TLDR: Learn, Laugh, Lift

Too Long Dad Recap

Let me share a true story that I shared on my other website (www.mlpguy.com) this week, inspired by the news that Eddie Van Halen passed away this week.

My first exposure to Van Halen was the music video for “Right Now”, which was an attempt by Van Halen to show they could be serious. According to Sammy Hagar, “I was tired of writing cheap sex songs. Eddie (Van Halen) and I wanted to get serious and talk about world issues.” While music critics aren’t a fan of the song, the video was a hit and it won the 1992 MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year. I was around 10 when the video came out.

I went to the retail music store (which existed back then) called Sound Warehouse. There I purchased the single “Right Here, Right Now” thinking it was “Right Now” by Van Halen. It turns out one hit wonder Jesus Jones is not Van Halen. It was as my kids say, a big oof…

I eventually figured that out and returned to the store to buy the full “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge”, even though I had no idea what the album title meant. That was pretty much the extent of my experience with Van Halen’s music as a kid. Much later when I would get into MP3s and re-discover the entire library of much more upbeat rock songs and riffs. These days, I celebrate Van Halen’s entire catalog.

Hot Take: The Internet is Useful

The Internet has changed so much about the way culture and hobbies are discovered and consumed. Learning about Van Halen today is way easier. I have the entire story of the band via Wikipedia, I can listen to all of their songs, I can read thousands of blog posts ranking the best songs and other posts putting the band’s impact on the culture and music into context.

My story in fitness follows a similar arc. For probably 30 years, I didn’t have the most basic of knowledge about diet and exercise. I somehow just assumed that you got in shape by eating less dietary fat and jogging.

I know now that lifting weights, minimal cardio and a calorie deficit works to build a strong, lean physique that I can be proud of. My kids don’t know how good they have it. Obviously the Internet has done some damage to our society at large, and Amazon is taking over the world, but I’d still take all that over that shitty Jesus Jones song!

Content I Consumed This Week: Humbled All Around

• One of my favorite follows on Instagram is a U.S. Army soldier with a garage gym and the handle @thedeadliftdad. This week he was interviewed for GarageGymLife Media’s YouTube channel (see it here)
  • I enjoyed hearing the passion he had for lifting and his garage gym.
  • I don’t get all of his Army memes he posts on instagram, but I like to pretend I get them all.
• Sidenote: I also listened to the latest episode of MorningLifter’s podcast with the founder of Garage Gym Life Media and publisher of Home Gym Quarterly
  • The episode covered how he got started and his general philosophy, great listen.
• Jonnie Candito put out a 30 minute video this week all about how to coach yourself in powerlifting (see it here)
  • It was chock full of content, but so much of it was over my head, because he talks fast and assumes people understand things he says.
  • I’m going to go back and listen a time or two more, because the man is like an evil genius when it comes to powerlifting.
• Finally, I watched a really funny video by YouTube comedy star Ryan George, who usually makes funny videos about movies.
  • He posted a video called “The First Guy to Ever Get Ripped”.
  • It was a really witty commentary on how non-lifters look at lifters, including the arbitrary things we care about.
  • For example, when we try to get muscular and lean, its important for us that everyone is able to see our “blood tubes”, our veins, and that we have large “bumps”, muscles, all over our bodies.
  • I liked how he clearly understood that being lean is about hard work and discipline, then went on to poke fun at how the media tries to make you think it’s really easy. Worth the 3 minutes for sure!

Food I Consumed This Week: Getting Spooky Shredded

At a high level, this week was one of the best I’ve ever had from an adherence perspective, especially this late into a cut. I cycled calories a bit to make up for last week’s overeating by eating less on non-lifting days. I’m down to 1,800 calories on lifting days, but with the low calorie dense meals I’m consuming, I don’t feel hungry most of the time. I’ve hit a second wind with the diet and am confident I can make it another few weeks and hit 160lbs.

As noted on Instagram Friday, I’ve reached the leanest I’ve ever been at 163.1lbs on a trailing 7-day average. The bodyfat device I have says I am around 8.5% bodyfat. In February, that same device was consistently reading 16%.

