Well…. I’ve got good news and bad: The good news is I didn’t come in dead last. The bad news is, I think the one guy who I “beat” dropped out of the competition due to bird flu or something… or may never existed, but all I know is there was somebody on the list who’s name was below mine.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here, let me rewind back to the beginning. I feel like Friday was the beginning of everything that made up my strongman experience, so we’ll start with that…

Friday was an interesting day: Obama was about a mile from my house speaking at U of R, and Sir Richard Branson was speaking at a conference that afternoon and they were having an after party at the Virginia Museum of Fin Arts that evening. Thanks to a friend, I was able to score free tickets to both events (thanks again buddy).

The conference was pretty uneventful, though the talk on Virgin Galactic was pretty cool, and I have absolute certainty at this point that I’ll be going to space at some point in my lifetime (assuming I don’t die in the next 20-30).

Anyway, the after party was what I was real excited/nervous about. Why? Because it was an open bar event. Usually I’m pretty good about being smart and not drinking the night before something important, but when there’s an open bar I always feel like I’m missing out on a once in a lifetime opportunity by not taking part in that, so I did drink a few. However I am proud to report that I did not drink too much.

….At least that’s what I thought, until I woke up on Saturday morning feeling hungover like a jackass.

So getting to the gym just in time to hear the end of the rules, I start to warm-up with a little bit of trepidation about this minor hangover and the fact that I had just been told we’ll be flipping a 520lb. tire three times. The most I’d ever done was a 500.

We had about an hour to warm-up, and I spent most of that wandering trying to figure out where things were and what I wanted to do about it. An hour seems like a long time, but it flew by pretty quickly, and next thing I knew we were starting…

Initially I was pretty nervous, but even before I had to take on the first event, I realized that the environment for this type of thing was a lot different than other competitive events. Back in my baseball playing days, or even professional grade beerpong days (don’t doubt me), there’s always been the “us/me vs. them”. There’s always somebody pulling against you, talking trash about you, trying to break you down and take the wind out of your sails.

Interestingly, the attitude at the strongman was completely the opposite. Sure, everybody wants to win, and you’re doing your best to beat the other guys, but it’s interesting how you all feel like you’re on the same team. Everyone high fives everyone else, cheers each other on, and is all around full of encouragement. It was completely foreign to me, and completely awesome. It’s a great feeling to be surrounded by a crowd of people yelling and cheering for you, even if they have no idea who you are. My theory is, everyone has a high level mutual respect due to knowing exactly what it is you’re going through, since they just did it or are going to be doing it shortly after you. It’s very much an “us vs. the weights” mentality.

Anyway, I hit the first challenge, and I’m happy to say that I accomplished 2 of the 4 lifts. Successfully clean/pressing the 180lb. axle, and pulling 350lb of the floor without any trouble. I was really hoping to get the 180lb log, since I know I have the strength to do it but have a really hard time getting the technique down. As far as the 500lb. off blocks, I’m not going to lie, I never really thought that was going to happen, and like an idiot I tried several times and ended up jacking up my lower back only 45 seconds into a day long competition. I am well aware of my tendency to round my back like a jackass on the deadlift when the weight gets heavy, and unfortunately this was no exception and I paid for it.

After the power medley was the yoke walk. The most I’ve ever done was 450lb., and I wanted to get some numbers on the board early, so I started with a relatively light 360lb.

Hitting 360 with ease, I bumped it up to 440 for my second attempt, and got through that without any problem and 0 drops.

At this point I learned that you get a total of 3 drops over your 3 attempts, so I made a ballsy call and decided to skip over 480lb. and go straight for 520lb…. Well, this ended up being not a very good call, and I ended up making the fatal 4th drop about ⅔ of the way to the finish line. Oh well, I figured if you don’t push yourself to the point of at least a few drops, you’re being a pansy about it… I didn’t want that.

