239 yesterday, and 237 this morning. It’s a long carb-less and low-calorie weekend, so I’m not surprised I dropped 2 lb. in 24 hours… it’s not all tissue, it’s simple depletion. I was craving HARD yesterday… but you just suck it up and go about your business. I expect by next Sunday’s weigh-in I’ll be 237, maybe 236. Whatever the number, so long as it’s a downward trend. 🙂
Otherwise, today was what it was. It’s tough coming in so depleted — just no nothing. Still, the AMRAP set went up, a few more dips. All in all, it felt good. Again, I don’t really expect much progress on this front, as this front is geared towards supporting the fat-loss efforts, which seem to be trending properly. So, all in all, cannot complain.
An unconventional favorite. Yeah there are a lot of songs by Type O that I like. But “Nettie” is such a great song, especially when you consider Peter’s tumultuous life and his mother’s undying support for him through it all.
Yesterday I went deer hunting with Youngest. He got to learn why it’s “hunting” not “bagging” because we came home with nothing.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. We came home with a bunch of great experiences and memories.
It wasn’t until maybe a year ago that Youngest expressed any interest in hunting. But since he did, I’ve been trying to make it happen. Finally, thanks to the generosity of a friend, I had an opportunity to take him out. Now, I’m doing the actual hunting and work here as Youngest doesn’t feel ready to do anything other than observe. But he wants to see what it’s all about.
We set off at an early hour. I swear I’ve never seen this kid so happy to wake up, not to mention wake up at 3:30 am! Obviously excited, and we set off. Over the hour drive there was much talking, asking and answering of questions, and getting ready for things. We get there, we set up the blind, and then we sit and wait.
I made it clear that there are no guarantees. That we could sit and wait and be bored out of our skulls, and have nothing to bring home. So he was prepared for that. Still, I really wanted to be able to bag a doe, as it was his first time out; it’d just help him see a lot of it all.
Alas, we saw almost nothing. We saw 3 does when we parked the truck, and we saw a very immature buck. That’s all we saw in our hours sitting out there. We even got tired of sitting and went on a stalk hunt for a while. Alas, nothing. It was very quiet.
But in that is where we were able to experience some neat things.
I told him that it is a little boring, but that’s ok. Take in what’s around you. There will be sounds, there will be things to see. Watching the sun come up itself is really cool. You never know what you might experience.
We saw movement behind some trees and thought “maybe a deer?” No… it wound up being a feral (house)cat. It was rather cute, and actually spotted us and stalked us for a while. 🙂
We got to see a hawk. Numerous other birds. This one squirrel had no idea about us and was hopping straight at us — that was mighty cute.
But the coolest thing?
We heard a woodpecker. We found him atop a telephone/power pole that was maybe 50-60 yards from us. We thought he was rather large, but didn’t think much of it. We watch him for a long time.
Then he took flight.
GEEZ! He was huge! I mean, for a woodpecker. Imagine a really large crow. He was a big dude! We kept watching him when he landed on another tree, then eventually lost track of him. But it was quite cool. We didn’t realize how cool until we got home.
Here’s a video of one, which is a pretty good shot of what they look AND sound like:
What made this extraordinary is they are an East Texas bird. To find them where we were is a rare occurrence!
Frankly, that made our day! 🙂 We’ve spent more time talking and learning about the woodpecker than anything else.
And you see, that’s really what it was all about.
It’s about having time together, building memories, and doing fun things. Heck, the fact we didn’t take a deer? Just means we have to go out again — gee, darn the luck! Which means another opportunity have time together, build more memories, and do more fun things.
So you see, we could focus on what we don’t have – a deer in the freezer. But life is so much better because we focus on what we do have. 🙂
Carbs are wonderful things — if you can eat them. 😉
Yesterday was a no-carb day, and with the recent revision to the diet plan the carbs were reduced again. I think I started the day with a pretty empty tank, because the Pressing was a struggle. Oye. But all good, as it does appear the weight is going down again (240 this morning).
As stated before, I’m adding more volume and work to my gym sessions: a little more exercises, a little more sets, a little more reps, a little less rest time (trying to hold stricter to 60 seconds between things). All in an effort to stimulate muscle growth (may not happen, but best thing towards ensuring I don’t lose muscle mass while on the cut), and to try to burn more and keep the fat loss going.
One thing is adding in side lateral raises, but doing it in a way demonstrated by Charles Polquin. I will say that just skipping bringing the db’s in front of the body and thus keeping more upright and a straight back was helpful. It does feel like more isolation on the medial deltoid, and obviously this approach puts more emphasis on the negative. We’ll see how it goes long-term.
I also dumped rear lat raises because I hate ’em…. face pulls instead, for a change-up. I opted to do them on a different weight stack, which has a different pulley system and thus affects the “work” done relative to the weight lifted. Still have to find the right groove here, but using this stack is better because I can position the cable in front of my face and get a more proper angle, instead of a “lat pull” station and having a downward pull.
Then, more tricep work. Close-grips are a good thing. I think the 350-method is appropriate here. Again, need to find my weight, but it’s close.
So, things started off kinda crappy but rolled ok towards the end. Hopefully this increase in workload will pay off on the fat loss.
Readers know I care about my health (diet, exercise, etc.) – and I’m sure you care about your health as well – so I want to discuss some numbers about health.
Odds of 1-in-150 vs. 1-in-6,000,000. Which has a higher likelihood of happening? The 1-in-150, of course.
What of those were odds of something bad – like contracting a terminal illness – happening to you? I reckon you’d prefer the 1-in-6,000,000 odds. Since we don’t have much choice if something bad happens to us or not, we have a pretty good chance of that 1-in-150 bad thing happening to us, yes?
What if I told you you could improve those odds with some simple changes in your life?
I’m sure you do things like this. Eating less fat, or minding your salt and sugar intake. Adding daily exercise. Maybe you look for GMO-free food, or make sure your plastics are BPA-free. And it’s not just food, but habits such as buckling your seat-belt when you get into a car, or looking both ways before crossing the street.
We seem to accept there are risks and dangers in the world, that we can’t fully escape them, but obviously we can make some changes in our lives that improve our odds of living a long and healthy life.
Look at what we teach kids. We teach them about “stranger danger”, and how to stay safe in a storm so they don’t get struck by lightning. Learning such safety precautions is an accepted part of our culture and society, because again we want ourselves and our loved-ones to live long and healthy lives.
Did you know that the average number of people killed in the US by lightning strkes each year is 51? With 310 million people in the US, that’s odds of 1-in-6,000,000 of dying from a lightning strike. A rare ocurrence indeed, and no one is considered paranoid for taking precautions against such a rare event.
According to FBI statistics, there are over 6 million violent crimes in the US each year. There are over 2 million where your life is literally at stake (armed robbery, aggravated assault, forcible rape, homicide). With 310 million people in the US…
That’s odds of 1-in-150 of you being a victim of a violent crime, that could leave you crippled for life or dead.
It’s not a “one in a million” chance of being a victim — it’s 1-in-150. It’s a 1-in-50 chance of being a victim of general violent crime. In fact, those odds are probably conservative because not all violent crimes are reported, so the real odds are likely greater.
Let that sink in.
You have a high likelihood of being the victim of a violent crime. I know you care about your health and well-being. Being alive, not being in pain and crippled for life because someone decided to shoot you for your iPhone – well, I think “being alive” is a fundamental component of being in good health.
Of all the unfair and undesirable things one can die from in this world, being a victim of a violent crime is pretty high up there. Please stop thinking it cannot happen to you, that crime only happens to other people (because to everyone else in the world, YOU are “other people”). The chances of you being the victim of a violent crime is pretty high, so once you start being honest with yourself about this fact and accept the reality of it, the next question is: what steps are you taking to do something about it?
(h/t to Tom Givens; listening to his interview on Ballistic Radio Season 2, Episode 87, 2014-11-23 provided the inspiration for this article. If you’ve never heard Tom speak, or even if you have, I highly recommend taking 30 minutes and listening to this interview. Tom has the wisdom and experience, and I can think of no one more authoritative and well-spoken on the subject matter.).
475 lb deadlift — Close, but not going to count it as a PR.
I’ve decided to stop deadlifting for a little while. Not a happy decision because I really like deadlifting, but my knee isn’t happy in a couple ways now, so I want to see if laying off the (heavy) deadlifting will help. Before I stop tho, I wanted to see if the sumos perhaps helped my conventional at all. So, today I decided to work up and see what I could do.
