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

[Nunedog]

Thank you, Jeff, for the kind words. I was hoping people would react that way. We all have quests in our life and people to acknowledge for the help they've rendered.

If you’re exhausted by this point, imagine how I felt not quite ten years ago: I didn’t really know if there was a place in the world for Corky’s old school brand of Judo, it was getting harder to drum up training partners, and I only had so much interest in what that multiple martial arts dude in Hawaii was up to.
Yeah, it’s a long, dry, technical story, much like my discovering all those things I didn’t know about strength training long, long ago.

7. THE GREAT BEYOND
According to the old friend who delivered the news, Corky ‘hadn’t been doing well’ since his wife of 71 years, Mary, died last August. Their reunion three weeks ago was no doubt epic and joyous as Mary greeted him restored to her tall, auburn, thoroughbred form. After a certain time, however, a certain restlessness no doubt settled in. Corky drummed his fingers and drew his breath but stayed on his best behavior. This would be over coffee in the kitchen; Corky was never without his coffee. He was perfectly willing to gaze lovingly into Mary’s eyes in the quiet, even if his mind was elsewhere.
‘Oh, go ahead,’ Mary finally said, the way she must have a thousand times back in Kodiak.
In an instant, he was out the door with the brand new gi that had been waiting for him, wondering only for a second, How did his ratty old black belt get here?
In the Great Dojo in the Sky, heads turned at his arrival. There they all were, stepping forward to greet him with bows or handshakes: EJ Harrison, Aida, Oda, Koizumi, Mifune, Dominy, those writers he studied so long ago.
Breathing menacingly, his eyes fierce behind his glasses, came Mikonosuke Kawaishi.
Corky had all his books. This was the Kawaishi who after the war finally made his way back from a prison camp in Manchuria, walked into the Kodokan, and promptly demanded, ‘What the Hell is going on here?’
‘This is the Judo the Americans want.’
‘Screw the Americans.’
‘You’re not in keeping with the spirit of the Kodokan.’
‘I’M not in keeping with the spirit of the Kodokan?’ Kawaishi kept right on going, playing a big role in the development of Judo in France, and when that contract ended, he was snapped up by the KGB and East German Stasi.
Behind Kawaishi and from his same troublemakers’ section of the mat, came Stanford Chai. The handshake with Corky became a backslapping embrace.
‘I missed you.’
‘I know. I’ve been waiting,’ Chai said. ‘The Judo’s good. Fishing’s good.’
With a stir in the crowd, a wide space opened beside them on the mat, and there stood none other than Jigoro Kano, founder of Judo. He and Corky exchanged deep bows. ‘Welcome, Walter,’ Kano said. ‘You’re one of the few who got it.’

8. HAWAII - продолжение
‘It’s time for another field trip,’ the jack-of-all-martial-arts announced. ‘A friend of mine is getting his Sambo Academy up and running, and he said to bring a bunch of guys on Saturdays.’
I was initially skeptical. From what little Sambo I had seen, I wondered what could be gained from a strangely bent over, twisty, turny style of ungainly throws. I’ll go once to show the flag, I figured. I don’t have to go back.
The warm up was a good, rough round of Alpha-Male signaling, with plenty of pushing and pulling each other back and forth, the antithesis of Corky’s light touch, but I made a point of getting into the spirit of the moment. Our last drill was grasping a partner at the shoulders, right in the folds of jacket fabric between shoulder and pec muscle, and driving each other, stiff-armed, across the mat.
The instructor grabbed someone for a demonstration. ‘OK, now that you’re there, and your opponent has all this power,’ he began, ‘your left hand lets go, comes in, and grabs his hand at your shoulder. Your elbow then goes over his arm, toward his chin as you drive in - but then it tucks down and then up, under his armpit. Do you now see that I’m [crouched] down here, low, my front at his side?’
He was about to do a sideways drop. ‘You attack his center of gravity!’ I blurted out.
The entire class looked at me. The instructor furrowed his brow a second. ‘Yeah, I guess you can put it that way.’
This was a throw of Nobel Prize brilliance. With force, leverage, and sheer disregard for doubt or fear, we buckled one of those impenetrable steel beams and got into prime position to launch the guy. We had solved two of life’s major mysteries in about five seconds.
Powerful grips could be broken in ways I had never seen any Judo instructor mention. I learned how to snap a guy’s sleeve back and down to tear his hand off my shoulder, and then trap his arm awkwardly against his body as I hit the most basic of hip throws.
Sambo emphasizes constantly gaining advantage, as in taking new grips for better leverage. A bent over defensive player can be defeated as you take out his grip on one side, clear his arm, and loop your own across his back, grabbing his far lat muscle - which is when things begin going very wrong for him. His center of effort is way out of his center of gravity because he’s so bent over. Your swinging in underneath for a sacrifice, with your bodyweight and that control of his whole torso, is going to kill him, with way more speed and power than Corky’s re-rolling a guy caught out of position.

Holy Cow, I thought. Corky’s Judo . . . is Sambo? No, he didn’t move like this. He was far more upright. Then . . . Sambo is Corky’s Judo?
At one point the instructor and I stood at the edge the mat, surveying the action. ‘The whole logic is to get to the center,’ I ventured.
He thought for a moment as he watched the group. ‘Yes.’ He looked at me and then stared. This was the most emotional reaction he had ever seen to a Sambo class.

9. WASHINGTON, DC
A month ago I wrote about the discoveries a few friends and I were making in our combatives workouts, about the kinetics that had to be in play for Judo throws to work, and the overall progression of a fight. Crashing into a guy with your forearms high is a good way to mitigate the danger of fisticuffs. You don’t want to hang around in a reciprocal arrangement if the other guy is a better boxer than you are.
The aim is constantly gaining advantage.
After a crash, the idea during the scuffle is to move into the next position of advantage, which is to be where you can break a guy’s balance - displacing his center of gravity - while he can’t do the same thing to you. If you can get behind him (preferably) or beside him in the chaos, that’s good, or if you’ve maintained some control of his head and neck and start throwing knees before he does, his body is going to be a trashed, painful mess.
This is when throws work instantly.
This is what Corky meant when he was talking about the Judo of World War Two.