After that was one of my favorites, the farmers walk. I was confident I could do this without any problem, which ended up being true, however something I need to work on is how quickly I walk with the weight. I ended up not doing so well as far as placing since everyone was able to complete the event without dropping, and a couple guys practically jogged with the weight.

Then came the tire-flipping/sled pulling medley, and the 520lb tire that I was so worried about proved to be the easiest implement of all, and I flipped it 3 times without much trouble, followed by a sled drag for ~45ft. I have no idea how much was on the sled, but it wasn’t too bad.

Sadly, the last event, the Atlas stones, which I was super stoked about, proved to be my worst event. After watching the women do the stones, I was feeling pretty good about my chances, when all of a sudden they cleared away the ~48” platform, and pulled out a tiered platform that blew my mind with the height they had picked for some of the lifts. If you watch the video below, you can see that I wasn’t able to get past the seconds stone, which is 215lbs of pure, infuriating frustration.

Thankfully, the next 2 or 3 guys couldn’t get the 2nd stone up either, so that made me feel quite a bit better. Not that I wasn’t pulling for them, but if I had been the only guy unable to get it on the platform, I’d have been pretty pissed.

So having finished the last event, I packed it up and headed out, roughly 8 hours after stepping into the gym: bruised, battered, and my back already sore as sh*t.

Am I glad I did it? Absolutely. Do I think I’ll do it again? Probably. I now know what they’re like, and what I need to work on. Having seen where I’m at, I know I’ve got tons of room for growth, and I believe I can make substantial progress if I put my mind to it.

However, I think it’s time for a change in the training regimen… More on that later. For now, I’m still tired, sore, and it’s time for a beer…. I think I’ll take a couple days off. DONE.

Coming off of a week of hurricane recovery, and only having lifted a grand total of 1.5 times during that week (with a jog somewhere in there), I’ll admit I wasn’t feeling real good. I’ve discovered that much like a crack addict without, well… crack, when I take several days in a row off from serious exercise, my mood and overall sense of well-being just goes straight south. Compound that with the fact that I’ve switched back to lifting on my lonesome (sans coach), so I’m all on my own as far as programming.

Take all this, and considering I’ve got a strongman competition this coming Saturday, I was just not feeling that awesome.

Until last night…I went to my old faithful, Gold’s Gym, and decided that it’d be a good call to do two of the core lifts in the upcoming competition: deadlift and overhead press.

Well I’m not sure if it was my long rest, or the sweet knee-high snowboarding socks that I was rocking at the gym for the first time to keep myself from bleeding all over Golds, but not only did I clean and press 185lbs without too much trouble, but I hit a 15lb PR in my deadlift, pulling a 1RM @ 400lbs.

Talk about a weight lifted-HEYOOOOO. Sweet joke…. seriously though, a weight was lifted off my shoulders, and now I can take it relatively easy the rest of the week up until the event, allowing myself to go in fresh (may do a little tabata type work just to get the body sweating a bit).

Event is only a couple days away, and I’m excited. You know I’ll be writing about that mess when I’m done!

Only several blocks from the plasma-TV filled, Brittney Spears blasting, packed-to-the-gills-at-5pm Gold’s Gym that I’m currently a member of (and not to take away from Gold’s, because it definitely has its place), lies a little gem in the rough… uh, extreme, rough.

It’s fittingly named The Weight Room, and there are no frills, no polo’d personal trainers with clipboards meandering around rearranging stability balls for the 80th time, and if you tried to play Brittney Spears I’m pretty sure your iPod won’t make it out alive.

Believe me, this place isn’t for everyone, but then again I don’t think they want everyone working out here. It’s a small, serious gym, that attracts big, serious lifters… and me, evidently.

I went there this past Saturday to lift with my friend Chris, because they have all of the strongman implements (atlas stones, log, yoke, farmers, etc.) that a wannabe strongman could desire. According to Chris the gym was “packed” at a ungodly 5, that’s right five, other people there. Now granted, the gym isn’t very big, but believe me the 5 people in there weren’t a problem, and we didn’t wait for anything.

