fter a massive European break, wedding, honeymoon, the works, I knew I couldn’t just ease back into life and hope for momentum to return on its own. In this episode, I walk you through the exact protocols I’m using to rebuild discipline: a month-long training system, my morning routine, and why I believe structure isn’t restrictive, it’s liberating. This is about reclaiming control and setting the tone for the next few months of my life. No fluff, no hype, just systems that work. Aka Effective Philosophy.
(00:00) – The Return: Coming Back with Purpose
(00:38) – Why Discipline Starts with Systems
(01:03) – What Holidays Took Away (And Why That’s Okay)
(01:52) – July Protocol: A System to Reset the Body & Mind
(02:30) – Training Cadence vs. Unrealistic Optimisation
(03:09) – The Two-Part Protocol: Strength + Morning Rhythm
(03:46) – Reality Check: 30s vs. 20s Strength Goals
(04:47) – The Hypothesis: 5x5 Training as a Reset Tool
(06:04) – Weekly Breakdown: Simplicity with Precision
(07:33) – The Four-Week Ramp-Up Plan
(09:06) – How to Push Without Breaking
(10:04) – Defining Your Training Max (Not Your Ego Max)
(11:04) – Running, Flexibility, and Leaving Room for Life
(12:05) – Protocols vs. Fancy: Just Show Up
(12:24) – The Morning Routine: Grounding the Day with Intent
(13:06) – Win the Morning, Win the War
(14:01) – Practical Morning Breakdown & Why It Works
(16:22) – Why Prepping the Day Before is the Real Discipline
(17:46) – 8 Days In: Results and Reflections
(18:23) – Final Thoughts: Be Scientific, Be Accountable
(18:52) – Outro: Discipline Is a Protocol, Not a Mood
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Wanna build a foundation back for an incredible few months ahead. So I'm preparing myself again. I wanna do a couple of months ahead in schedule that I'm I'm gonna try and achieve lots of good fun stuff, at least in my mind. Try to better myself. And to do that, I've gotta do something this particular month now that I'm back to set myself up. Welcome back, mere mortals, to another edition of mere mortals. You have me, Juan, here today. And I thought and it's been a little while since I've actually done a full setup. I'm I'm in my, new environment back home. I'm done with all my travels. I'll talk about my travels in another conversation soon after this one. But today, I thought I'd talk about protocols, systems, think about it in discipline. Something that I've been listening to lately is, you know, the the ability to be disciplined and what that means and then underlying that, it being kind of the the systems that you place to actually go and and do things. So what's the reason for me to talk about, protocols or at least my protocol in particular? And I'll get into the specifics of what I'm talking about. It's not just broad. It's gonna be quite specific and hopefully it's something that you out there who are listening to this right now, it kind of makes sense as to why. But I've just come back for a massive long holiday where, by the by, it was much more of an enjoyment, big holiday. I wasn't doing the the daily disciplines. I wasn't following the daily systems that I would generally do when I'm at home, which meant I wasn't training kind of on the daily. I wasn't hitting my protein macros and my carbohydrate macros and fat macros. In fact, I was probably having more than anything calories from bloody alcohol than anything else.
It was an awesome getaway. Wedding, honeymoon, everything combined. Lots of friends, lots of family, good times. Awesome. But that's all done. That was in the previous month. And right now, as I'm recording this, we're in July of twenty twenty five. And so I thought, look, at least for myself, I needed some sort of protocol, some sort of system, some sort of processes, the discipline, if you will, and the actual specifics behind that of getting me back on track. And so this is gonna be quite specific to body, a little bit partially in the mind, not so much in the soul. If you know or have heard me talk about the three aspects that I look into, body, mind, and soul, you might split it up into different ways. And so you might be listening to this because you've gone ahead and come back from a big travel. You've got one planned up. Maybe you had a big break and you've kinda thought out or trying to figure out how exactly do I slice and break it down, or what's that look like? What does it look like in practice?
