TLDR: Tis The Season

Too Long Dad Recap

Here we are in October, and it marks the start of a seasonal treat. I’m not talking about pumpkin spice coffee, colder weather or playoff baseball.

We have entered the perfect time of year to remove body hair and expose those gains for some great photos…stay with me here, here is my rationale:

1. It’s cold enough to be able to wear long pants and sleeves in public so folks don’t think you’re weird for shaving your legs. 
   • (Not as much of a problem this year, because we aren’t leaving the house much)
2. It’s early enough such that after you’ve taken pics and admired your gains for a while, you still have time to grow all that body hair back before winter comes and you need that hair to insulate your body against the bitter cold.

Who’s with me?

Even if you aren’t, I went ahead and got it done today…

Things I Listened to This Week:

• Barbell Medicine Podcast: Episode 115 – Programming Tweaks for Better Results (find it here)
  • TLDR: Lower intensity leads to better fatigue management
  • In this episode Dr. Feigenbaum and Dr. Baraki discuss how they’ve been programming lighter work lately and its been working well for themselves and trainees.
  • Less intensity in the working sets was discussed as a fresh approach for them. I have found in their programs the volume does start to taper quickly and the intensity goes way up towards the end.
  • This episode highlighted that muscle growth and strength gains can be stimulated in the 60% to 80% range of 1RM
  • Rather than shoot for 75-80%, they’ve been working into that lower side of the range for backoff sets, and they’ve seen benefits.
  • Benefits include fewer de-load or pivot weeks, less accumulated fatigue, setting up longer cycles.

What that means for my training: encourages me to listen to my body more and reduce weight if intensity is overwhelming. During my current 12-week program, managing fatigue has been more of a conscious focus of mine, so this podcast was great to hear.

Things I Ate This Week: Weight Stalling, Resolve Wavering

It is hard not to get frustrated when the scale is not moving in the right direction, despite your best efforts. My weight was sticky around 165-166 for most of the week, but started to move lower later in the week. Then, I slipped up Friday and ate like 8 pre-made cookie dough balls straight from the freezer and some hazelnut gelato.

After that, I decided to map out how to shave a few extra calories over the next week to make up for it by eating a bit less on days when I don’t lift. By Sunday morning, the scale was moving back in the right direction.

Just a few more weeks of discipline and I can hit another milestone of leanness close to 160lbs and then relax a bit.

Recipe Highlights: Ice Cream

• The highlight of every weekday continues to be the big batch of protein ice cream I make.
  • The recipes fill up most of the ninja blender (like 7 cups)
  • I fill up a container to put in the freezer for later and eat the rest.
  • Pictured below after a couple hours in the freezer is the peanut butter (PB powder) blueberry flavor from Greg Doucette’s YouTube channel.
  • I also make one with an orange flavored protein powder and frozen strawberries that is amazing, and one day this week I made an Oreo flurry using Oreo pudding

Also, my son has started to join me in eating some anabolic recipes. He loved the pizookie and the brownie recipe we made this week. Pictured below is him crushing some for breakfast one day this week.

Things I Lifted This Week: Strength Resilient

I started the final 4 weeks of my 12 week program this week. For deadlifts that means shifting from the high volume block into a higher intensity, lower rep block.

• Friday was the first heavy single of the block for 385lbs
• I was very pleased with how it moved, and it puts my goal of re-hitting my 430lbs max by the end of the block, but at 25 pounds less bodyweight (2.65x bodyweight vs. 2.3x last time)

• Squats went pretty well too, I hit 325 lbs for a single
  • That has me feeling confident that my current 355lbs personal best is within striking distance (would be 2.2x bodyweight)

• Bench press remains the lift that has seen the biggest drop off, which I think is pretty typical when you lose weight
  • My 270lbs personal best is not likely to happen, but 250lbs seems likely, and I’d be fine with that

If you total all of those target lifts together, its 1,035 lbs at what should be around 160-162 lbs bodyweight. Not bad for 39 years old!

I also broke out the SSB bar for accessory movements, which is always fun!

• My daily 400m walking lunge streak is up to 94 days as of this morning.
  • For today’s lunges, I broke it up a little bit by doing 8 sets of 50 lunges, but in between each set, I did sandbag carries down the driveway and back.
• Steps have been above 15,000 every day this week too!

Dad Report: Costumes and Cardio

As parents we continue to find events to look forward to and to talk about that can keep everyone’s spirits up. October is really easy for that, because Halloween is coming. Usually we keep costume purchases to a minimum and try to be as creative as possible. But this year, given all the money we aren’t spending on regular travel things, we lifted all budgetary restrictions on costumes. So this weekend, we searched up costumes for everyone.

• The youngest settled on a cheeseburger costume.
• Daughter chose an obscure character from some musical.
• Older son chose a bottle of hand sanitizer.

I haven’t decided, but I’m thinking maybe I could be a big bottle of Heinz mustard (no calories) as a companion to the cheeseburger costume? I’ll let you know, and definitely will hit some obligatory deadlifts in the costume.

Army Test, Round 2

Every Sunday (if the weather is nice), my wife tries to rally the troops to drive some place and go for a hike in the woods. The kids usually put up a fight. This morning, they came up with the argument they came up with was they’d rather stay home and re-take the U.S. Army fitness test.

Diehard readers will remember a couple months back when I did the Army test with the kids and filmed it in a fun YouTube video.

So, the wife went for a hike alone and left me to oversee the Army fitness test. To review, the events are as follows:

• 2 min max hand release pushups
• Hex bar deadlift 3 rep max
• 2 minute plank (as a substitute for legs to bar)
• 2 mile run
• Overhead weighted ball toss for distance
• Sprint, drag, carry strongman style medley for time

Last time we did this, we did the 2-mile run last and they had nothing left for the run, so this time they started with the run. The run went much better than last time. Each of the kids improved in each event over last time. This included more reps on pushups, longer time on the plank, heavier deadlift weights, everything. That gave them a nice boost of confidence to start the day.

Hope you all had a refreshing weekend and are ready for the current shitshow news cycle to continue! In the meantime, thanks for keeping it on the DL!