Property Investments, Landlording, CrossFit, Nutrition & Safety

Here are some great quotes that have crossed my path in the last year or so. Some I know the source, others not, but they are all profound:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. – Robert A. Heinlein

The only things in life that are certain, are death and taxes.

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. – Albert Einstein.

It is a bad life. Maybe I’ll have a bad death, at least then there will be symmetry. – Zathras, Babylon 5

At 20 you have the body you were born with; at 40 you have the body you deserve…

Only people willing to work to the point of discomfort on a regular basis using effective means to produce that discomfort will actually look like they have been other-than-comfortable most of the time. – Mark Rippetoe

Does the routine destroy our creativity or do we lose creativity and fall into the routine?

Choke on the cuteness of the most amazing video I have ever seen:

Teaching a wolf to howl, how cool is that?!? There’s only room for one video this week, simply because nothing can top that…

Last week I wrote about the start of my Hungarian influenced 9 week Olympic weightlifting training program. This week, I started week 2, which it won’t come as any surprise, is harder than week 1! Even my coach from Crossfit Manchester said: “This is really hard!” which is a worrying thing to hear from Mark indeed! Anyway, here’s week 2 (only 3 days as I suspect that might be all I can make this week):

Day 1

• Power Hang Clean – 6 sets of 3 reps at 75% = 75kg
• High Pull of Clean – 5 sets of 3 reps at up to 100kg
• Dead pull of Clean – 4 sets of 3 reps at up to 110kg
• Back Squat – 6 sets of 5 reps at 75% = 112.5kg

Day 2

• Front Squat – 5 sets of 5 at up to 80% = 97.5kg
• 1 Power Snatch + 2 Power Hang Snatch – 5 sets of 1+2 at 70-75% = 55-57.5kg
• 1 Power Clean + 2 Power Hang Clean – 5 sets of 1+2 at 75-80% = 75–80kg
• 2 Split Jerk – 4 sets at up to 80% = 80kg

Day 3

• Power Hang Snatch – 6 sets of 3 at 80% = 60kg
• High Pull of Snatch – 5 sets of 3 at 80kg
• Dead Pull of Snatch – 4 sets of 3 at up to 90kg
• Front Squat – 6 sets of 5 at 82% = 100kg

After Day 1 of Week 1 nearly killed me, I’ve resorted to taking a few liberties and viewing the prescribed weights as having an implicit “work up to” built in, at least for a few weeks till I get more used to it. However I have resolved to do at least half the reps at the prescribed weight. So take day 1 for example, the: Back Squat – 6 sets of 5 reps at 75% = 112.5kg. For this I did a set each at: 80, 95, 105, and 3x 112.5 and believe me, that was hard enough!

In fact, doing Week 2, Day 1 yesterday saw my first failure. I was unable to do Power Hang Clean – 6 sets of 3 reps at 75% = 75kg. First off, I can’t seem to drop that much weight (nearly my body weight) back down to my waist and hold my grip, without wrenching my arms and doing myself an injury. So I have to drop the bar complete and re-deadlift it up into the hand position. So in effect, I was doing sets of 3 singles.

Secondly, 75kg it seems is right on the limit of what I can hang power clean. I managed to do it at 70kg (I did 2 sets here) but at 75kg I could only get one per set, and had to resort to full power cleans, or just having a good attempt. Which to be honest, was rather disappointing.

I also have a bit of a problem with this program: yes it’s damn hard work, that’s a given. But compared to the fun and variety of Crossfit, it’s also rather boring and has already become repetitive and I’m only on the 5th day! It also takes a long time too. Even a deliberately expanded Crossfit workout only takes an hour, but these workouts are consistently taking me 1 hour 45 minutes to complete. Add to that an hour’s round trip travel time, plus time to change etc and you’re looking at 3 hours per session. Perhaps I’ve been spoilt by the short sharp efficacy of exciting Crossfit work outs, and am simply not used to this kind of training. Perhaps. At the moment however, 9 weeks looks a long way away.

Had a great weekend with my daughter, who came down to Newport. After some searching on the net for what to do all weekend, I finally settled on the following activities:

Saturday day we went to At Bristol with some friends, which is hands on Science Museum thing with mandatory Planetarium. They had the usual array of things to play with, but coolest of all was a Cloud Chamber with radiation source, giving off ace trails. Seeing other cosmic type rays shooting through the chamber was amazing.

It’s quite expensive at about £10 per person, and they ask you for an additional 10% charity donation, but if you accept, you get it back and more in vouchers for the shop. Either way, it’s highly recommended and was a good use of 4 hours.

