All in all it was good, but the weights were light (relatively speaking), yet everything felt heavy. Well, not so much heavy as things just felt…. slow? Hard to describe. I just expected with these weights to have felt a little lighter, moved a little faster.
Why? Hard to say. Could it be the fact I’ve been off creatine for 1.5 weeks now and it’s wearing off? Could it be the diet change? Was it just an off day? Who knows for sure.
Weirdest thing was dips… I felt really unstable and unbalanced. My body wasn’t liking it. Maybe just my triceps were tired from the prior AMRAP sets, but given past performance that doesn’t seem right.
But… whatever. I would love to know exactly why, but one day of data isn’t enough. It may simply have just been an off day.
I’m starting back on the cut diet. Back in mid-May I had cut down to 211 lb (from 265), but 9 straight months of deprevation finally got the best of me so I spent the past 2.5 months bulking. I’m up to 223 lb.. I also got to change how I lifted, and while it was good, it wasn’t the way I like to lift. So as of yesterday I began another cut, with the goal of clearing 200 lb.; I’m not sure 200 is where I’ll stop, as it’s more about look and composition than pure scale weight (I’m out to lose fat, and the scale weighs fat and muscle — so scale matters, but the mirror does too). But at least that’s the goal. I’m also mentally figuring this cut will last until just before Thanksgiving (about 16 weeks). Where I go after that will depend upon where things are when I get there. No need to worry about it for now, just stay focused. 🙂
So then in terms of gym work, I have decided to try Paul Carter’s Strong-15 Short Cycle. Why? In large part, because I want to. All of my lifting for the past year has been done in a manner to support the fat loss, and while I’m good with that, it’s not what I like to do. So I’m continuing to take a bit of a mental break and letting myself lift like I like. Of course this still supports the fat loss efforts, but certainly this sort of lifting I have to do NOW instead of later; can’t do this as I get deeper into the cut. Right now my diet plan can support this style. See, the plan I was on for about the past month as a “mid” is what I’m continuing with at the start of this cut. During the mid I had a plan plus a lot of cheating; if plan + beaucoup cheating held my weight, then strict plan should allow me to lose weight. Plus, I’m adding cardio (1 hour of walking) back into the program, so along with strict diet and cardio burning some cals, that should be sufficient to start loss. But the level of food intake is still quite sufficient to support a short strength cycle, so I’m giving it a go. Yeah, it might fail, but that’s ok as it’ll be a learning experience. My intention is to continue to get my strength back up, so as the cut continues I have a bit more “buffer” to lose from. So if I am going to lose some strength, at least it won’t be as far a regression. Plus, if I am bit stronger, that should enable better work during the latter parts of the cut when I have more mass-oriented work to focus on. So all in all, I think this should be alright for supporting my efforts. Besides, the Short Cycle is only 5-7 weeks.
So how did things go to start?
Great!
Because I’ve never run the Strong-15 Short Cycle before, I opted to try a ready-made template. This comes right out of Paul’s “LRB-365” book. I know he adjusted the Short Cycle in the “Base Building” book, but I wanted something that had the cycle plus all assistance work laid out. By using his ready-made program it helps to take the guess work out, especially in finding the right amount of assistance work to do, as you don’t want to do too much but need a little bit. This’ll help me better understand where Paul’s coming from.
Of course, week 1 here is pretty easy, moving weights well-under what I’ve been moving before. I did feel a little creaky, likely because I took all of last week off. It was good to have a “no-deload deload” last week and totally stay out of the gym, but I was quite active in other ways (lots of walking, other physical activity). All good, and I feel refreshed.
One non-obvious thing to note is rest time. All assistance work is going to follow about 1 minute of rest between sets and probably 2 between exercises. But on the main movement, I’m going to take rests as I need it. The warm-/work-up will probably get just 1 minute between sets, but once I get to the double and the singles I’ll take what I need. Today I did 2 minutes, and I wouldn’t be surprised if as the weeks go on I probably up it to 3-5 minutes. But even then I don’t know. I’ve gotten used to taking short rests, so I may well just continue with that. Bottom line: I don’t want to miss a weight, so if I need the rest I’ll take it. But if I don’t, I won’t.
In the end, I was just happy to lift today. Felt good. 🙂
If you don’t care about my fat-loss and weightlifting stuff, stop reading now. If you do care, read on as I ramble on.
It’s been just shy of 1 year since I started The Defattening Project. With the help of Nick Shaw @ Renaissance Periodization I went from about 265 lb to about 210 lb. But after about 9 months of deprivation, my body and mind had enough. Even though we’d take a small break every so often, it still wore on me pretty bad. So back around mid-May we opted to go full-stop and run a short bulk-cycle. I’m up to about 223 lb now, my lifts are recovering (even set a lifetime PR in bench press of 255 lb), and I feel ready to get back on the loser train. While it’s not about weight (it’s more about how things look, as weight alone doesn’t tell the whole story), picking a weight does help to gauge things. The goal is going to be 200 lb. Will that be where I stop? Can’t tell that now; I’ll make that call when I get there. Just call 200 lb. a marker on the road.
Of course, my gym work needs to support the fat-loss efforts. But the other day I realized that I’m not having fun in the gym any more since it’s all oriented around supporting the fat loss. I’m good with that because the fat-loss is an important goal to me. But still, if going to the gym every day becomes too much of a chore, how does that help anything? I decided that, at least at the start of this cut cycle I’m going to try having fun again.
I’m going to try running Paul Carter’s “Strong-15 Short Cycle”, and using the version from his “LRB-365” book.
Yes, this might totally blow up in my face, because cutting really doesn’t go with this sort of lifting. But I think this might work. My current diet would certainly support this style of lifting, and for the first 6 weeks of the cut the diet really isn’t going to be all that different. In fact, we’re going to start out by me just following the diet plan I have now, cutting out all cheating (and I’ve been cheating), and adding cardio back in (1 hour walking 4x week). That should be sufficient to get the ball rolling and that alone should last a few weeks. I don’t think I could do a full 9-12 week Strong-15 cycle, but 6 weeks? Yeah, that should be workable.
And it should be fun.
And frankly if it does fail, I’m OK with that. I know I’ll learn something, and I know somehow I’ll grow.
So yeah, main reason for doing this is because this is the sort of lifting I really like doing, I haven’t done it in over a year, and I want to have a little fun again.
But in terms of “smart” reasons for doing it….
It’s at the start of the cut cycle, when I should still have the nourishment to support it. Certainly once the cycle is done I’ll need to change gears and go to a more mass-building/bodybuilder-style program. But even that will be good because I’d like to try building up my strength a little more so when I have the inevitable losses it won’t be as much regression. If I’m lucky, by the end of it all perhaps everything will just average out to being flat.
I do think this should set me up better for going into some mass building and rep work. A little stronger, a little more weight, a little more rep… should all pan out nicely to help support the fat loss efforts.
I think lifting 3x week will be better for me for a little while. It’ll be a little less impact on my body, a little more rest/recovery, and frankly I think that will help me out in many ways, including the fat loss. And then later on in the fat-loss when I need the added work, when I want more gym days so I can eat more carbs, I’ll have somewhere to go (4x week). So backing off now should be helpful for when I need to ratchet it up later.
Why Strong-15 Short Cycle? Again, short cycle because I think timing works best here. I also feel I’ve set myself up decently for it, given how Paul lays out work prior to doing a short-cycle. I’m following his LRB-365 version of it because that maps out an entire cycle including assistance work. Given I’ve not done his Strong-15 Short Cycle before, I figure it’s easier to start with a known template and see how it goes for me. After I have more knowledge under my belt, I can adjust and customize from there. One thing I have to be careful on is that I want to add more volume in, but that’s not appropriate — so having someone/something like an existing full-template is good to keep me reigned in because otherwise it could blow everything. And as I’ve said numerous times, I want to keep trying Paul’s protocols because they really do seem to be working for me, both in terms of making progress and not feeling so beat up.
