Maspik Teruzim

They're Still At It

2007-11-18T21:28:00.000-05:00

Despite my e-mail asking them to stop, The Weigh We Were is still vacuuming up my content and putting it up on their forums. That's just scummy behavior.

Big Seminar Report

2007-11-17T21:01:00.000-05:00

My report about the Big Seminar I attended at TPS is now up at STTB. Comments and feedback are appreciated.

Meet Half-Report: Kansas NASA Regionals

2007-11-10T20:46:00.000-05:00

This was supposed to be a nice meet report which I was going to publish at STTB. However, my morning went kaflooey, I got there late and missed all the squatting, so this truncated report is getting posted here instead.

I got the meet info from Powerlifting Watch. It took place at the Assemblies of God gymnasium on 75th St. (That's quite a name for a gymnasium.) Even with my late arrival I managed to see most of the bench and all of the deads. I didn't want to interrupt anyone's warm-up or psych-up to ask if I could take a picture of them lifting, so the only picture I took was of these weight plates. As you can see they're lovely weight plates, weathered and colorful and Ivanko, but people would have been better.

There was a plastic tub full of chalk on top of those plastic milk crates you see in the back of the picture, and that white curtain is the long table where the announcer and record keeper were sitting. The announcer was good: very clear about who was next, who was on deck, who was standing by and what the weights were. If I understood correctly, he’s a pastor, so he’s got experience with public speaking. There were also two screens on the wall providing instant replay, but I didn't realize this until the deads were nearly done.

There were two flights of lifters. There was one female lifter and the rest were male. I didn’t catch her bench numbers, but she had opened with a successful dead at 105Kg and then missed 115Kg twice, but not for lack of trying. The gentleman lifting after her was went 105, 122.5 and 137.5, which made me think that with a lower opener she could have gotten her 115Kg. But I've never competed, so what do I know.

I was surprised by the number of benchers that did not get their bench opener. I was thinking along the lines of Matt K’s statement at the Boston seminar back in June, that your opener should be a weight you can do sick or dead. Almost everyone got their subsequent lifts though, so maybe it was just mid-meet jitters.

There were between 30-50 spectators, all ages, from babies to elderly. A boy and an older gentleman were loading and unloading the bar for the lifters, getting a rather lengthy workout themselves in the process. For the deads the older gentleman sat down to judge, but the kid kept loading and unloading. I’m thinking he should get an award for best GPP. The spectators were nice to every lifter regardless of how much they were lifting and the whole atmosphere was supportive and sportsmanlike.

The t-shirts were great: one had “Top Hog Power Sports Team” with a picture of a scary looking cartoon boar deadlifting with a mixed grip, one with “Dawg Pound” on the front and “Lift heavy, life is too short to be weak” on the back (amen to that). Another had “ET’s House of Iron and Stone” on the front and “Train with the Insane” on the back and one had “Dungeon Powerlifting” and “Blood, guts, sweat and tears” on the front.

I have to mention the leg wear: for the deads, most lifters wore black knee socks to protect their shins, but there were some standouts. The female lifter used strips of duck tape. A guy named John who was wearing a shirt that said “No, I’m not on roids, but thanks for asking” had white knee-socks that said “Love” and had colorful hearts. But the coolest socks were worn by a fellow named Ben: bright blue and white tie-dye pattern. A few people were using mouthguards: maybe so that they wouldn’t grind their teeth while lifting?

At the end the spectators got up and cleared away their chairs. I left at the beginning of the awards ceremony. I'm not big on medals and trophies and such, although giving the top lifters decorative swords rather than trophies was original. Overall I enjoyed myself very much. Next time I go to one of these I hope to be an entrant rather than a spectator.

Life

2007-11-06T21:32:00.000-05:00

I'll be back and blogging on Monday, Nov 12.

Good Stuff Elsewhere

2007-11-02T19:20:00.000-04:00

Quarterly grades for my students were due right after I came back from my trip, hence the delay in my reports and the lack of blogging (to say nothing of the lack of sleep).

In the meantime, head over to EFS and watch the lovely interviews they just posted:

Cosgrove

Dizenzo

Rhodes

Go and learn.

Rock

2007-10-28T23:30:00.000-04:00

Back from Boston. My reports about the seminar will be up later this week, once the muscle soreness dissipates enough for me to type comfortably. Kidding, but only just. The weather was perfect; rainy day yesterday for the seminar, sunny day today to explore Boston. Here are two more pics from outside the Museum of Fine Arts. I initially took these because the rock reminded me of the Ogri character in the late 70s Dr. Who series The Stones of Blood. When I got back to a wireless connection, I did a web search for Taihu rocks and realized just how beautiful this specimen is.

How to Save $17

2007-10-27T19:15:00.001-04:00

Got to Boston yesterday, checked into the hotel and then decided to take in some sights. It was too late to go to the MIT museum which closes at 5:00pm, but the Museum of Fine Arts closes late on Fridays, so that's where I headed. Problem was, they don't allow bags, and they wanted me to check my backpack. I asked what I was supposed do with my laptop, and they wanted me to get a plastic bag from the giftshop and carry it around in that. Um, no, thank you. So I got a refund for my ticket and saved $17 by not going to the Museum of Fine Arts. Took some pics of the art outside the museum instead.

Rude

2007-10-25T21:16:00.000-04:00

Despite the fact that I e-mailed them on Oct 5 and asked them to stop putting my blog posts on their forums, The Weigh We Were is still doing so. That's just plain scummy behavior. Anyone know how to stop this from happening?

Back

2007-10-23T17:39:00.000-04:00

Hadn't planned on going to the funeral, but thanks to my sister, who realized it was logistically possible, and the wonderful Midwest Airlines, who have bereavement rates for US-Canada travel as well as very kind and helpful agents, I found myself on a plane four times in less than one day yesterday. I flew Kansas to Milwaukee and Milwaukee to Toronto, cabbed to funeral home, traveled with family to the cemetery and then to the shiva house, cabbed back to the airport and flew Toronto to Milwaukee and Milwaukee to Kansas, all this in about twenty hours. Left my home at 3:45am Monday morning and was back by 1:15am Tuesday morning. Not much sleep in between, except in short naps on planes.

Baruch Dayan Emet

2007-10-21T18:55:00.000-04:00

For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again; -- 2 Samuel 14:14

Not the first time I've said Baruch Dayan Emet on this this blog, although once per year is quite enough. Relative died this afternoon, losing her second battle with lymphoma.

Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish. This their way is their folly: yet their posterity approve their sayings. Selah. Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them; and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning; and their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling. But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he shall receive me. Selah. -- Psalm 49:12-15

Assorted Things

2007-10-21T02:30:00.000-04:00

MMA Writing: Came back from the bar around midnight to find an e-mail from my sis. Doctor says that relative might not make it through the night. Didn't feel much like sleeping, so I got productive and did some MMA writing. My UFC 77 Musings and Spoilers are now up at Straight to the Bar.

Useful Quotes: "Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do." —- Dale Carnegie
"One of the most difficult exercises to accomplish with good form is kicking oneself in the ass."
--Mahler, on the JP Fitness Forums, 9-27-2007.

Fashion plate: The other day one of my colleagues comes up to me at work. "Cute top" she says, "Is that Chico's?" Have you seen the prices at that place? I'm a teacher; that means KMart, Target and the softer side of Sears. :-) Nice to know my clothes look five times more expensive than they really are. I didn't tell her that, btw, I just said no and smiled.

Why I adore the comment threads at Cr0ssfit: Because they can be an island of sanity in a universe of questionable aesthetics. Over at this post, comment #37, a woman asks what she should do to "slim down and not bulk up", because she doesn't want her arms to be "manly". Among the responses she gets: "The excuse of not wanting to work out for fear of looking too manly is what is known as a cop out." (Comment #59 from KeithW at CrossfitNYC) and "You will have fabulous, strong, muscular feminine arms, which is absolutely gorgeous and attractive." (Comment #77)

Lastly, from Friday's post comes yet another inspirational CrossFit vid from CF.

Glum

2007-10-19T19:28:00.000-04:00

I went and filed the walk-in police report this afternoon. Got a little lost on my way to the police station, but finally found it. The two officers that helped me were very nice. Nothing they can do, which is not surprising - I don't even know when the person hit my car during that day - but nice always helps. Standing there in the sunshine staring at the crumpled metal I could see that it was worse than I had previously thought. I've been avoiding looking at it because it upsets me every time I look at it. I was told that the official report for the insurance company will be available for download in 5-7 business days.

Glum as a marsh-wiggle today. Between my relative (I'm told they're trying some new chemo that has a 10-15% chance of success) and the car and students I am worried about and other stuff... clearly my stiff upper lip needs some work, because towards the end of the day my boss stopped me in the hall to ask if I was ok.

I'm just grateful it's finally Shabbat.

Numbers

2007-10-18T23:39:00.000-04:00

Arrive work: 7:30am
Depart work: 7:30pm
Chicken breasts: 2
Brussels sprouts: .5 lbs
Protein bar: 1
Donuts: 2

Pumpkin Non Loaf

2007-10-17T22:09:00.000-04:00

Got home at a half decent hour because someone asked me for a ride, and I could not in good conscience tell them to wait till 7:00pm. Stopped at the new k0sher Subway on my way home and picked up a turkey sub for dinner. I hadn't been there before, and I'm glad my observant students now have a place to go and grab a reasonably healthy snack.

Once I got home I went on a cooking mission. Chicken breasts, Brussels sprouts, snow peas, and right now there's a pumpkin non-loaf in the oven. By non-loaf I mean that it's in a cake pan rather than a loaf pan because my loaf pans are too small. I don't like nuts in baked goods, so I removed those, and I had no pumpkin pie spice so I went freehand on the cinnamon and nutmeg. And I forgot to grease the pan, so it may not come out of the pan when it's done. Let's just say that my baking days are long behind me, eh?

Speaking of good things to do with pumpkins, Roussel has an interesting protein pumpkin concoction here. Canned pumpkin is at $1.18 per 15oz can, so it's pretty economical too.

Turns out there are security cameras in the parking lot, but on that particular day they were not pointing the way I needed them to be pointing to catch whomever hit my car. I called the insurance company and they said I need to go to the local police station, file a report and get a case number, and then call them back with the case number and they'll take it from there. I'm not sure what I'm going to do if the car needs to be in the shop more than one day. I'll get a rental, but how will I get from the shop to the rental place? This is where a spouse would come in handy. :D

I am tired. As soon as the pumpkin non-loaf comes out of the oven I am going to finish up some grading and go to sleep.

Car

2007-10-16T20:47:00.000-04:00

So I get out of work after ten+ hours to discover that someone swiped the side of my car, leaving the area above the right tire bent and rippled and covered in white paint/dust. They didn't leave a note. Considering that 1. my car is pretty much the only big ticket item I own, and 2. I love that car, I am not in a good mood right now. I'm resisting the urge to drown my sorrow in udon noodles.

Work and more work. Recreation consists of listening to the cds of the new Vach3s novel while driving to and from work (there's an audio sample at that link, go listen). I think the first time I read a Vach3s novel was in 1987, I was in high school and found Flood at the North York Public Library. It was a black paperback, with a front cover blurb from Playb0y (really) that said "revenge novel of the year". I picked it up because I liked the blurb, and because the font was small and the book was thick and as a fast reader, I wanted something that would last me a couple of days. I've bought most of the Burke novels over the years, but they are packed away in Toronto. I'm going to bring some of my books back with me when I go home to visit this year.

Good stuff elsewhere:

An interesting article at Junkfo0d Science, with Part II here.

The October rant (with vids) is up at Stumptu0us.

Hopeless Romantic

2007-10-13T15:53:00.000-04:00

The most romantic thing I've read this year:

Found at MMA Madness via Bloody Elbow: UFC fighter Brand0n Vera on how he met his wife: "I heard somebody beating on a speed bag and beating the hell out of it. I looked up and it was her."

Isn't that sweet? I've never seen this guy fight other than on highlight reels, but I hope he has a great fight at UFC77.

I had planned to drive to a powerlifting meet this weekend. I've never been to one, and this was a mere 4-5 hours drive away. An 11 hour work day on Friday followed by a massive thunderstorm Saturday morning derailed the plan. *sigh* I'm told there's a local meet on Nov 10, so I'm going to go to that one instead.

I went back to Gym One this morning after a very long absence. It was quiet thanks to the aforementioned thunderstorm. I was reminded of why I chose it in the first place. It's small, and the owner is nice, and it has a power cage. I checked when my membership is going to expire, and found I have till early November. The renewal price is good too.

47 minutes of cardio. I can't remember when was the last time I did that much cardio voluntarily in one shot. Ten minutes on the recumbent bike - there are no upright bikes - and then 37 minutes on the treadmill. I just kept walking and walking, ending with an incline of 5% and a speed of 4mph. I don't run on treadmills; I have a vision of flying off the thing and ending up as a Wile E. Coyote blotch on the far wall. I had a lot of things on my mind that I needed to walk off, and good songs on the shuffle. Every time I thought of stopping a better song came on, so I kept going.

Gym One shares an entrance with a spa, and on the way out, the women at the spa's front desk were talking about how a bakery had opened a couple of storefronts down, and some female gym goers were going there after their workouts and then sneaking back to their cars so that no one would see them with cookies or cake or whatever. I said that this was just stupid: sneaking around in order to have a cookie? Are you a adult or a three year old? You want a cookie, have the damn cookie and get on with life.

Work Vignette

2007-10-11T23:24:00.000-04:00

When one of my co-workers has a birthday, he or she brings in food and leaves it in the staff room for everyone to enjoy. Some people bring healthy stuff, some people bring non-healthy stuff, whatever. Everyone has a copy of the birthday list, so if you want to avoid the staff room on these days, no problem.

Anyway, one day I was a bit short of food, so I went down to the staff room hoping for chopped veggies. No such luck: there were bagels cut into quarters, and donuts cut in half, and cream cheese, and candy corn and assorted chocolates. As I surveyed what was left, the co-worker who was sitting at the table says to me morosely: "Come, eat, get fat."

I picked up a quarter bagel, carefully put cream cheese on it, ate it, looked at her, and said "I don't care". She stared at me. I picked up a half donut, took a bite, "My blood pressure is 90 over 60, my blood work is great, I've been heavier and I've been lighter, and in my family the skinny people die first," I finished the half donut.

She was still staring at me like I was some sort of alien. Then she said, sort of ruefully, "Everyone has f*ckim, this one is my f*ck. It really stresses me."

I wanted to tell co-worker to deal with the stress by lifting some weights rather than inflicting idiot comments on the rest of us, but I refrained. Co-worker looked miserable enough as it was. Would I have eaten the quarter bagel and half donut if she hadn't been there? Probably not. I would have gotten something better from the cafeteria. But I have some buttons, and when they get pushed the old me responds first. Mind you, at one point I would have eaten an entire bagel and an entire donut in front of her, but I am older and mellower now and I don't kill flies with a sledgehammer. :-) Anyway, I don't think she'll make that comment to me again.

Linguistic Note: "F*ck" does not mean the same thing in Hebrew as it does in English. As per this 2005 post at Treppenwitz, it is "a fairly benign Hebrew expression meaning 'mistake'".

Some Days

2007-10-11T20:35:00.000-04:00

I get home and realise that:

1. I am not getting to the gym tonight;
2. I forgot to roll the Torah scroll forward for tomorrow morning's Rosh Chodesh reading;*
3. I missed (again!) the free shipping + hat offer deadline at EFS; and,
4. Randy C0uture is retiring.

