Becoming an Athlete

 I just got back from a week in the Andes Mountains and I am content with how well I handled the elevation and all the hiking.  For a full week I was living and playing at elevations between 13,300 and 16,200 feet.  I lost 8 pounds in the process and never got sore.  The only downside is my sinuses.  The dry air caused some horrific sinus bleeding.  I haven't thought about how to prepare for that other than take saline rinses with me. I have found that the more I train for functionality, the more necessary supplemental vanity lifts become.  Devoting more time to cardio and high rep calisthenics has paid off in my ability to move fluidly through the trails, but my looks have suffered.  My shoulders, arms, and chest have lost considerable size while my legs, abs, and back have all gotten very lean. To stay Mountain Tough but Beach Ready, I've started the following training split: 1. Monday: Whole body Strength & Stamina 2. Tuesday: HIIT and Stea...

 I'm kind of big and kind of heavy. I weigh 235 and wear XXXL shirts ťailored to fit my size L waist.  Even so, after moths of consistent effort, I'm strong enough to incorporate calisthenics as my primary form of training volume. My current plan is paying off in the form of major leaps in endurance, tighter physique, and fat loss.  The schedule is: Mon - whole body Tue - arms Wed - whole body Thu - off Fri - whole body Sat - arms Sun - off My torso has always grown faster than my arms and I need to build proportion, so they get 2 dedicated sessions a week.  A typical whole body session runs like this: 1. Single leg calf raise: 3-100 method* 2. 10 min EMOM: Big power movement like deadline, or snatch grip high pull, or clean&press.  Start at 10x3 and stick with the same weight till you can perform 10x6.  Rotate between 5-6 movements every session. 3. Conditioning circuit 1: 5 rounds of   A. Pushup progression   B. Pick a single leg squat patte...

 That's my mantra for 2023. I've reached a new chapter in life.  I'm married.  My kids are grown and living their own lives.  My career is meaningful but not consuming me 24 hours a day.  I have time to pursue excellence. My pursuit of excellence has led me to activities I never enjoyed before.  I never enjoyed low intensity cardio.  I never enjoyed treadmills.  I never enjoyed group workouts / cardio classes. I never wanted a TV in my garage gym. All of those things are part of my daily routine now. I am lifting 6sixdays a week (Legs, Push, Pull, Legs, Push, Pull). I am doing 30 minute group workouts from Beachbody On Demand six days a week (Pilates, bootcamp, yoga). I am doing 30 minutes of steady state treadmill walking every night. None of this alone is particularly interesting.  What is interesting to me is that by lowering my intensity I am able to get in 3 exercise sessions six days a week and still have time for big outdoor adventures...

The pursuit of strength and health have taught me that consistent and sustainable efforts beat inconsistent heroic efforts every time.  The last 2 years especially have been a game of progressing by inches instead of miles, but I have covered many miles none the less. It has taken me 18 months to fully recover from donating a kidney, concurrently with 13 months to recover from major knee surgery.  I have found the following to be the safest and most consistent way to build durability, strength, work capacity, and mobility. Principles of Optimal Progress Durability: You need repeated exposure to a specific load to build up your connective tissue.  Your tendons, ligaments, and cartilage strength more slowly than your muscles Work on stabilization: targeted core exercises help some. Controlling the rep speed and movement quality helps most Strength: Double progression is all you need to avoid plateauing for many years.  My favorite approach is Volume Accumulation. ...

My fitness methods have become pretty simplified in principle, but varied in execution. Building Strength: Use the 5-3-1 Method.  It always works Build Mass: The Volume Accumulation.  Use timed sets (2 minutes is a good place to start) to take a given weight from 5 sets of 5 reps and grind till you can do to 5 sets of 10 reps.  Add more weight and repeat.  This could as easily be 4x8 to 4x15.  It doesn't matter.  What matters is doing more reps in a given timed set with a given weight. Conditioning: It's hard to mess up conditioning.  When it comes to elevating heart rate, burning more fuel, and becoming a leaner more energy efficient athlete, variety of movement is a good thing.  The more static your exercise selection or work/rest ratios, the faster you'll make neural adaptations. That said, one of the work/rest frameworks I use frequently is the boxer's bout.  Start with 4 rounds of 3min work and 1 min rest.  During the 3 minute work ...

