A Middle Aged Adolescent (who cannot possibly be the only one)

[Nunedog]

(from above)

Maybe Maral Javadifar has a more sophisticated screening up her sleeve. However, if she’s going to try to impress us in any more videos, we’re going to have to see some quantitative descriptions of the performances she’s optimized. Nobody is providing this kind of narrative, on the pro, college, or high school levels, on how a movement screening called for a special program which in turn led to vastly improved performance. It’s also been difficult to find any statistics on improvements in strength, speed, or vertical jumps from all these sports centers that boast about training them. The silence is getting deafening.
Javadifar was an accounting major who elected to pursue physical therapy instead. It’s like she bagged a hard math class ‘in favor of something more fashionable.’

4-Day Split (8, 5, & 2 and TM rotation)
Weeks of: 12/23 - 12/30/19 5&2 TM week
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x5*) Tom 405 JC 167.5
2. Romanian deadlifts: 4 sets of 6 reps Tom 365x2, 367.5x2 JC 170
3. Power Cleans (3x3) light JC 75 - 95
3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485 - 535
4. reverse hypers (3x10)
5. abs; banded pulldowns

TUESDAY
1. Strict press: (5x5) Tom 152,5 JC 77.5
2. Bench press: 1 set of 2* (intensity) Tom 270 JC 120
3. Dips: 4 sets of 8 (20) or 4 sets of 5 wide grip bench Tom 230 JC 80
4. Hanging Rows: 5x5 vest, 25 lb db
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5

Conditioning (second session)
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

THURSDAY 12/26
Conditioning: swim 1 mile

TUESDAY 12/31
Conditioning
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0; (and six 50 yard runs)

THURSDAY, January 2
1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 2* reps Tom 495 JC 255
2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 445 JC 230
3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 5 sets, 3 reps Tom 365 bands JC 150
4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Press: (10 sets of 1) Tom 185 JC 87.5
2. Bench Press: [5x5*: (3x5*); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 247.5 JC 115
3. Pull ups (5x10)
4. 4 sets Lying Tricep Extensions or Band Press downs
5. (JC) Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
6. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
row 6000 meters

[Nunedog]

Dads have critical things to discuss when their 15 year old daughters start going out with boys. A recent development is that [Diana’s] new boyfriend seems to be a ‘pretty good dude,’ according to both my daughter and Diana’s Dad.
Dad and I were texting one night after the kids had all been hanging out. ‘I heard his stats,’ I typed.
He answered, ‘His bench is a little light, but his dead seems solid.’

We had been at their house for a Christmas party a week before. ‘Dad,’ my daughter gushed on the way home, ‘we were in the basement, and Diana was FaceTiming with a guy she just met. He plays football, so we looked him up on HUDL. He’s a junior, 230 pounds, and has a 415 squat and 500 deadlift.’
‘500 dead? No way.’
‘That’s what it said.’
A week later, when they were all at a pizza place in town, she hit him with precisely the question I dictated: ‘That 500 dead - was that a hex bar or a real deadlift?’
He was shocked that such a question would come unbidden from a young lady’s mouth. ‘A real deadlift,’ he insisted, ‘with a straight bar.’
It was at 11 o’clock, when everyone was home safe, that Diana’s Dad pointed out that The Dude’s bench was light. Dad played college ball and at 240 still sports a bench press approaching 400. He’s not much of a squatter or deadlifter, though. A 500 dead is ‘just silly,’ he texted.
‘What’s his bench?’
‘275.’
‘OK, so he’s a pretty normal kid after all,’ I wrote. ‘A 415 squat is still under double bodyweight - and I kind of want to see the 500, but at 230 it’s possible.’

The Winter Ball is about two weeks away, and my daughter has a date. He’s the friend of a friend and not (yet) the focus of any great love affair. ‘What do we know about this guy?’ I asked.
‘He got cut from a team. He’s kind of small, about my size.’
‘Bring him to the garage. We’ll make him dangerous.’
‘Not a chance.’

In keeping with these holiday reflections, it’s time for my New Year’s resolutions for 2020. The trends are all looking pretty good, so I’m hopeful for more improvement.

- Squat 470 and beyond; I finally reached 460, a previous max that eluded me for a long, long time. The slow grind with the 8-5-2’s has been instrumental.

-Deadlift 530 and beyond; I’ve pulled 525, and while an audience might have appreciated the heroic effort, the judges would have red-lighted my less-than-upright finish. Recently, I’ve hit 517.5 well, so the slow grind with a 3-2-1 rotation, a couple of back-off sets, and Romanian deads elsewhere remain the plan.

-Bench 315 and press 225; I’ve done 310 and 217.5, but this is where I have to crack the programming code better. I understand Andy Baker’s point that upper body progress is driven by the low gear of constant improvement in assistance exercises. I do this and it works, but I drive myself to burning out and regressing on the main lifts. Each new scheme works mainly to recover lost ground.
Baker has been advocating a ‘conjugate’ approach, which I should investigate.
I spent so much time pleading with the gods for a 300 bench a few years ago that now I fear I’m pushing my luck with the 315.

My final resolution - which is turning into an appeal to the Gods of Iron instead of an offering for all they’ve done - is to find a coaching gig. This is a damned lonely existence sometimes, having all this experience and not being able to reach the people for whom it could make a big difference.
I don’t see any easy solutions.
I know full well that the CrossFits and sports training centers across the region have no use for a classic strength training program. It doesn’t fit the business model of hiding behind the illusion of innovation and making bucks by ‘optimizing performance.’
The answer to this would be opening my garage as a small business - and the only thing that gives me any hope that two or three kids would drop by after school is the story (above) of Diana’s new boyfriend. Someone’s coaching him through some decent progressions somewhere, so some teenagers, few and far between, still recognize the value of old school training.
Then again, I’ve been through this before, when I was teaching Judo in various duty stations. It’s a TON of work finding one or two people who might or might not stick with you.

My wife has handed me a cocktail. It’s New Year’s Eve. I haven’t the slightest idea how I’ll reach some of these goals, but I suppose that’ll be 2020, figuring it out. Cheers.

