Log and leave.
Read the direction, not the last data point.
The whole protocol. Fat-loss-first recomp · cardiovascular health · muscle preservation · nervous-system regulation.
| Mon | Lift A — lower-biased · gym, late morning |
|---|---|
| Tue | Zone 2 30–40 min + evening sauna rounds |
| Wed | Lift B — upper, lighter · evening after office |
| Thu | Quality run — 4×4 / strides, alternating · governed by recovery |
| Fri | Lift C — posterior + squat pattern · gym |
| Sat | Long Z2 — 8–10 mi capped + evening sauna single |
| Sun | Rest — deep reset · non-negotiable |
Why this week works: three full-body lifts hit every muscle ~3×/week — enough to preserve and slowly build muscle in a deficit. Conditioning is 2 Z2 days + 1 quality day. Thursday alternates real Norwegian 4×4 one week, easy Z2 + strides the next — a real VO₂ max stimulus every other week without the sympathetic load that flares the upper traps. Saturday's long Z2 is the aerobic-base and fat-oxidation anchor. No hard-hard stacking — every intense day is followed by Z2 or rest. Sunday is the only true rest day and is non-negotiable. Every 6th week is a deload.
Priorities: NON-NEGOTIABLE do this even on bad days · IMPORTANT aim for most days · NICE TO HAVE great when you can.
🚦 The governor — read before deciding today's session. This is the only hard conditioning of the week and it is conditional on recovery. Primary check is body-first: did I sleep reasonably? Do I feel recovered, not run-down? Was last night manageable? Yes → intervals. No → Z2 or a walk. HRV is a tiebreaker only — if the subjective call is ambiguous, glance at the multi-day trend once, decide, and stop looking. The number never overrules how you feel. Taking the Z2 fallback is the protocol working as designed, not a failure. Never make up a missed session later.
The job of lifting in a deficit: not chasing PRs — giving your body a reason to keep the muscle it has while you lose fat. Muscle is metabolically expensive; in a deficit the body sheds what it isn't forced to use. Hard, consistent training + 180g protein is the "keep this" signal. Strength may stall or dip slightly — that is expected, not failure. Maintaining your lifts while getting leaner IS progress. The scale and the mirror are the progress markers now.
| Group | Sets/wk | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Quads | 8 | Hack squat + Fri squat pattern + leg ext |
| Hams / glutes | 10 | Hip thrust + RDL + leg curl |
| Back / lats | 11 | Highest volume — your largest upper group |
| Chest | 7 | Moderate — conservative for the neck |
| Shoulders | 5 | Lateral raises + machine press |
| Arms | 6 each | Direct work each session |
| Core / scapular | 4–6 | Pallof, dead hangs, Y-raises |
Keep the weight, add reps across sets first. Only add load when all sets hit the top of the rep range at ≤3 RIR, then drop to the bottom of the range at the new load. Example (3 × 8–10): 8/8/8 → 9/8/8 → 9/9/8 → 10/9/9 → 10/10/10 → add weight, back to 8/8/8. Adding one rep counts as progress. In a deficit you often won't add weight weekly — same load for more reps, same numbers at a lower body weight, stable strength while the waist drops: all wins. Pick 1–2 progression priorities per session; the rest just match last week.
Rehab / PT work doesn't chase load. Progress there = better control, longer holds, cleaner range, fewer symptoms — not more weight.
The principle: a partial week done consistently for months beats a perfect week you can't sustain. Protein, not training volume, is the non-negotiable that protects muscle on light weeks.
Per-exercise prescriptions, cues, the pre-lift neck/back prep, and the post-lift downshift live in the Train tab where you log.
Five protocols + the pelvic-floor work — each with a purpose. This is your strongest real-time lever for anxiety and HRV.
Double inhale through the nose (sniff + sniff), one long slow mouth exhale. First thing every morning, before meals if stressed, any moment tension rises, before sleep. Fastest-acting downregulation tool that exists — 3–5 cycles, 60 seconds.
