January 2012
12 posts
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GHRs without having a GHR
My gym doesn’t have a glute-ham raise machine. But what it does have is a seated calf raise machine, and if you have one of those you can improvise a GHR. Here’s how.
You load up the stem on the calf raise thing with plates until it’s not going to budge for anything. Stick a box or a stool in front of the machine. Then you kneel on the seat of the machine with your heels braced...
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Dynamic effort day
8x3 good mornings @ 135. Felt great. Should have gone heavier. Emphasis on speed.
Some benching at light weights, but when I tried to go heavier with some chains it aggravated my injured shoulder. So I stopped. This injury has already screwed up my first PL meet next month. No sense making it permanent.
Leg presses on one of those diagonal sled-type things, butt raised off the seat to make the...
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Clank, clank.
Yesterday: my first experience doing any lifting with chains. Back squats with 40# of chains on a bar for a total of 175#. I realize that’s light weight for lots of you, but I did a bunch of sets there and was pretty happy with what I got out of it. Dynamic effort training right now, so I was working on speed up from the hole.
I wonder what I’m going to do next time I try for maxes....
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Too much Plus in the Google →
One of the major drivers of my switch to DuckDuckGo this past weekend.
I figure I’ll spend a week with DDG then try Bing if I’m not satisfied. Then I’ll explore the other hopefuls if necessary. DDG has a lot of geek-friendly features, though. E.g., bang syntax for searching known sources specifically, like Ruby docs.
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Things that are the bomb, a partial list.
Each of these things made my life a little nicer this week, in one way or another.
Redis Backbone Pinboard Github Workflowy IFTTT Aeropress Barefoot Coffee Macbook Air BBEdit Deadlifts Ultimae Cats
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Traumatic service switching. →
I did something today that I haven’t done in about ten years: I switched Internet search services. I’m now trying out DuckDuckGo instead of the large-number Mountain View corporation that has been doing some really bizarre and occasionally evil things recently. I had to install the Glims Safari extension to do it, but that turns out to be fairly nifty so it’s been a win thus...
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What I built yesterday
I built a machine yesterday to be my development workshop for my current project. This gets easier every time I do it, because cabling gets more & more sensible. SATA cables are so easy to deal with that even I can route them properly.
DanW wanted to know what hardware I chose, so here’s the exact list:
Supermicro X9SCI-LN4F mobo (Intel Sandy Bridge, socket 1155, micro ATX)
Intel...
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Dithering.
Now I’m about to do another quick test with backbone.js. I am dithering about this decision about as much as I did about my storage choices. Part of it is sheer unfamiliarity: I’m a newcomer to client-side javascript development. I can fake it with some small-scale jquery, but this is a serious client-side application I am about to develop. I feel like I don’t know enough to...
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I should post a lifting update too.
Scratch that previous stack. Ember.js turned out to be heavyweight and confusing. At the moment I’m doing a spike implementation with spine.js and it’s looking far more like a winner despite the CoffeeScript.
In my free time I’m hunting around for deployment tools. Don’t have to solve that problem just yet, however.
December 2011
15 posts
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The current stack
Ember.js most likely for the client-side application Padrino & Ruby for the server-side application slim for html templates; less for css generation Ohm/Redis for objects & data structures I want around all the time my forked Risky/Riak for larger objects & anything with lower access rates, possibly with some redis-objects thrown in
I have a couple thousand lines of working code...
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I need to work on my core.
Yesterday:
8 sets of this pair:
10x barbell good morning @ 105
:30 extended-arm plank with toes on a stability ball.
The good mornings were the easy part. That ball really ought to be called an instability ball. Took me until the third set to figure out how to even get up onto the ball without help. After that was it was just pure core misery.
After that, core stability work. The upshot is...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-12-25) →
Solar Fields (13)
Luke Bond (7)
Underworld (3)
Brian Eno (3)
LFO (1)
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ME bench day
Board press. Got 135 this week, hells yes. Failed at 145. That’s next week’s goal. Slowly the upper body strength comes. My back is so changed from what it was: muscles all over, major shoulder mobility where I used to have very little, and so on.
Shredded the hamstrings on Wednesday:
Rack good mornings up to 275#, which was a weight that shocked me, because normally I do good...
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Mike Oldfield (5)
The Soul’s Release (4)
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Startle The Heavens (2)
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Max effort phase.
I’m into a max effort phase now. Heavier weights, singles, lots of rest between sets. Also, restricted ranges of motion for the lifts.
Rack pulls: 5x135, 5x185, ranging up to 3x295 (my max deadlift), then singles up to 345 which is a new rack pull max for me. Legs had no trouble with it. The grip on my left hand is a problem, though. The freaking bar slid right out of my hand on the way...
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Deadlift DE yesterday
2/2/2/2 8x2 @ 165/185/205/225 245
So much less grueling than last week that I couldn’t believe it. ADAPTATION: HOW DOES IT WORK?
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Oof, DOMS.
My legs are so sore. Time for the compression leggings!
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DE squats.
2/2/2/2 8x2 @ 75/95/115/135 155#
Felt good. It was work and I was sweating by that 8th set, but made all lifts with good depth. I’m not sure my speed on those last couple of sets was enough to qualify it as truly dynamic effort, but I was trying.
Followed this up with the same supplementary work as last Monday:
3x10 sled leg press, butt off the seat, feet wide, variety of...