Context is everything.
(continued below)

[Nunedog]

(from above)

To define Corky’s legacy, we still have to sort out Judo in the grand scheme of things, either my misunderstanding of it or its misunderstanding of itself. It occurs to me that despite the warm welcome in the Great Beyond, Jigoro Kano might regard Corky McFarland very warily.
The Judo Kano introduced to the world was a sophisticated, seemingly complete art of some 67 throws and their numerous variations, designed to handle almost infinite contingencies in the course of a standing grapple between two humans. For struggles on the ground, Judo had far more than 67 ways to immobilize or incapacitate an opponent. Judo’s katas are the study of those engineering principles I described before and others even more advanced.
Still, Kano’s legacy is muddled by two major issues:
I. If Judo’s techniques and katas so effectively address every challenge an athlete could face, did Kano really not have any tactical solutions for an opponent, through fear or malice, freezing in a death grip?
II. If fighting (shiai) is the means of testing one’s ability, why would Kano have a completely separate phase (randori) that serves that same purpose?

Here are the answers as succinctly as I can manage:
(I) Kano’s writings and the content of his katas indicate that he believed that maximum pliability, or the idea that ‘softness overcomes hardness,’ taken to an extreme was the solution. This would be flanking or circling around lines of force, a very subtle, difficult skill he acknowledged was known to only a small number of his closest associates.
His katas for Tachi Waza, or standing techniques, generally involve adding kinetic energy to encounters with an aggressor - a concept we hit upon in our backyard combatives study. In the katas, the bad guy’s amplified motion is something to be exploited directly or evaded for the sake of gaining position. It could be done, but would be impractically time consuming to parse through the katas for principles that can be applied to dynamic action.
The fact is that Kano dropped the ball on how to handle the stiff-armed death grip. Luckily, we have Sambo. If you can’t be quick, then you’d better be strong, and if you can’t be strong, then you’d better be smart - and know how to pry apart an opponent’s best defenses. Maybe that story is true, that Russian Judo players returned from a competition and developed this breaching skill, or maybe Sambo evolved from wrestling traditions across the steppes. In either case, Sambo solved far more problems than Judo ever has, and it proved that Corky was right all along: go for the center.

(II) I was cooking up the conspiracy theory that Kano’s original randori, or free play, was a very different modality from Shiai, or free fighting. Kano’s randori was rigged, I figured, as a means of facilitating learning. Guys took throws willingly for one another. Then, of course, as the years went by, this was one of the critical tenets that later generations of Judo leadership mishandled completely.
This is not the case - though Kano’s writings would indicate that he sort of had it both ways. Randori was a match where players did try to outfox one another and ‘win,’ - BUT Kano writes of the instructors who specialized in teaching randori (as opposed to kata) which would imply that some amount of guidance and repetition was taking place, a far cry from what I’ve see through the years.

If Kano hasn’t addressed these problems in the hereafter, then Corky could do it in short order.
He’d rig the randori.
This would be more dynamic and multidimensional than the singular scenarios we used to do. Player A would have two or three throws at his disposal, along with an entry technique or two, while Player B would offer some form of resistance - pushing, pulling, tying up his sleeves - as Player A attempts to execute. This compels A to adapt and succeed by nailing down his form and timing. They switch roles - and switch players in a big club. Athletes agree on the skill set and level of difficulty, and off they go. This is completely analogous to strength training, adapting and succeeding with increasing levels of difficulty. As with attempting new max lifts, free fighting contests come few and far between.
In the midst of it all, in the case of any technique he didn’t know, Corky would defer to an expert or read the instructions straight out of the book.
The resistance in randori would increase to the point that Player B is mustering any and all kinds of interference he can for A to overcome. Eventually his defense would include a few attacks of his own . . . and maybe this is what Kano was doing in the late 19th Century after all, and he simply found the contradiction of ‘fighting but not fighting’ too difficult to explain.
(Sensible as this sounds, this approach to randori simply cannot be grasped within these Earthly bounds.)

The legacy of Walter ‘Corky’ McFarland is an understanding of the foundation that links the techniques of the policeman and soldier to those of the competitive athlete. In fact, I would submit that hand to hand combat exists on a continuum. On the far left are life and death struggles: high speed and highly emotional moments of violent intensity. To the right is Sport: Judo, Wrestling, Sambo, Jiu Jitsu, where the stakes are low, the choices numerous, and where athletes can attack, retreat, win, and lose.
Right in the middle is Corky’s Judo. There’s no fighting, just practice in the fundamentals of human engineering.
It would serve cops and soldiers well to augment their training with sport play. Similarly, athletes should understand how their skills can save lives. It would serve them all well to knock through Corky’s basics from time to time, to understand why they train the way they do.

There was once a legend who walked the mats in the old Armory in Kodiak, a self-made teacher with lessons for warriors of all kinds.