My best ever is 455, set back in August before I started down the defatting path. I figured if I could hit that today I’d be happy — if anything, on a cut, I would expect to lose something, but the work of the past some months seems to point to maintaining and perhaps a hair bit of forward progression. So, the plan was to just see what I could do.
I put on a belt at 315, and things were going quite nicely. 405 went well. 455 did alright too; worked for it, but solid. In fact, because I haven’t had a belt on in a while coupled with less girth around my middle well… the belt doesn’t fit the same of course, I don’t like a mega-tight belt when deadlifting (can’t get into position if it’s too tight), but on the 455 I had it one notch looser than it should have been so when it went up and my torso got really tight, the belt actually felt totally loose — the 455 felt like I did it beltless. It was certainly nearing my end tho, so I figured just go 475 and see.
I got the 475 up — for sure it was tough. But I’m not going to count it. It felt like I got 98% of the way there, but just didn’t lock it out. Could I have done it? I think so, if I had my shit together. I recall being up there and just having a “just keep pulling!” mindset, but at that point it wasn’t pulling, but rather I needed to squeeze my glutes and thrust my hips forward. I didn’t remember that cue until afterwards. I think if I had all my cues in the right place I would have gotten it. But that’s OK that I didn’t. I think I learned more from the failure than the success.
Regardless, that I was able to do that tells me my strength in fact is going up despite the cut. Of course it’s WAY slower than a proper strength cycle would be (what? only 20 lb in 4 months), but the simple fact I’m losing fat and NOT losing strength is awesome. Really, I’m happy with how things went, all things considered.
Then I squatted my normal routine. A little tougher since I did it coming off the deadlifts, but fine.
Then here’s where things change up a bit. I did some empty-sled less presses, just to get some reps and volume and blood flowing. Then some calf raises. This is in part how squat day will change for me, both to try to be a little less heavy stress, and a little more volume towards the fat-loss. I don’t expect these to be a lot of weight, just lots of reps.
The other change will be stiff-legged deadlifts instead of conventional/sumo, for higher reps.
Had some talks with Nick & Renaissance Periodization over the weekend. More diet adjustments, and I’m trying to find out what else I can do to keep the losing train rolling. One certain thing is increasing my gym time – moar lifting! Like 5 or 6 days a week. I’m not sure how sustainable that will be for me. I’m old, I’m on a rather restrictive diet, no PEDs, and I have scheduling issues. So for now I’ve decided to stick with my same basic plan, just add in a little more work on each day.
The other thing is a change in deadlifting, but I’ll talk about that tomorrow.
So the changes started today, taking the dips as far as I could. Instead of artificially limiting it, just go until the lock-out gets difficult then stop. I also added Polquin Flies back in. So again, not a huge change in things, but trying to get a little more volume, a little more work, which should translate over into more calories burned. 🙂
All in all, things felt good. Certainly felt better than last week. I know the strength loss of last week was just a minor setback due to the diet kicking back in. One-step back, many steps forward. No worries.
You know, I think I like Ozzy more with Black Sabbath than his solo stuff. His solo stuff is good, but whenever I listen to it I think I give more consideration to his guitarists than him.
Case in point: “Mr. Crowley”
I was always a Randy fan (vs. Eddie Van Halen). And I think his classical influences show strongly on “Mr. Crowley”.
And one thing I always appreciated about Zakk was while he was still Zakk, still had his playing style, he honored Randy’s composition, playing the song as it should be.
I say this because, as I write this, I have fresh in my mind a cover band I heard at a small festival. They were actually pretty good, but then they played Ted Nugent’s “Strangehold” and butchered it. Solos aren’t just a time to wank off; sometimes they are, but sometimes the solo line is very much a composed piece that makes the song what it is and you just can’t deviate from it. “Strangehold” is one such song. “Mr Crowley” is another, especially on the outro, and while Zakk throws in his signature vibrato, it’s still Randy’s composition.
Another great line-up of speakers and topics for the day. Paul does a solid job of taking feedback from each conference and working to make the next one better.
Alas, I won’t be able to make this one (youth hunting weekend with the kiddos), but you should be there… all the cool kids are doing it. 🙂
Stuff From Hsoi 