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Forums › Training Journals Post your training journals here if you like. › Furmanate Me! — Leaner and more mobile and resilient
Tue., Jun. 22, 2021
5p-10p: 4 whole eggs; fuck ton of fat-free Greek yogurt; salad with ½ tbsp olive oil, 5 blocks of pine nuts, and fairly generous balsamic; 5 blocks (7.5 oz) of ground beef
My macros got all messed up for the day, with a huge imbalance of protein (20+ protein blocks) and very little carbs or fat. That fat-free Greek yogurt is great, but it’s got virtually zero carbs or fat, so I have to careful to balance those with other foods, otherwise I end up with my macros out of balance.
Exercise: Jogged 40 minutes, 10-12 naked pistols in singles, doubles, and triples. At Tom’s direction, this is to be a back-off week with 50% volume.
Wed., Jun. 23, 2021
Slept horribly.
7p: Dinner party where I kept the macro ratios *basically* righteous, but I ate a lot (including two cupcakes). I am a lowly sinner. (No idea how many blocks.)
Thur., Jun. 24, 2021
Slept horribly again. So tired that, in a moment of stress, I literally forgot the letters of the alphabet.
5p-9p: Strawberries, low-carb tortillas, pistachios, egg whites, whole eggs, salmon, butter, buckwheat (16 blocks)
Exercise: Jogging and crawling for 45 minutes.
Fri., Jun. 25, 2021
Slept horribly. I’m drinking too much caffeine to keep to a tight, 4-hour IF window, so today I opened up the eating window to 6 hours.
2:30p: Salmon, low-carb tortilla, hummus, egg. 2 blocks
4:30p: salmon, hummus 2 blocks
7:00p: salmon, cabbage, broccoli, pancakes (almond flour, buckwheat flour, coconut flour, egg), strawberries, whey protein, butter 12 blocks of protein and fat, but only 8 blocks of carbs
Middle of night: Hellish restless legs. I ate 4 more blocks trying to get the blood sugar to knock me to sleep.
No exercise.
Sat., Jun. 26, 2021
Horrible sleep, in spite of reducing my caffeine.
5p: Huge salad with eggs, cranberries, sunflower seeds, balsamic vinegar and a smidge of olive oil. (4 blocks)
7p: Art reception with a little bit of chicken breast and 4 cookies. (No idea of the macros.)
Exercise: Extremely lame, sad effort at swinging the 24kg. Less than 100 reps. I just didn’t have any oomph at all.
Sun., Jun. 27, 2021
Very little sleep at night. Looong search operation in brain boiling sun.
3am: Ezekiel bread, 2 eggs (2 blocks)
9am: 2 Rx bars (4 blocks)
10:30am: turkey sub (?? blocks. There was a lot of bread in this, so I should have skipped it, but we were going to stay in the field for a few more hours.)
2pm: Ezekiel bread, 2 eggs, strawberries, spinach, protein powder (4 blocks)
6pm: salmon, veggies (6 blocks)
I was doing fine so far, but still hot and dehydrated from all the sun, so then …
7pm: pint of ice cream (no “blocks,” just a pint of ice cream. Call it 1000 calories)
Exercise: 6 hours of searching
Mon., Jun. 28, 2021
More hellish restless legs last night and very little sleep.
2pm: a packet of prepared curry vegetables, protein powder, strawberries (4 blocks)
6pm: salmon, veggies, almond tortillas, eggs and egg whites (10 blocks)
Rest day–no exercise
Tue., Jun. 29, 2021
Slept awesomely! I attribute this to three things:
· Restricting caffeine after noon
· Finishing dinner almost 3 hours before bed time
· No reading off phone before bed
· Put up blackout curtains in bedroom
· Blocked A/C vent in bedroom so it doesn’t blow on me
Wed., Jun. 30
3pm. plain fat-free Greek yogurt; strawberries; protein powder (4 blocks)
6pm. egg whites, almond tortillas, kraut (4 blocks)
9pm. 2 eggs, egg whites, low-carb tortillas, ff Greek yogurt, strawberries (8 blocks)
Thur., Jul. 1
Exercise: pullups, AMRAP x5; pushups, AMRAP x3.