4-Day Split (8&3, 5&2, 2&1 rotation)
Week of: 1/6/20 2&1 week & TM
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x2*) Tom 440 JC 175
2. Romanian deadlifts: 4 sets of 6 reps Tom 365x2, 367.5x2 chains JC 170
3. Power Cleans (3x3) light JC 75 - 95
3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485 - 535
4. reverse hypers (3x10)
5. abs; banded pulldowns

TUESDAY
1. Strict press: [5x5: (3x5); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 155 JC 77.5
2. Bench press: 1 set of 1 (intensity) Tom 280 JC 120
3. Dips: 4 sets of 8 (20) or 4 sets of 5 wide grip bench Tom 230 JC 82.5
4. Hanging Rows: 5x5 vest, 25 lb db
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
Conditioning (second session)
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

THURSDAY
1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 1* rep Tom 520 JC 250
2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 467.5 chains JC 220
3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 3x2* reps Tom 395 bands JC 155
4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Press: (10 sets of 1) Tom 187.5 JC 90
2. Bench Press: [5x2*: (3x2*); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 265 JC 120
3. Pull ups (5x10)
4. 4 sets Lying Tricep Extensions or Band Press downs
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
6. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
row 6000 meters

[Nunedog]

Former linebacker James Harrison’s thoughts on Patriots quarterback Tom Brady are nothing short of admiration, which is pretty surprising, considering what opposite types they represent. Brady is the quintessential tall, handsome, lanky quarterback, far more more cerebral than physical. Harrison was a monster, a physical specimen of unbridled strength and aggression, slow to come around to the ban on helmet to helmet hits, and not above making his own life difficult in various locker rooms. Harrison is best known as a Pittsburgh Steeler, a menacing beast in black, but he’s more of a journeyman than most people realize, undrafted out of college and overcoming a number of setbacks and team changes through the years - mainly by way of attaining ferocious strength and size in the weight room and playing with the intensity of someone with something to prove.
His personality led to an unceremonious exit from the Steelers near the end of the 2017 season. Three days afterward, he was picked up by the New England Patriots, who made use of him in their subsequent playoff and Super Bowl campaign.
Harrison is now a TV analyst on FOX Sports, and despite being all neck, traps, and triceps, as well as sporting a pair of bowling ball sized deltoids beneath his dress shirts, he’s a very insightful commentator. He’s also very laid back, not one to get spun up into the wild arguments that often erupt on air. In fact, the guys who do get spun up tend to behave themselves when Harrison is around.
On UNDISPUTED a year ago, when the subject of Tom Brady came up, Harrison told the story of his first practice with the Patriots and encountering Brady: ‘Believe me, I wanted to hate this dude with a passion. I get there, and it’s like . . . he’s the ultimate teammate . . . You know how you watch him, [thinking] he’s putting on a show . . . and the practice squad dude - [Brady’s] treating him like he’s been there 10, 12, 15 years . . . ‘
Already that day, which was seeing a full scale blizzard, some of the Patriots had been milling around the complex, not quite believing that practice would be outside. ‘Stop complaining,’ Brady commanded. ‘Let’s go,’ and he was the first out the door in a short sleeved jersey.
Harrison says that some days later, they wound up side by side in the locker room, when Brady was having an ankle taped. ‘Finally, I was like, ‘you know, I wanted to hate you when I got here.’’
Harrison says Brady just laughed. Harrison, the beast - and this is kind of touching - laughs as he tells the story, at himself and how Brady was so awesome.

These unguarded moments are as rare as they are revealing when it comes to the sentiments and personalities of the guys who play the game. This is particularly important at a time when the very idea of masculinity has come under attack. Star athletes who have already set a standard for one brand of manliness display yet another as they reveal themselves to be respectful, appreciative, and honest about the high regard in which they hold their peers. Those who are less manly, the guys ruled by toxic influences like hatred or jealousy, should look to these moments for inspiration.

The problem is that we see them so seldom. Most of the interviews or interactions with NFL players steer clear of spontaneity. We hear a lot of cliches about ‘stepping up’ against ‘formidable opponents,’ with the help of ‘selfless teammates.’ Brady in particular seems as reticent and careful in his movements as a member of the Royal Family.
In celebration of the league’s 100th birthday, the NFL Network has put together a series of shows about the ‘100 Best . . ‘ teams, games, moments, and finally, the 100 Best Players of the past 100 years. In hour-long episodes, the honorees are presented by position, and some of the stars being enshrined join the hosts for the occasion. The episode featuring quarterbacks included Tom Brady and Bret Favre, and each of them provided moments as candid as Harrison’s.

Brady starts off in his typically polite fashion. He’s become expert at being suitably honored and modest as praise is heaped upon him. However, the conversation, as steered by hosts Rich Eisen and Chris Collinsworth along with Patriots coach Bill Belichick, becomes specific and technical, and this draws Brady out. He’s happy to discuss the process of analyzing defensive schemes and the meetings in which he and Coach Belichick shaped their game plans. As far as Brady was concerned, the more information he could digest, the better.
The group is joined by Brett Favre for a review of his career, and then they all move on to discussing Peyton Manning, the next All-Time Greatest nominee. Things stay technical. Belichick explains that it’s one thing to understand a team’s game plan or the tendencies they’ve shown. Really, coaches have to anticipate how the opposing quarterback sees the field, which was a tremendous challenge when it came to preparing to play against Manning.
This compels Brady to share ‘one story I don’t think I’ve ever told.’ During one off-season, he went down to Tennessee to hang out with Manning, to work out and talk football, and came away with having learned a great deal, especially about baiting defenses. Manning, with the Colts at the time, used to throw to a tiny little pass pattern called a ‘dig,’ which was barely beyond the line of scrimmage. It was great for stealing a few yards when the defense had fanned much further out.
‘What if they cover that?’ Brady asked.
Manning explained that instead of a dig, he calls a ‘dag.’ The defense rushes in to cover that shallow route, and the receiver veers off into the zone that’s left open.
Brady clearly loves talking shop. ‘One other great thing I took,’ he goes on, was a ‘counter-hot protection,’ or a ‘trap pass,’ in which the offense pulls the center or one of the guards to one side as the quarterback fakes a hand-off. This is ‘play-action,’ where the defense momentarily thinks the play is a run. The offensive lineman on the move makes it all the more convincing. This allows the tight end, whom the other team figures must be blocking, to escape. In reality, the tight end is running a pattern, and more often than not, he’s going to catch a pass before the defense realizes what he’s up to. Rob Gronkowski, the Patriots’ star tight end, who’s also named to the Top 100 All-Time Greatest team, ‘had about 50 percent of his offensive production,’ from a scheme that Brady picked up while drinking beers with Manning.

Brett Favre, who’s not been burdened with the role of American prince, takes less time to loosen up than Brady. Still, I think he struggles to explain what is at heart an easy concept to understand. In this discussion and in other interviews I’ve seen, he’s quick to admit, ‘Maybe there are a lot of passes I shouldn’t have thrown.’ He’s referring to the great many interceptions and seemingly careless mistakes he made along the way.
Maybe he’s being defensive, but it’s about time he comes right out and says, ‘It’s all good,’ - because
1. the game was such a sheer joy that sometimes winning or losing was beside the point - and -
2. the outrageous successes he did have actually depended upon that level of risk taking.
Folks would understand.
Favre also sheds some light on the dramatic December 22, 2003 Monday Night game he played against the Oakland Raiders a day after his father died of a heart attack. Not playing was not an option, he informed his Packer teammates at a meeting. His father would demand it.
‘By far, the most pressure I ever felt to perform was that night,’ he told Brady and the others. ‘I wanted to honor him.’
A nation tuned in to see what would happen, and even Raider fans in the Oakland Coliseum showed their support as Favre went on to play the game of a lifetime, throwing for 399 yards and four touchdowns as the Packers thrashed the Raiders 41-7.