 2020 was such a tough year for everyone.  I don't need to rehash the global level stuff.  Compounding it on a micro-level, I had to get through two major surgeries.  The first was kidney donation.  That was a tough one.  I've never been so fatigued in my life.  I tried getting back to exercise after a few weeks but could only sustain maybe 2 minutes of effort. It was humbling.  Then in October I had 60% of the meniscus in my right knee removed.  This has proven to be even more limiting than losing a kidney. But after shifting my focus to movement quality, mobility, and of course rehab, I'm back to normal energy levels and near normal ranges of motion in my right leg. One realization is that as I get stronger, I'm able to increase my mobility, so I've started training "heavy" again.  Keep in mind heavy is a relative term. I am using timed sets in a circuit to create a nice 1-2 punch of strength and conditioning.  Each set is 90 seco...

An alternate title could be: Reasons To Go Retro With HIT I donated a kidney to a very close friend of mine on 5/26/2020.  It was supposed to be in March, but COVID-19 pandemic exploded, and everyone's plans were derailed.  I was genuinely afraid my friend would die while we waited for the hospital to give us the green light for surgery.  It was scary enough giving up an organ for a friend, but even scarier to be in a hospital with no visitors allowed because of COVID.  I was quarantined in my room for 2 days.  She was there, totally alone, for 12 days.  We are nearly 2 months since our surgery and both recovering well.  Her health is better than it has ever been since I've known her.  We were part of a genuine miracle. After a few weeks of doing nothing, and sleeping constantly, I finally tried to get back to normal life.  I radically overestimated my ability to sustain physical effort.  I thought I could just lower the weights and ...

Man, so much has happened since I last posted. COVID pandemic was a huge one.  I made changes to keep systemic fatigue low so I could train almost every day.  Sometimes I could go 8 days with no rest days.  Sometimes only 3 days. The key for me has been to move to push/pull splits, and to manage fatigue with ladders.  Here is a simple framework you can follow. Add rest days between sessions whenever you need it. Day 1: Push 1 Compound circuit a. Overhead press: 5 x 5 b. Kettlebell swing: 5 x 10 Isolation circuit: Ladders a. Incline lateral raise: 3 x 3-5-7 b. Kettlebell swing: 3 x 5-10-15 Day 2: Pull 1 Compound circuit a. Ring row: 5 x 5 b. 1-arm swing: 5 x 5+5 Isolation circuit: Ladders a. Supinating dumbbell curl: 3 x 3-5-7 b. Kettlebell swing: 3 x 5-10-15 Day 3: Push 2 Compound circuit a. Pushups: 5 x 15 b. Kettlebell swing: 5 x 10 Isolation circuit: Ladders a. Skull crushers: 3 x 3-5-7 b. Kettlebell swing: 3 x 5-10-15 Day 4...

My goal in training has always been to develop the physical qualities necessary to be an agile bodyweight athlete (rock climbing, ninja warrior stuff), with explosiveness (Highland Games), and stamina (MMA, boxing), with enough muscle to look like a badass (marginal bodybuilder). I have finally distilled it all down to the principles that make most sense to me, and are yielding consistent results. I'm going to lay out my principles as succinctly as I can, and hopefully in a logical order. 1. Follow the Old-school Split: I was a whole-body training zealot for years, till my deadlift got to 500+ lbs and my squat to 475.  Once I started getting heavy in those lifts and my snatches and cleans, my lower back just couldn't handle the constant exposure to training stimulus.  Also, my targeted muscles needed more time to recover.  Paul Carter recently wrote an article on why Push, Pull, Legs is the best split.  I use it.  It works. At the moment I'm cycling throug...

I rolled my ankle on an easy trail run Saturday morning.  It was pretty bad.  Lots of discoloration in my foot from the internal bleeding, lots of swelling, etc. etc. But like I posted on instagram, every injury is a two-fold opportunity to grow.  First and foremost, is discerning the lesson.  Every setback or injury affords me the opportunity to pause, assess myself, my motives, and discover a lesson.  Every lesson is different, so each one is an experience to fully embrace. Secondarily, it's an opportunity to keep my ego in check and rehab my way to a level of structural balance and strength that is greater than before the injury.  It exposes the weaknesses I've been ignoring and forces me to address it with precision and consistency. So for now, my plans of trail running, high frequency squatting or deadlifting, and lots of plyos will be shelved. I'm coming back to that plan in the spring with determination!!!!! For now, I'm doing what I call "D-...

