Of D Minor and Snatches (Arts & Crafts)

As I’ve said many times (and any casual reader of this blog can confirm by perusing through the numerous posts), I normally don’t speak much about my life in here. I write to get better at writing, and when I have lots of writing to do in other venues (like preparing class materials or finishing a book) I can spend multiple months without posting without feeling I am missing on something. Sounds a bit autistic, but that’s how things are. However, today I intend to make an exception, and provide my readers with some data about what I’ve been doing lately in a number of fronts this last couple of years, for reasons that will become apparent es the post progresses. The apparently banal (or self-centered data) I’ll be providing at the beginning will serve (I hope) to put in context some more universal reflections on the nature of art, and the pursuit of the good life (that, consisting in a conscious application of artistic skills, the more difficult to acquire the better, constitutes an art in itself).  

2019 was for me a good reading year. Not stellar, but pretty close. I finished 85 books (a bit more than 7 per month, even if by saying so I risk being labelled as more of a frequency-obsessed guy than with my previous post) and 10 comic books (or graphic novels, although I’m not a great fan of that label), totaling a bit more than 24,000 pages (for an average of 67 pages per day). Not awful, but slightly below what I read in 2018, when I finished reading less books (just 76) but on average much thicker, as I went above 26,000 pages then (topping 70 pages/day, something I hadn’t done since I finished my first university career). I confess that I was a bit pissed by that, as since the birth of my last son, eight years ago, every single year I had managed to read a bit more than the previous one, as taking care of the young one demanded less time (as he became more independent, started attending school, and enjoyed more playing alone, or with his friends, than with his parents). SO, the fact that I had read less in 2019 demanded some introspection to find out what I had been doing that kept me from reading as much as I used to.

First place I looked was physical activity. On the weightlifting front, I continued consolidating my recovery from a semi old injury (tear of biceps tendon) trying not to fall prey of a much older one (replacement of ACL and removal of meniscus of left knee). I kept a fairly high volume of training (moved a bit more than 625 tons in the year, spread in 17 microcycles, which compares favorably with a bit less than 440 tons in 23 MCs in 2018) after leaving, in July 2018, a very Oly-centric training methodology that was really doing nothing for me (it kept me mobile and moderately fit from a cardiovascular perspective, but I was slowly losing peak strength), so in 2019 I ended up doing less microcycles (they went from during roughly a week to being planned for two weeks, allowing for better recovery between sessions) but moving many more kg in each of them. Although my left knee keeps degrading (the unavoidable wear and tear of old age) and losing mobility (apart from being a pain in the ass, aching now almost continuously, and giving me a really hard time after long hikes in the mountains) I have recovered a semi-dece level of base strength, and without breaking any lifelong PR I’ve put up some numbers in the squat, the deadlift, the bench press and the press that don’t compare too unfavorably with said PRs. All of that sounded good, but definitely I couldn’t say I had been devoting more time to training, as I went from training almost every single day to training 3-4 times a week, and just 2-3 when the teaching workload became higher (due to class material preparation or exams correction).

That pointed me to another potential culprit. On 2019 I started teaching the same subject (business ethics and corporate social responsibility) to a new set of students, less mature in theory (undergrads, instead of graduates within a masters degree), but that turned out to be extraordinarily engaged and enthusiastic, and also showed to have a quite solid background (I would say in some areas they could even teach some things to my masters’ students of previous years). However, I considered such different target population required a complete overhaul of the materials I had used in previous years, so I invested an inordinate amount of hours in preparing them, with all that such change entails (changes in exercises, continuous evaluation exams, group exercises and the like). Which was very rewarding, and lots of fun, but didn’t yet provide me with an explanation of why I read less, as it surely didn’t absorb me as much as the writing of a whole book did, which is what I did back when I started teaching this subject (by the way, such book was only published in December of 2019, and yes, proofreading it and making the final adjustments did consume quite a sizable amount of hours), in a year when I also managed to read more than this last one!

So maybe part of the explanation was the teaching load, but, on the other hand, I didn’t start learning a new language in 2019, as I had originally planned when I set out my course of language acquisition in 2015 (the plan back then was to consolidate French between Jan/15 and Sep/16, learn Italian between Sep/16 and Aug/17, learn German between Sep/17 and Aug/19, consolidate Latin between Sep/19 and Aug/20, consolidate classical Greek between Sep/20 and Aug/22, and learn Hebrew between Sep/22 and Aug/24, at which point I would recalibrate and set new goals). So in September of last year I should have started with Latin, but German proved to be a tougher nut to crack than I expected, and although I now read it quite fluently, it’s not as effortless as I wanted it to be, and still require substantial queries at a dictionary to fully grasp the content of either some pieces of news or some specially convoluted books. So I decided to give me some slack, and prorogue my German learning, which should have meant that I ended up reading more pages per day, as in 2019 I read much faster this new language than in 2018, and approximately half of the books I read are in the language I’m in “learning” phase, which means that both in 2018 and in 2019 half the books I’ve read were in German, but in the latter year I could coast through them much faster. As an aside, I’ll probably insert Russian before Latin as the next language I learn “voluntarily” (I may need to give a honest go to Chinese, due to work demands, but I’m not 100% sold on it, I’ll have a clearer picture in a couple months), but decade-long plans are intended to give wide guidelines, to be adjusted as we evolve and mature and adapt to the unexpected vagaries of life.  

However, at that point in my enquiry I had already seen the real culprit of my diminished reading performance. One of the things I wanted to do in my strategic plan for the decade was consolidate my combat skills by learning to box properly (something I could then pass onto my children, as I’ve recommended any reader of this blog to do repeatedly, to better prepare them for the more likely than not societal collapse in the coming 50 years, which I will probably not see, but they very well may). But, I’m ashamed to recognize to my attentive readership, that is something still in my “to do” list (towards the end of this year I may reconsider giving it a try), as after clearing my schedule in May last year to start searching for a convenient time and place to start boxing (the place I had already scouted, near my current job) I had kind of a bout of inspiration, went to a couple of music academies, and signed up for guitar lessons.

Now, anybody who has known me for just a couple of minutes would attest that I may well be the person less endowed with musical talent in the whole world (slightly paraphrasing David Hume, I’ve thought many times about myself and musical abilities something similar to what he thought of his cousin, Lord Kames, and arrogance: “when you say of someone he is the most arrogant person in the whole world, you normally only mean he is very arrogant, except when you say it of my Lord Kames, in which case it is the exact enunciation of the unvarnished truth”; in my case “when you say of somebody he is the most devoid of musical talent in the whole world you normally only mean he has no ear for tune and a limited sense of rhythm, except when you say it of the Vintage Rocker, in which case it is the mere truth”). Be it as it may, I’ve also enunciated many times (some of them in this same blog) that one of the measures of a life well lived is continuously striving to do difficult things, to master areas of practice that require conscientious application of our abilities, be they mental or physical; that take ourselves outside of our areas of comfort, and force us to experience again the agony and the frustration of being piss poor at what we do, and to have to struggle against things that a five-year-old does without much effort or attention. Seen in retrospective, I couldn’t think an activity that fit that bill better than me learning to play a music instrument.

I have to recognize that I probably underestimated the level of commitment that such endeavor would demand. In my original plan of learning to box competently, I assumed that 1 hour a week in class, plus some tweaks to my usual training routine (which is already optimized to keep me as explosively strong as possible at my age) would be enough. Not so with playing the guitar. The half hour I spend in class is but a minimal fraction of it, as if I really want to progress, I have to devote much more than that practicing at home. Between half an hour and one hour a day. Which I cannot detract from work (although I was freed from my responsibilities in the subsidiary of our company that builds thermal Hw for satellites, thanks God, as if it were not for that I wouldn’t have been able to do much outside of working like crazy, as I had been doing in previous years), and I can only partially detract from strength training (as I do not devote that many hours a week to that particular pursuit), so the time for doing my scales, and my following of a remorseless metronome with very basic rhythm patterns, and my occasional toying with some simple lick or other, had necessarily to come from reading.

Which is all well and good, and a price I’m more than willing to pay. I wouldn’t be entirely disingenuous if I said I’m loving every minute of learning to play the guitar… but I wouldn’t be far from the truth, either, as it is indeed a most enjoyable activity. And it’s already giving me enormously valuable insights into what art consists of (more about that in a moment), into the way the human mind works, and into the plasticity and adaptability of the brain. Specially when I compare my learning journey with that of my middle son, who started a few months before myself (and was one of the main sources of inspiration for me deciding that I wanted to do this). He “gets” complex rhythm patterns in seconds, and is able to replay riffs and long sequences of notes and chords with just a few repetitions after seeing other people play them (by just looking at their fingers running along the fretboard), while I need to see them written down in a tab, attempt to memorize them, then clumsily try to reproduce it continuously looking at the tab, the hand in the frets, the hand that strums, and sometimes the infinite in front of my, exasperated by how complex and challenging the whole thing is.

So if I think how far I still am from stop being an “absolute noob” and start being an “advanced novice” I may despair. Which I do not, because I think instead of how far I already am from “has never in his life touched an electric guitar” (which is where I was just seven months ago), and I’m nothing short of utterly amazed. My small advances may look laughable to any intermediate player (I can play three or four simple riffs, keep the rhythm and the tempo of another three or four famous tunes, still with a lot of interruptions and failed chords and missed beats), but are huge to me because, frankly, I never thought I could get this far. And I see better things coming my way in the future, just by sticking with it. As in weightlifting, perseverance, in most cases, trumps innate talent. And I may be distinctly short on the latter, but few people can beat me in the former (and, anyway, this is not a contest, I have absolutely no gripe with 90% of the population of Earth being better guitar players than me… as long as at some point I can play Johnny B. Goode, Sweet Home Alabama, Only Daddy that will walk the line and Summertime Blues I’ll be happy as a clam and more than satisfied).

Finally, let’s get to the deepest lessons I’m learning, fulfilling the (implicit) promise I made in the title of this post. The first thing that drew my attention in this process of learning an entirely new ability was how similar it felt to learning how to lift weights. It is a very physical activity, where you have to let the body deal with the little details as autonomously as possible, without having to pay conscious attention to every minute move, because consciousness is flexible (which you don’t need much, as you are doing repetitive, strictly patterned tasks) but slow, and you need to be distinctively fast both to lift well and to play well. Which is a nice illustration of Daniel Kahnemann theory of mind’s two systems, one “fast” (automatic, unconscious, based on quick heuristic rules, that feels effortless) and one “slow” (that engages our consciousness and attentiveness at the price of taking much more time to accomplish whatever it is directing us to do). But of course, to be able to delegate tasks to the “fast” system you need to train like crazy. When I started playing, I didn’t know (by heart) the position of a single note in the fretboard, much less where the fingers had to be to play chords. So before I played notes or chords I had to look at my hand, look at the fretboard, and slowly try to put each finger in turn where it had to go, then tentatively strum the string (or set of strings), which may require another look to the strumming hand, and usually find that the note was not right, the chord didn’t sound harmonious at all, and required some adjustment (move some fingers a few millimeters up, or down, or right or left). Needless to say, that took forever (a few seconds for barre chords), and such limitation on speed made the playing of any identifiable melody nigh impossible.

But, again, it felt oddly familiar, because it was not that different from learning to clean and jerk, where you first learn how to position the body under the bar in different moments of the lift (starting position, power position, receiving position of the clean, power position again with the bar on delts, receiving position of the jerk), and then practice how to go from one position to the next in the most efficient and fluid manner, and finally to start increasing the load on the bar whilst letting the body “do its thing” and keep the speed or even increase it (there are no “slow” movements in weightlifting). And to let the body do such moves reliably and solidly and producing the expected results you had to rely on countless repetitions, until the whole motor pattern becomes ingrained, and you could do it in your sleep (indeed, I found years ago that a good training method was to complete the Oly lifts blindfolded, I may reconsider doing that one of these days), and stop paying attention to the little details (“Are my shoulders sufficiently in front of the bar? Are my hips rising at the same speed as the shoulders? Am I extending enough the hips and knees at the end of this second pull, and thus should I start changing direction to get under the bar?”) and focus on the big picture, as if seen from the outside. You stop living each individual lift in the present tense, and start considering them once completed as a finished whole, that may require some adjustment in the next iteration (so when you crouch to grab the bar again you may say to yourself one or two cues, like “remember to finish the pull” if, after the last pull you have judged that indeed, you didn’t extend your hips and knees enough… something that you were unable to notice, and even less to correct, in the midst of doing it).

There is even an equivalent to the difference between the powerlifting moves (squat, bench press, deadlift) and the weightlifting ones (snatch and C&J). The powerlifting moves are like individual notes, where you just put one finger over one string in one fret, and strum that single string. You then put another finger over another string (in the same or other fret), and strum that other string, and so on. Thus, playing a scale is like completing a set. You try to play the scale faster, as you try to complete the set with more kg on the bar. Jeez, come to think about it, when I play I increase the bpm in my metronome in neat jumps of 10, as when I warm-up I increase the load on the bar by increments of 10 kg. When I approach the bar for a powerlifting move, I know in advance if I will complete the set (which I do 99.9% of the time, as I program conservatively), as there is no real “technical” difficulty involved. The moves are slow enough to allow for minimal adjustments of form during their execution, and they don’t really require the “fast” system to be in command. You can complete them as consciously as you want. Similarly, when I start a scale, unless I’m attempting a new speed, I’m pretty confident I’m going to complete it (almost faultlessly), as each single movement of the fingers is pretty short and easy, and can be kept under the control of the conscious mind. I have to go to really insane (for me, be somewhat indulgent here!) speeds to really have to rely on the “fast” system taking over, as it becomes impossible for the “slow” one to keep pace.

