UB: Conditioning - Review

I've finished the 6-week conditioning block from Paul Carter's Ultimate Beastdom - How to get What Constitutes Strong (WCS).

This program calls for 3-4 days of hard conditioning a week, 1-2 sessions of steady-state, and only two sessions of weight lifting with the goal being to stimulate strength maintenance.

Here were my results for the 3 types of hard conditioning:
Timed Mile - 7:58; previous best was 9:12.
Hammer&Tire - 15 minutes Tabata-style (30 seconds/10seconds); previous best was 5 rounds of 40 swings with 45 second rests for 10 minutes.
30 yd. Incline Sprints - 20 sprints in 18:30; previous best was 8 sprints in 10:00.

In the gym, I didn't miss a single lift, although my last round of singles on OHP were very slow.  Additionally, I actually set a 1 Rep PR in the Squat, but that's due to having missed my one previous attempt with that weight due to form issues.  Still, it was nice to get the lift on the books.

Additionally, I actually set a Chin-Up PR with 12 reps at a gym BW of 205.

It took me a while to get in the correct mind-set for this cycle as I kept looking forward to my gym sessions, and leaving the conditioning as an afterthought.  Once I flipped that, I started having a lot more fun with the program.  Also, the 45 minute walks I did for steady-state were very nice.  I wake up much earlier on the weekends than my wife, and it was nice to just go for a walk in the morning once or twice a week in that time.

The Mile was something that had been in my programming for a few weeks when I was doing Defranco stuff, but since then had only been used for an occasional steady-state finisher after a lifting session.  It was really cool to come back to it for 6-weeks to try and bring it up.  I was able to plot a simple mile around my neighborhood with easy 1/4 mile markers, and it was great to be able to walk out the front door, and be back home with my conditioning workout done all in less than 15 minutes.  This will definitely be another tool that I try to incorporate several times a year going forward.

Sledge hammer swings have been a mainstay of my programming for awhile, as they always made sense as a way to get some good conditioning in while giving the legs a break, they fit in well after a Bench or Press sessions, and they make me feel like a badass afterwards.  However Paul's use of Tabata timing in this was very different from what I had been doing, and very kick-my-ass as well.  Prior to this block, I'd treated them more like core work.  By that I mean I would do sets of moderately high "reps," and then rest for 30-60 seconds before doing another "set."  The 30 seconds of swinging, 10 seconds of resting protocol on this cycle was much harder conditioning wise.  I do want to say, that it didn't seem to be as much of a grip workout as the longer rounds of swings however, and that is also good to know.

The sprints are something I'd been working to try and incorporate for awhile.  I hadn't really gotten serious about them because what I wanted to do were the holy hill-sprints advocated so heavily by Carter, Wendler, and others.  However being car-less, and living in the flat city of Chicago had made this un-feasible for realistically incorporating them into my life.  Both my gym and my home have stretches of street/side-walk nearby that are at a steady incline, so I finally opted to just do 30 yard sprints there.  They seemed hard enough to start out, and hard enough to progress on (I failed to make my goal on one week of this program), that I've decided they're acceptable.  They will continue to be a mainstay for me.

I had a lot of fun on this program, and I learned a lot about myself.  The only bummer is that I now have 3 different conditioning drills I really like, plus there's a Prowler at the gym now, and I'm going to have a hard time deciding which drills I want to include in non-conditioning cycles going forward.  Probably I will go with the Prowler next time since I haven't done any programming with it yet, and want to get a baseline set.  After that, it's going to be really difficult to choose!

One other thought:  I still look back fondly on 531, and plan to go back to that after I finish out the final block of this programming.  However, I don't see any reason that the template Paul uses here can't be used as another template for 531.  Top end strength, conditioning, rep strength, right?  I'm thinking it would be set up as such:

Top Strength - 4 days/week, Press, Dead, Bench, Squat.  531 sets/reps for those movements for 6 weeks with no deload, so a week of 5's, a week of 3's, 531 week, 5's, 3's, 531.  Only going for rep maxes the last weeks.  Assistance work would be as prescribed in the Ultimate Beastdom program.

Conditioning - 2 days of lifting a week.  You would set up like Paul does, but using 531 sets/reps.  So Week 1 would be 531 sets for Bench and Squats, and Week 2 would be Press and Deads with the only difference being that you would also do some light sets of Squats on Deadlift day, and no assistance on any lower body day.  Or, there are a variety of 531 2-day templates out there, so you would pick one of those, and just make sure you pick one with minimal assistance, and only get the prescribed reps.  Then you do the conditioning as Carter lays out in his program.

Rep Strength - This would be very similar to Boring But Big 531, 3 times per week.  The difference is you only get the prescribed reps on the 531 sets, and then you do as many sets as necessary to get 30+ reps with 63% of a reasonable target 1RM for the cycle.  Paul recommends your current max +5%.  Also, you would have to think about what you want to do with the Press and the Deadlift.  Paul only uses the Press as Bench assistance here.  Also, he has changed his mind about high-rep Deadlifting since he wrote the program.  I will talk more about this when I start the Rep strength phase next week, but basically you can do Deadlift just for the 531 reps, and then work on your rowing strength for high reps afterward .  For the Press, a good compromise might be to switch to incline for this cycle instead of doing separate days for Bench and OHP.  Of the 3 blocks, this one is that one that takes the most tweaking to use 531.

UPDATE:  I forgot to include one other aspect of the program that I added.  Paul once wrote a post wherein he discussed that you can bring up one, smaller muscle group on a conditioing/diet/cutting phase.  I decided to do biceps for balance and fun.  I did a 4 sets of high-reps on a curl variation at the end of every lifting session.  I alternated between BB Curls, Reverse BB Curls, DB Hammer Curls, and Rope Curls.  I don't take body measurements, but I would say my biceps definitely look larger after this program.

UB: Conditioning Week 6. Squat, Deads and Sprints

Defranco Mobility

Squats -
BarX10
135X5
185X3
205X5

Deadlift -
135X5
225X3
275X1
295X1X5

BB Reverse Curl -BarX10, 12, 10

BB Curl - BarX15, 12, 12

Incline Sprints (30 yds.) - 20 sprints, 18:30 minutes

Last day of the conditioning cycle.  Squats were fine.

Deadlifts were still fine.  No appreciable drop-off on this lift throughout the conditioning cycle.

For the sprints, I just started a stopwatch I went for 20 which I got.  The most I'd done before was 14, and I still got it at a pace better than 1 per minute.  Good day.

UB: Conditioning Week 6. Timed Mile

Defranco Mobility

5 minute walk

Timed Mile - 7:58

40+ seconds better than my best time for that distance.  I even had to stop for a second at a red light to wait for traffic to clear.  This was pretty much an all-out effort; as much mental as physical.  These last two runs, I've seen that once I get past the first 1/4 mile my brain starts telling me it's not in the cards, and I have to push past that.  Once I'm almost 3/4 of the way through that passes, and it becomes a matter of sustaining the pace.  So the middle 1/2 mile is the mental hurdle for me.  Anyway, this feels awesome.  Come the end of May, I'm going to have a period where I can only get in the gym 2-3 times a week for about 4 weeks, and I might revisit this then.  Or at least one or two of these conditioning drills.  Not sure which yet.

UB: Conditioning Week 6. Press, Hammer & Tire

Defranco Shoulder Mobility

Press -
BarX12
95X2
115X1
125X1X5

Inverted Rows (45 degrees at top) - BWX10, 10

Hammer Curls - 15sX20, 20, 15, 12

Push-ups - BWX26, 6 (50% set)

Tabata (30:10) Hammer Swings - 15 minutes

Press felt hea-vy.  Every rep with 125 was so slow...I don't think I've ever lifted anything so slowly before.  After each one I felt it a wonder that I made the lift, and thought for sure I'd fail on the next.  Got them all though, and that's pretty cool.

