Thursday Random Thoughts

Would be Thursday thoughts but its Friday. Oops. Eh well. Shit happens.

I had a rant a week or two ago about massively overweight football coaches and how the hell they are even coaches. Well today I was pleasantly surprised to see a football coach getting a workout in and walking on his hands across our 60' long gym. Well played random football coach, well played.

Apparently chalk is a hot commodity in our weight room. Ive lost 2 separate containers of the stuff in a week. Once after i put the stuff away and it disappeared. Another time from me accidentally leaving the stuff out and then it vanished. Related note- lifting in this damn awful humidity without chalk sucks butthole.

Speaking of which if I were to ever leave Ohio for a specific reason its this damn humidity. I hate it. A lot. I went through 4 tshirts yesterday alone.

Well thats all. I have a fantasy draft in 30mins that my preparation for involved a whole 2 halfs of preseason football. This ought to be great.

Samsung Galaxy Note 2 Review

It's not much a secret I'm a tech geek and today I've decided to give a quick overview of my latest gadget; The Note 2.

Starting off if you are looking for the full rundown of specs and the lil whatevers under the hood of this phone, well, you probably won't get it here. This is the 'meat heads' perspective.

First Impression
Yes, this thing is big. 5.5" screen is a handful. But for the big man out there looking for something to fit their hands this phone is honestly perfect. My thumbs always smashed my last phones letters and it was equally frustrating when I never hit the right damn buttons. Now with the massive screen that rarely happens. My gripe is just 'teaching' the swipe how I talk. The is also very light for its size. Which makes me a lil nervous. I like having some weight in my hands. If also seems target fragile because of that. But I'll get into that later.

After a week of use
Well I already scratched the screen...twice. Remember when I said this thing felt fragile? Screen can't hold up at all apparently. The Otter Box and screen gaurd can't get here soon enough. Bit how about this gigantic battery?!? Holy damn this thing carries a charge. How much? I've had this thing off the old since 4am. Ran Pandora at least a total 7 hours today and barely put a dent in it. Watched YouTube, bogged, texted, Facebook, you name it.  It is now almost 9pm and I just broke 40%. Effing crazy. I literally don't need to worry about charging this thing. At all. Ever. Unless its bedtime.

Performance
This things rocking on the speed department. The apps function and load up fast as hell. The speakers are loud. The screen is responsive. And the S-Pen, despite not playing with it much yet, offers the ability to doodle and paint random crap all over the place them share it fast. The graphics are about as HD add I can imagine for modern phones.
Ok I gushed enough for the moment.
I'll try and finish this up later. In the mean time of you are looking to get this big sumbitch then I say get it! But for God's sake get some great to protect it!

Advocare SPARK - First Impressions

I'll keep this sorry and say since it's merely a first impress ion of the product.

So far I'm liking it.

Now dont get me wrong this stuff doesn't have that 'kick' that say a heavy can of Monster or Full Throttle might have but the 'buzz' is solid. And theres no crash to mention. The energy almost chines on waves. It's rather weird. Them again I use it at work at 4am. But it keeps me awake and I feel very 'aware'.

Will report more later.

Sunday Funday

Its the beginning of the week and its time for some maxing out! The day to smash some weights and hit some PR's. Well for the most part. Today was realistically more a learning day.

I wanted to have a mock competition. Get at least 3 attempts at some big singles and try for more if I could. So not a pure meet but just get an idea where I am at lifting wise. The results went good and bad.

Clean and Jerk - 240lbs
Snatch - 190lbs
 Total - 430lbs

Yeesh. I really need to work my leg strength AND apparently my shoulders are weak as hell. That fact really is not much a surprise to me. I never had a stellar over head press. But the truth is at my body weight I should be hitting bigger numbers by default. Instead Im struggling hitting what I use to get 5 years ago. I will say my Snatch has improved immensely. I just have a hard time holding at the catch and standing up with it. Usually falls out of position. My weakest aspect in the Clean and Jerk is by the Jerk. I need to make some blocks so I can train specifically the Jerk movement. That and just get my damn overhead strength up. This is frustrating.

Well tomorrow starts the first full week of the new lifting schedule. Im not really a fan of this. Really going to miss being well and done by 1pm. But I may dip into the weight during the day to see what the new class schedule looks like. If I can get a workout in early then all the better. Otherwise its nap time for this guy. 

Spartan 300 Workout

This looked pretty rough. Maybe even overkill. The 'intro' Spartan Race is just a 5k so performing this much work seems like a LOT. Regardless there are some more extreme versions of the race so I suppose if you can hit this in good time you are ready.

The Spartan 300
1. 30 Burpees
2. 30 Burpee/Pullups
3. 30 Pullups
4. 30 Box jumps
5. 30 Medicine Ball Squat Throws
6. 100 Jumping Jacks
7. 300 crunches
8. 30 body weight squats
9. 30 side kicks (each side)
10. 30 jumping lunges
11. 30 curls
12. 30 Tricip overhead presses
13. 30 frog jumps
14. 30 squat jumps
15. 3 x rope climbs

I'll Never Get This Sleeping Thing Figured Out

Well it's almost the weekend and my only thoughts are not of partying, being outside, getting things done, etc.etc.etc. Nope. Just catching up on Z's. That's the problem with this lifestyle I suppose. There just isn't enough time in the day to get sleep in. Between working, training, coaching, then either training again or practice the hours run out quick. Not to mention that much activity requires even more sleep than the usual individual.

Can you believe it that its reccomended to get in at least 8 hours a night? Pretty crazy huh? When was the last time you got that much in? I THINK I may have landed a solid 8 hours last Friday. Maybe. Lately, however, if I figure how to get that much in it's through a 4-6 hour sleep and then a later nap. Which usually ruins my day since I'll wake up all groggy anyways then just get nothing accomplished there after.

So what even inspired this post? The fact that I just took a 15 minute nap and feel WIDE FRIGGIN' AWAKE!!! I will never figure this mess out. All I know is the body reacts very positively to 15-20mins of sleep or also known as the mighty Power Nap. Theres a major problem hitting that though. Any more then you suddenly wake up feeling more tired than you did prior to that nap. Has to do with the REM cycle. I'm too lazy to look all the fun facts up at the moment but that is really it. 20 minutes and you shut down the REM cycle before it really kicks in and the body never quite makes it into full shutdown mode. Think of it like putting your computer to sleep compared to shutting it off. Might save energy shutting down but sleep mode allows a quicker reboot. So something like that.

So how the hell do you pull that off? Couple options were lay down to take a nap but first pop a caffein pill or some sort of stim. If you manage to fall asleep sooner than later then the stim when it finally kicks in will jump you out of your sleep. The obvious option is an alarm clock. Set it for 25-35 minutes. The prob here is this is assuming you can fall asleep quickly. If you can't then plan ahead a little bit more. Set it to 45 minutes even. Any longer and if you do happen to nod off quick then you're going to be in for a rude awakening. The last option that I kind of like is sleeping in a recliner or chair. This is more personal preference but I never sleep long in a chair or basically anything not a bed. So that may be worth a shot.

Well Im off with this crazy new found energy spike....on 5 hours +15mins of sleep.

10,000 Page Views!

Well that took long enough!

I kid. It is a nice little milestone for the blog. But there's no time to rest here. Onwards and upwards. 20k here I come!

Man Moves a Mountain

Never underestimate yourself. With the right motivation it is insane what the individual can achieve.

"Manjhi did not want anyone else to suffer the same fate as his wife, so he carved a path 360-foot-long (110 m) through-cut, 25-foot-deep (7.6 m) in places and 30-foot-wide (9.1 m) to form a road^[5] through a mountain in the Gehlour hills, working day and night for 22 years from 1960 to 1982. His feat reduced the distance between the Atri and Wazirganj blocks of the Gaya district from 55 km to 15 km, bringing him national acclaim.^[2][6][7] He died on August 17, 2007.^[8] He was given a state funeral by the Government of Bihar."

This guy moved a mountain over the course of 22 years. What the hell have you done recently?

Warrior Dash Recap

So I finally ran one of these things this past weekend. I got to say it was definitely NOT that bad. Especially considering we ran it in a BLAZING 51 minutes ...hah. Ok but seriously it was for fun and after I finished I legitimately wanted to run it again to see how well I could handle running a 3 mile obstacle course at a decent clip.

First off we couldn't have asked for a better day. 75 degrees and sunny. Sunny enough I got a bit of a tan line from it. Add to the fact that there were several water obstacles it ended up working out nicely. I will say it could not have been hot enough to handle how cold that water was they hit us with at the end to hose off. Damn that was like a ice shower from the 7th circle.

If you havn't ran one of these here's a few bits and pieces of advice for first timers.

Arrive early. It took us almost an hour to get our ID wrist band, gear checked, and kitted up. Not that it matters. I signed up for 12:30 while my friends were signed for 1pm. We just ran at 12:30 anyways. Fun fact; after you run if you're up for it just hose off and jump back in line. Not one person was checking us. Thought that was odd. But hey, why not?

Get plenty of hydration prior. That should be a given. Eat light. As I mentioned we had a few obstacles that involved some swimming and a lot of climbing. Having a belly full of food is no good for that.

Beer and food is expensive. Bring cash. They had ATMs but I didn't bother looking how much that service charge would've been. The beer steins were also 20 bucks. So if you're looking for a good souvenir then there ya have it.

Entry into the area was free. Which was good since parking was 10 $#&%ing bucks. In all honesty just with entries and parking they had to have grossed close to a mill on the event. Take away insurance and blah blah blah and they must be raking it in with these things. But I digress. This is the part where it's good to bring friends and split the gas and the parking. Or make them buy first round. Not everyone has to race either. There was mostly good music. Decent food and drink. And some different activities to mess with. So theres a bit of a party atmosphere surrounding the race.

Lastly, while I was doing a minute of research I did stumble on the risks involved. But after reading the story the injuries/deaths, yes deaths, were seemingly preventable. Especially after reading about the kid diving into the mud pool and becoming paralyzed. Listen, read the damn waiver you are signing. There's even a check box that says "DO NOT DIVE INTO THE WATER". Every entry point at ours was less than a few feet deep. And its muddy. Thats just dumb. Plus, if you are not at all familiar with running far (3+ miles) then don't try and kill yourself racing the course the first time in. I saw many people trying to do that who clearly never ran farther than to the kitchen from living room during a commercial break for a beer.

Overly Manly Mans Take on Workout Splits

...I've been writing emails all morning. Break time. AKA lifting time. AKA LEG DAY ALL DAY, BABY!!!!

Now an Advocare Distributor

I've been hearing a lot of good things about this company. Yes, it sounds like another pyramid scheme. Yes...it is. I mean the model is simple enough. Throw all sorts of numbers and success stories your way and BAM! make a sale. Then get that stiff to sell the crap to others and BAM! residual income starts flowing in.

Sounds like its too good to be true, right? Sort of is. Sort of isn't. I've seen some garbage in the past. Schemes like these are a dime a dozen. So why Advocare then? Well, I work with athletes. I regularly use supplements. Their supps have been receiving good reviews. So why not? Plus the 'start up' is WAAAYYY cheaper than many other companies. Hell, they throw in $50 bucks worth of supps with the start up kit. So realistically I'm spending $30 on the kit and buying samples to throw at potential clients/ customers.

There is a nice bonus going on here. The more you buy the more you save. They run a tier system so for every X-amount you spend you receive a PERMANENT discount on future purchases. Now that I like.

On the same note their big push is the "24-Day Challenge". This is something that peaked my curiosity simply because once rugby season is done, well done for me at least, I had the notion to drop some weight in prep for track season. So why not give that a run, take some before, during, and after shots, and post the results? I figure that would be a good boost for the business. Assuming it works that is. Time will tell.

So if you get on the site and are curious at having a look at what we're offering product wise click the tab at the top or right here -----> ADVOCARE

Warrior Dash is Here

I will say I am moderately enthusiastic. Mainly because I had a great lifting session today and yesterday and finally got caught up on sleep so I am not in complete zombie mode right now. Still down 7lbs since yesterday so that sort of concerns me. Got to keep eating.

Im already guilty of this hahaha no but seriously...

Lynne Crossfit Benchmark

I took a shot at another Crossfit workout today: "Lynne". I'm starting to like these benchmark lifts for a quick GPP session after a lift. Hit upper body pretty hard today and wanted something that hit a similar end. If you don't know Isabel is essentially supersetting cleans with ring dips and performing sets of 21-15-9. The cleans wern't bad. Dips kicked my ass. Between my shoulder going foul today and already being worn out the dips weren't happening. So I tied a band to the rack and stuck my knee in there and did them with some assistance. I think my total time was somewhere around 9:30 but at the moment I really don't remember.

Two things I picked up from today is I need to get in some serious shoulder rehab work and possibly work on my dips if I'm going to keep doing this. My dips are worse than my pullups.

Isabel Rx

My buddy did this last week (vid shot on Friday) and gave the bright idea to try it myself. Had to do some research on it first so I am hoping this was all correct. Also shot this on my brand new JVC camcorder. So far I'm liking it.




If you kept count at all you may have noticed what I saw. Only 28 reps. No blood to the brain = poor math. Also, I had no idea my hips rose up that high each rep. Even my 'good' ones. Definitely something I'll need to address from now on.

Mondays training

Dammit this one put a whooping on me. Few things that needed to be changed and I felt the difference.
1- Maintain rest between sets! My ADD lately has been ridiculous and checking the clock and regulating time between sets not only massively reduced workout time but also gave me a helluva workout to boot.
2- FOCUS. This really is part of Number 1 but deserves it's own note. Maintain focus. I'll admit this one is tricky since I train about the same time as my athletes do. So I suppose it could be classified more to do with time management. Coach when needed but still get work done. Either way when helping teenagers get a lift in it's easy to forget what you were doing or how long ago you did it.

So anyways I tried a few things different today. Mostly the cleans...damn my full clean is terrible. Im hitting the extension better but the second pull is something of a mystery to me. My catch is so slow. Granted I did just start putting effort into this not too long ago. Squats somehow went up. I drove myself into the dirt last week and felt tired for 8 days straight yet I managed to add 10lbs and then perform 3 reps with it. My body pisses me off sometimes.

Warmup, stretch, yadda yadda yadda
Kneeling box jump to depth jump - Worked up to max single, no idea on height
Cleans- Worked up max single. 275 felt great. 285 felt terrible. 2x3 @ 225 to finish
Box squat- Worked up to 415x3. Then 330x3 w/orange 'light' bands.
DB Step ups- 3x5@65/65/75
SL RDL- 3x6@235
Russian Twist- 3x12@10/20/25

Legs are shot at the time of writing this. Worst part is....got a 3 mile run later. Got a race in 6 days. Yuck.