But of course, although most riffs and some melodies are just successions of notes, individual notes are like words in a poem, while chords are the verses that really define a lot of what they can express (starting, unsurprisingly, by the internal rhythm and cadence of the whole poem). And chords are an entirely different beast from notes. There is really no way you can consciously think where each finger goes and then setting them carefully in the fretboard before strumming the strings. You just put the hand the best you can, all at once, and there you go, and just pray it wasn’t too far off. And, if you have practiced enough, it normally isn’t, so instead of a dissonant jangle that offends even the most uneducated ear what you obtain most time (amazing as it still seems to me!) is a heavenly, melodious, harmonic tone full of resonance and grace and suggestive, like a good gulp of craft beer, with its aftertaste, its main notes accompanied in the right proportion by the secondary ones that enhance and underline it, making the whole experience even more intense and satisfying. Quite similar to what you feel when you complete a demanding snatch, in which every muscle has started contracting exactly in the right sequence, so the whole body moves through space in the most efficient manner to put the barbell overhead in a seemingly effortless flow, with each limb, like each note, underlining and enhancing the effort of the trunk to position itself stably under the load, so it can triumphantly rise it in a glorious sign of mastery and domination of mind over brute matter.

The most interesting element of the analogy, though, has to do with what it reveals about art itself, and the way to both produce and enjoy it. Artistry in guitar playing has a lot of additional components beyond just getting your chords to sound right, but it absolutely ride on getting that absolutely nailed. You can add color, and chromatism, and texture, and sub-rhythms and whatnot to your basic chords… once you have absolutely mastered them. And within that mastery there is always an element of uncertainty. You really are not sure, every time you move the hand on the fretboard, that you are going to get it right, because you have “outsourced” the execution of each chord playing to the fast system, to the subconscious mind (there is no way you could play artistically if you wanted to keep full conscious control of the position of the hand in each chord). So to reach the highest point of artistic expression (in order to be able to focus on the most sublime consequences of the action), to really let the spirit (or the deepest levels of the mind, or of the brain, I’m not taking sides in the whole monism vs. dualism argument here) you have to pay the price of renouncing a certain level of control, of delegating a certain level of the execution… to forsake a bit of your freedom (understood as the opportunity to judge and consciously decide how you take each step) and suffer, unavoidably, a considerable level of uncertainty. Even the most seasoned performer is nervous before walking into the stage, because she is not sure (and, furthermore, she cannot be sure!) of how things are going to turn out, if, regardless of how many hours she has practiced it in advance, she may not forget some element, or have a misstep, and end up delivering a very poor performance. Even the most seasoned lifter, doesn’t matter how many top-level competitions he has been through, is nervous before walking on the platform to confront the barbell, because he is not sure (and, furthermore, he cannot be sure!) if he is going to successfully complete the lift. I’m not saying with this that Olympic weightlifting is as artistic as music (although it is my opinion that it is, indeed, much more artistic than a lot of what passes for music nowadays), or that it has a similar social worth (however that is measured), or allows for a similar expression of the depths and powers and wonders of the human condition.

What I’m saying is that creating art, attempting to express the hitherto unexpressed, in addition to require a certain mastery of some mechanical skills that are foundational for each type of art, requires the assumption of certain risk, is just not amenable to the mere application of a predefined formula, needs to go beyond the application of those repetitive, quantifiable, consciously controllable skills. The writer that embarks in a great novel (not a piece of genre that just ticks all the right boxes to satisfy the public) is, when he starts writing, mostly unaware of how the final work is going to look like. He has a very vague idea of what he wants to accomplish, but he throws himself into the act of writing like a weightlifter throws himself into the act of lifting, knowing he will not be able, to a great extent, to consciously control where the writing process, where the work, are going to take him, to be sure of what the final result is going to look like (remember, furthermore, he cannot be sure!). He should have put on the time to master the “mechanical” elements of his craft: how to transcribe a dialogue between hos characters, how to describe the physical environment where the action takes place, how to give a lively impression of the feelings and emotions of the participants. If he is not solid enough at those (each one of which can be done carefully and conscientiously, are “craft” more than “art”) the final result will be clunky, disjointed, will not flow graciously, and will ultimately fail. But it well may happen that he is a master of the craft, but ends up producing a very subpar work, not very inspired, with a feeble structure, maybe because he attempted to play it safe and constrained himself to just weave those elements he was most sure about, not taking the risk to completely lose himself in the narration, and let it take him where it may. Like a guitar player that is competent in his handwork, can meet the right notes at the right time but is somewhat lacking “spirit”, lacking “inventiveness”, lacking “feeling”. Again, not taking the risk to take the melody to wherever it may, pushing the application of each unit to its emotional extreme. Like a very strong man doing a “somewhat power clean & press” (and lifting, slowly and under control, a very respectable amount of weight, way more than I for one will ever lift) for lack of… adventurousness? to really throw himself under the moving weight and be uncertain of how or if it may end up in the right place.

So there you are, I now understand better not just how to weightlift (I approach my snatches and C&Js like chords, to be played first competently, and then, God willing, sublimely), but how to write, or to paint, or to draw… or to live a good life, although that may require some additional explanation that I leave for another post.

What I’ve been up to

Man, does time fly! I look back at the good ol’ blog and it’s been almost a month with no posting at all. An unpardonable lack of politeness to my increasing audience! Well, time to take up the metaphorical pen and get back to work. My writing is as shabby as ever, as convoluted and baroque and circuitous and muddled, and it would benefit from a bit of practicing and cleaning up as much as in any other moment of my life. And how do I clean up my writing? Well, practicing it, in long-winded posts that almost nobody reads, of course! Although I swear I try to make ‘em less long-winded and more to the point, less derivative and meandering and more precise and focused, I recognized I’ve not been so far an exemplar of pithiness and grace…

Now before we get back to the ill-starred fate of our global society, its many evils and more or less imminent demise, I feel like I owe to my readership an account of what has kept me away from the keyboard these last weeks, as it touches (tangentially as ever) in many themes of the blog, like how to live and what pursuing a worthy life looks like nowadays.

First, in the intellectual front, I started a new university career in September, and had been taking the first batch of examinations until recently. Yup, after a lot of reflection of what I wanted to learn and develop after getting my PhD in philosophy, I settled in mathematics. I considered retaking my studies of Economics (having almost three courses completed, that’s the degree I was closer to, and the one whose achievement would have costed me less, both in time and in money), but I’ve come to see the whole discipline as so muddled, so essentially dishonest, so useless and so lacking in the basic decency to acknowledge its uselessness as to make every single minute devoted to it a complete waste of time (you may find the beginning of my musings about such dishonesty here: Economics suck I, for a less-dishonest than usual take on the limits and shortcomings of the discipline, from one devoted practitioner I’ve quoted other times, John Cochrane, see: Economic humility? Hah!). So Economics was discarded. I had enjoyed researching sociology and history for my dissertation, and both seemed entertaining, but pretty full of bullshit and baloney overall, so I also discarded them.