And yeah, this could all be a big FAIL. But I’m sure I’ll learn from it. So it’s all good.
But really, it’s just because I want to have fun again. 🙂
I enjoy it when my disparate interests overlap in some way. In this case, powerlifting and personal safety.
In recent years, especially the past some months, it’s become a hot topic to have police body cameras. Basically, people want recordings of every facet of police interactions. This is understandable as it generally works to protect all involved because “video doesn’t lie”.
But does video tell the whole truth?
In powerlifting, squat depth is a big deal. To oversimplify, a legitimate squat is one where your thighs are parallel to the ground, or deeper (e.g your butt touches your heels). People putting massive weights on their back and only moving them about 3 inches then claiming awesomeness — that’s not legit. All sorts of videos come out of lifters making “world record squats”, and the first thing people do is gripe if the lifter squatted to depth or not. Granted some squats (and meet judging) are legitimately up for question, but most often the squat is passed by the meet judges but not the Internet armchair judges — because of the video.
The video may be poor. The video may be at a “wrong” angle. The video isn’t likely to see and reproduce what the 3 meet judges see.
And this could be good, this could be bad. It could give you the proper perspective, or it could give you the wrong perspective.
Is the video lying?
Is the video telling the (whole) truth?
What got me thinking about this was the recent posting of the dashcam video of a controversial police interaction. Commenters took the video as objective proof. Interestingly, some commenters took it as objective proof the cop was in the right, and some commenters took it as objective proof the cop was in the wrong.
Objective?
I thought back to the endless debates on powerlifting videos about their “objectivity”, because if video was in fact objective, if video told the Truth, there should be no debate about someone’s squat depth. But yet there is.
Back in 2014, the well-respected Force Science Institute published a list of “10 Limitations of body cams you need to know for your protection”. Original PDF here, article reprint here. You should read the article for a complete explanation, but here are the 10 points:
A camera doesn’t follow your eyes or see as they see.
Some important danger cues can’t be recorded.
Camera speed differs from the speed of life.
A camera may see better than you do in low light.
Your body may block the view.
A camera only records in 2-D.
The absence of sophisticated time-stamping may prove critical.
One camera may not be enough.
A camera encourages second-guessing.
A camera can never replace a thorough investigation.
I know some are going to read that list, especially because the article is titled “for your [police] protection”, assume there’s bias and these are just trying to give police “outs”, and then dismiss the article.
So let’s go back and look at this list in the context of powerlifting videos.
The camera does not follow the eyes of the judges nor does the camera see what the judges see. There may be bodies blocking the view (happens all the time when the video comes from audience members and there are lots of burly guys crowding around the squatter to spot the lift). One camera isn’t enough, when there are 3 judges precisely to judge multiple angles. Cameras only record in 2-D, and if you’ve seen some powerlifters, these guys are certainly bulging out in many places. Cameras certainly encourage second-guessing (look at all the armchair judges).
It doesn’t matter what you’re filming, these limitations apply.
We must also remember that these videos are often interpreted through the bias of the viewer.
One thing that will be the same across all feds is the fact that the line which separates the champ from the chump, the white lights from the red lights and 9/9 from bombing out is an imaginary and invisible line whose axis through disputed points is in the heads of the three individual judges who preside over your lift. No, it’s not perfect; it’s subjective. Deal with it.
Emphasis added.
Often the armchair judges insert their own interpretation of the rules or what they feel is right or wrong. A great example is Shao Chu’s 400# bench press:
Is that a legit bench press? Sure is, because it’s within the rules of the game. But hopefully even if you don’t know much about lifting weights you can see why that lift might be considered controversial (was it even a lift? did the bar even move?).
