30 GHRs
40x360 reverse hypers
30 standing ab wheels
31 axle shrugs against strong short bands
50 pull aparts
25 pushdowns
Notes:
Once again, worked up to 400lbs on the axle and it wouldn’t break the floor. The strength is there, but my body has enough small injuries that the internal governor shuts everything down when the time comes. I came in with an alternate COA and executed it. In full disclosure, the alternate plan was what I wanted to do, primarily because I gravitate toward this style of training these days, so part of me wonders if there was an element of self-sabotage there.
As for this workout itself: OH MY GOD. It’s been a long time since I’ve lied to myself that much in a single workout. I have too many names to pick from. Part of me was thinking “Vision Quest” or the logical “Lunatic Fringe”, just because you really go on a journey through it. The other part of me is thinking along the line of “Prince of Lies”, and picking from several deities there. There’s also the line in Disturb’s “Pain Redefined”, that goes “in the realm of pain I am the deceiver”, which would make “Pain Redefined” an outstanding name. But all of this to say that this is a gut check.
I have no sweated that much in a LONG time. We’re out of the heatwave, but this workout is crazy. It was like I had jumped in a pool when it was done.
All my nagging injuries felt fine through out. On top of everything else, a little bit of tendonitis is in the left elbow. The whole left side is a horror show.
This is the last workout for BBB Beefcake. Moving forward, I have a few ideas. If I stick with 5/3/1 for Hardgainers, I think I’m actually in a good place. I CAN pull lighter deads without an issue: heavy stuff is the problem. So what I could do is heavy good mornings to answer the mail there, then deadlift supplemental. It’s the holding the weight in the hands that is impacting things, so removing that will put me in a good way. I suppose that means zerchers might be good, but I can see that having an issue with my bicep. I DO have a zercher harness, so there’s a thought. Idea would be to treat the heavy work more like a max effort workout and then finish out with 5/3/1. If Hardgainers is a no go, there’s always Mass Made Simple or Super Squats; squat focused and deadlift on the backburner. If I do either one, I’d keep deads in for conditioning work to keep it grooved. And if all of that is no go, Chaos is the Plan.
On the nutrition front, for the deload week I plan to train fasted, as it’s a week of conditioning workouts. Once that is over, if I get back on the Surge, I’m gonna do like I did here: 1 serving for the first 3 weeks, evaluate, and up the dose if need be. I didn’t really notice much difference going from 1 dose to 2 in a workout, and if that means I can move those calories somewhere else in the day, I’ll take it.
EDIT: Totally forgot to document what the deadlift area looked like after the workout
Brought back a classic here. Because of my bicep, I was keeping the rack position for as long as possible. That made it pretty tough. Good to have this rotation going.
Tang Soo Do was a little rough on my tendons. Worked a lot of grab defense.
Slept until 0530. Mrs needed to get up early to work on a paper. Opened the day up with a fasted TABEARTA. Once again: 3 complexes in 20 seconds is honest work. I was gassed in 4 minutes. Scratches that ABC itch for sure.
Weekend plans got borked, but not in the worst way as far as training goes. Schedule is opened up, so I’m anticipating a lot of micro workouts through the day. Will probably just log totals at the end.
Yet another day of absolutely crushing it. It’s currently 2050, Mrs is getting in a run, I just finished my pre-bed meal and this is the first time I’ve sat down all day and had a moment, which is a testament to how awesome things are. A lot of the time was filled with chores (did all the grocery shopping and a LOT of meal prep, to include a ground turkey breast and beef liver chorizo that I’m quite curious about), but let me lay out the training
At 0850, I did 50 burpee chins in 5:25. THAT is the pace I need to do them at. I’ve been sleepwalking through them, and it’s been showing. THIS was a real burner.
After groceries and lunch, it was time for
MONUMENT TO NON-EXISTENCE: UNSTABLE MUTATION
15x225 front squats
20x225 squat
25x225 SSB squats
30x225 Deadlifts
Straight into 90 minutes of lawn care
STRAIGHT into 20 Thrusters w/135lbs in 2:30
And at some point, I got in my daily work.
Notes:
Lemme talk about MTNE first. That front squat felt WAY heavier than it had any right to, and I thought for sure I was gonna underperform today, but I found 15, which it’s been a while for me. I may have even had a 16th in there. And then, after that…ennui. Yeah, I still wanted to quit during the SSB squat, but I basically speed-ran this workout. The transitions between movements were about as short as they could be and I was flying through reps. I found that 25th rep of the SSB squat much faster than I’ve ever done before. Looking like a tune up or overhaul is in my future.
