Built to Endure - Training the Tactical Athlete By: Mike Prevost, PhD Captain, United States Navy
I started putting these ideas on paper when I started blogging in 2014. At that point I was working as the Director of the Human Performance Laboratory at the US Naval Academy. I was also serving as an exercise physiology consultant to the athletic department and working with lots of individual Midshipmen who were training for special programs (Airborne training, BUD/S, Infantry Skills Team, USMC TBS, ultra marathons, weight loss, powerlifting etc.). It was an ideal place to test lots of different programs and get feedback on effectiveness. I literally had hundreds of “test subjects” and was learning rapidly. I started blogging to capture that information, to put it somewhere that my Midshipmen could access it in the future, and to clarify my thoughts and ideas. This book is a way to organize that information into one resource. I am giving this book away at no cost with the hope that current and future tactical athletes find it useful. It is a way to honor the sacrifices they make every day.If you find this free e-book to be useful, please consider donating $5.00 to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation.
The book is getting nearer to completion so I am starting to move content over to the new blog. The book will be a free download and will consolidate many of the ideas from this blog. Eventually all content from this blog will be shifted over. Any new posts will be made at the new blog. Please bookmark it for the future.
Read the post and then read through the responses. Consider the basic message. This is a tremendous insight and virtually nobody was talking about this before Dan John. You'll find it here.
At some point everyone who's is serious about lifting will run into the problem of not being able to find a dumbbell heavy enough for one arm rows. A lot of gyms only carry up to around 130 lb. dumbbells. Some get as high as 200. But unless you're at a legit black iron gym you probably won't even find that. Of course, at homemade strength our gym is our garage, or living room, or backyard. Very few people want a rack of dumbbells in their home.
They take up way too much space. One solution is adjustable dumbbells. These are notoriously small. You can fit about 80 lbs. on them, and that's assuming you use 25 lb. plates too. This makes them too large in diameter, but still usable. One solution, albeit not the perfect one, is the "Big Ass Dumbbell". No, I'm not talking about a circus dumbbell that is large in diameter. I'm talking about the design that Matt Kroc came up with. Perhaps you have heard of Kroc rows. These utilize what is more accurately called a "long ass dumbbell". But that doesn't sound as good, nor does it produce as nice an acronym. You can buy these Kroc row bars for a few hundred dollars if you wish, or you could make them yourself. I based my design on the initial description I heard Kroc give in an interview.
The backbone of this thing is a 1 inch threaded rod. You can find threaded rods in any home improvement store, but not every store has them as large as 1 inch. I'm not sure if Home Depot or Lowes in your area will have them. I got mine at a Midwest store called Menards. They also have them at places like TSC. You'll also need 4 nuts that match your threaded rod. Then you'll need about a 6 inch length of pipe that fits over the rod. The pipe should also be called "1 inch" because pipe is measured by inner diameter and the rod by outer diameter. Of course the best way to make this all work is to just buy all the materials at one store so you can test fit them before you buy.
So with you nuts and rod in hand, we can begin assembly. Short lengths of pipe often have threads on each end. This is not ideal but it is what I bought. If you are willing to spend more money buy a longer length of pipe and cut it down so you have an appropriate sized handle with no threads on it. You might think the threads dig into my hands when I use it but they don't. I don't feel them at all so it's not an issue worth fixing for me. But ideally use plain pipe. You can clean the pipe with a bit of steel wool. You're probably going to use straps, and as such the lack of knurling is irrelevant. however, you can improve the grip with grip tape, or the poor version: masking tape and lifting chalk. I can't see how you wouldn't be using straps when rowing a massive dumbbell like this, for the same reason you use straps with doing shrugs. Although I concede that not everyone shares my views on the proper way to do such movements.
This project really couldn't be much more simple. you decide how big you want your dumbbell to be and cut your threaded rod to that length. The longer your rod, the more cumbersome it becomes. No matter what, you're going to end up with a dumbbell that needs to be lifted in a slightly different way, because it's simply too long to row in the conventional fashion. It utilizes standard plates (which means they have a one inch hole in the center, as opposed to olympic plates which have a 2 inch hole). If you leave it at 36 inches in length you can cram on enough 5 lb. plates to make it over 200 lbs. This will be of similar diameter to a normal dumbbell. If you use 10 lb. plates you can get it over 300 lbs. This will be slightly large in diameter, but not very much. If you cut it down it wll obviously hold less weight and you'll have to do the math yourself to figure out just how much less.