I tried two different anabolic pancake recipes this week, both of which were great. The first one used 4 slices of white bread as one of the ingredients, blended up with other ingredients. The second one used coconut flour and cottage cheese.

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I also made tons of protein ice cream, a few anabolic brownies and a pizookie that I shared with my son. I also made a cheesecake and a pumpkin pie that both needed another 10 minutes or so in the over, because they were basically soup, which wasn’t great. But I ate them anyway!

After a trip to the store for a bunch more fat free cream cheese, I’m going to try the pumpkin pie again this week, and am probably going to try for an Oreo cheesecake too.

Things I Lifted This Week: Peaking

Just two weeks left in my 12-week program, and I am into the peaking block. Starting to dial-in what is possible when I test my max lift attempts in a few weeks. I think 250lbs bench, 350lbs squat and 425lbs deadlift are going to be there.

• Lifted weights 4 days this week, with the following top sets.
  • 335lbs squat Sunday
  • 235lbs competition bench press Tuesday
  • 360lbs for 4 sets of 2, followed by 345lbs for 6 reps
  • 400lbs deadlift Friday, then 350lbs for 3 sets of 5
• 15,000 steps every day this week
• 400+ lunges every day, streak now at 101 days

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I’ve been squatting and deadlifting in bare feet lately, which is working for me. But I thought I could use a bit more grip on the bottom of my feet, so I ordered some socks with little rubber grip things on them. I tried them and they work great. Would recommend them to fellow garage gym lifters who don’t wear shoes, but who also don’t want to have dirty feet or need a little more grip.

What Will I do After Peaking?

Even though I’m a few weeks away from completing the current program, I’m already thinking hard about what to do next after I finish this strength program. Too shake things up, I need a program focused less on the big 3 lifts and more on hypertrophy (building muscle) than on strength.

More volume is good as a change of pace. It also will have the benefit of being easier to manage in cold weather. Warming up for high intensity powerlifting movements can take a very long time in the winter. I’d rather use that time to get more volume in.

On the one hand, a very strong friend of mine recommended the Juggernaut AI program. On the other hand, a world class powerlifter (Candito) said this week that the programs are trash for making progress in powerlifting. How do I square these two reputable opinions?

Easy. I rationalize that for the next 10-12 weeks, my focus is not going to be on the main powerlifting movements. Also, I’m not trying to be a world class powerlifter. For relatively low cost, seems worth a shot to give myself exposure to more lifts, to focus on building up rowing strength and some other things.  Also, everyone’s different, maybe this works for me.

So, I’ve decided on Juggernaut AI’s Power Building program, cognitive dissonance be damned.

I’ve had success with Barbell medicine strength and hypertrophy programs, I’ve tried and reviewed Brian Alsruhe programs in the past as well. The risk to reward ratio for injury/fatigue are too high for me to do another of his really intense giant set schemes right now.

After Juggernaut this for a while, I’ll probably try to build my own block programs and track how I do, once I figure out what Candito was talking about in his video this week.

Let me know what you are running these days in the comments below.

Dad Report: Voting Struggle

My mail-in ballot came this week. My wife and I filled them out together with the children to make sure they saw how seriously we took the whole process.

The ballot came with two envelopes, and despite our best efforts, my wife screwed up the process by putting the ballot into the envelope that was supposed to be used on the outside of the other envelope and sealing it up.

So, there was panic in the house halfway through the voting process as we tried to figure out how to unseal the envelope and fix it. But I think the kids learned a valuable lesson about the importance of voting AND the importance of reading instructions!

One final note on mail-in ballots. Because the world has convinced my wife her ballot won’t be counted unless we hand it in personally, we still have the final step of driving the county building to drop off our mail-in ballot, basically defeating the whole purpose of it. What a country!

Thanks for reading as always, I am truly enjoying sharing my weekly adventures at home with all of you. At some point, things will get more interesting again with some vacation and business travel…some day. But for now, its all good in the neighborhood.

Thanks for keeping it on the DadLifting (DL)!