I no longer have a good arm to pat myself on the back with, so this is gonna come out rough, but allow me to celebrate my insanity. I squatted 5x10x405 on Monday. Since that time, I’ve done a few million front squats through a combination of tabata front squats and Bear Complexes, of which I did 70 something of them on Thurs and opened up this morning with another 24 of them. On Friday, I went on a 45 minute long vision quest to get in 10x10x301 axle deads and 10x10x205 SSB squats, capped off with 20 Burpee chins. And then I did this today. All while “injured”. By any reasonable stretch, my legs should basically be rendered into the filler goo they put inside of Stretch Armstrongs, and instead I am lamenting the BOREDOM I am experiencing from my nutjob psycho workout.
I like to take a step back and take it all in sometimes, because if I don’t appreciate the sheer insanity of it, I’m missing out.
TABEARTA 3 complexes per round
31 burpee chins in 5 minutes
TABEARTA 2 complexes per round
That was 13 minutes of honest work. I really dig bear complexes as far as mobility goes. Wanna get limber first thing in the morning? Get some bear complexes in.
I feel like I’m inevitably just going to replace ABCs with TABEARTA. The biggest limiting factor is loading the bar and having the crashmats out, and that’s really minimal time suck. In fact, given the ABCs were 5 minutes and TABEARTA is 4, it might be a wash. Chaos is the plan.
In that regard, an idea struck me for deload week of trying to do the 10k swing challenge in 7 days. Did the math and that’s about 1430 swings a day. Wondering if I could make it 715 for a workout, go for a walk, come back and do the other 715. Or perhaps 715-daily work-715. It’s honestly time that I think is the big suck factor there. I’ve gotten 500 inside of 30 minutes before while doing daily work in between sets of swings, so I could probably shave it down some from there, but that’s STILL just a lot of workout.
Ya know, maybe I’ll just make tomorrow a swing day and see what I can do and evaluate from there. Not a terrible idea. Well, actually, yeah, this is a really bad idea, but most of my best ones are. This is what deload weeks are good for…or, I guess deloading.
Thanks man! There’s no way to say this without sounding arrogant so I’m just going to sound arrogant: I know I could do it: it’s simply a question of “can I do it without disrupting my home-life”. I’m already getting up at 0330 to get everything done, and I don’t mind sleeping even less, but I do know that the Mrs (rightfully so) gets concerned when I start doing that, ESPECIALLY if it’s just to take on a self-imposed physical challenge.
Gloves would be an absolute must from day 1, haha.
Oh my god I am so f**king stupid. I crunched the numbers and, to get this done, if I did 22 swings a minute for 65 minutes I would get 10010 done in 7 days.
That’s tomorrows workout sorted albeit a bit lighter. As I’ve only got the one rack and thus one squat bar think I’ll have to change something perhaps low and high handle trap bar deadlift which I’ve seen you do with higher reps.
And to think i was feeling pleased with my effort to do it in 4 weeks, this is something else. Looking forward to reading about it
Replies to come, but I did a quick test doing 20 rounds of 22 swings with daily work filling the remainder of the minute. I finished with 30 seconds remaining on good rounds.
Inital impression is that hand skin integrity will be the limiter, followed by grip. Not afraid to use straps to address both. Also considering gardening gloves vs lifting gloves.
Will give day 1 a try tomorrow and evaluate from there
@aholding88 Dude, I can’t wait to see how it turns out! Be sure to grab some video. Low to high handle is an effective form of self murder for sure, haha.
You already do like 50-60 swings at least a day with double 24’s and your conditioning is ridiculous. Now the question is multiple shorter sessions or longer?
Hey I had a question on jumps and throws in building the monolith, should I do 10 of each? Like 2x5 box jumps, 2x5 med ball. Wasn’t sure if the recommended total on these 10 or 20? Or none at all.
It looks like this is for real. The pilot run yesterday was valuable, and I woke up this morning feeling fine enough. All my connective tissue aches from the hard training but the swings from yesterday honestly seem tonic, and they don’t bug anything that hurts, so this honestly may be a bit of kismet. I’ve always wanted to take on this challenge and just didn’t have the schedule flexibility for it, and now my hand is forced.
The workout itself honestly wasn’t awful. It’s an endurance race, and toward round 50 I wasn’t feeling happy, but I was never winded, just felt the heart rate tick up. Planning on taking it to 24 reps per round next time so I can shave it down to 60 rounds. That’s 1440 vs 1430, which will mean finishing with 10070 when it’s over…or I can save 70 reps somewhere down the road. Although having those extra 70 there can honestly be decent “miscount insurance”. Very fair chance the reps per round will keep ticking up anyway: chaos is the plan.
