Tsatsouline - The quick and the dead: total training for the advanced minimalist

The Quick and the Dead

Total Training for the Advanced Minimalist

By Pavel Tsatsouline

Published by StrongFirst, Inc.

9190 Double Diamond Parkway

Reno, NV 89521, USA

StrongFirst.com

Editor: Laree Draper www.otpbooks.com

Design: Rachel Darvas rachel.darvas.sfg@gmail.com

Photography: David Stocco dlabphotography@gmail.com

Leopard cover photo: Stuart G Porter/Shutterstock.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tsatsouline, Pavel.

The Quick and the Dead: Total Training for the Advanced Minimalist

I. Strength training. 2. Fitness. 3. Physical education and training.

MMXIX Power by Pavel, Inc. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission by the copyright holder, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

DISCLAIMER

The author and publisher of this book are not responsible in any manner whatsoever for any injury that may occur through following the instructions contained in this material. The activities may be too strenuous or dangerous for some people. The readers should always consult a physician before engaging in them.

To KT

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Tale of Two Leopards

The antelope was grazing, oblivious of the superbly camouflaged cat stealthily closing in. The predator flowed like mercury, hugging the terrain.

It was a busy day in the savannah, but only one pair of eyes was tracking the leopard. My friend George had put in his time in Africa fighting poachers and he knew how to see without being seen. Recently he had been entertaining himself timing big cats hunts.

The blurry spot in the tall grass became a straw-colored streak. The antelope made a desperate run for its life, a run that was blissfully short. The panthera leaped. Her jaws, powerful enough to crush thick bones, closed on her preys neck.

It was over in 16 seconds. The proud hunter stood tall, surveyed her surroundings the way a big boss would, and made a brief fast and loose victory dance. Then she picked up her dinner, which was bigger than herself, and climbed a tree with it.

It would be like you climbing a tree holding me in your teeth, commented George, who has good 50 pounds on me. And that was no feat for a leopard that can climb with carcasses three times her bodyweight.

Then George told me of another leopard hunt he had witnessed, very different from the first.

The male cat did not have it easy. Age was taking its toll and one of his front paws was infected.

A thorn was wedged in it, a common hazard to alpha predators in the wild.

He also made his kill, but, as he was slower, he had to work harder and longer to bring the antelope down. Then he was unable to get to a tree fast enough to stash his cat foodand was attacked by a pack of opportunistic hyenas.

The tom fought hard and well and the hyenas ran off with their tails between their legs. George stopped his timer at four minutes.

Luckily, the hyenas did not return. Exhausted, the old tom lay panting on the ground. Can you even imagine a cat panting? It is below the dignity of a cat.

Finally, the old leopard got his bad breath back and dragged his dinner to the safety of a tree.

A few months later, George watched the same leopard retire to a cave to die. That is what they do.

Earn Your Leopard Spots

The second leopard hunt exemplifies the mentality of todays high intensity interval training. Dramatic, inefficient, costly. I admire the old cats tough style, given his circumstances of age taking its tollbut his heroics are not something to emulate on a Wednesday night at the gym.

In contrast, the Quick and the Dead regimen (Q&D) was inspired by the first cat. Not a single set exceeds the duration of her ferocious 16-second kill. Power undiluted by fatigue is not heroic; it is professional.

The Q&D protocol was designed to maximize your performance at a lowest biological costand to leave you fresh and able to perform at a high level, physically and mentally, at any time.

You will get powerful. Very powerful.

While power is awesome for its own sake, training it in a particular manner also delivers a wide range of what the hell effects. Muscle hypertrophy. Fat loss. Endurance. Anti-fragility. Anti-aging.

Plus, Q&D will enable you to make greater strength gains if you are also lifting.

Q&D can be a minimalists stand-alone, total training method.

Or make a quality addition to any athletes regimen.

Q&D does not beat up the body and takes only 1230 minutes per training session, two to three times per week.

Q&D was designed to minimize detraining when circumstances force you to lay off or cut back. If you get a hare-brained idea to take an entire month off all training and then go back to your boxing class and pretend you never left, you will suffer less than expected.

A US special operator I will call Mark is an accomplished boxer, wrestler, and powerlifter. His strength has enabled him to stay in the fight into his mid-40s. Then he added a Q&D swing and pushup plan to his trainingback when it was called StrongFirst Experimental Protocol 033.

I have completed the six-week 033C template. I did it as a warm-up for my powerlifts three days a week, always for 30 minutes. I noticed a speed increase in all my powerlifts and pain relief of all of my injuries.

I also found an increase in endurance while doing combatives. And as my hips developed more explosive movement, my speed came up, creating increased striking power. The big game changer I noticed was my hip movement in grappling. I am able to maximize force through explosive hip movement, coincidentally making me less tired.

I am more efficient with energy by driving my hips and getting heavy on my opponent. Combining that force with leverage has me launching big dudes like children. By getting my hips under and driving up versus using my arms and back during takedowns and throws has made me more efficient and explosive.

Also, I am more cognizant of my breathing. I am using more breath behind the shield as I roll versus using the more traditional skip breathing. I am less hypoxic and have better clarity of my opponents body position and movements.

I lost nine pounds and, based on my visual composition, I would say it was fat loss. I gave up sugar at the same time, so I would say it is a combination of factors. My arms have definitely gotten bigger.

Overall, I found the 033C enjoyable and meditative. I was able to go into a flow state and felt I could go on forever. After not touching a kettlebell in a few years, I felt this was a great way to get things going again.

I need to get a larger kettlebell!

Q&D is every bit as applicable to the female of the species as it is to the male.

Did you know that in a lion pride, it is the lionesses that do most of the hunting?

I come from a culture with strong women. They fought alongside the men in World War II, making history as snipers and pilots. My grand aunt was a highly decorated vet. She was in her third year of med school when the Nazis invaded. Young Natasha joined up and spent the four years of the Great War on the front line as a nurse. When she returned home after the war and finished her education, she became a civilian aviation doctor. A majority of doctors in the Soviet Union were women, by the way.