pain

Pain is a dashboard warning light blinking. Usually it signals something is wrong. My elbow hurts. It's been sore for about two weeks. I expected soreness. A combination of high rep burpees, weighted pull-ups and dips is bound to elicit pain eventually. Massage is an active way to deal with the pain.

The photo shows my favorite anti-pain medication: self massage gadgets all. At the extreme left are the two most frequently used tools: a hard plastic Indo Board cylinder and the Stick. Whenever I refer to the foam roller, I am actually talking about the Indo Board cylinder. The cylinder has proven useful in treating my back pain and plantar fasciitis. Runners should be familiar with the Stick. It's great for shin splints, calf and IT band issues, and elbow tendinitis. I've been using the Stick on my triceps. It greatly reduces the soreness in my elbow.

Further right are various sized balls. A ball placed between a trigger point and a wall or the floor brings almost instantaneous relief. I recovered from a whiplash injury using a golfball in this manner. The Knobble (mushroom shaped device) and the blue caltrop looking thingy are handy trigger point release tools. I am currently using these for massaging the extensor and supinator muscles in my forearms.

Friday's workout:
-27 squat cleans

Saturday:
-10 minutes of burpees
-1 minute tuck front lever (4x15 secs)
-12 sec hand stand
-10 minutes of kb high pulls

2,550/11,xxx

summer doldrums

I've been lazy the past few days; no work-outs, nuthin. A couple times I stood right in front of the dumbbells psyching myself to pick them up, only to walk away defeated. There's this annoying pain behind my right hip-it feels as if someone were digging a knuckle in my back. It makes it hard to sleep and saps me of any will to train. Bleh.

Enough already:
-weighted pull-ups (8x4, 3x9)
-bent arm hang (6x10 secs)
-24 squat cleans

Knocking off a weighted pull-up session from the week has not yielded any discernible results. I am still struggling with 4 reps per set. The next progression on the squat clean plan was 8x3 on the minute. For variety, I tried to complete 24 reps before 8 minutes and finished in 7'08".

wisdom from Bas

When I grow up, I want to have the presence of mind of Bas Rutten.

summer of love

It's Friday and I'm rockin' my Capezios. Not really, but I love the remix of this Donna Summer classic.

Today's workout:
-VB51
-squat cleans on the minute (7x3)
-push press on the minute (5x5)
-Tabata row!

I started out with a leisurely 51 burpees-no timer and lots of rest. I then added a set to the squat cleans and push-presses and finished with a Tabata row. As with all of the exercises, I used nasal breathing to recover and get the heart rate down quickly. Following the row, which again sent up a small cloud of dust, I got a little congested, which made nasal breathing very difficult; almost sent me into a panic attack (danger, danger, no oxygen).

2,460/11,xxx

spicy hot

Today's workout went like this:
-squat cleans on the minute (6x2,2x3)
-VB50 (3'53")
-25 lbs windmills (2x5)

One of my long term objectives is to build up the strength to do Crossfit's Fran with 2x30kg dbs. The squat cleans and push presses are stepping stones. I didn't do any push-press today though. The burpees weren't easier today, but I expected that as I'd just finished the squat cleans. While I was a little too tired for heavy shoulder work, I wanted to do something. Windmills, like a shot of chili pepper, were just the thing.

2,459/11,xxx

no pain, no gain

You've heard this mentioned before. I thought I'd bring it up to remind you with an example. In my quest to build up my burpee numbers, I've taken to doing burpee breathing ladders. The ladders enable me to crank out more than 100 reps, in relative ease. Therein lies the problem. A 1-15 breathing ladder is strenuous, but is not as painful as 50 burpees for time.

The price of low cost burpee ladders is decreased anaerobic efficiency. I know this because I just clocked 50 burpees at 3'50". Before the burpee breathing ladders, I was closing in on 3 minutes flat. I felt out of condition.

Today's workout:
-day 14 of the weighted density pull-up plan (7x4, 4x3)
-3x10 sec bent arm hangs
-5x10 weighted dips
-VB50 (3'50")

I feel like I'm stuck at this level (7x4, 4x3) on the pull-ups. I'm incorporating bent-arm hangs to bust through this resistance level.

2,409/11,xxx

wnba

Sunday was a day of firsts for my family. We attended a WNBA game between the New York Liberty and Chicago Sky at Madison Square Garden (click the title for a report of the basketball game). The last time I was at the Garden, New York's other basketball team, the Knicks, got smoked by the Utah Jazz. This time around, the ladies' team did New York proud by winning the match-up against Chicago.

Unlike the ill-fated Knicks game, which took place on a school night, this WNBA game started at 4:00PM on a Sunday afternoon and ended while it was still light out. The arena was filled, it seemed to me, with families. Young girls were in abundance. This was a perfect event for my daughters, who took great pleasure in watching the big girls play hoops.

Today's workout:
-20 burpees
-squat cleans on the minute (6x3)
-push-press on the minute (4x5)

2,359/11,xxx

saturday's workout

Here we go:
-day 13 of the weighted pull-up plan (7x4, 4x3)
-Tabata thrusters (2x20kg db's)
-burpee breathing ladders (1-15, 1-7)

Apart from diminished soreness in my triceps, it's hard for me to tell if I'm making progress with the density pull-up plan. Less pain, is gain I suppose as it's a sign of some kind of adaption. The Tabata thrusters were a bear. The amount of reps per set made it look like a max strength workout on paper; however, the 10 seconds of rest between sets definitely puts it in another class of hell. After a five minute rest, I plunged into the burpee ladders. They weren't lung searing so much as quad burning.

2,339/11,xxx

there's no "e" in spuds

If your knowledge of farm produce is based on what's available at the typical supermarket, you might think there are only two kinds of potatoes: Yukon Gold and Idaho. I'm no expert, but I'm certain there's more variety than that! Lucky for me, there's a farmers' market at Union Square. We bought a bag of peanut shaped spuds yesterday. I'm not sure how I'm going to prepare them this evening, but I'm leaning towards a treatment with olive oil and garlic.

Before hitting the farmers' market, I put 2 k on my Concept 2 rower. I have not touched the rower since I embarked on the now 11,000 plus burpee challenge. As soon as I pulled on the handle, the rotor sent up a cloud of dust that almost initiated an asthma attack. My time was 7'44"1, not exceptionally fast, but not disappointing. It seems that the burpees, while not making me a stellar oarsman, kept me physically prepared for something. That's gpp.

Where in the hell is Beeks?

If you've been following the soaring stock market, you might have been wondering, as I have, when Wall Street will align with the realities of Main Street. Just yesterday, my wife came home with a shopping bag full of goodies from a store on Fifth Avenue that was going out of business. Shoppers picked over the deeply discounted merchandise like vultures over carrion. Once this store goes, what enterprise will take over the lease? How many manicure and pedicure boutiques will it take to pick up the slack left by the companies that have gone under? I don't think there will be any fingernails left to shape and buff. They'll all have been chewed down to the cuticle.

Any who, I didn't like the way the stock market looked over the past couple days so I closed some long positions this morning and went short. This was a fortuitous move. Had I had my doctor's appointment today instead of yesterday, I might still have been long when the market fell off a cliff. If you look at the chart, it looks just like the trajectory of a rock pushed off a precipice: straight down. That's program trading for you.

The market closed right around where I thought it would. I suppose the market might find support and continue the upward trend, or maybe not. Buckle up, we're in for a bumpy ride.

old school dinosaur

I recently attended a gathering of old and current members of my alma mater's Tae Kwon Do Club. As one of the original members, I was curious to see what changes had taken place since I'd moved on. A lot has changed.

The TKD club was founded in the mid 1980's. If you remember that far back, MTV still played music videos. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor, plays a killer robot from the future. And I was practicing ITF TKD, as taught by Master BM Lee. ITF TKD resembles Shotokan karate more than it does the Olympic style (WTF). I didn't expect to see anyone I knew, but was more than ready to meet the folks who've come after me.

Well, there were two familiar faces: Kenji, who was pursuing a doctorate in linguistics; Master Michael Lee, son of Master BM Lee. Turns out Kenji never got his doctorate in linguistics, but he did get his 2nd dan in TKD. Master Michael Lee was in high school the last time I saw him. Since then he became a grand champion in a major TKD tournament, a senior instructor, and a family man. The rest of the faces were all too young, not even born by the time I graduated. I could only relate to them as a relic from the old school days. "Don't stop training," I told them, "it's a way of life."

Today's workout:
-day 10 of the weighted pull up program (5,5,5,4,4,4,3,3,3,3,1)
-dips (12,12,12,12,12)
-1 to 15 burpee breathing ladder

I feel like I'm rushing the sets of 5 in the pull-ups. I'll turn it down a notch so that I can get some clean sets in. My arms are medium-well to well-done. Some massaging with the stick and high bounce ball are in order.

2,040/10,xxx

on the metaphysics of martial arts: sex, chimps, and complex human behaviour

The article (linked in the title) cleared up some confusion that arose over a discussion I participated in on fighting. Some women involved in the discussion wanted the opportunity to fight against males under full-contact rules. The men active in the discussion were unanimously opposed to the idea of fighting women as if they were men. Some men felt that rules should be established prohibiting such match-ups. While notions of chivalry, equal rights, oppression and declining masculinity were tossed about, the crux of the problem, I see now, is sex, no not gender, the nasty.

Chimps have long been observed using sticks and blades of grass to extract termites from their burrows. Recently, some scientists have documented male chimps using dry leaves to entice females to mate. This is fascinating, complex behavior for the purpose of getting down with the ladies. Should we be surprised?

Martial arts, as distinguished from killing, I would argue is an activity to establish hierarchy and mating rights. If it were about self-defense and killing, martial artists would be training with the latest weapons and technology available. Instead, martial arts is all non-lethal fun. Tournaments, cage matches, kumite, along with rams butting heads or peacocks in display mode are primarily male pursuits, whose object, we might not realize, is to get the girl.

Getting back to the discussion of full-contact matches between men and women, perhaps the males' reluctance to hit women is not because of chivalry, but because deep in our simian brain we are simply programmed to hit "on" women. Hitting is reserved for the competition, the other guy.

Today's workout:
-weighted chin-ups (5, 4, 4, 4, 4, )
-1 to 15 burpee breathing ladder

curious george saves the day

There's truth in the title of the exhibit, "Curious George Saves the Day." We learned, while visiting the Jewish Museum on Manhattan's Museum Mile with our children, that the drawings and manuscripts for the beloved book series helped the authors and illustrators, Margaret and H. A. Rey, escape Nazi occupied France.

The exhibit sheds light on how the peripatetic life of H.A and Margaret inspired the little monkey's adventures. As a child reading the book series, and as a parent reading the books to my children, I wasn't aware of the back story. That the little monkey and the man in the yellow hat emerge from their scrapes with their optimism intact makes the stories all the more poignant.

'snot all cultcha:
- 1-15 burpee breathing ladder

1,780/10,xxx