Trev

Here ya go: viewtopic.php?t=5086

http://www.rosstraining.com/ Check this site out. There are others out there too. I do almost exclusively body weight training - most martial arts types do. Lots of push ups, hindu squats, burpees, pull-ups are good, and hundreds of crunches - do them every day. A set of dumbells can go a long way for a small investment (in $ and space). That's about the only weight training I do - shadow box with them etc. I'm going to look into a weight vest one of these days when I'm feeling rich too. Maybe I'll sell my trials bike and buy one. Just running is great too. You should find that once you've strengthened your core, your back problems will be minimized or gone. I had a bad back injury 2 summers ago (bike crash), followed by a workplace accident that resulted in 2 broken ribs and very pulled abdomen muscles, then the first day back on my bike, I crashed again and reinjured my back, and my hip. I did nothing fitness-wise for 6 months, and had chronic back pain. After about a month of kickboxing my back pain vanished and has never returned. It depends on what's wrong with your back, but my problems were herneated disc and an impact injury (scared me at the time, because I lost consciousness on impact and had no feeling in my left leg for an hour). Someone asked me when I first came on this forum why I quit bike trials for a safe sport like kickboxing... Also, check out Big bwii's site - he's got the bodyweight thing dialed! There's a lot you can do with just your own weight - you just have to get a little creative. And make it fun!

It's pretty normal behaviour for dogs to be vocal in this way. Barking is actually less a part of normal, unstressed behaviour. I think in each case, the dog makes the noises, and the humans interpret what they are "saying". When you see the video, with the words "I want my mama" on the side, you are expecting to hear that. I don't think it's any more abusive than getting a dog to shake a paw or roll over for a treat. Dogs like to think, communicate, search for and interact for food, and do their part for the pack. It's all stuff they would do (a version of) in the wild. The funny irony in this video is, the people think the dogs are speaking "human" and the dogs think the humans are speaking "dog". In each case, the humans start whimpering or howling, and the dogs join in. It probably confuses the dogs as to whether their humans are competent pack leaders or not. I don't think it's cruelty, I think it's just humans stupidly putting human faces on non-human animals.

Good to know! Thanks, Robert. We stay in lots of places everytime we drive down the coast - won't be Shilo! (never stayed in one before tho)

Welcome to the forum, jonwade.

Yeah, photos bad! Karma for my vanity I guess. Now, every time I see my avatar, I see busted rib - I will not forget! Must train more...

Yeah, I was just kidding about using knees and leg kicks! We do a lot of boxing at my gym, as well as MT, karate and a bit of BJJ - mostly takedown defence. The kickboxer that kneed the boxer just sounds like an idiot. Gives martial arts a bad name. I've never sparred just with boxing, but I definitely wanna give it a try. What is it about boxing that you like more than MT? I still enjoy watching boxing almost as much as MT or MMA. A good fighter is a good fighter is a good fighter. Cheers!

It'll be a little while before I "invest". I will let you know when I do. I might dig around and find a local supplier, so I don't have to order off the internet, not that that's bad or anything. As for abs - you won't wanna hear this - crunches, hundreds of crunches. I do a variety of different crunches nearly every single day, usually between 200 and 300 per day. And slow full sit-ups too, sometimes with a medicine ball. Ab roll-outs are also awesome. I also frequently do ultra slow leg raises between sets of crunches. With abs, you can work them constantly without waiting for them to heal. I also do tons of heavy bag work at the gym, and that conditions the core. Actually, most of the excercises and drills we do in kickboxing are good for the core. Burpees are another good core excercise - especially for lower back conditioning. I got a rib broken by a side kick a few months ago, after my avatar photo was taken, and I don't want that to happen again. I'm about to start sparring full contact again so I've been working my abs like crazy. A couple of hard round kicks or hooks to the body are good motivation to do sit-ups!

Welcome, Mark. I'm sure this forum will keep opening your eyes.

I'm seriously thinking of picking one of these up - especially after checking out rosstraining... As for which one... it's so hard to tell. I thought the V-max (shorter one?) looked more robust and less gimmicky, but they're both probably pretty good. I don't think you can go too wrong - if you get one and don't like it, sell it and get the other.

If you thought those movies were anguishing, check out 3 mini-reveiws at http://www.veganunderground.com/vault.html#whokilled - must-see movies for mental-anguish-lover! And Happy New Year, JW!

No, it's always been that way on my website. I guess since the blog is only one part of the site, I kept it closed. It's also kinda' why I've been posting the blogs here. I may change the blog page. It's not that I don't welcome comments. My website's grown to the point where I need to create more pages and reorganize. Maybe I'll open the blog to outside posts then. In truth, I don't even like calling it a blog - it's more like opinion/interest articles than a log of my activities. It's just that blogs are popular and people are more likely to read them than "articles" or "essays". I will post reactionary emails I get thru the site - I've only had a few so far. Anyway, thanks for reading, _raVen_! And thanks for checking out www.veganunderground.com - I'll try to keep the content coming!