The reason, wanted to document this is, one, I've done this quite a few times before, never off the back of such a big time away from my usual things. So, personally, I wanted to just write that down as a reminder for myself. Look. Where I am today wasn't where I was three months from my physical fitness, from, cardiovascular endurance, from, everything else, and that's fine. Right? But how do I get back to that, and then what sort of cadence and not pushing myself too hard given everything that I've got going on in my life and potentially, you know, as an example, you might have going on. So I'm not here to optimize within getting, you know, back on track in seven days. Oh, and, you know, give myself a month. How do I structure that? And so what I thought I'd do is I'll just talk through there's two parts. One being my sort of protocol from a training perspective. How am I gonna get back to what I was doing before? And then our second very part, which is gonna be what is the protocol that I specifically think is worth focusing on and doing right. And I'll give you the example of mine. It's a little bit kooky. Not many people would follow it, but, you know, it's just what it is. So let's start with part one, which is really the training aspect of it. And so for me, it's it's it is foundational to think of Yeah. What is it that I'm trying to get back to? I think for the first instance, I am in my thirties now. I'm not aiming to get back to the strength I was in my lower twenties. If for whatever reason that comes up, that's, later on the track. It's not right now getting back of a big holiday. So there's foundational things, and for me, it's my main lifts of a squat bench that they lift. There's just the general volume of training, so that's actual weight that I lift per body part throughout a week that I wanna get back to. There's certain modalities that I've been enjoying doing running, for instance, that I wanna do more of, not for any particular reason just yet, but just because I've been enjoying it.
Things for me that I don't need to get back into right now for whatever reason, maybe they do in the future, but it's just not right now, is rowing, running, cycling. All of those things could be present as a protocol. Right? Whatever example fits for you. For me, it isn't. So, obviously, it doesn't come up on there. But the way that I noted it to myself, right, so I'll I'll read you as I literally put this down, is, a bit of a hypothesis. So I kinda said, look. I wanna build a foundation back for an incredible few months ahead. So I'm preparing myself again. I wanna do a couple of months ahead in schedule that I'm I'm gonna try and achieve lots of good fun stuff, at least in my mind, try to better myself. And to do that, I've gotta do something this particular month now that I'm back to set myself up. So what is that? The the hypothesis I put together really look, I wanna use a tried and true methodology, which here is the five by five program. You might have heard it in various different ways. Very simple. Five sets, five reps, pick a weight. For me, it's a squat bench and deadlift. Do that a couple of times. Bingo bango. There's your mango.
I wanna be able to try and reach 90% move strength while keeping it pretty short so I can actually go and do my running and bodybuilding Olympic lifting if I can. So, I can already tell you in a couple of days into the July and using this protocol, I haven't done any Olympic lifting, and that's been okay. I think that's the thing that's just fall off to the wayside. But at least for me personally, I've I've tried this before, the five by five program. You know? Unless you're just elite, then you're trying to do something completely different. For me, that has always seemed to work out the best. It's really simple. Pick a white. I think I'll I'll say specifically the the way I've broken it down into the weeks that I was thinking about, but it's just pick a weight you think it the first week's gonna be pretty comfortable in, and then, you know, step it up from there, step it up from there, get to a particular training weight that you feel comfortable with. That'll become the new baseline of weight that you use, then off you go. Use whatever other programs you wanna, attempt or continue to use five by five. But as I mentioned, I wanna keep keep that running, keep the bodybuilding, and, obviously, not doing Olympic lifting, but that's what the original thought was as well. And so the way that I've broken that down very easily was week one, week two, week three, week four, and what does every day look like. I'll keep it really simple here as I did here in my, like, actual notes. It's Monday, bench, Tuesday, squat, Wednesday, deadlift, Thursday, bench, Friday, squat. Sunday, deadlift. So the only day off there from a gym training perspective was Saturday, which generally, I'll I'll leave for some sort of run.
Now I didn't document, you know, what that looks like in terms of more training apart from this little detail where b for bench was also upper body training and vertical back movements are just like from the back. S being squat plus lower body, and d for deadlift, and that's back horizontal movement and biceps. No more details than that, not what exact movements, what rep ranges, not nothing like that. Purely, the aim of the game with this sort of month back is get yourself stabilized, don't get injured, don't get too sick, Get yourself off the ground. Just go go into the rhythm. Get into the cadence of it, and do it.
Specifically, on the week breakdown, week one is obviously, as I just sort of mentioned, that Monday through Sunday breakdown. Week two, my note is, basically, do the same as week one with 5% load. Right now, I'm in that second week where week one of July has gone through. I established some rudimentary idea of what weight I should be using. If you're really well trained, you'll know as I kinda had a good idea of what I should aim for. If you're untrained to some degrees and you just took a big break, honestly, just on one of those particular days in a week, attempt to just go to a five by five weight that you feel comfortable, like, you're not gonna fail, like, you need a spot, anything like that. So that was week two of 5% load. Week three, same cadence, but push for the closer to working maxes of the past. That helps me at least understand, okay, how close am I to those working maxes.