In fact, it’s kind of nice lifting in a small niche gym, because it forces you to get to know some people… Well, maybe not force, but you’d look like a real jerk if you didn’t at least say “hello” to the 1 or 2 other people that are in there with you… and the handful of people I’ve met there are 10x friendlier and more willing to help you out than anybody I’ve met in my years of lifting at a commercial gym. The owner, Chris Lawyer, is probably one of the nicest people you ever meet. I know that term is thrown around loosely by pretty much everyone, but seriously, sit down and talk with the guy for while and you’ll see what I mean.

Also, want to give a shout out and thanks to Joey Tedrow and Danny Clingenpool, a couple of stongman veterans that were kind enough to give Chris and myself some pointers on how to not kill ourselves while doing the different lifts.

Joey putting on a clinic... show off.

So how’d I do?

Well, not too bad, but there’s considerable room for improvement as well. I’m still stalling at 165 on the log press, but I’m fairly certain that it’s more of a technique issue than anything else.

This is how it's done

My yoke walk I maxed out around 445lbs, which I’m not unhappy with, but I almost lost a limb doing it. My right leg caved at one point and I had to drop the frame and regroup for a minute.

Chris raging on a 260lb atlas stone

On the Atlas stones… oh man, the atlas stones. I was all excited about the stones, and feeling pretty confident, but the platform at TWR is much higher than the one I used at Brute Strength, and boy did that make a difference. At 52” or so, getting the stone up on that sucker was more than a little bit of a struggle. I managed to do 215lbs 3 times, but it got uglier, and uglier every rep. No worries, just means I’ve got more work ahead of me.

After a solid 2 ½ hours at The Weight Room, we shot on over to another little ghettofabulous establishment, known as The Dairy Bar. As we were walking up, there was a guy out front chaining up the tables on the deck.

“Are you guys closed?”

“…Nope.”

I guess they were battening down the hatches in preparation for a flashmob robbery or something. Anyway, though in the ghetto, the food was awesome…. and a complete and utter Paleo fail, but after almost 3 hours in the gym I think I earned a few carbs.

Moral of the story? I think I may have found a new home for the near future (both gym and dairy barn).

I’m not one much for sampling my own wares very frequently, but today I took a look back and read through last weeks posts and realized… Nice job chief, you successfully wrote all week on your “personal fitness journey blog” without talking about what you’re doing as far as personal fitness.

Fear not, I haven’t fallen off the train. I’m going to make it up to you here by posting last weeks workouts. I’m not Rainman though, so I don’t remember all the sweaty details of each day, but I’ll do the best I can:

• Monday – squat and clean day. I kind of wussed out on this day, since I was having some hip issues (like an old man) from running on Saturday like an idiot.
• Tuesday –
  • Plank – for time, with a 45lb plate on my ass/low back:
  • Set 1 – 1:20
  • Set 2 – 0:50
  • Set 3 – 0:45
  • Side plank – with 45lb plate held to side:
  • 3 x 25 seconds per side, 1:00 rest periods
  • Half-peeing Dog:
  • 3 x 35 seconds per side, 25 second rest periods.

  I’ve kicked the “off day” core work up a little bit. I’ve got an 80lb sandbag that my buddy loaned me a long time ago. Pretty sure he’s forgotten about it (as did I), and since moved, so I hope he doesn’t want me to ship an 80lb sandbag to him… because if so, Poerstel, we’ll need to go halve-zees.

  • Sanbag rotational pick-ups – max reps in 5:00 with 80lb bag (hit 38 reps)
  • Sanbag get-ups – max reps in 5:00 with 80lb bag (hit 27 reps…embarrassed)

• Thursday – yoga at Yoga Source in Carytown. They’re no joke there, and Friday was the first time I’ve ever woken up sore from yoga.
• Friday – Cleans and rows.
• Saturday – Log presses, Yoke walk, and atlas stones at The Weight Room. I’ll write up a little guy on this, probably tomorrow, since this place is awesome and deserves a shout out.