And so it goes with police interactions, because everyone is a lawyer and legal expert, right? And even if you know the law, do you know all the laws? That video may have been filmed in a different city, in a different state, in a different country, where laws are different from what you may know. As well, do you know the police’s operating procedure and rules and regulations they must abide by (beyond the law)?
When you view the video, are you viewing it through an objective lens, or the lens of your personal bias, (lack of) experience, and/or (lack of) knowledge? I hate to tell you, but it’s probably the latter no matter how much you strive for it (or believe it to be) the former. Doesn’t matter if it’s a dashcam video or a powerlifting video.
I think video is a good thing. I think video is a solid tool towards helping us preserve history and protect ourselves. Given the proliferation of cameras, either because our governments are putting more out “on the streets” or simply because everyone’s got a smartphone in their pocket, we’re going to see more and more video and relying more on video to help us find Truth.
But in doing so, we must take video for what it is. It is not The One Source, it is not (unbiased) Truth. It has limitations, and we must remember that in our quest for Truth.
So in the spirit of “having fun again”, I opted to work up to a 1RM on deadlift.
I haven’t deadlifted proper in a while. But I do believe all the stiff-legged deadlifts have been good for me. It felt weird to actually properly (conventional) deadlift today — just haven’t been in that position in a while. But I got back into the groove and things went alright.
Worked up easily, and I told myself if I hit 405 I’d be happy. And I did, and I am. I actually felt I had a little more in me, maybe could have done 425. But I was short on time and well, the 405 was “good enough”. I should be able to have a good short programming cycle based off 405, and the end goal of that is to move 405 better than I moved it today (e.g. faster, better form) and allow myself to work up even more if I want to.
All in all, I’m happy to be in the place I am right now. Sure I’ve lost strength since I started Defattening a year ago, but I’ve also lost a lot of weight too. 🙂 And what I can see is that I’ve gained a reasonable portion of my strength back, and getting back to my prior 1RM’s really won’t take much longer. I mean, heck… 2 days ago I set a lifetime PR on bench, so that’s awesome. My best squat was 325 and I am going to program 315 for this upcoming cycle. Best deadlift is 445 and given what I did today I’m pretty close. It’s like a cycle or two and I’ll be setting new lifetime PR’s AND at a lighter bodyweight too. Win!
Of course, I do have another (long) round of fat-loss to go through over the next 3-4 (or more) months. But at least I feel like if I work it right and well, muscle and strength loss should be minimal and then afterwards I should be able to program well and get things back on track towards my next goal of 3/4/5.
So, I’m happy. All is good.
This is my last gym session for a little while. Taking a no-deload deload, and will hit things again hard in about 10 days.
As I near the end of this cycle and approach what I hope is my last round of cutting to get me down to my desired weight, I’m going for a few things.
First with my current plan, I just want to crank because this is about the extent of it for many months.
Second, I’m trying to figure out my forthcoming plan. More on that in a bit.
So today I just wanted to push…. and 12 reps with 225 felt good. Left 1-2 in the tank, and really just feeling alright here. In a way, I think about wanting to do stuff with less reps and more sets (e.g. instead of 3×8 doing 8×3) to dial in form better. But that will come — eventually.
All in all, just felt good. More reps than last time. I can’t complain.
And yes, that 50-rep challenge is a bitch. 🙂
But I can’t help but think about what my next cycle of programming will be like. What hit me on my walk to the gym? I think I want to go back to 3x/week. Past experience has shown me I do better with 3x/week. I think it’s a combination of factors, such as my age, how much I recover (age, food, sleep, life stress, etc.), and that when I’m in the gym I kinda like doing more volume. Thus 4x/week is just too much for me and over time wears me down. The thing is, I can see from this last cycle that I actually do alright with 4x week because I do see myself progressing week-over-week, which is a good sign! But I also see that I’m feeling burned — I haven’t done my Friday sessions, because I do not feel like going to the gym.
