Tarz

Good little article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8158777.stm

You could also try reverse curls – not reverse grip curls – where your start position is your chest and you lower the weight, as opposed to a standard curl where you start by raising the weight from your hips/waist.

I like half curls, whereby you only curl 90 degrees as opposed to the standard 180 degrees.

You could try super-slow sets too.

Not sure if these would have an effect or not, but I like to vary my bicep exercises.

Are you training as hard as you could be though?

I don't know if you are or aren't, but at the end of the day you get out what you put in, so if you not giving it your all in training - at least some of the time - then your results will be limited to an extent.

Do you just lift weights? I'd recommend cross-training to help shift the fat, some form of cardio, circuit training etc.

Depends how much you want it at the end of the day.

I'm sure you know that lifting every day would be detrimental to your gains/results, so maybe look at it that way.

Make sure your muscles are nice n rested so you are extra motivated and can hit the gym hard on your weights days.

Could you not do a different form of exercise on alternate days?

That way you are resting from weights but still getting your exercise hit.

Depends what other exercise may appeal to you and what (potential negative) effect and impact it has on your weight training.

he was talking about the uefa-cup not the champions league.

Actually, I'll think you'll find he was talking about the Champions League, unless there's a seven day delay in showing football matches in Canada.

JW's post was Wednesday 27th May, 'right now'.

Champions League Final was yesterday, Wednesday 27th May.

UEFA Cup Final was last week, Wednesday 20th May.

The Champions League is also a UEFA competition.

You didn't miss much.

Man U didn't show up other than for the first ten minutes.

It gave me real bad cramps in my calves and lower back when running so I stopped using it.

Same evidence doesn't prove that roid rage doesn't exist then either.

despite the fact that steroid usage is a Victimless Crime

Not always when people go nuts when they've got the rage.

They were robbed though...

Great viewing all the same.

It's the way they win.

I think people just don't want to commit to the level of (hard) training that was done 20-30 years and is necessary to get top times. Maybe just don't want to graft in training as much as they used to. I think people at least have as much time, if not more these days, it's just an issue of effort and application.

Chelsea are really disliked over here too, almost as much as Man U.

You must of enjoyed the Spurs game on Saturday JW?

Hope you've been enjoying the Liverpool matches JW - great entertainment even if you're not a supporter.

Linen suits. They crease real bad though so can look scruffy.

I don’t think it’s possible to just gain weight on your face without also having to put weight on the rest of your body?

I want to maintain a lean and cut body, but don’t like having the too thin face that goes with it – makes me look gaunt, ill and unhealthy…

Where Sweatshops Are A Dream

Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, 14th Jan 2009

Before Barack Obama and his team act on their talk about “labor standards,” I’d like to offer them a tour of the vast garbage dump here in Phnom Penh.

This is a Dante-like vision of hell. It’s a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires.

The miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn. Then the smoke parts and you come across a child ambling barefoot, searching for old plastic cups that recyclers will buy for five cents a pound. Many families actually live in shacks on this smoking garbage.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don’t exploit enough.

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

“I’d love to get a job in a factory,” said Pim Srey Rath, a 19-year-old woman scavenging for plastic. “At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it’s hot.”

Another woman, Vath Sam Oeun, hopes her 10-year-old boy, scavenging beside her, grows up to get a factory job, partly because she has seen other children run over by garbage trucks. Her boy has never been to a doctor or a dentist, and last bathed when he was 2, so a sweatshop job by comparison would be far more pleasant and less dangerous.

I’m glad that many Americans are repulsed by the idea of importing products made by barely paid, barely legal workers in dangerous factories. Yet sweatshops are only a symptom of poverty, not a cause, and banning them closes off one route out of poverty. At a time of tremendous economic distress and protectionist pressures, there’s a special danger that tighter labor standards will be used as an excuse to curb trade.

When I defend sweatshops, people always ask me: But would you want to work in a sweatshop? No, of course not. But I would want even less to pull a rickshaw. In the hierarchy of jobs in poor countries, sweltering at a sewing machine isn’t the bottom.

My views on sweatshops are shaped by years living in East Asia, watching as living standards soared — including those in my wife’s ancestral village in southern China — because of sweatshop jobs.

Manufacturing is one sector that can provide millions of jobs. Yet sweatshops usually go not to the poorest nations but to better-off countries with more reliable electricity and ports.

I often hear the argument: Labor standards can improve wages and working conditions, without greatly affecting the eventual retail cost of goods. That’s true. But labor standards and “living wages” have a larger impact on production costs that companies are always trying to pare. The result is to push companies to operate more capital-intensive factories in better-off nations like Malaysia, rather than labor-intensive factories in poorer countries like Ghana or Cambodia.

Cambodia has, in fact, pursued an interesting experiment by working with factories to establish decent labor standards and wages. It’s a worthwhile idea, but one result of paying above-market wages is that those in charge of hiring often demand bribes — sometimes a month’s salary — in exchange for a job. In addition, these standards add to production costs, so some factories have closed because of the global economic crisis and the difficulty of competing internationally.

The best way to help people in the poorest countries isn’t to campaign against sweatshops but to promote manufacturing there. One of the best things America could do for Africa would be to strengthen our program to encourage African imports, called AGOA, and nudge Europe to match it.

Among people who work in development, many strongly believe (but few dare say very loudly) that one of the best hopes for the poorest countries would be to build their manufacturing industries. But global campaigns against sweatshops make that less likely.