What people forget in this story of Favre throwing all these incredible passes is that somebody had to catch them. This brings to mind two more honest moments I would love to have witnessed. The first was as the game approached and Favre had made his promise to the team. The ends and wide receivers must have gathered privately. ‘Guys, this is for real. Whatever happens - whatever he puts up, we have to bring it down.’
The focus stayed on Favre throughout the game. His wife joined him at the sideline near the end, and holding her hand he addressed the dozens of cameras that crowded in after the whistle.
The second moment is in the tunnel leading to the locker room afterward, I imagine, as that same group gathered once more. ‘Everybody good?’
A few ‘yeah’s are heard, but otherwise it’s nods and fist bumps. ‘Nice job, boys.’
Other Packers are passing them in the tunnel as they stand aside. Favre is still being interviewed.
‘All right. That’s cool. Let’s go.’

[Nunedog]

4-Day Split (8&3, 5&2, 2&1 rotation)
Week of: 1/13/20 8&3 TM week
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x8*) Tom 370 JC : 147.5
2. Romanian deadlifts: 4 sets of 6 reps Tom 365, 367.5x3 chains JC 170
3. Power Cleans (3x3) 75 - 95 JC
3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485 - 535
4. reverse hypers (3x10)
5. abs; banded pulldowns

TUESDAY
1. Strict press: [5x5: (3x5); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 157.5 JC 77.5
2. Bench press: 1 set of 3* (intensity) Tom 262.5 JC 112.5
3. Dips: 4 sets of 8 (20) or 4 sets of 5 wide grip bench Tom 230 JC 85
4. Hanging Rows: 5x5 vest, 25 lb db
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5

Conditioning (second session)
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

THURSDAY
1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 3* reps Tom 472.5 JC 247.5
2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 425 JC 220
3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 4 sets of 6 Tom 332.5 JC 132.5 BANDS
4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Press: (10 sets of 1) Tom 190 JC 90
2. Bench Press: [5x8*: (3x8*); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 232.5 JC 97.5
3. Pull ups (5 sets of 10 reps)
4. 4 sets Lying Tricep Extensions or Band Press downs
5 Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5 JC
6. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
swim 1 mile

[Nunedog]

A messy problem requires clear thinking.
My squats in the past month have been a good news - bad news story, and a slight change to the program is in order, though I hate to tinker with something that’s worked so well.

So, yeah . . . I got that 460 max a month ago, a big milestone in my life . . . but then right before Christmas my 5’s with 405 went 5, 5, 4, as cell phone video showed me fighting the weight at the bottom, at the expense of depth and stretch reflex . . . Then it was time for a week off, the break I take every quarter . . . My 440 for doubles the first week back were only singles . . . Was I burnt but then not sharp after a week off? . . . Lots of stuff is going on.

This includes my first day back at the top of the order, my 8’s this past Monday. The sets with 370 were murderously, lung-suckingly brutal. For days afterward I was sore, but worse, I couldn’t continue the workout in any real sense that day. I had so depleted myself that my greatest desire was to go to sleep. I should have marched straight into the house, knocked back a meal, and then returned a few hours later when I was somewhat recovered, but instead I pushed through a much reduced round of Romanians and shrugs, which was stupid. The second half of the workout was a loss.
Even though I got the reps, the 8’s are doing more harm than good.

First of all, I owe Andy Baker a beer. His 8-5-2 routine has worked beautifully, allowing me to creep steadily upward for months, increasing the weight by 2.5 pounds for each new week of 8, 5, or 2. This is what got me the 460. About two months ago, when that football coach blew off my offer of assistance, I had my wife film one of my 5’s with 400, which I angrily threw up on Facebook and dared any football coaches, trainers at the local sports institutes, or other 55 year-olds to match. Baker made that possible. The routine works so well that the 8’s have become heavy enough to kill me.

I’m going to tackle the problem of the 8’s first, which will require some precise thinking - and which, I must confess, did not take place immediately. The first impulse was to cast around for a solution, a ready made template that has already taken every training variable into consideration. Not finding any, I’m forced to grapple with the underlying principles, identifying the factors that 8’s and their weight bring to my training. The plan is to seize upon what’s good, eliminate what’s bad, and continue with general awesomeness.

The 5’s and 2’s in this rotation are no joke, either. The 2’s can be real grinds, which make the switch from 440 to 370 feel great. Mentally, I can reprogram my brain with speed and depth, and physically it’s a de-load. This might be more important than I’ve realized, a function of my age or how close to my limit I’m operating - or both.
The downside to 8’s has become apparent in recent months. The problems didn’t show up back when the weight was 330, but now the ratio between 370 and my weighing 208 is pretty steep, making this more a test of will power than a means of training. In the long term, I’m sore for two or three days after the 8’s. In the workout, during the sets themselves, my form has been breaking down in reps 7 and 8. When my lungs are heaving, either because I’m gasping for oxygen or trying to expel carbon dioxide, I can’t hold my chest up. I pitch forward and end up fighting a lift that’s more difficult than it should be. Also, it’s harder to hold my breath all the way through the rep. If I bleed the valve a little bit - allowing a grunt on the way up - that’s a great way to give myself a nasty exertion headache.
The surprising lesson in all of this has been the difference that 3 reps make - I guess because 370 is so close to 400 or 405, my honest 5’s range. I can pretty much throw around a set of 5 with 370, but if I venture beyond that, the warranty on my energy stores is expired.

In the article “Bad Advice About Higher Reps,” and the recent podcast, MUSCLE FOR LIFE with Mike Matthews: ‘ Mark Rippetoe on Effective Workout Programming’, in which Rip displays remarkable patience with the interviewer’s short attention span, he explains the idea of task specificity in strength training. It’s the load that comes with a heavy set of 5 and consequently the force production you muster that train your absolute strength. A set of 8 can’t be done with enough weight to build strength.
Additionally, extra reps in a set only get you fatigued. Your form breaks down, and the only thing those last two or three reps are doing is ‘feeling like shit.’ They’re not earning you anything, particularly strength, as a reward for gutting them out.
That’s something to wrap one’s mind around. In the podcast, Rip and Matthews talk about the mental constructs, ‘penance’ or otherwise, that drive people to extremes in the gym. For my part, I used to think, ‘8’s with 365 mean I can handle 5’s with 400.’ It seems proportional, but different physiological factors are in play.

If the 8-5-2 was working so well, then what was happening? Was I hitting heavy week, heavy week, and then de-load?
That must be it. I was getting speed and depth, along with some break from the demands of high force production. The 8’s were at 80 percent of max, which is not insignificant, only 7 or 8 percent away from my honest 5’s.
So, what do I do? The weight is right, the week to week timing works, BUT I’ll have to change the rep counts and drop to 5’s, to reap the benefits and avoid misery. Still, 3 sets of 5 with 370 would be too easy compared to the next week’s 3 by 5 with 405; that might be too much of a de-load. My initial solution is to hit 5x5, which would put me back in the same volume range - and maybe the growing problem wasn’t the volume so much as it was the rep scheme.
I can pull out this line, [5x5: (3x5); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] which I use elsewhere. It means I’d drop 5 or 10 percent for the last two sets if the first three prove rough. Further down the line, if things don’t improve on the 5’s and 2’s, I can make other volume adjustments.
I was on a slow and steady ride. I want to get back on.