Hammer & Tire session was a steaming pile of bullshit.  All the tires at the gym are fucked up because they're mostly used to rest strongman equipment (atlas stones, and logs and farmer's handles that are ALWAYS left with the load on).  Also the tire scoots around all over the place, making you readjust your stance.  None of this is new, but today it was really causing me problems.  The tire I grabbed was particularly dead; no bounce back at all.  And I tried some different strategies for setting plates or DB's in it to hold it in place.  Nothing worked very well, and I ended up switching out tires 2/3's of the way through.  Bottom line:  I worked for 15 minutes which is by bar the longest sledge hammer session I've ever done, and that was my goal for this final session.  Ultimately, I don't know how much work I got done.  I may have gotten less work done per minute than usual, or I might have gotten MORE done with all the fucking around with the set-up during my 10 second rests.  By the end, I was sweating rivers, though.

UB: Conditioning Week 5. Squat, Deads and Sprints

Defranco Mobility

Squat -
BarX10
135X5
185X2
225X1
265X1X5

Deadlift -
135X10
225X5

Rope Curls - 4 sets of 20

Incline Sprints - 14 in 13:00

I was nervous about these Squats.  I'd only tried 265 once before, at the end of the UB Strength cycle, and I got on my toes and had to dump the bar over my head.  So having "failed" to do it on a strength cycle, attempting it near the end of a conditioning cycle was a little worrying.  But I felt confident that the strength should be there, and that it was just a form issue.  When 225 felt a lighter than usual, I started to perk up a little.  I still took a lot of time to make sure my set-up was good.  If I got under the bar and my hands felt wrong, or the bar felt like it was against my shoulders instead of on them, I would pull out and reset.  Got all 5.  They were a bit slow, but so have all the singles been on this cycle.  Because I train alone, I also can't completely vouch for my depth on all 5, especially that first tentative attempt, but as a non-competitor I'm confident that they were low enough to demonstrate my ability to squat this weight.  Nice feeling of calm contentment after these sets.

I mis-read my damn program log, and did last week's programmed sprints.  Whatever; I got done with a minute to spare, and felt like I could have run more.  I did NOT feel like that last week, so I still call this progress.  In fact, I'm thinking that for the last week, instead of setting my timer for 15 minutes or what-not and trying to get X amount of sprints in that time, I might just start a stopwatch running, and see how long I can run sprints before I'm face down on the sidewalk.  Might depend on how I feel that day, though.

UB: Conditioning Week 5. Timed Mile

Timed Mile - 9:16

Right where I wanted to be.  The first week I was closer to 10:00, then the 2nd week I went way to hard and about killed myself getting about 8:40, but the truth is I slowed down when I realized how far over pace I was, and was actually approaching an 8:15.  The last two weeks I ran with my wife just aiming to help her beat her time, so doing it by myself this week, I just wanted to come in between the first two week's times.  Next week is the last one of this cycle, so I will go all out again, and shoot for 8:30 or better.

UB: Conditioning Week 5. Bench, Hammer & Tire

Defranco shoulder mobility

Bench (always CG from now on)-
BarX15
95X5
135X1
155X1
175X1X5

Standing EZ Triceps - 55X18, 15

V-Grip Chins - Gym BW 205X12

BB Curls - 65X10, 8, 45X12

Tabata (30:10) Hammer & Tire - 12 minutes, 30 seconds; 15-21 swings per round

Felt pretty good going into the gym today, but the 175 sets on bench were pretty damn heavy.  I got 4 reps with this weight at the end of the strength phase, so the drop-off is apparent here.  Not to worried about it.

Man, these tabata sledge hammer sessions are a beast mentally.  Last session, I had to give myself a longer break 1/2 way through before continuing.  This session, I got about 1/3 of the way through and my mind was all "God, this is hard.  Maybe I didn't eat enough carbs or something today.  I'm really tired.  Yeah, I probably didn't eat enough.  I should probably just stop and call it a day, and remember to eat a PBnJ before I leave work next time."  Instead, I just kept swinging, never took an extended break, and added 30 seconds, or 1 round of swings to last time.  "We're playing these miiind gaaaames..."