Tim's Journeyman Log

[Banshee20]

I think the dead hang part of the chin makes all the difference too...Id rather have a spot and do the dead hang than not. Enjoyed reading your entry again Tim. Glad the Olympic lifts are still going good.

Glad you made South Park!

Banshee

 

[tim290280]

Solace is nothing more than support.

Catharsis is nothing more than release.

Clarity and simplicity are the true relaxants. Think of all the anger and frustrations of your daily life, and how that can all be washed away by those moments of simplicity and clarity. Booze hounds have often described their epiphany as a "moment of clarity" where everything becomes simple and straight forward. These moments can then redefine the way our life progresses; wallow in the conflict and frustrations and create a deep dark hole inside; pass it all off and fail to move forward past the issues; find an inner peace and the problem becomes nothing.

How can you find this? What can you do to bring about these moments?

I lift weights.

Take as an example my recent tour of the USA for a science conference. I had to organise funding to send me on an overseas trip, get payments made to the various airlines, buses, hotels, restaurants, arrange to meet people, and to keep the receipts to make sure I wasn't blowing a lot of money frivolously. Now months later I have to deal with the bureaucracy who managed to not organise my pay check while I was away, leave off paying the plane tickets until the last few days before I left, that wouldn't give me all the money from the travel grant because I'm just a lowly student, and finally wouldn't take the prepaid receipts I had for all the conference tickets, flights and accommodation. These paper shufflers are now making threats and vague statements about not having justified my trip.

I could go postal. I could tell them how stupid and incompetent they are. I could tell them that their accounting system is the biggest joke this side of American money drops to Iraq (measured in tonnes of cash rather than $$$).

Instead I lift. Burning bridges leaves you with fewer paths to tread, and rebuilding often gets tied up with red tape and feelings (people really don't like being told that they are the dry desert sucking up all the water of life to create a barren wasteland of shrivelled humanity).

So last night I performed a shortened session and cleared the anger and frustration. Now I can face the world and say "I'm sorry that you're stupid, must be my fault somehow" (well be apologetic without the insulting part anyway).

Snatches were a breeze. 75kg went up easily, so I will attempt 80-85kg (~BW) next week. This does mean that my snatch is officially catching my Jerk numbers very quickly. Unless 95kg starts feeling light to Jerk I'll be looking pretty lame.

Bench and rows were good too. I didn't really do this last week as I used the machine versions in my gym visit. So the added weight to the bar, and the reasonable (7-8) reps I got when dropping back to a couple of finisher sets at 100kg felt good. Not bad considering my impingement last year, and how good my shoulders feel now. Thank God (or should that be sub-atomic particles?) that I started weightlifting. The rows went similarly well, although the thick grip is making my hands sore today.

I enjoyed this shorter session and will swap to upper/lower. I will do loaded and unloaded exercises, so upper days will have a weightlifting move, a chest and a back exercise, said same in a bodyweight high rep exercise (push-ups, fatman pull-ups), and some grip and arms. Legs will be similar except I’ll leave out the weightlifting movements. It has been too hot till too late in the evening to be doing as much as I am.

 

[Glex]

Thank God (or should that be sub-atomic particles?)

Did you read His Dark Materials?

 

[tim290280]

^^ No I've been reading a few New Scientists and they have been doing some religion bashing of late, and they have also been physics heavy as they have possibly discovered proof of other theoretical atom parts.

I have to take physics in in this form, its too much background knowledge otherwise.

 

[Glex]

But physics if fun. I call it 'funics'.








I'm also a dork.

 

[tim290280]

But which would you rather converse about:

1) The wonders of the universe and the exciting discoveries being made about our origins.
2) Last nights episode of Big Brother.

So while its knowledge heavy its more fun to talk about something worthwhile.

 

[Glex]

Glad you feel that way. I think it's sad that TV shows like Big Brother are considered more worthwhile than science or politics (even though I hate politics it's more important).

I especially have a beef with ESPN. I like watching sports well enough, but sports commentators sicken me sometimes. They make sports into this grand world of importance, when really it doesn't have any bearing on anything. Whether or not Peyton Manning wins the Superbowl, or if this player is injured and won't play in a game might be interesting, but it's not important. Treat it like it is; a hobby and entertainment, not the axis upon which the world revolves.

I'm not knocking passion for sports. I love playing sports and enjoy watching, and even do think commentators are interesting to listen to. We wouldn't be here if we didn't have some passion for lifting. I just think it's important to keep it in perspective.

By the way, what theoretical particles did they find?

 

[tim290280]

The thing I hate about sports is that the commentators tend to hold themselves above the sport, they tend to be illiterate idiots that butcher the language in a mass media setting, and the teams and players seem to live in another little world.

I've heard of all sorts of assaults, drugs and drunken dubauchery being undertaken by these athletes without anything happening to them.

As for the particles, I'd have to check the article as I can't remember off hand. I just had a supervisor meeting where I had to lay my entire project out for my supervisor that has been on 13months maternity leave in an impromptu setting. So my brain is frazzled!

 

[Glex]

Haha...summerize your entire body of work for the past year and a half. Ready...and...go! Sucks bud.

 

[tim290280]

^^ Well I managed to impress them that I could draw the key figures from memory, was able to give a pretty detailed overview, all without notes, or any backups. Every now and again I suprise people with my knowledge and intelligence, mainly those who see the lazy, weightlifting exterior.