I realize that a lot of what has driven my gym work has been the diet — the whole reason I went 4x/week was at Nick’s recommendation because it’d be a way to get more carbs and have a little more diet sanity than the deprevation I was under at the time. Well, my diet is pretty nice right now, and at the start of this cut it’s still going to be pretty nice. So while I thought this weekend I had finally nailed down my plan, this morning I took a step back and am going to revisit it. The thing that I need to determine is: do I want 3x/week because truly that’s better for me? or because I’m just fried right now? Hard to say, but I’ll mull it over. I mean, is the fact I’ve been skipping a session due to listening to my body a tell-tale sign that my body wants me to go back to 3x/week? Thing is, I could see going 3x/week for now, then when the diet gets to a particular point, go 4x/week again. That’s resonating with me pretty strongly right now, so who knows… if I can’t figure it out, I may just go 3x and see what happens.
That all said, another thing is Nick has urged me to always keep working somehow… take a deload when needed. Thing is, sometimes I do well with a “no-deload deload” — to do “jack shit”, truly. Just take a vacation from the gym, don’t think about it, don’t go, sleep in, rest up. Yeah, maybe stay active and walk or do yard work or whatever — don’t become a couch slug. But I think the fact that basically in a year I haven’t taken ANY break from the gym is probably catching up to me. I’m thinking next week will be a “no-deload deload”, doing some active things, but basically avoiding the gym and enjoying the refresh.
People often discuss the notion of how long and how much work it takes to master something.
Malcolm Gladwell popularized the notion of “10,000 hours” of practice being needed to master something. I just read an article written by Jay Jay French, founder and guitarist for the band Twisted Sister. Jay Jay writes about The Power of 10,000 Hours.
Recently AJ Pero, long-time drummer for Twisted Sister, passed away. Of course, this caused much sadness and unknown in the Twisted Sister camp. But as they say, “the show must go on”. Twisted Sister has been around since 1973, and with all the shows, all the rehearsals, they’ve got much more than 10,000 hours of practice under their belts.
Jay Jay reflects:
The truth is, these days, we only play about a dozen shows a year, almost always between May and August. It means that we are off doing other things the other nine months of the year. We usually only run over the songs once at a rehearsal. I am always feeling just a little queasy and unsure. That’s why, before we go into our first rehearsals, sometime in April, I’m gripped with anxiety. But this time, I was also anxious about a new drummer who had only three rehearsals to learn not just the music but also the pacing of the show; the fact that we were doing a live recording for DVD; multiple bands being on the same bill with us (their equipment changes can always cause problems); and special effects, flames, sparklers, and explosions that will possibly light you on fire if you stand in the wrong place. Plus, I’m not just a guitar player–I’m the manager of the band, with a long mental checklist. More important, I was really sad that A.J. wasn’t up there with us.
Here is my confession. There were just too many unknowns this time. Too many potential areas of disruption. Too much emotion. Because it was the first show of the year, I just couldn’t get lost in the performance. My mind was overwhelmed by the confluence of information. And I was still dealing with my own emotions about this first show without A.J.
So what did I do? I consciously let go. I set my brain on autopilot and let the songs flow out. I kept in the back of my mind an idea of what I would need to do if something really went out of control. But I tried not to think about it, and instead, I relied on my ability to do something I’d done for more than 10,000 hours.
And … nothing bad happened. The show went on about as smoothly as I could have hoped.
This is what separates the big boys from the also-rans. The confidence–in our case, forged in the fires of the live club circuit — that we could always deliver, no matter what was thrown at us, is burned into our DNA. As long as we want to do it, it will be done at the highest levels.
The same is true for companies and entrepreneurs. For you or your company to be great, nothing can ever present an obstacle to excellence. You need to practice until you’ve got muscle memory. You can’t stop Twisted Sister. And you can’t stop a great company when you have a great foundation.
So, get to practicing.
You won’t get better overnight. It’s going to take a lot of time, dedication, and discipline. But if you really want to master something, it’s what it takes, and it’s worth every bit.