4-Day Split (DL, 5, & 2 and TM rotation)
Week of: 3/30/20 5&2 TM week
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x5*) Tom 410 4’s JC 150
2. Romanian deadlifts: 4 sets of 6 reps Tom 370, 372.5x3 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 170 JC 85
2. Bench press: 10 sets of 3 (mini-bands) Tom 140 JC 65
3. Narrow grip pin bench press: 4 sets of 8 175
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 505 JC 240
2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 455 JC 215
3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 5 sets, 3 reps Tom 370 bands JC 145
4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Press: work up to 1 set of 2 reps: 182.5
2. Bench Press: [5x5*: (3x5*); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 255 JC 120
3. Pull ups (5x10)
4. 4 sets Lying Tricep Extensions
5. (JC) Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
6. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
swim 1 mile or row 6000 meters

[Nunedog]

Today I sit at home, brooding over a significant loss brought on by the nationwide shutdown, my second trip to Beverly Hills for an April 1 meeting at Rip Offices, the parent company that owns Aasgaard, STARTING STRENGTH, and the gel and fragrance partnership with Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey. Really, it’s an excuse to party after all the papers are signed for the latest schemes. We get a studio tour of the Wichita Falls Athletic Club set, and then Rip leads a three-day jaunt through wine country.
The whole thing is off, but Rip assures me that, at worst, the rollout of OK Boomer Starting Strength Suspenders, produced in partnership with Dominion Leather, will be set back by two weeks. OK Boomers are made from three inch wide single ($105) or double ($145) ply top grain leather handcrafted in Dominion’s Edgewater shop. They are stamped with the STARTING STRENGTH logo and feature structural aluminum rivets boasting premium tension and sheer ratings, as well as no-slip hold-up clips with three inch wide jaws that will bite into any kind of pants an athlete is wearing, any time of year.

The idea occurred to me late last Fall, when the weather began to turn and I found myself hiking up my sweatpants - yet again - before securing my belt for a set. I can’t be the only guy over 50 who’s developed both a decent squat and that tire tread of abdominal muscles we call the ‘squatter’s belly.’ I can tie my drawstring tight at belly button level, but since my gut narrows toward my hips, there’s nothing to stop my drawers from drooping soon after.
A good pair of sweats is like an old friend who’s been with you through good times and bad. It doesn’t make sense to throw them out once the elastic in the waist goes, the thighs get threadbare, and the seat . . . basin, for lack of a better word, stretches out. You just heave that waistband up to rib level to get the crotch against your crotch; suck in that gut, tighten up your belt, and you’re in business.
The problem is when you loosen your belt and everything collapses.

I decided to approach some of the other Masters lifters who log their training here, to see if they’d share their experiences and ask them, ‘Should we develop a set of suspenders?’
‘Hell yes!’ came a response. ‘I’ve been lifting in the same set of gray sweats for 20 years, and I have to pull them up over my nipples by this point. Luckily, I’m the strongest guy in my gym. All the young guys have taken notice and started pulling their pants up to chest level as well. It’s flattering, but these idiots are still doing curls in the squat rack. ‘
A ‘General Training Logs’ member said, ‘I pull my pants way up, but the problem is that I have to get taller socks. Tell STARTING STRENGTH to make some socks that will actually cover your shinbones when your pants are up where they’re supposed to be.’
One guy took the idea and ran with it: ‘Great concept! Three inch leather? Let’s make them cartridge belts with the loops for 308/30-06, .38, .45, 12-gauge. Folks’ll give you some space on the platform when you’re strapped up with some of that.’

I called Rip soon after. ‘I think I’m on to something.’
This commenced a process of sketches, designs, and prototypes. The winning design comes together in the back like traditional suspenders, with a single gator clip holding your drawers in the center. The leather straps in front come down to the edges of your pecs; in back they’re joined with fancy stitching and end at about the base of your shoulder blades. This way, they boost the pants while staying out of the way of your regular weight belt at gut level.
A few guys have them already and have been sworn to secrecy. ‘I wear mine to and from the gym and even while running errands. It’s so comfortable, I forget I have it on.’
He added in the e-mail: ‘You know they say in this whole coronavirus panic, you’re supposed to cough into your elbow. Well, Hell, I can sneeze right into my sweatpants and not bother anybody. I can’t believe they closed the gyms.’

[Nunedog]

Bravo to Andy Baker for his gift to humanity during the coronavirus crisis, a series of blog entries and a one hour and 51 minute video on conjugate programming. This is the quality of information I presume he usually reserves for his paying customers, and it explains in eye opening detail the logic behind each element of the program.
My upper body work has been adrift for a while, despite a few weeks of brushing up on my press strength. The heavy grind of bench press reps has been beating me up and keeping me from my top lifts, so a program that emphasizes speed on one hand and then climbing straight to maximal levels on the other sounds pretty good right about now. I know you’ve heard me announce fresh starts on upper body work a bunch of times - but if this doesn’t help, I don’t know what will.
I did manage a 465 max squat a few weeks back, but in recent cycles my reps have slowed down. I got 5’s with 405 and 407.5 - barely - but 410 has gone for 4’s and 3’s in recent attempts. If I’m at the edge of my performance envelope, I should show some capacity to learn from past difficulties and not beat myself up while hoping for a miracle.

4-Day Conjugate split
4/6/20
MONDAY - Maximum Effort Squat/Deadlift
1. Hit 1 rep max in SQUAT VARIANT - front box squat
1.5 3 sets of 3 back off sets (above) 80-85%
2. Romanian deadlifts/ add shrugs: 4 sets of 5 reps Tom 372.5 JC 165
3. 4 sets of 10 banded leg extensions
4. 4 sets of 10 banded leg curls
4. reverse hypers (3x10)
5. abs; banded pulldowns, calves

TUESDAY - Maximum Effort Upper Body
1. Hit 1 rep max BENCH PRESS VARIANT - incline bench press
1.5 3 sets of 3 back off sets (above) 80-85%
2. Chest variant - pin press 3 inches off chest - 4 sets of 8 reps
3. hanging rows - no weight - 5 sets of 15
4. banded face pulls 3 sets of 15
5. Triceps extensions (variant) 5 sets 20 reps seated overhead extensions
Conditioning (second session)
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

THURSDAY - Dynamic Effort Squat/Deadlift
1. Back squat: 5x5 with 60% max 280 30-60 sec rest
2. Deadlift: 5 sets of 3 with 60% max 315 30-60 sec rest
3. 4 Round Accessory Circuit
-25 goblet squats - 35kb
-25 kettlebell swings - 45kb
-25 sit ups
4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)