Sometimes when the break hasn't been that long, I can achieve them, and sometimes even surpass them, which is cool. Other times where I'm expecting here, I'm not. I'm gonna be probably a little bit on that, but I'm gonna just test that out. And that would normally look like as five by five. You might do a five by five where you do five reps of the weight you want, five reps of the weight you want, two more, potentially one more that'll be on, and then just push a little bit more just to see if you can do, example, 100 kilo bench. You might try a 105 kilo bench of that third set or that fourth set, and then maybe push it a little bit further. However you whatever you're actually feeling, and that's you get really have to go with how you're feeling, especially how close are you to, you know, injury or to a fracture or distress. Right? Keep it within, real means. Again, here, we're mere mortals. We're not trying to kill ourselves. We're not trying to optimize, you know, to the nth degree. If you're looking to do that, there's different ways, and I wouldn't be suggesting this particular thing.
And then finally, the fourth week is actually said specifically again, that five by five on the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday for bench squat and deadlift. And I actually said, you know, up my apologies. Bench squat and deadlift on the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. However, non five by five can actually work up to a more singular rep. So two reps, one rep, whatever you wanna, again, pay that to. To me, it's probably be gonna probably be, like, two reps or a single rep to your new training maxes. And from there so there's working maxes with five reps, and then there's your your training maxes or your, you know, local base maxes, which I will then base a lot of my training over the next few months off. So I'll give you a real example for me. My old time bench, lift of a 168 kilograms of bench.
Do I think I'm gonna get there at the end of the month? Heck no. No way. However, there's a potential that my new training max might be a hundred and forty two point five kilos or a hundred and forty five kilos. Awesome. If I can reach that sort of numbers, cool. I'll note that down as my new training max, and then next few months will be off that basis, not of my all time base. You know? As you get older in age and in training styles and volume, you just have to, face that reality. But that's it. And, you know, I haven't gone and documented what I wanna do for running, what I wanna do for bodybuilding.
Purely, that's there as an adjacent dove. I enjoyed it. I'll find some time. I do obviously do a daily tracking of my training, and I will plan it out a week in advance. I will note down, I wanna do maybe two kilometers of running or five kilometers of running here. Sometimes I do more, sometimes I do less. Maybe I'll do it when I'm not even planning to do it. Maybe a friend will invite me to go for a run, then I'll do that. But I found that this at the very least, it's it's acute, very specific focus for me, which is get back to my baseline strength as quickly as possible. Five by five is that model that I use at least for the protocol, and I go, look. I'm gonna follow this. So if you have done something similar to that, let me know. I'd be interested to hear about it. I've, you know, I've said this a couple of times.
Usually, the what I've I sort of gauge it out is how many weeks I'm away from my general training, roughly about that many weeks it takes to get back or even double that to, like, the actual full true Max's. And so I expect to get back you know, I was away with more for more than four weeks, I expect to get back to something close to what I was doing before, but I wouldn't expect to be hitting my my old Max's or at least over the last year within four weeks. That might come in about a month's time. So that's the training body side of things. Again, there's a few other things around, you know, my stretching and the style of hard train and everything else, but that is honestly secondary in this month to just being present, show up, do the moves five by five, push the strength, push the numbers, just get better on that.
Beyond that, you can get fancy. But for the beginning, don't. Second part I wanna talk about is the morning routine. Sorry. I've talked about protocols and specific things throughout the day and when it gets important. I, at least, personally so one, I'm a morning person. Everyone's gonna have their own, various phases that you, you know, work best in. There's plenty of, you know, resource and stuff out there, probably Mel Walker and a few others, Andrew Huberman, who you can go and listen to a ton of things around, you know, your super early morning person, early morning person, morning person, late person, late night person, really late night person, very, very late night. And, you know, all of those, shifts and changes, obviously, maybe figure out yourself what you are. I found that I'm a I'm an early morning person, not extremely early, but I'm a pretty early morning person. So I take this with a grain of salt when I say the the time frames or the times itself. One, it's what works for me. Two, I feel like the morning routine is probably the most important one. So that's coming from someone who wins the morning, if you wanna term it that way. If you don't if you get all your work done in the afternoon, maybe you shifted to doing, like, an afternoon phase, and maybe that works just as well. But for me, the morning routine and what I wrote down in July again, I've been doing this for many years, but I went specific, which I've done before in the past because it helps me just be present and available and not thinking that today, hey. How should I, approach this? It's pretty easy. It's like, this is what I'm doing. And if I'm deviating away from that, it's either I'm getting lazy or I'm I haven't, like, really dissected it enough. And so it it's one piece off in terms of preparation that I don't have to think about on a day to day basis. So I'll run you through this.
