TDetroit’s ramblings and nonsense

i went to the gym.  opened my gym bag, and this green stuff started coming out.  at first i thought it was my Michigan State university shorts I wear when i work out.   then i noticed the green stuff was in fact not solid, but gaseous.  yes, ladies and gentlemen, the stink monster lives in my gym bag.

good news for my wife (who reads my blog) is that i definitley did not hookup with any gym honeys while wearing those clothes.

i guess it’s time to do laundry

I had 2 accomplishments this morning

first was in the perfect pushup.  i got up to 29.  maybe i could of done 30, but i wasn’t ready to do the 29th and panicked.  doh!

 then after some other stuff, i did stretching.  put my leg up on the bed (we have one of those tall ones that you need a rope ladder to get into) and tried to stretch and bring my nose to my knee.  2 times on the left, once on the right.

more limber and stronger, now for some mass.  i think i’ll just wear my parka for the rest of the year

looks like i will be spending friday night at the gym.  no chance of tonight or tomorrow morning.  have to work on saturday and a party saturday night.  so next opportunity will be friday night (tomorrow) and then again on Sunday.  prob get a trip in next week too.  so I am still getting 2 per week. 

 looking for people’s good ideas for back, especially lats.  i have become obsessed with building the lats.  they are good so far, but the more you get used to them, the more you want them.  remember, i am still building the arms, so there are lot of things i can’t do yet.  have a hell of a time with the lat pull down, the arms give out before the lats have broken a sweat.

i have an idea.  if we take a lat bar (36 inches) and put a pivot pin at 14 inches from each end, and a cable ring on each end, then we have a bar that can bend.  now hook one cable to each end, and place a vertical stop in the center of the cable machine.  do a standing lat pull down to the vertical stop, then press and pull down with just arms and chest the rest of the way (the bar will bend for this to happen).  so you get the lat work coupled with the chest and forearm work. 

ok, it’s hard to picture for those of you outside mi and oh, but trust me, it sounds real cool to jacked in mi.

it’s a compound workout that will give a hold to the lats while the extra press is working. 

 just a thought, i am always looking for compound excersizes, i think they translate better into real world uses of muscle - like block work.

it’s probably just that I am getting to end of the sunless season.  it’s michigan afterall.  the sun has been gone since september, and is not due to come out until april.  5 weeks to go.

or maybe it’s the double duty.  being the housewife and the bread winner.  it’s a lot of work to do the dishes and the laundry and the other stuff and still have the nerve wracking 60 hour job i have. 

i guess i need more cardio.  get the heart rate up so that the resting rate is lower and uses less energy.  then I can stay awake longer and not be so tired.  so, next time in the gym, instead of 3 cardios, i’ll do 4.  not too much though, i don’t want to become a hamster.

I’ve been continueing with the 35/37 lb db curls.  I had one set up to 5 reps.  I have a muscle pain in the right elbow (the weak side).  it is the inner muscle, it doesn’t like the stress I am putting on it.  BUCK UP LITTLE MUSCLE, WE’LL MAKE A REAL MUSCLE OUT OF YOU IN NO TIME.

haven’t been getting to the gym like I should, between work, laundry, dishes, the dog, the kids, etc.   (wife can’t touch chemicals, so I have to do most of the work - no prob, I can do it)  but I get to the gym less. 

I’ve been working the db’s and perfect pushups.  the perfect pushup single set max reps is now 28.  up from 27.  I only hit it every 3rd or fourth day.  I don’t want that familiar overworked pain to come back. 

lot’s of leglifts on the floor, situps, lumberjacks, planks, etc.  just keeping everything going.

so I read Maddi’s blog this morning.  about how she came to the conclusion that for her to be strong, someone else would have to be weak.

no, I am not mad at Maddi, she’s got too cute of a pretty nose for that.

 but it did get me thinking about people’s thinking about stuff.  people think the world is finite.  There is only so much air or water or green house.  there is only so much money, or wealth, or opportunity.  this is all malarchy.  people keep forgetting to add in the replenishment and/or the growth.

 take for instance taxes.  if you cut taxes, people think the governement get’s less money.  wrong!!!!!!!  you are forgetting to add in the economic growth.  let’s take american taxes ont he rich (because it is the easiest tax bill to figure out)  a man with an AGI (the number at the bottom of the first page of the 1040) of 1 million will have amarginal tax rate of 35%, and also, because of the surtax and evening out thereof, he will have a total tax rate of 35%.

so 1 million income = 350,000 in taxes.  easy

now let’s cut his taxes from 35% to 34%  (1/35 = 2.857% tax cut) so now his taxes are $340,000  wrong!!!1 didi you see where it went wrong?  you forgot, the tax rate is lower, so the economy is better, so his income went up.  the math is simple.  if his income goes up by 3% to 1,030,000, he will pay $200 more in taxes.  not much, i am just showing you the break even point.  if you cut his taxes by 2.857%, he needs to grow his income by 3% for the governement to break even.  yes the second number is higher than the first, but think of this, he was going to grow his income by over 3% without the tax cut, so how much growth will he get with it? 

you also have to consider that the tax cut is not a 1 time thing.  it changes the growth rate of the economy permanently higher (until a later tax increase decreases the growth rate).  so the additional funds to the government continue to grow and an increasing rate oveer the years to follow.

