Eating more/less on gym/rest days doesn't do anything (per Feigenbaum, also just makes sense). So eating more on test days alone is going to help you out a bit.

Hitting 2500 calories should be incredibly easy. Just do it.

Clayton,
Here is an example of a 2500cal day with healthy whole foods and plenty of protien.just ignore the "Whet" instead of "Whey"

.

Thanks!

Jan 17

I felt like dog **** yesterday, was slightly under the weather and only got 4 hrs of sleep. Fell asleep at 8:45pm last night (!) and got a nice 8.5 hours. Felt great today. May try doing that more often.

Today was presses and deadlifts.

5 minutes on the airbike
stretches etc

3 orbits of
- handstand wall press, shoulders locked, holding for 20 seconds (visual). This was my second time doing it, takes a little practice but you basically have to walk your feet up the wall and then slowly nudge your hands toward the wall then stick it and press against the ground.
- 20 seconds max reps of seated kettlebell press (~25 lb kettlebells)

4 orbits of

- Deadlifts, 145 lbs, 7 reps
- 15 calories on the airbike high intensity (anywhere from a minute to 90 seconds depending on how hard I was getting after it)
- 90 seconds rest

Great beatdown, back at it tomorrow

Jan 18

Today was another max heartrate kinda day

4 minutes on the airbike

cardio bag runs! 8ish bags about 50 feet, so stride distance in between obv

hard pace going thru it, then run to wall (~15 feet), touch wall, jog back to starting point

- 2 runs of single foot touch between bags, high knees
- 2 runs of double foot touch, high knees
- 2 runs of side to side going left, using right foot as driver
- 2 runs of side to side going right, left foot as driver
- 2 runs of bunny hops (this was new, i think)
- 2 runs of hit the deck between each bag and pick yourself up going left
- 2 runs of hit the deck between each bag and pick yourself up going right

this wrecked me, had heartrate easily above 160 and felt a genuine shortness of breath for the first time in forever. not like "oh **** im gonna die" shortness of breath, just that intense. idk.

then 5 orbits of
- sled push 50 feet (50 lbs added)
- sled pull 50 feet (50 lbs added)
- 30 banded squat jumps best visual i can give,
but the band goes around my waist and PT is sitting down and holding the other side of the band as a stabilizer

back at it sunday i think

forgot to add that the bags are like medicine balls and are the size of beach balls

and 90 second breaks of rest after the banded jumps

Jan 22

whole lotta diff stuff today, lets see if i can remember it all

4 minutes on the airbike

3 orbits
banded front squat
banded deadlift
dumbell press standing up (15s)

2 orbits
- holding a dumbbell press (both arms) and stepping up and down from a box, 3 with left foot first and 3 with right foot first
- 30 feet of bear crawl (picture) , basically knees close to ground, feet relatively close to hands, shoulders locked, hands flared outwards, then tiny steps with hands and legs. primarily works shoulders and quads.

3 orbits
box jump, land both feet, 3 times
box jump, land on left foot, 3 times
box jump, land on right foot, 3 times
1 legged box jump (left foot), land on left foot, 3 times
1 legged box jump (right foot), land on right foot, 3 times
- holding a dumbbell press (both arms) and stepping up and down from a box, 3 with left foot first and 3 with right foot first
- 30 feet of bear crawl

3 orbits
- 200m rowing machine
- 20 reps of skater sideways jump squat lunge
- 20 reps of ring row pulls (rings are like 4 feet off the ground, you hold them and lean back with heels touching ground, then do the opposite of a push up to get your body close to the rings)

back at it tomorrow

Jan 23

whewww today sucked... feels good man

- warmup by jogging around the block twice
- stretch sequence

3 orbits of
- wall ball toss. Using a medicine ball bag from the shuttle run, squat and press the ball about 10 feet off the ground and have it bounce off the wall. catch in a press and squat, press-toss again. ball weighs like 15-20ish lbs. 2 minutes, max reps.
- hang from a pull-up bar and do reps of tucking the knees, making sure to keep core tight and shoulders pinned. 90 seconds, max reps.
- burpee, jump sideways over a barbell, burpee. max reps, 60 seconds.

this sucked a lot, so i got a 5 minute breather when finished

then working on push press (bar in the shelf/neck, 2 inches downward then burst up with hips and press)
- 10 reps bar
- 6 reps 65 lbs
- 4 reps 75 lbs
- [4 reps 85 lbs] x 3

possibly back at it tomorrow depending on scheduling. i may do my DEXA at end of this week.

Hey Clayton, just randomly stumbled across this thread and recognized you from BFI, but if your goal is to get to a point where you can "do Crossfit stuff with the rest of the gym", the best way to do that probably isn't to actually do Crossfit as your only source of working out.

I think Crossfit is great for a mature athlete with a strong strength base who wants to mix it up and do strength based conditioning, but I don't think it's very good for improving performance in an undeveloped strength novice (not intended in a negative way, but if you're deadlifting 145 pounds there's plenty of room for improvement there.)

I think you might see better improvement through a simple, linear weightlifting program as opposed to doing a hodgepodge of random WoD's, especially if you're aiming for a calorie surplus and trying to put on muscle.

With your deadlift for example, if you just deadlifted twice a week and put on 5 to 10 pounds each time, you'd be deadlifting 225 for reps in short order. You won't make that same kind of progress through deadlifting one day, doing wall ball tosses the next day and burpees the next day, etc. Also, form tends to suffer in Crossfit because you're exhausted from the conditioning, and that's especially true for novices, which leads to increased injury risk and also means you won't make the same strength progress as you would from having dedicated strength days at a gym.

Just my two cents. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

Also, I'm really not trying to be condescending here, and I hope I don't come across as such. But, I think your diet is a little bro-sciency and won't produce the best results.

It doesn't really make sense to be running at a big calorie surplus (and 2500 calories is a lot if you're 160 pounds at 24% body fat) and doing a lot of the conditioning based stuff that Crossfit does. If you're trying to lose fat, great, but you won't lose fat taking in that many calories.

If you're trying to build muscle, then by all means eat the calories (although 2,500 still seems like a lot if you're 160 pounds at 24% bodyfat), but Crossfit seems very sub-optimal compared to just a linear strength based program.

If you're trying to increase your VO2 max and overall conditioning and lose fat / modestly increase muscle mass, great, but again, you don't need that many calories / protein I don't think.

You might want to check out FitnessVT.com and try to setup a meal plan through there, I've been using it and had really good results. The guy that runs that site works with a lot of UFC fighters and really knows his stuff.

Good luck! I'll butt out now, just trying to help.

Hi Malachi,

Lot to take in here, your criticism is appreciated but i'm going to keep grinding and doing what i'm doing.

I believe there is a lot of merit to tightening up my diet (ty for recco for fitnessVT), and it's something I will address with my PT after my dexa scan this week. I suspect there is a decent chance that my weight gain these last two months (approx 6 lbs) is a higher % gain in fat mass versus the previous month where i gained 9 lbs of mostly lean mass. (not counting dexa variance, obv)

I think you misunderstand my profile having taken one post where I mentioned PT had me DL'ing 145. That's just what he called for that day as part of a cross training routine. Pretty sure my 1rm is somewhere around 230. Still relatively weak but it's not 145 lol.

The benefits of the linear strength training program have been hashed in this forum and in my threads ad infinitum (and i know many here are pro-SS or pro programs similar to SS). I personally am finding more benefit with this crossfit program.

I appreciate your input tho and welcome any contributions u wanna make in the future. Right now tho I'm happy in this grind!

Dexa results are in!

In the last two months I added 3.7 lbs of lean tissue and 2.9 lbs of fat. Most of the fat was added in my midsection, my bodyfat% in those areas are up about ~1.5% from last scan. New lean tissue seems to be evenly distributed.

There can obv be a little bit of variance in this stuff but it's about what I expected. I was anticipating a higher gain in fat mass, today was just a matter of figuring out how much. Unfortunately it means my BF% is back in the high 24's but I'm feeling optimistic because I keep adding lean mass.

I'll be taking this to my PT next time we meet up and we will adjust my diet accordingly.

Jan 28

Concerning diet, PT looked over everything and said lean gains were good but let's clean the diet up a little. He is in favor of eliminating all sugar and reducing all processed carbs + increasing fat. tons of carbs from veggies and maybe a little bit from beans but thats it. He still wants me to bulk, though. He will get back to me with a macro breakdown and I will adjust accordingly. Shouldn't be too bad, just means getting rid of rice in my chipotle and doing more eggs in the morning and more protein shakes.

Started today with introductory clean and jerk work. PT has had me work on power cleans before and clean+press, but this was first time I actually was working on jerk. Two main things I want to practice on off days... first, getting from hook grip to normal grip when in the process of cleaning. my grip/wrist work is a little shoddy. second, getting better at catching the weight in my sheld/shoulders and getting my elbows up there. i've said that before, but it bears repeating. if i dont doo that, i'm too far forward and using my arms too much. i had some good reps when i used my legs more and my arms were noodles. as far as the actual jerk goes, i think i decent okayish, just gotta get more experience at getting a longer stride with my lunge and a more aggresive jump.

got up to 95 lbs and would do clean, jerk, barbell back into shelf, jerk again. 1 clean, 2 jerks. got in a bunch of rep work at this weight.

barbell weight reduced to 75 and did the following:

4 minutes of
8 reps front squat-> press
8 reps box jumps
repeat the 8 and 8 until the 4 minutes run out

4 minutes of
5 reps power clean, bar never hits ground, bottom of the pre-clean is middle of shins
6 burpees, jumping over barbell in between
repeat the 5 and 6 until time runs out

4 minutes of
4 front squats
3 pullups
repeat the 4 and 3 until time runs out

this sucked, obv

back at it tomorrow

Jan 29

15 ghb back extension, 12 ghb situps
back squat bar x 10
15 ghb back extension, 12 ghb situps
back squat 75 x 6
15 ghb back extension, 12 ghb situps
back squat 95 x 6
12 ghb back extension, 10 ghb situps
back squat 115 x 4
10 ghb back extension, 8 ghb situps
back squat 135 x 4
back squat 155 x 2

5 orbits of
back squat 155x5
sled push, sled pull
12 alternating jumping lunges (this was the worst part cuz it came immediately after sleds where my quads feel like they've tripled in size)
90 seconds rest

finally 8 segments of
20 seconds hanging from pull up bar, knees tucked
10 seconds rest
most of the pain from this segment was actually in the hand meat below the fingers, tough to keep grip strength even with the chalk.

bad news ahead as it looks like my PT is gonna be out of town for a few months for a project in a different city. don't know what my plan is yet. i'll be ironing out the new plan within the week, it may involve PT correspondance or it may mean just going back to the crossfit-lite mentioned in previous thread combined with more conventional SS weight training.

dietwise i'm still waiting to hear back on specific macros, in the meantime i'm going atkins with low sugar/carb and continuing to bulk.

PT is confirmed out of town for a while (months, maybe more) so I'm having to make some adjustments.

I think my play is for February I'm gonna do SS and do video checkups. This will be the first time I'm throwing in power cleans.

Diet will be 200 cal over maintenance but fewer carbs and more fats. I'll log everything properly in here.

Once February is done I'll re-evaluate, but I'll be keeping my ear to the ground on going back to the Crossfit light (which has 2 days of lifting and 4 days of cardio) and integrating that with my SS (plus do a cut diet) between March1 and June1.

Possibly by then PT will be back from out of town, shrug.

Can a mod change my thread title to "Clayton's crossfit/SS log"? Might get more eyeballs and get back to getting berated by thremp

Everything about this is horrific. I think you're on one of the stupidest and most unsustainable plans imaginable while throwing an absurd amount of money at someone just as clueless as you are.

I trust this new title serves everyone's needs?

Unsurprisingly (when it comes to H&F), I wholeheartedly agree with Thremp. Your PT is obviously a full on bro scientist.

Elite log title tho.

True.

Log title is A+

welcome back guys

i look forward to critiques of my SS lifts this week

lets goooooo