I'm probably gonna just go very high level as a summary just in case you just wanna hear that. As a high level for a morning routine, I would probably say, try to find the ability for you to connect to your soul, to your mind, to your body, to do it so that you're not bombarded with information, be it social media, news, something else. If you have babies, if you have kids, if you have really dependent partners, if you're looking after somebody else, if you've got animals, finding some sort of solitude, quietness to be able to just be in your body, being yourself, thinking that through, preparing for what's ahead, reviewing what's been in terms of the past day, the past week, anything like that. Finding that solitude is fantastic if you can do it. If you can't, it's about either connecting parts of the day, of that morning or of the afternoon that you can kind of sequence a few things together so it does give you a bit of time later on or just if you can't, just being super efficient and effective with your time as much as possible with that front. So I'm gonna lay out my one. I'll give you some of the reasonings. Again, perhaps if you wanna borrow some of this, wonderful. If you don't, I get it. I'm unique in some ways.
I'll split it up into a section where it's basically just the times and the things I wanna be doing, and then another section, which is actually what is the preparation I need to do the day prior. So, you know, you hear a lot, you know, to to win the day or win the morning, you need to prepare the day before. You know? Similar lines, but it's let let just be direct. It's just you need to do some stuff prior to so you're not doing it in the morning. Otherwise, you're not gonna do it. You're gonna waste time, etcetera. So for me, four fifteen in the morning, wake up. Now I came back from jet lag, and I was going waking up at 9PM, 11PM, 1AM, 2AM, 3AM. And it's only, whatever it is now, seven days after the jet lag or flying back home that I'm back at the 04:15 in the morning. So this is late late for me, but it's actually what I actually wanna do. So 04:15 in the morning, I wake up.
I give myself fifteen minutes for what? Toilet break. For me, I am regular cadence. Go to the toilet, bang, lay it out. Now prep beforehand is lay out my clothes for gym and pack my back, especially I'll tell you in a moment why. Then 04:30 in the morning to five in the morning. What I want in it? I'll be specific here. Two boiled eggs and coffee. Ice only, no milk. Bang. Twenty minutes of focus work. So there's loads of things that I work on at the moment. It's just get onto it. Doing my work, doing the things that I need to do, whatever is, like, really I wanna be present and and mindful of. Three minutes, of general time, so that's I do a review of the day before and a little bit of, like, what I'm planning or how I wanna identify for the day today.
Then I'll have a pre gym shake, before actually traveling. Now in amongst this, I'll be clear as well. Usually, at that time, my partner, my wife is sleeping, and my daughter is also sleeping at the same time. So I don't have I have the solitude. I have the ability to do this. That's between 04:30 in the morning to five in the morning. And I travel to the gym about 05:20 to 06:30 in the morning, so I give myself seventy minute block of training. I'm training. I'm following my training plan. I'm doing the the runs that I can. Fantastic. By 06:30 in the morning, I'm getting changed and ready at the gym. So that's that's one of the bigger changes as well is that I'm packing the day before with all things I need, you know, toothbrush, toothpaste, my clothes, all the towel, the everything you need just to actually get changed and be ready so that by seven in the morning, I'm either meeting my wife and daughter here at home, and then we're just going on with the day, or I'm meeting them, at the gym where my wife actually goes to train, or if I can make it fifteen minutes earlier so I can be here with my daughter, getting her ready, going all through all the process as a quick breakfast before we get on to the day. And that's all I actually noted for for the morning routine. It doesn't have to be any further than that. But, again, the easy thing for me, and I've been doing it for a long time now. So it wasn't so much, like, a dramatic change as it was just a reminder. These are the time frames. It just helps me go, cool. It's, if I wake up at this time and I do this and I give myself these blocks and I'm focused in this particular times, I can accomplish so many things that I want to, both professionally, both personally, from a training perspective, from being in the right state mentally. And I can tell you, it's eight days now into July, and I've been loving it. The morning routine has been fucking fantastic. The training has been good. You know, my mental state and reviewing and a few things again, just like life, life comes up and the things to do. It's been great. I've been able to deal with it. For me, the morning routine has helped. It always helps. You just said, like, the most foundational core strength into the day makes me, the other terms, like, antifragile, and so I'd really, really enjoy for that perspective. So protocols, whether it's specifically a training, if you're coming off, you know, a big long time not training, something like that, or you just wanna start up perhaps or just doing into the next phase, put the protocol around, you know, what are you aiming for? What's the hypothesis behind it? Being scientific.