Some things that pilot run taught me: despite all my “armor building”, I needed armor for this. You can see the mechanic gloves I’m wearing, and I’m glad I bought a 3 pack, because they’re soaked from this. I’m also wearing some fight shorts on top of my traditional strongman shorts, because I’ve found that my wrists/forearms will run raw against the material otherwise. And I have my belt on for a similar reason. Basically, anywhere that’s a touch point needs to be covered with extra material, because 1000+ reps will find the weak points in your skin. I STILL got a small hot spot on my ring finger through it all, which means, absent the armor, I would have been shredded.
Really tried to focus on being explosive and snapping the bell down, but the workout is so long that it’s easy to lose focus.
Yes: I am playing Rival Son’s “Keep on Swinging” on a loop for 65 minutes, because that’s funny.
Pleased with the intensity I brought to the burpee chins after the fact. I was gassed. And my plan for later is to hit up legit TABEARTA later for my 4 minute insanity. Burpee chins and TABEARTA definitely answer any of the questions that the 10k swing challenge asks.
The “Chaos curls” were just me using a whole bunch of wild angles to try to get my left bicep to remember how to contract and work through some of it’s pain. I am curious if I experienced some sort of nerve damage or perhaps some sort of tearing, as it’s hard to contract the muscle fully at present, but it seems to be healing a bit more each day.
Treating nutrition like a diet break this week. Not going to force feed, but will respond to hunger. I’m thinking a fasted hour of swinging a kettlebell will generate a touch of that.
I’m sure @Dagill2 will dig the program name: a tribute to Dan’s “Mass Made Simple” advice combined into one. I was legit thinking about making this program a combination of a bunch of bad Dan John ideas, and including Tabata thrusters as well, but I think TABEARTA is close enough.
Love the program name, and any reference to Dan John in general.
I also really, really love the idea of making a program out of all the bad Dan John ideas. I think you could make something hideous out of it. The Big 21, Mass Made Simple Squats, Complexes, Litvinovs, high rep swings and a whole load of loaded carries. I can almost smell the Rhabdo.
@dagill2 I knew I’d have a fan in you there! Still gotta give some love for your summary of the Mass Made Simple book. One of my favorite re-reads. And all bus-bench program sounds like a tremendously awful idea. Gotta make it happen some day.
Feeling a “shotgun o’thoughts” coming on here, typically happens on a deload week.
Why take on the 10k swing challenge in the first place? I’ve always wanted to do this program and didn’t have a schedule for it. Well, being on a deload and with the small injuries I’ve racked up, this is just about perfect. Swings are one of the few things that AREN’T hurting me, and since my deadlift has been compromised, all this hip hinging is bound to be good for me. While letting the calories dip a little, this should also help re-ignite my hunger. Being 100% transparent: it sucks being bloated all the time in a gaining phase. I dislike looking at myself and seeing my distended gut filled with food. First thing in the morning I look human again, but otherwise it plays with my brain. Easiest way to overcome that aversion is to take on a ridiculously challenging program and to do those things that ignite the appetite, so I’m looking at a 2 in one here.
Chaos is the plan, and, in turn, chaos can meet chaos. Originally, I was going to roll the die and let randomness dictate the 3-6 minute insanity break, but given the limitations while working around my bicep AND knowing what my primary workouts are going to be now, for this week at least, I’m sticking with TABEARTA with 3 complexes per round. It’s 4 minutes, it sucks, and it makes me work hard. Only bit inconvenience is having to set up for it, but I can get that taken care of ahead of time so I can just roll into my garage and smash it.
I’m considering discontinuing my use of Surge because it works TOO well. I’m contemplating if my recent string of injuries is a byproduct of my ability to dig MUCH deeper into the well than usual. Thinking that all my normal “behind the 8-ball” stuff about getting up early and training underfed was working as a natural governor to keep me from exceeding beyond my reach.
Need to get my TMs sorted for the next training block. Everything is gonna drop WAY down so I can actually get some value out of it.
Got my annual physical today. Getting vitals taken the morning that I did 1430 swings probably wasn’t great, but I was at 111/70 blood pressure with a 51 RHR. Actually getting a testosterone/thyroid panel and blood lipids later too, so that’ll be good. Also got a referral to podiatry, because my right foot got taken over by plantar warts over the course of the last year, and it requires medical intervention
I made chorizo out of turkey breasts and beef liver, and I made gyros today with chicken thighs, pork loin chops and sliced turkey breasts. I’ve offended all cultures. …but they actually were all pretty good.