Front squats, the big thing was keeping my chest up/big. It actually hurts because that really drives my throat into the bar. But I want to really work on that form, because it really helps get the most of it the front squat. If I start to collapse over, not only do I risk dumping the bar, but it turns into a mess instead of a front squat. That said, when I start back on the cut, I’m not sure I’ll keep with front squats. I might, maybe alternating back squats one week and front the next, but I don’t know right now. Or I might do back squats only but low bar and high bar. Still firming up plans.
Leg press I just went for it and upped the weight. That was a good decision.
But then… the lunges.
Again, I opted to try that 50-rep challenge approach: pick a weight you can do for about 25 reps, then crank it out as much as you can, rest 15 seconds, keep cranking, rest 15 seconds, etc. until you total 50 reps. Of course, with lunges this is 50 each leg (100 lunges total).
Holy crap.
Now, I started with an empty bar (45#) on my shoulders, but when that only got me to about 15 reps I realized this may not pan out. Then I only got up to 21 and yeah… so from there I ignored the bar and just kept going. 15 seconds really isn’t enough to recover much, maybe only getting another 7-ish reps each time. But I just kept cranking and got to 50.
It hurt.
Like… it hurt because my quads were so pumped, the pressure from all the blood gorging my muscles was intense… it was not like a good hurt, this fucking sucked. It hurt like hell… the pressure in my legs was crazy. I sat there for maybe 5-10 minutes just pounding on my thighs, massaging them, pressing them. I mean, this wasn’t like a bad pain that I should stop and go see the doctor about, but it was rather amazingly uncomfortable. 🙂 And then I think about guys like John Meadows and realize that’s probably how he always operates and I’m being a wuss and never really pushing myself. 🙂
But yeah… these 50-rep challenges are going to stick around when I get back on the cut. I’m not sure if I’ll do split-squats or lunges, but probably just pick one or the other and do whatever makes me feel less bored.
I figure with just a couple weeks to go before I’m back to the cut diet, let’s bump up the weights and get “as far along as I can”. I mean, if I can hold at this level for 3 months I can live with that.
So I upped the weight on the squats and deadlifts, by about 15# working weight but it worked out to more-or-less 10# jumps each set. The 275 squat went up well. I’m still unhappy that I lost so much strength in my squat, but at least I’m getting it back. It makes me think futures, but more on that in a bit.
One change I did was the split-squats. I’m starting to plan out my program for when I’m back on the cutting diet, since the program needs to support fat loss (and muscle retention). One thing I wanted to do was add some finishers as a way to bump up the “work” to help with the fat burning. I read about the “50-rep challenge” which is basically taking a weight you can do for about 25 reps, doing it, resting about 15 seconds, crank out as many more reps as you can, rest 15 seconds, crank, rest, etc. until you total 50 reps. I thought on either lunges or split squats that’d be good to try out. So I thought to give it a go this morning to see how it went. I did remember the technique incorrectly: I would do one leg for as many reps, switch legs and match the reps, then immediately switch to the other leg and keep going, etc.; I never took a rest other than maybe a few seconds to switch legs and steady out my balance. Still, it burned. 🙂 I think it’ll be a good change up, or at least worth a try during the forthcoming program.
I admit I’ve got mixed emotions… I am enjoying the more relaxed diet, I’m enjoying getting some strength back, and I don’t want to leave that. But boy do I want to get the rest of this fat shed and get on with things again. So take the short-term pain for the long term gain. Really tho, I just can’t wait to be back on the “growth” program that I want.
To that end, I do find myself thinking more and more about 5/3/1. Why? A lot of reasons. It’s a known way of progressing, it works and has worked well for me. It gets back to lower reps and heavier weight. Paul keeps saying things like his Strong-15 is really meant more for peaking, but then I see some things that make it seem like you could run Strong-15 all year round. So I don’t know. I really do want to give Paul’s programming a more serious shake, as it’s all be predicated under my defattening. I guess… I’m just itching. 🙂
Stuff From Hsoi 