4-Day Split (8, 5, & 2 and TM rotation)
Week of: 1/20/20 5&2 TM week
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x5*) Tom 405 JC 167.5
2. Romanian deadlifts: 4 sets of 6 reps Tom 365, 367.5x3 JC 172.5
3. Power Cleans (3x3) light JC 75 - 95
3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485 - 535
4. reverse hypers (3x10)
5. abs; banded pulldowns

TUESDAY
1. Strict press: [5x5: (3x5); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 160 JC 80
2. Bench press: 1 set of 2* (intensity) Tom 272.5 JC 122.5
3. Dips: 4 sets of 8 (20) or 4 sets of 5 wide grip bench Tom 232.5 JC 80
4. Hanging Rows: 5x5 vest, 25 lb db
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
Conditioning (second session)
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

THURSDAY
1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 2* reps Tom 497.5 JC 255
2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 447.5 JC 230
3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 5 sets, 3 reps Tom 365 bands JC 150
4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Press: (10 sets of 1) Tom 192.5 JC 87.5
2. Bench Press: [5x5*: (3x5*); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 250 JC 117.5
3. Pull ups (5x10)
4. 4 sets Lying Tricep Extensions or narrow grip floor press
5. (JC) Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
6. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
swim 1 mile

[Nunedog]

The sets of 5 with 405 in the squat went very well this week, nice and low and fast, with a spring out of the bottom each time. I was sucking a little air before my fifth reps, but it was nothing like the gasping misery a week before. This has become food for further thought about those 8’s and programming in general, making me reconsider how I might set up what I’ve realized is a de-load week.

First, a brief update: I wrote a few weeks ago about romance being in the air for my 15 year old daughter and her gang as the Winter Ball approached. My kid’s date was the friend of a friend, the only option at the time. He was perfectly nice, and they had a great time with the whole crowd, but in the weeks leading up to the big night, he had gotten himself a girlfriend, who, my daughter noticed as I drove them home afterward, was texting him long, pleading paragraphs full of red heart emojis. ‘Hang on,’ he was trying to type on the sly. ‘I’m almost home.’
At the dance, though, was another young fellow who wasn’t terribly attached to his date, either. He and my daughter got to talking and in a few days made plans to hang out on a Saturday afternoon. I drove her down to Georgetown.
They bummed around, checking out a few stores, and then had burgers somewhere. He’s planning to try out for the rugby team, he told her, but he’s ‘stressing out’ over one thing: for the varsity, he has to be able to squat 170 pounds. That’s miles away.
She played it cool, because she likes him - so she definitely didn’t mention that she can hit 175 for 5’s.

Horrible as my 8’s might have been a week before, and counterproductive to the rest of the workout that day, they did seem to do the trick in preparing me for the 5’s with real training weight. I got to practice some decent speed and depth as well as allow myself either more recovery or less stress in the adaptation cycle.
Long story short - the extra reps are no longer worth the effort, and this is where I ended last week. I’m not sure I’ve found the ideal solution for making the most of a de-load week, however. That’s not an oxymoron; de-loads are not simply rest.

To repeat a description I’ve made in months past, the stress-recovery-adaptation cycle in a strength training program is a heightened metabolic workload, a task that comes in addition to the body’s providing for the rest of its day to day life. It’s like when you’ve broken a bone: your body has to go to additional lengths - and specific lengths - to heal the injury in the correct order. I’ve said in another example that strength training is not just a haphazard accumulation of stones to make a big pile. It’s the careful arrangement of those stones into a stable, smooth sided pyramid.
The whole trick in programming, therefore, is to match the delivery of stones to the builder’s rate of progress. You have to find the right blend of intensity and timing to match where you are on the strength training trajectory. (see PPST3 p. 7, Mark Rippetoe)
It’s like determining the slope of the line on that part of the curve, where intensity and timing are the ‘rise over the run,’ as we say in Math class. (see Calculus, 17th Century, Sir Isaac Newton)

My realization last week was that a comparative de-load is a part of my ‘rise.’ For months, I had no idea that my 8’s mainly represented a break. When it comes to strength, as God told Moses on Mt. Sinai, real training only occurs at weights that make for honest 5’s - but the 8’s were not nothing. Light as they might have been, they were still enough to spur some degree of stress, recovery, and adaptation.
Later that week, after the 8’s had trashed my Romanians, conventional deadlifts came on Thursday. As I warmed up, the weights felt heavy. The 472.5 for 3 was harder than it would have been had I hit my Romanians on Monday. You’d think I’d be rested; instead I had gotten out of tune. I had not pushed the S-R-A cycle along.

Now I’m back to the question of what to do with my 8’s in the 8-5-2 rotation. I’ll drop the three sets to 5 reps, per God and Moses. Since that might be too little work with that lesser weight, I revised the plan to 5x5, which gets me back up to the previous level of volume.
Another thought occurred to me. When I would take a week off every three months, it usually wasn’t a full week out of the weight room. On Thursday or Friday, I would warm up each of the Big Four Lifts and hit one or two reps of the following week’s loads in the working sets. Physically, this didn’t cost me anything, and the neurological stimulation, reminding the nervous system of the amount of bandwidth it had to keep recruiting, was valuable.
In fact, it’s essential. I’ve seen this somewhere around here: if you’re lacking time or the juice for a full workout, go to the loads you planned and just hit a few reps. You’ll get far more out of the neurological stimulation of real weights than you would fooling around with light sets.
So wait a minute: if I can hit a single or double with a strength-level weight when I’m wrecked, then the reverse is true, or at least it is during my vacation weeks: I can hit that single without exacting a massive physical toll.
This is what the new ‘8’ week would look like: I hit 5 with 80% of max, (which was 8’s territory, 370/460) getting good speed and depth, and then I can go to a single or two with 90%, practicing speed and depth with big league weights. (90% of 460 is 415. My 5’s at 405 represent 88%.)
The update to De-load Week looks like this: SQUAT 80%x5 reps, 90%x1, 90x1, 80x5, 80x5
I hope that’s the best of both worlds.

4-Day Split (DL&3, 5&2, 2&1 rotation)
Week of: 1/27/20 2&1 week & TM
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x2*) Tom 440 JC 175
2. Romanian deadlifts: 4 sets of 5 reps Tom 367.5 chains JC 175
3. Power Cleans (3x3) light JC 75 - 95
3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485 - 535
4. reverse hypers (3x10)
5. abs; banded pulldowns

TUESDAY
1. Strict press: [5x5: (3x5); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 162.5 JC 80
2. Bench press: 1 set of 1 (intensity) Tom 282.5 JC 120
3. Dips: 4 sets of 8 (20) or 4 sets of 5 wide grip bench Tom 232.5 JC 82.5
4. Hanging Rows: 5x5 vest, 25 lb db
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
Conditioning (second session)
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

THURSDAY
1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 1* rep Tom 522.5 JC 240
2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 470 chains JC 220
3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 3x2* reps Tom 395 bands JC 155
4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Press: (10 sets of 1) Tom 195 JC 90
2. Bench Press: [5x2*: (3x2*); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 267.5 JC 120
3. Pull ups (5x10)
4. 4 sets Lying Tricep Extensions or Band Press downs
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
6. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
row 6000 meters

[Nunedog]

An important part of my Tuesday routine is something I don’t write down on my schedule. It’s in my second session, after the sled pull and during the six 50-yard dashes in my driveway: I give my next door neighbor’s dog a good thrashing. By that I mean some good wrestling matches or tugs-of-war between my runs. The poor thing doesn’t get any action otherwise.
The neighbors’ house is at the end of a long driveway we share. Our yard is along one side. It’s a slight hill, so I launch my runs from the bottom up, which means I start right at the property line. Really, if I stand around a bit between the runs, I’m on their property, inside [Marley] the Dog’s electric fence line, so that’s when he comes up and wants to rumble.

The ability to take off on a good, hard sprint is a skill I wanted to maintain even after I ended my long distance career. It’s a fundamental athletic competency, being able to pick up one’s legs and drive with them forcibly and rapidly. Churning the arms brings foot speed, and controlling the incline in one’s upper body - or really, easing your center of gravity fore and aft over your toes, is what delineates acceleration versus cruising.
After a half hour sled pull, however, it takes three or four of these 50-yard dashes to get up to sprint speed. That must be something neurological, the cadence and stride length I had been drilling into my brain. My first run is practically slow motion. From there things loosen up to where I’m booking along.

Marley is a Goldendoodle, an expensive, ‘designer’ cross between a Golden Retriever and a Poodle, bred for their sunny dispositions, tendency not to shed hair, and sheer beauty. Marley’s blonde, curly locks would be the envy of any teenaged girl. His presence next door makes perfect sense: the parents are both highly successful professionals, the kids head off to a private school in DC every day, and a nanny takes care of all the daily operations, getting the kids from school and off to their activities before everyone gets home after dark. Poor old Marley, aside from being a handsome accoutrement, doesn’t seem to have much going on. He just lies around in his end of the driveway, which tugs at my heart every time I see him. We’re in the neighborhood that became famous some years ago when the police arrested a set of parents who had let their kids walk home from a park unsupervised, so there’s no way any neighbor would allow their kids or dogs to run free - and Marley has no visitors all day.

In the 1970’s, when kids and dogs roamed block to block through yards and over stonewalls and fences, we had a German Shepherd named Max who chased tennis balls, ran alongside as we rode our bikes, and sauntered around the neighborhood like a lion on the savanna. When we played basketball in the driveway, we could toss the ball to Max, who’d leap up and bite at it, knocking it right back. One time she lost one of her tags, so her collar no longer jingled as she moved. As a result, she murdered about 427 squirrels in the span of a month. Those were the days when you had to send away to the state for the dog’s license or tear off the side of a MilkBone box and fill out the cardboard form to get a name tag. Everyday I’d come home from school, and my Mom would say, ‘There’s a squirrel in the front yard,’ which meant I had to go to the garage, get a shovel, and then bury the mangled corpse in the woods, which was filling up with tiny mounds of freshly turned over dirt. Max died one Christmas break when I was in college, and the entire neighborhood turned out. One woman we had never met said that for some months she had taken care of her terminally ill mother. Max would come over in the mornings, when all the kids were in school, scratch at the door, run upstairs, and lie beside the mother for a while. We had no idea.

‘Oh, don’t jump,’ the owners scold Marley in voices tinged with apology whenever I’m at their place or we’re all out in the driveway.
‘Don’t worry,’ I’d say. ‘I can handle ol’ Marley.’ I bend over to pet him, whack him in the shoulder, spin him around, and club him with my forearms, so he has something to bite. He’s so happy he doesn’t know what to do.
On Tuesdays, I have to keep an eye out for a good, thick stick for some fetch or tug of war - which is what he really likes. We used to play keep away, where I would chase him or we’d run at one another and each drop into the shake, priming to spring one way or the other as he tried to fake me out. One day I got hold of the stick as he darted past, and as we heaved back and forth, he let fly that steady growl dogs make when they’ve clamped down and won’t let go. That was probably the first time Marley had ever growled in his life, and that a Goldendoodle actually can growl would have been news to his owners and breeders.
Sometimes I sling him from side to side, and others I let him win, which is when he struts around with his head held high. ‘See that?’ is his message. ‘That’s how that goes.’ In a few moments he’d bring the stick back toward my hand. ‘I dare you. Try again.’
‘You’re an apex predator, Marley,’ I tell him. I hope that when he dreams, some instinct takes him to the frozen wastes of the Yukon, where he’s part of the clear, starry nights and hears the lonesome howls in the distance.

4-Day Split (DL&3, 5&2, 2&1 rotation)
Week of: 2/3/20 De-load &3 TM week
MONDAY
1. Squat (5,1,1,5,5 @80, 90, 90, 80, 80%) Tom 370, 415 JC : 147.5, 175
2. Romanian deadlifts: 4 sets of 6 reps Tom 367.5x3, 370 chains JC 175
3. Power Cleans (3x3) 75 - 95 JC
3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485 - 535
4. reverse hypers (3x10)
5. abs; banded pulldowns

TUESDAY
1. Strict press: [5x5: (3x5); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 165 JC 82.5
2. Bench press: 1 set of 3* (intensity) Tom 265 JC 115
3. Dips: 4 sets of 8 (20) or 4 sets of 5 wide grip bench Tom 235 JC 85
4. Hanging Rows: 5x5 vest, 25 lb db
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5

Conditioning (second session)
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

THURSDAY
1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 3* reps Tom 475 JC 240
2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 427.5 JC 220
3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 4 sets of 5 Tom 332.5 JC 132.5 BANDS
4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Press: (10 sets of 1) Tom 197.5 JC 90
2. Bench Press: (5,1,1,5,5 @80, 90, 90, 80, 80%) Tom 240, 270 JC 112.5, 126
3. Pull ups (5 sets of 10 reps)
4. 4 sets Lying Tricep Extensions or Band Press downs
5 Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5 JC
6. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
swim 1 mile

[Nunedog]

It’s important every once in a while to try an experience that takes you away from your regular life, an opportunity I had over Super Bowl weekend by way of a Christmas gift from my wife. I’ve tossed around the term ‘blacksmithing’ before, usually when making the point that strength training in my garage is my means of creating a strenuous, challenging focus in life. However, I took a two day class in honest to God blacksmithing at an actual forge, which was great fun in its own right, but I also came away with a deeper appreciation for skills and ingenuity I had barely known about.

