dozen eggs, and whatever else you want daily.

Swallowing frozen cubes of butter because shots of olive oil are gross.

Chicken breasts and sugar-free strawberry jam is suprisingly good.

Workouts - Lifting at a gym that only had 25 and 45 lb plates and increasing reps then just making a jump. First time I pulled 545 it was because I felt lazy and didn’t want to do high volume that day and had been doing 315 for sets of 12-15, but just got curious.

This seems to be a common type of activity in this community, but barefoot hiking sections of the Appalachian trail.

Got a bunch of free rocks (big enough that I could only carry one at a time,) off craigslist and would wake up in the morning and move the pile to a different place in the yard as fasted cardio to slam a huge breakfast. The wife asked why there were trails of dead grass in the yard, I blamed the deer, so now I go chop wood instead.

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Dude!!! I’ve watched a number of videos from two professional eating challenge people (Randy Santel/Katina eats Kilos), and you could’ve been a contendah! Thor was in one of the videos I saw, and while you may not be as strong as Thor, you can definitely eat more LOL!

add: I noticed they make you wait 10 minutes so that you can’t just go and puke everything out afterwards -smart.

When I did karate, and needed to be able to pluck the wings off of flies, excedrin and coffee was magic.

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Downing “raw quail” in the walk in freezer got me. Great story sir!

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It was so bad. Salmonella-wrapped calcium toothpicks and the only point of comfort was “At least it’s protein.”

I certainly needed my scream therapy that day.

During our first lockdown when gyms shut I did 30 days of Murph.

I was really, really sore for a while after that but my mile run time and BW endurance definitely went through the roof

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