FRIDAY - Dynamic Effort Upper Body
1. 10 sets of 3 Bench Presses (5 week wave; 60-65-70-75-80%) 65% 202.5 60-90 sec rest
2. 4 sets of 12 reps Seated Press 125
3. Pull ups (5x10)
4. Dips: 3 sets of 10-15 (or 3 sets max reps of push ups)
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 15-20 @75

SATURDAY - Conditioning
swim 1 mile or row 6000 meters

[Nunedog]

On a late Summer day in 2006, my wife and I arrived with our daughters, aged 2 and 8, at the Fort Myer Officers’ Club pool complex. After we had set up camp on a pair of long deck chairs and been back and forth to one pool or the other with the kids, we struck up a conversation with an older couple beside us, during which the gentleman pulled on an old polo shirt with an ‘H45’ logo I recognized. My Dad had worn one just like it. ‘Sir, are you a member of the Harvard Class of ’45?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Did you know Tom [Nunedog the Elder]?’ I asked.
He lit up immediately. ‘Sure, I knew Nunedog!’
‘I’m Thomas the Third, born in 1964.’
‘Thomas Nunedog got me into the Harvard Club of New York City.’ The formalities took place at a giant, yearly black-tie bash for the entire membership.
The man’s name was Al Kennedy. He was a submariner in World War Two who stayed in the Navy and worked his way up the ranks in the ensuing decades. He was saddened to hear that my father died in 1990.
This solved a long running mystery in our family. Over the bar in our playroom as we grew up was a picture of my Dad in the forward torpedo room of the USS IREX. It was taken on a training cruise he went on one day, he said, but my brother, sisters, and I never knew much about it otherwise. (Dad was Army in the war.)
Kennedy was a senior commander at the sub base in Groton, Connecticut, and in appreciation for the club sponsorship, he scored a ride for my Dad.
Later that day I called my mother. ‘I remember Al Kennedy,’ she said. ‘I remember that night. I delivered the remarks after dinner.’
‘You addressed the Harvard Club of New York City?’
‘I was the only one there who was sober.’
The encounter with the Kennedys took place on my father’s birthday.

On the Friday before Memorial Day Weekend in 2015, I was cleaning up the back deck for a barbecue when suddenly the memory of an old Navy SEAL friend popped into my head. Joe [Satchell] was a very cool guy, though we hadn’t kept in touch. He was top tier, if you catch my meaning, an athlete who represented the Navy in international competitions, taught at SERE School, and, I was pretty sure, ended up working out of Dam Neck. That would have made him one of the first guys into Afghanistan in 2001.
I couldn’t shake the thought of him, so I went inside and Googled. Joe had lost a long battle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - five years prior on that very day.
‘I hear ya, buddy,’ I said to the screen. ‘That’s a lousy write-up to have on the internet,’ so I gave him a better one (not here) - telling stories of ocean swims, weaving between trees on runs as dive-bombing drongo birds attacked, triathlons, Wet Willie’s, and spearfishing. His wife was part of a group that flew out on an unauthorized visit at one point (since Guam was a forward deployment zone) and my wife and I helped with part of the cultural tour, a trip to the Marianas Trench, one of the world’s great Thai restaurants.
I have a story from this past winter of yet another one of these remarkable coincidences. They seem to happen for a reason.
It’s enough to make you wonder.

It’s enough to make you realize we should think about this rationally. Spiritually, there are two ways we can go: this either suggests that someone is out there - or Up There - hopefully looking out for us, or these moments, supernatural as they may seem, are what happens when worlds collide.

Unfortunately, these are not rational times. A pandemic has descended, preying upon our most vulnerable and all but shutting down 21st Century society all over the world. We can only shelter in place, each of us wondering deep down how we’d fare if we caught the virus. By all accounts, coronavirus deaths are horrible, slow suffocations in isolation, tethered to equipment that will be stripped away and attached to the next desperate case. Our leadership is flummoxed, offering contradictory statements, and where are we in those phases of combat I once described? We’re sucker-punched, flailing for cover as the blood pours out and the blows hammer down. We scramble for tests and protective equipment for our medical workers as they do what little they can for the mounting casualties.

It’s enough to shake those spiritual foundations we were just talking about. Those who are religious are wondering what’s taking so long with the Powers That Be: ‘Any time you want to let that miracle fly, we’re ready.’
Those who are a little more objective minded are watching the days go by while no one seems to have any solutions. Out of frustration, if nothing else, they’ll cry out, ‘Somebody, do something!’ and if they happen to glance skyward, they’ll whisper, ‘This might be crazy, but at least send us a sign.’

One week ago, news emerged from Bletchley Park of the discovery of an incredibly rare 11-minute silent film shot between 1939 and 1945, depicting members of MI6, or the Secret Intelligence Service, at Whaddon Hall. The Whaddon complex was physically separate from the Bletchley Park estate, yet it was where MI6’s Section VIII sent Ultra-level intelligence produced by Bletchley to Allied commanders in the field. Ultra-level intelligence is a grade above Top Secret.
Bletchley Park, now a historical site, was once one of Great Britain’s most closely guarded secrets, the home of the Government Code and Cypher School, where mathematicians, most famously Alan Turing, ‘penetrated the secret communications of the Axis Powers.’ That they divined the workings of the Enigma machines is perhaps best known, yet it was cracking the Lorenz Code, the means by which the German High Command communicated with its leaders in the field, that was even more impressive. Cryptanalysts worked out the ‘logical structure of the machine despite not knowing its physical form.’ Then, their own machinery, fashioned to help in decryption, gave rise to Colossus, the world’s first programmable digital computer. In other words, the world’s most powerful computational device was there to do the groundwork for human intuition, which was running way out ahead.

