Property Investments, Landlording, CrossFit, Nutrition & Safety

Acupuncture is a mixed bag. I find the whole experience barely tolerable and I’m dreading the thought of going back for another session. Apart from the general pain of having needles poked, twisted and worked in till each one hurts, the last time the needle in my hand near my thumb was particularly painful. Afterwards I could barely hold the wheel of my car driving home and the pain lasted all day. Not pleasant.

I say it’s a mixed bag though as I’m not sure, but I think my elbow might be marginally better. If there is any improvement, it’s only slight. It doesn’t really feel any better generally, but when I poke around at it, the pain seems a little less, I think, or am I just getting used to it / imagining it….?

Hardly definitive I realise, especially as I’m not doing acupuncture in isolation to other stuff, so it’s hard to tell. I need to decide in the next few days if I go back for another session or not.

I’m still trying to workout though.  So I got up with the post Easter guilty  intention of going for a run this morning.  Then I noticed how cold it was outside 😮 and decided better of it.  So instead I did a Split Half Angie, i.e.

• 4 rounds of:
• 25 sit ups
• 25 squats

I figured it was be more intensive to split the 100 sit ups and squats into four 25’s.  I managed a respectable 6 mins 20, or faster than 2 secs per rep.  Would have done it faster but started to really slow down on the sit ups on the 3rd round.

It would be interesting to do a full Crossfit Angie sometime as rx’d, and also do a split version in quarters.  I suspect that with the Crossfit mantra of Intensity, the quartered Angie would be faster and so a higher intensity.

I’m far from a geneologist, though I enjoy getting updated McNulty family trees from the geneology that my Aunty does. However I’ve recently been sent a document entitled: “Origin of the Surname, McNulty, and its Association with the MacDonlevys/Dunleavys of County Down” written by a Paul McNulty PhD.

This is the summary, how much do you know about your family?

It is generally accepted that the McNulty surname is derived from the MacDonlevys/Dunleavys who fled early Ulster (primarily County Down) after their defeat by the Anglo-Normans in 1177. Some of the Dunleavys who migrated westward to Donegal became known as Ultach and some of their descendants assumed the name, Mac an Ultaigh, son of the Ulsterman.

The first record of the name, McNulty, appeared in the Four Masters in 1281 when Murtough Macan-Ulty was among the distinguished slain at the battle of Desertcreagh in County Tyrone. However, the surname transformation to Mac an Ultaigh/McNulty was not confirmed until 1601 when a pardon was granted by Elizabeth to a yeoman, Morris m’Nich Ultagh. Further confirmation was apparent through the similarity of their coats of arms although it is more likely that the McNulty arms was a modified replica of the MacDonlevy arms.

DNA analysis, on the other hand, revealed a divergence of the McNulty and Dunleavy genes suggesting that the surname, McNulty, could have been derived from other Gaelic families who migrated from early Ulster. Analysis of the so called 1659 Census and Griffith’s Valuation (1848-1864) revealed that the Dunleavys and the McNultys were well represented in Mayo, Donegal, Sligo, Armagh and Down. The exceptions were the McNulty/Nulty strongholds of Tyrone, Meath, Leitrim and Cavan where the Dunleavys have little presence.

An outline of the ancient and early genealogy of the Dunleavys leading to the possible evolution of the McNulty name is presented. Further research into medieval history as well as genetic profiling may provide more information on the origin of the various McNulty septs based on the presumption that they are derived from Gaelic families who migrated from early Ulster.

A line that goes back some 830 years, not bad huh? Oh and here’s the McNulty Coat of Arms mentioned:

Edit April: How is it no one has pointed out that I originally misspelt the title of this post: “geneology”!

Edit June: There’s a shop that sells a really good quality version of the McNulty coat of arms and is very good value. Here are a few of the products and they do international shipping, just click the image:

UPDATE: This post has been editing, please see my comment below for an explanation.

On Saturday I took a 200 mile round trip to the Lilleshall National Sports Centre near Telford to support 7 members of Crossfit Manchester who were competing in the BWLA British Masters Weight Lifting Championship Finals!

Who were these mighty giants of British Weightlifting? Mark Beck, my Crossfit coach is by most weightlifting measures a wee slip of a man, in fact I think he was probably the lightest male competitor there at about 65kg. One of the other competitors said to me incredulously:

“There’s not an ounce of fat on that man!”