Look, I know that Americans have a hard time accepting that sweatshops can help people. But take it from 13-year-old Neuo Chanthou, who earns a bit less than $1 a day scavenging in the dump. She’s wearing a “Playboy” shirt and hat that she found amid the filth, and she worries about her sister, who lost part of her hand when a garbage truck ran over her.

“It’s dirty, hot and smelly here,” she said wistfully. “A factory is better.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/opinion/15kristof.html

I’m at work so can’t watch the video at the moment.

I’ve met Anthony and attended one of his talks.

He’s a nice guy, really knows his stuff (really good on all the latest scientific studies/reports/publications), and will happily chat with anybody.

That said, dunno if I’d call him the ‘UK’s number 1 fitness expert’, in the same way I wouldn’t want to describe anyone as the number 1.

I had bad headaches and palpitations a couple of times last year, I realised it was because I’d eaten at an Oriental vegan buffet beforehand on both occasions and that I was sick as a result of all the MSG they add – some of the cheap vegan buffets are notorious for the amount of MSG they use.

I think MSG in small quantities is probably OK, but from personal experience not in the amounts they put in certain veg foods and/or at certain (Oriental) vegan establishments is not good for you at all.

Consuming MSG and feeling unwell afterwards is well known - Google ‘Chinese Restaurant Syndrome’. I think it’s indicative that some Chinese restaurants promote themselves as ‘MSG free’.

Get in touch with Pete at www.veganbodybuilding.org .

I don't think cross-training would do any harm - probably make a nice change from all that running.

I'd also try and increase your running from 280 mins per week if possible. You should be aiming to do some 20mile runs in training, and they alone will probably take 120-180 minutes alone.

280 mins isn't much if it's just spread out over 4 or 5 60 minute runs, you need to get some long runs in so you're prepared for the full marathon. Or even if you do a long run, that means your other runs may only be short 20-40 min runs which can be OK, but you don't want too many short runs to balance one very long run to a max of 280 mins per week. I think in time you should be looking to go beyond 280mins.

It’s a sad situation.

It disappoints me that Isreali actions are always portrayed as a response to Palestinian provocation, and that Palestinian actions are always described as unprovoked, and not as a response to Isreali occupation, embargo and blockade. When the ceasefires always break down, you normally only read of when the Palestinians are responsible and not the Isreali’s. Sometimes it is the Palestinians fault, but not always. Both sides can be as bad.

I understand though why Isreal has to – appear to at least – strike hard, what being surrounded by enemies, many intent on its destruction. I’m as disturbed as anyone by the discrepency in casualty figures, but don’t doubt that Hamas and other groups would have no qualms about inflicting heavy casualties if only they had the means. I have to chuckle when the Palestinians are not allowed to arm themselves, but it’s OK for the Isreali’s to be the reciepants of billions of dollars of aid and equipment from the US and others. Can only be rueful with the talk of democracy in the Middle East, then refusing to recognise and have contacts with the legitimate winners of those elections.

I’m sure I read/heard somewhere once that Hamas was actually created/nurtured by the Isreali’s back in the 1980’s…

That said - and I’m no Isreali apologist - it is a complex issue.

I think the Palestinians are as much a victim of the Arab states - who do little to help them in terms of land and aid as it suits them to have the Palestinian cause as a stick against Israel - as they are Israel.

Also the amount of Isreali land is tiny compared to Arab land in the Middle East – the Arab states could give up some of their land for the Palestinians but do not.

There is always talk of the 1967 borders but people forget that it was Isreal who was attacked in 1967 and it is understandable that it retained the Sinai and still retains the Golan Heights for defensive reasons.

What is often overlooked too is the Jewish exiles forced from their historic homes in Arab states after 1948, so it is not just the Palestinians who are exiles/refugees.

Also there are many situations like this throughout the world that do not attract the same publicity or cause celebre. It doesn’t make any of these situations right, it’s just that many focus on the Middle East without the same interest and outrage of similar disputes elsewhere in the globe. The dislocation and forced migration of people is often the sad outcome of war - who many know of the Sudeten Germans forcefully expelled from their homes in Czechoslovakia in 1945, and other Germans from what is now Western Poland? Why is there the Russian enclave of Kalinigrad on the Danzig? The Chechens and other minorities expelled to Siberia and other god-forsaken places by Stalin for supposedly siding with the Germans in the Great Patriotic War?

No easy solution, what with hardliners on both sides and with the US administrations overwhelmingly biased in favour of Israel. Sad for those caught in the middle.

I was going to march for an end to the Isreali’s attacks in London but didn’t bother as I didn’t want want to be associated with some of the dubious and dangerous extremist Muslim groups that appear on these marches. ‘Londonistan’ by Melanie Philips is very good on this. Maybe the Isreali’s know their enemy better than we think they/we do….

Say you don’t eat anything after 6-7pm, then go to sleep 10-11pm and get up 6-7am, that’s a long time without food….

If you’re hungry then your body is trying to tell you something, and I don’t think depriving yourself of food – until you absolutely have to - is a good idea especially if you are about to go to bed so that it will be several hours until you next eat.

I eat late at night, sometimes just snack or sometimes a big bowl of porridge, often very soon before I try to get to sleep. I just listen to my body – if it wants fuel then I’ll feed it, and I won’t attach any significance and read anything into what the time is and the amount of food I want.