Wanna Lift Big Weight? Then Fill Your Heart With Hate!

It seems like I have been telling my kid this so much lately. That's right, I'm going for the father of the year award. I know, that sounds like a seriously negative attitude, but this mantra has served me well for years. When I was a kid I remember playing a game with a guy that I absolutely detested and I smoked him; up and down and sideways. I probably shouldn't have won, but the hate that I had made me focus and really knuckle down because, “I would not let this guy beat me, no matter what”. It really works...that kind of focus can make you almost unstoppable.

This mindset is similar to what you've probably read in books about successful people. They take criticism and negativity and use it it fuel their success. So my advice to my son is, not to get upset and retaliate when people screw with you. Just use that negativity to fuel your accomplishments, because your success is the best retaliation.

Pricks at school? Screw them! Knuckle down and ace every test (feel free to rub it in).
Jerks at work? Screw them! Knuckle down and be the top salesman (or whatever you do).
Ass holes at the gym? Screw them! Knuckle down and put up a stupid big squat.

 "Because sometimes a big lift really means FU"

Going to Jail

I was thinking about a close friend today. Sorry to write about you man, but at least I was thinking about you…hope all is well with the family. Anyway, he spent some time in jail and I was thinking about it and how I’d prepare for such a situation. Especially here in the Philippines where they just toss you in and sort it out later…perhaps years later.

I’ve had other friends that ended up in jail over the years but for them it was different because they were not able to make bail and went in from day one. This friend was a little different because he made bail and ended up with about 3 months to prepare. Before you get on your high horse and start saying it’ll never happen to you, just think about that for a second. We’ve all made mistakes over the years, but really, for the most part we just got lucky. Remember Tequila Sunrise? “we were both sharing a joint on the beach that day…Carlos went to jail and I went home”. Or something like that. The point is, we’ve all done dumb shit in our lives, and just got away with it.

Anyway, back to my friend. I think he was smart in the way he went about it. He was a state wrestling champ and he was already used to scrapping on the street/bars…whatever…check. He just ran some heavy steroid cycles, double downed on his training and walked through the gate sweating testosterone and strength. FYI: I've never done streoids and I'm not say'n it's a good idea, but I probably would in this situation, that's all.

Any rational person would do the same thing in my opinion; you’d program your shit to maximize your time and peak right before you go in. That’s a given…but what would you train? I think it’s easier to say what you wouldn’t do. You would not waste energy on anything that did not make you crazy strong and you sure as hell wouldn’t worry about your abs.

Yeah you can use the can, but you have to pee sitting down...abs boy.

If it were me, all of my training would be barbell and bodyweight based. Fuck training for appearance, fuck high endurance…I want to be all go, now! Really…have you ever been in a street fight that lasted more than a minute or two in your life? Heavy squats, heavy pushing and heavy pulling; supplemented with high rep chins, pushups, handstand presses, jumps and burpees. I’d eat like a horse to fuel my training and let the chips fall wherever. Fuck long runs in the park, fuck leg extensions, cable cross overs, preacher curls and fad diets…just give me a barbell, a steak and a huge plate of rice. The end result might not look “pretty”, but you’d be functional as hell (and) you’d be in better shape than 99.9% of the people walking the planet.

So why am I writing this? I’m really just trying to make a point, but if you are reading this because you are actually facing a prison term, just e-mail me and we can go over some programming.

Back to my point…My aforementioned friend told me once that he felt sorry for a coworker, because he was small and weak. Now this guy was a top producer in our industry and making money hand over fist, but my friend made a good point; that’s great, but how can this guy protect his family? Really, that’s our main function as men…yeah we earn money to put food on the table and so on, but it really boils down to protecting our loved ones. You can buy a gun for protection I guess, but what are you going to do when you don’t have it with you? You should be prepared for the worst case scenario in my opinion.

So when you think about your training, ask yourself this question. What if I was going to jail in 3 months, 6 months, whatever? You’ll be in one of the most inhospitable environments on earth…how would you train to survive…to dominate? That’s how you should be training most of the time in my opinion. Training to be a fucking tank!

 "Be a man...guns are for pussies"

Carb Backloading and Training Update

Screw Carb Backloading, it sucks balls and I want to stab it in the eye with a fork! I gave it a run and everything was great: I was pigging out every night, I was dropping fat, my energy was up and I was having some solid gym sessions. But man...as soon as school started up, it began to look like an intermittent fasting protocol and I started to feel like shit.

"grab a fork and make the first attack...lights out"

I really am happy with the backloading system, but it just wasn't working out for ME due to MY schedule and MY unwillingness to spend the extra time cooking and packing food. I live in a remote part of the Philippines and can't just pick up a tub of protein from GNC at the mall after work, so it's a lot of cooking and dining out for me. Sometimes you just need to make adjustments on the fly. So at this point, I'm just doing my no diet-diet. It's pretty simple; just eat like a normal human and do your best to make wise decisions.