What about the other 6 monster British weightlifters from Crossfit Manchester: all women. In fact at a stroke, Crossfit Manchester nearly doubled the number of women competing in the entire event. So much so that for the first time in living memory it seems, they had to split the women up into 2 lifting groups, something apparently previously unheard of.

Bare in mind that this is the British Masters Weight Lifting championships, which means that you have to be over 35 to compete. 5 of the 6 women are over 40, several of which are ordinary working wives and mothers, who have done no more weightlifting training than simply attend Crossfit for a year, since the doors opened in Manchester.

The most entertaining part of the day was to be found in conversation with other established weight lifting competitors, who were amazed at the 25 or so Crossfitters who had invaded their domain, and were keen to learn about where we were from and what Crossfit was. One question was:

“So do you do Power Lifting as well as Weight Lifting at Crossfit?”

His face was a picture when I replied: “Oh we’re not a weight lifting gym, we’re a fitness gym. Weightlifting, combined with gymnastics and circuit training, is just part of what we do to get Stronger, Fitter, and Faster!” 🙂

To be clear, I was not disrespecting the man, I have the utmost respect for these Masters athletes and the very strong and technically accomplished lifters there. Many Masters lifters continue to show true commitment and courage to compete despite suffering persistent injuries and even sometimes whilst recovering from serious operations. He had quite logically assumed that we were a dedicated weight lifting gym, after all, who else would be doing Olympic weightlifting to a standard that would allow entrants to the British Masters?

It is a testament to Crossfit’s efficacy that we were able to field 7 competitors in this very specialised event. As it happened, every one of our competitors was unopposed in their combination of age group and weight category, so Crossfit Manchester can now boast a massive 7 British Masters Weight Lifting Champions! And proud of them all I am.

I hope that by next year, my Golfer’s Elbow will have sorted itself out, and I’ll be able to compete myself. At my current weight, I’ll compete in the 85kg category and so need to lift 175kg combined across a Snatch and Clean & Jerk in a satellite competition in order to qualify for the finals. I would hope that a 75kg Snatch and a 100kg Clean & Jerk should be achievable within a year.

Just a little video I knocked up at the weekend:

Only joking, that’s some impressive stuff by a Team GB Gymnast called Damien Walters. Running at a wall and doing a back flip is pretty much all I aspire to, but he does a forward flip off a wall, now that’s impressive! In fact the whole thing is just amazing.

Here’s a couple more videos of Damien, there’s humility here too as he’s included one clip of him stacking it at the end:

And finally to show the guy has a sense of humour:

Hmmm, wonder if we can get him into a Crossfit gym…..?

I’m painfully aware that I haven’t done much in the way of actual “blogging” recently about what I’m upto (not that anyone seems to have noticed, lol). So here’s a whistle stop run down:

Work: busy, busy, busy! I’ve been pitching to some new clients over the last few weeks, and have won one new contract, which is nice. But it has taken up a load of my time. I’m also launching a new website of my own shortly, and am actively working on 2 other potential new lines of business, which I can’t currently talk about.

All in all I am working 10-12 hours a day at the moment, generally from 8am to 9-10pm, only stopping to eat and spend time with the family when the kid gets home from school.

Crossfit: has come to a complete halt. My golfers elbow has put a halt to almost all exercise and I’ve spoken to Mark at Crossfit Manchester and explained that I won’t be going down again for a while. The simple reason is that I can do virtually none of the crossfit exercises and so it becomes rather depressing going to the gym and seeing everyone else do what I can’t. If you take away the exercises that make Crossfit what it is, it’s also rather dull to be honest.

Still I am actively seeking the cure for Medial Epicondylitis and have so far tried / am trying:

• Complete rest
• Remedial Massage
• Ultra-sound
• Interferon
• CT Cream
• a Band-it Forearm Band
• and these week starts Acupuncture, which will be my first time ever and I’m rather nervous about it to be honest.

I am however doing some runs. I’ve got route round the block, which is just over a mile, and am running that 2-3 times a week, depending on when I wake in the morning. I’m hoping that this will improve my running performance when I do return to Crossfit.