And the particles were Higgs Boson's. They are part of the supersymmetry model of the atom, which posits that a heavy counterpart for every particle in the standard model exist, each with a different mass. They may have discovered the lightest one, while using a particle accelorator to measure energy levels of muons and antimuons.

Man there is so much I didn't even know I didn't know!!

 

[Glex]

Man there is so much I didn't even know I didn't know!!

Yeah, seriously. I haven't kept up on what they've been learning at the sub-atomic level I'll take a look; sounds interesting.

 

[tim290280]

Enough of the theoretic physics! Its time for some practical stuff.

Yesterday I was cleaning up the house a bit so that we can move house to my new job. I packed up my two oldest guitars to take them off to sell them. It was a hard choice, to part with my first two guitars was like chopping 12 years of friendship off cold for no reason. I need to sell them quickly so I took them to a Cash Converters store (a national chain of pawn brockers), hoping to get a few hundred dollars to eventually help pay for a new electric guitar (thinking a Gibson Les Paul Studio).

What happened next was insulting to both my intelligence, integrity, and experience as a guitarist.

First I pulled out my old acoustic. The clerk proceeded to do the guitar store clerk noodle on it, before declaring it was a cheap, old guitar (duh! it was my first guitar!) that was worth about $10-20, about ten since it had plastic tuning pegs. I was about to point out so do high end Gibsons and Taylors, but let it slide because I knew that it wasn't worth much. Then my electric which I thought I'd get around $400-500 for. He looked it over and said $200, which I was not happy with but he wouldn't budge. He explained they would want to sell it for around $450 to $500, just like the acoustic they would want to sell for $90. I wasn't impressed but I didn't want the hassle of moving these to a new house were they would sit in a shed until the next move.

But then he did it. He lied and tried to bluff me!

After the offer he took the electric into the backroom to plug it into an amp. He then returned to say "Ok there's a problem." He pointed out the broken bridge tuner (cosmetic stuff that would cost a couple of $$ to fix) that he would have already noticed when he made the offer, so I knew the bullshit was coming. Then he said "I've just plugged it in to three amps and couldn't get it to work, the electrics need resoldering." What a load of fucking bullshit!!!!! A guitar that I'd played not 3 days ago when deciding whether to sell it or not has suddenly lost the ability to make sound?!?!?

Now if he had said that the sound was scratchy, or overly noisy I may have believed him, as the pickup selector needs toggling to get the sound right. But to outright lie in order to just knock a few more bucks off the sale so they could resell the guitar for a bigger profit, well I told him to "Don't fucking lie to me. Its in perfect working order." Then he tried to pull the "I've been playing for 8 years....." So I just told him he was full of shit and took my guitars home.

Needless to say the deadlifts felt light. The weight sailed off the floor, the frustrations with these pathetic low-lifes fueled a steely resolve that could have shouldered another 10kg (on top of the extra 5kg since last week). The superset with pullups had the same easy feeling.

I finished with rack lockouts and bulgarian squats. The steam was subsiding, and the rage was going from a green beast to a wringing of hands. I was now toying with the idea of upgrading the old electric with some new pickups and interesting configurations. Yes I desperately needed that dose of big iron!

Cash Converters are a sham company.

 

[Glex]

Keep the guitars, man! It's always nice to have an extra one.

Gibson Les Paul Studio

That's such bull! Even if it did need resoldering, the guts of an electric only cost a few bucks apiece, and it takes maybe an hour for anyone with any experience to completely tear a guitar apart and put it back together. An hour of labor and 12 bucks worth of gear...that'll be another $100

It is very nice to go into a workout angry, though. More focus, energy, and by the time you finish usually you feel much better. If someone has to piss you off, it might as well be on squat day!

 

[tim290280]

^^ Exactly!!

I was going to start a bit of a campaign against Cash Converters, as they have a huge advertising thing going on. But after that workout I think "Fuck it".

 

[FOOTBALL FAN]

we have cash converters here they rip you off a treat they do a buy back option and my mate got £20 for a £250 gold chain obviously he bought it back but its a piss take, your better off keeping those guitars or selling them to someone whos not a asshole

 

[tim290280]

^^ And they try to act like they are doing you a favour! If they are reselling at 10x the cost to them you seriously have to question the value of anything they have in stock.

Suppose drug users and burglars keep them in business.

I plan to hang onto them until I can sell them privately. I still want a better electric guitar, and I can't really justify having 5 guitars laying around unless I was a pro musician.

 

[FOOTBALL FAN]

yeh I think thats what keps them going addicts and thieves im surprised they are allowed to open the amount of probably stolen electrical equipment they have for sale, you done the right thing keeping hold of them

 

[tim290280]

Just to update: I've managed to strain either a muscle or tendon in my hand that is causing some pain, especially in exercises where the palm supports the load (pressing). So I've decided this week will be a backoff before leading into a new program of upper/lower. I was only a week or so away from the backoff anyway, and the program change will be at a tough time now, rather than coinciding with my house moving.

So last night I did hill sprints for 6.5mins.

At some stage I am going to have to measure how many I do, how far I'm going, etc so that I know that I'm getting fitter and quicker.

 

[FOOTBALL FAN]

hope it gets better soon mate, wise to have a week off dont want to really damage it, 6.5mins hill sprints I bet thats pretty taxing

 

[Natureboypkr]

I hope you get better, by the way I like those hill sprints, when i do those i get a crazy pump