Bah! Some days I just shouldn't bother.

*Ok, this is one of those Jewish things: on Mondays & Thursdays we read the Torah. There are also special Torah readings from a different part of the Torah scroll on the first day of a Jewish month (which tomorrow is). This morning's Torah reading was from Genesis 6:9-22 and tomorrow's special reading is from Numbers 28:11-15, so the scroll needs to be rolled to the correct place, and then rolled back to Genesis for next Monday. Longer explanation here.

Overcooked

2007-10-09T20:50:00.000-04:00

This has been a day for long search strings. Someone from Morocco got to this blog with : "is 176.4 pounds considered overweight". And then someone from the United States got here with "my right shoulder hurts and is weaker then left". I don't think I was helpful to either one.

I'm blogging while grilling chicken breasts. Maybe getting the smallest grill in the store wasn't such a great idea? The problem is that I have a tiny amount of counter space, so anything larger would have been awkward. One is plain and I marinated two in some soy sauce & honey to see how they would turn out. Not that it matters; they'll turn out like chicken breasts always do - overcooked.

I've decided to do NROL's FL I as my program for the next three months. I need a change. I feel like a complete slug and totally unworthy of my old programs. It depresses me to look back in my training log and think of all the things I can't do. I've enjoyed reading about this blogger's experience with NROL, as well as this sub-forum at the JP Forums. And since I bought the book back in February 2007 - just because I liked the writing style - I may as well get my money's worth out of it.

Relative? Still in hospital. My mom? Still spending every day at her side. (And I do mean every single day.) It makes me so angry, especially since my mom is not this relative's only living relation. Relative has two financially-stable brothers and two financially-stable children, damn it, and they should be shouldering some of the load rather than just standing back and mouthing platitudes about what an angel my mom is. There's an old Middle Eastern proverb: one parent can take care of ten children, but ten children can't take care of one parent. I think about it a lot these days, usually while stuffing carbs into my mouth.

Rusty Bars

2007-10-07T16:55:00.000-04:00

Woke up early, went out for breakfast, then went to an interesting class at a local synagogue. Came home, changed clothes and went to the gym I visited the other day. Didn't push it; went slowly and thankfully neither the left shoulder nor the left hip did any objecting. Four sets of squats with ab work in between (10x45lbs, 10x45, 10x60, 10x70), four sets of flat bench presses with ab work in between (10x45, 10x55, 10x60, 10x65), 10 minutes on the rower and 15 minutes on the treadmill. I did something that I never do, which is choose one of the built in programs on the treadmill. I picked a spiky but not insane program. Almost flew off the treadmill at the end because I was distracted by subtitles on one of the tv screens. It was showing De Niro and Gooding Jr. in Men of Honor, which is great to watch if you're feeling whiny when you really have nothing to whine about. I hadn't planned to use the rower and the treadmill, but I just felt like moving more today. I've been indoors so much lately, either with long days at work or just being a homebody.

Gym was quiet. The entire weights area looks like a holdover from the early 70s, down to the exercise posters and ancient Nautilus machines. There was a ton of rust on the bar I was using for squats. I only realized after I was done the squats that the bench press bars were nice and clean. I'm swapping bars next time. The locks didn't fit the bars very well.

I like the cardio area, even though I'm only going to be using the rower, treadmill and upright bike for my intervals. It still has upright bikes and rowers. The brand new gym I visited last week was mostly ellipticals and recumbent bikes. Apparently people find upright bikes too hard now. The other thing I noticed is how little padding the benches in this gym had compared to brand new gym. I think I like these benches better.

Boxing Deprived

2007-10-06T13:52:00.000-04:00

Why can I not find a single sports bar in my area showing this boxing ppv? Harrumph. I was looking forward to seeing Barrera's last fight. Nothing against Pacquia0, but I'm sentimentally hoping that Barrera wins this one and then retires on a high note. Looks like I'll be curling up with the aforementioned brain book and following the fight on Bad Left H00k instead. On the positive side, this means I'm not supporting HB0 with my hard-earned money. As far as I know, the sexist twits still have the policy of not showing women's boxing.

Observation: any weekend day in which I get out of bed and am up and about before 6:00am will be a good day. Two reasons: first, my weekday wake up time is 5:45am, so a 6:00am weekend wakeup does not screw up the schedule. Second, because I get a feeling of accomplishment when I look at my watch at 8:00am and can say to myself: I've already done x y and z, it's going to be a great day. X, y and z can be pretty much anything: meal prep, morning walk, returning library books. The important thing is that something got done and finished and I can remove more things from the to-do list.

I looked at yet another gym. No hanging heavy bag, but it has C2 rowers and a cage which - mirabile visu - is NOT in front of a mirror. It also has old but serviceable weights, decent locker rooms and no moronic advertising. I asked the man at the desk if the bars were 45lb bars and how much the dbs increment by, and he turns to the woman beside him and says "I don't think she'll need an orientation". :-) They gave me a one week pass to try it out starting tomorrow. We'll see how it goes.

My freezer is stuffed with healthy meals ready to defrost and cook. Feels good. Now let's see if I follow through and actually defrost and cook and eat them.

Talking to the Wall

2007-10-05T22:54:00.000-04:00

So I'm on the phone to one of my elderly relatives. (I called him, out of sheer politeness, to see how he was doing. That was my mistake.)

He: Do you still look the same as the last time we saw you?
Me: I have no idea how I looked the last time you saw me.
He: You looked great. Are you still keeping the weight loss?
Me: I exercise, but I don't really pay attention to weight.
He: *silence*

Shortly thereafter during the same phone call.

He: You know who lost 80 lbs?
Me: Who?
He: Joe; isn't that great?
Me: Well, if it makes him happy that's great.
He: He was 360 lbs, he wasn't walking right, that's not healthy. He's going to lose 100lbs.
Me: Well, if it makes him happy that's great.

The thing about talking with elderly relatives is that you can't use profanity. Bah.

Gym Search Continues: Updated

2007-10-05T17:34:00.001-04:00

Update: This is Not a Weight Loss Blog, so if you've come here for advice on how to become scrawnier, please go elsewhere. I wanted to make that clear, since I discovered, via my stats, that this post was excerpted in its entirety over at the forums of a web site called The Weigh We Were, which bills itself as a collection of weight loss success stories. I never signed up with this web site nor did I add my blog to their site, and I find it peculiar that they would put my entire post on their forum, stripping the links to Ironmind and the JP Fitness forums in the process. I understand that on the web anyone can link to anything, but grabbing entire posts? Then I did a quick search and discovered they've been doing this quoting of entire posts since September 11. I e-mailed them and asked them to remove these posts. I'll update when and if they get back to me.

Actual post starts here=> Over at IronMind, a report from the recently concluded world weightlifting championships. Check out the lovely pic of American lifter Melanie R0ach, who did better than she did "ten years and three children ago". (Via this thread at the JP Fitness Forums.)

I went on the 24HF website the other day and got a 7 day pass to try out their gym. As soon as I printed it I realized that the pass was only good from 8am to 9pm. So I sent them an e-mail telling them that I signed up for this pass because I wanted a place that would be open outside these hours. To their credit, they e-mailed me back within the hour and called me back within two, telling me that they'd leave the pass for me at the desk and I could come by after 9pm. So I did. The good part is that they have a cage. The bad part is that there are no rowers or a heavy bag, and the in-store advertising is revolting. Not only is there a ton of Biggest L0ser claptrap, but also an annoying "Get to size six sooner" poster. Why the heck would I want to be a size six, sooner, later or ever? Makes me want to take a marker, cross out the words "size six" and insert "weakling" instead. :-) (Which I do not do, of course, because I am a capitalist with a healthy respect for private property.)

Wow. Again.

2007-10-04T13:41:00.000-04:00

Another sweet video (and adorable picture) on Cr0ssFit. What a great mother to daughter example. "Got it from my mama" indeed.

Women's Hearts

2007-10-03T20:45:00.001-04:00

An informative, readable and valuable post about women and heart attacks by the Ambulance Driver.

Connectionless

2007-10-03T17:29:00.000-04:00

My internet connection died last week and the earliest available service appointment was for tomorrow. I must be setting a record for number of technician visits. Back to the coffee shop and its free wireless until things are fixed.

Two 12+ hour work days in a row. However, today was a half day, and there is no more work for the rest of the week due to the Jewish holidays of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. Next week is a normal week and I am looking forward to having a week with no holidays. Yes, really. The Jewish month of Tishrei has several holidays and I am feeling a bit holidayed-out.

I'm deciding between staying with Gym One - the membership expires in a month - or going with Gym Three. Gym Three has a squat rack but no cage and no heavy bag. However, the location is superior to Gym One, the locker rooms are very sensibly designed, and the weights area seems woefully underutilized.

My employer has asked me if I'd be willing to go to Israel for ten days in Jan 08. It's going to be a ton of work around the clock for those ten days, but the prospect is appealing, and not just because I'd be in Jerusalem for two or three of these days and might have a chance to visit my old training grounds. (Which would be a huge motivational boost for me right now, and get me to train even on the 12 hour work days.) I've said yes, conditionally, but employer has yet to get back to me on whether those conditions are acceptable to them.

Having finished the Atlas bio, I am reading a book about neuroplasticity: Doidge's The Brain That Changes Itself, recommended by my sister. So far so good.

Interesting reading elsewhere:

Canadian health care on my mind because relative is still in hospital defying the odds.

A mother-daughter hunt.(via TFS Magnum)

A discussion of attitudes towards MMA fighter Gina Caran0 (via Bloody Elbow)

Inspirational Videos

2007-09-28T19:39:00.000-04:00

In the comments on the last post, M@rla posted a link to a absolutely gorgeous clip from CrossFit. This gives me the perfect excuse to link to a couple more, including one that just got posted today. These are the clips I keep on my bookmarks toolbar and go to for inspiration. The first five are clips that I think should be viewed by as many women as possible, especially those who think that fit+female = using 2 lb dbs.

Annie Does Josh. A classic.

Chicks Jerk Heavy Too. This is the one that was posted today. Beautiful.

Nicole & Zac Go for a Total. I'm running out of superlatives.

Nicole v. Glover.

Bodyweight Overhead Squats - Redux"

Brandon's Bad Day. I watch this one when I'm feeling particularly lazy and need someone to call me on it. Unfortunately, the only people who can call me on it are a 15+ hour flight away. :(

Movie Afternoon

2007-09-26T19:16:00.000-04:00

Half day at school today because of the eve of Sukkot. I stayed around for an hour to help a middle schooler and clear some paper from my desk, then headed to see Eastern Pr0mises at a local movie theater. The theater wasn't busy since it was a 3:15pm showing. Me and a few older couples: no talking, no cell phones going off, no idiocy.

The movie was excellent. Good drama/action movies that don't have stupid endings are a rare thing these days. I haven't seen a movie in a theater since 300, and I don't bother unless there's a reasonable chance that I will enjoy the experience enough to make up for the stupidity of fellow movie goers. I've liked Mortensen's work since G.I. Jane (egads, that was ten years ago), and Cassel's work in Brotherhood of the Wolf (six years ago, time flies), so I was reasonably confident that I'd like this film. A couple of violent moments at the beginning which I initially classified as the "by golly those special effects people have to account for every pint of blood they requisitioned" philosophy, but after a little reflection I think they were appropriate. The much discussed fight scene lived up to expectations. So, don't bother reading the reviews or looking at the imdb before you see it; there too much chance of hitting a spoiler. Just go.

O Rage o Desespoir

2007-09-25T20:45:00.000-04:00

Or something like that (if the link doesn't work, see Corneille's Cid, Act 1, Scene 7). Never miss a chance to stick in an overwrought literary reference rather than title this post "Rejection" and be done with it.

I discovered that there was a small powerlifting team/gym not too far from me, so I called them up and e-mailed and asked if I could come by. I heard back yesterday: they currently have 10-14 guys so there is no more space. So much for that idea. It's a private space so I respect the selectivity, but I were them I would have at least had me come by and have a look and meet the group, so that they could make up their minds on the basis of my training skills, not my e-mail skills.

To be fair, they did tell me that if I agreed, they could pass on my e-mail to another group that's starting up, and that group might have some room. So something might still come of this. I'm just mopey because I was looking forward to training with a serious group of guys again, and there was nothing on their web site to suggest that there was no space currently available.

In other news, I decided to go to Boston in October for another seminar. Some people use their disposable income to buy furniture, I spend mine on lifting seminars. :-)

UFC 76 Musings & Spoilers - Short This Time

2007-09-23T01:18:00.000-04:00

Just back from the bar. I didn't take notes and I'm very tired, so this will be short. Lovely lovely card. Every single fight was worth the cover charge. In fact, by the time the T.Griffin/Tavares fight ended I decided that I had gotten my money's worth, and everything else this evening was gravy. Made me wish I had brought SqueamishGuy to this card rather than the previous one. Not that this one didn't have blood, it did, but the fights were better overall. Who says you need a title bout to have a good card?

I had gone to the bar on Friday afternoon to make my reservation and got to pick my table again. My tablemate this time was a man who didn't say much, except to ask me what time it started and whom I liked in the first fight. I had my back to him for most of the evening (so I could face the screen, not so I could be rude) so there wasn't any interaction after that.

Notes from tonight:

Can ufc please stop showing celebrities in the audience? Other fighters, yes. It was nice to see Jackson, GSP and WSilva, and I wouldn't mind seeing their reactions to the fights. But of what use are actors who should be on What Not to Wear? Blech.

The first televised fight, TG/T, was non-stop, and I felt sorry for whomever was fighting after it because it would be hard for them to measure up. I like TG. I figure it must be frustrating (just a bit) to have people cheering and then realize as you look up at the screen that they're cheering for Randy Couture. Note to TT, saying "I win" after fight before the judges decision has been announced is silly and makes you look sillier. To his credit, he was classy about the decision after it was announced.

Fitch-Sanchez I have been looking forward to for awhile, and going by my general rule that the guy coming into the octagon looking more relaxed is going to win it, I expected a Fitch win. I worried that he'd be weaker because of the trouble he had making weight, but I dismissed it once it said on the screen that he used to captain Purdue's wrestling team. Wrestlers deal with making weight, so no worries. Sanchez looked intense though. He's not one of my favorite fighters, because I took a dislike to both him and Koschek in the blithering leading up to their last fight, but after this fight I'd like to see him fight again. And he was classy afterwards also. Except he shouldn't bother telling fans not to boo. If you exude class long enough they'll shut up and start supporting you.

Griffin-Rua... oh my that was just lovely. But why the heck was Rua so tired from mid -second round onwards? I expected FG to win this one, because he looked happy and excited and his pre-fight promos had the right attitude about them. Heck of a way to win: submission just before the end of the 3rd round, after you've shown everything you can do and bled for the victory also.

Jardine-Liddell. They were on their feet for pretty much the entire fight, which I mention only because, after the diversity of the rest of the fights (up, down, every which way) that was what stood out in my mind. No, I'm not happy. I like CL and I really wanted him to come back strong after the loss to Jackson. (I like Jardine too, as you already know if you read my UFC66 report.) I wish it hadn't a split-decision. Made me wish it had been a five round fight so that there would be a more definitive ending. What I disliked even more than this result was the reaction of some of the people in the bar. Some nitwit was badgering his friends, saying something to the effect of "It was worth it just to see Chuck lose AGAIN. To some guy named Keith WHO?" I felt like turning around and telling him, "That would be Jardine, you nitwit, the guy that beat that Griffin guy who just sumitted Rua." Why is it that the stupid comments are made by the most out-of-shape guys?

