Property Investments, Landlording, CrossFit, Nutrition & Safety

I’ve used the same Ocadia theme on my blog for 4 years and to be honest it was looking rather tired. Apart from anything, it was very thin! One of the reasons for this was that 800×600 resolutions were still quite common 4 years ago. They’re not any more and I wanted something wider (steady!). I’ve popped a picture up of what it used to look like below. I hope you’ll agree that it’s a big improvement.

In fact, that’s the first thing that my new Thesis Theme fixes for me. The old theme never handled floating images properly and I always had to manually edit the HTML to get images to align left or right with wrapped text. There are several other cool things I discovered about Thesis too, in no particular order:

• Thesis makes changing how your blog looks sooo easy! Whilst some basic coding skillz (to manage the hooks) are useful, it’s certainly not need and any novice can very easily customise the look and feel of their WordPress blog with ease.
• I no longer need the Canonical URL’s plugin as Thesis handles these automatically (canonical urls are a way of telling google how to handle the same content on different urls, that inevitably comes with having a WordPress blog).
• I no longer need the SEO Title Tags plugin, as that functionality comes out of the box too. Although having to manually migrate to the new Thesis title fields was a slight pain.
• I no longer need the Ultimate Google Analytics plugin, as Thesis handles that automatically too.
• That’s 3 plugins I can get read of, which can only increase the speed of the site, which is something else I’m hoping to see an improvement on.
• Thesis makes it easy to migrate from a development / test wordpress blog, to live, through the ability to export and import all the Thesis options. That’s very useful.
• Having post Teasers on the home page is lovely! 🙂
• The Multimedia box has some interesting possibilities, I look forward to experimenting with that.
• It automatically highlights my comments with a blue background, which is very nice.
• The Thesis support is awesome! Because it is a premium theme, there are lots of people prepared to put time into supporting it and so far I’ve found 5+ answers already on the web, for every question I’ve had.

I could go on but won’t. All in all, I’m very pleased with the way it’s turned out.  It’s taken me about 2 days to get it installed on a test site, sort out the layout how I want, do all the customisation and changes I wanted, fiddle with plugins settings, do a backup, test the migration process and deploy it to live (having spent 15+ years in IT, I’m super cautious these days!). I have to say, I’m pretty impressed with Thesis, and if I ever had to do another blog, I’d definitely start out with it.

However, there’s always the chance that I’ve mucked something up, or something has broken.  So if you spot any problems, please do comment below and I’ll get them fixed pronto.  Enjoy!

Oh finally, when I was redoing the AdSense code (Google Ads on this blog) I enabled image ads for post pages like this (you may see one below, or you may see a text ad, it’s Google that decides what goes there). I’m hoping they won’t be too intrusive, but if you get annoyed by them, do let me know. The reason they are there is simple: the very meagre revenue they generate (literally pence per day!) pays for the hosting of this site at the end of the year. If I ever get rich enough to not care about the odd £100, I may well take them off, lol!

It’s been a couple of months since I last updated my map and list of CrossFit Affiliated Gyms in the UK and Ireland and surprise surprise, another 6 affiliates have sprung up! Congratulations and welcome to:

• Crossfit Bold
• CrossFit CM2
• CrossFit Cork
• CrossFit Fareham
• CrossFit GU1
• CrossFit Harrogate

What’s more, this now makes an impressive 60 CrossFit gyms across England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland. Though to be fair, CrossFit Intensity is for the Police only, Capital CrossFit seems to have disappeared, and I’m not too sure about CrossFit Glasgow. Still, as long as they appear on the main CrossFit affiliates page, I’ll keep listing them.

Let me know if you spot any mistakes and if you have a website (or are one of the listed CrossFit affiliates) a link back from your site would be greatly appreciated.

For no good reason, other than to learn a new skill, I made learning to do butterfly pullups one of my goals for 2011. If you’re not sure what I mean, these are butterfly pull ups (or sometimes called cyclic pullups, or butterfly kips):

So when an open skill session came up at the gym, I spent 1/2 an hour working on getting them. At the end of the session I could maybe 3 reasonable butterfly pull ups in a row and felt things had gone quite well. It was the following morning however, when I couldn’t even scratch my head with my left arm due to the pain my shoulder, that I realised all had not gone as well as I’d thought.

