assassin_696

As amoeba said that sounds like the hack squat, which is good if you're bodybuilding and want to develop the front part of your quadricep but pretty much useless for anyone else. Don't worry about deep squatting for your knees, read this article for more information. Squats are detrimental to knees when done incorrectly, so for good form watch these videos. The point is the muscle gets stronger through the process of myofibrillar hypertrophy, which is where the filaments within the muscle grow and split and increase in number resulting in an increase in muscle strength. This occurs when you're lifting at about 80-90% of your 1 rep maximum for any given muscle group associated with an exericse. If you can do 50 reps of whatever exercise you're doing with very little weight this process will not be occurring at any appreciable level. Even bodybuilders, who might recruit sarcoplasmic hypertrophy (more fluid in muscle cells increasing their volume) would only look to do 12-15 reps. All you're doing is building endurance. Yeah you've gotten a bit stronger, but nowhere near as efficiently as you could dropping the reps. What exercises are you doing anyway with those dumbells?

@fastortoise, if you want bigger legs as Reb said squat more, and squat deep. Simple. There is no better exercise for your legs. As "machines" go the leg press is okay, but keep away from the leg extension. And eat more, you don't get bigger physically unless you have caloric excess. I'm not sure, but I wouldn't think that it would matter too much. Whenever works for you and whenever you feel good. My dad used to get up every day at 6 to go out on his bike but I could never do that, before lunch suits me better or afternoon. Each to their own, I tried it I swear, but feeling the lumps go down my throat just made me feel ill. :P Also, adding honey to your shake (a spoonful) is supposed to be good. This really depends on how you feel. The thing is, starting strength is a lot of squatting and some people can't take that kind of intensity on it's own let alone with leg based cardio in there. Others don't have a problem with it. So if I were you I'd start starting strength, add in a cardio workout maybe once a week (maybe on the saturday when you've had a rest day) and then add more as you require and feel able to do. I'll be honest and say I don't have much experience in this area, I recommended Crossfit because it works cardio into your strength training but because my goals right now is to put on a bit of weight my cardio isn't my concern. But if you do cardio before your workout your legs will probably be too tired to squat well. And if you do it after your legs won't get the chance to rest. So i'd be inclined to insert it on the days in between. But you might get a better feel for this once you start than I have.

A DVD about Lance Armstrong's success in the Tour de France. He loves cycling, so he seemed pleased.

The quality of cardio depends on the intensity. When your lungs are gasping for air you've got the intensity about right, and you want to maintain that for about 20 minutes. IMO, bike riding is excellent cardio because it's easy to vary the intensity. Jogging is vastly overrated, hill sprints or interval sprint training (run 100m, walk 100m, run 100m...etc.) is much much better for your cardio and building explosive power. The problem with long distance anything being done too regularly for weight lifters is that you run the risk of breaking down muscle for energy once your other energy stores are used up. Just look at marathon runners, they look sickly. So to answer your question as long as the intensity is good bike riding is excellent. Hell yes, Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe is a good place to start (http://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5- ... g-program/). Both are similar, the Starting Strength routine is more widely known but I can't see anything wrong with stronglifts. Personally I have a whey shake mixed with semi-skimmed milk, a banana and some raisins. I think the complexity of the PWO meal can be overstated, as long as you have a quickly absorbed protein source (i.e. mixed whey) and some fairly quick release carbs you should be okay. A lot of people put oats in their shakes, but this makes me gag. And a lot of people mix their shake with water to improve speed of absorption but I'm not a fan of this. Hard to comment on really. Sounds off the wall but that's the kind of thing dance classes seem to target. Just a final note, if this is your goal you may be interested in http://www.crossfit.com/, it's a program designed for what's called General Physical Preparedness. It works cardio into strength training. If you can do their Workout of the Day's (posted on the main site) regularly your fitness will be pretty elite.

Problem is 2g of protein per pound of bodyweight is a huge amount to get naturally, that'd be over 300g a day for me, which about 19 glasses of milk, or 50 eggs, or 6 big steaks. I partially agree with you, in my opinion nearly all supplements are crap that wouldn't be worth if it if they were free (thinking about nitro, cell volumisers and stuff), especially for beginners. But pure whey is a damn good type of protein (which is important) and about as cheap as it gets per gram. I think canned tuna gets close in terms of value but you might not be wanting to eat too much of that (i.e. more than 2 cans a day) because of mercury in it. The absolute best supplement for a beginner is whole milk, drink pints of it a day and you can't help but put on weight. In other news I've switched to the Bill Starr 5x5 program now, wanted something a little more advanced. Squats every workout now, yay.

Madness, or Ian Dury and the Blockheads. In fact I struggle with quite a bit of new wave music, but I wouldn't rule it out as a genre.

As long as it has a cold side to it I'm not fussy. I think I'm more of a fan of the slightly thinner variety, not the neck pain inducing pumped up ones you find in a lot of hotels.