‘Hey,’ I said to the guy at the forge next to mine, ’you ever see those old films of guys at construction sites chucking hot rivets to one another?’
‘Yeah. That’s bad-ass.’ We were heating the ends of 3/8-inch rods, not just to red-hot but bright yellow-hot (white is too much) to pound it into a squared quarter-inch shape. We turned hand cranks to draw air through the coal in our fire pits, which takes a minute or two to create the roar of 2000-degree yellow or white-hot heat that gets the iron hot enough to hammer. Throwing this stuff around would be no joke. Still, generations of ironworkers and shipbuilders did it with remarkable skill, drawing the yellow-hot rivet out of a furnace and swinging the tongs casually - with fantastic accuracy - to send the rivet up a few stories to a guy who’d catch it most often in a bucket, or sometimes in his gloved hands, turning to drop it for the riveters to ram into place.
It wasn’t just guys. The Rosie the Riveters in World War Two chucked hot iron around shipyards with the best of them. In one film, a young, sweet thing clad in overalls pulls a glowing rivet out of the furnace and holds it to her face so she and a sailor can light their smokes. This was an era when people weren’t just allowed - they were expected - to be tough, moving with cool assurance in close proximity to danger. It’s funny that this class was taking place on Super Bowl weekend; nowadays we have to look to special events to find displays of physical daring. I’ve been watching films of the ironworkers of our great-grandparents’ generation as they built skyscrapers and displayed that sort of courage everyday. They climbed up or slid down giant steel beams 20 or 30 feet at a time, pinch gripping the edges, untethered, 50 stories above the ground.

A basic blacksmithing class is not quite so dramatic. The most important skill is learning how to manage the fire in your forge. We were a class of eight, each with a forge we had to light and keep working. This was my first contact with coal, which I found fascinating. Coal turns into coke once its volatile components have been burned off. In fact, the smoke from coal is really from these components disappearing pretty early in the process; the coke left burning in the fire pit is a smoke free, pure carbon product that yields a phenomenal amount of heat for a long time.
The idea is to keep a bank of the fingertip sized lumps of coal around the edges of the sloping sides of the fire pit. The actively burning coke has to be stirred every so often to allow for air flow. You also have to keep an eye out for lumps of clinker, which is an aggregate of noncombustible impurities. They’re metallic looking and more jagged than the usual clusters of coke, but they can show up in the middle of things and cool a fire down substantially.
I kept thinking of locomotives and steamships. Part of the job in the engine room was stoking the fire, which was managing the air flow through the coke. They were not simply shoveling more coal into the furnaces. It’s surprisingly energy efficient, which is not how people feel, at least politically, about coal nowadays. That kind of fire can boil a lot of steam and push the empire across a continent or an ocean.

The elementary blacksmithing skills come very quickly. We started with a J-hook, hammering five or six inches of round stock into a squared shape, tapering the end into a point - which would be an ice-pick murder weapon if we didn’t ‘pigtail’ or twirl the tip in on itself. We formed the hook around the horn of the anvil, cut the top end of the hook from the rod where our squared stock ended, pounded out a tab at the top end, and punched a hole for the nail that would attach it to the wall. All of this involved a great many rounds of heating and hammering. As a class we carefully followed the instructor’s lead the first time around. Once we were done, he said, ‘Make another one. You’re on your own.’ It was surprisingly easy and fast the second time.
I was struck by the practical ingenuity involved. ‘Be sure to let the iron heat to a nice yellow,’ the instructor said, ‘so it handles like butter.’ Beginners tend to let things heat up only to about orange, and then they work too hard. ‘Also,’ the instructor pointed out, ‘in forming your square stock, you only have to hit the rod on two sides. Strike it on top, turn your wrist 90 degrees, and strike the side. Every time you hit this with a hammer, the anvil is hitting it with equal force from below. The anvil takes care of the last two sides of the square.’
We made S-hooks, which the instructor explained were vital in an 18th Century kitchen. Imagine that in a great hearth, various pots are hanging above the fire as dinner cooks. If one item has to cook in greater heat than the others, then the solution is to add S-hooks, making a chain that lowers that particular pot closer to the flames. ‘For centuries,’ the instructor said as he held up an S-hook, which had been pigtailed and twisted for some degree of style, ‘this was a thermostat.’

People who get into blacksmithing sometimes create Facebook pages or entries on Etsy to sell their work. Customers like the authenticity of items that have been visibly pounded into shape. I’m won over by the process itself. We did more advanced projects on the second day; mine was a flesh fork, a heavy duty two-tined piece for handling a heavy roast as it cooks. This comes from a 3/4-inch wide tab of steel that’s probably 1/8 of an inch thick. The bottom inch and a half is heated and split at the center. The two tails are then hammered outward to form a ’T.’ Of course, this takes multiple rounds of heating the metal, taking it to the anvil in a set of tongs, and hammering as the yellow glow disappears. The tails are then tapered into long points, after which much of the lower end of the whole tab is heated - and you’ll have to dip one point and then the other in water, to cool them when things get yellow. Thin metal can overheat and burn or break.
The ’T’ is placed upside down on the horn of the anvil, and with just a few taps, the long tapered points are bent around the horn, making two tines with surprisingly elegant curves. If only customers could see what mangled messes their forks were until the very end.

I suppose I lift weights because I don’t have a lot of practical manipulation of the physical world in my life otherwise. It was a great weekend, learning something about the fire and finesse with which things are forged - a topic I always try to write about, anyway.

4-Day Split (8, 5, & 2 and TM rotation)
Week of: 2/10/20 5&2 TM week
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x5*) Tom 407.5 JC 160
2. Romanian deadlifts: 4 sets of 6 reps Tom 367.5x2, 370x2 JC 172.5
3. Power Cleans (3x3) light JC 75 - 95
3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485 - 535
4. reverse hypers (3x10)
5. abs; banded pulldowns

TUESDAY
1. Strict press: [5x5: (3x5); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 167.5 JC 82.5
2. Bench press: 1 set of 2* (intensity) Tom 275 JC 125
3. Dips: 4 sets of 8 (20) or 4 sets of 5 wide grip bench Tom 235 JC 85
4. Hanging Rows: 5x5 vest, 25 lb db
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
Conditioning (second session)
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

THURSDAY
1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 2* reps Tom 500 JC 240
2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 450 JC 230
3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 5 sets, 3 reps Tom 367.5 bands JC 145
4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Press: (10 sets of 1) Tom 200 JC 87.5
2. Bench Press: [5x5*: (3x5*); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 252.5 JC 117.5
3. Pull ups (5x10)
4. 4 sets Lying Tricep Extensions or narrow grip partial bench press
5. (JC) Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
6. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
row 6000 meters

[Nunedog]

I never held out a great deal of hope that my daughter’s school would establish any real kind of strength program. It’s a great place, a top tier girls’ Catholic school but a bit fancy-pants, drawing from a pretty fast DC crowd. During morning drop-offs, the driveway is crowded with black Cadillac SUV’s and Range Rovers. When special events are held at the gym, I stick my head in the weight room, only to be disappointed as usual to see machines, bosu balls, and dozens of colorful stretchy surgical tubes with handles on both ends. On the school website, the Athletics section showcases ‘Training’ with a photograph of a student holding tiny dumbbells and stepping up on a plastic molded aerobics step.
Some years ago, when we first enrolled, a golf tournament was held to raise money for the weight room. ‘Hey, I can help if you’re wondering how to outfit the place,’ I said to the head of the committee.
He wasn’t interested. They already had plans. That was four years ago.