Still I’ve had shoulder tweaks before and always 4-6 weeks or rest has sorted it out, sadly not this time. I haven’t trained in 4 months now, and that sucks. I had to cancel a CrossFit Gymnastics cert I was booked on, and now with the Olympic Weightlifting cert coming up, things were not looking good. So it was off to the quacks to see what’s what. Long story short, I have a sub-surface / partial rotator cuff tear as diagnosed by ultrasound. This is not me, but a pic I found on the net which looks exactly like my ultrasound:

You can see the tear as the black area above the humerus (upper arm bone) and below the rotator cuff (a set of 4 tendons that hold the shoulder in place). The main symptom is a lot of pain when doing a very specific movements, typically with my arm extended out horizontally, e.g. reaching to pick up a drink (curses!).

After showing the consultant the video above showing a butterfly pullup, he told me that the injury is very similar to those suffered by rock climbers who loose their footing and their weight drops onto their shoulders, which typically means I also may have a SLAP Lesion (Superior Labral tear from Anterior to Posterio) which is another kind of tendon tear. This possibility is supported by 2 other symptoms: a dull toothache like ache, and trouble sleeping when lying on my left side. This means I need an MRI to check for a labral tear too. A rotator cuff tear is bad enough, but a labrum tear would be seriously bad news that definitely requires surgery!

The good news is that the rotator cuff tear is not full thickness (a bit of internet research (we’re all internet Doctors, no?) puts a name to it: PASTA Lesion, which means Partial Articular Supraspinatus Tendon Avulsion) and as the quack said, it’s “not a gross injury” so there’s no reason not to go on the CrossFit Olympic weightlifting cert. The chance to learn from coach Burgener (US Olympic weightlifting Coach CrossFit subject matter expert) and is not to be missed. However I doubt I’ll be taking part in many WODs and certainly not going for anything close to a max lift (not that 4 months of no training was going to help that anyway!). I’ll have to get myself back down the gym and workout what the hell I can / can’t do before next weekend.

In summary then, I’m rather unhappy about butterfly pull ups. I was just beginning to get my mojo back after last year and this has not helped. To be honest, had I realised the injury risk they posed, I probably would never have tried them. I’m knocking on 40 and have no aspirations for major athletic improvement. I train to not suck at life and getting injured makes me suck at life! So unless you’re a competitive CrossFitter (i.e. CrossFit *is* your sport and you have CrossFit Games aspirations) the butterfly pullup is just not worth the injury risk in my opinion.

Some months ago we took the kid (aged 10) out of school. It’s a long and convoluted story that I won’t bore you with, but we’d become increasingly unhappy with the school she was in so decided to home school her for a while to see how we got on. Here’s an example of how things went the other day:

Last week I bought her the PC game Warcraft 3, a game I enjoyed playing a lot many years ago. I did this for several reasons, to be successful in the game you must learn and use some good skills that are important in life:

– Logistics and basic economics (harvesting gold and lumber)
– Town planning and traffic management
– Management of ever dwindling resources
– Efficiency and optimisation of competing research strategies

Good skills for anyone I’m sure you can agree, especially when done so under the pressure of battle! However there was another good reason to introduce my daughter to this game: it has an intriguing ethical story line.

In the story, the hero Prince Arthas discovers a whole city of his subjects that have been infected with the Blight; a disease that turns them into Zombies. A swift death is the only cure! The evil Mal’ganis is recruiting the undead to his cause, so Arthas must “cleanse” the city, which is ideally done before the citizens inevitably turn zombie and try to kill him. So the question which is a staple moral dilemma in many a modern zombie flick, e.g. 28 Days Later, is:

Is it ethical to kill a person who’s been infected with an incurable zombie ailment before they turn psycho?

If the answer is yes, would such an act be a crime? That lead to questions of what are crimes and where do crimes stop?

• Is it a crime to commit murder? Yes obviously.
• Is it a crime to attempt a murder?
• Is it a crime to plan a murder?
• Is it a crime to plan a murder, but not write anything down?
• Is it a crime to think about a murder then?
• What if we had the technology to read people’s minds?
• Is it a crime to wish someone was dead?
• What about wanting to shove someone who’s stood on your foot?

