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08-06-22 08:54 AM - Post#920963
I'm currently on day 10 of my first-ever round of MMS... but let me backfill this log for posterity and context.
I'm 35 years old and have had many athletic phases. From 10 to 22 I competed in flatwater sprint kayaking at the international level, always as a smaller guy (bodyweight under 165) with a very strong upper body and legs so weak that I would cramp doing lunges with 10# dumbbells.
I moved to NYC after graduating college and was horrified to find out how tough it was to exercise in a city. I receded into the weight room and took on the GOMAD diet and 20 rep squat program for something like 8 weeks, working my way from no leg strength up to 265 for 20 at a bodyweight in the mid 170s.
Since then the big phases have been
- ultra distance canoe racing (https://www.texaswatersafari.org, 265 miles)
- CrossFit for an intense year in 2012, with an excellent coach that had been one of the top hammer throw athletes in the country back in her heyday
- ultramarathon trail running, racking up maybe 8 100 mile finishes (and a 200 miler!), some pretty fast.
My running body is maybe 155 without any real effort at weight loss, and I sit at 162# when the volume is lower. I've hung on to pretty solid strength over the years with periodic returns to a regular low-rep weight routine.
MMS
So why MMS, and why now?
My wife delivered our twin boy and girl this past May, taking any long runs off the table and nuking stretches of sleep longer than 2 hours. I spent a month answering "how are you?" with the usual "oh, you know, it's so hard, sleep sucks," before realizing how boring this was. Wouldn't it be more fun to say, "The twins are awesome, and I'm hitting PRs left and right, packing on muscle and the strongest I've ever been in my life!"?
The kids were sleeping a touch better in mid-June, so I started lifting again in the very early morning, first with a basic 5x5 program, and then plucking workouts from Jocko Willink's "Discipline Equals Freedom" book, along with some "BUDS Prep" sessions from a Stew Smith (https://store.stewsmithptclub.com/sixwenasedow.html) program I had completed back in college.
The Jocko workouts got me back into the high rep squats game, with simple workouts like
- 6 sets of max backsquats at bodyweight, 6 sets max front squat at 1/2 bodyweight,
- 8 sets back, 3 front
- 8 sets front, 3 back
These were HARD, but I was hitting numbers in the high 20s on backsquat for the first few sets, and eventually 150 total reps at bodyweight.
This was all great but I didn't have a structure or longer term plan. I started digging around my library, reading Dan John articles, and re-discovered MMS, with the scary-yet-TANTALIZINGLY CLOSE goal of the 50 rep set at bodyweight.
I read the book and decided to go all in. I had done a month already of high rep squats work, so I decided to start the program on week 3, skipping the "warm up" weeks at the beginning of the program. Maybe dumb, but I figured I could add two more weeks onto the end if it turned out that I had the courage to continue eating at a high level for six weeks (my biggest fear!)
Edited by Sam Ritchie on 08-06-22 09:48 AM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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