Welcome, Shinya! Your Englisch isn't so bad... you should see meine deutsch! It's terrible! Anyway, enjoy the forum!

Hmm, I meant tow write an all vegan appartment . Oh. Well, I guess that's pretty cool too.

Awesome, 'bwii! Inspired as always...

hello, dudeofthedead, welcome. Cool form name. Linguistics and video games - and interesting combination of interests. Does a society shape its language, or does language shape its society? I think at some point in the evolution of a language, the latter is the case. other animal words I don't like the use of: shark - either a noun, someone who is untrustworthy like a pool shark or someone who'll do anything to get ahead, or a verb, to scam someone. Sharks have a tough enough time with popular opinion! Whale - a large human Dog - a promiscuous human Bat - blind or crazy elderly human The list goes on and on. Speciesism!

I forgot to post this blog from my website, so it's a little past its best-before date... those were not the salad days afterall ___ Every so often I get something in the mail, or hear from an old aquaintance, that reminds me just how sweeping all the changes I’ve made in my life over the last 9 months have been. I guess I’m too busy, or just haven’t noticed all of them. Today, I got two reminders – a call from an old aquaintance and a magazine in the mail. The call was not terribly significant, just somebody I haven’t worked with, or talked to, since before I went all vegan/buddhist/enivro/activist. He accused me of avoiding him. I guess I did fail to return some calls. I tried to tell him why, but I just couldn’t say it succinctly enough to be appropriate for a hurried, static-y cel phone call. No matter, I’ll be able to tell him in person soon enough. Better start working on the speech. The magazine I received was the publication of the Performance Drivers Club, of which I am still, but not for long, a member. It’s the last magazine I’ll get from them because my membership runs out on December 31st. I won’t be renewing. I flipped through the magazine, glanced at the articles, gazed half-heartedly at all the exotic cars that had shown up at the last few track days. I couldn’t force myself to read the articles, and I wasn’t drooling over the Elises and Caymans. What was wrong with me? I closed the magazine, knowing that I was closing the book forever on that chapter of my life. Then I picked up a local recycling guide to read about what my municipality was doing about its garbage. A little personal history is required, I suppose. I was a “car guy”. I had been for a long time. I haven’t owned many nice, or fast cars. I’ve driven lots of them. Fast. Before and during university, I was a valet in a few different major hotels, which shall not be identified here, and I fashioned myself a bit of an automotive journalist-in-training. Okay, and a racing driver-in-training too. I drove many an exotic, and everything else too. My love of cars began much earlier than that though. My dad was a muscle car and hot rod hobbyist when I was growing up and we had a few classic cars. I almost went to the Jim Russell School of Racing instead of university. I was wisely discouraged by my parents and grandfather. I was also a Formula 1 and MotoGP fan from the age of ten. All my heroes were racecar drivers or Kevin Schwantz (moto GP multi-world champion). Actually, there was one childhood hero of mine who wasn’t a motorsports god and that was Captain Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd, but I’ll get back to that. After I finished school, got married and embarked on my first career, I had a few sporty cars which culminated, finally in a real sports car. I bought a 2002 Mazda Miata Sport Package with no heavy stuff like leather interior, A/C or fancy stereo. Black on black cloth, no ABS – just the good stuff: close ratio 6 speed, limited slip diff, Bilsteins, sport springs and bigger brakes. It was a fantastic sports car and it taught me a great deal about driving quickly. Of course, before long I started modifying it. I think it was right after the pilgrimage to Laguna Seca for the Monterey Historics in 2002. I put lower, heavier springs in it, stiff adjustable shocks, an intake and exhaust, race wires, a 4 point roll bar, new lighter wheels and Falken Azenis RT615 tires (street-legal near-slicks). I belonged to a local Miata club and we embarked on many a spirited back road drive. I soon tired of driving quickly on the street. Spurred on by the increasing attention sports cars were getting because of street racing (something I never engaged in), I decided to “take it to the track”. I joined the Performance Drivers Club, and decided to see if I really had what it took to be quick, and to see what my fairly heavily modded, and not really street driveable car could do. Turns out I was pretty fast. The car was quick too. My little Miata embarrassed a few Porsches and Skylines in its day. But were all the wasted high octane fuel, burnt rubber and scorched brake pads worth it? I had rationalized it and justified it, but all the while, tied up and duct taped in the back of my mind, the environmentalist in me, the one who idolized Paul Watson at the age of 8, was mmmmph-ing. When I got back into martial arts, went vegan, and became a starter-Buddhist in the spring of this year, I ripped off the duct tape gag and 25 years worth of true feelings poured out. I renounced cable TV first, which was a big step, because I hadn’t missed an F1 race in a decade. And it was mid-season. In fact, we removed the TV from the living room entirely and replaced it with a smaller one in our office. I denied the inevitable as long as I could, but winter was looming, and my wife needed a car to get to her new job. I meditated and it became clear. The Miata had to go. I resigned to the fact that we’d fallen out of love, and that it was too much of a burden on my conscience. I traded it in... on a 2006 smart fortwo CDI, which now zips back and forth to the non-profit where my wife works, rain, shine or snow. How could I, an active member of several online car communities, and a staunch supporter of sportscardom, trade a real car for half a car, with less than a third the horsepower? Because the smart gets nearly three times the fuel mileage, takes up half the space on the road and makes a hundred times more of a statement. There is a lot about the smart fortwo that makes sense for us now. It is probably the most environmentally friendly car on the road, from its manufacturing process to its fuel economy to its low emissions. Next to becoming vegan, this was the best thing we could do to reduce our ecological footprint. And you know, it’s not so bad. I’m not known by my work associates as a “car guy” anymore. I don’t have to scrimp and save for, then justify, the new turbo, or the track-only brake pads. I have a car with tires that’ll last more than one year. I’ve hung up my helmet and nomex gloves and I feel good. The veganunderground.com patrol car is a black smart fortwo. You may have seen it during the Vegan Roadtrip 2006 in Seattle, Portland or San Francisco. It can often be spotted zipping around the greater Vancouver area, burning very little fuel and changing many minds. posted by veganunderground # 5:49 PM