The Whaddon Hall films are shot entirely outdoors. We see military and civilian personnel taking in the fresh air, as if they’ve just come out on break. Women - many of them in uniform, and who made up three quarters of codebreaking personnel - blush at the camera. In a color segment, a young lady in a pink dress suns herself, belly down, arms crossed at her chin and her eyes on us. Our eyes travel down to the small of her back and the landscape beyond. Elsewhere we see football and cricket games. This is the most ordinary looking and seemingly unlikely bunch of heroes you’re likely to find - but then again, these are some of the folks who won it; the Bletchley Park operation is said to have shortened the war by two to four years.
Fascinating as this all is, what is this little canister of film doing turning up in the English countryside NOW, in the midst of a global crisis? Is this one of those cosmic signals like the ones I got from my Dad and Joe? Maybe the Bletchley Park Trust knows something about timing and the potential of a hidden message.

In either case, Section VIII has intel: some mathematician, bridge player, or chess master is going to break the coronavirus code and turn the tide of this battle. The lesson of Bletchley is that while this might be crushingly difficult and time consuming, the intuition of some unlikely hero is going to outrun the computers and conventional wisdom. They will divine the molecular sequence by which SARS-CoV-2 injects its spike proteins into our cells and thwarts the immune system’s response. Colossus then crunches the numbers, running an inventory of medicines and the scenarios with which we can block this process. Factories spring into action.
We will meet the coronavirus on the battlefield, but on our terms, with anti-viral drugs, a vaccine, or mitigating treatments.
The final thoughts of a great many U-Boat commanders who once ruled the seas, preying in wolf packs with seemingly unstoppable cruelty, must have been, ‘How the Hell did they find us?’ as depth charges split the seams of their hulls apart.

As one of those unsung heroes in the Whaddon Hall film would say, outdoors in his tweed jacket and galoshes as he lights his pipe and cuts a quick glance at the camera, ‘Steady on.’

4-Day Conjugate split
4/13/20
MONDAY - Maximum Effort Squat/Deadlift
1. Hit 1 rep max in DEADLIFT VARIANT - green flywheel deficit dead
1.5 3 sets of 3 back off sets (above) 80-85%
2. Supplemental Squats: Front box squats - 3 sets of 5 reps 255
3. 4 sets of 10 knee drops to mat
4. 4 sets of 10 banded leg curls
4. reverse hypers (3x10)
5. abs; banded pulldowns, calves

TUESDAY - Maximum Effort Upper Body
1. Hit 1 rep max BENCH PRESS VARIANT - pin press 3 inches off chest
1.5 3 sets of 3 back off sets (above) 80-85%
2. Chest variant - kettle bell presses 53’s; 4 sets 12-15
3. hanging rows - no weight - 5 sets of 15
4. rear belt flies/ shrugs 3 sets of 15
5. Triceps extensions (variant) 5 sets 20 reps lying triceps extensions
Conditioning (second session)
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

THURSDAY - Dynamic Effort Squat/Deadlift
1. Back squat: 5x5 with 65% max 302.5 30-60 sec rest
2. Deadlift: 5 sets of 3 with 65% max 342.5 30-60 sec rest
3. 4 Round Accessory Circuit
25 goblet squats - 35kb
25 banded pull-throughs
25 sit ups
4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)

FRIDAY - Dynamic Effort Upper Body
1. 10 sets of 3 Bench Presses (5 week wave; 60-65-70-75-80%) 70% 210 60-90 sec rest
2. 4 sets of 12 reps Seated Press 125
3. Pull ups (5x10)
4. Dips: 3 sets of 10-15 (or 3 sets max reps of push ups)
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 15-20 @65

SATURDAY - Conditioning
swim 1 mile or row 6000 meters

[Jeff Brophy]

Good read as always. When you do the pin press variant are you going above typical 1 RM territory on a comp bench? If so, what %, or are you going by feelz?

[Nunedog]

Hey, Jeff. I'm glad you liked it.
My best guess is that for that pin press three inches above my chest I'll be at or slightly above my usual max, at 300 or 310. I'll be feeling my way up.
This routine's pretty new; I haven't done a pin press in a year or so. In his blog, Baker mentioned that the week before a lift is going to be the focus of the max effort, you can 'learn' it by doing reps with it as a secondary lift on Max Effort day. I did 8's with 205, which was tough because I'd lower the weight to the pins, disengage, reset my shoulder blades, and then go. Starting from a dead stop made the reps hard. I hope that when I work up toward 300 without reps wearing me out the three inches and the set shoulders will be an advantage.

[Nunedog]

Start at the end, and figure out how you got there.
That’s a writer’s trick for forming plots, especially detective stories. If you know how the bad guys did it and what they were after, you mask it with incomplete or confusing information, which your detective has to sort out. The truth has to be as shocking as the hiding it is clever, which is the payoff for the reader, who goes through all the same trouble as their hero.
In a case that’s popped up in my neighborhood, the truth doesn’t seem to be too surprising. No real attempt to hide anything appears to have been made. We have no victims - or maybe a few, if you go by the press account - and no crime, it appears, as far as private schools in Washington, DC are concerned.
Here’s the end of the story, unmasked: the Gibbs family, namely a father and two sons, one of them a former centerfielder for the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers, along with at least two associates, have put together an apparently very impressive player development program called Diamond Skills Baseball. Their youngest clients are middle schoolers, and by way of summer and winter training camps, players are groomed to the point that they are ready for presentation to the Gibbs’ numerous contacts in collegiate and professional baseball.
Where the story gets interesting, kind of slimy - and therefore objectionable to some - is in Diamond Skills’ connection to the St. John’s College High School baseball program, a perennial champion which has been in the Gibbs’ hands for decades. The combined operation has cornered the local baseball market. It’s a coach’s dream come true, on the field and all the way to the bank - and happens to be illegal in some states. For us the story is instructive: this is why in some places there are no high school strength programs where a well meaning teacher or coach can do some good. When money stands to be made, connections between coaches and training centers require scrutiny.