Edited: I forgot Machida-Nakamura, because I'm exhausted, and because my main memory from this fight is the parasol... Seriously though, not a bad fight, just compared to TG-TT not as exciting.

Quitting Quote

2007-09-21T18:20:00.000-04:00

In the ring, I see fighters quit or give up all the time because it feels at that moment like it's the easiest option. I always tell them the easiest thing is actually to make a stand. The act of fighting, of facing what you have to face, in reality lasts only a few minutes. Otherwise, you have to deal with and live with the consequences forever. -- Teddy Atlas

I'm about halfway through the Teddy Atlas autobiography, "Atlas: From the Streets to the Ring: A Son's Struggle to Become a Man", and I'm enjoying it very much. I'm jotting down useful quotes along the way.

I'm scrambling to get everything I want done before Yom Kippur starts. It ends around 8:00pm or so tomorrow, and once it does I'll head off to the local sports bar for ufc76. If you're observing YK, have an easy fast and may you be sealed for a good year. If you're not observing YK, enjoy the warm and sunny weekend. Not too many of these left before winter.

Odds and Ends

2007-09-20T00:24:00.000-04:00

I don't buy health & fitness magazines as regularly as I used to because I don't have time to read them. But there's one way to ensure that I will spend my hard-earned $5 on MH, and that is to put Jas0n Statham on the cover. The article isn't bad either. :-) This issue also has an interesting piece by Aragon about food myths.

My gym membership to Gym One expires at the end of November and right now I don't plan to renew it. I think I lost interest the day they took down the real heavy bag and put up the wimpy one. Yes, they have a power cage, but with the current left hip issues I'm not going to be squatting for some time. If I don't find a place I like and within a reasonable distance from home or work it will be home workouts for awhile.

I went shopping for fruit and veggies this evening and decided that I need to cut down on the protein bars. I love the taste of the Balance Gold chocolate peanut butter bars, but I go through them way too fast and they encourage me to not bother prepping real food. $4.98 for a box of six at the local Walmart tends to add up.

I have Friday off this week, so tomorrow is the last work day before the weekend. Saturday is Yom Kippur. The plan is to head to the local sports bar as soon as the fast ends and watch UFC76. No company this time. Unless some non-squeamish person presents themselves between now and Saturday night, which I doubt.

We have a guest from Brazil visiting at work, so I googled to try and find out how one says "welcome" in Portuguese. Didn't find it, but found this very useful study guide site.

Thirty Percent

2007-09-18T21:45:00.001-04:00

According to the latest doctor-speak, relative has a 30% chance of recovery. How the hell do they calculate these odds, anyway?

No exercise yet this week. Left work too late both yesterday and today. So I'm back in lazyass territory, since there's nothing stopping me from getting up at 0430 and going to the gym in the morning beyond my love affair with inertia. Yesterday when I was in my car I actually had a thought in my head that went something like this "What if I gained all the weight back? Was I that unhappy being fat? Why all these expectations? I'm never going to go back to Jerusalem anyways." which was followed shortly thereafter by a much clearer thought: "Are you a complete effing idiot?"

Yes, apparently, especially when I don't get enough water or sleep.

I'm going to do one of my exercise dvds and go to bed early. Not much to choose from as I only own two, it's either this one or this one.

Static

2007-09-17T21:45:00.000-04:00

No change in anything of note. Relative still in hospital, I'm still stressed. I'm no longer limping and range of motion is better, but there are still enough twinges along the left hip and knee that I haven't gone back to the MA place.

Nutrition was great until I left work today (at 7:00pm, I might add) and then went to hell in a handbasket (the nutrition, not me). The air-conditioning at work wasn't functioning for most of the day. At the last meeting of the day I had someone tell me I looked "wilted". Just what I needed to hear.

This post and clip at Blo0dy Elbow made me smile. No, it definitely doesn't make the process easier. :-)

Current favorite portable second breakfast: Fage 2% yogurt with a packet of Simple Harvest oatmeal sprinkled on top. Stats: 290Kcal, 21P, 38C, 8F.

Depressing Post; Skip at Will

2007-09-14T21:56:00.000-04:00

Talked to my mom earlier today just as she got back from the hospital. She's been there every day, 8-12 hours each day since relative Q went in. Apparently when the doctor heard that relative Q has a son who lives a five hour flight from Toronto, the doctor said "He should come". Which is, of course, doctor-speak for "We think she's dying". When I got home I read Cosgrove's cancer diaries off the Liftstrong cd I bought awhile back. They were an unexpected but useful thing to find on that cd. Then I had a mini-binge consisting of a Balance bar and rosemary bread.

Damn this is a depressing post.

How many shall pass away and how many shall be born,
Who shall live and who shall die,
Who shall reach the end of his days and who shall not
-- Unetaneh Tokef

The above is a part of the Jewish High Holy Days liturgy. You can read more about it here and listen to the Leonard C0hen song "Wh0 by Fire", which is based on the same prayer.

Nine Hours

2007-09-13T19:26:00.000-04:00

Nine hours of sleep later I'm still in pain. Less pain than yesterday, so I'm not complaining. Besides, there are people in my family with much bigger health problems than a screwed up leg.

Relative Q is still in hospital and family mood in Canada is pretty low. Her son flew to TO to be with her, but no sooner did he land than he got a cold, which means he's not allowed to see her because her immune system is so fragile. I talked to him on the phone for about an hour yesterday, commiserating about the situation and talking about fighting. He used to wrestle greco-roman competitively, so he's the only relative I have with whom I can discuss MMA without his eyes glazing over. He wrestled at superheavyweight; he and I are the two grandkids who got the maternal grandfather's propensity for weight-gain. It seems to come with an affinity for strength training, so as far as I'm concerned it was a good genetic deal. :-) When I told him about the injury, and the fact that it occurred during the warm up, he said that at our age we have to warm up in order to do the warm up. Man's got a point. :-)

Good reading:

An article about the Transtheoretical Model of Change.

A 2001 webcast by Dr. James Pr0chaska about Helping Populations Progress Through Stages of Change. Well worth the hour and fourteen minutes. I bookmarked this a long time ago and can't remember how I got to it. I think it was by googling for Dr. Prochaska's name after seeing his book "Changing for Good".

Waddling into the New Year

2007-09-12T17:55:00.001-04:00

That would be the Jewish new year 5768, which begins tonight at sunset. I'm actually happy that I decided not to fly to Canada for the holiday because sitting on a plane with this hip would have been very painful.

To sum up: standing still and walking hurt a little. Sitting and getting up hurt more. Getting in and out of a car, or doing anything where I have to move the left leg sideways & up hurt a lot. The pain does not discriminate between side of the hip, butt and hamstring. Going up stairs hurts, going down stairs hurts less. If it doesn't feel way better by Sunday (after a few days of rest and ice) I'll call the doc for an appointment.

The good thing about injuries is that they remind you that you should have taken your fish oil and should have used that foam roller you got, instead of letting it collect dust in that corner over there.

The good thing about this injury is that I'm learning a lot more about what connects to what. Every "Oh, if I move my leg this way, the ouch moves from here to there" tells me something new. I'm frustrated that I can't do a groin stretch - you know the one with the soles of your feet together? I've never in my life had a problem doing that one, but right now my left leg will not get into that position.

If you're celebrating the New Year tonight, I hope you have a year of health & wealth (I'm a capitalist and I'm injured - can you tell?). If you aren't celebrating the New Year tonight and you're not injured... have a good training session and squat something heavy for me. :-)

Limping

2007-09-11T21:59:00.000-04:00

Last weekend I had the bright idea to try out a martial arts class, Krav Maga, to be exact. A local school has an intro class once per month, and paying for that class gets you a free week of classes thereafter. I enjoyed the intro, although not enough to write them a check on the spot, but decided to come back this week for the free classes and see if I like it enough to continue.

Just before the class I was standing in the front desk area, and someone asked me if I was sure I wanted to do this. "No," I said, "But that hasn't stopped me before. What's the worst that could happen?" (Yes, those words came out of my mouth. Insert obligatory remark about tempting fate here.)

We started, as so many MA classes do, by running around in a circle. I could feel my left leg beginning to get tight. But did I stop? Nope, I'm too vain for that. So I kept going. Then the instructor told us to do side steps, then drop and do pushups, then sit ups, then get up again. So I did, and when the running around re-started, I could feel the leg getting even tighter. But I continued. And then he asked us to do walking lunges.

So I lunged, except I don't think you can call it a lunge if you only go down and don't manage to come up again because your left leg refuses to support you in your stupidity any longer.

And that's the sorry tale of how, five minutes into the class, I limped out of it in pain. I spent the next half an hour gingerly trying to walk upright and gently stretch things without the shooting pain returning.

Limited success, but I did finally limp out to the car (which, thank god, is not a stick shift) and looked damn funny trying to get into it. Not before I asked the owner if we can move my intro week to next week. He said yes, and I told him that if I wake up tomorrow and the pain is gone, I'll come back tomorrow. At the moment, sitting at home and wondering how much extra time I should allot to getting dressed in the morning, I don't think I'll get back to the MA place before next week.

So what is it? I have no idea and I'm too tired to research tonight. Pulled muscle? Screwed up ITB? All I know right now is that the pain is on the side and back of my left leg and hip, and that I can't raise my knee to my chest while standing or pull my heel to my butt.

Moral of the story? If your body tells you to slow down, don't be an idiot and keep pushing. And if you have a choice between a nice pleasant night of deadlifts and a martial arts exploration... well, you can figure that one out for yourself.

Hummus Basar

2007-09-02T02:09:00.000-04:00

I forgot to post this photograph when I came back from Jerusalem. It's hummus basar: hummus is the yummy chickpea stuff, basar is Hebrew for meat, and the dish has hummus and spiced ground beef on top. This picture was taken on my last Friday afternoon in Jerusalem, enjoying a lunch with my friend B. at Pinati restaurant. The name means "my corner" and the restaurant is on King George Street. We sat outside. The restaurant is tiny, and there was a line of people waiting for our table. Whenever I think of a perfect combination of protein and fat, I think of hummus basar. It's a bit sad, because we both were heading off to locales where hummus this good does not exist.

Stresses Major and Minor

2007-09-01T23:06:00.000-04:00

Woke up at noon today; I was so tired from the week. I had been setting multiple alarms every morning because there are few things I hate more than being late. So today I lazed about and then headed out at night for a little shopping. I found an Under Arm0r HeatGear women's top on the clearance rack for $5, and four pairs of Under Arm0r socks (made in the US, slightly irregular) for $7, so it was a productive shopping trip. Speaking of UA, I like this Bo0m Bo0m Tap commercial and the microsite they built to go with it.

I was going to write a post about how my lack of progress in August was a direct result of my lack of focus and intensity since I returned from Jerusalem, but the inimitable PastaQueen has already written a good one on the subject and put it succinctly: "I've only lived in my own body, so I can't speak about anyone else with 100% certainty, but I know that when I show up and do the work, I get paid." What she said.

This seems to be a day for stressful phone calls: first I hear from my family that the relative who finished chemo for cancer a few months ago is back in hospital; the lymphoma is back and things are described as "worrysome". Since relative's children live out of town, my mom has been on bedside duty in the hospital, which worries me because my mom is the duty-bound sort of person who takes care of other people before she takes care of herself. They're referring to it as "the situation". As in "did you hear about the situation with relative Q?". Then a former classmate calls: seems her employer just screwed her out of the job she was promised by deciding that a newly hired, less experienced man will fill the position. She knew it was an old boys club (not a single woman in the entire section) but she didn't expect them to pull this. She was angry but she's got the right attitude about it: she's going to make herself even more indispensable this year, walk away on her own terms and leave them SOL. Good for her. Serves those dishonorable dimwits right.

Gym Two still hasn't put up the heavy bag. When I joined they had one. A week or two later it vanished. I was told that it had collapsed, and since they were in the middle of renovations, they had decided not to replace it until the renovations were complete. (No, I don't see the logic either.) Renovations are pretty much done, and still no heavy bag. Maybe they're afraid it will scare off the new frou frou clientele that the renovations were intended to attract?

I found out that a new community center is opening not far from me and that it has a gym, so I went one evening last week to check it out. The good: it is spacious, the locker rooms are gorgeous, there's a squat rack, two flat benches, one incline bench, and one lonely rowing machine. The bad: there are a gazillion treadmills and bikes and not one person that looks like they're serious about their training (and that includes the staff).

I decided to try out some martial arts classes starting next weekend. It will have to be an outstanding experience for me to join up, because the price is $110 per month, which I find a bit steep. But if I had a class to go I'll get my butt out of work at a decent hour (she said hopefully).

Food was fine this week, hydration was on and off, and exercise was entirely at home due to the hours I spent at work. *sigh* I love my work, but I do know that spending my entire life there is not a good idea.

Early Morning Blogging

2007-08-26T01:51:00.000-04:00

First week of school is done. Not sure what possessed me to do so, but I volunteered to teach two classes at a community event on Sunday. And of course I went to see the UFC74 card earlier this evening. I've been looking forward to this one and it met all my expectations.

So in brief: school is going fine. I'm looking forward to the Sunday teaching, and the UFC card made for a very enjoyable evening. Both Canadians - Cote & GSP - won in convincing fashion (yay!), so I hope there'll be a card in Montreal soon. My inner Canuck nationalist comes out at UFC cards. I wanted Cote to win because I find Grove's Lecterish mask annoying and his spider haircut oh so gimmicky. I wanted GSP to win because he's classy and polite and I like classy and polite, and those eyes and cheekbones don't hurt either.

It was wonderful to see GSP back to himself. He looked bigger than he did against Serra. He said at the end of the fight that the Serra loss was the best thing that ever happened to him. I think I'm quoting him correctly. Unfortunately I can't write my usual long commentary because I went to see this card with a guy, and it's not polite to ignore your dinner partner in order to take copious fight notes. It was guy's first time seeing UFC, and it was too bloody for him. I am not going to make a snarky comment here. Some people can't handle contact sports and that's fine. Guy was distracted by the blood stains in the Octagon, and then the Couture-Gonzaga fight, with the blood coming out of Gonzaga's nose was just too much for him. So I think I am better off going to see fights by myself, unless I know for a fact that the guy in question isn't squeamish. (I can just see myself asking this when the next person tries to set me up with a blind date - "sure, I'll go out with so and so, but I need to know if he can handle ufc first".) I was amused when they showed Sanchez watching the GSP-JK fight. It was just so clear from his face that he didn't care about GSP winning; he just liked to see JK frustrated and losing.

I had a great seat this time. When I came by earlier in the week to make a reservation, the waitress recognized me from my previous visits, and (I think) she remembered that I'm the person who tips well even when they lose my reservation, so she showed me the floor chart and let me pick any table I wanted. After the Couture-Gonzaga main event was done, the bar cut the audio feed, even though there was a fight from the undercard (Leites-Jensen) being broadcast. I asked the waitress to put it back on and she at first said she couldn't, but then the audio came back. I guess I wasn't the only one who asked. As far as the guys who didn't win tonight, I'd like to see Jensen and Crane again, the former for being aggressive and the latter for continuing to gut it out when he could have thrown in the towel. I think at the end of his fight he was running on mental strength alone.

Nutrition and hydration were good this week, thanks to the new lunch box and being back to work and in a routine. I've been starting the day with a protein shake: 1 cup skim milk, 1/2 cup water, scoop of protein powder, tbsp of pure cocoa, a couple of ice cubes, all in a blender b0ttle that is turning out to be one of the most useful gadgets I've ever spent money on. Super fast, so I get a few more minutes of sleep. I have all the ingredients to make homemade protein bars, just not the time to make them at the moment. Veggie consumption is up thanks to bagged spinach. Now I just need to get the training back to Jerusalem levels and all will be right with the world.