The Zone Diet: My current weight is 12 st 12 (180 lbs / 82 kg) and I am currently wearing jeans that were too small for me the day I bought them from Ford market in West Sussex some 8 years ago! Yes I kept a pair of too small jeans (2 actually) for 8 years, that if nothing else, is evidence that I’m an optimist at heart! I continue to either maintain weight or lose the odd pound here and there, on the following formula: Strict zone for breakfast, lunch and pm snack. A roughly zone diet / lower than “normal” carb tea. Then at least half the week, all bets are off in the evening and the wine and/or chocolate is broken out. Bad I know, but I’m working on it.

Mostly that’s it, my life at the moment is consumed by work and injury recovery.

Mark my words, this is the future of gaming, oh yes! If you’re really impatient to see why, skip to the 3rd video below, the first 2 introduce the technology and set the scene for the 3rd.

Why is it the future of gaming? Do you remember when you first played a first person shooter type game, ie. when you play as if looking through the eyes of the character? For me it was DOOM back at university some 15 years ago. It was revolutionary and no one had ever played a game like it. This was evidenced by 1 simple observation:

People would duck and dive and lean in their seats to avoid things or peer round corners.

Sadly these days that feeling of immersion has been lost, as gamers have realised that the missile coming for their heads isn’t really going to hit them. (Shame.) Well these videos you’re about to watch is going to change all that again. Without any change to 3D cards or monitor or PC’s you can get real 3 dimensional effects out of your computer, and PlayStation and XBox etc, with just a Wii Remote! Enough talking, watch the videos:

How to use the Wii Remote to track your fingers aka Minority Report style:

How to use the Wii Remote to make an Interactive Whiteboard:

And now with Head Tracking 3D bit, watch the demo at the end, it’s extremely impressive, the future of 3D Games for sure!

Gabe and Max’s Internet Thing (yes I realise it’s a spoof):

How it should be done by Andy Jenkins from StomperNet:

I’ve posted before about my sore elbow and on going back to the physiotherapist last week, she confirmed that it’s now exhibiting symptoms of Medial Epicondylitis otherwise know as Golfer’s Elbow. It seems that this is different from Tennis Elbow say, in which part of the elbow hurts.

With golfers elbow, it’s where the tendons of the forearm meet your boney bit of elbow on the inside of your arm. Very close to what you’d consider your “funny bone”. The area of pain starts from the Medial Epicondyle and extends towards the forearm muscles and the effects the tendons between the 2. Tendonitis effectively.

The significance of this is that pain occurs when these tendons are being used, which is just about everything involved in carrying a load and often simple matters like simply picking something up or anything that uses these forearm muscles. Either way, I’m completely unable to train with anything that involves my right arm at the moment, which means just about everything excpet running, situps and air squats.

So I’m back to the physio again today to get another dose of ultra sound and electricity in the form of the evocatively named Interferon Machine! I’m also doing some stretching exercises I was give by the physio and I’m using a topically applied anti inflammatory cream. At the moment I’m seeing no improvement, but will give it a few weeks.

Then all bets are off and I might even consider acupuncture, which is something I’ve always been extrememly dubious of before. There’s something about sticking neddles in your body and wiggilng them around that just doesn’t seem quite right. However I’ve spoken to people who claim it’s worked wonders for them.

Add to that that this has been an issue for me for many months already, and talking to Jo M at the gym, who had this recently too, she says it was 18 months before she was back to normal! That’s a long time and I don’t fancy that at all I can tell you.

EDIT March: Several years have passed since I wrote this post. Please read my
Golfer’s Elbow Treatments post for how I cured my Medial Epicondylitis.

This is an astonishing video of utmost stupidity. Apart from murdering a perfectly good abusive song by translating it into French, these guys actually do pull ups off a crane on top of a sky scraper! (Sound possibly not work safe, if anyone around you happens to speak French.)

For the uninitiated amongst you, this is what the song should sound like, it’s Friggin’ in the Riggin’ by the Sex Pistols.  In fact this is probably one of the most famous rudest songs ever produced, and I show it here in purely in the interests of historical lyrical study of course.  I did think about posting the lyrics, but couldn’t in all conscience repeat them in print, they really are shockingly rude!

SOUND MOST DEFINITELY NOT WORK OR FAMILY SAFE: