assassin_696

Lazy weekend, back to work today fairly gentley with 2x10 mins on the erg. No more pissing around, I'm going to get seriously fitter for the summer rowing.

Having now studied climate science as part of my degree, I'll just say this: climate science is massively complicated, far more so than I ever appreciated. To come to any conclusion on it based on casual reading of news articles would probably be foolish and naive. The evidence is pretty clear that we're accelerating the greenhouse gas effect, the actual effects of this are very hard to predict but although a global increase of 1oC might not seem significant given the number of feedback mechanisms in the climate it could potentially be very serious.

Yesterday: outing in the morning, weights before lunch and then a 10k erg after dinner. Felt damn good, 2.04 split, first time though.

I use Optimum Health Ultimate Whey, seems to be the best value. Used to get vanilla flavour, but I prefer banana now.

Wolfmother is what you want

Yesyesyesyesyes. Do these: http://stronglifts.com/the-reverse-crunch-get-your-six-pack-abs/ MUCH better than crunches. Knees to elbows are also killer: http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_Knees2Elbows.wmv Medicine ball twists are also pretty good too. You can have a great ab workout just doing reverse crunches (first link) but if you want variety do the other stuff too. But don't do crunches.

Deadlifts are the king of back exercises. Pullups are good too though. Shoulders...personally I superset military press with lateral raises, but I find shoulders a little tricky to work. See what suits you. And definitely give yourself a rest day if you're lifting heavy. Once you're deadlifting heavy enough you probably won't want to be doing them more than once or twice a week, so substitute bent over barbell rows in, or power cleans.

I don't think there'd be too much harm in starting a strength training program with occasional cardio now. Muscle gains, especially in teenagers, tend to be slow so you might get frustrated if you left it before getting your body to that stage. Also strength training is probably slower for fat loss gains than intensive cardio, but would work well enough over the long time period you're talking about. Something like Starting Strength or Stronglifts (google both). You're still quite young so focus on form and technique over the actual weight lifted for now. In general my advice would be to focus on compound lifts 3 times a week (a 5x5 program is good) with cardio once a week to maintain aerobic fitness. So something like barbell squats, bench and deadlifts/cleans three times a week then whatever you want for cardio. Compound lifts work the full body and give you good all round strength and fitness, isolation exercises that bodybuilders use might be fine for a single muscle group but they don't give you a good base.

I know there's a famous squash player who shares my name, but other than it just seems to come up with various professors and academics. It's a relatively common name though so there'd be quite a spread.

I used to think I wanted to do academic scientific research, but I no longer have the appetite for it that I used to. I'd still be very interested to work in a scientifically related field, i.e. using my degree, but I don't know exactly what. Heck, I might still sell my soul to an investment bank or something but that wouldn't really be a long term career path, just a means. I'm fortunate enough that I can keep my head down and focus on my degree without worrying too much about jobs, I want to keep an open mind so I don't miss potential opportunities.

Nice work! We had a 5k last night (and we're still not quite sure why...), pulled a 19.16, which was okay I guess, we were all still pretty sore from weights though. Had another weights session this morning, an outing yesterday morning (hungover, fun) and one tomorrow morning in a four. All this early exercise is messing with my sleep patterns, I'm constantly napping. Need to get back into the routine.

Steak is also bloody expensive. Drink milk.

A couple of quite good outings this weekend. Took a little while to get the boat sat right but by the end of today it was feeling better. I was very rusty at first as well. Weights session at 6.45am tomorrow...

I love the sound of a girl's laugh, and when they do it a lot. It's probably quite easy for guys to make other guys laugh, essentially we can easily resort to a fairly crude humour. So when you can make a girl laugh there's something about it. This is ignoring Janice from Friends type laughs.

Well, that's not entirely true. I'm all in favour of changing up a routine but with the abs (depending on physiology) you can keep it simple and it will still work. You can often add resistance by gripping stuff with your legs and it'll work. All this P90X stuff is great if it works for you and you have the equipment but the old ways still work you know. Squatting heavy three times a week is still a pretty damn good way to build legs, same principle. It's easy to overcomplicate this stuff, it doesn't have to be.

Ah good luck with that. I want to go sub 7 by the end of the summer term so I might be able to do the lightweight development squad. A mate of mine pulled a 6.48 last week, and he's even smaller than me!

Thanks, pulled a 7.18 which i'm pretty happy with because I just wanted to keep my split sub 1.50, and it was by half a second. Was aiming for 1.48 split but started to zone out a bit in the second 1000m and struggled to keep it there. 6 seconds faster than my last attempt and my training has been very patchy over the last few weeks. Nothing too special but it's put me in my ideal boat (2nd) so can work on getting properly fit this term. Dying to get out on the water now, it's been too long!

Radiohead? Probably all indie, but Kid A was is wildly different from Pablo Honey

Two 15 minute pieces on the erg today to prepare for my 2k test tomorrow oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no...

The snow was amazing in Yorkshire where I live but since coming back to uni in Cambridgeshire it's a bit of a let down. We're supposed to get it heavy today but it doesn't really look like it. It's a pain if it stops you getting anywhere but it makes everything look so much better and made the whole Christmas holidays pretty special.

Perhaps look into CrossFit workouts you can do without equipment, stuff like: Where squats refers to air squats done for speed. That'll get your heart rate up and build strength.

On Board - Friendly Fires

Do pushups on yor knuckles. Supposed to be better for you anyway and doesn't use the wrists. Just make sure you're stable in that position so your wrists don't suddenly bend.

You're not eating enough. You think you are, but you really aren't. Of course you have a fast metabolism, so you can seemingly eat a lot more than most without gaining much weight (or even losing it...) but if you're eating a calorific excess of about 500 calories a day whilst working out you should put on about a 1lb a week. All teenagers think they eat a lot and can't gain weight but you might be eating the wrong kind of foods or just plain not eating enough. 2000 calories a day is not a lot, in fact it's about 500 less than what most medical experts recommend. But before I end up with egg on my face could you post what you eat in a typical day?

Although sort of possible in theory and used by bodybuilders (bulk and cut, as someone said) muscle growth and weight loss tend to go hand in hand if your workout intensity is up to anything. Even when bodybuilders "bulk" they still have pretty damn obvious muscles, it's just for them "bulked" is a relatively high bodyfat percentage.