I've trained so many times this week.  But the experiment led to some obvious conclusions after just one week. I can't train legs every single day, even when alternating from quad-dominant movements to hams/hips-dominant movements.  Every other day will be the max. Basic rowing is adequate for developing muscle, but it isn't enough to develop power and athleticism. I'm going to add snatch grip high pulls from blocks to every Pull day. The lack of eccentric loading should make recovery a non-issue. Dips are absolutely tanking my ability to press with any real load, but watching the reps go up during my 3 minute AMRAP sets is crazy motivating. 3 minute AMRAP sets are the absolute sickest way to do your accessory work.  45 reps of dips, or 21 or chinups, or 110 reps of alternating jump lunges in 3 minutes each builds stamina, conditioning, vasularity, and size. I'm gonna stick with these!!!!!

About 3-4 weeks ago I really tweaked my right trap.  I deadlifted what I'm calling my 40's PR: 485 x 1. A few days later, my trap started hurting was down into my lat and even down to my elbow.  It was incredibly painful but I worked around it. Now that I'm lifting like normal again, my pulling strength feels hampered by neural inhibition more than muscular pain.  To overcome this as quickly as possible, I'm moving to a high frequency program. For this month, I'm following a push / pull split, and will train 6 days per week. Every muscle group will be trained three times per week. Monday: push-1 Tuesday: pull-1 Wednesday: push-2 Thursday: pull-2 Friday: push-3 Saturday: pull-3 Volume within each session will be fairly low, but volume across a single week will be higher than a normal bodybuilding split.  Each of the three sessions have a bit of variety to ensure week to week progress. I'll write up a summary at the end of week 1 to see how it's goin...

I feels amazing to see myself getting bigger muscles, losing fat, and feeling my mobility improve and my stamina increase all at the same time. My lower back was starting to hit a wall from all the clean and snatch complexes, so now I'm starting my workouts with bodyweight circuits. I'm blowing through these and plan to do a few weeks of them while increasing reps per circuit, then sprinkling in a couple complexes each week. Yesterday I was able to deadlift 435 for 5 reps.  2 weeks ago I BARELY hit 3 reps with that weight. Today is the first time in my life I was able to curl 100 pounds as a work set. I worked up to 100 x 10 on ez-bar curl.  I'm so pleased with the steady inches of progress. God willing, there is no end in sight.  I just need to keep my ego in check and focus on consistent diet and sleep. Happy Friday!!!!

Certain authors have a way of presenting an idea that is simple, logical, and compelling to the point of getting me to examine my previous methods as well as my motives.  Paul Carter is one such author and trainer. The major concept I've embraced from him is chasing rep PRs before Weight PRs. I'm almost 42 and realize I'll never compete in a powerlifting competition, so chasing 1 rep maxes has very little relevance to my goals. Its high risk and low reward. Rather than trying to add more weight every week, I'll stick with a specific weight and just grind out more reps every week. The two methods I am using at the moment: Volume Accumulation programming: I'm not sure if there is a better name for it, but that's what I call it.  I can run this for 12 weeks with amazing results before I have to switch. I pick a weight I can manage for 10x5. Each week, I add 1 rep per set for a total of 10 extra reps.  By the end of 6 weeks, I've gone from 50 total to 100...

I am a tinkerer by nature.  I've built a career of consistently improving things, optimizing results for minimal effort. I have many shortcomings and weaknesses, but one of my strengths is to filter out all the distractions from a situation and zero in on the critical few that matter. I've realized the following limitations in myself: I'm too old to keep chasing weekly increases in poundages, so 5-3-1 isn't optimal for me I need LOTS of volume to elicit the metabolic stress necessary for my goals, so 5-3-1 isn't optimal for me When I follow typical periodization blocks, I lose the other qualities far too fast I've solved this by: Following a Push / Pull split that ensure I'm hitting everything twice a week. Always starting with a variety of barbell complexes, focused on Snatch or Clean.  The variety means I have to master movement before I can increase load. The nature of complexes adds significant metabolic stress with minimal time, and leav...