‘Dad, the championship hockey game is tonight, at six o’clock. Everybody’s going. I have to have a costume.’
I had just plucked her from the pick-up line on Friday afternoon. ‘Cool. How are you getting there?’
‘You’re taking me.’
‘There’s no carpool?’
No - for various reasons. One nearby pal on the hockey team was long gone on the bus. My kid was furiously typing on her phone. ‘[Carolyn] doesn’t have a costume for me. Can I wear your gold sequined jacket?’
(That’s a story for another day.) ’Sure.’
Above that she’d wear a three-cornered pirate’s hat complete with Captain Jack Sparrow’s long, black dreadlocks spilling out the back.
‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘Seriously, you want me to drive all that way in the middle of rush hour? You know we’d have to leave almost an hour ahead of time.’
‘OK.’
‘Then I’m not going to drive back and forth all night. I’ll stay for the game.’

As my daughter bounded up the bleachers packed with rowdy, costumed kids, I worked my way further down the glass, past the Zamboni port, and stood with the parents and teachers near one of the goals.
Our team killed the other in a beating that started first thing, due in large part to one superstar player. Already labeled an ‘elite prospect’ in a WASHINGTON POST profile, this girl moves at least twice as fast as everybody else on the ice, her hips low and legs bent and driving in long, powerful strokes. Watching her catch hold of the puck - and even the sound her skates make cutting into the ice as she swoops past - call to mind a jet taking off. It’s hard to tell what’s more impressive, that or the collective gasp in the crowd as she charges up the ice.
Every summer she heads off to Europe to train at a boys’ camp run by NHL and international players. During face-offs, even as she’s knocked the puck back to a teammate, she darts across the circle and runs her non-stick-side leg deep between her opponent’s legs, high-centering the kid with her hips and rendering them unable to move at all. That’s how she can steal the puck on the fly as well, merging with an opposing player even at full speed, getting in between them and their own stick, and then suddenly veering away with the puck, leaving them empty handed and shocked by the robbery in broad daylight.
In the second period, the other team’s goalie was at our end, where all the parents and teachers stood. Soon enough, our girl came roaring up the ice. The other team was well coached, from the standpoint that they closed ranks to protect their goalie.
Our girl deked the first defender, sending the puck between her feet and slanting up to the right side. However, cutting right to pick it up, she ran into a crowd of defenders that lunged and flailed their sticks after her. This took her legs out from underneath - yet while diving through the air she managed to shovel the puck up and over the goalie’s shoulder with the back bottom corner of her stick blade. (She’s a lefty.)
The crowd screamed. Even the parents pounded the glass. Had somebody captured the moment on video, it would have made SPORTSCENTER.

The most important statistic to consider is that she scored only four of the team’s eight goals, where the year before she had scored seven of the team’s eight in the championship. She could have scored 20 the other night if she wanted, but interestingly, she visibly backed off now and then, passing to her teammates, letting them lead the charge, and covered for defenders who pushed forward.
This has created a Michael Jordan effect, an elevation of all her teammates’ abilities. Girls’ Hockey is a relatively new addition to interscholastic sports, so not everyone has years of youth league experience. However, with this one incredible teammate, the girls have seen what’s possible, and even if they’re not the best skaters or puck handlers in the world, they’re scrapping in the corners as hard as they can.
If they’re going to take the sport that seriously, I figured, then the school should return the favor.

As the buzzer sounded, the team’s sticks and gloves all flew into the air as the players rushed into a giant scrum to celebrate. I turned to the Head of the Upper School, who stood beside me at the glass. ‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘If you ever want to start a serious strength training program for your athletes, I can help you do that.’
‘Really?’
‘That’s what I was doing in Cleveland, coaching high school kids in weight lifting.’
He turned and gestured to a younger fellow a few steps away. ‘This is the guy you want to talk to.’
I was facing a young, cool dude of about 30, a member of the athletic staff. If he was the one behind all the ‘core training’ and aerobic steps, he wasn’t going to enjoy this. ‘The school needs a barbell based strength training program, a real one,’ I said. ’Not prancing around with tiny dumbbells and wasting time.’
’Hell, yeah. You’re speaking my language,’ he said.
‘I see it in some of these girls, how they handle their sticks and try to make wrist shots. They need upper body strength.’
‘They need legs, too.’ He was speaking my language.
‘In Cleveland, I coached kids through novice linear progressions in a ten week preseason. My best boys boosted their squats and deads 100, 150 pounds, and my girls about 80 or 90.’
‘That’s cool. I’ve been keeping an eye out for used equipment, from colleges that are refitting their facilities. The problem is the administration. They’re not ready for real weights. I have to convince them.’
‘I can help you find information. I can help with a presentation.’
‘Awesome. The thing is, too, a lot of girls go to places like [Gullible Wannabe]’ - (a performance training center).
‘That’s wankery.’
‘I know.’
‘They’re not even lifting. We can crush them.’

He gave me a business card. E-mails have been exchanged, athletic directors copied. We’ll see.

4-Day Split (DL&3, 5&2, 2&1 rotation)
Week of: 2/17/20 2&1 week & TM
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x2*) Tom 442.5 JC 175
2. Romanian deadlifts: 4 sets of 5 reps Tom 367.5, 370x3 chains JC 175-180
3. Power Cleans (3x3) light JC 75 - 95
3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485 - 535
4. reverse hypers (3x10)
5. abs; banded pulldowns

TUESDAY
1. Strict press: [5x5: (3x5); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 167.5 JC 82.5
2. Bench press: 1 set of 1 (intensity) Tom 285 JC 120
3. Dips: 4 sets of 8 (20) or 4 sets of 5 wide grip bench Tom 237.5 JC 82.5
4. Hanging Rows: 5x5 vest, 25 lb db
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
Conditioning (second session)
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

THURSDAY
1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 1* rep Tom 525 JC 240
2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 472.5 chains JC 220
3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 3x2* reps Tom 397.5 bands JC 157.5
4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Press: (10 sets of 1) Tom 202.5 JC 90
2. Bench Press: [5x2*: (3x2*); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 270 JC 120
3. Pull ups (5x10)
4. 4 sets Lying Tricep Extensions or Band Press downs
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
6. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
swim 1 mile

[Nunedog]

Outside of strength training, which is to say out of the garage and down the little hill to my level side yard, where we put the mats, other pursuits are going well. Specifically, I mean the combatives, the hand to hand fighting skills I’m studying with a few other guys each weekend. We’ve actually blundered into a few important discoveries, one of which is how Judo is supposed to work.
I don’t think that’s overstating the case. Of the millions of people who have taken up Judo, I don’t imagine that a great many have had a chance to appreciate its truly ruthless power. It featured prominently in World War Two military training, especially among units that went to the trouble of extensive unarmed combat preparation, but I had to take History’s word for it as I searched nearly 20 years for exactly why. Then, unbidden on a Saturday morning some 10 years since I had last strapped on a gi, the answer tumbled out on a muddy blue mat under a sunny sky.

