Mike

I'm never been comfortable with stretching before a run. It seems to me that whatever I'm stretching would be more prone to injury during the run, due to it being pre-stretched. I think a good warm-up and stretching daily are very important, though. Which reminds me, I actually aggravated my Achilles tendon when riding a bike. I never warm up before a bike ride, so maybe that's part of my problem in addition to not stretching. From now on, I'll be warming up and stretching out By the way, is your back feeling better, hs?

I know what you mean, hs. I took a year or so off of running and went on somewhat of a squatting binge (oh, the pain), and was amazed at much easier it is to run after I gained a little leg strength. Mike

Welcome to the group!!! Slave to the Grind is actually the name of one of my favorite albums. I hope have a great time here. Mike

I'd better step it up if I'm going to be on a thread with all of these great runners! Congrat L/G on the new time record. You're a heckuva lot faster than I am. You winter runners are impressive, too. At first, I thought the temps were you were talking about were Fahrenheit (sp?). I thought you were crazy . I'm kind of frustrated with myself . I wasn't stretching properly and ended up with a really sore Achilles tendon on my right foot. Now I'm walking funny! It looks like I'll be doing some upper body work for a week or so . It's all good, though. I'm going to stretch daily from now on. As a matter of fact, if anyone has any good stretching routines they'd like to pass on to a "newly-converted" stretcher, it would be much appreciated. Good luck with your training everyone!! Mike

When I first joined the forum, my first thread was about something I called the "Anti-Routine Routine." The way I did it was to make three days a week some sort of upper body activity and three days a lower body activity. The exercises, reps etc. changed every workout. It can be a nice change-up and a way to try some exercises that normally wouldn't fit into a normal routine. Mike

I couldn't agree more with DV about how cultural characterisitics and politics ruined the original message of the Bible. I also agree that, unfortunately, it wouldn't be very effective to point to the Bible's final version as an argument for a vegan lifestyle. For me personally (and again, this is just my own take on it), I think if you remove all of the political bs added on by men who were hungry for power, the original message is one of compassion. "If you have two coats, give the better one to someone who needs it." "If you're having a feast, don't invite your rich friends and people who can repay you. Invite the poor, sick, blind, crippled, etc." I would assume (and a great deal of interpreting any religious text is through assumption) that this compassion would extend to all of God's creatures, even if the final version only reflects the "male-dominant" culture of when/where it was written. Why would God create life (in the form of animals AND humans) only to have us mistreat it? Interesting conversation. I'm enjoying learning about everyone else's views on the subject

Potter, good question about the dietary restrictions. I'm Christian, and I've never really thought about that Not to get too far into theology, but the main point of Jesus' teachings was that a person doesn't have to follow the strict guidelines from the Old Testament to be a good person. The Old Testament had some pretty harsh rules; I remember seeing something about how someone who's testicles had been crushed couldn't go to heaven There were also plenty of rules in the OT about when people couldn't work, what they couldn't eat, etc. Basically, Jesus came along and said not to worry about micromanaging every aspect of your life to please God because that stuff doesn't matter to God. Christians don't follow the Kosher diet because it is an Old Testament teaching that no longer applies. SyrLinus, I've been troubled by the treatment of animals in the Bible as well. People in that culture used a lot of imagery in their storytelling, so a fish could mean something entirely different. In fact, early Christians used the fish as a signal for their belief in Jesus. It had to do with the message contained in the Greek letters that spell fish. So, they may have only been referring to the animal symbolically. That's just my take

I like that idea, Tasha. Hmm...Come to think of it, my job sucks, too. I'll see you all in Costa Rica!

Me too! I remember skimming through the book and feeling so inspired that I would do a couple sets of neoprene dumbbell curls and think, "Yeah, I could be just as strong as the guys in that book." I have A LOT of respect for Arnold's attitude and his determination. Another book that actually has some okay stuff in it (man, I am gonna get crap for this) is ... The Antonio Sabato Jr. Workout for Life. It sounds cheesy but he had some good supersetting routines in there. I think it was more for developing a fit-looking physique than it was for bodybuilding, though. Mike

How much heavier is the increased weight? If you want to work down to low reps, you could increase the weight 10 pounds each workout and decrease the reps by 2 (10lbs x 12 reps, 20 lbs x 10, 30 lbs x 8 etc.). That depends on your goal. Lean and Green gave a great description of various rep ranges you can use, depending on what you want to achieve, so you don't have to work all the way down to 5. If you don't mind me asking, what is your goal in doing dumbbell front raises? If you're looking for overall shoulder strength, overhead presses would be a great alternative and much better for your shoulders. Mike

Since you're a numbers guy, maybe you should start up a peanut butter distributing business. You could find fulfillment in knowing that you're bringing delicious peanut butter to the masses.

Arnie! Yeah, I used to work the late night shift at a radio station and would read that book to keep me awake. There was some great stuff in there. Did you ever try the sample routines? I remember them being obsene: high volume six days per week, deadlifting every other day in addition to squats. I love the pics where Arnold had that maniacal look on his face when lifting. Mike

I think for some people (excluding myself, since I don't like to argue -but to each his/her own) it may be like a form of addiction. I think when somebody argues, the body experiences a "rush," and chemicals are released in the body to produce that rush. When a person is presented with an opportunity to create an argument (often where one doesn't need to exist), perhaps the body remembers the "rush" or "high" that was experienced by the last argument and craves that feeling, so it sends a signal to the brain to start an argument so it can have another fix of the "argument-related" chemicals. The more this happens, the more the behavior is reinforced. Even if arguing is emotionally unpleasant, it may be physically pleasing because it is satisfying the addiction. That's just my personal theory . It could be way less complicated than that . Mike

That sucks, man!!! I'm sorry to hear about that. It's funny; I was complaining about my job to an older friend of mine who's been one of those "Horatio Algers" types. He told me that he used to get so angry about his job that he would come home and hit his punching bag until his arms couldn't move, lose sleep, etc. One day, he realized that he was wasting precious energy and time on things that were out of his control. He said, and this is easier said than done, that what worked for him was to start finding something he could change and focusing his energy on that. He ended up becoming a very successful business-owner because of this change in perspective. So, maybe your work situation is only a temporary bad time on the way to you becoming a millionaire . I hope your situation gets better for you. It's always a bummer when cool people are in uncool situations. You rock, JW. Don't let the man bring you down . Mike

Depends on your definiton of training . Over the summer, I plan on hiking, cycling, running, kayaking, hitting the ole' heavy bag and weight training once a week just to get myself in decent overall shape while having some fun outside. (I could use the tan, anyway ). At the beginning of May 2009, there's a marathon/half marathon, so I might start this program in September to prepare. I'm a little apprehensive, though, because I've heard that marathons are actually not very good for a person. Who knows? Maybe that only relates to those who haven't trained enough. Mike

Welcome!!! As others have mentioned, I really appreciate your motivation. There are quite a few positive people in this group, and I think you'll fit right in! Mike

Welcome to the group, Pastor Riddle!!! Despite the "Jesus ate fish" arguments that people try to give me, I think veganism and Christianity really go hand in hand (in much the same way that veganism fits into nearly any compassion-based religion or way of life). I look forward to learning about your persective on this relationship. In fact, if you'd like, I think it would be cool if you started a thread on the topic. Mike

I felt so inspired by JW's Runner's Support Group thread, that I started looking around for marathon training plans. I thought I'd post this for anyone who's interested. It's the only plan I've found that actually has the runner working up to 45 miles per week, which I believe is vital in order to prevent injury to the heart during the actual marathon. Here's the link: http://www.runninginjuryfree.org/marathonplan.html Mike

I just put a big spoonful of peanut butter in my mouth and noticed that the first two replies were from JW and Potter. What a coinkidink . I was intrigued by the post from I'm Your Man. I would imagine that all of those high reps your bro did were largely responsible for his vasularity. I'm not a martial artist by any means but I am a huge fan of the way they train for functional strength and endurance, which are my main goals. You should have him join and post his routine . Mike

If I could start over, I would devote more attention to progressive overload. I did so much research on periodization, conjugate method, Russian training, etc. that I thought prog overload was a waste of time. I think I would have made better gains if I would have just started with a single prog overload routine and stuck to it for a while. Mike

HAPPY BIRTHWEEK, TASHA!!! (This gives you two more days of celebration .) Mike

5 lbs in two weeks?!? Congrats!!! With each cycle, you can use any number you want. Say you can do 50 crunches. You would want to do 51 in two fridays, so you count back: Mon-42 Tue-43 Wed-44 Thur-45 Fri- 46 Sat- off Sun- off Mon- 47 Tue- 48 Wed- 49 Thur- 50 Fri- 51 Sat- off Sun- off The next cycle would start at 43 and end at 52. I suppose you could count by 5's too, starting at 10 and adding 5 every day until you hit 55 in two Fridays. Then, starting the next cycle at 15 and ending up at 60. Mike

Hey. I'm not stalking you, man, but I was checking out everyone's training journals (for inspiration) and noticed something in your training that seems to happen to me a lot. It looks like you do fine for the first week, improve your numbers in the second week and end up hitting the wall in the third week. That is basically my training schedule for the past couple of years. I've been messing around with Pavel's PTP for weight lifting, but I think you can apply it to bw stuff as well. The basic principle is that your body needs to learn an exercise by doing numerous "easy" sets. For pushups, let's say that your max is 10. A two week cycle would look like this: Mon- 2 pushup Tue- 3 pushups Wed- 4 Thur-5 Fri-6 Sat-off Sun-off Mon- 7 Tue- 8 Wed- 9 Thur- 10 Fri- 11 (hooray, new max!!!) Sat- off Sun -off The next cycle would start at 3 pushups and you would end up at 12 in two Fridays. This allows you to progress for two weeks, cut back before you hit a wall and then build up for another two-week cycle, ideally hitting new maxes every two weeks. I think it might be cool to take a couple days off, find your rep maxes for whichever exercises you want to do and write out cycles for each. You may want to take the best exercises from your two routines and combine them into one routine for this program, since the exercises don't change. I hope it helps! Mike

It can be at first, but after a while you get used to it. I googled my name and it showed a picture of a middle-aged real estate agent from New Zealand. I'm still trying to figure out if he's cooler than me. If so, I'll just tell people that it's a picture of me. Mike