same works for water.  1% of the global water is used by humans for nourishment.  this does not mean that in 100 years we will be out of water.  the earth has a process whereby water is evaporated into the air, accumulates into clouds, and then rains down again as fresh drinkable water.  the water on this planet will last forever, or at least until the next hot age.  yes hot age and yes next.  there have been 15 ice ages that we know of.  each has a hot age before the next.  and there will be both in our future (not ours, our heirs - not our children, our 30th great grand children.)  think about this people.  was the earth warmer or cooler 2000 years ago.  let’s see the greeks and itals wore bed sheets and loin clothes 24/7/365.  they never needed winter clothes.  today, they wear parkas.  hmmmm….. it must have been a hell of a lot warmer. yes.  did you know there was a mini-iceage only 750 years ago?  yes, and the reason the globe is getting warmer as we sit here, is because we are still soming out of that ice-age.  when we get out of that iceage, the earth will be at the temperature it was during the beginning of civilisation.  it will probably warm up after that, and then cool down to an ice age, and then warm up and then cool down etc.  and guess what?  it has nothing to do with us.  we are irrelevant to the process.

the earth, for over 99% of it’s history was so hot that water could only exist as vapor.  suddenly it cooled down and became inhabitable.  and you are thinking we are the cause of the earth returning to it’s normal tempurature!  I assure you, all of you, each and everyone of you, the sun is a yellow star, it will turn orange, and grow, then it will grown more and turn red.  when that day comes, the earth will be inside the sun (actually it will have been burned, scorched, charred, and then incinerated in a nucleur reaction 100’s of thousands of years before that), and we will not need to worry about global warming or water consumption.  I promise.  this will be the end of the earth.  it’s history is already written.  and guess what?  it has nothing to do with we humans.  and there is nothing we humans can do to change it.

so, remember, when you are looking at things in a finite way, remember it is not finite.  there is an ever expanding opportunity and growing list of possibilities.  there is more than enough water, and if taxes on the rich come down from 35% to 20% of the course of many years one tick at a time, the governement will continually receive more and more money because of the economic growth and therefore income growth. 

 limited view is the work of the short sited devil who wants to make you a slave. 

it started all good, a glass of wine…

then the crab cake,

then the gumbo (lot’s of restaurant sodium)

then the cioppino (sort of a fish stew - and sodium)

then the cappucino

and finally the $8 worth of ice cream (well $2 overpriced at a fancy place), but it was big.

now I am home hoping that the sleep will work it off.

don’t eat big at night

there weren’t many people at the gym, but it seemed all of them were there for the same exact workout as me.  so I had to improvise several times.  I didn’t get the exact workout I wanted, but I got a good one none the less. 

after a stretch, i did 30 sec of lumber jacks, and then 30 sec plank

3×3 at 35/37 bicep curl

35/37 db flies, 7 reps and 3 rep

30/32 db presses, 2×10

3 min eliptical

chin ups 1×8 at -30, 1x 8 at -20, 1×7 at -20 (this is up from previous)

bentover db rows with each leg up on bench for stretch 2×10

calf raises 1×1plate, 2×2 plates

then a few machines working upper body (arms and back)

then bench 155 1×8, 1×4

how healthy can a 40 year old man actually get to be?  check a hocky game sometime. true the goalie you are seeing is probably still in his 20’s, but there are the odd balls.  the dominator and grant was old and still playing.  and a few others.

these guys warm up by doing full cheerleader splits.  I can get about 10% of the way there.  wow.  these guys have a flexibility that cats dream about. (that’s what they are doing when they are laying in the sunlight - dreaming about flexibility and catching and killing birds)

so here’s the new challenge.  flexibility. 

1. can you touch your nose to your knee, straight legged

2. side kick as high as you shoulder - each leg

3. front split to the floor

4. side splits to the floor

for numbers 3 and 4 - if not to the floor, then at least stop a hockey puck

I doubt an old guy like me will ever be able to do these, but that shouldn’t be a reaon to not try.  imagine the  health improvements implied if I could get just a 50% improvement from where I am.  everyone says when you get older, your joints get more stiff.  ok, but Dom can do splits at 43 years old.  most of us can barely reach for a beer at 33 years old.  I don’t think the flexibility should go away from the most of us the way that it does.  obviously, goalies can keep their flexibility well passed the age of 13.  why can’t we?

obviously the answer is because we don’t try. 

here are a few stretches for you.  put your leg on something waste high.  now try to bend you nose to your knee (straight legged you cheaters).  you’ll have to twisted you torso, and your hammies will be in pain before you are close enough to see your leg hair roots.

 btw, this muscle stretching will help to avoid injury, and will allow you to lift heavier wieght with out a pull.  so it has lifting benefits too.  not to mention the tangle of bodies you will be able to get into and still do your part in the bedroom.  imagine if it didn’t hurt to position your body in the way she wants you to.   or what if you had the flexibility to do something really radically different from missionary.

also, if you believe that all the bad crap (food or emotional) is stored in the fat and cartilage, flexibility means that stuff is all gone.  even if you don’t wholly believe that, you believe there is something to it, and therefore, flex.

just some thought on flexibility

i blogged a couple days ago about the short work out.  in that workout, i didn’t want to change the weights, so i did my bicep curls at 35/37.  i took everything to go 3×3.  well yesterday, i thought I would do it again, and in just 2 days I had a 33% gain in the reps 3×4 at 35. 

to think, I ‘ve been trying to do higher volume all this time because I thought the arms were took weak to go heavy.  not that 35 is heavy, but it is at the limit for me.   it turns out going to the limit will have the fastest gains.   we’ll see in a few weeks if it also equals mass - the ultimate goal.  for now, the plan will be to work 35 lbs up to 10 reps and then go to 40 lbs.  and keep moving up until I am a regular at 55 or 60 lbs.  so let’s peg that goal for end of the year.  55 lbs db bicep curls 3x 10 by dec. 31, 08