Then we had a whole conversation about thought crimes, which enabled me to bring in elements like the PsyCops of Babylon 5, and Judge Death of 2000 AD. Happy days! As evidence of her ethics class, I asked her to actually write down a list of 10 possible crimes, sorted by severity, with a line defining the boundary between an actual crime and a non-crime e.g. is borrowing something without asking (with the intention of giving it back) actually stealing?

I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that games aren’t educational and will rot kids brains! I contend that anything can be educational, when framed in the right context and with some thought from involved parents. Do you know what’s in the games your kids are playing? You too could enjoy talking about Zombies over breakfast!

This post is a little over due but a few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attended a 3 day weekend of Personal Defence Readiness (PDR) training and workshops in Gorey, Ireland at Daragh Bolton’s Focus Martial Arts club.

Senior SPEAR Instructor Neil Wilson, myself and fellow PDR Coach Charles Shanks flew over from the UK and were joined by 4 PDR Coaches from Ireland for a weekend of fun and bruises. Briefly, the weekend went like this:

• A day of ground fighting Coaches’ training on the Friday
• Drinking till the early hours of Saturday morning with the Irish!
• We ran a 20+ person PDR workshop on the Saturday
• Followed by more drinking with the Irish to even later on Sunday morning!!
• A slightly hung over day of further Coaches’ training – knife work.

As with the Martial Arts Show a few weeks earlier, this excellent video was put together by Neil. It’s hard to work out who’s who when we’ve all got High Gear suits on, but I’m the only one with brown trainers on:

It was an amazing weekend and I am very lucky to be part of a small but very enthusiastic PDR community in the UK and Ireland. If you want to see some of the many pictures of the event, checkout my FaceBook page.

Where does the time go?? I seem to be having trouble recently putting posts up here, must try harder to write up stuff that goes on, so I’m a bit behind.

2 weeks ago I had the privilege of attending The Martial Arts Show with 3 SPEAR Instructors and another PDR Coach, to put on PDR demos and workshops on the Saturday and Sunday. It was a great event and brilliant to just to spend time with other similar minded people. This video gives an example of what we got up to, edited by the ever talented Neil Wilson:

Each of the 2 days we put on a 10 minute demo, followed a few hours later by a 30 minute Skill Share Session. The demo consisted of a series of Ballistic Micro Fights (BMFs) in the impressive looking High Gear that we were wearing. Each BMF lasts a very short period of time and are performed at a very high intensity level, sound familiar? 😉

Just to take a moment to explain the suits as I think they can give the wrong impression sometimes. First off, High Gear suits are not impact protection suits, in that they do not completely absorb the blows. You still feel every hit and hits can still hurt… a lot! They are impact reduction only and are designed to allow completely normal movement, whilst protecting the wearer from injury. In other words, expect bruises, but no broken bones!

Secondly, in no way shape or form do you need High Gear suits in order to learn or practice Personal Defence Readiness (PDR). They are a training aid only and in terms of self defence training for the general public, one that’s really designed for the PDR Coach (read bad guy) to provide a more realistic training environment for the student.

They do look impressive though and allow for explosive and very realistic looking demos. It was gratifying then to have a couple of people come up to us afterwards and declare that ours was the best demo they’d seen so far (maybe it was early yet).

We really had no idea how many people would rock up to the skill share sessions, so were very pleased to get 10-15 participants for each one, plus spectators. Especially when the previous and following sessions had only 3 and 1 respectively… but who’s counting! 😉

Whilst doing high energy BMFs in gear is fun, in many ways it was the skill share sessions that I enjoyed the most. It’s the education process I get the biggest buzz out of, knowing that I’m contributing in my own small way to making people safer and more confident in life. This was backed up by what was the highlight of the weekend for me, which happened on the Sunday session:

Neil was demoing and the drills and me and the other Coaches were then moving around the participants assisting. Starting with the bear hug drill I was working with to guys in their 50s. One told me he wasn’t sure what he’d be able to do as he had a weak left arm. Assuring him he could stop whenever he wanted, or could simply choose not to participate, we continued.