3:30pm: ff Greek yogurt, samosas (4 blocks)
5:30pm: low carb tortillas, eggs & egg whites (4 blocks)
8pm: lamb, veggies, samosas, ff Greek yogurt (8 blocks)
Jul. 5-10: Staying with in-laws and adapting to their menus. No way to count blocks exactly, so relying on approximate balancing of macros, IF with 4-6 eating window, and saying no to dessert.
Jul. 5: TON of ff Greek yogurt; a little bit of granola and peanut butter; lentil soup and veggies.
Jul. 6: Pistols. Rucked about 3 miles. Gyros with much of the dough removed. Tritip, rice, beans.
Jul. 7: Lizard crawling around the sidewalks of San Francisco, which still made me the least eccentric non-Asian person in the city. Pasties with much of the dough removed; Korean food.
Jul. 8: Rucked 6 miles and about 300 swings with the 32kg. Pasties and gyros with much of the dough removed; scrod, risotto, carrots, salad. Fuck ton of cereal and yogurt.
Jul. 9: Walked for 90 minutes. Pullup ladder and hangboard. Cereal and yogurt. Lamb, veggies, risotto.
Jul. 10: 16 pistols (as singles) about 1 minute apart. Ton of salad and chicken breast; half a sushi roll; ff Greek yogurt, strawberries, and whey powder
Sun., July 11, 2021 Back home with full control over my food.
5pm: Low carb tortillas, egg whites, ff Greek yogurt. (4 blocks)
7pm: salmon, cabbage, broccoli, wonton strips, pine nuts. (6 blocks)
9pm: ff Greek yogurt, strawberries, whey protein, peanut butter (6 blocks)
No exercise. Hot and lazy.
Mon., Jul. 12, 2021
Continued laziness–no exercise.
4:30pm: ff Greek yogurt, blueberries, a little peanut butter (4 blocks)
6:30pm: salmon, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, wonton strips, pine nuts (6 blocks)
8:30pm: ff Greek yogurt, blueberries, a little peanut butter (6 blocks)
Tue., Jul. 13, 2021
Crawling
3:30pm: salmon, pistachios (2 blocks)
5pm: fish burrito, chips (6-8 blocks? But definitely some excess carbs too)
9pm: low-carb tortillas, 2 eggs, 2 egg whites, salsa, cheese sauce, ff Greek yogurt, berries, whey protein (7 blocks)
Wed., Jul. 14, 2021
4pm: low carb tortilla, egg & egg white, salsa, cheese (2 blocks)
7pm: engagement/anniversary dinner – bread, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, pudding, ff Greek yogurt, strawberries, whey protein (not measured–this was a splurge)
Short ruck. 36kg and 40kg swings. Not a lot. I felt run down and achey.
Thur., Jul. 15, 2021
10am: chili (2 blocks)
2pm: ff Greek yogurt, strawberries, pecans. (4 blocks)
5pm: almond tortillas, eggs & egg whites, cheese. (4 blocks)
6pm: trail mix (not sure how many blocks–this wasn’t planned, but I just got too hungry waiting for dinner)
8pm: veggies, salmon, pine nuts, wonton strips. (6 blocks)
11pm: some ff Greek yogurt (2 blocks)
Short ruck. Pullup ladder and hangboarding.
Fri., Jul. 16, 2021
Backpacking trip. This was something of a death march: I felt like crap the whole time.
AM: ff Greek yogurt and sunflower butter (This was totally macro-unbalanced: a lot of protein and fat but only miniscule carbs)
noon: supermarket chicken tenders (8 blocks)
PM: 4 RX bars (8 blocks)
Sat., Jul. 17, 2021
Backpacking death march, cont’d. I was supposed to stay out another day, but I felt so migrainey that I came home early.
AM: oatmeal, whey powder, RX bar. (6 blocks)
Lunch: fish taco and lamb gyro (8 blocks)
Dinner: Thai food (Moderate in portions but too much carb, not enough protein)
Sun., Jul. 18, 2021
Felt like crap all day. Still not recovered from the mountain death march. Search & rescue callout all afternoon/evening.
PM: Tri-tip, bean salad, little bit of bread & humus. (About 9 blocks.)
Later: Sheriff’s office dropped off cheesburgers and fries for us in the field. I pounced on both like a puma. (No pretense of blocks.)