To compensate for that added stress of school, I gutted my whole program after my last cycle. Man...that last cycle and plowing thru all of those heavy doubles during exams really, really sucked ass. I was so happy when I finally wrapped up the last session. Now I'm back to my “go to” program. I scaled down my assistance work to the “bare bones” essential movements and nothing more. I took maxes for my assistance lifts and then cut the start weight to 50%, and programmed them for increases. I also cut my training maxes pretty deep (20%).

My TITANIC ego is taking a major beating right now with all of the weight cuts, but I know I'm being smart about it and it'll pay off down the road. Everything feels light and easy (and) I know that I'll be able to roll past the new year strong without stalling. Side note: isn't it funny how the new year usually represent a goal line for people like “us” (and) a starting line for everyone else?

Yeah, that's about the right size.

School in the Philippines: Culturally Biased Tests (weird stuff)

I'm pursuing a 2^nd degree here in the Philippines and this semester I was required to retake Sociology for some reason...I guess because the course name was a little different. I took “Intro to Sociology” back in the day and the required class for my degree here is called “General Sociology with Family”. It's pretty much “same shit/same smell” in my opinion, but they let me slide on several other classes, so I just bit the bullet and rolled with it. For me it's really a sociology/anthropology class and has some value because I'm re-learning the same thing from a different perspective.

Furious Styles knew about that culturally biased testing shit back in the day!

So we had prelims this week and I did okay, but the Sociology test was actually the most difficult; not because the material was complex, but because the questions were presented from a completely different viewpoint. A whole bunch of shit was weird to me, but I'm going to throw out this example.

Anomic and Egoistic suicide: Now the simple definitions are as follows:

Anomic Suicide: Something happens in you life where you end up with a shitload of freedom and you basically don't know how to act, because the rules all relax over night. The example in the book is a dude that hits the lottery and can just do what he wants.

Egoistic suicide: You feel cut off, alone, isolated and detached from the community,  so you kill yourself.

The question on the test was something like this: (majorly paraphrasing)....Your parents kick the bucket and you're all alone to make your own way in the world, so you off yourself. What kind of suicide is this according to Durkheim?

I'm thinking...”Shit..if Mom and Dad kicked the bucket I'd feel alone and disconnected...it's obviously egoistical, right?

Not so fast Skippy/ Rickey!

RICKEY!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is a matching test and Egoistic suicide isn't and option...and Anomic Suicide is the only match in the category, so I verified with the teacher that my test paper was correct. So...yep...strange to me or not, that's how they roll here. Loss of parents would represent sudden freedom, as opposed to feelings of isolation because they are gone. Makes sense?

"They punched the clock on ol' Rick!"

Lazy Guy Programming

I'm probably the laziest mother fucker on the planet when it comes to programming. I use some common sense when I plug in assistance work, but I also REALLY try to minimize plate loading and moving around in the gym when I write my programming. I'm more of a camper guy...I like to unpack my shit, plant my ass in one place and go to work.

Just a leftover photo of Elisabeth Shue that never made it from my CPU to a previous post. My gift to you...lord have mercy....

I was at Pizza Hut yesterday pounding my post workout meal, and thinking about my session and thought...Damn...I didn't leave the rack for an hour and a half and still probably made 10X the progress of everyone else in the gym. To the untrained eye, I just mindlessly squatted for an hour or so. But in reality, I did my work sets and 2 assistance movements: I worked up to a heavy double (maximal strength work...check!), did 4X3 pause squats (addressed my weak spot out of the hole with some dynamic type work...check!), and did 5x10 burn outs at 50% (hypertrophy work to increase my strength ceiling and some extra grove work...check!).

Now I'm 30 minutes out of the gym and everything's pretty fried: quads, hams, glutes, abs, lower back, upper back, and erectors. I'm ravenously hungry and systemically trashed...so what the fuck else do I need to do? I didn't dick about moving all around the gym and I didn't have to load any plates after my top double, because after that I just stripped weight. Now that's what I call training economy.

I do the same crap every session whenever possible. Deadlift day for example; pull, stiff legs, and shrugs. It amounts to the same thing: I do my heavy pulling from the floor, strip it down for stiff legs, then use about the same weight for high rep shrugs. I hit the main movement, hit the assistance I think drives my deadlift, and never leave the platform. Now that's lazy man thinking right there!