Judo is a fantastic art but a stupid sport, a claim I’ve made for a long time. Practicing its techniques and katas go a long way in learning about the structure and movement of the human body. To use a martial analogy, studying Judo is like being a combat engineer: once you understand how bridges and buildings are built, you know where to place the dynamite to bring them down.
The only problem with Judo is that you can’t do it. You can practice off-balancing, fitting, and throwing all day long, nailing down vital principles, but when it comes to pressure testing them in a match, they don’t work. People clamp their grips onto one another’s gi’s, and by steeling their arms and hunkering their bodyweight down they can thwart practically every one of their opponent’s movements. Judo matches by and large go nowhere; I can think of no other sport that has so little use for the fundamental skills its athletes practice. I would never leap out of a plane wearing a parachute with the same reliability as Judo training.
For YEARS - decades - that’s how Judo was taught - or not taught. You’d get into randori, Japanese for ‘free play,’ or essentially sparring, and try to surprise one another with techniques that became very clumsy under duress. It was comically pointless. For thousands of judoka, mounting frustration and the wear and tear from hard falls and muscling each other around made Brazilian Jiu Jitsu very attractive by comparison. Bursting on the scene 20 years ago, this was a sport that mercifully started on the ground and actually worked, even when an opponent was resisting. A generation of disillusioned Judo players climbed the fence and never looked back, and a second generation have gone straight to BJJ without giving Judo a thought.
A second piece of history is that any inroads made in solving the ‘stiff arms’ conundrum in Judo come from Russian Sambo. The rough story is that 100 or so years ago, a delegation of Russian athletes returned from a tournament in Japan disappointed in their performance. ‘Great art,’ they decided, ‘but a stupid sport - and we have to find a way to get past that rugby scrum that happens every time.’ Sambo has its own throws and its versions of Judo throws, but its entire premise is overcoming defenses. If Judo throws are target practice, then Sambo is kicking the door down and killing the bad guys.

After six months of trial and error, bashing at each other while dressed in armor, we’ve arrived at the same continuum others have no doubt discovered. Violent encounters - generally speaking - follow the same progression:
1. JOUSTING AT ARMS’ LENGTH: Yes, I mean to say boxing, but this can include all manner of pushing and shoving, brandishing a weapon, or pre-fight bowing up at one another. Swings are taken; the dance begins.
2. COLLISION: Sooner or later, the combatants will come together, whether somebody purposely grabs or charges, or they fall into one another by accident. The aim is to CRASH this moment effectively.
3. BREAKING STRUCTURE, LEVERAGE, AND POSITION: We used to call this ‘flanking,’ ‘getting to a reference position,’ or ‘clinch maneuvering,’ but the idea is that in very close quarters, after the collision or crash, this is a very broad category of absolutely chaotic head-locking, pulling, pushing, twisting, striking, and shoving. It’s stand-up grappling, where it’s very easy to spend enormous energy in a stalemate - if not wind up in worse circumstances.
It’s vital to understand what your objectives are and how to work to a position of advantage. Yes, this can be Jailhouse Rock or 52 Blocks territory when it comes to forearms or elbows to a guy’s chin, but what we’ve discovered, only after we had enough padding to practice, is that throwing knees changes everything. A well thrown knee comes out of nowhere and hits like a sawn-off 12-gauge.
4. TAKEDOWN: A good takedown is scientifically done and not an epic display of strength or fury. This is where the metaphor of the combat engineer blowing up the bridge comes into play. If you’re in a position of advantage, which is to say you have the leverage to displace the bad guy’s center of gravity and break his bodily structure, then that’s the spot to place the dynamite. The takedown becomes a comparatively easy shot. This is when the battle is at its most asymmetrical - and when the Judo, for example, can be at its most brutal.
5. GROUNDWORK: You can wind up here having done everything else right, or the brawl could have collapsed into a heap anywhere along the way. This is its own brand of battle, and the only way out is to immobilize a guy’s entire body with a hold, or immobilize one particular part, which you might have to damage to take him out of the fight.

Our approach is to study each of these phases in turn.
Caveats to the above:
1. A fight can begin or end at any point in the progression. If a bad guy bear hugs you, you’ve skipped to Step 3. If it’s a tackle, you’re on Step 5. A knockout can end either one of you any time, or either person can disengage when they get a chance and make a run for it.
2. Fights can skip steps or (very rarely) back up. A sloppy swing becomes a headlock and a tumble to the ground all at once; then you clamber back to your feet, grab a bottle, and start swinging all over again.

We’ve found two tactical advantages in all of this:
1. Each phase represents a juncture at which only certain principles apply. Boxers are going to want to stand and throw, Krav Maga guys swing elbows, or Judo guys and wrestlers grab and go - but the reality is that certain techniques only work at certain times.
2. Understanding these five phases goes a long way in developing situational awareness. The big lesson in the class where we all met last August was on the tunnel vision and panic that set in under duress. We’ve clobbered each other so many times by this point that we’re cooler under fire.
This awareness helps with the real tactical lesson here, the idea that you always want to be one step ahead of the other guy. For example, if he’s a better boxer than you are, then you want to crash while he’s still punching. That’s way more force than a punch, and you can either get away or flank him while he’s reeling.
If he’s got hold and is trying to sling you, but you can knock his center of gravity out from under him, then it’s time to hit him with the planet while he’s thinking of something else.

Conventional Judo is taught in a manner that lacks context. A typical throwing demonstration would illustrate that an athlete should draw their opponent off balance. Here, the instructor prevails upon a volunteer, who like a big, stiff tree tilts forward upon being tugged. The instructor fits into place against the volunteer’s body and then levers him the rest of the way over. If the person throwing can execute with some degree of efficiency and the person being thrown can take a proper breakfall, then all is well. The best technicians are taught to throw from their centers of gravity, similar to the manner in which a tennis stroke is a centered, whole bodied motion.
Still, these are tame and too easily read attempts at kuzushi, or off-balancing, to be effective.
The context that everyday Judo lacks is the massive amount of kinetic energy from a fight that has already begun. A fighter truly trained in Judo, one of those World War Two commandos, knows that in all the rock and roll the time for Judo comes a few phases down the line. Any technique he chooses is merely the simplest way to redirect all the force and speed at play into the ground. To use a weight room analogy, it’s like when you’ve just hit a power clean. You can pop the bar off your shoulders and let it fall, or you can slam it down to the ground as hard as you can. The throws are that easy, and you have that much time to make up your mind.
That was my discovery the other day, finally feeling the weightlessness and acceleration these throws are supposed to have.