A WASHINGTON POST story from nearly a month ago unfolds like a classic mystery, juicy reading in a sports section that had otherwise run dry shortly after the nationwide shutdown. “[I]n December, a lawyer representing three families sent a letter to the school’s administration stating that [head coach Mark] Gibbs had revoked their boys’ positions on the baseball team at St. John’s and forced them to transfer after they would not pay to play on his private offseason travel team. The letter alleged that Gibbs and St. John’s were running a “pay-for-play” system that treated the players and their parents unfairly . . . Emails and other documents provided to The Washington Post show a dispute among the school’s administration, Gibbs and multiple parents over the requirement — which is considered to be unusual in the world of elite travel baseball — that St. John’s players play in Gibbs’s private travel program, for which he serves as an administrator. Some families said Gibbs’s offseason program can cost more than $12,000 in total expenses each summer and fall.”

It turns out that Gibbs runs two off-season programs:
“Gibbs co-operates a for-profit company called Diamond Skills Baseball LLC and leads another program called D.C. Cadets . . . The activity fees players pay to play on D.C. Cadets can run as high as $2,400 annually . . . and go toward coaching, league fees and equipment. But multiple parents have alleged that those costs can run much higher, via additional fees that have included scrimmages, a winter camp, training sessions and a spring break trip . . .
The distinction between Diamond Skills and D.C. Cadets is further muddled by the fact that Gibbs’s teams go by Diamond Skills, not D.C. Cadets, when they play in showcase events during the summer. This . . . is because the for-profit camp company name carries better brand recognition with college coaches. In the promotional brochure for the St. John’s team last year, the Diamond Skills name — not D.C. Cadets — was used to tout Gibbs’s offseason program.”

As far as St. John’s is concerned, this looks fine to them: “The St. John’s administration investigated the claims and cleared Gibbs of all wrongdoing . . . [They] called Diamond Skills ‘a for-profit baseball camp,’ in which St. John’s players often participate but are not required to do so. The school identified D.C. Cadets as a travel baseball team that every St. John’s player is required to play for during the offseason and is a ‘zero-profit’ entity.”
Gibbs, however, doesn’t seem to sweat the distinction: “Last May, when the father of one of his most talented young players . . . said he wanted his son to take three weekends off last summer, the coach replied: ‘Before [you decided] to come to SJC I was very specific about what the commitment was going to be. This is not a ‘pick and choose’ type situation,’ Gibbs wrote in the May 28 email . . . ‘The SJC baseball program and DC Cadets program (which includes the summer player development and Diamond Skills) are all linked together.’”

“Several schools [from their conference] guard against conflicts of interest between their school teams and offseason programs. Gonzaga College High’s student-athlete and coaches handbook states: ’It must be explicitly stated by each coach, in writing, that participation in fee-based off season workouts is optional and will not directly or indirectly affect an athlete’s ability to make the team or his playing time.’” In a brief internet search I found regulations from Connecticut and Florida that strictly control coaches.
At St. John’s, Mark Gibbs’ father, Ed, stepped down as coach in 2007 “and named his son his successor. Mark Gibbs has been head coach since, with his father and brother, Kevin Gibbs, serving as assistants. His rise to prominence coincided with the school’s development of a muscular athletics department, which received a considerable boost in 2015 when Under Armour founder and St. John’s alum Kevin Plank donated $16 million. In the past six years, St. John’s has won 23 league and city championships.” Gibbs uses the St John’s facilities for his camps and pays no fees.

Despite pay-to-play being a form of racketeering, the Gibbs family and St John’s seem untroubled as they count their winnings, although not this season. If this is a detective story, I’m turning into one of those cynical private eyes. I can only muster so much sympathy for the families of the players that have transferred away: you knew what you were getting into when you let your pre-teen start playing hardball with this bunch.
The real news is that sports are no longer a means by which schools provide physical development to compliment academics. Then again, I can think of one sport that could be.

4-Day Conjugate split
4/20/20
MONDAY - Maximum Effort Squat/Deadlift
1. Hit 1 rep max in SQUAT VARIANT - paused squat to pins
1.5 3 sets of 3 back off sets (above) 80-85%
2. Romanian deadlifts/ add shrugs: 4 sets of 5 reps Tom 372.5x3, 375 JC 165
3. 4 sets of 10 banded leg extensions
4. 4 sets of 10 banded leg curls
4. reverse hypers (3x10)
5. abs; banded pulldowns, calves

TUESDAY - Maximum Effort Upper Body
1. Hit 1 rep max BENCH PRESS VARIANT - overhead press
1.5 3 sets of 3 back off sets (above) 80-85%
2. Chest variant - spoto press - 4 sets of 8 reps
3. hanging rows - no weight - 5 sets of 15
4. banded face pulls 3 sets of 15
5. Triceps extensions (variant) 5 sets 20 reps seated overhead extensions
Conditioning (second session)
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

THURSDAY - Dynamic Effort Squat/Deadlift
1. Back squat: 10 sets of 2 with 70% max 325; 60-90 sec rest
2. Deadlift: 10 sets of 1with 70% max 367.5 60-90 sec rest
3. 3 Round Accessory Circuit
20 goblet squats - 45kb
25 kettlebell swings - 45kb
20 sit ups
4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)

FRIDAY - Dynamic Effort Upper Body
1. 10 sets of 3 Bench Presses (5 week wave; 60-65-70-75-80%) 75; 225 120 sec rest
2. 4 sets of 12 reps Seated Press 125
3. Pull ups (5x10)
4. Dips: 3 sets of 10-15 (or 3 sets max reps of push ups)
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 15-20 @75

SATURDAY - Conditioning
swim 1 mile or row 6000 meters

[Nunedog]

The first time we see Humphrey Bogart’s character, Rick, he’s at a chessboard. Don’t ignore this.
Rick doesn’t drink with the customers. Even when things are picking up in his nightclub, he sits by himself, studying a game that appears to be in progress, as if considering strategy.
Also, the Bulgarian couple are everything. Seemingly extraneous characters, they are the opening, through which we grasp how the endgame plays out.

