Running for bigger athletes and lifters
I’m 100KG and back in my army days I was 85-90 KG’s. Certainly I had no problem running back then as I was an infantryman. I never enjoyed it however and always wondered how to improve my style.
Well technique is more important the more you weigh & being large does not mean you are doomed to be a bad runner.
You need to check out the POSE running technique.
It really is the best advise on running I have come across & I expect to get back into it this summer
Spermadine & Resveratrol increase lifespan 10% in lab tests
Spermadine & resveratrol are autophagic – meaning they assist the cell to clean out waste tissue and cellular damage. This promotes longevity of the cells.
Autophagy mediates pharmacological lifespan extension by spermidine and resveratrol
Although autophagy has widely been conceived as a self-destructive mechanism that causes cell death, accumulating evidence suggests that autophagy usually mediates cytoprotection, thereby avoiding the apoptotic or necrotic demise of stressed cells. Recent evidence produced by our groups demonstrates that autophagy is also involved in pharmacological manipulations that increase longevity. According to the study by the INSERM, exogenous supply of the polyamine spermidine can prolong the lifespan of (while inducing autophagy in) yeast, nematodes and flies. Similarly, resveratrol can trigger autophagy in cells from different organisms, extend lifespan in nematodes, and ameliorate the fitness of human cells undergoing metabolic stress. These beneficial effects are lost when essential autophagy modulators are genetically or pharmacologically inactivated, indicating that autophagy is required for the cytoprotective and/or anti-aging effects of spermidine and resveratrol. Genetic and functional studies indicate that spermidine inhibits histone acetylases, while resveratrol activates the histone deacetylase Sirtuin 1 to confer cytoprotection/longevity. Although it remains elusive whether the same histones (or perhaps other nuclear or cytoplasmic proteins) act as the downstream targets of spermidine and resveratrol, these results point to an essential role of protein hypoacetylation in autophagy control and in the regulation of longevity
Organismal lifespan can be extended by genetic manipulation of cellular processes such as histone acetylation, the insulin/IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor 1) pathway or the p53 system. Longevity-promoting regimens, including caloric restriction and inhibition of TOR with rapamycin, resveratrol or the natural polyamine spermidine, have been associated with autophagy (a cytoprotective self-digestive process) and in some cases were reported to require autophagy for their effects. We summarize recent developments that outline these links and hypothesize that clearing cellular damage by autophagy is a common denominator of many lifespan-extending manipulations.
Spermadine is found in grapefruit & resveratrol in red grape.
The soul of Primitive Man
The soul of Primitive Man
Primitive man was tasked with survival in the “real” world. I assume that as an alpha male a true primitive man lived alone in the wilderness.
Killing all other males upon contact & mating with females. His time tasked to survival and migration. I’m sure in prehistory there were many such primitives.
The environment of the primitive survivor put him into a deeper contact with reality. Morphology is the study of shape and form. The morphology of the primitives world was much more ancient than ours in the modern world.
The night sky for example is 15 billion years old, the ocean and shore also billions of years old, the clouds and wind just as they were 2 billion years ago. The trees and vegetation hundreds of millions of years old. This is the morphology primitive man was tasked with surviving in. He was challenged to survive in the raw universe with his flesh, blood and imagination.
Today modern man has been trapped into a morphological environment only tens or hundreds of years old. He has become weak, dependent, blind. While the machine that has entrapped him has grown man himself has diminished.
Primitive man was far stronger and fitter, his senses were sharp and he had inner vision, imagination.
Our modern society to him would be seen as a man trap, a death trap to ensnare the weak prey that men today have become. Ultimately to face slaughter of some kind as modern history has proven to often be the case.
You can walk away from the modern world when ever you want. Take a walk into the wilderness and discover your true purpose. To survive in the stars, the mountains and the ocean.
Just as it was a billion years ago before man.
To survive in the wild is the ultimate test of physical & mental fitness. Greater than even the test of war for the worst that war can do is send us back to the stone age.
If you can not just survive but flourish in this “real” world you will have found your true human potential. You will know that the modern world is no longer your master. No longer will it dictate your survival.
So there is a great opportunity for greater balance & perspective.
With this in mind I intend to undertake pure survival training in the wilderness. Alone without supplies for extended periods is the ultimate goal but I will build up to it sequentially.