I have not entirely abandoned the idea of doing a PhD in history later in life, specializing in some truly obscure subject matter, period and geographic area (peculiar versification in Norse sagas developed in the first stages of Greenland settlement, between 1000 and 1200 AD, say, or distinctive guerrilla tactics of the Saracen raiders from Andalusian origin that built a holdout in Fraxinet, in Provence, between 889 and 973 AD), but right now I know myself, and I would immediately hover towards universal history, the whole of humanity, in a period during no less than a hundred centuries, trying to discern the currents, the tendencies and the drifts in such an enormous mass of facts and events (something serious historians tend to dismiss, and to confine to the later years of a life previously filled with what for me now seems like uninteresting and trivial minutiae).

I also toyed with the idea of studying something truly alien and even tinged with some utilitarian argument, as it could be used to improve my professional prospects. To be more specific, I toyed with the idea of studying law (and, being an all-or-nothing sort of guy, taking the bar exam so I could practice as a barrister). But it just seemed a) too practical, b) too serious and c) boring as hell.

So I really had to dig deep within what motivates me, what makes me tick and what I thought would be a valuable commitment of my all-too-scarce time. I went back to what a life well lived should look like for my particular circumstances. And two immediate features of such life came to my attention: it had to be a life of achieving difficult things and of deep understanding and pursuit of the absolute (absolute truth, absolute beauty and absolute goodness). After six years immersed in philosophy I had a passing familiarity with words and thoughts and how whole societies had ended up believing a bunch of noxious balderdash and thinking it formed a sacred description of naked facts revealed by Nature herself. So it seemed to me like pursuing more words and ideas people happened to have had wouldn’t take me much closer to that absolute truth I was endeavoring after…

But if words wouldn’t cut it, imprecise and biased and amenable to misinterpretation and manipulation, what could work? What symbols had humanity devised that were devoted to precision, to exact communication, to rigorous reasoning not subjected to ideology or propaganda, to certain verification, regardless of what sorry state the world may be in? Numbers and mathematical operators, of course! When Aristotle thought about the best life for man, he concluded that the life of an Athenian gentleman, slave-owning and all was objectively the best. When Hagel did the same exercise more than twenty centuries later, surprise, surprise, it was the life of a Prussian bureaucrat of his day and age, with exactly the same worldview and set of beliefs as himself, what he clearly “saw” was best. Ditto for Thomas Jefferson, David Hume, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Wittgenstein and all the philosophers of a conformist bent. There were revolutionaries, sure (what I have called “critical” thinkers, starting with my much admired Kant, and following with Schopenhauer and Marx and Nietzsche) but even them, it’s difficult not to admit, ended up validating the old Protagoras dictum “man is the measure of all things” (every single man considered in himself “and his circumstances” we may add, quoting my countryman Ortega y Gasset).

Something you can hardly say of Euclid, Cantor, Leibniz, Hermite, Lebesgue, Riemann, Cauchy or Fermat. In general they did not give a rat’s patootie about their fellow men circumstances or opinions (or they fellow men full stop), as they didn’t much care about their own. They carefully constructed their trains of thought, identifying with exacting precision what followed from what, and invented new ways of reasoning in the process. More than that, they defined what reasoning consists in, what is the proper way of doing it and what ways, sensible as they may seem, end up guiding you astray. They definitely knew a thing or two about how to discover truth. Stupendous truth, undeniable truth, self-evident, kick-you-in-the-teeth truth. No matter if you’re black or white, a man or a woman or something in between, rich or poor, liberal or conservative, an ISFJ or a ENTP, a proper demonstration is a proper demonstration, and a logical fallacy is a logical fallacy. 2 + 2 = 4 here and in China, today and 30,000 years ago (and in another 30,000 years, even if there is nobody left to appreciate it).  

As is normally said, what can be used to explain everything doesn’t explain anything. A set of knowledges that obtain whatever the state of the universe doesn’t describe much at all, and then the universality of mathematics is not its main strength, but its Achilles heel. Bollocks, I say. The more I learn the more I realize that apparent discrepancies between mathematical order and the deepest structures of reality only reveal our insufficient grasp of such structures, and once the veils are removed and the errors corrected we find an even deeper agreement. That is what guided me back to a very peculiar and highly idiosyncratic form of belief in an all-powerful (and likely all-benevolent) mind in the origin of reality itself many years ago, but that would be a topic for another day.

What I mean with this, as usual, tortured and full of circumlocutions discourse, is that the clearest path for me in my search for truth was to deepen my understand of mathematics. Not this time by reading a bunch of books and reaching my own conclusions. Mathematics is subtle and complex and vast and branching. So I paid the tuition fees, and enrolled in a full degree, to ensure I get the basics right. Slow and steady, as I’m not leaving my day job, or my training, or my family (God forbid!) but surefooted and disciplined as always. Do not be surprised, then, if more rigorous reasoning occasionally creep in this blog, and if some numerical concept shows its head every now and then. Not that the blog couldn’t benefit from some more streamlined and logical argumentation, mind you.

And is maths difficult! Specially if you haven’t practiced it formally for years (or rather, for decades, as in my case). I may work in an engineering firm, but I don’t remember having done anything more challenging than basic algebra (add, substract, multiply and divide) for most of my career (I’m in quality and organization, after all). So this is like having been all your life in a “toning/ weight loss” program in the gym and suddenly starting a powerlifting routine to take you in a short time over 1,000 pounds competition total (for those not in the know: tough!) But that is the other reason I chose maths. It is difficult, and doing difficult things, mastering complex and challenging subjects, is what a life well lived looks like.

But of course, that’s not the only thing that has kept me away from posting. Doing difficult things with your head is allrighty and well, but we shouldn’t forget the old Greek adage about the healthy mind requiring a healthy body (funny that we all think that comes from the Greeks, whilst the sentence used to convey it is in latin…) And since the end of last year I was thinking in what physical skill to invest into once I finished the brunt of preparing the first examinations (in mid February).

Although my initial inclination was to learn how to properly box, and had been informing myself about boxing gyms close to my work location, an unexpected opportunity opened up with the creation of a weightlifting club in the Crossfit box of one of my loved ones. Weightlifting is something I’ve been doing (awfully) since I was about 12 years old, without much progress in the last twenty five years (well, I clean and jerked 100 kg again, something I hadn’t done since I was 23, and I also equaled my best snatch soon afterwards, but just couldn’t keep the momentum and let my PBs fall again). And if you intend to do something for, roughly, the rest of your life (as I do), you better learn to do it right.

So a month ago I also enrolled in a weightlifting team, with a coach and all, and for the first time in my whole life have been following a program written by someone different from myself. A program that has me snatching, clean & jerking and squatting basically every friggin’ day of the week (and then somehow trying to recover in the weekend). Not half assedly performing the power versions of the lifts every now and then, or doing three or four 90% lifts and calling it a day, but doing 6-8 sets of 6-8 reps of each one day in day out.