Saturday evening we went to see Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs in 3D at Newport Cinema. Very funny, though we *ahem* may have spent rather too much on ice cream and sweeties *ahem*! 😉 The film was very funny and the 3D is still just awesome:

Sunday we went down the Big Pit, which is an old coal mine turned into a Museum. Actually it was very interesting. There’s nothing quite like turning all the lights off in a mine and experiencing complete and utter darkness. It’s just not something you can comprehend when you’re on the surface, because there’s always some light somewhere.

Sunday afternoon we went to the Roman museum at Caerleon and also got a explore the Amphitheatre there, the only fully excavated Amphitheatre in Briton, built to hold a crowd of 6,000. There’s so much history there, you can feel it.

All in all, a good weekend. 🙂

Yes I know, *more* cat videos. It’s not my fault, cats are cute, and the internet was pretty much invented for cat videos, so what ya gona do? This first one is the ultimate in cat stoicism, as this cat tries to ignore the fact that it’s sitting on a monster subwoofer!

Cat must have Striiiiiing!

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it lunch? This is evolution in motion and boy does this cat need the exercise!

I’ve started the build up to the North Open Weightlifting competition in 9 weeks, and have started following a vaguely Hungarian influenced training program.  I can only manage to train 4 days a week, not the 6 prescribed, but we’ll have to see how it goes.  Here’s the first week’s program:

Day 1

• Power Hang Snatch – 6 sets of 3 reps at 65%
• High Pull of Snatch – 5 sets of 3 reps (I’d look to do these at about 70kg)
• Dead Pull of Snatch – 4 sets of 5 reps (work at your current snatch max)
• Back Squat – 5 or 6 sets of 5 reps at 65% (of your 1 rep max)

Day 2

• Front Squat – 5 sets of 5 reps at 70% of 1 rep max
• Power Snatch/Power Hang Snatch – 5 sets of 1+2 at 65% of Snatch (this means 1 Power Snatch followed by 2 Power Hang Snatch)
• Power Clean/Power Hang Clean – 5 sets of 1+2 (as above)
• Split Jerk – 4 sets of 2 at 70%

Day 3

• Power Hang Clean – 6 sets of 3 reps at 70%
• High Pull of Clean – 5 sets of 3 reps (I’d work at 100kg for these)
• Dead Pull of Clean – 4 sets of 5 reps (start at 100kg go up to 110)
• Front Squat – 5 sets of 5 reps at 75%

Day 4

• Power Hang Snatch – 7 sets of 3 reps 72%
• High Pull of Snatch – 5 sets of 3 reps (about 72kg)
• Dead Pull of Snatch – 4 sets of 5 reps (work up to 82kg)
• Back Squat – 6 sets of 5 reps at 72%

I’ve not really done the slightly oddly titled: “High Pull of Snatch” and “Dead Pull of Snatch” before, so recorded a short video to so my Crossfit coach could inspect my form:

As you can see, the first day went quite well, however I did wake up this morning with a sore back. It’s not used to that level of back related effort I think. It’s just DOMS, so a days rest to make sure I don’t tweak anything on Day 2, and it should be fine.

At the beginning of September, I decided to have a go at the Paleo Diet. In brief, you could call this the caveman diet, the stone age diet, the “don’t eat anything invented in the last 10,000 years” diet. So you can see that there’s a lot of things that you can’t eat when eating Paleo(lithic)ly. No:

• Bread
• Pasta
• Grains
• Cereals
• Flower
• Dairy (Milk)
• Cheese
• Sweets
• Chocolate
• Alcohol
• etc etc

Now I should say, that I agree with most of that, but I wasn’t doing the Paleo for the reason most do. I wasn’t doing it to lose weight. There’s no doubt at all, that if you follow a classic western diet, or even the recommended high carb, low fat diet, you will definitely shed the fat on this diet. No question. Not only that, you will feel full of energy and probably the healthiest you’ve felt since being a hormonal teenager.

But I am already at a good weight. In fact, many of my friends and family think I should be putting a few pounds on! I also have good energy levels and rarely feel tired. That’s what 2.5 years of the Zone Diet has done for me, a story I’ve told a few times on this blog. So the reason for trying Paleo, was to see if it would make me feel even better… and the short answer is: it didn’t.

You see my diet was already close to a Paleo Zone diet, as recommended by Crossfit. The Crossfit dietary recommendation is simply:

“Eat meat and veg, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar.”

However for me, I would have to rewrite it slightly, to be more like:

“Eat meat, fruit and dairy, nuts and seeds, some veg, little starch, occasional sugar, no wheat.”