New Lunch Box

2007-08-18T22:55:00.000-04:00

At home most of the day today, and popped out briefly to get groceries. I tried to come up with a 6 meal, portable, protein & veggie intensive menu for next week. My plan is to have the exact same thing every day, which will simplify cooking and shopping. I also want to get through all the stuff I have in my fridge and cupboard. Today I discovered that I have 17 cans of tuna on hand. :-)

I have a new lunch box. The one I used all last year was a soft-sided Igloo, but it began to rip along one side because I stuffed too many things into it. I considered getting a Gatem0uth bag to replace it, but at the end decided to go with a hard plastic cooler instead. The new lunch box (which will probably get as many comments at work as the old lunch box did) is a red 15L Igloo Playmate Elite. It is:
1. Insulated: because I don't have the time to wander back and forth from my classroom to the fridge in the teachers' lounge;
2. Roomy: enough for two protein+veggie meals, one shake, assorted fruit for snacks, cutlery, and anything else I think up...
3. Easy to clean;
4. Made in the USA (I wanted USA or Canada, not made-in-China junk)
5. Reasonably priced: I got it at my local WalMart Neighborhood Market, for ~$15, considerably less than the online price.

Classes begin on Monday, and I'll be at work Sunday morning to do some last minute prep. Not a lot, as this has been a productive week for me, but I want to have everything ready so that on Monday morning I don't have to worry about printing, copying, or anything else except my classes.

Back in June I went to Boston for a lifting seminar and then blogged about in five parts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). EFS now has video clips from the seminar available online.

Back to Work

2007-08-14T22:42:00.001-04:00

This week is all about logistics and administrative matters; the students arrive next week. I set up my classroom, hung up the new posters I bought over the summer, fell off a desk while doing so... thank god there wasn't anything sharp or pointy between me and the floor. Banged up my elbow a bit but nothing serious. My favorite poster has two perplexed lizards staring at each other with the caption "There was homework?" below.

I'm putting the finishing touches on syllabi which are due tomorrow. Another part of my brain is planning tomorrow's food, because she who does not plan will find herself on a sugar binge of epic proportions come evening.

Nutrition and hydration have been horrendous this week. I am so glad that classes are starting. It is so much easier to be nutritionally sound when my routine is established and my students are around. The free nosh with meetings ended today. Obviously, no one is forcing the bagels / donuts / strawberry shortcake down my throat; I consciously chose to partake in the Festival of Simple Sugars. Enough.

I've been procrastinating (meaning: forgot entirely) about the "training partner wanted" sign I was going to put up at the two gyms. Then I read this: "the most important factor is not what program you use, what supplements you use, how you train, when you train, what you train, BUT... WHO YOU TRAIN WITH" on Ferruggia's blog. Sigh... tell me something I don't know.

Rather depressing post today... see what happens when I can't squat? On the cheery side, I think the hip issue is getting better and I'm only a couple of months away from having a bar on my shoulders again.

Conference Thoughts

2007-08-09T20:09:00.000-04:00

The university campus was gorgeous but I was running from session to session and had little time for pictures. I do like outdoor sculpture, however, and these bears were right outside the university's athletic center.

Drove the five hours back from St. Louis earlier today. I had apples and protein bars with me, so I was able to avoid the questionable food options along the way, and only stopped at rest areas to fill up on water.

The conference was educational in several ways. I was a bit shocked by the number of sedentary people of both the obese and skinny+flabby variety. I was disappointed that we didn't have access to the real gym on campus, but only to a pathetic cardio-hamster "gym" that didn't even have a 45lb bar. One of the university students I talked to told me that it's referred to as the estro-gym. Depressing but funny. :-) I was annoyed by the number of people who complained about the short distances they had to walk on the flat campus. I realize it was horrendously hot: but can't you just grab hat, sunglasses & water bottle and stop whining?

I had a chance to discuss the general out-of-shape situation with another conference attendee, a personal trainer I met (where else?) in a stairwell. I think both of us were surprised to see someone else taking the stairs. For the record, it was one (1) floor, and still most people took the elevators.

More later, but unpacking, grocery shopping, laundry and going through seven days of mail await.

Presented Without Comment

2007-08-01T18:18:00.000-04:00

Back in Kansas as of this morning, and off to a seven day conference tomorrow. The conference is taking place at a university. While attendees get information on everything from parking to laundry to food, there is nary a word on whether we can use the university's athletic facilities to train, and how we should go about getting access to them. The instructions do, however, contain the following bit of advice:

Though the campus is compact and flat, if you think you will have problems moving about campus we recommend some preplanning. Electric scooters can be available for those who might find walking around campus difficult.

The Last Jerusalem Deadlifts

2007-07-31T15:18:00.001-04:00

This post and its predecessor are being posted from Ben Gurion airport (free wireless), where I am waiting for my flight to begin boarding. I did my requisite trip through the duty free shops, and picked up this cd by Fear Fact0ry. Also checked out the airport synagogue. Not bad, but the women's section is tiny (four or five seats only) and stuck behind an unnecessarily cluttered screen.

Very hectic day today. I met one of my university professors, then headed to the Coffee Mill on Emek to meet an Australian educator who has just arrived in Israel. We had a fascinating discussion on matters educational, and I also gave him my frank opinion of several of the university professors, with the caveat that his mileage may vary. I was so frank, apparently, that the gentleman sitting at the table behind me leaned over to advise me that I was in an area of town where many people know the academic folks in question (implying that I should be careful &/or lower my voice). I told him that I didn't say anything that I wouldn't say directly to their faces.

Fortified by breakfast (generously picked up by the aforementioned educator - thanks muchly!), I headed to Pardes and dropped off the skirt that H had lent me, then said my goodbyes. Then I was off to the gym for the final training session for this trip. MiC wasn't there yet, but GiC was. Only two people were training when I arrived but things got very busy by the time I finished.

Today's Deadlifts
6x34Kg/75lbs
6x54Kg/119lbs
6x67.5Kg/148.8lbs
6x67.5Kg/148.8lbs
6x62.5Kg/137.8lbs
6x60Kg/132.3lbs

Post gym, a mad run to the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, and then home to pack the last bag. The airport cab service arrived 15 minutes earlier than expected. Kudos to roommate #2 for helping me get my things together in record time. Have you ever tried to stuff a turkey sandwich, three apples and the remnants of a yellow pepper into your purse in a hurry? Not as easy as it sounds. :-)

On the way to the airport I thought about all the things I didn't do. Either because I forgot to do them or because I didn't have enough time. Frustrating. But with some luck I'll be back here next summer for another workshop, and this time I'll give myself more time for fun stuff after the studying.

About to start boarding; got to go. Which is a good thing, because if I start thinking about how much I'm going to miss my gym...

Monday Day III: Triceps and Back

2007-07-31T12:06:00.000-04:00

Everything supersetted with ab work.

Six reps is as low as I go on this program; next week it's back to 8 rep work sets.

Skull Crushers
6x12Kg/26.5lbs
6x18.5Kg/40.8lbs
6x24Kg/52.9lbs
6x19.5Kg/43lbs
6x17.5Kg/38.6lbs
6x15Kg/33.1lbs

I saw the 12Kg tricep bar on the floor, loaded with of weight. I asked GiC if anyone was using it. Turns out it was being used by M2, who is one of my favorite gym colleagues to watch train. I didn't ask to work in because was his last set; I waited and did a bit of extra warm up. Who should pop up to helpfully inform me that I could use the 10Kg tricep bar instead? Yes, Mr. Helpful again. "I know," I said, "But I want that bar." Two things: first, I trained here for nearly two years; I know exactly how many tricep bars the gym has and what weight they are. Second, there's a reason I wanted the 12Kg bar. The bars where you grip are thicker, which has a positive effect on my grip and forearms.

When M2 was done with his set I went over to unload the other end of the bar.
"You want the 10s?" he asks. This delighted me to no end. The day I can put two 10 Kg plates on my tricep bar will be a happy day.
"No," I said, passing the 10Kg over.
"I'll leave the 5s, you're going to use those." he said.
Yes, I will. And thank you for mentioning it. :D
See? There are lots of nice guys at my gym. And only one occasional dingbat.(And I'll give that one the benefit of the doubt that he means well, annoying as he is.)

Bent Over Single Arm DB Rows
6x9Kg/19.8lbs
6x13.75Kg/30.3lbs
6x18Kg/39.7lbs
6x15Kg/33.1lbs
6x15Kg/33.1lbs
6x12Kg/26.5lbs

These felt really smooth and easy. The twinge that I had felt in my left shoulder last time I did them was gone. After my max set, M2 came over to where I was training.
"What does your boyfriend think of the lifting?" he asks.
"What boyfriend?" I ask.
We had a very nice conversation. I explained that I would expect any future boyfriend of mine to be active. He doesn't have to powerlift, necessarily, but he has to be active; no couch potato clicking away at the television.
"What if he jogs?" M2 asks.
"God help us," I said, "Look, there's all kinds of sports, there's lifting, martial arts, mountain climbing..."
"Beer drinking?" M2 mimes someone on a couch tossing back beers and I started laughing. "No belly."
"Look," I said, "I was pretty big when I started this, so if he's got a belly but he's in the process, fine."
I came up to him later and told him that he gave me an idea for an ad "Needed: 1 boyfriend. Must squat x, dealift y and bench z."

Lat PDs to Chin (wide pronated grip)
6x25Kg/55.1lbs
6x40Kg/88.2lbs
6x50Kg/110.2lbs This one was hard, but it's also the entire stack on that machine, so I was really happy to get it again.
6x45Kg/99.2lbs
6x40Kg/88.2lbs
6x40Kg/88.2lbs

When I put the handle on the machine I somehow dislodged the cable from the pulley wheel. So I asked GiC for help. It took a couple of minutes and he had to take off the handle to get the cable back in place. Mr. Helpful popped up again like a prairie dog to take the handle from GiC's hands. Then, once the cable was back in place, he came back, said "I help" and put the handle on the cable. I didn't say thank you, because at this point my patience was at a near-end. If I was staying for another month I would have a little talk with this guy, but I only have one more training session after this, and I am relatively certain he won't be there for it.

Lat PDs to chest (close grip, palms facing each other)
6x21.5Kg/47.4lbs
6x34Kg/75lbs
6x43Kg/94.8lbs
6x40Kg/88.2lbs
6x38Kg/83.8lbs
6x36Kg/79.4lbs

Finished in plenty of time to shower. My pacing was very good, and some of it was that I tried to do the ab work as close to the weights as possible, as opposed to strolling to an out of the way area to do it.

Shopping and Training

2007-07-30T05:57:00.000-04:00

Running around doing last minute errands. Saw one of my professors first thing yesterday morning, then went with my friend H. to do some Judaica shopping. I bought a lovely hand-woven talit on Yoel Salomon Street. Then I changed into a skirt (generously lent to me by H) and long sleeved shirt which I bought from the clearance rack of the bat ayin store by the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, and we headed to the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Meah Shearim. I found another siddur (prayer book) to add to my collection and a lace-edged challah cover.

Got to the gym yesterday night but didn't have time to finish my session, so I went in this morning and made up the exercises I missed on Friday and Sunday. Last night I ran into the Mr. Helpful turkey again. This time he came by to tell me that my position on the lying cable rows wasn't right and wouldn't I be more comfortable if I was at a different angle to the machine. I told him that the angle in this case didn't matter. He said that I was making the exercise too hard. I asked him if he comes to the gym to rest or to work, then walked off without waiting for a response. Nitwit.

On the other hand, this morning the deadlifting guy from Thursday was at the gym while I was training, and he was doing absolutely beautiful dips with a 20Kg/45lbs plate hanging off him. I had come in just as he was finishing his bench work. The gym was blissfully quiet, and I don't mean empty. I mean everyone there was training without blithering. I'm planning the regular Day III: Back session tonight, which will leave the deadlifts for tomorrow before I leave.

I took a look at the second program that MiC gave me, the one to be used once the hip injury is cleared up, and discovered that on Day I: Chest, the regular pushups get replaced by pushups with hands close together. :-) Hello triceps.

Friday Morning Bench

2007-07-27T11:50:00.000-04:00

I did a half session this morning because I have several errands to run before I fly back to North America next week, and almost everything closes early on Friday because of Shabbat. Things are made more difficult by the fact that all the phone numbers I needed were on the defunct cell phone. The plan is to do the second half of the Day I: Chest session on Sunday morning, and the full Day II: Quads session on Sunday night.

Flat BP
6x22.5Kg/49.6lbs
6x36.5Kg/80.5lbs
7x45Kg/99.2lbs
7x40Kg/88.2lbs
7x37.5Kg/82.7lbs
7x35Kg/77.2lbs

MiC told me that next time I do BP I should do two sets at the beginning with just the bar for technique. Apparently I lost my form on the last rep of my max set and my chest went down instead of up.

Deadlifts and Dead Cell Phones

2007-07-26T16:42:00.000-04:00

Today my cell phone stopped working due to an unfortunate accident involving water, and then I got to the apartment and discovered the internet connection wasn't working. So here I am at a remarkably noisy Cafe Rehavia at quarter to midnight checking e-mail. There's no land line in the apartment since all the flatmates have cell phones. Or, in my case, had a cell phone.

Between the stress about the (now averted) strike and the stress about suddenly having no means of communication, I suspect any strength gains I made were wiped out by cortisol surges. Kidding, of course, but my concentration at the gym was off. I did get myself on track once I got to the deadlifts, though.

Today's Deads
6x32.5Kg/71.7lbs
6x52.5Kg/115.7lbs
7x65Kg/143.3lbs
7x60Kg/132.3lbs
7x60Kg/132.3lbs
7x60Kg/132.3lbs
The last set really should have been 55Kg or 57.5Kg, but I stuck with the blue 20Kg plates because I was working in with another person and didn't want to keep him waiting while I swapped the 20Kg for the 15Kg. He seemed reluctant enough to work in with me as it was, but warmed up to the idea once it dawned on him I really didn't mind taking plates on and off.

Eight Hours Ahead

2007-07-25T16:50:00.000-04:00

Ignore the timestamp; it's showing Kansas and here in Jerusalem I'm eight hours ahead. We had the closing dinner of the workshop tonight, even though we still have a day to go. The reason for this scheduling is so that people who need to fly out tomorrow don't miss out on the closing dinner. At the moment, of course, it's anyone's guess whether there will be any flying at all. There's a general strike looming in the public sector, and the airport is just one of the many things that could be shut down.

After the closing dinner I went to train and tried not to think about airport closures. It was a good session.

Day III: Triceps & Back

Everything supersetted with ab work.

Skull Crushers
6x10Kg/22lbs
6x16.5Kg/36.4lbs
7x20Kg/44lbs
7x20Kg/44lbs
7x17.5Kg/38.6lbs
7x15Kg/33lbs

Bent Over Single Arm DB Rows
6x8Kg/17.6lbs
6x12Kg/26.5lbs
7x15.5Kg/34.2lbs
7x15.5Kg/34.2lbs
7x12Kg/26.5lbs
7x12Kg/26.5lbs

Lat PDs to Chin (wide pronated grip)
6x24Kg/52.9lbs
6x38Kg/83.8lbs
7x48Kg/105.8lbs
7x46Kg/101.4lbs
7x41Kg/90.4lbs
7x40Kg/88.2lbs

Lat PDs to chest (close grip, palms facing each other)
6x21Kg/46.3lbs
6x32Kg/70.5lbs
7x41Kg/90.4lbs
7x38Kg/83.8lbs
7x38Kg/83.8lbs
7x35Kg/77.2lbs

Fasting and Films

2007-07-24T15:40:00.000-04:00

No workout today due to the fast, but I did train last night just as the fast was starting, so I didn't drink anything during or after the workout. Not something to do on a regular basis, obviously, but I had taken in enough water during the day and felt pretty strong during the session. I asked MiC about the curl variations because they felt too easy, and it turned out that I wasn't doing them quite right. Once I fixed the form they got a lot harder.