Then all you do is slide the pipe over the rod and center it. Screw a nut on each side of the pipe. Your dumbbell is basically done at that point. Load it up with plates and screw a nut on each side again to lock them down. Here's a few extra tips:
You can get 1 inch spring collar clips. These fit perfectly in the threads of your rod so they will be secure even if you hold the dumbbell in a vertical orientation. Just make sure you have a few inches of rod at each end. You don't want to load it up to maximum capacity and have a spring clip at the very edge of the rod. In those cases, lock it down with a nut. But if you aren't loading it up that much it's a pain to screw the nut on and off. In these cases it's nice to quickly use the spring clips instead.
If you lock down the two center nuts tightly your handle in the middle won't rotate. If you want it to rotate, simply loosen the two center nuts a tad until it does. In general you do want a dumbbell handle to rotate for the same reason you want a barbell to rotate. If it needs too it will simply spin rather than try to roll out of your hand.
Because of its size, you have to take a different stance when rowing this thing. First, you need the foot that's on the ground to be a bit further away from the bench. And you need to grip it slightly off center, away from your feet. This is because you need it to be higher towards your head, and lower towards your legs. This thing is so long it will literally be between your legs when you row it. As such you need to be able to touch it to your chest without jacking yourself in the crotch on every rep. This is common sense and mere trial and error will teach you how to use this thing on the first set. Or just watch videos online of people doing "Kroc Rows" if you want to prepare ahead of time.
Is Cannibal Ferox the best preworkout supplement, or just a ridiculous mix of stimulants on top of stimulants? Perhaps the two aren't mutually exclusive. Will it really melt your face, or is that just hyperbole? I'll give you my thoughts on Chaos and Pain's most popular product in the newest installment of Supplements Not Miracles. First I need to say that I have followed the Chaos and Pain blog for years now. I love it. So when Jamie started releasing supplements it was only a matter of time before I tried them out. I would have done so sooner but I was actually out of work at the exact time. In any case, while I am a fan, I'm far from swinging on his nuts. I agree with him on most things, but not everything. So let it be know that I like to support C&P, and at the same time I'm not a huge fan of wasting money on shit that doesn't do anything, regardless of who made it. So you're getting an honest review here from someone who likes the company, blog, and philosophy so much I rep CnP shirts as part of my regular wardrobe, but is far from a fan-boy who will blindly do anything as long as it's CnP approved. And if I don't get anything out of a supplement I'm not buying it, and I won't claim it's the greatest thing ever, fooling myself with placebos, just because I like the guy who made it.
Cannibal Ferox has gone through several changes since its inception. As of this writing there are three versions of Ferox, plus one for international customers. My actual review is going to be of Ferox 3. The first version of Ferox apparently tasted like complete shit, to the point it was difficult to choke down, but people loved the stim-packed goodness so much they took it anyway. That problem was remedied with version 2. It tasted (I guess) like Ferox does now, which is awesome. Version 2 also had AMP Citrate in it, and it is touted as the holy grail of pre-workouts by fans. I've never had it, because as I mentioned, I didn't have disposable income at that time. AMP Citrate got targeted by the FDA and as such it had to be removed. So now we have Ferox 3, which doesn't have the AMP Citrate. Fans of version 2, as said, still claim it was the greatest thing ever. And to test that theory I went ahead and got some AMP Citrate, and brewed up my own hybrid of Ferox 3 plus 300mg of AMP Citrate to mimic the Ferox 2 formula. I'll get to that at the end so read on.
The next thing to say is that other reviews range wildly with some claiming it's akin to methamphetamines and others saying they "can't even feel it." First, it's pretty obvious that taking a teenager who has never done drugs' opinion on the similarity between a pre-workout supplement and an illegal addictive hard substance they've never even tried is bad advice. This is not meth. If it was you'd be on the street sucking dick for your next Ferox fix. As such, use logic. Next, for those who can't feel it, they either don't know what to look for or they are so stim tolerant that they need to take a step back and let their body reset because they are apparently running on stims 24/7. Case and Point:
450mg caffeine 75mg Synephedrine 3mg Yohimbine
If you can't feel that, lay off the starbucks for a few months and try again. But you'll notice there is no Beta Alanine in this product. As such, you won't get that itchy tingley feeling. If that's what you want, you can add your own. So as with most things the truth lies somewhere in the middle of the extreme opinions you see online.