I've been using barbell complexes regularly and systematically for the last month to make steady and consistent progress in my performance with Clean & Jerk, and Snatch. I've read a lot of articles that simply give you a menu of complexes and combos to choose from to make a killer finisher. It doesn't take a genius to figure string together random combinations of barbell movements performed for 5-8 reps each.  Any combination will leave you sucking wind and sweating buckets.  This random approach to exercise selection, rep ranges, and load progression won't make you any better and will likely lead to plateaus or possibly injury. So what's the difference between a combo and a complex? Coach Dan John summarizes a Complex best: A complex is a series of lifts back to back where you finish the reps of one lift before moving on to the next lift. The barbell only leaves your hand or touches the floor after all of the lifts are completed. Although you can do them...

Man, this current phase is just incredible.  We had to build up our work capacity to reach this level, but is yielding fantastic and balanced results.  Functional mass, increases in strength, work capacity, and endurance across several energy systems. The basic framework is: Train Mon, Wed, Fri Whole Body Circuit: Same circuit every session - legs, upper push, upper pull Power Development: using a variety of combination lifts and complexes build on Clean variants or Snatch variants. Alternate every session between Snatch-focus and Clean-focus Hypertrophy: Focus on one or two body parts and smash with volume and high time under tension Whole Body Circuit: weeks 1 - 4 Mon, Wed, Fri: 3 circuits of a. Squat: wk1,2 - 20 reps; wk3,4 - 15 reps b. T-bar row: wk1,2 - 15 reps; wk3,4 - 12 reps c. Pushup:  wk1,2 - 15 reps; wk3,4 - 20 reps Power Development: weeks 1 - 4 Monday: medium load complexes; e.g. 3 x 3-3-3-3 (4-movement complex) Wednesday: light l...

Crossfit is an amazing marketing engine. I love and hate it.  When I saw a barbell advertised as a "WOD bar", I had enough.  I can't justify spending $175 per month to work hard when most gyms either: have poor programming that won't lead to consistent improvement outsource their programming to places you could go directly (Invictus, MisFit, Mayhem, etc.) Have highly enthusiastic coaches with no understanding of long-term planning at all. So here I am training with my buddy making consistent, injury free progress, looking better at 41 than I did at 31. What we're doing now could arguably called CrossBuilding.  Like that?  Yet another CrossFit mashup to differentiate for no real reason. I REALLY like the Cross Lifting stuff coming out of Russia. Dimitri Klokov and Mikhail Koklyaev are just mind boggling.  They know more than I'll ever know about strength training, programming, and fitness.  Its astounding. So what I'm doing is nothing as sop...

I'm as lean as I've ever been, and on track to get to a new peak leanness.  I'm running so freaking much, and my calves and shins are responding wonderfully.  Normally I get shin splints and knee pains, but my gradual mileage buildup has paid off. I'm 204lbs and at a lean 32" waist.  My abs are awesome, by my mediocre standards.  The only problem is I've had to cut back the lifting volume and my shoulders are looking a little small. Here's what is working: Monday AM: Chest & Back Monday PM: Distance run Tuesday AM: High Intensity Intervals Tuesday PM: Speed work (AKA Sprint buildups) Wednesday AM: Legs Wednesday PM: Recovery run Thursday AM: High Intensity Intervals Thursday PM: Speed work Friday AM: Shoulders & Arms Friday PM: Recovery run Saturday: Challenge day Sunday: Off

Now that I'm ramping up my run mileage for race season, I have to lift about half as often as I was lifting in previous blocks. All previous training blocks have been: Mon: Chest & Back (power/strength) Tues: Shoulders & Arms (strength) Wed: Legs: (power/strength) Thu: Chest & back (hypertrophy) Fri: Shoulders & Arms For Phase 2, which is Race prep, I've moved to a lower frequency lifting schedule so I can keep up the increased running / conditioning in the evenings. Phase 2 Morning Lifting Schedule: Monday: Chest & Back (strength/hypertrophy) Tuesday: Cardio Wednesday: Legs (strength/hypertrophy) Thursday: Cardio Friday: Arms (strength/hypertrophy) Saturday: Race Day or Challenge Day Phase 2 Evening Conditioning Schedule: Monday: Speed warmup, distance running Tuesday: Speed warmup, sprints, boxing Wednesday: Speed warmup, sprints, boxing Thursday: Speed warmup, distance running Friday: Speed warmup, recovery run Challeng...