Detail it down so you can follow something. Again, a plan is gonna be present. It's gonna get punched in the face. I got sick a couple of days ago, so you kinda have to just maneuver with it, but you have to have a plan in the first place. And then overall for me, it's the morning protocol, which I go, that's the key thing that's a focus for me. Coming off a holiday, that was what's important to get right. I am in the process of doing it. I'll let you know maybe a little bit of a conversations with Karen or somewhere else about how it's going. But if I was gonna leave anything with you, it's win the morning, put a plan together, put a protocol together, hypothesize what you wanna be doing, be scientific, use the numbers, keep yourself accountable, you know, be really accountable and strict with yourself, compassionate with others. The immortalites, I'll leave it there. I hope you're well. I hope you take out a lot of stuff from this. If you enjoy it, subscribe it. You know, like it, comment. Do all the various things that we enjoy here at the mere mortals. Thank you very much. Be well. One out.
Wanna build a foundation back for an incredible few months ahead. So I'm preparing myself again. I wanna do a couple of months ahead in schedule that I'm I'm gonna try and achieve lots of good fun stuff, at least in my mind. Try to better myself. And to do that, I've gotta do something this particular month now that I'm back to set myself up. Welcome back, mere mortals, to another edition of mere mortals. You have me, Juan, here today. And I thought and it's been a little while since I've actually done a full setup. I'm I'm in my, new environment back home. I'm done with all my travels. I'll talk about my travels in another conversation soon after this one. But today, I thought I'd talk about protocols, systems, think about it in discipline. Something that I've been listening to lately is, you know, the the ability to be disciplined and what that means and then underlying that, it being kind of the the systems that you place to actually go and and do things. So what's the reason for me to talk about, protocols or at least my protocol in particular? And I'll get into the specifics of what I'm talking about. It's not just broad. It's gonna be quite specific and hopefully it's something that you out there who are listening to this right now, it kind of makes sense as to why. But I've just come back for a massive long holiday where, by the by, it was much more of an enjoyment, big holiday. I wasn't doing the the daily disciplines. I wasn't following the daily systems that I would generally do when I'm at home, which meant I wasn't training kind of on the daily. I wasn't hitting my protein macros and my carbohydrate macros and fat macros. In fact, I was probably having more than anything calories from bloody alcohol than anything else.
It was an awesome getaway. Wedding, honeymoon, everything combined. Lots of friends, lots of family, good times. Awesome. But that's all done. That was in the previous month. And right now, as I'm recording this, we're in July of twenty twenty five. And so I thought, look, at least for myself, I needed some sort of protocol, some sort of system, some sort of processes, the discipline, if you will, and the actual specifics behind that of getting me back on track. And so this is gonna be quite specific to body, a little bit partially in the mind, not so much in the soul. If you know or have heard me talk about the three aspects that I look into, body, mind, and soul, you might split it up into different ways. And so you might be listening to this because you've gone ahead and come back from a big travel. You've got one planned up. Maybe you had a big break and you've kinda thought out or trying to figure out how exactly do I slice and break it down, or what's that look like? What does it look like in practice?
The reason, wanted to document this is, one, I've done this quite a few times before, never off the back of such a big time away from my usual things. So, personally, I wanted to just write that down as a reminder for myself. Look. Where I am today wasn't where I was three months from my physical fitness, from, cardiovascular endurance, from, everything else, and that's fine. Right? But how do I get back to that, and then what sort of cadence and not pushing myself too hard given everything that I've got going on in my life and potentially, you know, as an example, you might have going on. So I'm not here to optimize within getting, you know, back on track in seven days. Oh, and, you know, give myself a month. How do I structure that? And so what I thought I'd do is I'll just talk through there's two parts. One being my sort of protocol from a training perspective. How am I gonna get back to what I was doing before? And then our second very part, which is gonna be what is the protocol that I specifically think is worth focusing on and doing right. And I'll give you the example of mine. It's a little bit kooky. Not many people would follow it, but, you know, it's just what it is. So let's start with part one, which is really the training aspect of it. And so for me, it's it's it is foundational to think of Yeah. What is it that I'm trying to get back to? I think for the first instance, I am in my thirties now. I'm not aiming to get back to the strength I was in my lower twenties. If for whatever reason that comes up, that's, later on the track. It's not right now getting back of a big holiday. So there's foundational things, and for me, it's my main lifts of a squat bench that they lift. There's just the general volume of training, so that's actual weight that I lift per body part throughout a week that I wanna get back to. There's certain modalities that I've been enjoying doing running, for instance, that I wanna do more of, not for any particular reason just yet, but just because I've been enjoying it.