Later: 2 eggs, almond tortilla, ff sf Greek yogurt, berries (4 blocks)
Mon., Jul. 19, 2021
4pm: ff sf Greek yogurt, peach jam, peanut butter. (2 blocks)
6pm: eggs and egg white, salmon, almond tortillas, kraut, zucchini, tomato sauce (11 blocks)
8:30pm: ff sf Greek yogurt, peach jam, peanut butter. (3 blocks)
Tue., Jul. 20, 2021
2pm: chili (6 blocks)
4pm: ff sf Greek yogurt, berries, peanut butter (4 blocks)
6:30pm: roast chicken, broccoli (6 blocks)
Pistols: singles time either 10 or 12–I forget which
Fri., Aug. 5, 2021
Tom has moved me to the “Dirty Work” program, where the centerpiece is extended sets of OALC PP, drawn out with extra swings in between reps as active rest. God I love this! I really like GS-derived training, like Federenko’s “KB pentathlon,” and this really hits that spot. And boy was this humbling. I was thinking maybe I’d be starting with 28kg, and maybe I could have pulled off a single 8-minute set that way, if I loafed around in the rack long enough to keep that pace super-slow.
But instead I started with the 24kg, and even that got hard to sustain. I did a total of 3 sets of 8 minutes with hand switches on the minute, first with 24kg, then starting with 24kg but switching to 16kg halfway through, and finally 20kg switching to 16kg halfway through.
The way I measure KB volume is by the pood (16kg), lifting it about one arm’s length. (So if you swing one 16kg bell, or clean it, or press it or jerk it from the rack, that’s one pood. If you clean it and then jerk it, that’s two poods. Likewise, it’s two poods if you snatch a 16kg bell, since you’ve lifted it about two arms lengths, from backswing, up past the shoulder, to locking out overhead. If you clean a 32kg bell, that’s two poods. And if you take a pair of 16kg bells and clean them, that’s also 2 poods.)
By that measure, I did 650 poods of volume. For me that’s pretty substantial. I can’t wait for the next one.
Sat., Aug. 8, 2021 170.8 lbs.
I’ve finally exited a period of frenetic busy-ness (cool and rewarding, just harried).
AM: breakfast burrito (6 blocks) <– This wasn’t one of the ones I make but a restaurant one. 6 blocks is just an estimate.
PM: steel-cut oats, berries, ff sf Greek yogurt, protein powder. (6 blocks)
PM: piece of pizza, low-carb tortilla, eggs, salad (5 blocks). This made for one excess block today.
Sun., Aug. 8, 2021
No exercise, but light housework all day
2pm: steel-cut oats, ff sf Greek yogurt, protein powder, berries, pecans (5 berries)
5pm: same thing
7pm: salad, ground beef, wonton noodles, berries, EVOO. (6 blocks)
9pm: Still hungry AF. 2 more eggs and some beef. (3-4 excess blocks)
I thought the oat/Greek yogurt/pecan thing would fill me up better, but it didn’t. I was still ravenous before bed.
Mon., Aug. 9, 2021. 169.4 lbs., 33 1/4″ waist
At Tom Furman’s suggestion, I’m sticking with 16kg for now. OALC PP time ladders, 2-4-6-8-2-4-6 minutes. Avg. rest between sets 3 minutes. Total of 32 minutes working time, 50 minutes total time, volume 700 poods.
2pm: ff sf Greek yogurt, berries, pecans (3 blocks)
Tue., Aug. 10, 2021
2-3 hour ruck.
I ate an excess 3-4 blocks at night. I’ve been having a flareup of sleep trouble (restless leg syndrome), and it struck me so I ate more at 11pm to get the blood sugar bump to knock me into sleep. It works, but obviously it’s a terrible tactic. I’m visiting a sleep specialist on Thursday to find a better one.
From experience, I know that to be sure of sleeping well, I need to finish dinner by 8pm. That sounds simple enough, but now that I’m in a new household with my woman, it takes planning and attention to make it happen reliably.
Wed., Aug. 11, 2021
Stretching. Eating went great: 16 blocks.
Thur., Aug. 12, 2021 168.8 lbs.
Fri., Aug. 13 – Sun., Aug. 15, 2021
Time is a blur here: I did three search & rescue exercises or callouts, had the parents-in-law over, slept in a sleep lab (no fun), and made an offer on a house. I’m not sure what I’ve even eaten, except that it was much, much less bad than it could have been.
I did fit in a morning of hiking and a 28-minute set of 16kg OALC PP “dirty work” (see Tom Furman’s article). I could have continued that set indefinitely long (I think I had 60 minutes in me) but I got interrupted and had to transition to work.
Mon., Aug. 15, 2021
Laughably short ruck. I think I only got in 15 minutes.
Tue., Aug. 16, 2021
KB “dirty work” (concerning which see Tom’s article “Dirty Deeds”). I love this stuff. Today was 17kg (using some magnets) for (OALC PP + 3 swings) x 12 minutes, 12 minutes, and 22 minutes. Total of 46 minutes under load, and 730 poods of volume.
Wed., Aug. 18, 2021 169.1 lbs.
Bike ride with heavy rucksack, 40 minutes. This was no joke. Cool form of exercise.
Thur., Aug. 19. 172.0 lbs.
Awesome “dirty work”-out. I only had 40 minutes and a 28kg bell ready to hand, so I improvised. Tom mentioned that Vasiliev sometimes does “minute on, minute off” workouts, so I tried out “2 mins on, 2 mins off,” to give a minute each to the R and L hands, for (OALC PP + 3 swings) x10 times 9 sets. So that gave me 9 sets of 2 minutes, and I rested 2 minutes in between. That gave me a 34-minute workout with 875 poods of volume.
It’s possible that’s close to a lifetime PR for KB volume in a single workout. That doesn’t seem possible, since I’ve done some long-ass workouts like Fed’s OTW GS workouts and DJ’s 500-swing workouts, but the math bears it out. (On those long 500-swing workouts, I was clocking up an average intensity of 26kg at most. But with this workout I squeezed in almost 10% more volume, in half the time, because it spreads the work out over the pulling and push-pressing muscles.) Every muscle below my neck got a good stonking, right down to my foot muscles. (I’d forgotten how much the feet have to work in GS-type work.)
I only went that heavy because I had to rush. Next time I’ll go back to 17kg or 18kg.
Tue., Aug. 24, 2021
3pm: cassava tortilla, eggs, salmon, kraut, hummus. (4 blocks)
7pm: more of same, plus broccoli, sf ff Greek yogurt, strawberries, pecans (12 blocks, minus a good bit of the fats and carbs)
For today’s “dirty work,” I’d planned to move up only to 18kg, but since I only had 1kg of fractional magnetic weights, I went all the way up to the 20kg bell. Ladders of (3 swings + 1 OALC PP) for 2 time ladders of 2-4-6-8 minutes. That made a total of 40 minutes of working time in about a 65 minute workout, and total volume of 1250 poods. Holy fuck, that’s almost a 100% increase in volume from a couple weeks ago.
Sat., Aug. 28, 2021. 168.6 lbs.
I made an 18.5kg bell and did one 46-minute set that I ended to spare a callous that felt close to ripping. I was aiming for a fairly quick workout, so to amp things up, instead of doing three swings and a clean & push press, I alternated that with three swings and a clean and a simple press. (This was a GS-type press, not a bracing, power-breathing grind. ) So it was: swing x3, clean, push press, swing x3, clean, press.
In terms of RPE, I’d say that workout was a 7, as my grip and shoulders started to get fatigued.
Volume for the day was 1250 poods. Definitely a PR. (Probably a PR for kettlebell volume in a single workout, definitely a PR for volume in a single set.)
Mon., Aug. 30, 2021
Just a 2.5 mile walk.
Tue., Aug. 31, 2021
Crap workout today, so I didn’t push it. I was scheduled for a “minute on, minute off” day, and I thought I’d use the 24kg, figuring I could keep that going for 30-40 minutes pretty comfortably. Nope. The first set with 24kg didn’t feel good, so I dropped all the way down to 20kg, and even that felt surprisingly laborious. Everything just felt crappy: my callouses, my sacrum (on my left side I had to make a conscious effort to reach my elbow to my iliac crest), and even my forearm wasn’t loving it when I racked the cleans. (Well, that was with the 24kg. But even that is abnormal.) So after 7 sets with the 20kg, I just declared it a “light day” and stopped.
In hindsight, this isn’t so surprising. I’ve upped the volume at every workout for two or three weeks, and I’ve PR’ed for the last several workouts.
Tempo was quicker today: 6 rounds per minute, instead of 5, of the usual complex (3 swings and a clean & push press). Total volume was 600 poods. (That’s actually more than I thought.)
Sat., Sept. 4, 2021. 168.4 lbs.
A few changes here:
The last few days have involved just walking the 3 miles or so to and from work, nothing more.
Today’s “dirty work” workout used 21kg for time ladders of 2-4-6-8-2-4-6-8-2-4-4-2 minutes, or a total of 52 minutes of work spaced out over 76 minutes. That made for 1700 poods of volume, which is another PR.
About halfway through the workout I began having the same old problem of being limited by my palm condition instead of my wind or my muscles. So I adapted a little. The biggest stressor on my palm callouses was when I dropped the bell out of the rack. So to minimize those, instead of doing 1 CPP after each 3 swings, I tried doing a lot of swings at the top of the minute, followed by a lot of PPs. The best combination–the one that squeezed the most sustainable volume into each minute–was 20 swings and then 5-7 PPs, and then switch hands as usual at the top of the next minute. That helped–it didn’t eliminate all palm stress, but it did buy me another 20 minutes of work before my callouses were really hurting too much.
In all these weeks of “dirty work,” I haven’t torn a callous, just gotten them to that familiar point where you know it go any minute. That alone is a big plus for this form of training. And of course, another is the incredible volume.
21kg is a good weight right now. Even the first 2-minute set didn’t feel like a cakewalk. I think at the next KB workout I’ll try starting with this “20 swings, then PPs” formula and see if that can win me even more time under load before the callouses get irritated. (Also, I’ll revive the old GS palm-care routine of soaking, filing, and moisturizing the callouses.)
Tue., Sept. 7, 2021. 170.0 lbs. (!!)
Lighter day with the KBs. My palms were still irritated and threatening to tear. So I split each minute: 15 swings (30 secs) and about 10 push presses (30 secs). 21 kg for 2 sets of 10 minutes each, with about 8 minutes of rest in between. Pretty tough.
Total volume: 650 poods
I’ve walked or rucked daily this week.
Sat., Sept. 11, 2021 167.6 lbs. (PR*)
* i.e. for purposes of my time working with Tom.
KB “dirty work.” Today was a true “light day.” Tom has been working with me on the idea that, “It’s what you can sustain, not what you can take.” (More on that in his recent interview below…) Intellectually that’s something I know and preach to others; in my personal practice, I might have wandered somewhere along the way. In particular, Tom has been pulling back on my bridle and keeping me from galloping off into heavier bells. Note I say “heavier,” not “heavy.” So far I’ve mostly stayed well below 24kg, which is not what I’d normally call heavy. In my days of (blindly groping, self-taught, unimpressive) GS training, 24kg was just a normal working weight.
However, two things are different. First is something I’ve overlooked until now, namely the greater duration, volume, and tempo. In days of yore, under VF’s OTW, a workout might involve two working sets of 5-10 minutes. So 10-20 minutes total, and at low rpms (at least where the 24kg bells were concerned). Let’s say maybe 6 rpm in the jerk and 12 or 14 in the snatch. Add a set each of heavy swings and OAJs and you’re looking at 600 poods of volume for the day, tops. That’s about half of what I’m doing now with Tom, where total time is longer and the tempo is faster. (The other different thing is that I’m 15 years older now, and that has to count for something.)
With that in mind, today’s light was a minor epiphany: I could feel palpably that, for now, 24kg really does lie on the other side of some invisible but noticeable line for me. See, I did 2 minutes on, 2 minutes off, alternating 18kg and 24kg. (The idea was that, since I don’t have my 21kg with me right now, the average intensity would still come out to 21kg.) The 18kg sets felt much like my 21kg sets do: like I could go just as long as I needed to. But though the 24kg sets felt OK, there was no feeling that I could keep chugging along for 50 minutes, or even 20, or even 10. No, I was watching that clock and only too happy to end the set. It wasn’t killing me, but it wasn’t effortless grace like the light bell either. Subjectively, it felt like the difference between running at 105 bpm (well below my aerobic threshold) and 135 bpm, a little above it. At 105 I could go all day; at 135 it’s exciting for awhile, but I’m spending real energy.