Inhale 4 → hold 4 → exhale 4 → hold 4. Mon/Wed/Fri mornings, between sets, when you need focus without agitation. 5–6 rounds, 3–4 min. Controlled arousal without a cortisol spike.
Inhale 4 → hold 7 → exhale 8. The extended exhale activates the vagus nerve directly — the most powerful parasympathetic protocol in the stack and a direct HRV-raiser. Also builds CO₂ tolerance. 4–6 rounds; mild dizziness at first normalizes.
Nasal-only on every easy run. Produces nitric oxide, forces diaphragmatic breathing, trains the aerobic system at lower ventilation. 8–12 weeks → faster pace at the same HR. Test: can't hold a conversation nasal-only? You're above Z2 — slow down.
Body scan 5 min → slow nasal 10 min (in 6 / out 8) → gratitude + week review. 20–25 min, lying down, before the walk — the one day the order flips.
Your addition, and it fits the protocol: 2–4 rounds of ~30 breaths + retention. Deliberate sympathetic stress with a parasympathetic rebound — the same train-the-response idea as the cold. Best slot: after the morning walk, before or with coffee. Rules: never in or near water, never while driving, not within 2 h of bed, and skip it before intervals — the hypocapnia hurts pacing. On a rough-sleep day, skip it entirely; it's a stressor, and stressors are a budget.
Habit-stack it onto the post-lunch walk: walk, then sit. Plain breath-following counts. NSDR / Yoga Nidra counts — especially after intervals or a short night (recovery + dopamine restore). Sunday's deep reset already counts as one. 3–4 days a week is the target, not a streak — and the Yoga Nidra that used to be prescribed nightly lives here and in Tools now: the book is doing the sleep-bridge job fine.
Doctor-confirmed hypertonic pattern — the training is relaxation and coordination, NOT Kegels. Kegels would make it worse. Same nervous-system pattern as the neck/traps, different location.
One nightly block, on the floor, in front of the TV. It absorbs what used to be two separate items \u2014 the daily pelvic-floor down-training and the three-per-week mobility nights \u2014 into a single ~12 minute routine. The core never changes so there is nothing to decide; the add-on is picked by the day, not by you.
Mon quads + calves \u00b7 Tue ankles, calves, plantar fascia \u00b7 Wed doorway pec stretch + gentle scapular work \u00b7 Thu hamstrings + calves \u00b7 Fri hamstrings + adductors \u00b7 Sat the full lower-body flush \u00b7 Sun the long version, 15\u201320 min.
Always sauna first, cold finish. Heat raises core temperature; the cold-accelerated drop triggers deep-sleep onset and the anti-inflammatory response. Consistent sauna use in men (4–7 sessions/week, 20+ min, 175°F+) correlates with elevated growth hormone, better cardiovascular markers, and lower all-cause mortality. Cold is your strongest trainable nervous-system signal.
| Sauna | 170–190°F | hotter is not better past this range |
| Cold plunge | 50–59°F | 2–3 min max — benefit plateaus at 3 |
| Cold shower (sub) | max cold | ~55–65°F seasonal · 2–3 min · ~60–70% of plunge benefit |
Expect: wk 1–2 brutal (normal) · wk 3–4 breath control in the cold noticeably easier — the same adaptation that reduces daily anxiety response · wk 6–8 measurably better sleep on sauna nights, HRV trending up, better morning energy.
Phase 2 \u2014 counting, made survivable. The first attempt failed on three frictions: too tedious, no idea what home-cooked food costs, and impossible around family and work meals. Discipline does not beat those; structure does. Weekdays run on default meals saved once in your tracking app, so a weekday is a few taps plus dinner rather than twenty entries. Weekends are uncounted.
| 2,600\u20132,700 | Mon\u2013Fri | A gentle ~300\u2013400 deficit. Deliberately not lower \u2014 testosterone and running both suffer in a real deficit. |
| 180 g | protein, every day | Weekends included. The one number that never flexes. |
| Sat\u2013Sun | open | No counting. Protein first. One indulgent meal, not an indulgent day. |
| Waist | monthly | The composition marker now that weight is not a number goal. Log it in Trends. |
Breakfast \u2014 pick one: 3 eggs + 1 cup oats + berries \u00b7 or protein shake + banana + 2 eggs + toast \u00b7 or (office days) overnight oats + protein powder, prepped the night before.
