Please be sure to read my disclaimer on all baby food recipes before continuing.

We’re back with another installment of the paleo baby food recipe series.  Be sure to check out last week’s recipe as well.

Green Slime Pudding

I decided to give this recipe a more fun name, and when you have your finished product you will understand why it’s called this.

1 cup organic baby spinach (baby seems to help blend, but not required)

1 ripe to almost-ripe banana (organic if possible)

1/2 ripe avocado (Be careful not to go over ripe on these)

Step 1: Cook the spinach in the most convenient manner you choose.  You can lightly steam the spinach, or toss it in the microwave for 30 seconds.  You want it to soften, but retain it’s liquid.  As we mentioned in recipe #1, we want to balance the “wet” foods that add moisture with the ones that absorb it.  In this recipe, “wet” foods are outnumbered 2 to 1, which is what helps create the pudding-like consistency.   

Step 2: Peel your banana and cut it into pieces about 1 inch long.

Step 3: Cut your avocado in half, and remove the pit.

A note on consistency:  Even if your baby food comes out exactly as shown above, every child is different when it comes to how they like their food.  After feeding your child for a few weeks you will get a better idea of how they like their food.  Some prefer it on the watery side, and others thicker.  Keep that in mind as you continue to make their food for them, as you may need to adjust the ingredients slightly.

Flavor summary:  Depending on your final blend this could vary from sweet to creamy.  The spinach won’t add too much flavor, so your baby will likely taste mostly the banana and avocado.

Vitamins and nutrition: The sweet potato and apple provide a good source of carbs and calories for  your child.  Spinach isn’t very calorie dense, but helps with vitamins and minerals.   Here is the vitamin information according to fitday.com (Note: Percentages shown are for adults, but this gives perspective of what is and isn’t in the recipe.  As always, consult your pediatrician for nutritional advice for your child.)

Please be sure to read my disclaimer on all baby food recipes before continuing.

As the first in this series, let me provide a little background.  Ever since my daughter Adeline began eating solid foods, I very much enjoyed making her baby food.  The process of selecting the ingredients in the store, preparing them, blending them, serving them, tasting them, handling the critique of them from a 6 month old.  It was as though I had opened up my very own restaurant where I was executive chef, that served 3 meals a day, every day to 1 very demanding critic.

Some recipes were more popular than others, but after a few months I felt as though I had a strong stable of delicious and nutritious recipes for Adeline to eat.  Right around this time I had the idea of capturing all of these recipes and putting them into an e-book.  And right around the same time, Adeline decided she wouldn’t let us feed her anymore.  She wanted to feed herself everything after watching us feed ourselves.  That put an end to blending baby foods, and got her started down the road of finger foods.  It also meant I wouldn’t be making any food to document and photograph.  So rather than faking it, I decided that I would wait until our next child was ready to start eating solid foods.

That time is now.

Our son James recently hit 6 months old and began the process of augmenting breast milk with some solid foods.  As we did with Adeline, we started him on a single food for a week or so to make sure he didn’t have a reaction to anything.  We started with a week of sweet potato, then moved to a week of spinach.

So now it was time to give him his first taste of dad’s kitchen handy work.  I decided to start with:

Sweet Potato, Spinach, and Apple

1 cup organic baby spinach (baby seems to help blend, but not required)

1 quarter large organic sweet potato or yam (or half of a small one)

1 quarter peeled apple (any kind of apple works, but i’d avoid tart ones like Granny Smith)

Step 1: Cook the spinach and potato in the most convenient manner you choose.  You can lightly steam the spinach, or toss it in the microwave for 30 seconds.  You want it to soften, but retain it’s liquid.  Tip! When creating baby food recipes it’s important to balance foods that add liquid, and those that absorb. More on this later.  You can bake the sweet potato or microwave it as well.  Slide it long-wise so that you can scoop it out of the skin and into the blender.

Step 2: Peel your apple.  You can choose to peel the entire apple, and then refridgerate the remainder, or just cut off a quarter and peel that.  Before adding to the blender, cut into small pieces.  The apple will be the hardest ingredient in the blender, so making the pieces smaller will help get an even blend when it is finished.

Step 3: Add half of all of the ingredients to the blender and turn it on.  The reason that we are using half is so we can determine if our liquid ratios are correct.  The apple and spinach can be purified down to almost an entire liquid if they are over blended.  The sweet potato will assist to bind things together.  Here is what the finished product should come out looking like.

The finished product (the dark green spinach was left over from previous recipe)

And this is what it might look like on your child.

Step 4: If your baby food looks like the picture above, then go ahead and add the remaining ingredients.  If it looks too watery, then begin adding just the sweet potato and blending that in to try and achieve the above consistency.  If it’s too thick, add equal parts spinach and apple.

A note on consistency:  Even if your baby food comes out exactly as shown above, every child is different when it comes to how they like their food.  After feeding your child for a few weeks you will get a better idea of how they like their food.  Some prefer it on the watery side, and others thicker.  Keep that in mind as you continue to make their food for them, as you may need to adjust the ingredients slightly.

Flavor summary:  This recipe has 2 sweet ingredients, sweet potato and apple, and 1 fairly neutral ingredient in spinach.  Most children should find this very appealing, but nowhere near as sweet as hyper-palatable artificial sweeteners.

Vitamins and nutrition: The sweet potato and apple provide a good source of carbs and calories for  your child.  Spinach isn’t very calorie dense, but helps with vitamins and minerals.   Here is the vitamin information according to fitday.com (Note: Percentages shown are for adults, but this gives perspective of what is and isn’t in the recipe.  As always, consult your pediatrician for nutritional advice for your child.)

1 cup spinach

1 cup sweet potato

3 slices of apple

If you have ever bought anything online, you have probably also looked at “reviews” of the product.  On Amazon, this could be a 1-5 star rating followed by any amount of text.  If you google the product you are interested in, you will no doubt land on a page with the exact model name in the title, file name, and possibly even the domain name of the site that comes up first in your search results.  If you ever been disappointed with something you have bought online, You may have thought back on those reviews and wondered how your experience was so different.

Welcome to the internet.

Sadly, the state of the union when it comes to trusting what you read online about a product is about as good as the economy during the great depression.  ”Internet marketers” are playing every angle they can to funnel you to products and get you to purchase.  If you are a tech savvy person, this isn’t news to you, as things have been this way for quite some time, but for the unindoctrinated, this may come as a surprise.

This is why I have found so much value in the personal reviews that Marco Arment has started doing on his site. To be clear, I do not always agree with Marco, and on some topics we are at opposite ends of the spectrum, but that’s what makes freedom of speech so great, and I respect his opinions (and his technical accomplishments). Some people don’t seem to.  I began to notice Marco’s reviews when he began his curiosity about light bulbs.  He spent a lot of time experimenting with a bunch of different makes and models, and in the end shared his experiences.  We didn’t have any need for new light bulbs, so I was completely neutral as I read his posts.  But it did leave a lasting impression on me, that if Marco were to review something I needed to buy, I’d probably take his advice.

So fast forward to a couple of months ago, when we decided that a new bathroom fan was necessary to improve the steam situation.   The fan that was in the house when we bought it was loud and didn’t suck much air.  So it was noisy and useless.  I decided to send a tweet to Marco asking if he had a suggestion for a bathroom fan, and shortly after he responded with a link to a review that he had written.  The focus of the review was actually on fan timers, but at the beginning he mentioned the fan that he had purchased(Marco’s Amazon affiliate link) and recommended.

After reading the article, I decided to order the fan, but not only that, we also decided to order the fan timer.  I’d never really thought about having the timer, but Stacy and I both thought it made sense and would encourage us to use the fan more often if we knew it was also going to automatically turn off.