FYI: here's my current schedule:

Day 1: Squats, pause squats, high rep squats
Day 2: Chins, abs (at home)
Day 3: Deads, SLD, shrugs
Day 4: Bench, press, row

That small home session floats with the bench session depending on my schedule and when I'm in town. I'm not even close to dead set on a schedule. I hit it when I can, but it usually works out to be every other day or so, and I try to squeeze in lighter daily conditioning. Conditioning everyday? Yeah...why not, a few sets of burpees or skips aren't going to infringing on recovery. Just gotta be smart and go easy.

"Go get big, strong and lazy"

Carb Backloading

I have been chasing some squat and deadlift numbers in the gym and eating with reckless abandon for the last 6 months because I know the weight gain will help me hit my numbers. I don’t have a scale and the gym scale is broken, so I’m just guessing here: I’m probably running at about 230-240lbs. It’s quite a bit lower than you’d expect from a 6 month unlimited bulk, but the local Filipino diet really isn’t conducive to gaining and holding weight.

The plan was to gain as much weight as possible for six months and then start cleaning up my diet to “grow into” that weight. Basic re-composition; put on a little more muscle and lose a bit of fat and try to keep the bodyweight about the same. Yes I know that you can’t put on totally lean weight because some fat will accompany it, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. You can lean out and maintain weight. I’ve done it plenty of times.

By the end of May (6 month mark) I was feeling like total crap and happy to be done. I didn’t really let myself go completely, but my body fat was getting up there. Every lifter with a 2 pack is convinced that they are at 15% body fat but I’m not that guy. I’m not pulling out the calipers, but I’d say I’m easily 20%+.

So here I was just poking around on line trying to get some diet structuring ideas beyond the basic “just eat cleaner” thing (which still works by the way). Several top powerlifters that I respect are running Kiefer’s Carb Backloading protocol with good results in both fat loss and strength, so I looked into it. http://www.dangerouslyhardcore.com/

What I found was a diet structure that mirrored one that I ran about 12 years ago.  I refer to that time of my life as “the bait and switch” because that’s when I met my wife and I was lean as fuck when we met and then I blew up about a year later.

At the time I was a typical meat head bachelor and besides work, my life revolved around training and paddling. I worked up to it, but by the end of the season my training looked like this:

Monday:              Lunch- Lift           Afternoon-Paddle Practice

Tuesday:              Lunch- Run          Afternoon- Lift

Wednesday:        Lunch- Off           Afternoon- Paddle Practice

Thursday:             Lunch- Run         Afternoon- Lift

Friday:                   Lunch- Lift          Afternoon- Paddle Practice

Saturday:              Off

Sunday:                 Race

This kind of paddling

Despite my steady diet of frozen pizza, frozen burritos and ice-cream sandwiches, at the end of the season, I was super lean with a 32” waist at about 190lbs. I felt strong every day and still kicked ass in practice. I always figured that I managed to out train my diet back then, but since then I have replicated that training volume during triathlon seasons but never managed to get that lean again. Up until now, I kind of figured it had more to do with father time.

Usually 2-3 of these

and a box of these

So when I started researching carb backloading it hit me. The thing that was different about that paddling season was that I was carb backloading and maybe I didn’t lean out like that in spite of my diet…but because of my diet. At that time I was running on protein shakes during the day up until my 2^nd training session or practice, and then I’d go home and pound pizza and ice-cream sandwiches before crashing out.  I was carb backloading by accident and didn’t know it. Hell, the system wasn’t even invented yet.

First off, let me issue a disclaimer here…I did not buy and read the Carb Backloading book, instead I just read, listened to, and watched everything I could find online and oddly enough, there really isn’t that much information out there. If you want the entire fine tuning details you’ll need to buy the book, but Kiefer has freely given enough information to run his system in broad strokes.  Here’s the gist of it as I understand it:

The cornerstone of the system is the manipulation of your insulin levels. Insulin affects everything, but I’m only going to discuss fat and muscle cells here. Your body is most sensitive to insulin in the morning and it tapers off throughout the day. Insulin is an anabolic hormone for both fat and muscle, so the idea is to use it to drive nutrients (grow) muscle and minimize fat growth. Since insulin will grow both muscle and fat cells, you want to keep it low throughout the day to minimize growth in general.

What Kiefer recommends is to skip breakfast (I’ll touch on this later), eat low carb up until training at 3-6 p.m., and then pound carbs until bedtime. The reason for this is because insulin sensitivity bottoms out at this time of day and the heavy training “turns on” your muscle’s sensitivity to insulin. The heavy training does not increase fat cell insulin sensitivity, so you’ll be eating all of your carbs when your muscles can easily soak them up (due to training) and your fat cells are disadvantaged (due to the time of day). That’s it in a nutshell. The caveat here is that it’s a diet for hard training individuals and it wouldn’t be nearly as effective for “regular folks”.  

As for Kiefer’s recommendation to skip breakfast, it’s because of the catabolic hormone cortisol. Apparently, cortisol levels peak in the morning along with insulin sensitivity. Cortisol is a catabolic hormone which means that it breaks shit down, which is bad for muscle. According to Kiefer, in the absence of insulin, cortisol prefers to attack the fat cells. So his recommendation is to leave well enough alone, skip breakfast and let the cortisol go to work on the fat stores. I’m majorly paraphrasing of course.

I’m almost 3 weeks in and feeling pretty good. As I said, I don’t have access to a scale so I took body measurements at the waist, chest, thigh and arms. I carry most of my fat in my gut and chest and my arms and legs tend to stay pretty lean, so I figure that this is probably the best way to track progress. As of today I’ve dropped 1.5” on my waist, dropped 1” on my chest and my arms and legs are unchanged. So far so good and it looks like I’m slowly dropping fat and still maintaining my lean mass. It’s not a drastic improvement, but that’s not what I’m after. I initially planned to give Backloading a 3 month run, but I really think I might take it for a 6 month ride now. It’s an easy diet to follow consistently and over time, all of those inches will add up to a decent change. I’m pleased so far and it sure as hell beats out “eating cleaner”.

 

 "Slow and steady"

Flexible Programming: Have a Backup Plan

I consider flexibility to be one of the most important components of a good program. I have heard so many people say that they are not motivated to train and although I really don’t understand that mindset, I can tell you that not having a backup plan is probably a big factor driving that statement. People tend to get off track on rigid programs because it’s all or nothing. My recommendation is to have a backup plan for every part of your program to include both scheduling and the actual training sessions. Figure out what you WANT to do and also what you NEED to do and you’ll have a program with a good backup plan.

Sometimes this is good enough

 I think of it as plan A, plan B, and plan C: plan A is the bare minimum to achieve my goal, plan B is extra work to support that goal, and plan C is reserved for my crazy/stupid side. Most people write out their programming with the best intentions and they leave no stone unturned. They load up their schedule with lots of lifting and then they fill in every nook and cranny with supplemental and conditioning work. When in reality just a few things will get the job done and keep the progress coming. I have no problem with ambitious programming as long as you understand the bare minimum requirements to make progress and are willing to drill everything down when you need to.

The first thing to consider when writing your program is when you will train. Most folks will specify certain days, MWF for example. This might be necessary based on your life schedule, but I think approaching it more like “I’ll train every 2-3 days” makes more sense if you can swing it. Maybe you’ll hit it every other day like clockwork and blaze through a cycle in 4 weeks. On the other hand, if everything goes to crap, what’s the worst thing that will happen? Maybe you’ll end up stretching that cycle out for another week or two. You’re a lifer and you’ll be lifting for 30-40 more years, is it really going to make a difference?  No it won’t…but that built in flexibility will go a long way to keeping you on track.

I also recommend having a full plan on training days, while being prepared to call an audible. This is not a license to be a pussy, but the minimum goal should be to just get in and do your core movement’s working sets. You can have all kinds of crap lined up; extra singles, multiple back off sets, 2-3 assistance movements, post training conditioning, etc. But if all you can manage on this day are 3-5 heavy squat sets, just do that and leave, happy that you got your main work in and that you moved forward. Plus, there is something kind of primal and barbaric about a guy that just rolls in to the gym, squats heavy and walks out. If I see a guy do that, I’m not thinking anything negative at all, just “that guy has his shit together”.

Here’s a sample squat session so you’ll see what I’m talking about:

Plan A:

Squat – (Whatever I have programmed) right now it would be a warm up then my work sets (6 sets of 2)

If I get to the gym and feel like crap or have limited time, I’ll do this & bail and be totally cool with it. This is the bare minimum work that I need to make progress and it earns me the right to move on to the next session.

Plan B:

Squat – Work sets (6 sets of 2)

Squat – Back off sets (1^st work set weight X3X10)

Good mornings – 5x10

Weighted abdominal work: 5 sets

This represents a full session and an average day. There is nothing special going on here…just getting the work in to support my squat.

Plan C:

Plan C is reserved for just getting stupid in the gym and tends to result in a massive training hangover. So it’s plan B, plus whatever else I decide to do: maxing out, tons of back off sets, repping to failure, running around the gym getting a ridiculous pump, stuff like that. Plan C is good old fashioned poor judgment and tons of fun.

I really think that building flexibility into your program is super important. Having a backup plan will keep you motivated to plug away and move forward even in the shittiest of conditions. Sometimes things can get rigid, a peaking cycle for example…there’s really not much that you can do about it so just suck it up and go to work for a couple of months. For your meat and potatoes training though, I strongly recommend that you build as much flexibility into it as you can.

 "Just don’t use it as an excuse to be a pussy"