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DE deadlift day, grueling.
Half an hour of stretching & warmup. Got my 100 unbroken 2# speed rope jumps ☺ then did another 50 after a breather. Did some lat pulldowns and arm stretching.
Dynamic effort deadlifts:
2/2/2/2 @ 165/175/185/195 to warm up
7x2 @ 245
2x2 @ 215, just to recover all the speed I’d lost on those last couple of sets at 245.
Am tinkering with my form to shift the load from upper back to...
November 2011
18 posts
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-11-27) →
The Candlepark Stars (27)
Chicane (5)
Andy Blueman (2)
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Avenger (1)
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DE squats.
A bunch of sets of 2 reps working up to 115. 8x2 @ 135. Working on a controlled descent and then keeping my right knee stable while driving up.
Hamstring supplementary work (curls, good mornings @ 65).
Leg press sled machine, 3x10 at a variety of weights, very wide foot position and, most importantly, butt completely off the seat. Interesting variation for an exercise I haven’t done in...
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Pressing day.
150 jumps with a 2-pound speed rope. 86/14/50. Was trying for 100 unbroken but I let the rope slip out of my hand. Have been warming up with the speed rope recently because the elliptical was starting to bore me. I’ll try a normal jump rope next week to see if all this speed rope work has helped my double-unders.
DE bench press. 3/3/3/3/8x3 50/60/70/80/90#.
3x10 dumbbell press at...
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DE day
My first day of DE lifting, aka dynamic effort, start of a 3 week cycle. Lots of sets of 2 reps each, ramping up to a working weight, then 8 sets of 2 reps each at those weights. Not a lot of rest. Each lift performed at max speed.
Deadlift: 215#
Low-bar back squat: 125#
Squats are starting to feel good. Deadlift was solid as always. Finished off with good mornings and assisted side lunges.
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Brief workout log.
Yesterday: benching to failure over and over, low-bar back squats (new 1RM @ 175, which is 20# up from my previous), barbell hip bridges @ 95 (awesome glute exercise, do it!), and wide-grip lat pulls on a Hammer machine.
Today: stretching, nothing more.
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Deadlift & upper back day.
Bench pressing protocol is up to 5 sets of 6 reps at 95#. Volume feels very high right now, and I start failing on the fourth set. Forced reps the rest of the way. The point is to fail with my shoulders and back staying solid & locked in place, so this is okay for now.
Rack pulls to 335#, which is a new max for me. Did 2x315 right before that, which was my previous max.
Conventional deads...
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Catalyst Athletics on warming up →
Great article on why you warm up and some ways to do it, working through the body systematically. Lots of specific suggestions about stretching and foam rolling.
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How to do Ruby development on your OS X box...
Sick of rvm? Yeah, everybody else is too.
One. As before, install homebrew and pow
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/gist/323731)" curl get.pow.cx | sh
Two. Install rbenv and some supporting tools.
brew install rbenv rbenv-gemset ruby-build
If you have previously installed rvm, remove its setup from your profile. Replace it with this line:
eval "$(rbenv init -)"
...
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Why is the pushup so hard? →
Well, mostly because nobody ever in my life taught me how you actually do them. Not until very recently have I had the least clue how to position myself, how to push, how to hold myself rigid. My husband the military school graduate, on the other hand, can still do perfect pushups 30 years later. Somebody taught him then made him do millions of them.
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And a half hour of stretching every day.
Benching volume work continues: 6x5 @ 95. I’m worn out from the week of doing this and I started failing on the third set. Forced reps for each set to finish. At least I know I’m giving it maximal effort. A little protein and a little rest and I should see some good improvements next week.
Low-bar back squats, 8-3 reps at 95, 115, 135, 155. Doing well with squats: good depth every...
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Today in lifting.
Benching volume protocol: 6 x 5reps @ 95, 45 sec rest, continuing to work on perfecting form.
A squat stretch where you lie on your back with your butt close to a wall and your feet on the wall in a squatting position. Sit there for a while and let yourself settle into it. Use your hands to move your knees apart.
Rack pulls, at a range of weights up to 315#. Got several solid reps in at that...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-10-30) →
Codes In The Clouds (21)
The Candlepark Stars (15)
Solar Fields (15)
Carbon Based Lifeforms (15)
Cell (10)
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Pressing and triceps work.
Bench pressing in the volume-heavy protocol. I’m up to 6 sets of 5 reps now at 95#, 45 seconds of rest between.
Good mornings, 65#.
Skullcrushers on an inclined bench (head down) with a 45# barbell.
Bulgarian split squats, 3 sets of 10 per leg, empty-handed, 15# dumbbells, 30# dumbbells. That last set kicked my ass hard.
Weighted extended-arm planks, 30 seconds holding it with plates...
October 2011
37 posts
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JWs call former members "mentally diseased";... →
2040 comments at the time that I post this. Most of them are pure nonsense, of course, but if you sort them by “Best rating” you get the interesting ones. Something I learned just now from one of the comments: the JWs are now publishing two editions of their famous magazine The Watchtower. There’s one meant for public consumption and one meant for insiders. They say the...
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A sister's eulogy for Steve Jobs. →
This gutted me.
There is a story like this for every death there is in the world.
Also, fuck cancer.
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What kind of Buddhist was Steve Jobs really? →
Another fascinating article because it doesn’t do the obvious. I need to read that bio soon.