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I dove in head first. I found an awesome gym; an awesome coach. This meet is starting to feel real. I'm not showing up expecting to win with 9 months of lifting under my belt. But I am expecting—between now and my last deadlift of the day on 11/5—to continuously surprise myself. I'm listening to the new Kesha album as I write this, and her first track has these lyrics: Been underestimated My entire life I know people gonna talk shit And darling, that's fine But they won't break my spirit I won't let 'em win I'll just keep on living The way I wanna live Powerlifting is not just a sport for me, but a physical ritual and (almost?) spiritual practice. I am not a super spiritual person, so I hesitate to say that. But training consistently and treating my body with respect is possibly the closest thing to religion I've got. I am done underestimating myself. Making myself smaller. Hesitating. Doubting. Powerlifting allows for me to access these parts of myself, and I can take it with me to other parts of my life. Anyway. My goal for this challenge is simple: Eat to support the gainz. Stop cannibalizing muscle. Since I joined NF, I've leaned out quite a bit (30% body fat to 22%). My weight has been hanging steady for awhile, but I lost a lot over the past few weeks with my new training program. I need to fuel to support the work. And I want to fill out the top end of my weight class. For this, I've enlisted the help of Renaissance Periodization. It is essentially macros plus easy meal planning plus timing. It takes as much decision fatigue out of eating as possible. I'm doing a "soft launch" today and tomorrow and going full RP on Sunday. I expect to gain 0.5-1 pound a week.

We have a battle coming up on May 13! Looking over the next six weeks..... Week 0: April 15 to April 21 - Back to the Grind in the Mines of MinniBulgaria, Week 2 Week 1: April 22 to April 28 - Back to the Grind in the Mines of MinniBulgaria, Week 3 Week 2: April 29 to May 5 - Back to the Grind in the Mines of MinniBulgaria, Week 4 - Also birthday coming up! Star Wars Day! Week 3: May 6 to May 12 - Prepare for Battle! Week 4: May 13 to May 19 - Battle on May 13! Deload Week Week 0: May 20 to May 26 - New Program Week 1. Quest 1 - Prepare for Battle It's springtime now and while everybody else is getting out and doing fun things, I am deep in the mines of MinniBulgaria grinding out gains. My current programming is: Monday / Wednesday / Friday: 10 Snatch Singles in waves up to 95% 10 Clean and Jerk Singles in waves up to 85% Front-Squat max, then 4 triples Tuesday / Thursday: 8 Power Snatch Singles up to 80% 8 Power Clean and Jerk Singles up to 80% 3 heavy Front-Squat singles Max-Out Saturday: Hit a max Snatch Single Hit a max Clean and Jerk Single 3 heavy Squat Triples 5 Snatch Pulls at 105% Given that I see Miss Broki on Tuesday and Thursday now, it is most likely Friday will be scratched and Wednesday and Thursday will be shifted to Thursday and Friday so that she gets to see both parts of the program. The six-day program would then be reduced to a five-day program. We are back to the MinniBulgarian Grind! Quest 2 - Don't Die Track the number of times I die. The last time I died was on April 1, 2017. So. Number of Cycles: 3 Number of Deaths: 3 Quest 3 - Do Battle with MinniBulgarian Honor! May 13 is the big day. So far, I am looking for 5 kg gains in both lifts, so I am thinking..... Snatch: 75 / 80 / 83 kg Clean and Jerk: 102 / 107 / 111 kg Quest 4 - Tracking This is a copy and paste of the previous cycle. Still working on IfItFitsYourMacros and being a little bit less extreme on IfItFitsYourMouth. We have approximately one year's worth of data showing a slow increase in weight at 3350 Calories per day. Setting my goals slightly lower and using slightly less than 0.9 g Protein / pound bodyweight and splitting the rest of the calories in a 3:1 ratio, I get something like: 3240 Calories 360 Carbs (270 to 450) 120 Fat (90 to 150) 180 Protein (160 minimum) So we are not shooting for any kind of precision here. Let's just see if we can hit the broad side of a barn. When we miss, then I can go looking for the culprit and evaluate from there if I should be making a different choice in the future. We will come up with a list of things we can get away with and things we cannot! Meal prep once per week. One outing per week, even if MB would have me become a hermit. One dessert between now and the end of the cycle. Try to be original and post the picture! Track weekly weight over 2017. Track open, high, low, and close. The candlestick chart from last year was fun! Last cycle we hit 25/35. Yup. Just copy and paste because it has been working well enough for me. Quest 5 - Life Hax - April / May Edition Taxes are in. It looks like now I should be revisiting the life and death issues. I left off last will and testament stuff with a couple of decisions I was supposed to make. I don't have much of a list of life stuff to think of. Also it still feels too early to think about Tank's wedding in July. Quest 6 - Other Quests as they Appear And that's it.