When I want "energy" I'm looking for that "bouncing off the walls" just want to get up and move kind of feeling. It's like when you're a kid on Christmas Eve. You can't sleep, you're so excited. This seems intricately tied to two things for me. One is happiness. There is no supplement for this. Things are very different on my Saturday sessions because it's Saturday. I don't have work. It's awesome. The same is not the case for Tuesday. This is likely the reason I could fuel my Saturday sessions with nothing but Ferox and 2 hours of sleep (when I used to work nights and don't want to waste my Saturday so I take a nap after work and get up Saturday morning like a normal person.)
The other component is calories. It should go without saying, but usually doesn't. If you're trying to run the machine on nothing but stims you're not going to have a good time. It works for a little while but not long term. You can't empty your gas tank and then think the NOS button is going to win the race. You have to be fueled. Otherwise what you will feel is akin to red lining an engine while in 1st gear. Your CNS and heart might be going hard but it doesn't translate to throwing around heavy weights. And you might feel hyped until you try to rip that PR off the floor. When you fail and feel drained you might understand my point. Calories > Caffeine, every time. Calories + Caffeine > Calories alone.
A quick note about me, before Ferox I hardly every used stims. I never drink soda or energy drinks, rarely drink coffee, and I can't even remember the last time I took a preworkout, which was C4. My stim tolerance, in theory, should have been rock bottom. I started with half a scoop, felt fine, so next time took the full scoop and still felt fine. I have since stacked it with aggro (just for lols) which kicked me up to 650 mg of caffeine in one blast, still felt fine, but not necessarily better. So I usually stick to just a scoop of ferox. I have also done a super blend, where I add 5mg of Beta Alanine and 300mg of AMP Citrate, which I'll address at the end of this article.
And finally a note about Chaos and Pain. Their labels are completely transparent. They list every ingredient and how much of each is in the tub. Most of these came from Jamie's own formulas that he was making for himself using bulk ingredients. There is a reason for everything in there and you can straight up ask him the purpose for his decisions to include an ingredient if you want to. But more than that, the label is transparent so you can decide for yourself if the formula is something that will work for you. No guessing games here, just science.
THE REVIEW
One glance at the label will tell you that Cannibal Ferox is a stimulant heavy product. If that's not what you're looking for then obviously you'll have to look elsewhere. They have a non-stim pump based preworkout called PermaSwole and also an energy drink style product called Aggro, which is superior to Monster and Redbull in numbers, price, and taste. Ferox is very much for those who want to stim up like a Marine in Starcraft.
The picture above shows the ingredients. 450mg of caffeine, 75mg of Synephrine, 3mg Yohimbine, 75mg Higenamine, 75mg Hordenine; all stims. Plus Noopept for focus and some other stuff for good measure.
If you want to "feel" Ferox you have to pay attention to what your heart and CNS are doing. You might feel a little jittery and your heart will be beating faster. As I mentioned there are many factors that contribute to your level of perceived energy. If you are excited and happy , that helps. If you are depressed, Ferox isn't going to change that. If you are on a cut Ferox isn't going to give you caloric energy. But if everything is sorted, Ferox is like a slap in the face to get your going. Pressing the accelerator when there is fuel in the tank results in increased performance, obviously. That's what stimulants can do for you. They also suppress your appetite and can burn more calories but that's not the role of Ferox. If that's what you want look for Cannibal Inferno for that purpose.
You should also note that this is not an endurance product. You don't take Ferox and expect to be fucking shit up 3 hours later. You take it, you lift, and you're done. CnP has a product called Mercury that is supposed to be for endurance sessions. I've never taken it because I only lift for about 90 minutes, so I don't know how well it works. Ferox really isn't something you should take for a night shift, for example. Ferox is more like dropping a bomb. Aggro is better suited to shift work, although blackout curtains so you can sleep properly is far better. I don't need to stim to get through work and I work 12 hours a night. Bt then again, I'm single so it's no problem for me to then sleep 8 hours a day, get up at 2pm, and basically eat/lift/work the week away with nobody to bitch at me or kids to take care of.
Cannibal Ferox tastes fantastic. I'd give it an 8 out of 10. It depends on how much water in which you mix it. I would say a full scoop needs about 12 to 14 oz of water to maximize the taste. 8 oz of less and it starts getting pretty intense. It's not bad, but it starts getting more like a sour candy. You could argue that this is a pre-preworkout kickstart as usually the first sip of Ferox combined with heavy music is a kick to face when you do this. As of right now I've only tried the Watermelon flavor but I haven't heard any complaints about he others. It's basically what I remember C4 tasting like (which is known for tasting awesome). So if you're looking for a new preworkout and you aren't hypersensitive to stimulants, give ferox a try. Start light so you can assess your tolerance to it.