A vegan apartment community? That's cool! My wife and I are vegan, but our dog is an omni still. He might go vegan someday. I still put vegan household on the poll. We also have a no meat/no dairy rule in our house and we enforced it over the holidays with all the family and friends that visited - and none of them seemed to mind.

Holidays are almost over... Ate not too badly, all things considered, but my body is less and less forgiving of cooked food. The last restaurant meal I had nearly turned my stomach inside out. I managed to train a fair bit. The kickboxing gym was closed a lot, but I trained at home. I'm up to 80 good push-ups consecutively now on most days. I'm going to start doing more difficult variations. I'm doing lots more ab and core excercises, because I don't wanna get my ribs broken again. I'll hopefully be sparring full contact again soon. I've been hitting the heavy bag a lot and I feel pretty good. Went for a 1.5 mile run this morning over rough terrain (not a big distance, I know, but I haven't run in 3 months and I worked out heavy yesterday). Still I felt I could've gone a bit farther. Next week will be very intensive for training as I'm back to work on Thursday. I'm going to have to try pretty hard to get enough excercise in over the next 5 months. The show I'm doing (Whistler, the series, season 2) isn't too physically demanding, but I do work 14 hours a day minimum. I'll have to work out at lunch - which won't be too hard on studio days. My weekends are going to be spent entirely at the gym. On top of this, I have to be working on my real career and get my books finished. If I'm not on the forum much over the next few months, you know why.

Thanks! Yeah, it's all planned out... Now I just gotta figure out how to squeeze working at my job 14 hours a day, 5 days a week in there somewhere!

The fully extended push ups are crazy hard! Ouch my lower back!

To keep pushing my training limits, to run more and to fight full contact again, now that my ribs seem to have healed. Specific training goals are to build a brick wall of abs, to gain a little weight and bulk (I'm gaining at a rate of about 2 lbs/month right now but I'm still 10 lbs under the ceiling of "lightweight" which is 155lbs) and to just be stronger all around. All this on a predominantly raw diet.

In the 1st round, Tito covered up more tightlly. Mario stopped it in the 3rd because Tito was fetal, which is often an involuntary reaction when losing consciousness, plus he was only covering up with one arm, the other was kinda' flapping around. Tito seemed happy with his fight and went out with grace - I was happy to see that. Ortiz wasn't as ko'd as Griffin tho - he got K'd the F O! (his own words) I'm still a bit PO'd about his quick exit after the fight - sorta takes something away from Jardine's win, which was well earned. I thought the fights were pretty good overall. The last heavyweight bout even had some good BJJ. The Alves/De Souza fight was a bit of a let-down maybe. A bit bizarre - I loved De Souza's "flying-into-uppercut" move, followed by "shooting-for-knee-in-face." Too bad cuz De Souza looks like he's probably a good BJJ fighter. Just wasn't a good enough striker, and it definitely wasn't his night.

Oh dear, I sound like a Fargonian. Well, I am Canadian... What I wanna know is how I can be "North Central" and Trev can be "Midland" and yet we both have the same accent. So why does everyone always say you sound like Jody Foster?

I have a "midland" accent. "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio. I'm not even American! I guess I'm just another non-descript, boring Canadian. Good quiz tho. I always thought I had kind of a hybrid Toronto-Vancouver accent, if that means anything.