Proof of "aliveness", Mass made simple and new paths

Ok...alive. Still.

Believe me, I know, I´m a doctor.

So... we got the question if I´m still wandering this earth out of the way...

Although I suspect I got close to something different when I lost about 11kg in 3 weeks last summer due to delicious Indian food.

Since December I am training regularly without immediate-onset diarrhea. Plus I got a Squat- rack now. And a barbell and several dumbbells. And plates. Lot of plates!!

December and January I did Dan Johns "Mass Made Simple".

Several things I learned:

- I need to eat more to gain muscle mass.(yeah...REALLY!!)

- I actually can work up to 3 meals a day without feeling like sh*t all the times.(this one was a new lesson... Like you should all new stuff: small increments over some time.)

- I realized how little in terms of frequency I can hit the weights and still (or because of it?) make gains. Both in body-weight and weight I move.

- I like the 2-3-5 rep approach. More of that one later.

- Gaining weight (in my case over the 6 weeks about 7-8kg without adding much fat) makes you suck at body-weight-exercises. Even If you do them in the warm-up. More of that also later...

And one more thing:

High rep back-squats can crush you. Not literally but mentally.

During one workout with my body-weight on the bar after rep 31 I literally crushed. I know this state from other encounters in my life and I simply lost it.

Imagine me, after all the strength work for the upper body, the complexes and 31 reps of the back squat I am standing in the rack...and...start panicking ( "the last rep was so hard...breathing is getting so difficult...the bars is crushing the contact- points on my back..." all the excuses I could find).

I mean it was just a workout but I had my heart set on the set of 50. But after the last rep the thought of the remaining 19 reps overwhelmed me.

I´m very careful not to state that the 31 reps killed my mindset. They made me stronger. In every way. It was the process of thinking about the pain about to come from additional 19 reps...

I even was unable to fall back to my panic- coping- mechanisms like controlled breathing, etc I discovered during my skydive- training.

I simply lost it in my mind, so after I had been frozen up for like 10 sec I stumbled forward into the rack, fell backward (something you get used to when doing high- rep set of back- squats...) and fluctuated between being pissed and about to cry.

Then I started laughing... It was just a workout.

The lesson for me?

High- rep Back squats help you build muscle mass.

High- rep Back squats challenge your mind and because of that I will come back to them. I do not want to but I will...

Ok...So Mass made simple is over. What now?

Well... I got a rack and a whole lot of iron. What dou you think comes next?

Well... there is something else...

Rugby.

I first saw it on TV last summer and liked it. I had no idea what the rules are (I still have no idea!!) but the very thought of a sport where you have to run a lot, analyze situations with multiple elements under pressure (time and real physical one) and get together with teammates to crash with other guys trying to push the the hell out the way almost instantly seemed a good idea to me.

Well...I´m special...

Plus I will not be able or willing to attend Martial Arts classes after my move to my current residence (private reasons so no answers to your questions here) so I need a little human contact. (in my head this one was really funny...)

So I´m managing a new contact sport with my strength and conditioning program right now...

There are the points of strength training, conditioning, sport practice, etc.

More of that later, right now I need to eat.

Meat. Fish. Eggs. Vegetables.

(You are welcome, I just saved you an entire diet- book)

Train hard and enjoy every moment!

Harry

Still alive...

Hey guys.

Do not worry, I´m still alive.

Those who did not know, I was on a longer trip for the last 2 months.

Training was not possible for a long time, due to some health complications but I´m very happy to tell I´m back on the wagon again. ;-)

Right now, I use the HeavyHands System by Dr. Schwartz, MD to get my Conditioning back up again, spend some time on my feet and started working with the Convict Conditioning Bodyweight Exercises.

I´ll be doing this stuff till mid- december, then I´ll finally have my very own Power Rack, Barbell and enough weight to keep my growing physically and mentally for a very long time.

So stay tuned, I´ll try to post regularly again and keep good topics coming.

Tip for today: Grip- Work!

Take some heavy weights (I used Kettlebells) and a towel.

Do Farmer Walks (two KBs in one hand, one Kettlebell with only one or two fingers), towel- swings and towel- curls.

GET A GRIP!!! :-D

Train hard and enjoy every moment!

All the best,

Harry

Testing (1) - Thoughts on testing

Finally I could motivate myself again to write a blog- post...

This time I wanna talk about testing in our training.

We`re not talking about special workouts you do regularly to compare times, weights you used, reps you did to measure progress.

The essence of this approach is to do something and then look if it is working. Maybe it is, maybe it is not, maybe you overestimated yourself and got injured, maybe you underestimated yourself and progress was not as fast as you wished or it could have been...

First, this is not totally my idea.

I first heard about testing via Adam T. Glass and the Gym Movement.

http://movefu.com/blog/what-is-biofeedback-training/

http://www.adamtglass.com/

So the basic idea would be to test for things you are about to do in a workout prior to starting.

Somehow you would have to get yourself a tool which could tell you if some movement is good for you today.

Everybody who has ever worked out for more than a month knows you eventually hit a plateau. Your eccentric- deload- supported- water- supported- ultra- flexible- wave program could not prevent that.

The key question is: why?

I exaggerated a bit above when naming the periodization. People much, much smarter and with way more experience than myself have spent decades developing periodization- schemata and they got much stronger than I am currently in the process.

Fortunately I am still in the beginning of my training career and the internet is giving people like me a place to put their opinions.

Ok, again, why do plans fail?

There are several factors to consider:

The key- factor would be: you are planing the future and...well...you cant really do that with certainty.

You did something in the past which had a certain outcome. It is as simple as touching the hot stove an experiencing the burning sensation. This can teach you, for example, not to touch the hot plate.

The problem is you never have all the information. Either there really is a lack of information or you can not comprehend all of it(lack of knowledge, inability to translate, perceive, etc.)

So, to stick with the example above:

If you do not understand the relationship between the power- switch and the hot plate you might assume several things:t 1)the plate is hot. Period. Therefor do not touch it. 2)the plate is hot and I can not control the heat, so do not touch the plate.

There are more but you get my drift...

You made experiences in the past which taught you more or less and according to those lessons you are planning something which is only existing in your head.

Your plan will always be flawed because no one has ever all the information and/or the cognitive ability to conclude from all of it. So your plan is flawed.

Combine those actions in the now, based on the past, with the human ego, which has brought us very far, which has inspired many great things, and there is potential for personal tragedy, injuries, etc..

So we need a tool to test our plan against the now, the true capacity of the physical body, meaning what would the body do in today´s workout if there was no ego, no mind, nothing constricted by "must", "should", etc. to interfere, only the need for improvement.

This requires a tool in the "now", nothing pre- planned, just coming in with a plan and checking if it is ok.

The next part will be dedicated to the few things I can tell you about neurological testing as well as my own variation I´m using due to my conditioning through my past experiences. :-)

Train hard and enjoy every moment!

All the best,

Harald

Running

Good advice.

Train hard and enjoy every moment!

All the best,

Harry

Velocity Diet Completed

Well...It´s done.
It´s my last day of the Velocity Diet...Tonight at 2400 I´m back to eating solid food.

To be honest, it´s about time.
It´s fun to drop weight, get some mindfuck going but still... :-D

There have been some physical changes as well, as you can see in the video below.
So objective number 3 has been accomplished as well as number 1 and 2.



I lost around 6-7kg, my strength levels are the same or higher, conditioning didn´t suffer either.
I even took a blood- sample yesterday and I will have the results in a few weeks...


To be honest, there is nothing more I can say right now...Maybe during the next few days some insights will occur to me which I can share with you.


If not... It´s always best to try it ourself anyway...


Train hard and enjoy every moment!
All the best,
Harry

Sick pig phase 3

OK, since the beginning of March I completed 2 phases, each 4 weeks long.

First I was eating like a pig and working the One lift a day program by Dan John.

After that I was a crazy pig starting the Velocity Diet.

I´m still doing that one, Sunday 2400 will be the finish- line.

Right now I´m looking forward to it, simply because I´m starting to feel I need quality food again.

I learned a lot so far, re-evaluated my idea of nutrition, discovered some things circling around in my head and lost some fat in the process.

The next phase is gonna be the consolidation: I´m gonna be pig all the way. I´ll train and eat like one.. ;-D

One success sets you up for the next one.

(Please, think about that one for a moment...It can make a huge difference in your life.)

Ok, why the comment above?

Because I lost some weight. I only consumed Protein- shakes for 4 weeks. I retained all of my strength and likely gained some conditioning because I´m lighter.

Still...My body is craving nutrients, fuel, energy which does not come from within.

So the next few weeks, 4-5 to name numbers, will be dedicated to strength work.

I was provided the possibility to train at a friends apartment, he has an awesome power rack, lots of weights, barbells and dumbbells... To sum it up: everything you need to become stronger.

Always going hand-in-hand with a decent strength protocol is a decent nutrition.

I´ll stick to one main indicator to know when to eat: hunger.

After reseting pretty much everything through the Velocity Diet I´ll simply trust myself to tell me when to eat.

I´ll consume 1-3 Protein- shakes per day, I´ll eat 1-3 meals per day, I´ll stick with protein, fat and veggies on my off-days and consume protein, veggies and carbs on training days.

About the training...

When we are talking about barbells and the basic exercises I know some things but had little practice so far.

So I pulled out my best reference towards strength training available in my literature: Purposeful Primitive by Marty Gallagher.

I like this book so much, I read it 3 times I think...

Finally I have the opportunity to practice some of the things I read about.

I chose to go with a 2 day/week training.

Marty describes it as somewhat crazy and... well... I like crazy. It´s OK, people tell me, ask me, whisper about me being crazy all the time so...yeah...it´s OK.

Each of the two days I´m gonna work up to one top set with 5 reps and add 3x8 back-off sets with roughly 75% of the top set.

This is done first for the Back squat, then for the Bench-press and then for the Dead-lift.

After this terrific amount of pushing and pulling little girl weights I´ll do one upper body pulling and one upper body pushing movement. Marty calls it Biceps- and Triceps work.

But I´ll stay away from triceps- push-downs as far as possible.

Instead I´ll stick with dips, heavy barbell curls and chinups. Which will be really funny after the basic- movements before. But hey, call me crazy... ;-D

2 times a week the body will be blasted, the rest of the week I do some easy cardio (I´ll talk about that in a further blog-post), maybe yoga and eat a lot which I hope will increase my strength- levels as well as my muscle mass.

We will see, as always I will keep you posted.

Train hard and enjoy every moment!

All the best,

Harry

Strongman- training

Some things just get you going, make you access reserves you never would or maybe even could tap into on your own...

Doing things you never do can be such a thing.

To me, training alone and mostly using Bodyweight exercises and Kettlebells, Strongman Training with tools and implements I have no access to is such a thing.

Training in a group is as well...

Last Saturday I was able to combine those two strangers when I was invited by a friend, Gregor ( http://www.strongbodyandmind.de/ ), to visit him near Munich and together with other well known crazy trainees we would hit a 6 hour monster training day.

We started light... ;-D

Several Rounds of Tire Flips using a 100+kg Tire and with each round adding Sandbags which added up to 120,140 and 160kg "supersetted " with hand-over-hand Sled- pulls with the Sled weighing 60kg, 80kg, 95kg and finally 110kg...

That was mini- workout number one...

The next part consisted of Strongman Log Clean & Pushpresses.

We didn´t discriminated between Jerks, pushpresses and all that stuff.

Pick it up and get it over your head. Period. Because that is how strength is built.

The workout itself consisted of 60sec with 60kg, rest for 60sec, 45sec with 45kg, rest 75sec and finish with 30sec with 30kg.

I showed some weakness with the heavier weights but was able to beat some of the guys simply because due to my Kettlebell- Training I have got some pretty good endurance and speed with the lighter weights.

But I have to take care of my strength- levels...

Still I hit a personal best when getting 75kg (my current bodyweight) overhead...

The fact that I managed that weight was interesting to me, because I still struggle with 2 32kg Kettlebells.

To me somehow Kettlebells are more difficult to handle than Dumbbells.

But in the end all that matters is getting stronger, getting more enduring, be it with any form of free weights...

The next workout consisted of a 3 round- superset- set- up with 2x 20m Sled Drags (95kg, 110kg and some guys even hit 125kg) and 2x20m Trapbar- Farmer Walk with 110kg.

That one was tough...

The next one was even tougher...

4 Times 2x 20m Trapbar- Framer walk up to 150kg (some guys even hit 180kg!!) and finish with 1 round of max. time Farmer walk with 130kg...

We finished the day with a evil medley designed by Gregor:

For time 7@ Clean and Overhead(Pushpress, Jerk, Powersnatch) with a Thick- bar Dumbbell weighing 32kg, 6x Sandbag Loading on a 122cm platform(I used a 40kg Bag, some even handled a 70kg Sandbag!!) and 5 Keg- Cleans with a 40kg (some went for 50kg)

I was surprised how well I handled myself since I´m still doing the Velocity Diet and am living on Protein- shakes only.

The day after our training was tough because my body was screaming for food to restore itself...Still, I didn´t waver and stuck with my Diet. I received enough protein to restore my muscles and everything else will only help to burn off fat.

All in all it was a great day, I hit several personal bests and I am looking forward to another session when I actually have eaten something. ;-D

Train hard and enjoy every moment!

All the best,

Harry