I retest wouldn’t be the worst idea, but you most likely won’t lose much in those 5 weeks. Some skill on the lifts will decline, which will mean a slight loss in weights moved, but your strength itself won’t go down in that time. If nothing else, you could do like Jim Wendler and use a training max rather than a true max to program Operator (Go with 85-90% of the numbers you got this week) or just feel out the first week of Operator and, if it feels too heavy, walk it back.
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Got it, that makes sense. I will just feel it out when its time.
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Kindle is useful. With the addition of a few extensions to a laptop, I can now go to the library and print out the Kindle books (which I’ve turned into a pdf files) It will be so much easier for me to read, I wont be hurting my eyes trying to look close at the ebook. I can actually use my glasses to read now.
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Are you going the OMS route? 22 weeks, if I remember correctly.
No, Im just sticking with operator+black, I just want to get stronger, not bigger. I will welcome any gains that I will make in operator black, I wont try to stay the same size, but Im not going to try to get huge puffy muscles.
This isn’t a thing you need to be concerned about. Even if you TRY to get them, you most likely won’t. That’s going to boil down to genetics and drugs. However, after your run of Operator, we’ll pick up Mass Protocol, and then can get rolling into an OMS schedule.
The point of mass gaining phases isn’t to improve bodybuilding, but to lay a foundation for strength. Effectively, a bigger muscle has the potential to be a stronger muscle, so we break training into phases where we build the muscles bigger, then we build the muscles stronger, and then those stronger muscles allow us to lift more weights when we go back to make the muscles bigger, which then makes the muscles bigger so that we can make them stronger in the strength gaining phase. Very simple periodization, which is what I dig about Tactical Barbell.
You’re pretty much already doing a version of this. You spent these last few years making the muscles bigger, laying the foundation for this strength phase. Before that, you’ll do base building, which is a General Physical Preparedness (GPP) phase, which is also pretty crucial to the process. The more in shape you are, the harder you can train and the better you can recover from the training, which means you can train harder more. It all feeds into itself.
Fool around with the settings on Kindle - back lighting and font may help. I have the app on my phone and at my age I can still read it okay with bigger font.
Fool around with the settings on Kindle
I will try doing that, but for me its not so much the screen itself as it is I just like having a physical book. That way I don’t have to worry about “power dying” or “turning it off”. I try to rely less on technology so I don’t become dependent on it.
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The point of mass gaining phases isn’t to improve bodybuilding, but to lay a foundation for strength
I don’t think i’ve ever heard this. But it makes so much intuitive sense. How many cycles of Operator should I do?
In the Mass Protocol, K. Black lays out a periodization scheme known as “OMS” which stands for “Operator-Mass-Specialization”. In that, he recommends a scheme of 3-6 weeks of Operator, 3-6 weeks of Mass, and 3-6 weeks of Specificity (those latter 2 protocols are contained in the Mass Protocol).
After you are done with Base Building, I’d do at least 12 weeks of Operator. That’s 2 full cycles, which is what K. Black recommends in the first Tactical Barbell book as far as testing out a program before moving on. At that point, you should have a pretty solid assessment of where you are training wise and, ideally, will have saved a dollar a week to be able to purchase the Mass Protocol book on kindle. At that point, there would be room to try out Mass Protocol, or stick with Operator if that’s still going well for you.
For me, I make the decision based off training/schedule priorities. I’ll have been on Operator for about 6 months now coming up, because it’s been strongman season for me, and the program fits my goals better than the Mass Protocol. However, once this competition is done at the end of Jul, I’m going to switch to the Mass Protocol because I won’t have any competitions coming up, and my birthday is in the fall, along with all the holidays, so I want to spend that time eating well and gaining weight. Once the New Year rolls around, I’ll get back to Operator to shed some excess fluff.
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The timing of this is great. Il be on the last week of base building the first week of school, which is a good transition to when il be in strength class, I will be able to do my workouts there. And when the 2 cycles of operator are done, that will be mid-November, so for the Mass Protocol I will have ample food and protein to eat.
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So….you ARE doing OMS. You just didn’t know it.
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I have an idea.
I’m thinking about making a YouTube channel to document my progress. Im keeping the videos private, though, as I don’t want social media attention to get to my head (I used to have a yt channel showcasing my physique during my lean bulk. I got up to 1k subscribers, but it was really getting to my head and distracting me from life, so I deleted it)
It will give me a visual representation of where I am at, so I can look back on it at a later date. It will also be a log for me to keep track of everything. Any suggestions on how often I should do it? I’m thinking daily, or weekly, or somewhere in between.
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Weekly video updates but, if something interesting happens in between or you think of something you’d want to share, shoot a short video to keep interest.
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Its getting to my least favorite part of every 2 weeks. We’re running low on good food, so now I’m forced to find every bit of healthy food with protein I can find. We have canned tuna, but I only eat 2 of those a week because of mercury. Lunch was
Chex mix- 0.75 cup
3 mini sausages
2 hard boiled eggs
1 oz cheese
4 tbsp peanut butter
1 tsp honey
3 small pretzel sticks (I only had 3 because I didn’t want to add too many calories to the peanut butter I drank by the (tiny) spoonful.
1067 calories, 73g fat, 61g carbs, 44g protein.
Its calories, and protein. thats all I can give that meal
Hope mom decides to cook dinner. I still need 50 g of protein and I don’t feel like drinking more peanut butter. We do have greek yogurt and cottage cheese at least, but I don’t like having them other than with breakfast really. Il do what I gotta do though.
It’s good you’re aware of this, but I wouldn’t sweat this as a concern for your teenage years. The accumulation of heavy metals will take quite a while to have any sort of significant build up, whereas this is just a limitation you’re experiencing now while you live at home. If you eat a lot of canned tuna these next 3-4 years and then stay off of it for the rest of your life, I can’t imagine you’ll experience any issues.
However, another great canned meat option is canned chicken breast. Canned beef is also out there and yummy as well, but the former tends to be less expensive.
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canned meat option is canned chicken breast
Oh yeah I know that. I love canned chicken. We just only buy 2 cans at a time for whatever reason. I keep asking mom to buy more and “stockpile”. I need more than just 2 cans of chicken per 2 weeks. I like the 8 oz cans best, 44 g protein.
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I was thinking about adding an extra barbell exercise to Operator, but I’m not sure if its good for me to do that. I was thinking Barbell curls/EZ bar curls. I want to be able to pick heavy things up like that, and be able to pick it up like that. I can deadlift a good amount (275lbs x1), but I can’t curl that much (I think I can do 65lbs x 10-12)
Assuming you’re doing chins/pull ups as part of your cluster, you’ll develop a strong arm flex ability.
Rather than adding an extra barbell exercise to the cluster, there’s an avenue to include assistance work. When you look at some of the general endurance programs from TBII, you’ll see that some of them are exercise circuits. A curl could be included as part of an exercise circuit for the sake of conditioning. I include curls in a circuit on my deadlift day, alongside DB rows, reverse hypers an hanging leg raises.
Curls will also find a home in the Mass Protocol. If you follow the Gray Man protocol, you can include them in your supplemental cluster, and when you do specialization, they can be included there.
So, from a periodization perspective, curls will get trained: just in the Mass phase vs the Operator phase. But if you’re absolutely itching to include them, it can be done.
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It probably would be better to wait off until doing the Mass phase. I will be doing pullups, so yeah Im sure that will help.
Also, 100th post on this 
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