If you have read this far you can probably predict the result.  The fan is amazing.  First of all, it’s the quietest fan I’ve ever heard.  Or rather not heard, that’s how quiet it is.  Secondly, it’s so powerful that our bathroom mirror doesn’t even steam up anymore when we take showers.  When our contractor installed it for us, he was impressed by how quiet it was as well.  Once we told him the price of it, he said he was going to start recommending Panasonic bathroom fans to all of his customers.  That’s when it hit me.  Marco’s legitimate review of products that he tried and experimented with, will now benefit people who have never even read his reviews, just from a few hops of word of mouth “advertising.”

There will always be “search engine optimization” and plenty of fake reviews on shopping sites, but if you can stumble on to some real reviews, you may have struck gold.  For any home owners or parents, I recommend spending time going through Marco’s site.  Between his renovations and new baby, he has reviewed a lot of products that may improve your home and life.  Speaking of which, he recently put up a review of every baby item they used.  I was surprised how few of the items what we love for both Addie and James were on the list.  It actually has inspired me to write up our own version of his post.  However, we did purchase one item off of Marco’s list, and lets just say James does indeed love his new car.

See larger image Panasonic FV-08VQ5 WhisperCeiling 80 CFM Ceiling Mounted Fan, White (Tools & Home Improvement) List Price: Price Not Listed New From: Check Amazon For Pricing In Stock Used from: $88.03 In Stock

I just spent the past few hours trying to figure out the best solution for me.  If you are in a similar situation, you can probably benefit from the same solution.

As of yesterday, I published my podcast via wordpress and used Feedburner as the RSS URL that was submitted to the iTunes podcast directory (iTunes store).  My wordpress feed was sent to Feedburner, and feedburner added all of the nice iTunes specific categories to the feed etc.

Give the recent news about Feedburner, I decided it was probably best to update my feed in iTunes before anything broke.  Sadly, iTunes doesn’t have a direct interface to do so, but instead suggests adding an XML element to your existing RSS feed which tells iTunes where to look for the new feed.

<itunes:new-feed-url>http://www.unrxpodcast.com/feed</itunes:new-feed-url>

After reading a few outdated “How-to” articles on how to do this, and being met with no success, I looked into many other ways to solve this.  The problem with all of the How-tos was that Feedburner no longer lets you just enter in that new-feed-url manually, so there was no way to solve the problem via Feedburner.

I tried passing the value via WordPress custom fields, but that didn’t work because those fields are sent within a different element.  And after scavenging thru dozens of WordPress plugins, I found one that does the job and very simply.

It’s simply called “iTunes Redirect” and all you have to do is enter the URL that you want iTunes to look for.  In my case it was http://www.unrxpodcast.com/feed

A few seconds later my feed contained the new element.  So hopefully in a few days, iTunes will have updated their feed location.  They suggest a period of 2 weeks to allow for all people who have subscribed to your feed to receive the update.

Jim Wendler:

Answer: I think it’s a nice gimmick – if you are so fat and awful that you need to
resort to that to make you burn fat, you might want to reassess your training.

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So ever since I got the Rogue W4 installed in my garage, I have been maintaining a very steady workout routine.  Thanks to the online programming of Rudy Nielsen, I haven’t had to put my Level 1 Crossfit certification to use and write out my own programming.  As I have been discussing on my podcast, I have been following the diet of Carb Backloading.  While CBL sounds too good to be true, I have to say, it actually works.

To see my actual training log, you can read my previous posts.

Just prior to starting Carb Backloading, I had my body fat measured at Fitness Wave.  The two results on the left are from before Addie was born.  It was a 60 day paleo challenge that Crossfit Santa Clara did.  You can see that I lost more fat during those 2 months, but it was also twice the length of time.  In just one month on CBL, I lost 4.23 pounds of fat.  I should say that I ate my usual paleo foods outside of the heavy carb backloading portion of the day(night).  I’m still 100% a believer in the paleo diet(that is Grain, Dairy, and Legume free) for people looking to lose weight and the metabolically deranged.  But I do think athletes looking to tweak a few things can (self-)experiment for performance reasons from time to time.