Yes my balance of fruit to veg is probably off, but that’s down to lifestyle and lack of time to prepare veg for every meal. I also don’t eat wheat as I’ve discovered it simply doesn’t agree with me. The major addition is the dairy though. I drink a pint of milk a day + eat cheese regularly. That was the thing that really put the stopper on a proper paleo diet. Removing dairy would mean no:

• Milk
• Cheese
• Yoghurt
• Chocolate *
• Ice Cream *
• Cakes, even wheat free ones *
• Even salami!

* = these foods can be “zoned in” on the Zone diet, and so are not taboo from a Zone perspective.

Milk crops up in a lot of places that I must confess, I hadn’t originally thought about. I like the zone diet, because you can eat anything you want, so long as you adjust portion sizes to compensate. So that occasional chocky bar, whilst not condoned, can be fine, so long as you balance it with some protein. Or indeed, a few glasses of wine are ok with a meal, as long as the meal is light on carbs to compensate. The point is, with the exceptions of bananas, offal and egg yokes, nothing is off limits on the zone. (And they are only strongly advised against, at least in most circumstances.)

Whereas a straight Paleo diet is the opposite. It heavily regulates *what* you can eat, but places no limits on when or how much you eat. The zone diet is quantitative; the paleo diet is qualitative. So ironically, doing a Paleo Zone diet is actually the worst of both worlds, you are restricted in what you eat, and you can only eat certain proportions!

Either way, I simply decided, that for the gains the paleo might have brought me, it simply wasn’t worth the sacrifice. That’s a personal choice and I applaud the Paleo diet’s goals and ideals and heartily recommend it, if you are hoping to lose weight and currently struggling. Personally, I’d try the Zone diet first, it’s worked for me. And indeed I mostly follow a paleo zone diet, but with dairy and the occasional sugar and wine, however 90% of the meals I eat are simple meats, nuts and fruit & veg. A healthy and balanced way to live in my opinion.

Let’s start with a very short BBC News reader blooper. What goes wrong when comma’s are left off the auto prompter:

I used to keep rats as pets. They are actually friendly, sociable and very clean animals. But even I would be hard pressed to look after a rat that’s the size of a large cat!

And in a break from the norm, some awesome wildlife pictures:

Last year I applied for the ESA astronaut program and so keep an interest in general space developments. This weekend I read an excellent article this weekend by Lawrence Krauss (the author of “The Physics of ‘Star Trek.’”) who proposes a rather novel solution to the problem of the expense of a manned Mars mission: send astronauts on a one way trip!

Now this idea seems shocking at first. Sending astronauts off to die on Mars appears an horrific idea to our modern sense and sensibilities. It’s not humane, surely? First there’s the long are perilous trip through space to Mars, the risks of landing and then the reward of knowing you’ll die on the red planet. Don’t we owe it to man kinds brave space explorers to bring them home?

But let’s look at this for a moment. One of the obvious reasons why we as the human race haven’t travelled to Mars yet, is the cost. Some estimates put the figure of a Mars mission at up to $1Tn ($1,000Bn). Especially in the current world climate, that’s an awful lot of wonga.

Now a significant part of that cost, is in getting the astronauts back to Earth. Not only do you have to take all the fuel you need for a return journey with you (plus the return vehicle etc) but you also need more fuel to go as you’re heavier because of it. Not planning a return journey would make the whole prospect not only significantly cheaper, but possibly affordable for the first time, especially as it looks like Obama will rescind Bush’s Mars mission plan.

The question is, is a 1 way mission to Mars really such an abhorrent thought? There are many good reasons why it makes sense, and not just the cost.

– More time can be devoted to experiments by the astronauts.
– More research can be done on the long term effects of a base on Mars.
– Many astronauts are actually older than you think, with an average age being 47 in 2007.
– If man kind is to populate the Galaxy, by definition we eventually have to send people out on 1 way trips, why not now?
– Necessity is the mother of invention – I expect you’ll find these first Martian colonists live longer than we expect.

There is one final obstacle that will need to be over come: volunteers. Would anyone want to go? To answer that, you have to ask this question: would you want to do something no human has ever done before? Would you want to go on an adventure that guarantees history remembers your name? Would you want to do something that would be watched by over a billion people, and potentially inspire a whole generation of scientists, explorers and adventures? In short, would you want to do something amazing? Or would you rather spend you life stuck in an office, writing your weekly management reports, raising your 2.2 children, mowing your lawn every Sunday and pondering what vegetables to grow in your retirement allotment?

It comes down to the fundamental human dilemma: Is it better for your candle to burn bright but burn out fast, or to simply glow until it eventually fades away? I strongly suspect, that this last hurdle would be the easiest to over come. I think it’s a no brainer that there would be millions of volunteers for a 1 way trip to Mars, it’s in our nature. And if people volunteer, who are we as a society to impose our collective morals on them and say they can’t go? A one way Mars mission should be a serious consideration for any space ambitious government.