Flattery goes a long, long, way, so be nice for goodness sake!

Compliments are a wonderful thing. If they are delivered in earnest then they convey such a nice message and if received without doubt they can lift a mood as high as high can go. Furthermore, giving a compliment, that is being nice, can also make the giver feel better. Producing a smile in another person feels good. It's, well, contagious if you will...

Just the other day, I was complimented (rare as that is) twice in one day. Yes, I said twice as in two times in one day! The thing I noticed about a compliment is that they are highly valued when they come from no where. Wholly unexpected wondrous love (loosely defined) from another individual. Your dog does it everyday, I am sure. Right? When you sit down to pet, orient toward, or yell "Fido, let's go for a walk" - s/he wags the tail. Hell, that's a great compliment. That's like the dog saying - YOU FUCKING RULE DAD! YOUR PETTING IS THE BEST THING IN MY DAY!!! OH WAIT, THERE'S A SQUIRREL! Humans do not have such ostensible fixed action patterns (FAPs) for telling you how they feel about you (well, maybe, but more on that in another post). Rather humans have to use language to persuade you that 1) they are being an honest conveyor of a message and 2) that the message they are conveying means something to the receiver. Sometimes, these conditions are not met, like when a graduate students says to their major professor: "You are the smartest scientist I have ever met!" With exception of my case, for which my PhD supervisor, Prof. Gordon Gallup Jr., is the smartest person I've ever met, most PhD students are full of shit! They are being dishonest to the person, and more importantly to themselves. It takes a lot of work to deceive, try to deceive, etc. They don't call it the simple truth for nothing! The other way that a compliment can go awry is when the message, even if being delivered honestly, means little or nothing to the receiver. For example, is someone says to you "Whoa you got mad typing skillz" and you don't give a rat's ass about how fast people type, let alone your own lightning fast phalange flexing ... then the compliment falls short of having any effect.

OK, so I was complimented the other day by two people, one of whom I have known for about a year or so and the other I have never met.  In the first instance a student of mine said that he really likes reading my blog. That's twice in a 10 day period someone asked me about my blog. I hadn't thought anyone actually read the damn thing, it started as a means to communicate with my pals in England about our workout regimen, but special thanks to my two readers! The student went on to say that he really liked reading it. It was a great compliment, it made me feel like whoa - I entertained a person. Ha! So cool, someone commented about my fitness-based blog. Actually another person did, as well. About 10 days ago another student said she tried my Bear Attack Defense workout and it was really hard, but a great workout. Glad to help. So This got me thinking, if (2) people read it, why not get back to it! Not to mention it's really quite fun to get your thoughts down...

The second compliment, not unrelated to the fitness and blogging, came from someone I never met, talked to, or had ever even seen. I was riding the elevator with a student. We were discussing the workings of Al Einstein's brain and a paper that we are writing on the topic. This other person rushes to get into the elevator (don't fret, I typically never take the elevator for all the expected reasons, but the student had a suitcase with her). So this person comes in, interrupts our conversation about ol' "relativity Al" boy's cortex and says to me: "Hey, you look like the 300 guy". OK, at first I was like, I look like 300 guys, so much for the adorable unique sleek look I was going for, just teasing. In all seriousness I was thinking to myself, ok... self. 300 guy. Does she mean the 300 guy that appeared in the movie (see Image 1) or the aftermath of his fame in which he turned into a toad (see Image 2)? She clarified very quickly by saying, but have you seen how he's let himself go to shit? This is the second time I received this compliment, probably because of the goattee, but whatever, I will take it and believe it's because of the muscles!

Image 1

Image 2

Compliments are wonderful. This tiny little series of statements had made my week! Energized me. Excited me (in the non explicit way, of course!) It's amazing what a nice gesture can do. I am far from the first person to write about this. And further from the person to be expected writing about this as my typical catch phrase is "I got enough friends!" I only have about 2.

So my charge to anyone out there reading this (all 2 of you) is to be nice. And be nice to someone about their fitness. If you see someone in the gym working really hard, let them know. If you see someone push a weight that is amazing, let them know. The other day a young man in my gym hang power cleaned 225 pounds with perfect form and I let know it was fucking impressive! He smiled. If you see someone who's toned up, tightened up, bulked up, or simply shaped up, let them know! Don't be perverted about it. Just let them know that since the last time you saw them, they look really good and that the workouts are obviously helping. This happens to my wife quite frequently.  Encouragement can go a long way and for someone trying to lose weight, tighten up, or get big, a few words of encouragement from a complete, or relative, stranger could be just the trick to keep them going. See we all go home and expect wife, husband, mate, partner, girlfriend, boyfriend, rover, felix, mom, or dad to say good things about us. Those compliments are great too, dont get me wrong, but a compliment from a stranger or acquaintance holds more weight. See they dont have to say a damn thing. They could just keep their mouth shut (and most of the time we hope they do that, right?) BUt for someone to purposefully go out of their way to say "Way to go kiddo!" - now that's just good humanity!