Aeron the owner of Fitness Wave said that the body can healthily sustain itself with 20 pounds of fat.  So that leaves me with 9.675 left to lose, which should provide me with optimum performance.

Taking a look at muscle gains:

This is probably my favorite chart.  Even with the entire downtime of training between Addie being born and getting the garage gym setup, I was able to continue to put on lean mass (muscle).  Specifically around my recent progress, I gained 2.23 pounds of muscle in the 30 days of Outlaw/CBL.

So what does this mean on a percentage basis?

So now you can see the yo-yo that I have lived thru.  This feels so relevant right now, with another baby just weeks away.  Luckily I have the garage gym already, so I shouldn’t have to go without training like I did when Addie was born.  So my BF% is near the lowest it’s ever been measured, although I would guess it was lower during portions of my college years.  But without a doubt I am stronger than I ever have been before, and have the muscle mass to show for it.

Do you have any thoughts or questions about Carb Backloading and/or following the protocol with the paleo diet?  Feel free to ask away and I’ll do my best to answer.

Highlight of the week:   This was testing week for Outlaw so I set a few PRs.

After several failed attempts, I jerked 235 pounds on Monday. Tuesday was squats. I was hoping to hit 305, but failed multiple times at 295. I did hit 285 which is not my best squat, but it is my best high bar. I don’t think I have ever really set a bench press PR before, so let’s just establish this week’s 235 as my PR. It’s not that impressive, but for the small amount of bench press work I do, I’l take it.

Training Program: The Outlaw Way

Diet: Mostly paleo version of Carb Backloading

Details:

Days trained: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday

Commentary:  Since it was testing week the workouts were fairly short. I was worried that the low volume combined with CBL would mean extra weight/fat put on. This morning I weighed in at 185, so I guess that concern was invalid. I missed Saturday’s workout and pushed it into Sunday.

Highlight of the week:  Vanity Sunday.  I did calf raises and barbell bicep curls.  Felt great.

Training Program: The Outlaw Way

Diet: Mostly paleo version of Carb Backloading

Details:

Days trained: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday

Commentary:  Good squats on Tuesday. 5×5 back squat, and 3×5 front squats.  Also hit 3×8 shoulder press, 1 set at 125 and 2 at 115.  On Friday I did 7×1 of (1 hang power clean, 1 power clean, 2 push jerks at 165).  There was a time when 165 would be challenging for a max effort, and now I was able to do seven sets of reps with short rest intervals.

Wow, remember when I was going to post my training logs?  Looks like I wasn’t great at that.  But I think I’ll give it another try.  The past 2 months have been great for me, and I wish I had been posting all along, so I better get started.

The highlight of last week was hitting a new Front Squat PR of 255 pounds.  My previous best was 225 back before Addie was born.

I’m still following The Outlaw Way but most of the time I skip the conditioning.  For diet, I am following a mostly paleo version of Carb Backloading.  If you aren’t familiar, it’s basically a combination of Intermittent Fasting with some Cyclical Keto, but with a whole lot of hormonal details thrown into the mix.  It’s probably the best e-Book I have ever read and purchased.

Last week I worked out Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday.  We had multiple interviews for the UnRx Podcast so I missed a few nights.  Going forward I will include more details in these posts as I will just keep a running draft throughout the week.

I love to make aggressive calls.  Here is my latest one.

Ski Safari is the iPhone game of the year.  In fact, it’s actually an iPad game too.

So Robb and Dave announced on episode 7 of the I Can Fix America podcast that the book club is a go.  The first book will be the Ascent of Money, and most likely the second  book will be The Big Short but that is up in the air and subject to change.

Also check out their shirts to help them get a better Mic for dave.  I recommend the Heil PR-40.

Last week John Welbourn posted a new crock pot recipe for some beef ribs.  Coincidentally, I was adding some meat to my US Wellness cart and they happen to have an 16 pound pack of ribs that I couldn’t say no to.

Here is what the ribs look like when they arrived.  What that picture doesn’t really tell the story?  How about this one? CLICK ANY PHOTO FOR FULL SIZE VERSIONS.

So after some light thawing to separate the ribs, I sliced up the beets, onion and garlic.  Then I cut the rack in half so it would fit in the cooker.

You can’t see the onions in there, but trust me they are under the beets.

Then I piled the ribs on top of them, added some dry rub and garlic just like the recipe calls for.   I only very slightly modified the recipe.  I didn’t have beef stock so I just added a tiny bit of water.  I also love spicy food, so I added a few squirts of Siracha.  Although it didn’t make much difference in the final product.  The last steps were salt, pepper, and a bit of maple syrup.

My crock pot tends to run hot, so I used the lowest setting – “Keep warm” to cook them.  Because I’ve known it to over cook things even when just on “low.”

In the morning things were ready to eat, but I somehow resisted and waited until dinner to eat them.

His and hers servings.

The ribs were delicious.  Next time I would start them in the morning instead of the night before, and add more siracha to make them spicier, and maybe more than 2 cloves of garlic too.  I’ve got 2 more racks in the freezer so I will have some practice to make perfect.

Based on the recommendation of Robb Wolf, I’ve begun reading The Ascent of Money. You can get it from iTunes or Amazon.

And that means The Program. Millions of people play fantasy football and hundreds of websites, podcasts, and magazines are dedicated to it.  Unfortunately, almost all of that effort focuses on player picks and not how to really play the game for maximum strategic advantage.

Former ESPN producer and fantasy sports industry expert Dave McKay has done all of the work for you.  Be sure to check out his “3P3Z” – Proprietary Draft Prep Spreadsheet.

Click here to check out The Program.

Cool article written about Rudy Nielsen, the coach who came up with The Outlaw Way, which happens to be the programming I am following now. Check it out.

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It Starts With Food – A Review

I think that I have let it be known that I was excited for this book to come out for the past few weeks.  I’ve let my expectations really climb and thought that this book could possibly have one of the biggest positive health impacts in the United States in a long time, and, after reading it, I still do.

Background

Dallas and Melissa announced that they would be working on a book on my podcast about a year ago.  While this is obviously exciting news, and I was excited for them, my expectations were a bit tempered.  You see, right around that time the “paleo” book tsunami was starting to peak.  There were new books coming out all of the time.  Starting with Robb’s book in September, 2010 and continuing into 2012, the amount of books related to anything paleo or gluten-free is overwhelming.  So I wondered, as I am sure Dallas and Melissa did, what could make their book different?  More importantly, what could make it worth reading?

One obvious answer is the Whole 30.  Dallas and Melissa’s “change your life in 30 days” program is one of the things that they are best known for, so why not make that the foundation of the book?  That might have worked, but we all know their are plenty of “diet” books out there that make huge promises of results if you stick with them for 30 days, and it could be easy to get lost among them.  But the Whole 30 actually works!  Look at all the testimonials!  I can hear the screams across the inter web.  But how can a potential reader tell the difference between legitimate testimonials and air-brushed, photoshopped marketing pictures?  In my mind, I thought that for this book to be successful, the Hartwig’s would have to come up with something else, something unique that really told the story.

And. they. nailed. it.

It Starts With The Title

Remember when I said how my initial expectations for the book were low?  This wasn’t because of a lack of belief in Dallas and Melissa’s abilities to write, or their understanding of how to help people.  It was mostly because I wanted to manage my expectations to prevent disappointment.  But when the title of the book was announced, I immediately realized that they had done it.  This book could be something special.  It Starts With Food.  What does?  What is it?  It is everything.  Your problems: obesity, poor sleep, diabetes, poor athletic performance. Your solutions: weight loss, clear skin, reduced symptoms from auto-immune diseases.

Everything that we do, be it well or poorly, starts with the food that we eat.

It Starts Where You Least Expect

“Surprised that we’re leading off with psychology and not calories, energy, or metabolism? Stay with us, because we suspects this section is going to resonate with you.”

