Sunday, November 13, 2011
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Toughness and strength
I was talking to my girlfriend Hayley tonight about the Live Export Ban rallies that have been happening around the country today, one of which we attended. Some of the descriptions of what the animals had been through were incredibly upsetting; many people in the crowd were in tears, myself included. Hayley got upset talking about it later on, and apologised for not being tougher.
I've had cause to think about this a few times over the last few months and I've come to the conclusion that there is a distinct logical difference between toughness and strength. When meat is tough, it's difficult to eat and awkward. When a game is tough, it's physically taxing. When a fighter is tough, he's good at hurting you and difficult to injure. The more I thought about it, the more I realised this was not a good quality to have.
Strength, on the other hand, is completely different. Steel is strong. An athlete is strong. Strength, in and of itself, is a quality which defines both offense and defence, much like toughness, but doesn't necessarily imply that it is making things difficult for those around it. Strength is a tool that can be used in many ways, for good or bad. Toughness is just being hard around the edges, and while it can be useful in the short term, where there's a choice, I'd much rather be strong than tough. While strength can help or harm as it is used, toughness is just resistive, and does not help anyone*.
*in modern civilised society. if you are a soldier, prisoner, or otherwise fighting for your life, this does not apply.
I've had cause to think about this a few times over the last few months and I've come to the conclusion that there is a distinct logical difference between toughness and strength. When meat is tough, it's difficult to eat and awkward. When a game is tough, it's physically taxing. When a fighter is tough, he's good at hurting you and difficult to injure. The more I thought about it, the more I realised this was not a good quality to have.
Strength, on the other hand, is completely different. Steel is strong. An athlete is strong. Strength, in and of itself, is a quality which defines both offense and defence, much like toughness, but doesn't necessarily imply that it is making things difficult for those around it. Strength is a tool that can be used in many ways, for good or bad. Toughness is just being hard around the edges, and while it can be useful in the short term, where there's a choice, I'd much rather be strong than tough. While strength can help or harm as it is used, toughness is just resistive, and does not help anyone*.
*in modern civilised society. if you are a soldier, prisoner, or otherwise fighting for your life, this does not apply.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Weight gain and fitness
So I'm gaining weight at the moment.
It wasn't intentional at first - I like to ride, and I'm trying to get a local hill-climb (2.3km with a 285m vertical elevation) in under 10 minutes. I have a friend who is into weights show me the ropes of squats and deadlifts. But then while we were there, we did some bench presses, military presses, and clean lifts. Within a week my appetite had gone through the roof, so I started feeding it; a far sight from my previous MO of eating only enough to stop being hungry. Then with more food came better results, more definition, more strength. Within a month I'd gone from benching 40kg to 60kg. Then I started looking in the mirror and going 'holy shit, what?'.
Long story short, my experience has been that strength and size are built in the gym and in the kitchen. I'm doing weights in a 5x5 pattern and it's working out amazingly in all ways; strength, mass and definition. The only thing about such a hyper-caloric diet is that you will be carrying some extra fat - a small price to pay, I think, for making sure the body always has what it needs to keep building. I can always lean out when I'm done, which for me I suspect will be around 85kg (I was 75 when I started, now at 80).
Dietary method is a seafood diet - I see food, I eat it. Haha no, not really. I mostly eat lean meat (generally steak, salmon or chicken) with some vegetables and pasta, and try to eat as much as I can at any given meal. Fucking shitloads, I believe is the metric measurement. I eat roughly double what I used to. I tend to use Musashi protein powder with milk once a day, but especially after a workout. No special vitamins really, just the odd Centrum or Berocca.
All of what I've learnt from this and my previous patterns of weight gain and loss can be condensed to two simple ideas:
1. FOOD. You can't out-exercise a bad diet. A good diet does not necessarily mean small amounts of food, just not shit. The appeal of junk food is surprisingly less when you are full of delicious steak.
2. WORK OUT. Exercise frequently, and hard. Be exhausted at the end of every session. If you are not destroyed by the end you could have gone harder. Work as hard as you can without failing.
So, pretty much exactly what I said in the previous post, but with a different goal.
It wasn't intentional at first - I like to ride, and I'm trying to get a local hill-climb (2.3km with a 285m vertical elevation) in under 10 minutes. I have a friend who is into weights show me the ropes of squats and deadlifts. But then while we were there, we did some bench presses, military presses, and clean lifts. Within a week my appetite had gone through the roof, so I started feeding it; a far sight from my previous MO of eating only enough to stop being hungry. Then with more food came better results, more definition, more strength. Within a month I'd gone from benching 40kg to 60kg. Then I started looking in the mirror and going 'holy shit, what?'.
Long story short, my experience has been that strength and size are built in the gym and in the kitchen. I'm doing weights in a 5x5 pattern and it's working out amazingly in all ways; strength, mass and definition. The only thing about such a hyper-caloric diet is that you will be carrying some extra fat - a small price to pay, I think, for making sure the body always has what it needs to keep building. I can always lean out when I'm done, which for me I suspect will be around 85kg (I was 75 when I started, now at 80).
Dietary method is a seafood diet - I see food, I eat it. Haha no, not really. I mostly eat lean meat (generally steak, salmon or chicken) with some vegetables and pasta, and try to eat as much as I can at any given meal. Fucking shitloads, I believe is the metric measurement. I eat roughly double what I used to. I tend to use Musashi protein powder with milk once a day, but especially after a workout. No special vitamins really, just the odd Centrum or Berocca.
All of what I've learnt from this and my previous patterns of weight gain and loss can be condensed to two simple ideas:
1. FOOD. You can't out-exercise a bad diet. A good diet does not necessarily mean small amounts of food, just not shit. The appeal of junk food is surprisingly less when you are full of delicious steak.
2. WORK OUT. Exercise frequently, and hard. Be exhausted at the end of every session. If you are not destroyed by the end you could have gone harder. Work as hard as you can without failing.
So, pretty much exactly what I said in the previous post, but with a different goal.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Weight loss and fitness.
This may surprise you, but I've actually been through quite a lot of weight loss.
Find some old photos of me from 2006/2007 if you can and I'm about 15kg overweight. Then one day, I bought a bike. I figured that it would be good to get some more exercise. Being able to dual-use my transport time for exercise was pretty good, it was only half the battle.
I remember the day I looked over at the mirror in Hype in the mall and I just looked like shit. Double chin, stomach poking out with the classic late-20s pot belly, man-boobs poking at my shirt. I had to look away, disgusted. I don't know why I hadn't seen myself as I actually looked in the years leading up to it, but I did that time. Not too long after that, my car blew up, my girlfriend broke up with me, my band broke up, one of my friends died and my job turned to hell. I felt like shit, in every way.
So I worked on it, and started riding to and from work. I was doing more exercise, and getting a fitter, but I wasn't really losing weight. I did a lot of experiments to see what did more for my performance (I decided to focus on that, rather than fat loss as I'd decided fitness was a more respectable goal). Alcohol intake, sleep, food, exercise levels, all of them were variables, and eventually I discovered that I could continue to eat less and less with no effect on my performance. I still had the energy required to do all my riding, swimming and gym work whilst continually cutting back food.
And dear god did the kilos shed. I lost 11.5kg in 12 weeks. I've had to go through this whole thing again now since January when I discovered I looked like shit from putting on an extra 6kg. Thanks, woodford.
It's just so simple; eat less, exercise more. Oh, and buy a bike.
Find some old photos of me from 2006/2007 if you can and I'm about 15kg overweight. Then one day, I bought a bike. I figured that it would be good to get some more exercise. Being able to dual-use my transport time for exercise was pretty good, it was only half the battle.
I remember the day I looked over at the mirror in Hype in the mall and I just looked like shit. Double chin, stomach poking out with the classic late-20s pot belly, man-boobs poking at my shirt. I had to look away, disgusted. I don't know why I hadn't seen myself as I actually looked in the years leading up to it, but I did that time. Not too long after that, my car blew up, my girlfriend broke up with me, my band broke up, one of my friends died and my job turned to hell. I felt like shit, in every way.
So I worked on it, and started riding to and from work. I was doing more exercise, and getting a fitter, but I wasn't really losing weight. I did a lot of experiments to see what did more for my performance (I decided to focus on that, rather than fat loss as I'd decided fitness was a more respectable goal). Alcohol intake, sleep, food, exercise levels, all of them were variables, and eventually I discovered that I could continue to eat less and less with no effect on my performance. I still had the energy required to do all my riding, swimming and gym work whilst continually cutting back food.
And dear god did the kilos shed. I lost 11.5kg in 12 weeks. I've had to go through this whole thing again now since January when I discovered I looked like shit from putting on an extra 6kg. Thanks, woodford.
It's just so simple; eat less, exercise more. Oh, and buy a bike.
Friday, June 11, 2010
a terrifying direction
As I write this, I'm too consumed by fear of future events to coherently plan a post.
Just weeks after Senator Conroy slammed Google for an invasion of privacy for capturing unencrypted Wifi data during Street View updates, plans to capture your entire browsing history. Let me repeat that in simpler terms:
The Government wants to require your ISP to keep a record of EVERY WEB PAGE you have visited, and retain it for five to ten years.
This all comes within days of the announcement that AusCERT, the Computer Emergency Response Team responsible for identifying and distributing information about online security threats, is to be replaced by a government-run CERT. AusCERT is one of the most efficient organisations in the country, providing an amazing service on a shoe-string budget. It isn't broken at all. Why fix it?
To tie that all together with current Internet issues in Australia, the plan is:
- implement a filtering system which checks every URL entered by every Australian
- implement a data retention system for all ISP's to maintain substantial information about user internet and communication history (including browsing history and emails for many years)
- implement a single national broadband network
- remove funding for AusCERT and establish Government run CERT
All of this is being done in the name of stopping paedophiles and terrorists, but anyone who's had anything to do with network security knows this is not true; these things don't happen online and through public email. Those affairs are conducted through encrypted peer-to-peer sessions in the backrooms of the internet. This is the equivalent of asking every person boarding a plane, "Are you a terrorist?", and if they say no, they're allowed to get on.
It does not make sense. I'm not that bothered by privacy issues generally. I don't care that my information is on Facebook and Google's Wifi dumps made me laugh. But this; this is terrifying. We are being lied to in order to have our privacy stripped. They are systematically putting the pieces in place to take control of the Internet in Australia, and it's being sold to us as a performance and protection upgrade. It's the privacy equivalent of Godwin's Law that eventually the Government will be referred to as Big Brother and a 1984 reference made, but is this not a digital telescreen?
Own the infrastructure -> Record everything we do on it -> Filter what's unacceptable -> Control the threat response = Total control.
We are in trouble. Big trouble. And I'm scared.
Just weeks after Senator Conroy slammed Google for an invasion of privacy for capturing unencrypted Wifi data during Street View updates, plans to capture your entire browsing history. Let me repeat that in simpler terms:
The Government wants to require your ISP to keep a record of EVERY WEB PAGE you have visited, and retain it for five to ten years.
This all comes within days of the announcement that AusCERT, the Computer Emergency Response Team responsible for identifying and distributing information about online security threats, is to be replaced by a government-run CERT. AusCERT is one of the most efficient organisations in the country, providing an amazing service on a shoe-string budget. It isn't broken at all. Why fix it?
To tie that all together with current Internet issues in Australia, the plan is:
- implement a filtering system which checks every URL entered by every Australian
- implement a data retention system for all ISP's to maintain substantial information about user internet and communication history (including browsing history and emails for many years)
- implement a single national broadband network
- remove funding for AusCERT and establish Government run CERT
All of this is being done in the name of stopping paedophiles and terrorists, but anyone who's had anything to do with network security knows this is not true; these things don't happen online and through public email. Those affairs are conducted through encrypted peer-to-peer sessions in the backrooms of the internet. This is the equivalent of asking every person boarding a plane, "Are you a terrorist?", and if they say no, they're allowed to get on.
It does not make sense. I'm not that bothered by privacy issues generally. I don't care that my information is on Facebook and Google's Wifi dumps made me laugh. But this; this is terrifying. We are being lied to in order to have our privacy stripped. They are systematically putting the pieces in place to take control of the Internet in Australia, and it's being sold to us as a performance and protection upgrade. It's the privacy equivalent of Godwin's Law that eventually the Government will be referred to as Big Brother and a 1984 reference made, but is this not a digital telescreen?
Own the infrastructure -> Record everything we do on it -> Filter what's unacceptable -> Control the threat response = Total control.
We are in trouble. Big trouble. And I'm scared.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
ways in which your brain can strengthen you
I read an interesting article today about how handling money is more effective at pain relief than Aspirin.
"Researchers at the University of Minnesota carried out a series of studies which revealed those who counted money before taking part in an experiment where they were subjected to low levels of pain felt less discomfort than those who did not. The results, published in a recent edition of the journal Psychological Science, showed those who had handled money reported less pain and lasted longer. A University of Los Angeles team of scientists found just looking at a photograph of a loved one can also be a powerful form of pain relief. They recommended anyone visiting hospital for painful tests or examinations should bring a picture to help them cope. And patients who have had major surgery, such as a knee or hip replacement, can halve the amount of painkilling medicine they need simply by stroking a pet, according to tests at Loyola University in Chicago."
What I really love about this is that it highlights what I've been harping on about this entire time - that a great deal of what you can withstand depends on how much of your brains capabilities you can force yourself to use under pressure. It seems that determination and resolve could only be half of the picture. If trained properly, your brain can generate its own pain relief.
(article here).
"Researchers at the University of Minnesota carried out a series of studies which revealed those who counted money before taking part in an experiment where they were subjected to low levels of pain felt less discomfort than those who did not. The results, published in a recent edition of the journal Psychological Science, showed those who had handled money reported less pain and lasted longer. A University of Los Angeles team of scientists found just looking at a photograph of a loved one can also be a powerful form of pain relief. They recommended anyone visiting hospital for painful tests or examinations should bring a picture to help them cope. And patients who have had major surgery, such as a knee or hip replacement, can halve the amount of painkilling medicine they need simply by stroking a pet, according to tests at Loyola University in Chicago."
What I really love about this is that it highlights what I've been harping on about this entire time - that a great deal of what you can withstand depends on how much of your brains capabilities you can force yourself to use under pressure. It seems that determination and resolve could only be half of the picture. If trained properly, your brain can generate its own pain relief.
(article here).
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Thoughts with Devo
"It doesn’t count for shit if you just sit there smugly, curl up inside your warm glowing sense of superiority, and don’t work to improve your own shortcomings."- David Powles.
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