Things for me that I don't need to get back into right now for whatever reason, maybe they do in the future, but it's just not right now, is rowing, running, cycling. All of those things could be present as a protocol. Right? Whatever example fits for you. For me, it isn't. So, obviously, it doesn't come up on there. But the way that I noted it to myself, right, so I'll I'll read you as I literally put this down, is, a bit of a hypothesis. So I kinda said, look. I wanna build a foundation back for an incredible few months ahead. So I'm preparing myself again. I wanna do a couple of months ahead in schedule that I'm I'm gonna try and achieve lots of good fun stuff, at least in my mind, try to better myself. And to do that, I've gotta do something this particular month now that I'm back to set myself up. So what is that? The the hypothesis I put together really look, I wanna use a tried and true methodology, which here is the five by five program. You might have heard it in various different ways. Very simple. Five sets, five reps, pick a weight. For me, it's a squat bench and deadlift. Do that a couple of times. Bingo bango. There's your mango.
I wanna be able to try and reach 90% move strength while keeping it pretty short so I can actually go and do my running and bodybuilding Olympic lifting if I can. So, I can already tell you in a couple of days into the July and using this protocol, I haven't done any Olympic lifting, and that's been okay. I think that's the thing that's just fall off to the wayside. But at least for me personally, I've I've tried this before, the five by five program. You know? Unless you're just elite, then you're trying to do something completely different. For me, that has always seemed to work out the best. It's really simple. Pick a white. I think I'll I'll say specifically the the way I've broken it down into the weeks that I was thinking about, but it's just pick a weight you think it the first week's gonna be pretty comfortable in, and then, you know, step it up from there, step it up from there, get to a particular training weight that you feel comfortable with. That'll become the new baseline of weight that you use, then off you go. Use whatever other programs you wanna, attempt or continue to use five by five. But as I mentioned, I wanna keep keep that running, keep the bodybuilding, and, obviously, not doing Olympic lifting, but that's what the original thought was as well. And so the way that I've broken that down very easily was week one, week two, week three, week four, and what does every day look like. I'll keep it really simple here as I did here in my, like, actual notes. It's Monday, bench, Tuesday, squat, Wednesday, deadlift, Thursday, bench, Friday, squat. Sunday, deadlift. So the only day off there from a gym training perspective was Saturday, which generally, I'll I'll leave for some sort of run.
Now I didn't document, you know, what that looks like in terms of more training apart from this little detail where b for bench was also upper body training and vertical back movements are just like from the back. S being squat plus lower body, and d for deadlift, and that's back horizontal movement and biceps. No more details than that, not what exact movements, what rep ranges, not nothing like that. Purely, the aim of the game with this sort of month back is get yourself stabilized, don't get injured, don't get too sick, Get yourself off the ground. Just go go into the rhythm. Get into the cadence of it, and do it.
Specifically, on the week breakdown, week one is obviously, as I just sort of mentioned, that Monday through Sunday breakdown. Week two, my note is, basically, do the same as week one with 5% load. Right now, I'm in that second week where week one of July has gone through. I established some rudimentary idea of what weight I should be using. If you're really well trained, you'll know as I kinda had a good idea of what I should aim for. If you're untrained to some degrees and you just took a big break, honestly, just on one of those particular days in a week, attempt to just go to a five by five weight that you feel comfortable, like, you're not gonna fail, like, you need a spot, anything like that. So that was week two of 5% load. Week three, same cadence, but push for the closer to working maxes of the past. That helps me at least understand, okay, how close am I to those working maxes.
Sometimes when the break hasn't been that long, I can achieve them, and sometimes even surpass them, which is cool. Other times where I'm expecting here, I'm not. I'm gonna be probably a little bit on that, but I'm gonna just test that out. And that would normally look like as five by five. You might do a five by five where you do five reps of the weight you want, five reps of the weight you want, two more, potentially one more that'll be on, and then just push a little bit more just to see if you can do, example, 100 kilo bench. You might try a 105 kilo bench of that third set or that fourth set, and then maybe push it a little bit further. However you whatever you're actually feeling, and that's you get really have to go with how you're feeling, especially how close are you to, you know, injury or to a fracture or distress. Right? Keep it within, real means. Again, here, we're mere mortals. We're not trying to kill ourselves. We're not trying to optimize, you know, to the nth degree. If you're looking to do that, there's different ways, and I wouldn't be suggesting this particular thing.
And then finally, the fourth week is actually said specifically again, that five by five on the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday for bench squat and deadlift. And I actually said, you know, up my apologies. Bench squat and deadlift on the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. However, non five by five can actually work up to a more singular rep. So two reps, one rep, whatever you wanna, again, pay that to. To me, it's probably be gonna probably be, like, two reps or a single rep to your new training maxes. And from there so there's working maxes with five reps, and then there's your your training maxes or your, you know, local base maxes, which I will then base a lot of my training over the next few months off. So I'll give you a real example for me. My old time bench, lift of a 168 kilograms of bench.
