Jason Halstead's Blog, page 56

The Rest of the Basics

Today's topic is about rest. Well, initially at least. It's a very important part of the overall picture of making progress. Not everybody out there is going to be as dedicated (read: obsessed) with working out like I am, but that does not make taking time off any less important for maintaining gains and making progress.

Our lives are busier than ever these days. Technology and busy lifestyles have managed to drive us to exhaustion — and often we do so willingly thinking we're having fun! Video games, movies and television, writing articles like this… all great examples of things that we enjoy (amongst many other technological activities) but they keep us going beyond what we perhaps should. The end result is a shorter night of sleep.

I average 6 – 7 hours a night of sleep. Sometimes more on the weekend, sometimes less depending on how tired my kids are. It's really not enough to provide for optimal workout recovery, and it's a part of why I often slip into a state of being overtrained. You can tell when you get overtrained because you body isn't responding well. You may be irritable or tired, constantly aching, and unable to make any progress in the gym. An easier test is to take a pencil and pick a time range, say 20 or 30 seconds. Now time yourself and use that pencil to put dots on a piece of paper until the time is up. Just tap the paper as many times as you can. When the time is up count the dots. When you're fresh and ready to go you should have quite a few. If you're wiped out and overtrained you'll be able to put down a lot less of those dots. That's your nervous system telling you it's fatigued and it wants a break.

So how do you get overtrained? Too much work for too long, not enough rest to allow recovery, not enough nutrition to handle the workload, too much stress, and working out in a weakened condition (ill, dehydrated, malnourished, etc.). Any one or more of those conditions can cause overtraining, and being overtrained sets the stage for a weakened immune system, injuries, decreased reaction times, and other bad things. Overtraining can also be a tool, if used very carefully, but more on that down the road.

As a living example of what not to do, I used to overtrain myself prior to a powerlifting meet, then I'd take the week off before the meet to recover. The last time I tried that I pushed it too far. Circumstances, a wiped out body, and too much CNS fatigue worked together to pop off the tendons connecting my pectoral to my arm. That's a rather severe example of why overtraining should be avoided. Most people won't have that sort of problem, but in the off chance you decide to play with extremely heavy loads and get very serious about it, pay heed and take care.

Back to resting to avoid overtraining and promote recovery and growth. For the majority of trainees most repair and muscle / strength gain happens when we are resting. The body goes into repair mode when sleeping. It's not just about weight training either — why else would doctors recommend rest to help recover from an illness or injury? Outside of the muscular and skeletal improvements the mind and central nervous system also takes a break from stressors and resets itself. This is as important as the body fixing itself.

For the lucky few who have sponsors that allow them the luxury of working out a few times a day and not having to worry about punching a clock, rest is both even more important and a little bit easier to come by. A mid-day nap, for example, can help boost the body's anabolic properties. I don't know if any studies have been done to support this but I also wonder about hormonal release, especially in men. I do know that the average man has the majority of their daily testosterone generated and released in the pre-dawn hours of the day. For third shift workers I wonder if that timing changes to whenever they get their daily (nightly?) sleep in. I don't want the results to this little test but for anybody working midnights, keep track of whether you're waking up with a kickstand propping you up on your side or not – that's a great indicator that you're producing testosterone while you're sleeping.

For the majority of us life is just too damn busy to catch a nap during the day. Doesn't mean I wouldn't like to some days, but there's nothing comfortable on my desk to lay my head on. So instead we have to try and do what we can to find as much sleep as we can in a comfortable fashion (aka a decent mattress and pillow, preferably a cozy bed partner as well). If that's not enough to refresh the mind as well, work on finding relaxing activities to indulge in. For me that means writing, reading, or some other immersive activity that allows me to put the world and its stressors out of my conscious mind. Incidentally sex is great for stress relief too, but if you're aching from a major workout and there aren't enough endorphins in the world to make the trembling arms and legs stop, take a rain check on the nookie.

So go out and get some rest. It's not a license to be lazy, it's a requirement for maintaining the moist robot that is the human body.

Shameless self promotion links below, disregard or check out as you wish:

www.booksbyjason.com

Jason's Smashwords Page

Running From One Problem to Another

So when do I start offering up canned routines guaranteed to boost your bench by 40 pounds in six weeks? Yeah, that's not going to happen. Me writing about it, that is. Could it happen? Sure, but it's either going to involve needles, pills, and some insane training or wiggling into an impressive bench shirt. Now technique changes can also drive the numbers higher, but that's advanced stuff and I don't plan on tapping that resource for a while yet. Like ketchup, good things come to those who wait.

So back to the basics then. I've babbled about intro to weight lifting enough that the benefits are in your face. Or, if they're not they should be: more strength, more confidence, more fat burning, looking good nekkid, impressing people at parties by shoulder pressing an adult woman until she can touch the ceiling (yeah, I did that, it's a pic on my Facebook profile), stronger bones to help offset bone density lost with aging, increased immune system function, and a lot of more generic benefits that come from any sort of exercise.

I mentioned fat burning, but let me dive a little deeper into that. Anaerobic exercise, which is what weight lifting is, burns a similar or perhaps even slightly lower amount of calories than an equal amount of time spent doing high impact cardio exercise. What? Why would I admit something inferior about lifting weights? Because it's not inferior – there's more to it. Sixty minutes spent lifting weights could burn 500 calories. Sixty minutes jogging at 6+ miles an hour could burn 500 calories (incidentally that's fewer calories than many fast food sandwiches have in them). Now when that sixty minutes is up the treadmill bunny is done burning calories. The person lifting weights continues to burn for another 12 – 36 hours. Not at the same rate, but those muscles just got their collective asses kicked and your body is going to be working hard to refuel them, repair them, and make them grow stronger. Some days you can even feel it, especially if you're working areas you don't normally do. That's called DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). Oh, and afterwards those stronger muscles require more calories to maintain them, which boosts your base metabolic rate (read: calories burned on a daily basis just because you're alive).

While I'm dogging on cardio, let me take it a step further. Cardio is catabolic. After twenty minutes of cardio exercise the oxygen is depleted from the body. At that point it starts to pull the fat out of cells and use it for energy. That's the simple part and good news, if you've got the stamina to make it twenty minutes without passing out. It's never just that simple though, is it? When the body does cardio it looks for ways to optimize the process. It looks at itself and reasons that if it has to run / bike / spin / whatever then why not make it easier and get rid of this stuff that makes it harder to move efficiently? "This stuff" is not fat. The body likes and wants fat. It knows fat is energy it can use, and especially in a starvation state or emergency condition it can turn to that, so it wants to keep it as long as it can. "This stuff", therefore, is muscle. Cardio is a catabolic activity. Catabolic means a breakdown of materials (protein, aka muscle tissue) for the release of energy. Ever seen a buff looking marathon runner? Hell, they don't even look all that lean, at least not compared to people who understand the art and science of lifting weights.

So does that mean all cardio is evil and should be avoided? Not so much. Sure, I may grumble and mutter words to that effect but even I will do some treadmill interval training to keep my energy systems in shape. Interval training is not for this article though, so swear at me for mentioning it then move on.

Likewise cardio can be used to warm up for a lifting session. When I started in at the gym and was focusing on losing weight without knowing any better, I ran a mile, worked out, then ran another mile. I lost weight too, lots of it and in a timely manner. The problem was I was basically wasting 50% or more of my lifting sessions because the cardio stripped away the materials (nutrition / calories) needed to help the muscles recover and grow. Instead it broke muscle down. I lost fat and I lost muscle, but the end result was I lost weight.

The secret to The Biggest Loser is this process. They take people who don't even know how to spell exercise in most cases and hit them with a hefty dose of it. They run them into the ground with cardio and spend time doing some borderline ridiculous weight training with light weights and super high reps to try and fatigue the bejeezus out of the muscles and turn even weight lifting into an aerobic activity. Because they are beginners their CNS (Central Nervous System) does get trained to recruit more muscle fibers and in better ways, that shows a strength increase and an increase in muscle definition. The high levels of aerobic activity, on the other hand, cause fat and muscle both to break down. That's the secret to double digit weight loss – and also the reason why they go from being morbidly obese to skinny fat.

One of my greatest problems with The Biggest Loser is how the contestants are judged. They are judged on pure weight loss, which is unhealthy. They should be judged instead on fat loss. There are several methods to determine bodyfat percentage, with a few of them even reliable. There's one method that involves immersion in a tank of water, and another that seems to be the best method that involves x-raying the patient (DEXA). Another involves taking multiple skin fold measurements with calipers – that's the one I use. Scales and other methods are less reliable but as long as the same consistent method is used it can still chart progress (or a lack of).

So say a 200 pound woman loses 100 pounds, she's lost 50% of her bodyweight. Is that a good thing though? How about we look at her LBM (Lean Body Mass – the weight of the body without fat accounted for, e.g. bone, muscle, organs, etc.). If she starts out at 200lbs and 40% bodyfat that means 80lbs are pure fat and the remainder (120lbs) is what the woman inside the fat suit weighs. I'm not showing the calculations – if you can't figure out what 40% of 200 is go back to junior high school.

So our vixen to be wants to drop down to around 20% bodyfat or, if she's really itching to have a bikini body she can go for around 10% – 15%. That's a reduction of 40 pounds or, at most, 60 pounds. I do not recall the exact number, but I believe it's in the 10% – 13% range where woman who are beneath that number begin to lose their monthly cycles. Not a good thing, even though many might prefer it that way. Those hormones do what they do in a cyclical nature for a reason.

A woman can start to display her abs at around 15%. Shadows only really, but the real cut look begins beneath that in the 12% and under league. And individuals will vary. We all have genetics that determine where our fat is predominantly stored. For women it tends to stick more in the butt and thighs. For men the abdomen gets the majority of it.

Men can drop lower more safely though, with no major concern for their hormone and health until they get beneath 5% – 6%bodyfat. To be fair getting to that level of leanness is an incredible effort accomplished by very few people, and often with the support of thermogenics that may or may not be controlled substances.

So back to our 200lb victim. If she drops 50 pounds of fat and maintains her LBM of 120, she'll look pretty damn good. Sure, she'll still weigh 150lbs, but it's pretty lean and I reckon she'd draw appreciative second and third glances on the beach. I can't remember her name but I remember a figure competitor who went from being excessively heavy down to 202 pounds. She was also 5'11" or 6' tall. At that weight and the minimal bodyfat she had on her she was winning competitions. Not bodybuilding contests, figure competitions.

I've strayed from my Biggest Loser rant too far to really attempt to drive it home. Still, the moral is that weight is just a number. Composition of that weight is what matters. LBM means burning calories and shaping your body to look and do what you want it to do. Fat means you're good at floating in a swimming pool and sweating like a pig on a summer night even with the air conditioning on.

Cardio, therefore, is a tool that should be used carefully. I have a friend named Andres who dropped to around 6% bodyfat last year without any cardio. All natural, he just planned and executed his workouts properly and ate the right kind of nutrition. I myself have been between 8% and 9% in the past, though I typically maintain a 10% – 12% rating. Truth be told I have to work hard to maintain my weight these days, and twice as hard to gain weight. If I don't pay attention I lose weight! Hate me if you feel like it, but wouldn't you like to have that kind of a problem?

Pick up some weights and make that lifestyle change and you can. Anybody can. Just remember that fat loss happens faster than lifestyle changes do, so don't be a drone and do what somebody tells you, understand what it is you're doing and why. Once you truly understand what you're doing and the consequences of those actions (good or bad), you can make lasting changes.

Weight for It

In this entry I continue both my weight lifting series and my incurable need to use poorly phrased topics. While I certainly enjoy Dr. Mallard's weekly word play on NCIS, I'm afraid I'm no "Ducky."

So when we last left our heroes I was discussing the benefits of getting in shape and in particular powerlifting. In the beginning though the specific style is not so important (bodybuilding, powerlifting, or just screwing with machines). The first 6 months of working out, in fact, are called the beginner stage. A trainee can do virtually anything and both gain muscle and strength as well as losing fat. Cherish this time because it is fleeting.

I spent mine on pushups and sit ups. Although it could be argued that might not have been enough to fully trigger the beginner phase. I mentioned lifting weights on and off over the years many times. The fact that I made some progress every time is proof that this stage exists, even though I had no idea what I was doing. When I did get into the gym — a local on YMCA — I spent at least three months using machines and, occasionally, dumbbells. The dumbbells were good but the machines sucked. Case in point I managed a small bicep tear at one point using those damn things. More on why machines suck later – perhaps even a later date.

The body makes such progress in the beginner stage because it is shocked and confused. It knows you are now doing some stuff it hasn't done before and that you obviously need to get stronger to handle it. So the body adjusts, trying to meet the demands you are putting on it. The body doesn't know the best way to do this though so it goes all out and burns fat for the energy needed and builds protein to increase strength. Not only that but the more muscle you have the more calories you burn simply because that muscle is hungry and needs to be fueled.

But all too soon that blink of time is over and the body transitions from the beginner stage to the intermediate stage. This is as far as most people make it, unfortunately. Making gains is still easily possible with routine changes and a plan, but gaining strength and losing muscle simultaneously is a thing of the past (with a few notable exceptions to be discussed at another time). This stage can last for many years, but it's also one where a trainee learns how their body acts and responds best. The key to progress here is experimentation and variety, often at the hands of a trainer who knows how to challenge the trainees body.

A key thing to remember at the intermediate stage is that any exercise you really don't like doing is probably going to be the best exercise for you. That sucks, but it's true. We don't like what we're not familiar with or what we found particularly difficult to do. Well if it's unfamiliar we're not doing it enough. If it's hard, we haven't done it enough to fully understand it and train our bodies to perform it properly. A lot of sticking points and weak links are eliminated when these unpleasant exercises gain a priority spot in our workouts.

So after intermediate is advanced. Typically a trainee has been under the bar for about five years, though time varies by person. An advanced trainee has a good idea on how their body responds to different training styles and can generally get a pretty good response out of themselves. They know when they should and should not be doing a particular exercise or movement. They also know that they don't know a damn thing when it comes to exercise science. What? Yes, advanced lifters know their bodies and what works, but they also know that there are a lot of different things out there worth trying, even if they've never done them before. Conversely, they also know when something does not work for them, though they may throw it back into a routine from time to time to see if things have changed.

And in most circles it is strongly recommended to wait until that advanced stage before attempting any competitions, be they powerlifting, bodybuilding, strongman, or figure. That's just a recommendation, I've seen firsthand times when it does not apply. I watched a tiny little twig of a sixteen year old girl at my first powerlifting meet who deadlifted more than 225lbs. I watched a woman in her forties who looked to also be in danger of being swept away by a strong wind deadlift 335lbs. The first girl had a history of track and sports but only a few months of lifting under her belt, the second one had lifted longer, but not more than a couple of years. I myself waited about five years to compete – I wanted to be able to put up some big numbers when I started and I did, setting a record in bench pressing in my federation(on Son-Light Power)m / state / division / weight class. Yeah, say that three times fast. Incidentally both my bench press and deadlift records have since been beaten in 2011.

Will Brink, a friend and bodybuilding industry insider, recently put forth an observation he made. To paraphrase he said that female trainees underestimate themselves and do not meet their potential. Male trainees overestimate themselves and end up injured. I agree whole-heartedly with him, both due to my own injuries and in the many women I have worked with who did not give themselves enough credit.

Regardless of what stage you are at here are my words of wisdom: If you only do what you think you can do, you'll never get any better. To improve you must push yourself beyond what you know. Do so safely and do it knowing that you are making yourself a better person both physically and mentally. When you realize you can do more than you once thought you could it causes growth well beyond the physical, it makes it possible to do anything.

Weight of the World

For every guy who wanted to be bigger and stronger, why not aspire to take the place of Atlas, the titan who holds the sky on his shoulders to keep it from crushing the Earth? And let's be fair, for every woman who feels just as strongly that she should be as physically tough and powerful as she has the right to, why not have similar aspirations? Well so begins my pet project to include blog posts that pertain to working out. I already chronicle my saltwater aquarium trials and errors, why not a topic I actually know quite well?

So then a bit about what I want to write. I may segue into different areas from time to time, but primarily I hope to stick with powerlifting. That is my bread and butter, and I'm working myself very hard to try and get back into competitive powerlifting. In fact I'm planning on attending bench only non-sanctioned meet in October up in Ashtabula, Ohio. Hope to have a new bench shirt by then as well.

So what is powerlifting? It's an unusual sport that usually draws confused stairs from people. The polite ones, that is. Most people ask in borderline unkind terms, "Why the #@!% would you want to do that?" It involves maximal training and any athlete who competes quickly comes to understand injuries are common. It's just not possible to walk on the edge of a cliff for very long without stepping off.

A full powerlifting meet, for example, involves people being split up by their weight classes. These range from light weight lifters barely over 100 pounds to the superheavyweight class, which is anybody over 308 pounds. The class I have lifted in is the 242lb class, though my heaviest competition weight was 229.

Powerlifting is broken up further by divisions, and those are generally identified by age. At 34 I was in the open division. My next meet I'll be 36, which may still be open or it might be sub-masters – each federation is different. Federation? What's that? Yes, just like there is an NHL, IHL, UHL, and other hockey leagues (and the same with football and baseball), there are different leagues for powerlifting. Previously I lifted in the Son-Light Power federation. This next one I'm going to is a local thing, but I'm hoping it can be a stepping stone for me. Full blown federations include the USAPL, WABDL, and half a dozen others including some that are considered unlimited leagues. The unlimited ones allow pretty much any gear and are often untested for drugs.

Gear is equipment, and because powerlifting is such a dangerous sport, there is a lot of it. Every tried squatting with 500 pounds on your back? How about 800 (or more)? You can do a lot of damage to yourself if you rely on nothing but mind and meat to hold it together. Things happen, from being a fraction of an inch off balance to dipping to low at the bottom of a movement. They make things like squat suits to protect people. They are ridiculously uncomfortable, but wearing one can make the difference between being paralyzed or walking away safely from a personal best. Knee wraps, wrist wraps, benching shirts and even lifting briefs are all examples of protective gear that lifters use.

I can speak from personal experience on the benching shirt. I was training for an upcoming meet and was not wearing mine. Without the shirt I pushed myself too hard and could not do what needed to be done. The end result was a jarring slap in my arm and shoulder that turned out to be my left pectoral separating completely from my arm. Had I worn my shirt there is a 99% chance that would not have happened. Hell, if I'd have worn my shirt I would have been able to bench the weight!

Yes, the gear helps you lift more. Some people swear it adds a lot to their lifts. My shirt only added about 20 pounds to my bench. Ultimately though at some point in a lift it is 100% human effort. Locking out a bench press, squat, or deadlift are all about raw human power. A lot of people swear that raw (no gear) is the only way to lift. I swear that safe is the only way to lift. Even with all safety measures in place bad things can and do still happen, so why tempt fate?

I mentioned benching, squatting, and deadlifting. Bench press is done simply enough, ass and shoulders on a bench press, feet on the ground. Lower the bar to the chest and hold it there until the judge says press, then push it up to a locked out position. There should be three judges watching the lift and at least two of them have to give a thumbs up for the lift to be successful.

Moving to the squat, it's a simple enough movement on paper. Bar on the shoulders / upper back, then step out of the rack and sit down until your ass is parallel to your knees. Now straighten back up until the legs are locked and rack the weight. Judging in the squat involves making sure it's a controlled movement, the butt depth is sufficient, and the weight is locked out at the top.

The final lift in a traditional three lift meet is the deadlift. This is the easiest one way to by way of form and function. Reality, however, is an entirely different beast. Step up to the bar, feet placement may be shoulder width (conventional stance), outside of shoulder width (semi-sumo stance), or trying to do the splits (sumo stance). Grab the bar and lift it up until the legs are locked, shoulders are back, and the body is straight. When the all clear is announced set the bar back down – do not drop it, set it down.

So there it is, an introduction to powerlifting. But why compete? Is it really that important who can lift 500 versus 550 pounds? No, not really. It's the same as golf, the difference between shooting a 70 and a 71 on 18 holes only matters for friendly rivalry or, in the case of the elite athletes, who can pull in higher dollars for advertising purposes. But to each individual athlete the difference is profound. Not amongst one another so much but between ourselves.

Like everything in life, we've only got so much time and we want to make the most of it. I have read and heard that powerlifters peak in their mid forties. That may be true but most burnt out way before then. It's a hard sport. Louie Simmons, of Westside Barbell fame had undergone multiple back surgeries and recoveries to push on and still total 2100 pounds with a squat of 920lbs. He is the only man over 50 to do so, more proof to the dangerous nature of the sport. Regardless of the legends, the clock is ticking we want every lift we do to be better than our last one. What else are we going to do at the nursing home when our dentures fall out and we've got to relive something to make it worth enduring the next game of bingo.

As for me I grew up idolizing fantasy novels and Conan, both in print and on the big screen. I was a fairly active kid but given to a lot of time spent reading or playing computer games in spite of living in the country. I played tennis, not football or wrestling. I wanted to be big and strong. I wanted to be unstoppable and admired by others for what I could do physically – yet at the same time I was afraid of failure and of embarrassing myself. So I stayed a weak skinny-fat kid.

I dabbled in weight lifting on and off over the years, but never really knew what I was doing so it didn't last. My equipment selection was limited too and I didn't join a gym because of that fear of not knowing what I was doing thing. Stupid, I know, but that's hindsight. It wasn't until I was engaged and about 9 months away from getting married before I realized I had gone from skinny-fat or being marginally in shape to just outright fat. Damn that mirror in front of the shower!

What followed was me digging in and flipping the switch in my head. Into the trash went the deep fryer. Gone was the fast food trips. Meat and low carb for me, along with time honored pushups and sit ups every day. Mix in some jogging (I hate cardio to this day), and by the time I got married gone was the fat. Still skinny, but now I had something to build on. Now I had a reason to go to the gym and to try and stop accepting the excuse of not knowing what to do.

And now, many years later, the fire still burns in me to lift heavier and to get in better shape. I know the shame of being ignorant and the shame of letting myself go. I try to help others get past that, but it's amazing how few people there are out willing to flip that switch in themselves. Complacency and deniability is so much easier for them, rather than an hour of hard work done a few times a week.

My wife made that transition herself and seldom does a day go by when I'm not reminded and amazed of the transformation she made. Not only is it apparent during those wonderful moments when I get to see the physical proof of it (don't worry, she'll smack me in the back of the head for admitting that), but also just to hear her talk and be concerned over her own nutrition and physical fitness. We're not nuts about it – or at least she's not – but we are keenly aware and interested in our health and in making sure we're able to enjoy as much time as we can while we're here.

And as any parent knows, after the abuse our kids put us through in the early years, the thought of being able to torture them into old age is a wonderful idea to cling to!

New stuff out!

New book published! Sex Sells…yes, that's the title. Is it half as exciting as the title implies? There's one way to find out…

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/48242.

3 Minutes of fame

Okay, so it wasn't really fame. Turns out it wasn't really much of anything. That Examiner thing, I've decided, is not for me. Oh sure, maybe it'll work for some people but I'm really not interested anymore.

I put together a brief little article today for it and published it, but then was immediately shot down by the content reviewers because it wasn't "local" enough. And I was not allowed to resubmit it. The prior article (initial one) I posted also had nothing local in it, yet it was accepted. WTF?

Still I'm not ranting at all. I'm ambivalent mostly. The more articles I tried to look at on there, as well as my own limited experience and feedback I've received indicates that this place does not give a damn about people writing articles or helping others out. It's not even an online yellow pages like device. Instead it seems far more like a legalized spam machine. Sure, it's not sending out email to people annoying the heck out of them, but it is exposing any unwary travelers to tons of advertisements that have little or no bearing to anything practical or useful. The best button to click, in fact, is the little 'X' in the upper right corner.

So Examiner it what it is. A cash generating machine for the owners with a pittance paid to the "content" providers. Yes, those words drip with sarcasm. No real complaints on my end and heck, for somebody who's into reporting local area "stuff" it might even be worth it. That ain't my thing though, sorry to say.

Explosive Lifting

I've been invited to write about another passion of mine – weightlifting. Or more specifically, lifting heavy ass weights. Okay, the official title of the section is explosive lifting, but what that means is generating as much force as possible. It's not a one time thing, but rather a recurring blog-like setup on a place called Examiner.com.

I did some research first before plunging in blindly. Examiner's had some bad vibes from people who used to write for them or refuse to write for them. They cite problems with being paid and questionable shady reporting, among other things. I have little experience thus far but my initial impression is that these people with problems did not read the clear and up front email distributed by Examiner in the first place. It states how their pricing model works, and they also indicate that it is not going to generate the kind of money to allow a person to quit their day job. As time goes on and I gain more experience with Examiner I'll clearly develop my own opinion, but thus far I have nothing to complain about and no expectations.

In the meantime, it gives me a venue to write about something I feel passionate about – power lifting. My hopes is that it might do some people good, allowing them to see the benefits it can bring and hopefully dispel some misconceptions or myths about weight lifting in general. Or, if nothing else, make people think and question a few things. And of course the more I can get my name out there in a writing related venue, the better the opportunity for me to draw more attention to my books.

So here's the link to the first article – I'll be sure to cross post links to the new ones as they arrive as well: http://www.examiner.com/explosive-training-in-youngstown/where-man-and-mythology-meet.

If it smells like fish…

…don't go there. But in the spirit of all things aquatic, here's a pic of my aquarium taken just tonight. The corals are doing great and so are the snails and crabs. I've got one clown fish in my quarantine tank in the basement. It's doing great down there and that's good because he's 2 weeks or so away from being able to return to the display tank.

37 gallon display tank sans fish

In other news, I've been chugging away at Ice Princess, the sequel to (a href="http://www.booksbyjason.com/wanted" target="_top" >Wanted. Having a lot of fun writing it too so I hope to have the rough draft done soon, then I'll see about cover art. The cover art for Voices is coming along amazingly well, I'm very excited with that too.

Something fishy…

By now you're clearly onto my often horrible subjects. Par for the course – it's about the saltwater tank. New stuff today, from updates to equipment and critters.

Protein skimmer came today, I've got that assembled and I'm surprised and disappointed by the many reviews I've read online where they complained of poor instructions. It was remarkably simple to install and start up. Those people who complained, whomever they are, suck. It's an Octopus BH 100 hang on the tank protein skimmer – so far it's got my thumbs up!

At the fish store I had no idea what they might have in. I got lucky, they had a nice looking frogspawn (one of the things I was hoping to pick up), and a toadstool leather. Only other coral I was really hoping for was a Kenya Tree coral, which they had, but I didn't feel comfortable dropping that much cash. I also picked up five Narissa snails for shaking up the sand in my tank.

But wait, it gets better! Nearing the end of my coral shopping experience this guy comes up and asks me if I've got a reef tank. Then he gave me a couple of frags his buddy had given him. Acropora coral frag (difficult coral, but I've got it ideally located under my new lights and I have a water pump blowing a strong current straight over it. He also gave me some kind of a disc or shelf coral. He said I should glue it to he side of a rock and it'll grow there or if I find a place that's stable it will attach on its own overtime. I found a great place and we'll see what happens. I forget the name, but who am I to turn down some free coral frags?

Protein skimmer is still blowing extra bubbles into the water but that will resolve in time. Already the micro bubbles are reducing significantly in size and severity. In fact I need to go adjust my collection cup now that I'm looking at it.

Women With Balls

The promised post about the Arnold Classic and my awesome wife.

So we showed up a few minutes late for dinner with some friends of mine who are into amateur bodybuilding and powerlifting, as well as Will Brink, nutritional guru and often consultant for various SWAT teams. Eight of us gathered at a restaurant in downtown Columbus called Haiku. Their specialty was sushi and, I have first-hand experience to admit, it was outstanding.

I am the big guy on the right – and I was surprised at how big I look in the pic. I blame it on all the skinny and shapely women at the table. My wife is behind me, and directly across from her is Will Brink. The rest of the people shall remain nameless so as to keep their secret identities safe. Super heroes, one and all…

The next morning was a little rough on my wife. It had something to do with a few too many white Russians. Not the Dolph Lundgren kind either. We rolled into the convention around 10:30 or so and had a lot of walking to do. We watched some martial arts, some fencing, some painting, some powerlifting (USA PL federation), some female bodybuilders posing on stage, and looked around for people to meet and greet. We missed Arnold Schwarzenneggar, he came in later I guess. We also missed the guy I was really hoping to meet, Lou Ferrigno. I can't explain why, but I've wanted to meet this man for as long as I can remember. I don't know much of anything about him outside of what's public knowledge, but I like him and I've always been inspired by him. But alas, I guess he had a booth there on Friday but I could not find him anywhere on Saturday.

Speaking of booths and finding things, the expo floor on Saturday is madhouse! Many aisles were slowed to a crawl with people literally having to push their way through. My third time through there (yes, three times – I really wanted to meet Lou) I found the Titan powerlifting gear booth. I spoke with Ken Anderson briefly, and couldn't hear more than 20% of what he said. I'm looking for a new bench shirt to help me get back into powerlifting – about a year and a half ago I tore my pec, separating it completely from my left arm. I underwent surgery to reattach it and I've been getting myself back in shape ever since. So far so good, but I really want a good bench shirt to protect it and prevent something like that from happening again. Anyhow, Ken wants me to give him a call so we can talk about it and get the right thing. I'll probably wait until later this month.

Now as far as the women with balls topic goes, there are two incidents worth mentioning. The first was what many of us firmly believe was a tranny at the bar we visited at Haiku. It was eye opening, to say the least.

The second incident is where my wife comes into this story. She was hungover and dehydrated as we walked through the hallway outside the expo room. We stopped, wondering why there were two cement balls with grips laying on a rubber mat. The vendors at the booth surrounding them were trying to talk people into coming up and try deadlifting them. My wife stepped up, curious, and found out they weighed 210 lbs each. Her best deadlift this year was 205.

They talked her into trying it – she admitted she was curious if she could pick it up once. The existing women's record was lifting them 25 times. She wasn't sure she could do 1. She tried it, she succeeded, and then she tried it again. She kept going and I was so stunned and proud I completely forgot to get out my phone to take a video of it. I suck. But not her – she kept going and going until she blew past 25 and ended at 30. She quit, she said, because her lungs were on fire and she felt funny from the lack of proper hydration. She figures she could have done five more easy if she had not drank the night before.

The record held the rest of the day. She got a free tank top out of it too, but the shirt is nothing compared to the knowledge of what she accomplished.

I considered trying it, the men's record for deadlifting both balls (420lbs total) was 40 reps at the time. I reckoned that should have been easy – my best single rack pull is over 600lbs – but I opted out. I didn't want a sore back and, more importantly, I didn't want to do anything to diminish the awesome feat of strength she had just done.

And let this be a warning should anyone give me a hard time – my wife is sexy and strong and I will not hesitate to sick her on you!