This will require extreme strength & endurance plus many other skills. Its going to be a lot of fun.
Got a Molar out
If flickr is working you will see the picture above. That was a painful cavity – felt like a hornet sting at times but usually felt nothing.
I got it pulled 3 weeks back now for $40. The dentist just gave me a local & yanked it. No cleaning the hole or stitches. It was meant to have healed by now.
Well I took pain killers for 4 days afterward and the pain subsided. It wasn’t as bad as the cavity anyway. Then the gums began to regrow.
At some point about a week back the gum got infected. No pain just swelling and pus so I called the dentist yesterday & he said to go in today.
He immediately gave me a shot and started sucking bits of infected gum out. There was blood all over the place & I could feel it scraping the bone. I expected to be right back to square one after.
Well thank heavens the anaesthetic wore off and there is zero pain at all – none. So its nothing like the extraction.
He cleaned the wound properly and gave it stitches. I am on antibiotics too. My only fear now is the dreaded dry socket. That would be the icing on the fricken cake.
All along I cant eat a decent steak or lift real heavy – its a son of a bitch.
E is for Endurance
Consider this as it is how a great genius trained…
E = The number of days you have cycled (or other) more than E number of miles (or other)
Now the great genius was Eddington & his cycling E = 87
But you could do this with Kettlebell swings, snatches, hindu squats, any number of things. You could substitute weight vest hiking for cycling for example.
So E is your Endurance personal best.
Click for larger image.
Bulgarian training with Kettebells
You may be familiar with the training programs from OTS Optimum Training Systems. These are based upon research into bulgarian & Russian weight training. There is a website where you can get the ebook Big Beyond Belief” Big Beyond Belief
I recommend this ebook and basically it will give you a framework around which to structure your training.
They have a couple of older programs floating around too, titan training & bulgarian power burst.
Basically compound exercises that require maximum neurological response are used – hence heavy kettlebells are ideal for many exercises. Training is more frequent than you may be used to – I have nearly completed the first week of preliminary training & feel quite fatigued.
But I can tell a good program after 28 years of lifting & this is good – I think I could quite easily get up to 250 lbs on this system.
My bod at present 100 kg
I’m actually training more like a wrestler than a bodybuilder these days.
I need to get some shots done flexed – will ask a young lady to help out with that.
My first sandbag
I had never touched a sandbag until yesterday.
Had no idea how much the damn thing would weigh but I did know how to use it & make it thanks to the video from Ross Enamait & various places online.
So my plan was to go to the beach & load my first bag, haul it home & repeat with the other two. I visualized myself doing this before hand carrying the heavy bag home on my shoulder.
Well off I set on the bus to Okahu bay in Auckland to get my sand. Its winter here now but it was a fine enough day for there to be an inch of dry sand on the surface.
This was a pain as I couldn’t just scoop it up & it was full of shells which I needed to remove too. For these reasons I recommend just buying clean dry sand.
OK so then things got interesting. The sandbag was so damned heavy I could only carry it 100 yards at a time but I was 3.5 KM from home.
Obviously I would need a cab or bus to get it home. It took me half an hour to get it to the bus stop right next to the beach. I swear I nearly passed out.
I then hauled it on the bus into the city. Once there it was another 40 minutes to haul it to the next bus stop barely around the corner. By this stage my arms were beginning to die & I must have deadlifted the thing 40 times.
Finally the second bus took me to within 350m of my home. That took another 1-2 hours to carry it from there to my home.
It took all I had – it is a beast.
So I was guessing it had to be 150-180 lbs maybe even more.
Finally after a rest I got it on the scales – 120 lbs only. And I can bench 400 lbs on a machine for reps so that proves that sandbags are pure killer.
Today I am a bit sore & fatigued after yesterdays 4 hour sandbag ordeal.
I’m sure in six months I will be a damn sight stronger all over.
Here is my new sandbag & two soon to be military surplus bags…
Bad news for manuka honey users
Well I have been an advocate of manuka honey in the past because of its natural antibiotic properties.
But those properties were linked to an unknown substance. It turns out the antimicrobial substance is methylglyoxal.
Methylglyoxal is unfortunately a genotoxin than causes irreversible damage to your genes & chromosomes.
So I can no longer encourage the use of this honey for its antibiotic properties.