Even when we did the Saving Private Ryan drill and I had my full 80kg of weight on him, he was holding me off with ease. It was only afterwards and I was chatting to him about how he’d liked it, did he tell me that he had Parkinson’s disease and his left arm was virtually useless! {:-O He continued: “I was amazed I was able to do all the drills. I normally do everything with my right arm. You’ve made me realise my arm is not as useless as I thought.”

You can’t buy that. It’s a testament to just how natural the movements are in the SPEAR System that even with a debilitating neurological disorder, this man was able to increase his confidence and learn effective personal safety principles, and in just a single 30 minute session! That’s PDR and that’s priceless. Here are some photo’s from the weekend:

An Obituary printed in the London Times originally by Lori Borgman (See comments) – Interesting and sadly rather true:

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:

– Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
– Why the early bird gets the worm;
– Life isn’t always fair;
– and Maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.

It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his son, Reason.

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers;

– I Know My Rights
– I Want It Now
– Someone Else Is To Blame
– I’m A Victim

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

A few weeks ago a friend asked me If I had an opinion on a story he’d seen about low cholesterol being linked to high suicide rates. As it happens I DID have an opinion on this, none of it complimentary about low cholesterol diets or Statins, the cholesterol lowering drugs.

But it got me thinking, you see I don’t believe the “Dietary Cholesterol Hypothesis” which simply states that cholesterol levels in your blood are raised by eating a diet that’s high in cholesterol. Such a simple theory is so easy to understand, it’s almost obviously true, it’s just a shame it’s not.

So here’s the thing, by all accounts I’ve been eating a diet very high in cholesterol and saturated fat. We’re talking steak, fatty mince meat (ground beef), pork of all forms including roasts with crackling, and bacon, oh yes plenty of bacon! Add to that cholesterol laden eggs, hard cheese, full fat soft cream cheese, sausages, fatty lamb (both leg and shoulder) and whole (full fat) milk, not to mention glorious double cream! You can almost hear my arteries hardening.

But wait, there’s more, we’re not talking eating this kind of once a day for my evening meal, but for lunch too. Oh, and breakfast, let’s not forget breakfast. Plus I typically have 1 or 2 snacks a day as well, which is more of the same (e.g. includes a block cheese, or a sausage, or hunk of meat).

I’ve been this way, 5 times a day for 4 years now, having a high cholesterol and saturated fat laden meal for breakfast, lunch, an afternoon snack, dinner and an evening snack before bed… perhaps I should just book myself straight into hospital now for that heart bypass and not waste my poor GPs time. It’s just a shame that I’m the thinnest and healthiest I’ve ever been.

But like I said, I don’t believe in the dietary cholesterol theory. So much so, that my daughter now eats just like I do and when my friend asked me about low cholesterol issues, I resolved to get myself tested to prove that I was right, so I did and the results are back. First, here are my cholesterol levels as they were back in 2000 when I was not quite 30, just for comparison:

• HDL = 1.6 mmol/L or 62 mg/dl. This is meant to be the good cholesterol and by current thinking, should be more than 1.0
• LDL = 1.7 mmol/L or 66 mg/dl. This is the so called “bad” cholesterol and should be between 2.2 and 4.9
• TG = 1.2 mmol/L or 106 mg/dl. Triglycerides are apparently very bad, and should be less than 1.8
• Resting heart rate was 84 beats per minute, with the normal range being 60-80

Barry Sear’s excellent book Toxic Fat on p76 suggests that a very good indicator of what he calls Toxic Fat Syndrome (otherwise known as Syndrome X or “Why current Western children might be the first generation in centuries to live shorter lives than their parents”) is to divide TG by HDL. If this ratio is more than 4.0 you’re in trouble, obviously the lower the better. My TG/HDL was 106/62 = 1.7

So you can see that back in 2000 I wasn’t doing too badly and everything was in the right range, except resting heart rate which was on the high side and bizarrely LDL cholesterol was a little low! I was starting to put weight on though on my fairly typical western diet of cereal for breakfast, sandwiches and crisps for lunch, and typically meat and 2 veg type dinner (or pasta, pizza, curry, Chinese etc), with an occasional desert.