As part of the curriculum workshop we had a morning lecture on Dealing with Death and Loss in the Classroom. Following this I went downtown with friends to Beit Avichai, where they had a Tisha b'Av film marathon on the themes of Love and Baseless Hatred. (According to Jewish tradition, while the first Temple was destroyed due to the sins of murder, idolatry and forbidden sexual relations, the second Temple was destroyed due to the sin of baseless hatred.) I saw Neilah by Zohar Markman, Eicha by Eliezer Shapiro, one episode of the Israeli tv series Merchak Negiah (Touching Distance) about a Russian family and an ultra Orthodox family, and one part of Ruach Kadim (Kaddim Wind), about the experiences of Moroccan Jews. There were discussions with the directors &/or writers, and a lively and opinionated Israeli audience. I didn't stay for the last session, but the event was very worthwhile. All the films made me think, and I need to look into how I get permission to show films to my students. Whom do I need to call, where do I send the royalty checks and so on.

9th of Av

2007-07-23T11:34:00.000-04:00

It's the eve of Tisha B'Av - the Ninth of Av - here in Jerusalem. Tisha b'Av is a fast day on the Jewish calendar. It's a sorrowful day, commemorating the destruction of the Jewish Temples and Jerusalem in 586BCE (by the Babylonians) and 70CE (by the Romans). Services feature Kinot - elegies, as well as the entire Eicha scroll (Lamentations).

How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary! Lamentations 1:1

Echoes of TurkeyGuy

2007-07-23T02:47:00.000-04:00

Remember TurkeyGuy? (Jerusalem TG, Kansas TG) He's long gone, but fear not, there's a new incarnation of him at the gym. I'm calling this one HelpfulGuy. He must have joined in the past year, either that or he never trained at the same time I did. Last week he kept coming over to "help". He asked me twice if what I was doing (abs, usually) doesn't hurt, and wouldn't it be better to do it a different way. Then he points out the incline board and tells me I should do abs on that. I told him that that was not the exercise that man-in-charge wrote down for me. Then he tried removing weights from my bar, and I just looked at him and said, "no help". Friday was funnier that the rest of the days, because he was benching while I was doing the aforementioned deadlifts, and from the corner of my eye I could see the wheels in his head turning. Dingbat.

I'm feeling civic, so here are my Simple Rules for TurkeyGuys:

1. Do not remove weights from the bar for me. If I loaded it on the bar, I can take it off the bar.
2. Do not put weights on the bar for me. If I couldn't load it, how the heck would I lift it?
(Exception to #1 and #2: if we are sharing the rack, then obviously for reasons of speed and efficiency we'd be loading and unloading each other's weights. Except that TurkeyGuys, on the whole, don't offer or ask to work in.)
3. If we've been training at the same gym for less than six months, &/or I've never seen you do a leg exercise of any sort, don't offer me advice.
4. "Doesn't it hurt?" is a stupid question.
5. If you are using deadlift straps, do not leave them on for your entire workout. You look like a little girl's tricycle, with all sorts of ribbons waving from it.

Strong As Samson

2007-07-23T02:32:00.000-04:00

Not quite. But he's on my mind because as part of the curriculum workshop we had a field trip last Thursday: "In the footsteps of Shimshon," looking at the biblical narrative that appears in Shoftim (Judges). We didn't get back to Jerusalem till after 7pm, and by the time I got to the apartment, ate and drank something and grabbed the gym bag... it was 8:50pm when I arrived at the gym. I didn't finish everything I needed to do, so I came in Friday to do the deadlifts and ham curls.

Friday Deads (supersetted with curls)
6x31.5kg/69.4lbs
6x47.5kg/104.7lbs
8x62.5kg/137.8lbs
8x62.5kg/137.8lbs
8x60kg/132.3lbs
8x57.5/126.8lbs

The new program, which I will post soon, is still a four day split. The changes are: no squatting until the hip recovers; no cardio intervals (ditto), a 1/3 increase in ab work; and, the last set on each exercise is now a 4th work set rather than a cool-down/technique 50% set.

I need to do something about my abysmal pace. MiC says that if I didn't rest at all, I should be able to get through a session in 45-50 minutes, and that I should aim for 1 hour and 10 minutes, but no way should I be over 1 hour 30 minutes. I tend to take my time, and the main reason is that I love being in the gym.

By Me, Elsewhere

2007-07-20T10:35:00.000-04:00

My story of going back to my gym in Jerusalem is up at Scott Bird's Straight to the Bar. Enjoy!

Sartorial Offense and Defense

2007-07-17T15:40:00.000-04:00

I wore one of my favorite t-shirts to the workshop today. One person, a former classmate whom I had not seen for two years until yesterday, decided that God appointed her the sartorial police. She came up to me and said, out of the blue:

"Your shirt is offensive to me."
"Oh?" I said.
"Do you wear that to school?" she sniffed.
"Actually I wear business attire to school," I said, "What do you wear?"
"I work with little kids, so I'm always in paint, I wear jeans and this," she pointed to her potato-sack orange dress.
"Ok," I said, thinking she would go away, but she persisted.
"I find it offensive that you wear a shirt with ways to kill people on it." she said.
"Well, if I walk down the street and see you being attacked, and I have a gun, I promise not to defend you, deal?" I said sweetly.
That shut her up for about three seconds, and I walked past her and into the room where our next session was.

You know, there's a reason I didn't keep in touch with every single person with whom I studied. This is the same genius who found it necessary to declare loudly when she saw me on Tuesday, "You're half the size you were!" Whatever. I wasn't planning to wear the shirt again, but I'm going to make sure I wear it at least once more if not twice. Maybe even to the closing dinner. :-)

Good gym session tonight. I felt really nauseous when I began, because my abs and obliques are very sore from Monday's session and this session had the same amount of ab work. Cable rows, machine bicep curls, limited range bb hack squats to bench, and leg extensions, all the while staring longingly at the squat rack. One of the taller guys was doing beautiful squats, breaking parallel, and every time I turned around he had two more plates on the bar. And I forgot to mention the Anglo guy who was there on Monday, doing textbook conventional deads with metronomic rhythm and about 360 lbs. Turns out he knows one of my colleagues from Kansas. Small world.

Landed

2007-07-16T15:19:00.000-04:00

Landed in Jerusalem last week. Sorry for the disappearing act. Things were like a ghastly Bosch painting here for awhile (yes, I'm being dramatic, so?).

I went to the university last week to straighten out some MA details: for example, where, pray tell, are grades for papers I handed in over a year ago? The profs in question were very nice, said they would check and if they don’t find anything I can send them copies and they’ll grade them. Ok, great. I met with other profs and my academic advisor, and all was going well. Then, a day later, a form e-mail from the university lands in my inbox, saying that as I wasn’t registered in my last year, my coursework is not recorded and they won’t give me my MA. *pause* *deep breath* WTF? Where the heck did my tuition payment go then? The invisible bureaucrats slush fund? I sent them a polite Canadian e-mail pointing out that I have a receipt, as well as an e-mail from the financial person who sent me the receipt. As no one was in the office on Friday and Saturday, I had to stress until Sunday to get the e-mail that said that the issue was fixed. No apology for stressing me out for an entire weekend, of course. Meanwhile I was pacing around the apartment with smoke coming out of my ears. Roommate #1 says I should be grateful they bothered to fix it. Bureaucracy here being what it is, they could have continued to make me miserable for weeks on end and forced me to dig up every shred of paper I got from them.

I went back to my gym, and I'll be posting a detailed account of the return tomorrow... but not here. I'm guest blogging elsewhere and this will be my first post there.

Jerusalem is wonderful and I wish I had more time here. The only downside is that I can't squat for six months. If anyone but man-in-charge had told me this I would ignore the advice, but since he has forgotten more about training than I will ever know, I’m listening. He designed a new program for me that will take the hip issue into account. I’ve been in the gym five days thus far, and the only reason I wasn't there this evening is that we were at the workshop till 5:30pm and then had a group dinner at our teacher's home which it would have been rude to skip. More about the new program once I've gone through the entire thing once. For now, I'll just say that it involves 30% more abwork. Ow.

I took this pic on the weekend. I like this sculpture very much. I think it's supposed to be a fountain, but doesn't have any water due to conservation; it would all evaporate in the heat.

Counting Down

2007-07-08T00:01:00.000-04:00

Neither boxing nor mma tonight; busy cleaning and packing. It will be quiet here for a bit, and if all goes well, the next post will be from Jerusalem. :-)

Laundry

2007-07-05T22:51:00.000-04:00

More medical tests today and four loads of laundry.

The hot dog eating contest that was on the news this week reminded me of my all time favourite short story, Damon Runy0n's "A Piece of Pie": audio files of an abridged radio version here, but the full written version is much better. I was eleven when I first read it. The story describes an eating contest with a female contestant.It was the first time I had ever encountered a large - she is described as having a face like a town clock - vibrant, female literary character that ate a lot with unabashed pleasure, Miss Violette Shumberger. She also gets the man (although I didn't notice that when I was eleven). I can't think of any other such character in literature.

Good reading elsewhere:

Since I've had multiple interactions with health care providers this week the subject is still top of mind. Junkfo0d Science drills down into health insurance numbers and Asymetrical Informati0n ponders a plan and also points to this commentary, where I found this quote: "...nobody, here or in other countries, wants real insurance. Instead, everybody's idea of health coverage is to be insulated from costs." I've been thinking about this a lot lately. What percentage of my income is my health worth to me?

The Agitator on school nutrition programs.

VDH on rising food prices.

Down on the Farm

2007-07-05T02:09:00.000-04:00

Two articles about the farm bill, both at the Renegade Lunch Lady. Found the first one via a post at The Jew and the Carrot, and the second one while browsing the RRL after reading the first.

One article was unnecessarily snarky but somewhat informative:

"The farm bill sets the rules for the American food system and helps to subsidize obesity. It rewards growers of big commodity crops like corn, soybeans and wheat — the foundation of our junk food nation. So, a bag of highly processed orange puff balls with no nutritional value is cheaper than a tomato or a peach."

More informative and less snarky article here.

The 2002 farm bill provided $143.3 billion for nutrition programs like Food Stamps, $16.8 billion for conservation and $67.6 billion to subsidize the planting of certain crops. Almost all of the subsidies usually go to growers of five commodities: soybeans, corn, rice, wheat and cotton. Fruit and vegetable farmers do not get subsidies.

For more facts and more in-depth analysis, check out the farm subsidies database at the EWG, as well as James's & Griswold's analysis: Freeing the Farm.

Happy 4th of July

2007-07-04T22:22:00.000-04:00

If you're not American and wondering what the holiday is about, you can read the Declaration of Independence here.

Gym One was closed today in honour of the 4th of July, and I didn't have the patience for Gym Two with its ongoing renovations, no heavy bag and cardio hamsters. Physical activity consisted of assembling three black wire shelving units, moving the two wood shelving units, and re-shelving all my books and magazines. I met a colleague for a short study session then went home and continued the cleaning enterprise. I don't want to come back to a messy apartment. Also, while I'm away maintenance is supposed to come by and paint the no-longer-leaking but stained and warped ceiling.

While cleaning I listened to old episodes of Roussell's podcast: Max-Out Radi0. I started with episdoe four, which is a Cosgr0ve interview on fat loss. It answered some questions that I had after reading a few of his (AC's) articles.

Out of Left Field

2007-07-03T20:46:00.000-04:00

Saw a new doctor this week for a physical. When I got on the scale at the doctor's office I wore jeans and shoes and had coins in my pocket. Can I project "who cares" any more clearly? I have delightful blood pressure: 90/60. I got blood work and the usual and sundry tests scheduled, and only had one surprise, which was doc saying "I want you to have a thyroid ultrasound". My first thought was, Thyroid? isn't that the excuse lazy people use for not exercising and eating clean? Then I shrugged mentally - what's another test.

In any case, I won't have the results of anything until after I come back from my trip, so I am not thinking about it right now. My standard reaction to this sort of doctor comment would be to drop everything and spend the next two weeks studying the endocrine system; that lovely physiology textbook I bought awhile back has 38 pages on it. However, I can't afford to do that; too much stuff needs doing before, during and after my summer workshop.

Speaking of the summer workshop, I received the schedule and discovered that I am leading a session on "Technology in the Classroom". Now, it is one of my areas of interest and I love teaching and I've mentioned to the people running the workshop that I could do such a session, BUT, no one had actually e-mailed me or called to say "Mich, would you like to lead this session?". They just put me on the schedule and sent it out to all participants.

The workshop days are absolutely packed. I won't have time for anything except studying and training, and it looks like training will have to be done in the morning, because several of the workshop days have evening activities scheduled.

Leaves, Branches and Trees

2007-07-01T17:15:00.000-04:00

Stressing while counting down to the trip. Said stress is reflected in my nutritional choices, which are subsequently reflected in my skin. I could play connect the dots on my face right now. I need to clean the house, remove perishables from the fridge, get travelers checks, pack...

Met colleague this morning at Gym Two for another session. Not a useful gym visit for me on the training side. If I'm showing someone else how to use the weights or explaining why one should not structure a leg workout around the adductor machine, I can't get my own training session done. However, it was useful on the instructing/explaining side. It's good to articulate why and how I do things and I get to pay forward the help I've gotten from other people.

Gym Two had the usual assortment of characters: the bicep curling teenager with three variations of curls, no less; pair of older gentlemen doing bench and more bench in between discussions of cocktails in Cancun; and, the skinny guy with the weight belt grunting under a 95lb bench press. Can't beat this gym for sheer entertainment value. :-)

Gym One is rather empty these days due to lots of people on vacation (I hope). I'm sufficiently concerned about its financial viability that I feel uncomfortable asking them to freeze my membership for the month I'm going to be away. I do not like training in an empty gym. It's so much easier for me, psychologically, when there are other people around. I wish I had a training partner. First thing I'll do when I come back from my trip is post a little sign at both gyms looking for one.

"Acerbic Canadian seeks hard working and focused training partner who can squat below parallel without a Smith Machine. Must promise to never upright row my bench presses. Power cage bicep curlers need not apply."

Needs work. I'll get on it in August. :-)

And since I'm on the subject of procrastination, in this post by IATGN she points to this article about OCPD. I printed it out last week and still haven't finished reading and highlighting. Very very hard for me to read. Particularly this line:

An extremely difficult time making decisions (always looking for the correct choice) contributes to procrastination. Frequently even starting a task seems impossible, due to a need to sort out the priorities correctly.

Seven months to choose a new gym? Check. Five hours creating the perfect twenty minute classroom activity? Check. Stumbling through my academic career paralyzed by indecision? Check. Agreeing to write articles for a great web site and deleting everything I write before uploading because nothing measures up? Check. And this line perfectly describes my twenty+ obese years and their aftermath: "The forest is missed while examining each leaf, of each branch, of each tree."

Weak By Choice

2007-06-29T00:57:00.001-04:00

I went to a funeral a few years ago. The ground was damp, and as we walked across the cemetery to the grave site, one of the elderly women slipped and fell. I found out later that the fall was the beginning of the end for her. Apparently she broke her hip and never recovered. I was reminded of this when I came across this New Yorker article about aging. I found it via this post at Dynamic Fitness, and after reading the entire article, I keep coming back to the piece he quoted:

Each year, about three hundred and fifty thousand Americans fall and break a hip. Of those, forty per cent end up in a nursing home, and twenty per cent are never able to walk again. The three primary risk factors for falling are poor balance, taking more than four prescription medications, and muscle weakness. (emphasis mine)

Muscle weakness. For the vast majority of people, preventable or treatable. According to this article about strength training for the elderly: "Osteoporosis substantially affects roughly 20% of the population, whereas muscle weakness affects virtually all seniors." How much media coverage does osteoporosis get vs. muscle weakness? Maybe because you can't swallow a drug to treat the latter. You have to actually get off your butt.

As a Canadian, I often look at health care in terms of "what are my tax dollars paying for"? How much money could my provincial system save by reducing the number of falling-related injuries?

Unless God decides to send my bashert sometime soon, I will likely age and die alone. Fine by me, as long as I'm mobile and independent, but neither mobility nor independence is compatible with being weak-by-choice. Being weak-by-choice needs to become socially unacceptable, rather than a condition that evokes sympathy.

Two more links: a profile of Dr. Maria Fiatarone-Singh who pioneered research on strength-training for the elderly. Money quotes: "Being a couch potato is lethal" and "It's never too late to start. Lots of people are starting in their 80s and 90s." She's also quoted in this article, dated 1993(!). The information has been out there for some time. What are we doing with it?

Rest Day

2007-06-28T22:57:00.000-04:00

No workout at Gym Two last night. 15 minutes on the rower, then I spent the next hour and a half showing my colleague how to use the weights. I enjoyed it very much; it's just another type of teaching, really. I will start studying for a personal training cert (I'm thinking CSCS) once I get back from my trip. Never hurts to have another piece of paper on one's wall. :-)

No training today. I got the list of classes I'm teaching next year. I will have grades 6, 7, 8, 11 and 12 which is a nice combination. Met one colleague for lunch, then met another colleague for a study session this evening. We looked at Avot, which is a collection of sayings by various sages from the Mishnaic period (around 70-200CE).

There's this M00re documentary film about US health care opening tomorrow... If you're going to see it, I suggest this short film about the Canadian health care system as a reality check. And if you have extra time, read this summary of the Cha0ulli case.

Gym One and Gym Two

2007-06-27T16:48:00.000-04:00

I'm going to Gym Two tonight with one of my colleagues. Gym Two is renovating and putting in silly machines that tell you what to do. I didn't want to take the chance that whatever equipment I needed will be unavailable, so I went to Gym One this morning and got my Day I session done. Didn't eat enough this morning so I got home after training and ate the fridge, figuratively. Now that Day I is done, I'm planning to use tonight as GPP: rowing machine, farmers walk, that sort of thing.

Training Day I: Chest/Push

Flat BP (abwork b/w sets: stomach vacs)
6x50lbs
6x80lbs
6x100lbs
6x90lbs
6x85lbs
12x50lbs

Push ups leaning against a bar (abwork b/w sets: leg lifts on bench)
6xL3
6xside supports
6xfloor
6xside supports
6xside supports
12xL4

Single arm pec deck (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step f/b)
6x30lbs
6x50lbs
6x63lbs
6x60lbs
6x55lbs
12x30lbs

Skull crushers w/ tricep bar (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step s/s)
6x22lbs
6x32lbs
6x37lbs
6x32lbs
6x32lbs
12x22lbs

Useless Agent Update and Stuff Elsewhere

2007-06-26T22:56:00.000-04:00

Remember the useless travel agent with whom I was arguing several weeks ago? She sends me an e-mail advising of a "minor schedule change". Except that this "minor" change lands me in Atlanta 43 minutes before my flight to Israel departs. Not wishing to deal with her again, I called the airline directly and changed my Kansas-Atlanta flight so that I have three hours in between. Just in case there's a delay somewhere. Then I hear from one of my Orthodox friends that he called his airline directly and discovered that his request for kosher meals never made it to their computer. He would have ended up fasting for twelve + hours.

I visited the EFS site today. They have women's t-shirts now, which I will be delighted to buy as soon as they put up a size chart, because, as we all know, women's t-shirt sizes vary wildly by manufacturer, style and barometric pressure. I, for example, am a Han3s small and an American Appar3l large. And I'm fine being either one, as long as I know that the shirt will fit me before I put money down.

Anyhow, some time back, Dave Tate decided to get under 5% BF. Check out the before & after shots. Wow. And over in the Q&A section, Jim Wendler (10% BF) shares some of his diet philosophies:

4. If you eat something and it tastes like shit, don't eat it.
5. If you eat something and you FEEL like shit, don't eat it.
[...]
7. Eating vegetables and fruits is good, but only the ones that taste OK. I'm not going to live my life eating crap.
8. It's easier and cheaper to eat clean than it is to eat like crap.
9. (Amendment to #8) You should eat crap sometimes. We all have our Diet Demons.

Going to their site always makes me smile. However, it also costs me money because I discover more things I want. This used to only happen to me in bookstores.

Shaking My Head

2007-06-26T20:01:00.000-04:00

I made the mistake of checking the web for news "just one more time" before going to sleep last night, and ended up staying awake and on-line till 3:40am, following the Ben0it story. I was a wrestling fan for a long time, until I gave up television and the WWF/E gutted the women's division and replaced simple good vs. evil story lines with raunch & sleaze story lines. Still gleaned info from the web occasionally, and the knowledge came in handy connecting with some middle schoolers who were shocked to find that I knew anything about it. So to say that I was stunned by yesterday's news would be an understatement. I enjoyed Ben0it's work because he worked hard consistently in the ring, regardless of whether he faced a beginner or a fellow star, and because he came across as a quiet, no frills Canadian. And now this. I can't fathom the evil that is needed to murder one's spouse and child. Watched the various tribute clips recorded before details had emerged, this one was hardest to watch.

So today was unexpectedly difficult. I got very little done before I got to the gym and when I was finally in the gym I kept losing concentration during my sets.

Training Day IV: Hams and Other Stuff

Bicep curls (abwork b/w sets: stomach vacs)
6x17lbs
6x27lbs
7x32lbs
7x27lbs
7x22lbs
12x17lbs

Lying cable curls (abwork b/w sets: leg lifts bench)
6x35lbs
6x60lbs
7x73lbs Used a 3lb db on top of the weight stack.
7x70lbs
7x60bs
12x35lbs

Deads (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step f/b)
6x65lbs
6x105lbs
7x130lbs
7x120lbs
7x115lbs
12x65lbs

Ham Curls (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step s/s)
6x40lbs
6x60lbs
7x80lbs
7x75lbs One of the strolling women - by which I mean the ones that stroll from machine to machine and do symbolic sets while gaping at 0prah - came by as I was doing these and said to me dismissively: "Circuit training, I used to do that, jumping around." Ok then. Thank you for sharing. :-)
7x75lbs
12x40lbs

Wet Ceilings and Quads

2007-06-25T22:50:00.000-04:00

Stayed home all morning and maintenance did not come by. I went to the office and the lady was apologetic and said she'd tell them again. So I head out about my daily business, get home late and find a note from maintenance on my door: "The people above you are showering without shower curtain. When ceiling dry we will paint."

Charming neighbors I have, no? Although I am not at all sure that maintenance knows what they're doing. Their note has a 9:00am time noted on it, which is a complete lie because I was home at 9:00am. So does that mean I can shower without endangering the ceiling, or that I need to stay out of the shower until the painting is done? Guess who's paying another visit to the management office tomorrow morning? *sigh*

Training Day III: Quads and Other Stuff

Lying Cable Rows (abwork b/w sets: lying sv)
6x35lbs
6x50lbs
7x66lbs
7x63lbs
7x60lbs
12x35lbs

Upright DB Rows (abwork b/w sets: side curls off roman chair)
6x12lbs
6x20lbs
7x25lbs
7x20lbs
7x15bs
12x12lbs

Squats (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step f/b)
6x50lbs I'm under the bar, focused, braced and just about to unrack when gym person comes by and chirps at me "Do you need a spotter?" And the first thing that comes out of my mouth is "For this?" First, what is the world coming to when people assume a woman can't handle 50lbs? And second, I'm in a power cage, the whole point of which is that I can let the supports catch the bar if it gets too heavy for me.
6x80lbs
7x100lbs
7x95lbs
7x85lbs
12x50lbs

Step Ups (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step s/s)
6x pinch gripping two 10 lbs plates (one per hand)
6x holding a 25 lbs plate
7x holding a 35 lbs plate
7x holding a 25 lbs plate
7x pinch gripping two 10 lbs plates (one per hand)
12x holding a 12 lbs db in each hand.

Random Non Fitness Thoughts

2007-06-24T18:38:00.001-04:00

If you're looking for thought-provoking e-cards about a subject that receives little news coverage, check out the selection at Sokwanele. Have a look at their blog, too.

What kind of silly people are running Canadian schools these days? Any teacher worth her or his salt would be thrilled to have "research obsessed" students. (Contrast with playstation-obsessed, tv-obsessed, TeenV0gue-obsessed... you get the idea.)

Sunday Back Pull

2007-06-24T17:10:00.000-04:00

The session seems to go faster than usual, maybe because I was distracted by thinking of the plumbing problems. When I got home the office had still not called me back, so I walked in there and inquired politely when they thought I might be able to take showers in my own apartment again. A side effect of having worked in complaint resolution and customer service many moons ago is that I tend to be cheery, civil and conciliatory when a normal person would be breaking furniture. The young woman apologized and said she would send a gentleman tomorrow to look at the ceiling.

Let's look at the bright side: in order to have my daily shower, I must hit the gym seven days a week.

Training Day II: Back/Pull

Lat PD to chin (abwork b/w sets: standing sv)
6x45lbs
6x75lbs
7x95lbs
7x95lbs
7x90lbs
12x45lbs

Lat PD to chest (abwork b/w sets: elbow fwd curls)
6x45lbs
6x73lbs
7x93lbs
7x85lbs
7x80lbs
12x45lbs

Bent over db rows (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step f/b)
6x15lbs
6x25lbs
3x7x30lbs Ok, I think I can move to the 35lbs db now.
12x15lbs

Seated rows (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step s/s)
6x35lbs
6x58lbs
7x75lbs
7x75lbs
7x65lbs
12x35lbs

Having done all that, I remembered that I had intended to do inverted rows. I went to the nearby bar and managed five. But, I was tired and I had no one watching my form, so I don't know if they were close to what they were supposed to look like. I put a little note to try them in a day or two, once the back rests a bit.

Gym was quiet: one woman hamstering away on a treadmill and one trainer (in proper footwear) and her shrinking client.

Plumbing

2007-06-23T21:08:00.000-04:00

At home for most of the day on Friday, waiting for maintenance to come and fix a leaking toilet. This was their second attempt. The first attempt, which took two phone calls on my part, succeeded in making the leak bigger. Maintenance arrived just as I had used up my last towel to sop up the expanding water puddle. I was also waiting for UPS to deliver a vacuum cleaner I had ordered online. They arrived a few hours later. The reason I had to be at home is that they needed a signature, and for whatever reason, the property management office will no longer hold packages for residents. I suspect it is a combination of people not coming in promptly to pick up their stuff, someone complaining about a damaged package, and stupidity.

I am usually very happy to spend my Friday evenings on my own, but last night I actually wished I had a Shabbat dinner invitation from someone. On the other hand, I was a tired and probably would not have been mesmerizing company.

From water puddles on the floor to water dripping from the ceiling: this morning my bathroom ceiling began dripping water. I called the property management office and discovered there's no maintenance person around on Saturdays. The woman suggested I leave a message for the emergency maintenance. So I did, and at 2:30pm the gentleman called me back and told me that he'll come by "later this afternoon". It's now 8:00pm and he has yet to show up. It's possible that he was held up at another job, but a phone call with an update would have been nice. I called the number from which he had called me earlier and got a woman who said she would take my number and have him call me back. As of right now (9:01pm) nothing. So I have spent over six hours sitting at home waiting for assistance. I am not impressed with this apartment complex right now.

Flip Flops

2007-06-21T20:17:00.000-04:00

What would possess a personal trainer to show up for work wearing flip flops? It just struck me as having no respect for your profession. First, the gym does not have a pool, second, what are you modeling to your client regarding proper gym attire, and third, you're just asking for a plate to drop on your toes.

Training

Day I: Chest/Push

Flat BP (abwork b/w sets: stomach vacs)
6x45lbs
6x75lbs
7x95lbs
7x85lbs
7x85lbs
12x45lbs

Push ups leaning against a bar (abwork b/w sets: leg lifts on bench)
6xL4
6xL1
7xLS bar resting against side supports - hard to explain, last level before floor
7xLS
7xL1
12xL4

Single arm pec deck (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step f/b)
6x30lbs
6x45lbs
7x55lbs
7x55lbs
7x50lbs
12x30lbs

Skull crushers w/ tricep bar (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step s/s)
6x22lbs
6x27lbs
7x32lbs
7x32lbs
7x27lbs
12x22lbs

Wednesday Training

2007-06-20T16:20:00.000-04:00

Another morning session. It works well as long as I am up and about at least two hours before I get to the gym.
Training

Day IV: Hams and Other Stuff

Bicep curls (abwork b/w sets: stomach vacs)
6x17lbs
6x22lbs
3x8x27lbs Kept all three sets the same b/c I didn't want to increment by 5lbs.
12x17lbs

Lying cable curls (abwork b/w sets: leg lifts bench)
6x35lbs
6x60lbs
8x73lbs Used a 3lb db on top of the weight stack.
8x60lbs
8x60bs
12x35lbs

Deads (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step f/b)
6x60lbs
6x100lbs
8x125lbs
8x115lbs
8x115lbs
12x60lbs

Ham Curls (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step s/s)
6x35lbs
6x55lbs
3x8x70lbs Again, kept three sets the same b/c I didn't want to increment by 5lbs.
12x35lbs

Studying with my colleague again tonight. More of the book of Exodus.

Tuesday Training and Her Majesty Rocks

2007-06-19T14:41:00.000-04:00

Decided to do a morning session rather than a nighttime session, so I headed to the gym early. There were six people there, three trainers, three clients. Again, I was annoyed by some people's propensity to leave the bench inside the squat rack when done. Oh well, more GPP for me. :-) I did take food with me, and promptly forgot that I had it.

Training
Day III: Quads and Other Stuff

Lying Cable Rows (abwork b/w sets: lying sv)
6x30lbs
6x50lbs
8x63lbs I decided that 70 was too big of a jump. Also figured out where to add a db to the machine stack - on the side of one of the plates.
8x60lbs
8x60lbs
12x35lbs

Upright DB Rows (abwork b/w sets: side curls off roman chair)
6x10lbs
6x15lbs
8x20lbs
8x20lbs The gym set goes from 20 to 25 and nothing in between. I didn't want to make the jump to the pair of 25lbs dbs just yet.
8x15bs
12x10lbs

Squats (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step f/b)
6x50lbs
8x75lbs This was supposed to be six reps; I was having fun and forgot to stop.
8x95lbs
8x90lbs
8x80lbs
12x50lbs

Step Ups (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step s/s)
6x no weight
6x holding 10 lbs plate
8x holding 25 lbs plate
8x holding 25 lbs plate
8x holding 10 lbs plate
12x no weight. Losing steam by the end. Getting hungry, too.

The rest of this post is a current events rant: I like the Queen of England, and not just because she's my official head of state or because she can fix cars but because of decisions like this. And as for some countries' reaction, puhleeze, like the suicide bombers need a reason. As Hitchens put it so well back in 2005 (emphasis mine):

"We know very well what the "grievances" of the jihadists are. The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London. The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won't abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music, and of most representational art. The grievance of the existence of Hinduism. The grievance of East Timor's liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a licence to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way.

(2nd link via Instapundit)
p.s. Perhaps Pakistan's complaining minister of religious affairs should get busy fixing this and this? (Note: links contain graphic pictures.)

Woof

2007-06-18T22:20:00.000-04:00

Gym was pretty quiet. Two young guys, a personal trainer, her client and the client's dog. I think it was an Irish Setter, but I'm not sure. Best gym addition ever. I wish I had a dog, but I can't afford the financial outlay (pet rent, dog food, vet bills and so on). I'll think about it once I manage to leave work at a decent hour for six months straight. :-)

Training

Day II: Back/Pull

Lat PD to chin (abwork b/w sets: standing sv)
6x45lbs
6x75lbs
8x93lbs
8x90lbs
8x85lbs
12x45lbs

Lat PD to chest (abwork b/w sets: elbow fwd curls)
6x45lbs
6x70lbs
8x90lbs
8x85lbs
8x75lbs
12x45lbs

Bent over db rows (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step f/b)
6x15lbs
6x25lbs
8x30lbs
8x25lbs
8x25lbs
12x15lbs

Seated rows (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step s/s)
6x35lbs
6x55lbs
8x73lbs
8x70lbs
8x60lbs
12x35lbs

M@rla's post today reminded me that I should try inverted rows. Next time.

After the gym I headed to a local coffee shop to meet a colleague for a study session. We spent two hours on various medieval commentaries on the book of Exodus, particularly Rashi, Rashbam and Ibn Ezra.

On the music side, two artists that I heard for the first time this week (yes, I live under a rock, so?): First, via the slide show at Chaotic Fat, I learned of Jenny Owen Y0ungs. Second, via Stinn's video of his recent Winnipeg meet (two PR's, cool!) I learned of The Mars Volta.

Cleaning and Furniture

2007-06-17T20:52:00.000-04:00

I got a lot of cleaning done; amazing how big my living room looks when it isn't cluttered. Also scrubbed the bathroom, swiffered the floors, and took the newspapers to the recycling bins which I discovered are located at local churches, synagogues and schools. My colleague changed his mind at the last minute about giving me a futon, but I did get a small desk and a coffee table. The coffee table is very sturdy and just the right height for bench dips.

Nothing Doing

2007-06-16T23:38:00.000-04:00

Felt lethargic all day. Forced myself to go to the gym but things did not turn out as planned. I had planned a Day II: Back/Pull and started with lat pulldowns. 6x45lbs, fine, 6x75lbs felt uncommonly heavy and the planned 10x95lbs turned out to be 0x95lbs. It would not budge, which is ridiculous because 10x90lbs on Monday was smooth and easy.

I had the gym to myself, which, for a change, was not a good thing. I like having other people around. If they're more advanced, I'm motivated to compete and demonstrate that I'm a serious lifter too. And if they're less advanced, I'm motivated to set a good example. Anyhoo, since the weight - for no logical reason - was not moving, I rested for a bit and tried to start over. Nope, no such luck.

I ended up doing thirty minutes of stretching, trying to figure out what it is about my upper front left quad that's causing the pain. It reappears when I bring my knee to my chest, either standing or lying down. It also shows up when I start to sit down & back in the squat. I've changed my warm up to try and deal with it, and slowed down the movements, but I'd like to know what's causing it.

Gym One is closed tomorrow for Father's Day. I was a bit surprised when I saw the sign on the door, since I've never been in a gym that closed for Father's Day, but hey, why not. The gym owner has kids, and if he can afford to take a day off to spend it with them, more power to him. I may go to Gym Two instead, but I won't know the exact time until I talk to one of my colleagues tomorrow morning. He's moving away and has offered me some of his furniture, which he's delivering to me tomorrow.

No heavy bag work for the time being. When Gym One took down the old bag because some dingbats complained it was too hard, they replaced it with a TK0 bag. Now every time I look at it I think of this post. Yuck. I'm not saying a bag needs to be stuffed with new materials, but at least shred and sanitize whatever it is you're putting in the bag.

Getting close to midnight and I'm cleaning and organizing in expectation of the new furniture.

I'm Feeling Snide

2007-06-14T23:23:00.000-04:00

Happy US flag day!

The above was sincere. The snide part of this post follows:

I don't read celebrity gossip, so it took a couple of days for me to hear about the silly comments made by some clothes hanger: "Today, no one is a virgin when they get married." Could she not articulate her disagreements with her church without disrespecting the chaste & celibate? In any case, you'd think that a Brazilian would be aware that at least one of her countrymen (younger, more talented and better looking than she is) was a virgin when he got married.

Thursday Training

2007-06-14T19:50:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I know, exciting post titles...

Training

Day I: Chest/Push

Flat BP (abwork b/w sets: stomach vacs)
6x45lbs
6x70lbs
8x90lbs
8x85lbs
8x80lbs
12x45lbs

Push ups leaning against a bar (abwork b/w sets: leg lifts on bench)
6xL5
6xL2
8xL0
8xL0
8xL2
12xL5

Single arm pec deck (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step f/b)
6x25lbs
6x40lbs
10x53lbs Discovered how to make the 3lb db stay on top of the machine's weight stack.
10x50lbs
10x43lbs
12x25lbs

Skull crushers (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step s/s)
6x22lbs
6x22lbs
8x27lbs
8x27lbs
8x27lbs
12x22lbs

Wednesday Training

2007-06-13T23:43:00.000-04:00

I lost track of time while working at home this morning, so when I got to the gym it was busier than I am used to. Still, got through everything, and was reasonably happy with how everything went.

Training

Day IV: Hams and Other Stuff

Bicep curls (abwork b/w sets: stomach vacs)
6x8lbs (dbs)
6x17lbs (E-Z bar)
10x22lbs
10x27lbs
10x22lbs
12x8lbs (dbs)

Lying cable curls (abwork b/w sets: leg lifts bench)
6x30lbs
6x50lbs
10x70lbs
10x60lbs Above 50lbs, the silly machine only has 10lb increments.
10x60bs
12x35lbs

Deads (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step f/b)
6x60lbs
6x95lbs
10x120lbs Fortuitous song on the shuffle: I Will Survive
10x115lbs Fortuitous song on the shuffle: The Bitch is Back
10x105lbs
12x60lbs

Reverse hypers on a Swiss ball (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step s/s)
6,6,10,10,10,12
These were supposed to be ham curls, but an older gentleman was superglued to the ham curl machine, and I didn't want to suggest that perhaps he should spend his rest periods vertically rather than horizontally.

The good: remembered to bring flipflops for shower.
The bad: forgot to bring post workout food. But, this gave me a reason to stop at Wild Oats.
The ugly: people who do not remove the bench from the cage when they finish benching. I'd understand if the gym had multiple cages/racks, but there's only one.

Interesting Reading

2007-06-12T21:37:00.000-04:00

Over at Asymetrical Information there are thoughts, questions and comments about fat and thin.

Tuesday Training

2007-06-12T19:28:00.001-04:00

The goal for today was to get through everything, however long it took. It took close to two hours, because I was trying different weights trying to figure out how far to push. A nice group of people in the gym today, including red bandanna guy, and a kid who went out in the parking lot in the sweltering heat and did what looked like football drills. There's hope for the next generation. :-)

Training

Day III: Quads and Other Stuff

Lying Cable Rows (abwork b/w sets: lying sv)
6x25lbs
6x40lbs
10x55lbs
10x60lbs Easy. Will try 70lbs next time.
10x60lbs
12x35lbs

Upright DB Rows (abwork b/w sets: side curls off roman chair - ow)
6x8lbs
6x12lbs
10x15lbs
10x20lbs I wanted a pair of 17.5 dbs, but the gym doesn't have them.
10x15bs
12x10lbs

Squats (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step f/b)
6x50lbs
6x70lbs Felt a sharp twinge at the top of my left thigh. Stopped and stretched again and it went away. But I lost my concentration.
10x90lbs
10x75lbs
10x70lbs Got my concentration back. Smooth and controlled on ascent and descent.
12x50lbs

Step Ups (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step s/s)
6x no weight Still wiped out from the squats+cardio minutes.
6x no weight
10x holding 10lbs plate
10x 10lbs Here it dawns on me that 10lbs was too light.
10x 25lbs
12x 10lbs Counted these out loud - twelve left, twelve right. Did the last cardio minute and floated to my car on endorphins.

The good: remembered to bring post workout food.
The bad: forgot to bring flipflops for shower.
The ugly: the max squat set, which is why I dropped the weight sharply to get my form back.

Looking forward to deads tomorrow.

Talking to Myself

2007-06-12T00:42:00.000-04:00

Q: So, self, when did you make the most progress in your strength and fitness?
A: When I was training hard in the gym and letting my anticipation of the training drive my food choices.

Q: So why are you suddenly tracking food and being pedantic about grams and kcals?
A: Because I'm going to visit my old gym in a month and I am stressed about walking in there weaker than when I left. This is known as "clutching at straws".

Q: Ok, so don't go back. Skulk around Jerusalem for a month while avoiding the gym. Duck behind a tree if you see anyone from the gym.
A: Are you &%$&*#@ kidding me? I love that gym.

Q: Well then, perhaps more focus on training and less on nutrition labels?
A: I hate it when you're right.

Today So Far

2007-06-11T18:56:00.000-04:00

Picked up the laptop this morning ahead of schedule.

Packed away my winter clothes yesterday and this morning and re-organized the closet for summer. With some luck, when I open the boxes in September everything will be too loose around the hips and too tight around the biceps. :-)

Training

Day II: Back

Lat PD to chin (abwork b/w sets: standing sv)
6x45lbs
6x70lbs
10x90lbs
10x85lbs
10x80lbs
12x45lbs

Lat PD to chest (abwork b/w sets: elbow fwd curls)
6x45lbs
6x70lbs
10x88lbs
10x80lbs
10x70lbs
12x45lbs

Bent over db rows (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step f/b)
6x10lbs
6x20lbs
10x30lbs
10x25lbs
10x20lbs
12x12lbs

Seated rows (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step s/s)
6x35lbs
6x55lbs
10x70lbs
10x60lbs
10x50lbs
12x35lbs

Food tracking is taking too long to type. All clean so far today. H2O is good too; I'm at 3L for the day thus far, one of which I drank during the above session. Remembered to bring PWN also.

Downtown Morning

2007-06-10T13:04:00.001-04:00

Woke up to thunder and rain and headed downtown to drop my laptop off for repairs. Blogging may be intermittent until I get it back. In the meantime, meals 1 & 2 are done and on track. I remembered to take my camera with me today: did you know that Kansas City has more fountains than Rome? Here's an example, and I am blogging this from the Scooters at the Plaza.

No Blogging Without Tracking

2007-06-09T22:35:00.000-04:00

So this title doesn't have the same oomph as "no taxation without representation", but I decided that I need to put numbers on the screen.

I headed to Gym One this morning after a playing whack-a-mole with the negative thoughts and dumb-ass excuses in my head. Finally got everything together, including, for the first time, post-workout nutrition in a little cooler; makes a world of difference not dithering for 30+ minutes post exercise to get food in. I had the place to myself for most of the session. After the last person left I turned down the silly music that was competing with my shuffle.

Training

Day I: Chest/Push

Flat BP (abwork b/w sets: stomach vacs)
6x45lbs
6x70lbs
10x85lbs
10x80lbs
10x75lbs
12x45lbs

Push ups leaning against a bar (abwork b/w sets: leg lifts on bench)
6xL6
6xL4
10xL3
10xL4
10xL4
12xL6

Single arm pec deck (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step f/b)
6x25lbs
6x40lbs
10x50lbs
10x45lbs
10x40lbs
12x25lbs

Skull crushers (cardio b/w sets: 1 min step s/s)
6,6,10,10,10,12
All sets done w/ empty tricep bar, which is 22 lbs.

Food

M1: 38g whole wheat pancake mix, 1 omega3 egg + 1 egg white, 1/2 c skim milk, coffee, 1/2 tbsp maple syrup. 18p 40c 6f
M2: 1 scoop protein powder, 1 frozen banana, 1 c rice milk LF vanilla, 1/2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder. 26p 48c 5f
M3: 85g mixed greens, 75g apple, 1 can H2O packed tuna, 1 tbsp dressing, 1 tbsp spicy mustard, 1/2 c skim milk in coffee. Easily the highest volume meal of the day. That was a lot of greens. 44p 24c 2f
M4: 60g turkey breast, 1 slice rye bread, 165g green pepper, 75g apple, 1 square halva. 26p 41c 8f
M5: 32g cereal, 113g 0% plain yogurt, 113g 1% cottage cheese. 26p, 40c, 2f

Total: 1526kcal, 138p, 193c, 23f. Need more fat and less carbs. I also want the calories a bit higher, around 1800. Adding a sixth meal tomorrow will take care of that. I got a late start today. It will take a few days to sort things out: I want to finish some things that I have in the fridge & freezer before I do another grocery trip.
H20: Forgot to track, but at least 3 litres; I kept refilling the bottle.
Outside food purchased: none
Cravings: none

Sleeves & MMA

2007-06-09T22:32:00.000-04:00

This is going to be a sleeveless summer. By this I mean that unless I am somewhere where it would be uncomfortable - religious services or the gym, for example - I am going to wear a tank top. Sleeve tan lines annoy me, and I want to see my arms, to remind myself that this backsliding into non-definition will not do. I'm not crazy about the current styles in women's tanks, so most of my tanks come from the boys' department, like this or this. Cheaper and sturdier, too.

The July 7 UFC card will be the last one I see before leaving for the workshop in Israel. I hate to say this, but I hope the main fights end somewhat faster than expected. The fight I am most interested in - Bocek vs. Edgar - isn't scheduled for broadcast, and the only way it will air is if there's time left at the end of the card.

Not Sleeping

2007-06-08T03:53:00.000-04:00

I haven't fallen asleep at a decent hour since I came back from Boston. It's a one hour time difference, so it's not as if I can claim jetlag. It is now 0351 on Friday morning and I am still awake. I've set the alarms (yes, plural) for 0600 and hope they suffice, because this non-sleeping thing is not helping. I've been tired all week and haven't been to either Gym One or Gym Two since Tuesday. How pathetic can my excuses get? The sensible thing would be to just stay up till 0500, go to Gym One when it opens, and then come back home and sleep.

Updated 3:50pm:
Woke up late, ate, drank a litre of H20, trained. All is right with the world.

TPS EFS Seminar: Part V

2007-06-05T17:02:00.001-04:00

A bit of reflection on the afternoon technique session: We split up into three groups, with one group at the cage, one at the collegiate rack and one at the monolift. One group had MK, one JW and one MB, and DT floated from one to the other. I started at MK's group. We looked at squats first, then bench. At first I thought either the groups or the leaders would rotate, but it didn't work out that way, so people began moving between groups. I had hoped to take more pictures during this part, but there wasn't enough light to do so without a flash, and you can't go around shining bright lights at people when they're trying to lift.

I volunteered to go first for logistical reasons: I wanted to get my question out of the way before they added weight to the bar. MK looked at me squatting with the empty bar and then with 95 lbs. I was really annoyed at myself because, had this been right after I left Jerusalem, I could have used 135lb with no problems. I was falling forward a bit, and MK ask me if I am keeping my weight in the middle of my feet. I never thought about it this way before; just lifted my toes instead. I learned a lot watching the other guys squat, also. Some of them I could tell what was wrong, but others were a revelation. Often it was minor adjustments that were necessary, but it takes someone who knows what they're doing to see the minor adjustments.

After squats MK looked at my bench and pointed out some issues with my elbow position. I realized that to get my elbow position correct I need to pretend I'm doing a close grip bench but with a wide grip. Doesn't make much sense when I write it, but makes perfect sense when I'm horizontal. I haven't lost what I learned in Jerusalem, thank god. While the other guys were having their bench looked at, I moved to JW's group, which was right next to mine.

JW looked at my bench and noticed that I had a dead spot just above my chest, where the bar sort of floats before I push it up. Aha! On the rare times I got stuck in training, it was just above the chest, so I guess I am still anticipating getting stuck even if it is a weight I can do in my sleep (empty bar). It was fascinating watching the other attendees, some of whom hadn't used a PL set up on their bench before. It is not a comfortable position. :-) MK's delivery is more low-key, and JW's is more interactive. The latter was getting other people to pay attention and pick out the mistakes that the person on the bench was making, if any.

There was good discussion in both groups. I asked JW about working with high schoolers and he gave me good ideas as well as book and dvd suggestions. I lost track of time and didn't get to join MB's group and have my deadlift analyzed. I also wanted to ask MB about kettlebells. I know my technique on the dead is more solid than that of my squat and bench, and I am going to visit my old gym soon, but it was still a squandered opportunity. As people were starting to leave, I asked MB about the hook grip and he graciously showed me how it should be done. Apparently my fingers are long enough. :-) He also said it will be painful.

The seminar was supposed to start at 8:30 and end at 5:00. It actually began at 9:15 and ended at 6 or so, with lunch going a bit overtime. So while we certainly didn't lose any time - and JW was very clear about asking each of us if we had additional questions before he wrapped up his session - the late start was an unnecessary stress factor. I'd arrived at 8:15, so I was feeling ornery about my missing 45 minutes of sleep.) Overall, learned a lot, and the only other thing I'd adjust would be to have a formal rotation of the presenters or the groups so that each person has at least two presenters looking at each of his or her lifts. My initial thought is to have three groups, DL, SQ and BP, and people and presenters swap at regular intervals, but I haven't given it enough thought.

Last thoughts: totally worth it. I needed to be around serious people again, and a face to face meeting has a lot more impact than an online exchange. I'm going to budget for another seminar this year, and if if it is at TPS, bring my gloves and schedule some time for a workout at the gym the next day. I'd also write down my questions in advance.

TPS EFS Seminar: Part IV

2007-06-05T16:16:00.000-04:00

One last set of quotes, with my notes in italics. Please remember that I was writing these down during a free flowing discussion, and these snippets can't possibly convey everything. Use them as springboards to further learning. Better yet, get off the internet and go lift something...

Tate Quotes

- "Supposedly, you have to do interval training to lose weight. Meanwhile, every bodybuilder I know who's under 5% does not do interval training."
"I'm going to sell products instead of programs. Programs are BS, products people can use."
- "Get ideas, not solutions. You never want solutions, only ideas. The solutions lie in yourself." I glean useful info from various places, but it's my responsibility to choose what to adopt and what to discard.

The next two quotes were about the purpose of tracking. I've tracked all my training session, including my feeble forays into exercise back in 2001. The most useful for me, obviously, are the Jerusalem logs.
- "What are your indicators? What are you using to track where you're going? What really drives your bench?"
- "What you'll forget to do is what you suck at."

On training your weak points:
- "If you're not in the top 50 in PLUSA, weak point training is not an issue. You don't have weak points, you're weak."

On adding things to your program:
- "Believe it's gonna work or don't put it in there."

In response to a guy who asked what a skinny weak guy should do:
- "The biggest problem is how you worded the question. You said a skinny weak guy, you should've said an aspiring lifter."

- "Ernie Frantz said it a long time ago: treat the heavy weights like they're light and the light weights like they're heavy." This was in response to a question about injuries, and I like it because it is exactly the attitude of the gym in Jerusalem. Your form had better be perfect on the light weights, and you don't let the heavy weights psych you out.

- "Your body doesn't know the difference between overtraining and mental stress.

- "If you break a record, then take a second attempt and it's easy, go home. Don't fuck it up."

- "If you're trying to gain weight, weigh yourself at night. If you're trying to lose weight, weigh yourself in the morning."

Someone asked what you do to prepare yourself the day of the meet. The response was a glare and then,
- "The 12 weeks preparing for a meet." Yup, if you didn't put in the prep, don't expect the last day to make any difference.

"Get blood work every six months. If you're going to push for the extremes, take responsibility, at least."

- "There's nothing worse than a deadlift. It's what you did before you went to eat." Me, I love deads, but I liked this description all the same.

"I gotta be in the weight room, that's all there is to it." Amen.

"This shit ain't easy." Wouldn't be half as much fun if it was.

Lastly, a quote from a gentleman named Vinny who was visiting from Southside Gym in Connecticut:
- “I'm big enough that the protein isn't as important as the carbs.” I can't find an e-mail to ask him for permission to post a picture, but trust me, he's got every right to say this.

TPS EFS Seminar: Part III

2007-06-04T17:20:00.000-04:00

Ignore the date imprint, my mistake. Pic is B&W because I thought that looked more old school. :-) Yes, I asked if it was ok to post. L to R: Bartley, Tate, Kroczaleski, Wendler.

More morning session quotes below. My notes are in italics.

As the discussion turned to beginners vs. advanced lifters:
JW: “Marc and Matt, as advanced lifters, they're not going to get a lot stronger.”
MB (quietly): “Don't like you.”

Bartley Quotes

- "I'd give up every 1000 lb squat I ever had for an 800 lb pull." Whoa, just hearing that hurt.

- "I'm the opposite of him [MK]; I'm Mr. Anti-Volume."

- "What's the difference between a lift and an exercise? An exercise supplements your lift." MB gave credit to Pavel T. for this idea.

- "Look for patterns that work."

- "99% of your effort will be futile. 99% of what you do will be futile. The 1%, that's what you try for, every single time." I LOVE this line. It's perseverance in a nutshell.

- "Pour your efforts into the first couple of exercises."

- "Develop the skill first."

- On psyching up for a lift at a meet: "Screaming and yelling, doing stupid shit means you miss the little things."

- On troubleshooting squats: "[They’re] Doing too much shit, overtraining, 3-4 weeks out still doing max squats. It can take a solid month to recover from a max squat."

Wendler Quotes

- "I'm very happy that we never had the fucking internet; we had to fucking think. […] Just lift for 10-12 years, then start reading about shit." Ouch. I've learned a lot online, but sometimes I really need to shut off the computer and hit the weights. Like (ahem) now.

- When X benches, his ears bench the weight, his toes bench the weight; everything is working. I love this line also. I'm adding this to my verbal cues: are my ears involved? are my toes involved? If not, I need to concentrate harder.

- "You make your greatest gains in the first few years, then hit a stale point. Hi volume hi intensity, that shit does not work the 2nd time around."

- "Training is about weird experiments, and sometimes they blow up in your face."

- "The best training program gets the best result with the least amount of effort." JW gave credit to this book cover for this idea.

- "Go with weights you know you can get. I'm only going to train to crush my opener. For 1000, train for 16 weeks to make 850 the easiest weight in the world."

- "Train what is trainable." This referred to coming back from an injury.

- "You're 165lbs with abs, who cares? Get abs at 235lbs." :-) I’m not sure if this was a JW or DT quote since both of them weighed in on the subject of scrawny guys with abs. There are at least two underlying ideas: first, the nutrition side is easy, it's the busting your ass in the gym that's hard. Second, if you're going to give people advice, you need to be an example. You can't be benching 225lbs and expect a 600lbs bencher to take your advice.

A Sunday in Boston

2007-06-03T23:44:00.000-04:00

Met a friend for brunch followed by a stroll through Harvard Yard where I took the above picture. Finished with an afternoon at the Museum of Natural History before making my way back to the hotel.

TPS EFS Seminar: Part II

2007-06-03T22:43:00.000-04:00

As noted below, the first part of the seminar was an informal Q&A. To get the most out of this set-up, you (the seminar attendee) have to actually open your mouth and ask a question. I asked two; one about leaving an amazing training environment and preparing to work alone, and one about squat depth. If I attend this format again I'll write my questions a day before. Strangely enough, several people asked no questions, but just sat and listened. Not sure why anyone would just sit there and not ask questions, unless all their questions were being answered as the discussion flowed. I was scribbling notes throughout and I'm sure I didn't get everything down.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the morning session, chosen because they made me think or struck me as particularly relevant to my situation. I didn't tape anything, just wrote them down as I heard them, so any misquotes are my fault. I'm going to start with Kroczaleski quotes. The bolded ones are the ones that resonated with me the most.

On training

- "Be self-critical: where am I weak? what mistakes am I making?"
- "Every day you step in the gym should be the best you've ever had."
- "If you're going to coast through, why do it?"
- "Training doesn't take that much time."
- "When you try something new, try it for eight weeks, really hard.

On meets

- "If you haven't done one, get in there."
- "Your opener doesn't mean shit. It's something you should be able to do sick or dead."
- "Don't think about what your competitors are doing until the 2nd deadlift."

On comparisons:

- "Numbers don't mean nuthin'; it's just weight."
- "Right now you're stronger than some people and weaker than others. So am I."**

**I heard some guys gasp when he said this. Recall that this man has squatted 970, benched 661 and deadlifted 783 for a 2414 total in the 220 weight class. To quote G.K.Chesterton: "It is always the secure who are humble."

On deloading

- "If you deload and you get stronger, then you're doing it right. If you deload and you get weaker then you're lazy."

On injuries and coming back

- "Competitive athletics is not healthy."
- "90% of the people docs deal with are lazy couch potatoes."

More quotes tomorrow. I've typed everything, it's my html fiddling that's holding things up.

TPS EFS Seminar: Part I

2007-06-02T22:10:00.000-04:00

As I told the friendly people (David, Susan and Laura) at the desk of Total Performance Sports this morning, their gym is like Narnia; its inside is bigger than its outside. This is the unassuming outside:

They just moved to this new building, hence the sign. Their grand opening is June 9th. The mild-mannered exterior hides an interior with many delightful things.

Start with a weightroom with multiple racks (including a monolift);

dumbbells galore;

tires for flipping;

upstairs, a room with mats for classes and a boxing ring:

heavy bags;

and boxing equipment;

Who could ask for anything more?

Now, add in four presenters - Tate, Wendler, Bartley and Kroczaleski - with a gazilion years of training experience and a straight-shooting no-BS delivery, and you have a seminar that is worth the flight from Kansas.

The seminar had two parts. The morning session, which ran from 0900-lunch was a free-for-all Q&A. The quartet up front and a bunch of lifters scattered on the floor, on machines and on benches, asking questions. Three women including me. The afternoon session, from after lunch to 5:40ish, was devoted to technique work on the racks. More about both parts tomorrow. I learned a lot and it was so nice to be around people who take lifting seriously. This is probably the best birthday present I ever bought for me.

Alexanderish

2007-05-30T21:26:00.000-04:00

Feeling a bit like Alexander today...

End of year luncheon at work today, which served as a recognition luncheon for those people who reached a milestone year (5th, 10th, etc.) as well as a farewell luncheon for the people who are leaving. Great people choosing to move on is not unusual in education, but that doesn't make it hurt any less when inspiring colleagues whom I respect deeply are the ones leaving. I had known about all of the departures except one, but the one that I didn't know about was like being punched in the gut. I pictured my corner of the building devoid of some highly experienced and calm-exuding colleagues, and I went to my classroom and started to cry. Actually, I started crying going up the stairs. I'm going to miss them so much. I was also emotional because I realized that my students didn't know about that last departure yet, and it would hit some of them really hard when they found out.

Chicken and salad for lunch, fruit and a brownie (1" cube) for dessert. But overall not enough calories, not enough protein, not enough H20, and way too much emotion.

A couple of my students came by today also. Most, thank god, before I got weepy. Next year I'll make sure I have tissues and foundation on hand before I go to the year end luncheon. Live and learn.

Insomnia

2007-05-29T04:39:00.000-04:00

So here I am at 3:40am, unable to sleep. By the time it gets this late (or early), I don't want to fall asleep because my alarms are set to go off in two hours and I'm worried that I'll sleep through both of them. Fortunately, this non-sleeping thing happens to me rarely.

I spent most of the day at work, and got kicked out of the building (nicely) at 5pm, as it was closing early for Memorial Day and the guard needed to set the alarm. I was not happy, as I still had about three hours worth of work I'd planned on doing, but there wasn't anything I could do about it, so I smiled and left. My usual free wifi coffee shop was closed, so I headed to a quiet Starbucks and got work done there.

I think I'm going to read about anatomy and physiology until it's time to get ready for work. A few weeks back, based on EC's resource page, I bought myself an early b-day present in the form of a used copy of the Marieb book. I'm planning on having this body for a while, may as well learn more about it.

If you're up at this hour, here's a beautiful Memorial Day article (found via Instapundit).

Fight Report Later

2007-05-27T01:58:00.000-04:00

I went to the local bar to watch the fight. Remember that the first time I went to watch ufc there, they put me next to a nice young couple, the second time next to an annoying drunk, the third time behind a pillar, and this time they managed to forget about my reservation entirely. I can hardly wait to see what they'll do for the next card. I really should acquire some friends who own a tv and get them to host a fight night. I'll bring the crudites and protein shakes.

I had made the reservation in person on Friday, and it was right there on the laminated chart: "MC - one person - paid", but according to the puzzled folks at the door, either the person who created the seating chart forgot to add me, or they added me but a confused waitperson gave my seat to another party who needed the extra chair. Lovely. Trying to solve the situation, blonde waitperson with an overly short skirt sends me to the table at the farthest corner of the room, claiming there is space there. Fortunately, the nice people at that table informed me it was full. Back to the reservation geniuses at the front door. Thanks to a different waitperson, I got a seat at a table closest to the largest screen. Actually, way too close to the largest screen, so that I spent the evening with my head tilted back at an uncomfortable angle, but at least it was better than the corner.

I am super-tired, so the report will have to wait till tomorrow. I can't say I'm happy with the results of this card, but I did enjoy the bouts and I like the unpredictability of this sport.

Sisters and Mindset

2007-05-26T18:13:00.001-04:00

I have the most amazing sister in the world. She not only sent me platemates for my birthday, she also sourced them from a supplier right here in Kansas. Since I already solved the incremental plates issue, I drove there yesterday afternoon to exchange the platemates. It was a long and confusing drive and I got lost twice. This is a good thing. If it was easy to get there I'd spend way too much money with them; I want half their catalog. I found my way thanks to a nice landscaping/construction guy and a very helpful shift manager at Einstein Br0s. I am now the proud owner of an uber-fancy foam roller and a Fitball Sport stability ball. If you're wondering what to do with a foam roller, TN had a good Cressey/Robertson article on the subject back in 2004.

The other day, I clicked through to a blog I rarely read and found a post directly related to what's on my mind at the moment; how mindset and perspective affect performance. I'm 4th or 5th on the local library queue for Mindset, and I'm looking forward to reading it. Seems to me it would be useful for improving my teaching techniques.