Property Investments, Landlording, CrossFit, Nutrition & Safety

This cracked me up:

However, the following video is just shocking:

I didn’t make it down the gym last night, as work finished late. So I went this morning before work.

Yes, I can reliably inform you that the world does actually exist at 05:30 in the morning, contrary to popular belief, and driving is actually a pleasure on the empty roads. Yes, 06:20 saw me 10 minutes early for the gym opening in Cardiff and doing squats and press ups on the pavement! So this morning:

– Snatch practice, up to 3 good lifts @ 70kg.
– 3 x 3 Snatch Pulls @ 80kg
– 3 x 3 OHS @ 80kg, only I finished the 3rd round with a set of 5, which I’m sure is a PB, but don’t have my chart to hand.

A shower followed, into the suit, a leisurely drive out of Cardiff (most cars were going the other way) whilst eating rare steak, almonds, and cherries off the passenger seat, and I’m in work for a very respectable 8:15. Marvellous. Just a 9+ hour workshop to endure; day 3 of 4! *sigh*

This is the video I made of my snatch practice at Aspire Fitness in Cardiff last week. It’s 90 minutes condensed down to 2 for your viewing pleasure:

Whilst it looks like it wasn’t going that well, I was actually quite pleased. Since getting 77kg in March, I haven’t felt capable of even attempting more than 70kg, but the warm up to 70kg went very well so I pressed on. If you watch carefully, I’m trying a new starting position where I’m leaning a little further back. You can see me adjust backwards just before the pull.

This has made a difference, but I think I need to sit back more. It’s all about getting the bar to land right over my centre of gravity when it’s over head. You see that every time I lose it, I lose it forward, which means that I’m still not getting it right. Whilst I didn’t get it, I was pleased to have 3 good goes at 77.5kg which would have been a PB by 0.5kg, lol.

That body weight snatch is within my grasp I think, it’s only a matter of time.

This looks awesome, coming out in 2010 in Disney 3D, although having the bikes able to turn smooth corners, shambles! 😉

BUT, is this better, or utterly awful (2nd act is the best, watch that one if nothing else)?

The Yorkshire Masters weightlifting competition is just over 2 weeks away now, and my attempt to make the 77kg category is going well. Below is my fitday weight goal graph, which I’ve been updating every day, except for the week I was on holiday. Amazingly I was quite good and ended the week weighing exactly the same as I started!

You can see that weekends are still a trial for me and I invariably gain a couple of pounds each weekend, only to lose it again the following few days. I have basically 2 weeks to lose the last 2 pounds, which should be no problem based on the last 4 weeks performance. All hail the zone diet. 🙂

Training is coming along nicely too. I made a 75kg Snatch today, the first time since the 2009 BWLA Championships in March this year, that I’ve even attempted more than 70kg. I had 3 goes at 77.5kg too, which would have (just) been a personal best. It was close, but I didn’t quite get it. It felt really achievable though, so maybe at the comp, if the lifts go well.

Anyway, here’s that graph, click it for a bigger version:

Edit: Pesky F1 have been pulling YouTube videos off the footage as fast as they were put up. I’ve replaced the two that no longer work with one with static pictures instead:

I’ve just been watching a re-run of the Forumla 1 qualifying in Hungary for today’s Hungarian Grand Prix, in which Ferrari’s Felipe Massa crashed out in the second qualifying session. It seems he was struck in the head by a suspension spring from a Braun car and is in intensive car in hospital.

Get well soon Massa.

EDIT: QuickTime Embed Plugin disabled, due to pre-downloading the content which caused the site to slow down too much.

Here are some awesome videos of the Crossfit Games 2009 that went on last week. A finer collection of athletes I’m sure you will not find. It should also answer once and for all, the issue of whether Crossfit’s programming of heavy weights, makes women big muscle bound freaks? I think you’ll agree, the lady’s competing here are all nicely proportioned. And remember, they have all come through regional qualifiers to get here, so they are all very accomplished Crossfitters.

(I’m using a new plug-in that embeds QuickTime .Mov files… I think I need a wider blog theme! It’s also a pain, as it expects you to know the resolution of the video before hand, which doesn’t appear to be information that’s readily available, so the player size and video size don’t quite match, that’s my fault.)

http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFitGames09_Highlights.mov

Here’s another one:

http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/2009CrossFitGames_Individualday2Sweet16.mov

For my personal training, this week has been a mixed bag. I worked up to three Snatches at 70kg on Tuesday at Aspire Fitness, which was exactly what I planned to do. But then Clean & Jerks on Wednesday all went Pete Tongue, and I failed at 95kg three times!

I forget why I’m reading this book now (someone must have recommended it to me) but the Carbohydrate Addicts Diet has an interesting twist on the usual “low carb is best” mantra of alternative diets. It boils down to this:

1) Eat 2 very low carb “Complementary meals” per day. E.g. 3-4oz of protein + 2 cups of salad or low carb density veg.

2) Every day eat a “reward meal” which can consist of anything you want, without limit. Obviously it’s best if it’s a balanced meal, but if you want frois gras on crackers, a 1lb steak with roast potatoes, and 1/2 a chocolate gateaux, all washed down with a bottle of wine, you can.

3) The gotcha is that the reward meal has to be started and finished within 60 minutes (including any booze). They believe that this avoids a “second wave” of insulin that’s normally released 75-90 minutes into a meal.

4) Also there’s absolutely no snacking and no carbs throughout the rest of the day, not even half a sugar in your coffee. Everything gets saved for your reward meal. After all, you can have anything you want, it’s always less than 24 hours away.

I might give this a go for a month and see if it works. I can imagine that after 2 weeks of having a reward meal of a whole chocolate gateaux, smothered in a litre of ice cream, the novelty might wear off and you start eating more sensibly. 😉

If you’re around my age, you’ll have grown up when Bonnie Tyler’,s A Total Eclipse of the Heart was a smash hit. I can certainly still sing along to it like a good’un. I nearly wet myself when I saw this spoof video, very funny: