Case Study

The following is a post written by Paul, a retired USMC Colonel who had success running the S&C Program that I created a couple years ago. He’s under the guidance of Eric Montgomery, a really sharp guy who is doing an excellent job of programming and coaching. Eric’s comments are after Paul’s in italics.

It is hard to add a lot of new information to what has already been written about Justin Lascek’s program. Yet here I am adding another such story to the mix. Hopefully my experience will be helpful and motivating to someone. In just 8 weeks of following the Justin Lascek approach seasoned with a lot of Mark Rippetoe, STARTING STRENGTH, guidance I had measureable strength increase that exceeded what I had been able to gain in the previous 8 months doing CrossFit.

My basic profile is: a 52 year old male, about 6 feet tall and tip the scale today at 195. I have limited barbell experience before I started CrossFit about a year ago. I retired from the Marine Corps in 2006. After I retired I struggled to maintain any sort of fitness. Combine that with stupid things like a lot of business travel including the seemingly requisite late night meals, decadent carbs and lack of sleep, I was becoming a physical wreck, fat and old.

I was able finally to drop the endless business travel and began searching for a program to fix my sorry ass. Some colleagues pointed me at CF.com. I followed CF.com by myself at various military fitness centers for about a year mainly because it was fun and because it was completely different from the useless Marine Corps way—jog three miles slowly, do some pull-ups and crunches then go back to an office and brag about what a bad ass you were—that I had followed for decades. Being the novice that I was, I noticed some good results. I felt better, slept better and was slightly stronger. Unfortunately, I didn’t do all of CrossFit. I ignored any of the nutrition stuff and continued to eat the typical, high carb, get ready for Diabetes and cancer diet– I didn’t know any better and didn’t research.

Even though I felt better and was getting some good results, I knew that doing CF alone was probably not optimal and that any progress would be slow. Fortuitously, I ran across Trish Davis, then of CFSD, during a computer security course and she recommended CFSD. Following Trish’s recommendation, in Sept 2009, I started a Crossfit Foundations course with Nathan Stivers—then a CFSD trainer.


However, I had another health issues to deal with before I could continue. In the last part of the same month, radiologists confirmed that I had a type 1 lung cancer. I was fortunate in that it was found very early, before any metastasize—if I said that right—it appeared to not have spread anywhere. Nevertheless, the treatment was a lobectomy—surgery to chop out my left lower lung lobe.

Surgery was scheduled for October 21 of 2009. However, I continued at CFSD all the way up to the day before surgery. On October 20th, I remember doing one rep max weighted pull-ups at over 80lbs. Then the next day open chest surgery. BTW, if you can avoid surgery of any type, I highly recommend it. I got some great pain meds and overall great Navy medical care. But it still hurt like hell.


The worst part was that I couldn’t train for ten weeks. I wanted to train so bad that two days after surgery, flying high on morphine, I was trying to do air squats in the hospital bathroom. My son ratted me out to the surgeon and I was told in no uncertain terms to lay off for the full ten weeks of recovery.

Slowly the ten weeks passed, the holidays of 2009 passed and I was finally able to get at it again at CF San Diego in January of 2010. Suffice to say I was pretty much a physical wreck—again. I was doing banded pull-ups, knee pushups and overall generally just a mess. However, once I started training again things improved rapidly. I lost the bands in a few weeks and got off my knees for pushups about the same time.


This is where the real story begins that is relevant for 70s Big. I did a Crossfit total (combined weight for one rep max Squat, Press and Deadlift) in May of 2010 and scored what I thought was well considering I’d been on an operating table just a few months earlier. My CFT at that time was 750. The coach at the time made an off the cuff comment that I was on my way to 1000. Hmmm, 750 to 1000 any time soon, I doubted her veracity.

For the next several months, I followed the basic CFSD programming including following the Zone/paleo diet suggestions. I consistently attended classes and competed with my peers at the box. Yet I felt that I struggled at too many CrossFit expected movements—handstand pushups, 20 lbs wall ball, DUs, OHS etc. Then the real gut check came when my 26 year old daughter, already a Rippetoe convert, told me essentially “Dad you suck because you’re weak. You need to get strong, now! You aren’t getting any younger. Get Rippetoe’s book and get on with it.” Well she was right, I did suck and I was weak. However, the positive side was I could get Rip’s book and try to do something to get stronger.

In January 2011, I was still getting my plan together about how to incorporate a strength program while I was still playing with my friends in the CFSD morning class. Then another CFT came upon the schedule. I still showed reasonable gains. I squatted 334, deadlifted 423 and a weak press of 135. That was the second gut check; I realized that I’d never get really good numbers doing the eclectic programming that is prominent at CF boxes. BTW, CFSD is a great place and the programmers really do a good job trying to increase member’s general fitness while pleasing all the various motivations and goals of a big group of Crossfitters.

Those two gut checks did it. I quit attending classes and carved out a time on a barbell platform three days a week. I took Rip’s SS as gospel and started following it completely—for a week. The feedback I got when I talked with others about it was: “WARNING your metcons will suffer.” BTW, I’m the guy with half a lung—my metcons already sucked. Yet, I spoke about this with trainer Eric Montgomery. He suggested the Justin Lascek modification to Rip’s guidance—little slower gains, a couple more exercises and two metcons a week. Okay, if Eric tells me something, I do it. I dropped the three days a week SS program and started the Lascek 70s Big program with two short metcons for conditioning. I have followed it exactly for about 8 weeks now. I also followed closely the Rippetoe prescriptions for protein consumption, except milk, and a paleo diet with some unflavored protein powder supplement.

I did the CFT today for fun, March 31, 2011. CFT today was 1034, a 144 lbs increase from the end of January, in just 8 weeks. Squat went from 334 to 405. Deadlift went from 423 to 475. Both lifts were easy. Press increased by 19 lbs, to 154lbs. That is still weak, but a vast improvement from January. Moreover, I’ve increased muscle mass and decreased body fat. My tape measurements show my body fat is around 12%. I’d never had a body fat lower than 18% even when I weighed 15 lbs less.

So in 8 weeks following the 70s Big S&C program, I increased my CFT by 144lbs and landed in the Advanced Athlete block of the CFT chart on CF.com FAQ. That is a four lbs greater increase than I got during 8 months of CFSD basic programming.

Eric’s notes:
It’s also worth mentioning that his form is about 100% better than it used to be. As of a few months his squats in particular didn’t look that great, mainly due to some mobility issues. To the best of my knowledge he hasn’t done any intensive mobility work aside from some basic K-Star stuff—simply squatting more has fixed most of his flexibility issues and made him much better at squatting.

The other thing that Paul didn’t emphasize as much as he should have is that he did the program to an absolute T, and was 100% consistent and compliant. No fancy modifications, no skipped days, nothing. That’s not to say he blindly followed the program—he came to me with questions on a fairly regular basis, but as soon as I gave him the logic behind why the program is designed the way it is, he accepted my reasoning, put his head down, and went to work on the platform.

His progress also proves that a lifter can go from the relative novice stage to solid numbers without completely losing all his conditioning or putting on a lot of soft weight. For instance, he just posted a 4:28 Fran yesterday, which compares quite nicely to his previous PR of 7:10 set about 4 months ago. Paul looks pretty ripped right now without even really trying to, and I’d probably yell at him to gain 20lbs if his numbers gave me any indication that lack of weight gain was stalling his progress. Maybe if things slow down a bit and he decides he wants to make a push for 500lbs on his squat and 600lbs on his deadlift we’ll revisit the bodyweight issue, but as of now it’s not holding him back at all.

Despite the fact that the first two Games workouts have skewed heavily towards lightweight metcon machines, and despite the fact that he’s competing with 1.5 lungs, Paul is currently 58th out of 249 in the 50-54 age group. Expect him to start smoking non-adult males as soon as the first halfway heavy workout comes up.


Here’s a video of him squatting 156kg for a set of 5 last week. Before anyone jumps on him for it, when Paul emailed me the link he immediately noted that he needs to get about 2″ deeper on all of those reps. I did get verification that his 405lb 1RM was to legit depth though.