Cole's HLM/TM

[Cole Gorton]

12/12
TM 11.2
Recovery Day


Squat - 295 x 5 x 2
*light and easy

Press - 157 x 5 x 3
*also felt really light and easy today. ready to go 160+ with these

Chins (BW) - 6, 6, 6


notes: nothing really to report on recovery day. i had some low back and groin/glute DOMS from the volume day session but it seems to have resolved. The wife was up puking and shitting all night and now my kids are home sick from school and I am having a plumbing emercengy at work that i now have to try to deal with remotely. heres to hoping i dont catch what my wife had.

[Cole Gorton]

12/14
TM 11.3
Intensity Day


Squat - 400 x 3 x 2
*felt good, cept my nose exploded after the 1st rep of the 1st set and it looks like i slaughtered a suckling pig on my platform

Bench Press - 290 x 5
*well I was planning on triples, but after 3 reps it felt too good to stop.

DL - 430 x 3, 370 x 5, 375x1
*got a work call after my last warmup. the call lasted 30 minutes. i had to take it. i re did my last warmup and it felt like shit, but i went ahead and loaded my work set weight and said just do your best. went easy, could have got 5. misloaded the goddamn drop set. kept thinking my grip was off, so after the set of 5 i looked at both sides and realized i forgot to load a 5 on one side. put the five on and did another rep just for punishment.


notes: hot damn this one felt good. specially pulls. felt like i could have pulled all day. prob had 500 in me today fuck yea. bench also is just exploding right now. never done 290 for 5 that easy before, seriously felt like 245. im gonna have to figure out the bloody nose thing, ive always had some issues with that side of the nose, but with this T protocol im thinking im gonna have to offload some blood at least quarterly. waiting for the first lab work back so i can get an accurate measure of whats going on with my numbers first though.

video:
squat - YouTube
bench - YouTube
DL - YouTube

[Bill Anders]

Now that was a fun session!

re: nose - perhaps a bit of a saline spray before the session to moisturize the sinuses. No doubt that it's getting dry over there during these first few weeks of winter. Even if you're drinking enough, the sinuses can/will still dry out. I've had it happen a time or two, usually only a few drops, so nothing like a suckling pig being slaughtered, but it's been awhile, probably because I do daily sinus rinse now to keep things clean.

re: giving blood - definitely wait on results. You don't want to introduce a confounding impact on your values until you can establish a trend. I didn't reach a point where values indicated giving blood would help for ~15 months. Of course, YMMV, but establish your baselines now before tweaking anything.

Keep at it!

[Cole Gorton]

Now that was a fun session!

re: nose - perhaps a bit of a saline spray before the session to moisturize the sinuses.

great idea. its dry as hell here. do you just get the kind where you squeeze the bottle and it mists up?

re: giving blood - definitely wait on results. You don't want to introduce a confounding impact on your values until you can establish a trend.

thats a good idea, i want to know whats going on without me meddling with anything

[Bill Anders]

great idea. its dry as hell here. do you just get the kind where you squeeze the bottle and it mists up?

Yep. Nothing fancy or expensive. It might help.

thats a good idea, i want to know whats going on without me meddling with anything

Yep. It also comes in handy if your regular doc is trying to push something based on a single reading for anything, which will happen more and more over the coming decade for you. I started running into that a few years back, so I dug through the archives and built a spreadsheet that covers some values back to 1994. That history has come in handy a few times since. Starting the T protocol just meant adding a few new columns, but I had already been tracking hematocrit since 2017. Once I started the supplementation late-summer 2022, it slowly rose until it reached the point in Autumn 2023 where we discussed donating blood, which I've done once with the expected results.

[Cole Gorton]

12/16
Conditioning


Airdyne / treadmill intervals
25 min

[Cole Gorton]

12/17
TM 12.1
Volume Day


Squat - 370 x 5 x 5
*went ahead and jumped 5 pounds again even though I said I was gonna hang out at 365. It just felt right to go up, felt boring to re-do last weeks weight. Im glad I did bc it was actually fairly easy, easier than last week. I used saline before first set but my nose blew up anyway. Ill just need to plug it from here on out the rest of the winter.

Bench Press - 270 x 5 x 5
*went well, delts a little achy especially right delt but nothing major.


notes:Good volume session on this sunday morning. excited about how well my training has been going. Ive come a long way since August when I decided to rehab my low back tendonitits, and get back to the basics with Starting Strength training principles. I read the Blue Book, Grey Book, and BBrX and I feel like im in a much better place. Now its time to start pushing for PRs.

Video:
squat - YouTube

[Cole Gorton]

12/19
TM 12.2
Recovery Day


Squat - 295 x 5 x 2

Press - 160 x 5 x 3
*Easy!

Chins (BW) - 6, 6, 6


notes: Not too much to report, easy day. Bodyweight between 235-240 which puts me pretty comfortably in the 110kg class for my meet.

[Cole Gorton]

12/21
TM 12.3
Intensity Day


Squat - 405 x 3 x 2
*low back smoked after these

Bench - 295 x 5
*keep thinking im gonna have to go to triples but every week i end up with 5. not complaining

DL - 435 x 3 (ties PR), 385 x 5
*double smoked after this. quads and upper back are fine, its the low back muscles and joints that are just smoked. both sets way harder than they should have been.


notes: its been a damn good twelve weeks of Texas Method. part of me wants to keep pushing, but im concerned i will not be able to keep pace for another 9 weeks until my meet. i may need to map out a slightly more conservative approach (like last year for this meet) and plan it for PRs 8 weeks from now. last year, the heaviest i pulled during my meet prep was a single at 455 and a backoff set at 365x5 and i was able to pull 501 at the meet.

video:
squat405 - YouTube
bench - YouTube
DL - YouTube

[Cole Gorton]

12/29
conditioning
HIIT


treadmill / airdyne intervals - 30 minutes


*took some time off for a variety of reasons. havent been feeling well from the T injections. in short its giving me anxiety and it feels like im back in my 18 year old brain...id was completely happy with my 40 year old brain and seeing though i have yet to see any benefit, im promptly dropping this experiment after 6 weeks. possibly it just wasnt enough time, but im actually wishing i was feeling the way i felt before i started.

*ill be back to lifting sunday, for the begining of my 8 week meet prep