Do I think I'm gonna get there at the end of the month? Heck no. No way. However, there's a potential that my new training max might be a hundred and forty two point five kilos or a hundred and forty five kilos. Awesome. If I can reach that sort of numbers, cool. I'll note that down as my new training max, and then next few months will be off that basis, not of my all time base. You know? As you get older in age and in training styles and volume, you just have to, face that reality. But that's it. And, you know, I haven't gone and documented what I wanna do for running, what I wanna do for bodybuilding.
Purely, that's there as an adjacent dove. I enjoyed it. I'll find some time. I do obviously do a daily tracking of my training, and I will plan it out a week in advance. I will note down, I wanna do maybe two kilometers of running or five kilometers of running here. Sometimes I do more, sometimes I do less. Maybe I'll do it when I'm not even planning to do it. Maybe a friend will invite me to go for a run, then I'll do that. But I found that this at the very least, it's it's acute, very specific focus for me, which is get back to my baseline strength as quickly as possible. Five by five is that model that I use at least for the protocol, and I go, look. I'm gonna follow this. So if you have done something similar to that, let me know. I'd be interested to hear about it. I've, you know, I've said this a couple of times.
Usually, the what I've I sort of gauge it out is how many weeks I'm away from my general training, roughly about that many weeks it takes to get back or even double that to, like, the actual full true Max's. And so I expect to get back you know, I was away with more for more than four weeks, I expect to get back to something close to what I was doing before, but I wouldn't expect to be hitting my my old Max's or at least over the last year within four weeks. That might come in about a month's time. So that's the training body side of things. Again, there's a few other things around, you know, my stretching and the style of hard train and everything else, but that is honestly secondary in this month to just being present, show up, do the moves five by five, push the strength, push the numbers, just get better on that.
Beyond that, you can get fancy. But for the beginning, don't. Second part I wanna talk about is the morning routine. Sorry. I've talked about protocols and specific things throughout the day and when it gets important. I, at least, personally so one, I'm a morning person. Everyone's gonna have their own, various phases that you, you know, work best in. There's plenty of, you know, resource and stuff out there, probably Mel Walker and a few others, Andrew Huberman, who you can go and listen to a ton of things around, you know, your super early morning person, early morning person, morning person, late person, late night person, really late night person, very, very late night. And, you know, all of those, shifts and changes, obviously, maybe figure out yourself what you are. I found that I'm a I'm an early morning person, not extremely early, but I'm a pretty early morning person. So I take this with a grain of salt when I say the the time frames or the times itself. One, it's what works for me. Two, I feel like the morning routine is probably the most important one. So that's coming from someone who wins the morning, if you wanna term it that way. If you don't if you get all your work done in the afternoon, maybe you shifted to doing, like, an afternoon phase, and maybe that works just as well. But for me, the morning routine and what I wrote down in July again, I've been doing this for many years, but I went specific, which I've done before in the past because it helps me just be present and available and not thinking that today, hey. How should I, approach this? It's pretty easy. It's like, this is what I'm doing. And if I'm deviating away from that, it's either I'm getting lazy or I'm I haven't, like, really dissected it enough. And so it it's one piece off in terms of preparation that I don't have to think about on a day to day basis. So I'll run you through this.
I'm probably gonna just go very high level as a summary just in case you just wanna hear that. As a high level for a morning routine, I would probably say, try to find the ability for you to connect to your soul, to your mind, to your body, to do it so that you're not bombarded with information, be it social media, news, something else. If you have babies, if you have kids, if you have really dependent partners, if you're looking after somebody else, if you've got animals, finding some sort of solitude, quietness to be able to just be in your body, being yourself, thinking that through, preparing for what's ahead, reviewing what's been in terms of the past day, the past week, anything like that. Finding that solitude is fantastic if you can do it. If you can't, it's about either connecting parts of the day, of that morning or of the afternoon that you can kind of sequence a few things together so it does give you a bit of time later on or just if you can't, just being super efficient and effective with your time as much as possible with that front. So I'm gonna lay out my one. I'll give you some of the reasonings. Again, perhaps if you wanna borrow some of this, wonderful. If you don't, I get it. I'm unique in some ways.