See?… Still all about some personal fitness here at theyoking.com. Been a slow start to the exercise regimen this week, but last week was solid.

On Friday I stated that I was going to go on a creatine cycle, which I started yesterday. I decided it’d be a good idea to do weekly measurements, so I went to Gold’s and weighed in and measured the body fat to see where I was at. I haven’t weighed myself or measured the BF in a while, so I was interested to see where I was at, considering I’ve been eating roughly 80% Paleo compliant foods. Yeah sure, some alcohol here and there as well as a milkshake or two, but as far as during the week, and all the foods that I prepare myself, they’ve been Paleo legit.

So here’s where I stood yesterday morning, weighing myself in the morning before I eat or drink anything to keep the results as accurate as possible:

181.2lbs @ 7.1% body fat

I’m pretty ecstatic about that. Keeping to my regimen of heavy lifting, with some yoga and core work on off days, I would not have been too surprised to see my weight go up a little after slacking up a little bit on my diet. However, if I did the math right, it looks like I gained over 4lbs of muscle… or water, or something. Anyway, it’s not fat. So that’s cool.

I’m interested to see how the weight changes on this cycle of creatine, since I’ve never been real scientific with my previous cycles. I’d just take the recommended doses, eat an assload of food, lift weights, drink water, and weigh myself here and there to prove to myself that I wasn’t consuming $40 per pound kool-aid mix.

So next Saturday I’ll do the same, and for at least a month continue to measure. I’m not putting a hard date on when I’ll stop, but we’ll just feel it out.

Friday’s workout (since I was being lazy yesterday and didn’t post it):

• Roll out/warmup
• Snatch – 5 x 1 @ 135lbs (Slightly more than 60 kilos, thanks very much Hitler)
• Clean – 5 x 1 @ 150lbs


The good news? This is 25lbs over the competition weight. The bad? This almost ripped my fingers off.

• Farmers Walk
• ~60ft @ 115lbs per hand
• ~60ft @ 155lbs per hand
• ~60ft @ 205lbs per hand

Heyo, here’s a new video. I’ve got a beer in my hand right now, and I’m in weekend mode. So all I’ve got for you is a video from yesterday’s workout.

Today I made the decision to start a creatine cycle. I’ve used creatine probably 5 or 6 times in my illustrious weight lifting “career”, and have almost always received good results from it. Now I will say, there have been a couple times where I’ve taken it and had some undesirable side effects (short fuse, namely), but it helps me out in the gym, and there actually are a few studies that back up the hype.

What is creatine?

I don’t really know. As far as I can tell, it’s a powdery substance, that grows in the forests of the Adirondacks in many exotic flavors such as grape, fruit punch, and razz-a-ma-taz. No but seriously, creatine is a substance that is naturally produced in our bodies out of a handful of amino acids as well as naturally found in meat and fish, so we’ve already got it floating around.

However, there have been studies to suggest that supplementing with creatine increases ATP production (energy) and subsequently delays muscle fatigue for short spans of time…. Yeah, I pulled all that together from several sources, and don’t really know what I’m talking about, but if you read through some of the articles and studies cited below, you’ll see I’m not full of it.

An interesting thing about creatine, is that it also draws water into the muscles, so I’m pretty much guaranteed to gain weight. But as I stated yesterday… I don’t care about that anymore. Bring on the weight, and bring on the delayed fatigue. Time to train my face off for this strongman shindig.

I had a realization today that I was being dumb… No surprise to anyone there I’m sure.

I’ve been dumb because I’ve semi, sort of, half-assedly, been watching the weight a little bit. Nothing too serious, but I’ve been hoping to hover around 180ish give, or preferably take, 5 pounds.