So go out there and be good to your fellow workerouters for goodness sake!

Me, Myself, Versus I

Homo sapiens, like every other critter that dons this wonderful planet Earth has had a long history of competition - with themselves. Let me try to explain. We are all here - that is, we as a species are all here because somehow, some way, via some processes that are not entirely worked out, our species' ancestors did things that allowed them to 1) live and 2) most importantly, reproduce. The biologist in me calls this natural selection. I hesitate to use the term here while discussing exercise in order to not disuade individuals not privy or interested in evolutionary science from my idea. Instead I choose competition as my proxy for this discussion. Think about our ancestors: they had to survive in grasslands that housed a number of predatory types (e.g., lions and tigers and bears, don't say it don't say it, oh my!). Not only did they have to evade predation, but they also had to provide for themselves and if they were "lucky" they also had to provide for their families. (I use quotes for the word lucky purposefully. It would have been a superbly easier ancestral life if we hadn't had to go out and hunt, gather, or farm our own food. We could just sit back in our stone recliner, drink our homemade fruit brew and watch the other dufuses try to catch food for a large family of 2, 3, or 4 other humans. So lucky is not really all that lucky, except in the game of evolution reproduction is like a touchdown, a goal, a hole in one (pun intended).) That is, in the game of evolution reproduction is what makes winners. So one would be lucky to have survived to reproductive age, to acquire a consensual mate and proceed to procreate. Voila! Wham bam... enough!

This is probably the reason our species has the drive that we do. Probably the reason all species have the drives they do. However, as we all know, certain individuals lack a drive, lack the motivation to "get ahead", advance, develop themselves. In fact, some people look like our ancestral lazy boy (sans the stone recliner). So what is happening in these individuals? They are fat bastards. Actually, they are a variant in the existence of our species that chooses or is designed to not be driven. Seriously, they most likely anchor the high end of our species BMI and fat to muscle mass ratio due to low exertion to ingestion ratio. They lack the urge to compete: with themselves. They lack the drive to consider their own body an experiment and a challenge. The lack the drive to be the best they can be as a Homo sapien. They do not compete with themselves! This can come in all areas of one's life. For example, I have friends, colleagues in academia who have kicked up their heels after getting their PhD, or for some it's after they get granted tenure. For them, they've done it. They are done. Accomplished their goal. For others, it comes in the form of exertion. A very good friend on mine used to say "I walk to work, so I don't need my gym membership". OK, don't get me wrong, walking is great. In fact, walking is fucking absolutely brilliant. It's one of those cool things that makes humans, well human! But walking is far from the type of anaerobic exertion needed to produce optimal fitness, as evidenced by the fact that my friend was rather out of shape. For example, if I had asked him to run to work, he'd have laughed at me. "That's 3 miles!" I think I've made my point. So....

What does it mean to compete with yourself? Go ahead try arm wrestling yourself, it don't work does it. So that's not what I mean is it? No. In short, what I mean is work against yourself. It'd be better to work against a real opponent, but we do not all have that luxury, and thus are forced to work against ourself. Many individuals who workout do this, somewhat. You've seen them in the gym. They carry a notebook around and they record how many reps of what weight they did this and make an attempt to track their progress over time. Laudatory, no? No. Actually, in the time they spend writing down that they bench-pressed 2.5 lbs more this time than the last 10 times they could've really competed with themself. They could have run 100 m. Then do it again, and try to do it faster. See, this is more what I am talking about. We need to push ourselves to the limit. The gym, our workouts are not supposed to be leisurely activities where we read the latest Dan Brown novel while trickling on the elliptical, treadmill, or reclined bike. Rather we need to focus our cognitive energy on creating competition with ourself. We need to have fast, hard, strength and power based training regimens that tap our humanly limits. Then we need to track the global speed and effort exerted over time. I tried to explain this in words to a fella at my local Gold's Gym, but it was difficult because I am shy. Instead I said try this, it's a CrossFit workout: Clean and Jerk/Press 135 lbs 30 times as fast as you can. He responded "As fast as you can?" Yes, I said, as fast as you can. That means go buy a stopwatch ($4 at wally world, right?) Then in try to do something to increase your speed the next time. That's the essence of fitness to me. This is very much in line with the CrossFit mentality, and that's because THEY ARE DOING IT RIGHT!

So, go have a fight with yourself all Fight Club parking lot style. No don't do that, you might get sent to the psychiatric hospital and I ain't bailing your ass out. Instead set up a few big exercises that you do for time. Say, do 100 repetitions of a 65 pound snatch. As fast as you can. Get the stop watch out. Yes! But that;s not it. You will also have to closely monitor your exercise. If you need to rest, you need to rest - this is not a recipe in suicide. But those rest periods should be as short as possible. And they should decrease over time. Another avenue to do this type of self-competitive exercise is to try and do a certain number of reps in a limited amount of time. Do as many burpees as you can in 5 minutes! Fuck me, right? And then try to do more the next time you do that workout.

Go for it!

Dead Legs

OK so this was posted as a workout on the crossfit main page and it was bloody killer so I thought I would post it again here (probably against all types of rules) as well as what else I did.

I call this Dead Legs, because it's been 3 days and my walking is slowly deteriorating!

Repeat three times, for time:

50 meters walking lunge

100 meters broad jump (some people call this a frog leap, same thing basically)

200 meter spring

I added to this some upper body that goes little something like this:

7 rounds of:

- Hold Handstand against wall for 30 seconds (but on each successive round try to increase the hold for 15 seconds so that on round two you hold for 45 seconds, round 3 = 60 seconds and so forth so that round 7 = 2 minutes and 15 seconds

- as many handstand pushups that you can do

Repeat for 7 rounds.

When you are done that do 100 repetitions of BICEP to REVERSE GRIP OVERHEAD PRESS as quickly as you can. I used 65#, but use what you think you can complete. This looks and feels strange. You curl the barbell normally so that your overhead press is reverse handed. This should fire up your anterior deltoids and biceps. This video demonstrates it nicely: http://revver.com/video/1620697/barbell-curl-and-press-hybrid-exercise-combo/

Good luck!

B-CUP

Do this workout for time starting with 21 reps for all four exercises, than in the second round decrease it to 15 reps, and then on the last round decrease to 9 reps.

======
21-15-9 reps

Burpees
95# Clean & Press or Clean & Jerk
double Unders (jumping rope where the rope goes around twice on each jump)
Pull-ups.

Sunday Workout

For time:

50 Sumo deadlift high pulls (45 lbs)
25 Pull-ups
20 Overhead squats (65 lbs)
15 Kettlebell swings (1.5 pood)
10 Burpees
Run 400 meters
10 Burpees
15 Kettlebell swings (1.5 pood)
20 Overhead squats (65 lbs)
25 Pull-ups
50 Sumo deadlift high pulls (45 lbs)

My time: 22 minutes

Good Crackers and a Great Desert

First off, this afternoon I re-tried this recipe: http://cavemanfood.blogspot.com/2009/04/grain-free-almond-crackers.html

...the Bomb! I seasoned with ground pepper, garlic salt, and cajun spice... Really nice!

Also, for desert this evening I decided to whip (literally) a banana soufle... no seriously.

Check this out.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Heat up a touch of water, pour in some honey and just a touch of pure maple syrup.

While that s heating on a very low heat and while constantly stirring (yeah you need about 8 arms to do this one) puree two really really really (i.e. brown and spotted and wonderfully ripe) bananas until they are smooth and no chunks are left.

Stir the banana mix into the honey/syrup/water mix until smooth and of all one consistency.

Remove from heat and let cool completely.

In a stainless steel mixing bowl whip using a whisk two egg whites, a little sea salt, and a touch of something sweet if you like (I used just a touch of raw sugar (I know naughty and not strict paleo, but whatever, you could also use raw honey or syrup, I think). Whisk that bad boy - took me the better part of the evening and I think I burned off the calories I ingested after cooking of the soufle was complete. Seriously, whisking by hand, it will take a while. You want this mixture to be really quite stiff. You can test this by sticking your whisk, your kitchen whisk - damn you American Pie watching fools! - and you should get little peaks. If that happens you are all set.

If your banana/honey/syrup mixture is cooled completely then using a rubber spatula fold that into your whisked and whippy egg white mixture.

Combine until mostly the same color and consistency.

Pour into ramequins and place he ramequins on a cookie sheet.
Place the cookie sheet into the oven and turn don the heat in the oven to 350-375 degrees.

Bake about 10-20 minutes depending on the size of your ramequins. The way you know they are done is by sticking a sharp knife into the middle, all the way to the bottom. It should come out dry; i.e. if it is wet put it back in the oven for a few more minutes.

Once you think it's done, serve immediately. Shortly after being removed from the oven they will, or might, start to sink. Serve with some fresh fruit, powdered sugar for your non-paleo friends, melted dark chocolate, etc.

Enjoy.

Today's Workout: 21 May 2009

So today I adopted two WOD's from the CF page. I took yesterday off for rest b/c I was dead from the previous workout (B.A.D.). That was a freaking killer!

So today...

2 round of each of the following sequences back to back for time (my time: 35:45):

75 reps of 45 lb sumo deadlift high pull (SDHP)
20 hand stand pushups (I did them in sets of as many as I could, with as little rest in between as possible)
(do the above twice, then do the following twice)

20 reps of 115 pound thrusters
20 reps of L-pullups

I followed this up by doing as many round of the following in 20 minutes as I could (I completed about 8-9 rounds, I think. I honestly lost count because people started talking to me about what I was doing)

5 pull-ups
10 push-ups
15 air squats
2 minutes of jump ropes, incorporating as many double unders as possible.