Fast forward to 2007 and I was quite over weight, was 30% body fat with a 43″ (128 cm) waist and my combined cholesterol had risen to 4.3 (sorry, no break down figures). CrossFit got me exercising and onto the Zone Diet and then with heavy Paleo Diet influences + dairy. I lost 2.5st (35lbs / 16kg), half my body fat (15%) and 10 inches (25cm) off my waist. But I realised I hadn’t got my blood worked up since starting my new way of eating and so I did.

I must confess to some trepidation. What if it came back terribly high? What would that mean for my health and my family and daughter’s health?!? What if I’d been wrong all this time and was eating myself to death, however enjoyable it was doing so? But I’m an engineer at heart and data matters. So without further ado, here are my results after 4 years of my high cholesterol food five times a day:

• HDL = 2.4 mmol/L or 93 mg/dl (a 50% increase)
• LDL = 2.1 mmol/L or 81 mg/dl (a 24% increase)
• TG = 0.8 mmol/L or 71 mg/dl (a 33% decrease)
• TG/HDL = 0.76 (a 56% reduction)
• Resting heart rate = 62 beats per minute (26% reduction)
• Blood Pressure = 125 / 77 (at 38 years old)

EDIT July: I’ve added the US mg/dl numbers to the above stats and as I’ve realised that cholesterol conversion is not linear with the triglyceride conversion, I’ve recalculated Barry Sear’s ratios.

Well that looks pretty good to me. Experts don’t seem to agree on whether there should be a lower LDL figure it seems, but my test from 10 years ago said it was too low, so a small increase seems ok. It’s well below ideal max range though. But I’m not used to interpreting cholesterol test results every day, so here are some examples of what they had to say at the Doctor’s:

• “The good HDL cholesterol is very high. That’s one of the best results I’ve ever seen.”
• “Excellent.”
• “Triglycerides are very low, that’s very good.”
• “Keep up the good work, whatever you are doing is obviously working.“

Wow! Even I was seriously impressed with how much gushing was going on. I have to say, it’s a real vindication of everything I’ve learnt over the last 4 years about diet, and of course exercise, and proof positive that I’m doing the right thing, not only for myself but also my wife and daughter (and everyone who’s had to put up with my bleating over the last 4 years!).

What is perhaps most interesting, is that last year I really went off the rails and put a load of weight on. My head was not in a good place at all. This year I’ve sorted myself out and in 3 months have lost the weight I put on last year. So I might have thought that my bloods would be worse. It just goes to show, it’s not too late to sort yourself out. But perhaps that’s a story for another day.

If you want to read up on why the dietary cholesterol hypothesis is a load of old bolox, this is the very easy to read and entertaining book I recommend: The Great Cholesterol Con by Dr Malcolm Kendrick (unusually for this field, he’s an English Doctor!)

This you need a black belt to defend yourself from a mugging? Read this story (copied below) and think again:

A disabled grandmother who fought off a mugging attack by headbutting a teenager has said she believes she broke his nose.

The 49-year-old, who is just 5ft tall, said she retaliated as the youths tried to steal her bag because she thought it was what her grandchildren would have expected of her.

The mother of six, who has asked not to be named, said her 24 grandchildren would have wanted her to make sure the criminals did not get their way.

The woman – who was travelling on a mobility scooter – knocked the teenager to the ground and the trio fled empty-handed in Barnstaple, Devon.

She said: “They were not expecting me to fight back.

“I am a very strong person because of what I have gone through in my life. As they attacked me, I heard my grandchildren saying to me in my head ‘Nan, get up and fight them’.

“When I headbutted the robber I think I broke his nose, it was that strong.

“Once they saw me attack him his mates scarpered and so did he.”

What can we learn from this story:

• This woman has a great personal directive, which gave her permission to fight back.
• She won the “first fight” which is the mental fight within your own mind.
• It shows that one of the 3 things a bad guy doesn’t want, is to get hurt.

Of course nothing is certain in life,there are no guarantees, and only you can decide what’s right to do in any given situation, but find something in your life that is personal, present and you’re passionate about (the 3 Ps) which will give you permission to defend yourself if need be; and if attacked, know that fighting back will give you a greater chance of surviving the encounter with fewer injuries.

Well done to disabled grandmothers everywhere! Chalk one up for the good guys.