I’ll devote considerable more space to what I’m learning, about the lifts and about myself, but I’ll just advance here that I’m a) loving it and b) being thoroughly challenged by it and c) adjusting to the new rhythm, trusting in the process and the coach and trying not to rush it, as I’ve done so many times before, just to reach a plateau faster, and then paying attention to a different thing and having to start all over again a few months later. And having somebody actually knowledgeable in the lifts watch me clumsily try to perform ‘em and correct my many, many failures, so my inconsistent and inefficient snatch starts being more predictable and focused:

Not yet the nicest view, I know. I’m old and rusty and slow and not that strong and specially not that mobile (in the muscles and joints required to move the weight stably and with agility and grace… I’d be happy with just doing it competently).

The thing is that with such an increased demand on my time (studying mathematics plus weightlifting every day plus job plus family plus regularly reading to try to understand how the world and the mind work) I haven’t had that much time to blog, hence my lack of posting. But despair not, o faithful readers! Even if I have to write much shorter posts, writing is one of the characteristic features of my life, one of those things I’ve been doing from as far as I have memories (I still keep the reams of paper that received my first musings, and occasionally reread them and smile by how naïve, but also how intellectually daring and curious and most definitely unconventional I was at such early age), and I do not intend to interrupt it. I may write more haphazardly, more touch and go, more discontinuously, but you can keep coming back here for some scathing social commentary, some amused advice on the barbell sports and some abstract musing about what this human life may be all about. 

Keep lifting after the honeymoon phase is over

As princess Irulan, daughter of emperor Shaddam IV Padisha famously states at the beginning of the first tome of Frank Herbert’s Dune, “a beginning is a very delicate time”. Indeed, in my bookish childhood beginnings were a dreary business. Every time I immersed myself in a new book (that was many times a week) I had to first find my bearings. I read mostly fiction then, and a good deal of science-fiction, and God knows that science-fiction beginnings are dazzling and confusing and disorienting. It’s not just entering in a new place, populated by people you still don’t know anything about, but on a whole new universe where the usual laws of physics may not entirely apply, where societies are systematically imagined to work differently (but in the end not that differently) from your own, and where customs and mores and unspoken assumptions can’t be relied upon to guide you through the plot.  

To this day, acquiring a new skill is a bit like starting a new book: you feel clumsy and insecure, you soon realize you are woefully inadequate to perform it, especially when compared with more experienced practitioners, and there seem so be an unbridgeable chasm between what you can actually achieve and your aspirations. As the traditional wisdom would have it, if you persevere and keep honing your ability, you end up having a reasonable level of mastery, and you can actually start enjoying the application of such skill. Be it writing poetry, reading in a new language, playing a sport, developing web pages or drawing comics, what I’m essentially saying is that beginning sucks, but overcoming such sucking enables the patient practitioner to reap the rewards of his application and become that “better version of himself” that so many times I’ve propounded as the ultimate finality of human life.

As an aside, there are a couple activities where the beginnings are not that tough, and for some they may even result to be even more enjoyable that what comes after. The first of them is dating: when we start going out with a new prospective couple everything is peaches & cream. Everything the other person says or does is charming, amusing, interesting and a source of endless fascination. Her utterances and comments and suggestions are deep and thoughtful. Her face is an inexhaustible well of wonder, each gesture and countenance a trove of suggestions, of rich signals to be deciphered and treasured. If she happens to smile, or even more to openly laugh, what a joy, what inexpressible happiness and exultation! But as is well known, after a (sometime shorter, sometimes longer) period of time the initial wonderment wears off and the relationship has to either find a more stable, better rooted footing or wither away, to be replaced  by some new one (and we all know of people that seem unable to make their relationships grow beyond that first phase of elation and settle in a more sustainable and mature form).

The second kind of activity blessed by nature with an easy beginning, I will argue, is lifting weights. And as with relationships, it is likely to be followed by a more mature, more stable phase when there is not so much exultation and fun but, if pursued consistently, is apt to give us much firmer benefits. Now some readers may argue that the beginning of a lifting career is not that different from other complex pursuits, as we soon realize we are not that skilled, and definitely not that strong to begin with. BS, I say. Most moves are so easy a kid can learn to do ‘em in a technically sound way in 10 minutes (believe me, not only did I learn myself in such a timeframe -and I’m no genius of kinetic self-awareness- but I’ve taught my own kids to do it without much fuss), and every session brings with it the wonder of being almost effortlessly able to move more total weight than the previous one. A most exhilarating feeling, as becoming gradually (but sure-footedly) stronger is a solid foundation for a host of additional pleasurable and rewarding mental states (more self-confidence, better ability to do in a sustained way difficult thing, more tolerant to pain and discomfort, etc.)

But like in sentimental relationships, there comes a time when it is just not so fun anymore, when the prospect of going to the gym and complete the planned schedule does not fill you with joy but either leaves you somewhat indifferent or, worse, what it fills you with is dread of how difficult and painful and exhausting it will be. My contention, and what this post will argue for, is that such wholly expectable moment has to be overcome, for it is by overcoming it that we not only become better persons, but learn a valuable lesson that unlocks additional possibilities of personal growth and improvement.   

First, let’s take a look at the underlying cause of most people disenchantment. When we start lifting progress comes naturally and easily (as every experienced coach say, at the beginning almost everything “works”). Making a weak and detrained person half strong is comparatively easy, as long as you do not prescribe some utterly asinine program based on an excessive volume (or highly ballistic moves that can prove dangerous and lead to injury), regardless of age.  As long as you do not expect a 90 year-old lady to do full snatches on her first day, or ask a detrained guy of any age to do 10 sets of 10 reps each of half a dozen moves, they will be OK, and will improve from one session to the next. Some will do it at a slower pace, some will do it by leaps and bounds (young females and, especially, young males become stronger just by breathing, eating normally and sleeping well, so if you add a few compound movements it’s amazing how insanely strong they can become really fast) but all and every weak human beings have the potential to gain some strength no matter how asininely they are coached (unless they get injured, of course, so the basic boundary to effectively train them is “do not do stupid shit that can get them harmed”).

But after a few months (or may be quite a lot of months, if progress has been slower) people are more than halfway in their way to reaching their full genetic potential (a somewhat slippery concept, but bear with me for a while) and can be considered to have overcome their novice phase (that phase has a very precise meaning in Mark Rippetoe’s terminology, which we will come to in a moment). That means that to continue progressing it is not enough to do just any combination of sets and reps of nay move. Recovery within each training session, and recovery between sessions become a priority (more so the older the trainee), and if things are not balanced properly it is very common to stop progressing altogether: too much volume and little recovery and instead of being stronger and moving more weight every single day you find that what you could lift a week ago feels like it is stapled to the ground. Reduce the volume substantially and increase the rest periods (decrease frequency substantially) and you meet the same result. What gives? No wonder a lot of people in forums and seeking advice end up thinking that this lifting thing is an arcane science (or more like a dark art) that requires paying some guru a lot of moolah to be able to keep on adding a few paltry grams to the bar.

And when the required effort keeps on increasing whilst the measurable improvements keep on becoming smaller and smaller (the almost omnipresent law of diminishing returns) it is not surprising that so many people quit entirely, and stop lifting altogether. Hell, even some of the greats turn to other interests (there is a very specific transition from lifting for “performance” to lifting for “aesthetics” that take many former powerlifters to end up in bodybuilding shows which I found deeply disheartening, but I will not go into such deviancy for now) as finding the willpower to keep on punishing oneself in the gym after many years in the iron game is understandably difficult, and that’s why you see comparatively few people able to squat over 400 pounds or deadlift over 500 (something that, according to Justin Lascek, any healthy male who puts his mind to it should be able to accomplish). When it starts being difficult to further approach those numbers, they raise the foot from the gas pedal, and when understandably the car slows they let it stop altogether and divert their straying attention to other pursuits, like Pilates or Zumba, “toning” their muscles, “leaning” and other sorry excuses for working less hard and not having to push themselves so hard.

Well, I’m not here to criticize anybody, but I will say this: lifting heavy weights beats, hands down, any other form of physical activity. I’ve played rugby (great for conditioning, and much, much more fun), I’ve run until my reconstructed knee told me in not uncertain terms to shove it, I’ve shot putted (which is really a lot of heavy lifting plus jumping oddly with a cannonball that then you let go a couple times a week) and cycled and swum and rowed and skied and skated, and let me inform you they are not even close. Any other activity is probably funnier, and as such I fully understand it can be a deeper source of joy and contentment for many. That is not what I’m arguing about. But if you want to be “fit” (whatever that means), if you want to ensure you fully function as a normal human being is intended to function (with well-oiled joints, reasonably strong and balanced muscles for moving thick, dense bones around them and a sense of balance and coordination to direct them) there is simply no substitute to lifting repeatedly a heavy barbell, in “big” compound movements that involve most of the body, and doing it frequently. Again, I’m not saying swimming, or running, or cycling are not great exercises. They are, and chock full of benefits for your body and most likely for your mind. Hell, even Zumba and Pilates, which I can not help but see as glorified versions of 70’s aerobic and old school calisthenics beat by a mile stayin’ in the couch watching TV and eating Doritos all day. And if that is what makes you tick, by all means go for it. But just don’t think you are making the most efficient use of your time (and especially, don’t try to proselytize me into following your latest fitness trend, thank you very much). Not that everything must be decided based on efficiency, and as I’ve said a number of times now, if balancing on a Bosu ball with pink dumbbells in your hand is what lights your candle, have at it to your heart’s content.

Obviously, I’ll stay lifting, and lifting frequently, and going heavy now and then, and for sure “pushing it” well beyond the point of noticeable discomfort (and every now and then right into the realm of all out effort, and occasionally in that of questionable sanity). And hope to counteract the unavoidable setting in of old age ‘til the day I croak, not necessarily setting new PR’s (unless I start using the Sinclair coefficient for calculating it, but I’ll still wait a few years for that) but programming my lifts judiciously so I can keep on improving, no matter how hard it is (no matter how dark an art I have to learn in the process) until that very last day. A few pieces of advice for those who are, like myself, past their prime years and thus need to apply some sound judgment:

·           Don’t get too obsessed about sets and reps and percentages of 1RM. If you have been some years in this game you already know what your body tolerates and what you can get away with. Periodize and program some undulation (start your “waves” with more reps with less weight, and slowly add weight while reducing reps per set… when you reach a high enough number start again, if possible slightly higher) but leave yourself some leeway to accommodate changes in your baseline strength

·         Be consistent, but don’t get obsessed about it. Allow for some slippage in your schedule caused by more load at work, bad sleep because of the kids, longer intervals due to attending family events, etc.

·         As you grow older, it may be advisable to notch the intensity down a bit. Still go heavy now and then, push it when you feel like it, but don’t impose on you many sessions above 80-85% furthermore, 85% of a 500 pounds DL is significantly more taxing than 85% of a 300 DL (Duh!) You should be pretty strong by now, that level of strength only grows when used judiciously, not so much when called upon frequently with no rhyme or reason

·         Assume that it may take longer to recover from the same effort you recovered easily from just a few years back. Specially from moves with a marked eccentric component. Heck, I’m talking about squats. Low bar back squats can be wrecking (again, not exactly big breaking news here), so as you will be doing them (heck, what kind of program does not include lots of heavy squats? A shitty program, that’s what!) you better program some extra recovery measures afterwards (be it foam rolling -which, btw, has never done anything at all for me- deep tissue massage, or plain ol’ eating a ton of carbs)

·           Probably it pays to break your training in more sessions of shorter duration. Instead of very depleting couple of full body sessions twice a week, of almost two hours each it may pay to do four sessions of 50’ in which you stay focused from the beginning to the end, and instead of leaving the gym like the cast of The Walking Dead (and I’m not talking of the “live” part of the cast that tries to escape from the zombies here) leave sprightly and full of energy, itching to come back for more as soon as you can, but…

·           Pay attention to your joints. Past certain age, I’d be surprised if you don’t have at least one or two ligaments and tendons either surgically replaced or chronically inflamed or at least giving frequent and clear signals of protesting all the abuse you have heaped upon them. Be gentle to them and accept that you better be picky and take some aggravating exercises off the menu, rather than keep pushing beyond the point of no return. And frequent training seems to make that condition worse (unless you choose the exercises in each session to provide for adequate rest of the aggrieved joint), so balance your programming accordingly

Just apply some common sense and you may enjoy a long, productive lifting career. I’m not telling you following those simple rules will ensure you become your country’s IPF champion and/ or record holder, but they sure can make you have a physically more rewarding, fuller life. And that, my friends, is what a life well lived should be about. 

The importance of frequency in training (why you need to work out more often)

Time to update my latest thinking about training, as my injury in December last year really got me off tracks at least until I lost the last shreds of respect I had for the medical profession (exaggerating just a little bit here) and decided not to undergo surgery, so its really only a couple months I’ve been training consistently again, and I still can’t say I’m fully back to the strengths levels I reached when my biceps tendon gave way. But I’m certainly getting closer, and one of the things I’ve (re)learned in the process is that you really should never lose sight of the importance of frequency (hence the title of this post). A bit of background will be necessary to clarify why I lost such sight, and what I’m doing to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Towards the end of last year I had a nice little routine in place that finally balanced (in a way that seemed to work for me) my powerlifting and Oly weightlifting interests: I did three “big sessions” per microcycle, and each session could be split up in two different days if for some reason I was pressed for time (that gave me some flexibility so I could finish writing my dissertation, and polish the articles I had to publish in peer reviewed journals in order to be able to defend it and get my PhD, and also attend to my other duties as salaried professional, parent and espouse). Those sessions had the right mix of “slow” and “fast” moves to develop both strength and explosiveness, and I was (theoretically) waving them in a way that allowed for a smooth progression for as far as the eye could see. The layout of each microcycle looked something like this:

Session 1	Session 2	Session 3
LBBS (PL prog) BP (PL prog) Farmers’ walk BTN SG P Press Chin ups	Jump squats (immediately followed by bounded jumps) Speed BP (doubles at 80%) Power cleans (WL prog) Savickas Press Pull ups	FS (PL prog volume +) Paused BP (PL prog) DL (PL prog) Paused PC Power Jerk (WL prog) Chin ups

I designed the program to have one floating day (whenever it fitted in the schedule) to work in explosiveness with shot putting (a bunch of throws) and hill sprints (ditto), but honestly I never found the willpower and time to actually do it.

A program, any program, is as good as the principles behind it, so I’ll explain why I chose those movements and the different progressions I applied to each one. First, this was a “strengthen your weakest link” program. I was tired of having a very subpar bench press, of not progressing in the squat, and of struggling with putting any significant amount of weight overhead. So I decided to squat every session, bench press every session, and put the bar over my head every session, and just try to tuck everything else (thankfully everything else was basically deadlifting, the only move I’m half proficient at so ti doesn’t need that much maintenance, and some power cleaning not to forget the Oly moves) in between. As for progression, I called this routine “Easy strength plus” as I didn’t want to overexert myself with frequent super-high intensity lifts that kept me away from the gym for days with the slightest excuse (well, sometimes it was legit, but my experience with going too frequently above 95% was that the microcycles extended more and more and one only partially unconscious cause was my lack of enthusiasm for the idea of going to the gym to fight a bone-on-bone grind almost every session) and wanted to try instead for some steady accumulation mostly in the 70-80% intensity zone. It worked like this: for each PL move (any squat variation, the bench press and the deadlift) I started doing 5x5 with 70% of my training max (which was in turn a 90% of my 1RM of the last month, typically calculated from any actual 3RM, 2RM or one actual 1RM that I had perceived as being truly limit in that period). Next week I would keep roughly the same total number of reps, in shorter sets (so I would normally go for a 6x4) adding 5 kg in the squat and BP, and 10 kg in the DL. Next week I would do the same (so this time it would be 7 or 8 sets of triples w 10 or 20 kg more), and finally the next week I would do 9 or 10 doubles with 15 kg more on the bar (for the squat and the BP) and 30 more kg on the deadlift. Depending on how that felt, I would go either for singles, or reset with 5 kg more (so if I started the BP doing sets of five across w 80 kg the first time, I would now start with the same sets of five across w 85).

You may have noticed that there wasn’t so much of Oly, just some paltry power cleans (one day with pauses -which I do both just below and just above the knees), some front squatting once a week and some power jerks. Not much technique or mobility, and no snatching whatsoever (well, I’m not arguing it was the perfect program, just that it seemed to serve me well at the time, just wait ‘til I describe how it has evolved!). Those were intended to be progressed more gradually, starting at a somewhat higher percentage (close to 80%) for triples, then 85% for doubles, then 90% for singles, and rinse and repeat, if possible with 2,5 kg more on the bar. If that increase in weight felt too heavy and the form was somewhat compromised, I would add some additional sets instead to consolidate, and run an additional wave with those extra sets before attempting the weight increase again.

A final note on chins and pull ups: they were there mainly to balance all the pushing I was doing with a somewhat equivalent amount of pulling, mainly for shoulder health reasons. I also didn’t dislike the idea of some indirect biceps work, to keep the tendons healthy for the deadlift (but most of you know how well that turned out). Of course, both chin ups and pull ups were strict: no kipping and no half-assing (all done from dead hang, full range of motion, having the sternum hit the bar to be counted as one rep, nothing of those semi-epileptic monstrosities that CrossFit has made so popular).

So how did it go? Somewhat of a mixed bag. I felt I was progressing in my traditional weaknesses, albeit at a very slow pace. Seen in retrospect, there were some glaring deficiencies (the speed BPs were done with too much weight, so they were not fast enough by a long shot, and I was doing too few sets with too many reps of the front squats for them to be of much use, as it forced me to use too light a weight), but the overall principles were pretty sound, and with some minor tweaks it would have served me well, were it not for the main defect in how I executed: I left too much time pass between sessions.

I have always valued the flexibility that comes with having your own home gym, as it allows you to train exactly when it best suits you, regardless of the day of the week or of the hour of the day. The dark side of such flexibility is that it makes it very easy to skip some days because really, you can do it tomorrow exactly the same (and it always sounds more convenient for some reason or other), and what difference does it make one way or the other, just to let an additional 24 hours pass? And whoever says 24 hours surely can say 48 hours (because the next day you have, honest to God, an important meeting at work that leaves you just too drained and “ego depleted” -a pity science has shown that is just junk- to go and train). And so it goes. So my microcycles, designed to be executed in a single week (so I did squats, in different configurations, thrice a week, and the same goes for overhead movements and bench presses) ended up taking ten days, then twelve days, then finally two weeks. And as of the three squat days two were with much lighter weights (the front squats, as I was doing too long sets for them to be of much use, and the jump squats, as honestly you neither can nor want to jump and land with 300 pounds on your tender back) that meant that I only squatted heavy’ish once every two weeks, which every seasoned coach will tell you is not enough by a mile.

The BP fared a bit better, as all the three sessions ended up being similarly heavy, so I was not anywhere near the thrice a week frequency I had devised originally, but was somewhat closer to “one and a half per week”, which is not so bad. Unfortunately, the bench press doesn’t have a systemic effect as powerful as the squat, so yep, my pecs and may be tris (that also had some extra work when overhead pressing) were growing steadily stronger, but my overall ability to exert force and sustain it for short periods was essentially stagnant. That was very apparent in the “explosive” Oly moves, where I was essentially spinning my wheels.

So big lesson learned: frequency is one of the most important variables to manipulate (Duh! That is like discovering gunpowder at this stage of human development), and to drive progress the frequency of “challenging” squats (the kind of squats that really disrupt the homeostasis your body so efficiently seeks to maintain and thus really force you to grow stronger) has to be above one per week. Upper body moves, being less demanding and easier to recover from, adapt themselves nicely to higher frequencies, admitting three per week with relatively short adaptation periods. Not that I needed a long self-experimentation period to discover that, as Mark Rippetoe had discovered it (and Bill Starr before him) a few decades ago, and called it “Texas method” for intermediates (having two days per week for each PL move, one day more oriented towards volume and one day more oriented towards intensity).

As is well known (while my training journal, full of hastily scribbled comments reflecting the increasing awareness of the need for more consistency and mostly a higher frequency of heavy squatting, clearly point towards the gradual correction of the problem), in December all that became moot, as I tore the biceps tendon of my left arm and had to stop any upper body lifting while I waited for surgery. Only towards the end of June did I realize (with the help of a fortuitous encounter with a colleague that had an Achilles tendon surgically reattached and was doubting the need of the procedure given what he had learned about how there are numerous historical examples of tendons healing with no need of intervention -as it was a common procedure to “hamstring” unsuccessfully escaped slaves by cutting tendons in the back of the knee or the heel) that my own injury had essentially healed by itself, a prolonged period of inactivity having been enough not only to make the pain disappear, but the ability to exert force to come back gradually (How I realized I was OK). So it was high time to revisit my last programming and update it with what I had learned to plan for the remainder of the year (and beyond).