*Note: A handful of you may have caught this article before this edit. I have since tried Ferox Amped and I've been experimenting with various mixes of CnP products and bulk ingredients to dial in a super pre-workout formula. Instead of tacking it onto this article I have decided to make a separate one, so stay tuned for that. For now, if you want to try Ferox, head over to chaosandpain.com and get you some.
I think that a fair share of my readers will agree that T-Nation over the years has degenerated into the strength website most like your refrigerator. Sure, you'll glance at it (regardless if you'll admit to it or not) to see if there is anything interesting but you know there isn't; just the same shit as the last time you glanced in. Still, every once in a while, someone puts something interesting in there. You know, like a friend brought over some good beer and threw it in there much like Nick McKinless posted there what seems like too long ago. If, you know, you had friends that nice...which you probably don't.
Okay, T-Nation pretty much sucks.
Still, I did read Dean Somerset's article, "The Five Best Exercises Ever." It was a reasonably well written piece. I even agree with a good chunk of the movements listed as well as enjoying the historical perspectives.I also like that the movements were less specific to a particular execution with a specific implement. Still, like any other internet fitness God, I think I have a better list and you're about to get bombarded with my rendition of the five best movements in history.
Actually, I wouldn't change too many on the list. I'm just going to give better reasoning as to why I think they're so good. I'll even do it without wearing a polo shirt.
Seriously, why do so many trainers and PT's wear polo shirts?
Removing the Antiquity Requirement: Squatting From what my modest research over the years into physical culture history, the squat seems to be relatively new to hoisting for strength. It seems to show up in Germany around the time that barbells started to catch on. Somerset mandated in his inferior article that exercises had to be around for thousands of years. Generally I'd agree but the squat has too consistently shown to build strong, massive legs, even entire bodies in general, for the past century and a half.
Just because the Romans weren't quite genius enough to use it can't take away from the fact that this was probably the best, single movement to become popularized in the past 150 years of lifting. In fact, if you look at who were considered the real leaps forward in strength athletes in this period of time, most of them were also prodigious (for their times) squatters. Hackenshmidt, Steinborn, Grimek, Anderson... Name an all-time great strength guy and you'll likely also name a great squatter.
Squatting alone may be the most convincing evidence that the modern strength athletes are better than their counterparts, if you chose to pick that fight.
Rope Climbing This is one I'll agree on for sure. We all know that rope climbing is regarded as more advanced BW movement. Someone usually has to be very proficient with pull-ups before even trying this. Advanced bodyweight demands a high strength to bodyweight ratio. That favors a person who is muscular and lean.
Hey, Whiffet, challenge! Top this, Mr Six Pack...
All lifting sports have their contingent who loves to be fat and strong, arguing that it gives them some sort of edge. My chosen sport of strongman loves to hold up Zydruanas as the latest piece of evidence, disregarding the fact that prior to him the most of the WSM winners were all lean. In fact, at least 3/4 of the strongmen who won that title were all lean guys. Historically, the strongest guys were usually the leanest guys.
Did the they climb ropes? Fuck if I know. Still, I've never seen a fat ass get up a rope. It's a lean, strong person's proposition all the way. That's probably why rope climbing so consistently shows up throughout history as an exercise. It builds lots of strength and promotes high strength-to-bodyweight ratio like few other movements do.
PCP... Who says drugs in training aren't useful? Well, only people that like being wrong, I suppose. Still, I'm not talking about using the drug that the LAPD (circa 1990's) favorite drug to hate. I'm simply consolidating all forms of weight training-bipedalism into one acronym: Pushing, Pulling and Carrying.
People love to talk about lifting weights all the time and even though strongman has nearly half of their events involving PCP, I still don't think this shit is given nearly enough attention. PCP's are all pretty easy to learn, idiot resistant with execution and can serve dual roles of strength and conditioning. If the strength gods would bless me, I'd do some sort of PCP every single day.
I've alternated between more upper body-dominant stuff like frame carries, overhead sandbag walking, famers handles, and weighted sled pulling. Then, I've pushed trucks, dragged sleds, and used prowlers on days where I want to hit my legs. Repeat process. For weeks. That's how valuable I think they should be to the strength world.
Combining them makes good stuff even better. I've done sled/prowler combos. I've dragged sleds while carrying a sandbag on my shoulder. I've seen beardo-extroardinaie Adam Wayne Caposella do a yoke with a sled. Friend Chip Conrad did a sandbag shouldered-farmer carry. There's as much versatility with weight-walking as there is good work for the body.
Getting Shit off the Ground and Overhead Another one that I agree that Dean got right. There's a reason that this combination of movements essentially is the backbone of both modern strongman sport and early physical culture alike. There really is a lot of limitations on your strength if you can't do this well. Recall my broscience theory years ago: if you have strong hips, back and grip, then you're good to go. Ground-to-overhead lifting pretty usually hits all of this pretty hard, demanding that you have all three.
A funny thing happened years ago in strength gyms. People got really, really focused on putting up insane lbs of weight. While there's nothing wrong with that inherently. What was wrong was that weights started getting less awkward. They were pre-positioned in places to make them easier to lift more. Putting them over the head was marginalized since, you know, its hard to do a lot of iron over your head in a very short timeline.
So, if you wanted to combat that asshole that said modern lifters are stronger because they squat, you could retort that old time lifters took things off the ground and put them overhead with far more regularity. While the modern gym-goers are starting to rediscover the utility of ground-to-overhead (giving birth to quaint phrases like "functional training"), the ancients knew it all along.
Push-ups... Going back to what dead people you forgot all about after your tests in school, you'll see a common thread in Dean's and my list: Asid from being rooted in manual labor, the implements needed to execute these strength movements are pretty rudimentary. Chances are good that most of them you could do right now if you'd just stop fucking around on the internet, pushed away from the screen, and got moving. In that regard, there are few strength movements that are more minimalistic than the push-up. All you need is your body and the ground.
...Or a stupid-popular, crazy old motherfucka for extra weight
Just because the rest of the strength world outside bodyweight training doesn't look at push-ups as strength moves doesn't mean they can't and don't build strength. I've been pretty vocal about this lately. They can throw weight onto every other strength movement. Just throw some weight on push-ups too. It's like they forgot that there is no rule book that says push-ups can't have weigtht. Chains, vests, sandbags, other humans...they've all been used in the past. They all work. They've worked for years too, regardless if shaved apes of today forgot about that.
This list also happens to summarize my training lately since I got home from Florida. In this period of time, I've gotten bigger (10 lbs) and did my first no-zero strongman competition. While I won't say that this qualifies me as an expert yet, I will call it definitive progress using stuff that's worked for millennia.
About four years ago, I wrote one of my favorite blog entries about adding weight to common BW movements. It's turned out to be one of my more popular entries. While I'm opinionated I'm not dogmatic or without a sense of compromise. So, I imagine that my audience is much the same. That might explain why an entry like that one, with its compromising tone, went over so well.
As my training has given more into weights and strongman, I haven't forgotten the effectiveness of BW stuff. Often times, I weigh them down with heavy stuff. Very recently, I finally got off my ass and showed off how I used a sandbag for heavy push-up work in lieu of both not having a place to bench press and despising the bench even if I did. You can find that here. Although ambition got the better of me momentarily by posting that video, laziness struck when I noted that I liked adding chain to one arm-push-ups but failed to post proof that I am awesomely clever enough to undertake such a movement.
Such maneuvers are excellent ways to bring up questions of validity in training. As I've stated in the past, I don't care to enslave myself to practicality when training. If it's fun, I'll do it. Still, there are methods to the madness. One arm push-ups are a great way to hit those muscles that nobody gives a shit about because girls and gym bros don't tend to admire them. You know, the serratus and all those lower shoulder blade chunks of meat that make you care about them via injury from lack of training. In case your overpaid online coach never told you, working these muscles are why you do face pulls.
The next merger of iron and bodyweight that I've adored lately is double rope climbing with some junk chain that someone inexplicably stretched the piss out of (which should have taken tens of thousands of lbs to do) at work.
Rope climbing kicks all kind of ass. At the moment, I'm trying to goose my bodyweight up to the 215 lbs territory. Doing BW during such attempts has served me well. Things like this 30 lbs o' chain rope climb require a good strength to bodyweight ratio. That's generally obtained by having a lower bodyfat percentage. In other words, doing these while bulk generally keep getting too fat in check. That may be brocience as fuck, I admit, but it's worked for me in the past.
Note that on both of these, I've gone out of my way to use other methods to increase the difficulty. Rings and two ropes will go a long way to making less weight more difficult. I may be doing weighted BW but I'm not going to fall on the sword of only using adding weight to make stuff harder. Plus, these aren't BW movements that often get the weighted treatment. Take this as friendly reminder to not be afraid to take a different road that's slightly less traveled.