Why? Because I set 3 strength based goals for myself way back in… December? Something like that. Anyway, they’re all based off of percentage of body weight:

• Deadlift 2x bodyweight
• Clean 1.25 x bodyweight
• Front Squat 1.75 x bodyweight

This is all well and good, but if you’re gaining weight while working towards these numbers, the damn goal is always moving farther and farther out. Get it?

So after hitting my goals in both the deadlift and clean, I’ve been slowly working towards the front squat… And straight up stalling out around the 260-265lb. mark, which is well shy of the ~315lb. that I’d need to hit to make the goal. I’m a little embarrassed to admit, that I’d even thought a little bit about cutting some weight down if I could bump my squat into the upper 200’s, just so I could “hit the goal”.

But you know what? Who cares. I don’t want one goal to keep me from pushing forward towards bigger and better things.

So screw that. I’m going to lift to get as strong as I can be, and I’m talking all around strong, not just one awkward-ass lift. Does that mean the goal is off the table? No, absolutely not. That may be a goal that’s on my plate for months, hell, even years down the road….But a goal should be something that makes you better, stronger. Not something that makes you weaker or holds you back from achieving other goals.

So now that I’ve shared my little epiphany, here’s yesterdays quickie workout:

• Roll out/warmup
• Push press with Axle bar
  • 1 x 5 @ 45lbs
  • 1 x 5 @ 75lbs
  • 1 x 5 @ 115lbs
  • 8 x 1 @ 150lbs


Starting to get the hang of this one....all in the legs baby.

• Blast strap push-ups w/ 40lb vest – 13, 10, 7
  –superset with–
  Towel pull-ups w/ 40lb vest – 8, 6, 4
• Heavy band tricep extensions – 2 x 20
  –superset with–
  Med-Heavy band hammer curls – 2 x 20

If you’ve been following this for any length of time in the past few months, or even just took a random look a post or two, you’d know that for a while there I was pretty Paleo-centric: Paleo this, Paleo that, blah blah blah.

Well I’m still eating fairly clean by Paleo standards, with a few things that I wasn’t eating before that I’ve incorporated back into my diet without any visible negative side effects (it’s embarrassing to admint, but Kaola Crisp is my jam… Look if there isn’t a maze or cartoons on the back, chances are I don’t like it. But hey, it’s gluten free).

Anyway, now that I’m stabilizing my diet and getting into the long-haul Paleo groove, I’m looking for the next thing to try. Not that I’m going to walk away from my current diet, but I’m interested in a couple other things that I’ve read about in regards to the Paleo-style of eating:

• Intermittent fasting
• Clean weight gain

What do you think about me giving either one of those a solid 30-day strict, blood tests before/after, weight/bodyfat measurements throughout, theyoking.com-style college try? I’d stlil be eating Paleo-friendly foods, but the amount or timing would be strictly regulated (depending on which one I was doing). I’ll write more about each in the future, and am open to suggestions for other things to try, but the above two are diet strategies that I’ve read a bit about and am highly intrigued by.

Like I said, I’ll come back to this again in the future, but just wanted to get some initial thoughts on it if anybody has any….

Oh, yesterday’s workout posted below. I think coach must’ve missed me over the weekend, because he poured on the leg work. It was a good workout, and felt great both during and after:

• Roll out/warmup
• Power snatch – 3×5 @ 105lbs
  –superset with–
  High box jumps – 3×5
• Back squats
  • 1×5 @ 135lbs
  • 1×5 @ 185lbs
  • 1×5 @ 210lbs
  • 3×5 @ 250lbs


Weird picture. I look like one of the those poor chumps in the photos from "The Ring"... No weird phone calls yet. Just telemarketers, dammit.

• Trap-bar deadlifts – 5×8 @ 275lbs.
• One-legged Romanian Deadlift – 3×8 @ 35lb kettlebell
  –superset with–
  Hanging leg raises w/ pause – 3×6