Attending the fundamentals first, I liked the idea of having three big “sessions”, each involving the full body, although now I saw that it made sense to separate them in two days by design, with a first half mostly devoted to “slow” moves (powerlifting ones, with one exception we’ll talk about later) and the second devoted to more explosive ones, plus some accessories for balance. I also liked the idea of each day’s training consisting in around half an hour of very intense exercise, with relatively short rest periods. I realized that during my “low body dominated” training (while the tendon healed) I had gone a bit overbananas with the volume (I usually did a total of 70 reps, mostly of squats, per day, although it required up to 15 sets) so I decided to dial it down a bit, which should  also help making the program “stickier” and easier to follow.

As the squat is the most foundational movement, that helps drive all the rest by making you overall stronger (but also potentially hampering the rest of the training day by leaving you utterly depleted jut after completing it) I kept one squat type per session. One would be lighter (the front squat), but not so light that it didn’t help push the main move further (so I would do much shorter sets, with a weight that never goes much below 70% of the low bar back squat that acts as a benchmark, and at that comparatively low percentage still helps it by making the quads work significantly harder). The other would be really focused on speed, alternating jump squats and jump half squats (obviously with more weight) immediately followed by bounded jumps (two horizontal jumps, the second one over a bench to force some extra push and provide more consistency and comparability between sessions). The third one, obviously, would be the real deal, waving around 5x5, but starting with longer sets (3x8) and stopping at triples (at 8x3, which will take 6 weeks, and end with 30 kg more on the bar), only to start again 5 kg higher).

I also kept one bench press per session, usually right after the squat, but instead of toying with semi-different versions I’m sticking with different rep ranges of the same variant (close grip paused bench press), doing sets of 15 reps the first session, of 5 reps the second session (with roughly 30 kg more) and of 2-3 rep the third session (with about 10 kg more than the previous one), and trying to increase 2,5 kg from one microcycle to the next. If I can not complete the planned reps, I’ll keep adding reps per set ‘til I’m two or three reps above the 15/ 5/ 2 in all sets of every day, and I’ll then resume adding weight. I’ve found that both the close grip and the pause help with the high frequency, as they are much less aggressive on the shoulder and the pecs.

One deadlift session per microcycle also seems about right, seeing how depleting that is. I am happy with my current level, even after more than six months without training it seriously, and I confess that my main misgivings have to do with the potential loss of gripping power (I’ve experienced some almost-misses with very modest weights of late because of grip issues) that such low frequency may entail, as I’m also leaving aside farmers walks for now (the traditional recipe for improving the grip), but I’ll just monitor how it goes and adjust accordingly in one or two months if it further degrades.

For explosiveness, I’ll keep the power cleans and the power jerks (depending on the weight these may alternate with push presses some weeks), and substitute hang cleans for the paused ones (these I’ve found work very well when needing to transition from one move done from the floor to another one done from the pins of the rack, like when I have to move from power cleans to power jerks), and add power snatches. Overhead strength will also be worked in every session with the same scheme: in addition to the mentioned power jerks/ push presses there will be a day for heavy BTN SG push presses (aka Klokov presses), and another day for Savickas presses (although I have some doubts about how effective these really are, as they can only be done with very, very light weights, but they help with flexibility, stability and probably provide some extra core work, so I’ll keep them for now and see to what extent they help more than hinder the rest). As I have some concerns about how my form may have degraded in this time, I’ll start with a sets and reps scheme closer to the one I’m using for the PL moves (around 3x5), which forces me to use less weight, and by allowing me to accumulate more repetitions, some of them pretty exhausted, definitely pushes me to clean up my form (however, to avoid ingraining bad habits I’ll need to be more consistent videotaping myself and analyzing how it looks like intra sets).

In addition to chins and pull ups, I intend to do some dipping, both loaded and unloaded (as well as load some of the chin ups), as the tris are probably my weakest point (I think the main limiting factor both in my bench press AND my overhead moves), so it’s high time to really make it work (not just in every session, but every day within each session) and see how it responds. Putting it all together it looks like this:

One microcycle (duration: 10 days)
Session 1	Session 2	Session 3
Day 1	Day 1	Day 1
Front Squat (PL prog) Bench Press (3x15)	DL (PL prog) Power snatch (OL prog)	LBBS (PL prog) Bench Press (5x2)
Day 2	Day 2	Day 2
Power Clean (WL prog) Hang Clean Push Press/ Power Jerk (WL prog) Weighed chin ups	Bench Press (3x5) Weighed dips Savickas press Pull ups Jump squats + bounded jumps	BTN SG P Press Dips Chin ups

To be done in 10 days, allowing for roughly 1 day rest between each session (the days in the same session have to be done one after the other, if for some reason I have to skip a day the next one I do both back to back), with the possibility of the rest being extended to 2 days in the weekend (because the weekend is mostly for the family, so I’ll only train if there are absolutely no family events planned).

Finally, I still dream of being able to have one session here and there interspersed between the rest to go to the park and do some throwing and hill sprinting, just for fun and to stay supple. It will have to wait for temperatures to drop down a bit, as it is now too hot to think about it, but it will arrive. Another difference with how I’ve been doing things this last years is that I do not intend to make any effort at all to stuff myself with food no matter what. One side effect of my recovery (may be a bit before the injury I was already well down that road) is that, exercising considerably less I also ended up eating less, dropping a few pounds. Not something I ever obsessed about, but I’ve noticed my knees (mostly the surgically reconstructed one) ache and hurt much, much less when I go around weighing 190 pounds than when I weighed 210 pounds. So although I’m sure my lifting would improve faster if I went back to eating two servings of every dish, wolfing down pizzas and hamburgers as if there was no tomorrow and drinking gallons of milk multiple times a day to complete my caloric intake I plan not to do any of those. Not only that, I’ve discovered that not having lunch most days of the week leaves me with extra time to pursue other interests, saves me a lot of money and doesn’t noticeably impact my training sessions, so I’ll be in an unstructured IF (Intermittent Fasting) protocol for the foreseeable future, and see how my bloodwork evolves (again, not a big concern of mine, but curious about the purported miraculous benefits it is supposed to have). I’ll dine whatever I deem both edible and desirable (trying to stay clean, no processed food at all if I can avoid it, so no bread, pasta or sodas, just meat, fish, eggs, milk, vegetables and fruit… and beer, of course, beer is almost as old as humanity, so it doesn’t belong in the category of “processed food” at all) in the amount that leaves me fulfilled. If I gain weight, I gain weight, and if I lose some more weight, I lose it (my Wilks points at least seem to be improving so far). Needless to say, no supplements (that’s 99 times out of 100 for mentally weak people that have been sadly addled by the shady industry that sells such pricey and mostly useless stuff) and no drugs other than alcohol.

If possible, I’ll post more frequently how it is progressing and what adjustments I feel need to be done.