I'll split it up into a section where it's basically just the times and the things I wanna be doing, and then another section, which is actually what is the preparation I need to do the day prior. So, you know, you hear a lot, you know, to to win the day or win the morning, you need to prepare the day before. You know? Similar lines, but it's let let just be direct. It's just you need to do some stuff prior to so you're not doing it in the morning. Otherwise, you're not gonna do it. You're gonna waste time, etcetera. So for me, four fifteen in the morning, wake up. Now I came back from jet lag, and I was going waking up at 9PM, 11PM, 1AM, 2AM, 3AM. And it's only, whatever it is now, seven days after the jet lag or flying back home that I'm back at the 04:15 in the morning. So this is late late for me, but it's actually what I actually wanna do. So 04:15 in the morning, I wake up.
I give myself fifteen minutes for what? Toilet break. For me, I am regular cadence. Go to the toilet, bang, lay it out. Now prep beforehand is lay out my clothes for gym and pack my back, especially I'll tell you in a moment why. Then 04:30 in the morning to five in the morning. What I want in it? I'll be specific here. Two boiled eggs and coffee. Ice only, no milk. Bang. Twenty minutes of focus work. So there's loads of things that I work on at the moment. It's just get onto it. Doing my work, doing the things that I need to do, whatever is, like, really I wanna be present and and mindful of. Three minutes, of general time, so that's I do a review of the day before and a little bit of, like, what I'm planning or how I wanna identify for the day today.
Then I'll have a pre gym shake, before actually traveling. Now in amongst this, I'll be clear as well. Usually, at that time, my partner, my wife is sleeping, and my daughter is also sleeping at the same time. So I don't have I have the solitude. I have the ability to do this. That's between 04:30 in the morning to five in the morning. And I travel to the gym about 05:20 to 06:30 in the morning, so I give myself seventy minute block of training. I'm training. I'm following my training plan. I'm doing the the runs that I can. Fantastic. By 06:30 in the morning, I'm getting changed and ready at the gym. So that's that's one of the bigger changes as well is that I'm packing the day before with all things I need, you know, toothbrush, toothpaste, my clothes, all the towel, the everything you need just to actually get changed and be ready so that by seven in the morning, I'm either meeting my wife and daughter here at home, and then we're just going on with the day, or I'm meeting them, at the gym where my wife actually goes to train, or if I can make it fifteen minutes earlier so I can be here with my daughter, getting her ready, going all through all the process as a quick breakfast before we get on to the day. And that's all I actually noted for for the morning routine. It doesn't have to be any further than that. But, again, the easy thing for me, and I've been doing it for a long time now. So it wasn't so much, like, a dramatic change as it was just a reminder. These are the time frames. It just helps me go, cool. It's, if I wake up at this time and I do this and I give myself these blocks and I'm focused in this particular times, I can accomplish so many things that I want to, both professionally, both personally, from a training perspective, from being in the right state mentally. And I can tell you, it's eight days now into July, and I've been loving it. The morning routine has been fucking fantastic. The training has been good. You know, my mental state and reviewing and a few things again, just like life, life comes up and the things to do. It's been great. I've been able to deal with it. For me, the morning routine has helped. It always helps. You just said, like, the most foundational core strength into the day makes me, the other terms, like, antifragile, and so I'd really, really enjoy for that perspective. So protocols, whether it's specifically a training, if you're coming off, you know, a big long time not training, something like that, or you just wanna start up perhaps or just doing into the next phase, put the protocol around, you know, what are you aiming for? What's the hypothesis behind it? Being scientific.
Detail it down so you can follow something. Again, a plan is gonna be present. It's gonna get punched in the face. I got sick a couple of days ago, so you kinda have to just maneuver with it, but you have to have a plan in the first place. And then overall for me, it's the morning protocol, which I go, that's the key thing that's a focus for me. Coming off a holiday, that was what's important to get right. I am in the process of doing it. I'll let you know maybe a little bit of a conversations with Karen or somewhere else about how it's going. But if I was gonna leave anything with you, it's win the morning, put a plan together, put a protocol together, hypothesize what you wanna be doing, be scientific, use the numbers, keep yourself accountable, you know, be really accountable and strict with yourself, compassionate with others. The immortalites, I'll leave it there. I hope you're well. I hope you take out a lot of stuff from this. If you enjoy it, subscribe it. You know, like it, comment. Do all the various things that we enjoy here at the mere mortals. Thank you very much. Be well. One out.
Introduction and Setting the Stage
The Importance of Protocols and Systems
Returning from Holiday: Re-establishing Discipline
Training Protocol: Building Back Strength
Week-by-Week Training Breakdown
Morning Routine: Winning the Day
Reflections and Final Thoughts