This past weekend marked an important moment of progress in life, a flash of insight into the movie CASABLANCA, which I watched once again with the wife and kid on Saturday night. Starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, it’s a love story set in the crush of refugees fleeing the Nazi takeover of Europe. Really, it’s something far greater: a tale of moral awakening and courage that does not come easily in a time of suffering or when everyone else is scrambling to look out for themselves. Normally, CASABLANCA is shown on Valentine’s Day, but Turner Classic Movies, after explaining that they had to cancel the film festival and live events they had planned for this month, appears to have chosen this film very deliberately.
It’s consistently ranked among the finest films - if not named THE finest - ever made. This is testament to its narrative economy, how tightly and perfectly the story is woven, and consequently its ability to enchant an audience the way that fairy tales enchant little children. By that, I mean to call to mind all of storytelling’s deeply psychological and magical potential. Little kids, as they start to make sense of the world with a mixture of fantasy and reality, are utterly hooked by the savage dangers and beauties within fairy tales. Puzzling through them again and again is how they make sense of new truths. CASABLANCA catches adults on a similarly unsure footing: war rages, the forces of darkness close in on the helpless, and life and death are at stake in nearly constant games of deception. The writer Christopher Hitchens used CASABLANCA as a means of explaining the duplicitous nature of Pakistan as America forced them into an uneasy alliance after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Pakistan I got completely; I came away from the piece understanding more about the movie.

Many of us can practically recite the dialogue - with all those fantastic lines - as the story develops. Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine owns Rick’s Cafe Americain, Casablanca, Morocco’s most popular nightclub and gambling establishment. Rick’s an ex-pat who’s run guns to Ethiopia in one war and fought in Spain in another, yet he’s a broken man. He too fled the Nazis as they marched into Paris, but his heart was crushed by the woman who abandoned him on the eve of their escape.
Morocco is overrun with German and Vichy French officials, criminals, and especially refugees, all of them desperate to get to America, a trip for the lucky few that begins with a flight to neutral Portugal and requires the right papers, ‘Letters of Transit’ that authorize travel. These are few and far between and come at a high price in Casablanca’s black market.
A petty criminal entrusts two stolen letters of transit to Rick early in the story. He’s arrested and killed before revealing where the letters went, but soon the contact for whom they were intended arrives, Europe’s leading Resistance figure, the great Victor Lazlo, along with his wife - played by the luminous Ingrid Bergman - who happens to be the very woman who crushed Rick’s heart in Paris a year and a half before.
The reunion does not go well, and Rick has no intention of giving them the letters of transit despite the the Germans’ plan to subvert Vichy French authority and capture Lazlo. Rick has a lot of feeling sorry for himself to do before realizing that a lot of other people are in worse circumstances.

His change of heart and rejoining the fight is what makes the film such an inspiration, yet the enduring mystery and appeal of CASABLANCA is in exactly how and when he does. Yes, Rick and Ilsa (Bergman) have to resolve the meaning of their relationship, and then we see Rick perform a remarkably unselfish act in the face of steadily increasing danger. He sets Lazlo and Isla free with the letters of transit, reminding her at the airport in the very last moment he’ll ever see her, ‘We’ll always have Paris.’
The film is regarded as one of cinema’s greatest romances - even though audiences, myself included, have had to overlook a possible blemish, a very strange line creating an unresolved question at the end. However, this past weekend, I caught exactly where Rick joins the fight - and how the filmmakers make it happen - which makes me realize CASABLANCA is an all the more profound depiction of the highest ideals of love and duty to one’s fellow man. I think I even know what that strange line is about.

Storytellers, filmmakers among them, know that they cannot simply shift a character’s motivation and cover this flaw with jokes or sentimental dialogue. If they do, the story certainly won’t stand the test of time. There has to be an underlying logic, a structure with a hook on which they can hang that change. In CASABLANCA, it sneaks up on the audience all film long. A young Bulgarian couple finds their way into more scenes early in the movie than we might realize, as they’re pushed here and there in the throng of confusion that is the teeming city. At a certain point, the young, sweet wife, aged 19, comes to Rick for advice. Rick, reeling from the reappearance of Ilsa, is drinking too much, which in the 1940’s, in this film, and for Humphrey Bogart, is saying something.
The woman confides that she and her husband simply cannot come up with the money for letters of transit. In fact, her husband is at the roulette table losing pathetically in his attempt to secure the impossible sum. The Prefect of Police, she explains (in not so many words) can arrange a set of papers if she sleeps with him. She presses Rick: should she do it, if she loves her husband very much and can keep this secret locked away in her heart forever?
‘Nobody ever loved me that much,’ Rick grouses.
He leaves her abruptly but strangely enough heads straight to the roulette table. Leaning in next to the young husband, he casually inquires, ‘Have you tried 22 tonight?’ as he catches the croupier’s eye. The young man puts his last few chips down.
The wheel comes to rest with the ball precisely in the Black 22 spot. The man suddenly has stacks of chips.
‘Leave it there,’ Rick instructs quietly.
The croupier spins the wheel and calls, ‘Vingt-deux!’ once more.
‘Cash it in, and don’t come back.’ This is thousands of dollars, more than enough for the exit visas, but Rick is headed out the door.
Audience members by and large gasp with sobs at the sheer power and generosity this moment represents, as well as Bogart’s infinite deadpan cool. It’s not hard to see that this marks Rick’s change of heart, though there are two hidden components to this scene. Black 22 on a roulette wheel has been featured in numerous TV shows or movies, most notably THE STING, as homages to CASABLANCA. However, consider the connection to ‘b22,’ which, according to the Encyclopedia of Chess Openings, is a version of the Sicilian Defense, long considered a ‘best opening answer’ to an opponent’s first attack. When we see Rick at the chess table early in the film, he’s seated behind the black pieces. This is the filmmakers’ hook: Game On.
Secondly, this simple parable about the Bulgarian couple is the basis by which Rick sorts out his feelings for Ilsa, even while confusion mounts as the Germans close in.