All told, today was the usual (3 swings + 1 CPP) for 4 sets of 2 minutes with 18kg and 3 sets of 2 minutes with 24kg, with 2-minutes rests. Total volume was 460 poods, which makes it the lightest day so far.
Cooled down with a few gorilla pullups, Hindu pushups, and some hangboarding.
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Wed., Sept. 15, 2021. 167.2 lbs. (PR)
“Dirty work” with 20kg. 3 sets of 10 minutes each in 40 minutes. In the sweaty heat, callouses were a problem so I did 20 swings, 1 clean, and 6 push presses. Because of the faster tempo and short rests, my HR got up there at the end. Total volume: 1000 poods. (Damn, no wonder I breathed so hard. That was a pretty dense workout.)
Sat., Sept. 18, 2021
5-hour hike with 4500-ft. elevation gain. Nice and slow, inside my MAF zone the whole time, felt hugely energized the rest of the day.
Sun., Sept. 19, 2021 171.6 lbs. (!)
KB “dirty work” ladders with the usual routine (3 swings, 1 CPP) with the 20kg. 6-8-10-12-2-4-6-8-2-4 minutes, for a total 62 minutes with a 1:1 work-rest ratio. At 25 rpm (where each swing, clean, or push press is one rep), that’s a total volume of 1930 poods, which is another huge volume PR.
Wed., Sept. 22, 2021
Worst fucking insomnia of my life. Went for a 30-minute ruck.
Thur., Sept. 23, 2021
Quick KB workout. Minute-on, minute-off with the usual cluster (3 swings, 1 CPP) using 24kg. (Tried 28kg for one pair of sets, but it was too much to hold without over-gripping.) Unlike past such workouts, I was really doing just one minute at a time, not one minute L and one minute R. Total of 16 sets, average 30 rpm, total volume 720 poods.
Oct. 3-5
Huge fucking Bataan death march of a backwoods hunting trip. In the week that followed, just walked a few miles every day or two.
Tue., Oct. 12, 2021
Tom has put me on a base-building program of swings, TGUs, and pullups, with LSD workouts. Today I started with…
That kind of smoked me. It feels like forever since I did any grinds.
I spent most of the week traveling, so workouts were improvised:
Friday: Half hour of improvised yoga flow and pistols in airport.
Saturday: 5 sets of pullups (11, 5, 5, 6, 4). These were basically AMRAP sets.
Monday: walking with leg weights
Tue., Oct. 19, 2021
swings (2 hands, Hardstyle) (10L, 10R) x5 sets: 36kg, 36kg, 40kg, 36kg, 32 kg
24kg TGUs (1L, 1R) x5 sets, done slowly, especially the awkward, poorly supported phases like the bridge and the pistol-like lunge
Pullups (chest to bar): 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. Sixty-second rests.
Wed., Oct. 26, 2021
Walked 4 miles. (No pack.)
Thur., Oct. 27, 2021
In the TGU, I used to have this “hitch” on the L side after the roll when sitting up. The kind of hitch where your feet come off the ground and you need body English to break your torso off the ground. That’s gone now, and I credit the slow-motion work for that. (As it happens, I suspect it wasn’t a strength imbalance or weak point but just a difference in how I used my support arm on the two sides. The trick is to have the elbow of my support arm slightly bent.)
Mon., Nov. 15, 2021
Two (?) kettlebell workouts this week, consisting of:
Gradually I’m adding reps opportunistically to the swing sets, just because I can. Keeping the rest periods compressed. Ditto with the slo-mo getups.
Cardio this week continues to be just “catch-as-catch-can” this week, consisting of walking, riding, or chopping wood for half an hour at a time, maybe 10 times/week.
Tue., Nov. 16, 2021
Completed the workout in 32:10 minutes. (I should be measuring the total rest time, so that I don’t create a perverse incentive to speed up the TGUs and rob myself of TUT.)
Wed., Nov. 17, 2021
Biked 65 minutes
Thur., Nov. 18, 2021
Total resting time 15:11 minutes
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