Fuck SOPA/PIPA

By the numbers

Yes, it’s the first of the month/year/thing, and I actually woke the fuck up and busted out the tape measure. Timeliness and shit, not to mention taking full advantage of all the resolutionist momentum that everyone else in the world is going to be bandwagoning the living fuck out of.

So, hey, here’s the state of the meat at the dawn of 2012, going into a de-load week before testing my maxes and moving into the next phase of things.

And, if you’re good, there will be Yet Another Phone Shot (YAPS) to go with each of these updates moving forward. Nothing spectacular, just me, standing around in my office wearing a pair of shorts. No lighting tricks, no flexing, nada. Those conditions are not the case in the photo at left; that’s racking 165 after doing some head-supported rows with the flattering (but very fucking hot) halogen in my garage overhead.

T totalling

Some things are easy to gauge — strength and endurance and weight — because we have the tools at our disposal to measure them. Other things are trickier — sleep quality, or various nutritional balances — but still within the realm of doable for someone who is attentive and attuned to how their body works. But for some things, there’s no real substitute for professional diagnostics and evaluation.

And this brings us to today’s subject, which is going to come as something of a surprise to most readers.

Your not so humble scribe has what has somewhat coyly become known as “Low T.”

Still Angry

When they ask you how I died, tell them, “Still angry.”

- Quellcrist Falconer (from the Takeshi Kovacs series, by Richard K. Morgan)

Yeah, it’s been quiet on the weightlifting and exercise front around here. I’m still doing it, and making progress (and videos) after taking, essentially, September off, and that stuff will return to the fore as time and bandwidth allows.

However, that said, there’s been no shortage of things that require the attention of my gentle ministrations, and foremost among those is the wide swath of the population that is, in not remotely humble opinion, incorrectly critical of the “Occupy” movement, in all its iterations.

The shirt off my back

Randomly gifted with a fairly nice, black, Nike dri-fit golf shirt from Dell at work the other day, I decided to wear it this morning.

It’s an XL, which, admittedly, I’m not. However, the contrast between the fit of an XL and my more habitual Ls (with a couple of Ms) has got me thinking about the concept of vanity sizing for guys.

Yes, part of my goal when I started lifting was to outgrow my Medium polo shirts, at least through the arms, shoulders, and upper back (there’s nothing to be done about length; no lift I’ve found will actually make me any taller, dagnabbit). That’s on the forseeable horizon, and not just because of my penchant for washing my laundry in warm or hot water (cotton shrinks; this dry-weave/dri-fit/wicking stuff is fucking amazingly resilient to that sort of stupidity). So, it’s not surprising that I’m most comfortable in shirts with an L on the tag.

Ten Percent Better; That’s Like Going to Eleven, Right?

So, here we are:
Age: 38 (as of end of July)
BW: 170-175
BF%: 12-13

Good lifts:
Bench: 255 (+15)
Squat: 350 (+35)
OHP: 160 (+25)
Dead: 455 (+30)

Under ideal conditions (smart headspace, spotter, etc), I’m pretty sure those would be 265-275, 365, 165, and 465-475, but I’m stronger all the way around than I was when I started with Josh (12 weeks ago) by about 10%.

Measurements with the tape will be done tomorrow.

Nemesis

“I’m an easy thing to hurt yourself against.”

- Uisgebaugh, Blood and Iron (Elizabeth Bear)

I joke with an old friend (that is, a friend of long acquaintance, not one of advanced years. She is STILL twenty-nine, some-fucking-how) about being her “sexy nemesis,” because I don’t pull any rhetorical punches in our friendship, and gleefully fuck with her when I think she’s getting too complacent.

This is my standard modus operandi in many things; my younger, more pretentious self wrote a first-person essay from Satan’s POV about trafficking in doubt, for instance. Be that as it may, presenting a challenge, an obstacle, or a target is something I tend to do whether I mean to or not.

Going to Eleven

That's one louder, innit?

So, my overall theme for the year, “I can do better,” has finally started to bear more fruit. Some of it was expected, some of it is coming as a pleasant surprise, but pretty much all of it is welcomed.

Hired Guns

Image via Wikipedia

Traditionally, I have turned to friends for mentoring and motivation (at least when the latter is not to be found in sufficient quantities internally). However, a couple of the generally-accepted bits of conventional wisdom when it comes to strength training is that, 1) you’re going to hit a plateau, 2) you need to be around people stronger than you, and 3) everything works for a while, but nothing works forever.

To mitigate all three of those things, and at the back-handed suggestion of the guy a mutual acquaintance and I call as “our Tall Friend,” I reached out to Josh Bryant, of JoshStrength.com.

I have a problem.

Specifically, I have a problem with the way figure athletes are photographed entirely too frequently. These are women who bust their ass in the gym, on the track, or wherever, and turn their bodies into works of functional art.

I understand that doing conventional modeling shoots – swimsuits or club clothes and what have you – are a look that, regardless of the model being photographed, is fairly consistent.

However, fitness models and figure athletes also end up doing shoots and sets that are set in workout facilities, allowing them to showcase that aspect.

… and almost without fail, whoever is coordinating these events comprehensively fucks the dog.