Ilsa comes to beg Rick for the letters as the situation for her and Victor deteriorates. She even pulls a gun on him but cannot bring herself to use it. Soon, she’s confessed all: ‘The day you left Paris . . . if you knew what I went through; if you knew how much I loved you . . . how much I still love you . . . ‘
She also explains: Victor Lazlo had been her husband for years. At the time of her romance with Rick in Paris, she had thought Lazlo was dead, killed in an escape attempt at a concentration camp. The day Ilsa and Rick were set to flee Paris, she had gotten word that Lazlo was alive, escaped, and barely ahead of the Germans outside of town.
Soon after this encounter with Isla, Rick finds himself with Lazlo, who pleads that if Rick’s not willing to give him the letters of transit, he should at least use them to take Ilsa to safety.
In rapid succession, Rick is struck with two important truths: someone really does love him that much, but more importantly, he is touched by the selflessness of Lazlo. When Rick is headed out the casino door after saving the fortunes of that Bulgarian couple, the young woman stops him long enough to throw her arms around his neck in gratitude. He peels her off. ‘He’s just a lucky guy,’ he says, the implication being . . . ‘to have you.’ Ilsa’s a lucky girl to have Victor.

Two chess games kick into gear, the first being the maneuvers by which Rick gets Victor and Ilsa to the airport and past the French and German authorities. The second is that Rick has to do what is best for Victor and Ilsa’s relationship - just as he did for the Bulgarian couple.
After Rick and Isla have their goodbye, their ‘Here’s looking at you, kid,’ moment, Victor returns from seeing to the luggage on the plane. Regarding Ilsa and the letters of transit, Rick says to him, ‘She tried everything to get them, and nothing worked. She did her best to convince me that she was still in love with me, but that was all over long ago. For your sake, she pretended it wasn't, and I let her pretend.’
(continued below)

[Nunedog]

(from above)

Wait. What? Do Rick and Ilsa sleep together? This question has confused and divided audiences for more than 75 years. Of course they do, say some. Only Bogie could get away with telling a guy he just screwed his wife, all for a good cause. For the record, the movie studio was forbidden to suggest any immorality, so the scenes surrounding Isla’s visit are pieced together in very ambiguous fashion.
Rick wouldn’t do it in a million years. What we’re seeing is a chess strategy in play, where Rick has anticipated a cascade of moves. First of all, just as he spares the Bulgarian wife a lifetime of guilt, he would never place that kind of burden on Ilsa’s heart - especially when she becomes such a wreck during her visit and nearly shifts loyalties completely. He gets all he needs when she confesses her feelings.
Rick’s line is complete fiction, ‘a fairy tale,’ as Claude Rains’ magnificent character, Louis, scoffs moments later. Then and there on the tarmac, Rick knows a few things:
1. Ilsa might still love him, so she needs to hear Rick blow her off in cold blood (the way he does with another woman early in the film)
2. Hearing the suggestion of it in Victor’s presence might make her realize what a catastrophic mistake it would have been to sleep with Rick and then make a choice she’d regret (which Rick had just tried to tell her)
3. Ilsa, seeing this sting Victor, would rush to put the story right.
This catapults a confused, possibly reluctant Ilsa onto the plane with Victor as magically as a trick at the roulette table.

That’s a fast set of crib notes which might prove useful in the last few minutes of the film, which becomes one rapid deception after another. The reward in CASABLANCA is that Rick turns out to be as awesome as we hope all along. Not only is he preternaturally cool in his white dinner jacket managing the most elegant cafe in a dangerous corner of the world, the guy who once declares, ‘I stick my neck out for nobody,’ inspires us to fight for those less fortunate.

4-Day Conjugate split
4/27/20
MONDAY - Maximum Effort Squat/Deadlift
1. Hit 1 rep max in DEADLIFT VARIANT - snatch grip deadlift
1.5 3 sets of 3 back off sets (above) 80-85%
2. 3 sets of 5 front squats 257.5
3. 4 sets of 10 banded leg extensions
4. 4 sets of 10 banded leg curls
4. reverse hypers (3x10)
5. abs; banded pulldowns, calves

TUESDAY - Maximum Effort Upper Body
1. Hit 1 rep max BENCH PRESS VARIANT - spoto press
1.5 3 sets of 3 back off sets (above) 80-85%
2. Chest variant - ring crosses - 4 sets of 8 reps
3. hanging rows - no weight - 5 sets of 15
4. rear flies/ shrugs 3 sets of 15
5. Triceps extensions (variant) 5 sets 20 reps seated overhead extensions db
Conditioning (second session)
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

THURSDAY - Dynamic Effort Squat/Deadlift
1. Back squat: 10 sets of 2 with 75% max 350; 60-90 sec rest
2. Deadlift: 10 sets of 1 with 75% max 395 60-90 sec rest
3. 3 Round Accessory Circuit
20 belt squats - 45kb
25 banded pull-throughs
20 sit ups
4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)

FRIDAY - Dynamic Effort Upper Body
1. 10 sets of 3 Bench Presses (5 week wave; 60-65-70-75-80%) 80; 240 120 sec rest
2. 4 sets of 12 reps Seated Press 125
3. Pull ups (5x10)
4. Dips: 3 sets of 10-15 (or 3 sets max reps of push ups)
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 15-20 @75

SATURDAY - Conditioning
swim 1 mile or row 6000 meters