Lunch \u2014 pick one: ground turkey + rice + broccoli \u00b7 or chicken + sweet potato + spinach \u00b7 or (packed) grilled chicken + rice + veg.
Dinner \u2014 family food, three rules: protein first and half the plate \u00b7 one plate, no seconds \u00b7 kitchen closes after. Log it once as a saved meal and reuse it; after a few weeks most dinners are already in the list.
The point of the defaults is that you never estimate on a weekday. Same food, same numbers, already saved. When they get boring, rotate to another fixed option \u2014 not to improvising.
Weight is no longer the goal \u2014 it is background data on whether the deficit is working. Track it as a 7-day average only; daily swings of 2\u20134 lbs are water and stress. After 3 honest weeks: losing 0.3\u20130.5 lb/wk \u2192 hold. Losing >1.5 lb/wk \u2192 add food; too-fast loss costs muscle, testosterone, training quality, and sleep.
If nothing moves after 3 honest weeks, tighten by one notch \u2014 never by slashing calories. In order: cut the weekday snack, then shrink the dinner carb portion by a third, then bring one weekend day onto the weekday defaults. Two weeks each.
The markers that actually matter this phase: waist, easy pace at a given heart rate, and whether the three primary lifts keep moving. All three live in Trends.
Protein \u2192 defaults \u2192 the count. A day where the count fell apart but protein landed is still a good day.
Rebuilt around the May 2026 bloodwork. The stack serves two priorities: the one real medical issue (ApoB 131 / LDL-P 2477, family history of CAD + bicuspid valve) and the recomp. Supplements are ~5% of recomp — training, protein, deficit, sleep, consistency do the actual work.
Look for NSF / Informed Sport / USP on labels; fish oil IFOS 5-star, triglyceride form. Bring to the cardiology visit: ApoB/LDL discussion, CAC score question, echocardiogram for bicuspid screening (father confirmed bicuspid), statin vs. icosapent ethyl conversation, CoQ10/berberine "if statin" questions.
🍵 Green (morning/early afternoon, cut by 2 PM) — calm focus. 🌿 Chamomile or passionflower ~9 PM — pairs with the wind-down stack. 🫚 Ginger after meals — digestion.
Reference instructions only — deliberately no tracking here. Logging thought-counts is the scanning pattern with a database.
Seek care for: objectively measurable new symptoms; symptoms that persist and worsen consistently over weeks regardless of anxiety level; any genuine emergency. Apply ERP to: sensations that fluctuate with anxiety, symptoms already medically cleared, second-opinion urges after reassurance. Rule: one medical evaluation per genuine new symptom. Further checking after a clear result is a compulsion — treat it as one.
Expect: wk 1–2 it feels worse (attention makes thoughts seem more frequent — every non-response is a deposit) · wk 3–6 urges lose intensity, gaps appear · mo 2–4 waves peak lower, fall faster, Tier 3 becomes rare · mo 4+ thoughts still arrive but carry less weight.
The Regulated Man. You're not training for a race. You're training for the next forty years — a hormonally vital, lean, calm, physically strong body that stays that way. Every walk, every breath, every lift, every meal, every cold exposure is a vote for the man you're becoming: rising testosterone, a shrinking waist, a nervous system that doesn't flinch, and a presence your wife and child feel in the room. The nervous-system work isn't separate from the performance work — it IS the performance work. A regulated man is leaner, stronger, clearer, and more present than an unregulated one at the same fitness level.