First of all, hats off to you for doing this. You might be bored at times but having the time to catch up on learning and doing things is a great thing. I can second the Richard Dawkins forums. I've posted quite a bit there in the past but not much recently (lack of time more than anything) but there are lots of intelligent and lively debates going on. I'd also recommend reading this post at a blog I frequent. It seems right up your alley, it's all about learning using the internet. To highlight some of their recommendations. iTunes U is great for this sort of thing, so many lectures to choose from on all sorts of topics. Walter Lewin is great for basic physics, and Leonard Susskind does more advanced physics topics with an interesting twist. I've also started listening to the Daniel Kaufman lectures on philosophy, and my friend recommended me the 7.012 Introduction to Biology lectures from MIT which he used when preparing for his Cambridge interview. You don't get much better than http://www.physicsforums.com/ for physics, covers every level really and it's got some maths stuff as well. A couple of book recommendations. A Concise Introduction to Pure Mathematics by Lieback is a really good primer on more advanced maths. You don't need much prior knowledge beyond what you have (I think, but might be wrong) and a lot of universities recommend it. This reading list from Cambridge also contains a wealth of book recommendations for anyone interested in maths at all levels. And this is a preliminary reading list for Natural Sciences there and has a lot of good book recommendations. If you're interested in logic Godel, Escher, Bach would definitely appeal. And one final thing before I bore you to death, you mentioned going to the gym. Because I like what you're doing I'll give you this advice. Please please please please don't go anywhere near websites like bodybuilding.com looking for your first routines. Assuming you're wanting to maybe build some strength and muscle mass. Go here and learn about 5x5 strength training (not necessarily the starting strength program, although you can't go wrong with that). It's a program that works, not one designed for genetically lucky mesomorphs who want to do 20 sets per bodypart. Keep it simple and focus on the big lifts. Eat well and sleep well and you'll definitely grow.

The National Anthem - Radiohead

This, I just find them a bit weird really.

Does anyone have any experience with CrossFit? I like the sound of their training and fitness and was thinking about incorporating a slighly scaled down Workout of the Day as my accessory after my 5x5 program. I also need to look into modifying my 5x5 but that'll take serious research and I need to focus right now on exams.

Don't do situps, they're a load of rubbish. Lying leg raises, russian twists and lying reverse abdominal crunches are where it's at for abs. If you insist on doing something like sit-ups stick to crunches. They don't engage your lower back and cause spinal flexion which risks damaging it [1].

I can't really think of a joint that I don't crack. Although I never really do my neck because that feels a bit weird. My right hip socket has started cracking recently, it's damn satisfying. Same with my left shoulder when I reach behind my head.

Winter Wonder Land - Animal Collective Trippy

Wolf Like Me - TV On The Radio [cabbage] hot music.

While it's hard to speak too confidently about this case without knowing the details I know enough about this kind of thing to know that the courts always (and rightly so) put the child's best interests first, and almost always the child's best interests is to stay with their natural mother. It's normally quite an exceptional case when the child is taken away from the parents. This case sounds a little bit unusual since the mother seems passingly capable, but I suspect the media stories will heavily be biased against "the government" when in reality it was the judge's decision.

First Night - The Hold Steady Definitely summer music.

I can't believe no one else picked up on this comment, I couldn't have put it any better.

On a slightly related note I'm the same with books. I tend to buy more than I possibly have time to read but I like the choice of having them to read for in the future. Just ordered The Thomas Crown Affair on DVD (the recent one with Pierce Brosnan). It's a great film and there's someone I really want to watch it with. The final heist scence with Sinnerman by Nina Simone playing in the background is superb.

The Trapeze Swinger - Iron & Wine Now and again a song comes along and hits you so hard, emotionally, that it almost redefines your conceptions about beautiful music. This is one of those songs for me. The lyrics, the melody, the phrasing, the chords, this song is so damn close to perfection of the utterly non-sterile kind. And please, remember me seldomly In the car behind the carnival My hand between your knees, you turned from me And said, "The trapeze act was wonderful But never meant to last"

Whilst I respect the intentions of the PROTECT act (protecting children) I think the law is misguided and possibly ineffective. 15 years is a massive jail sentence when rapists often get away with less, and this really does come into the grey area of at what point fantasies become criminal. We don't prosecute people for the fantasies they have but simply drawing them wouldn't make much difference. But then again they have to be seen to discourage it. It's tricky either way, but the sentence is ridiculous. The sentence should be appealed.

Interesting list. As someone who likes some rap but struggles to get into the genre your recommendations will definitely be useful here.

I prefer dancing to songs with actual dance moves that normally go to them. You don't normally hear these in clubs and stuff so it's not particularly useful, but I like dancing when I know exactly what I'm doing. E.g. [yt]fYTOmEwz2VM[/yt]

I'm currently really enjoying Around The Well, a collection of B-sides and rarieties from Iron & Wine. Scott Matthew's new ablum, Elsewhere is also pretty good although I haven't given it a proper listen to. Ditto Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest

Ringing phones. I can't stand them, it's effectively equivalent to someone walking into a room and shouting constantly until you speak to them. But then again I don't particularly like speaking to people on the phone anyway.