That’s how chapter 4 of the book starts off, and they are right from all angles.  Without a doubt the majority of “diet” and health related books would normally start right out with calorie counting, portion control, etc.  But this book is different.  After reading this book, you will understand how food effects your body, and that goes far beyond just the digestion of carbohydrates and calories.

That same chapter also contains a phrase that has particularly stuck with me since reading it.  Ancient signals in a modern world.  Our bodies (including our brains!) are still looking to the food that we eat for their signals.  And because the food that most of us eat is so processed and refined, the signals are all screwed up.  Our bodies can’t help but tell us to eat when we aren’t hungry, and worse we eat the foods without the nutrition we need.

It Starts with Standards

The idea of using a framework as your dietary plan and rather than a 100% prescriptive method isn’t completely unique to this book, but it is one of it’s well executed aspects.  The four “good food standards” are well laid out, and explained at the start of the book. And by doing so, it makes the later explanations of troublesome foods that much easier to comprehend.  For example, sugars and sweeteners fail all four standards.  Want to know why? READ THE BOOK.  This isn’t a sales pitch, this is for your own good.

Most importantly though, by using a framework instead of prescription(i.e. eat half a cup of strawberries for breakfast every day) and by explaining their standards in a way that is both scientific and easy to understand, Dallas and Melissa enable their readers to honest-to-goodness take control of their lives.

It Starts with the Whole 30

Like I said early on, this book couldn’t have been written without including a section on the Whole 30.  The book is full of so many testimonial quotes from people who have had their lives changed (for the better!) by the Whole 30.  Some of them had been told they needed medications and would never come off them.

And of course the Whole 30 contains something that sets Dallas and Melissa apart.  Tough love.  They make no apologies and make it clear that this is something that you, the reader, have to do for yourself.  There are no cheats, only choices.  As I read through this part of the book it reminded me of a post from the Whole 9 site.  You won’t find point systems in this book.  Because honestly who would choose points vs a cookie?  The cookie would always win, and that’s not what we want.

 One Last Thing

There may be some of you out there thinking, “I don’t need to buy this book because I already read the Whole 9 site.”  I can understand where you are coming from.  You hear about the subjects covered in the book and they align with the subjects covered on the web site, so it’s probably not worth it.  I actually had a similar experience not long ago.  When I read The Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss a couple of years ago, I was struck by the fact that entire chapters and sections were literally cut and pasted posts from Tim’s blog.  Obviously this left me a little disappointed.  After all, I was a loyal reader of his blog, shouldn’t I have been rewarded with a little more info on how he gained 34 pounds of muscle in 4 weeks?  Nope, same post I had read a few years before.

That is NOT what you get with Is Starts With Food.  Instead you get the book I was hoping for.  The book that could possibly have one of the biggest positive health impacts in the United States in a long time.

See larger image It Starts with Food: Discover the Whole30 and Change Your Life in Unexpected Ways (Hardcover) By (author) Melissa Hartwig, Dallas Hartwig List Price: $26.95 USD New From: $16.36 In Stock Used from: $15.93 In Stock Release date June 12, 2012.

The short answer: Absolutely nothing.

On our recent vacation we flew Hawaiian Airlines from San Jose to Maui via Honolulu.  When we boarded the plane in San Jose, it turns out that half of the overhead compartments aren’t the standard size, so our carry on wouldn’t fit.  The flight attendant asked us if we would gate check the bag.

Stacy was immediately hesitant of the idea because we had multiple cameras in the bag.  Our Nikon D7000 with multiple lenses and our Olympus underwater camera that we use when we go snorkeling.  Snorkeling is probably the main reason we were going to Maui in the first place.  When we went there for our honeymoon we got some amazing photos of sea turtles and fish.  We couldn’t wait to do that all again.

Being concerned about the camera, Stacy took the Nikon out of the carry on (it was in it’s travel case) and left the Olympus camera hidden in my shoe inside the carry on.  It turns out that hiding place didn’t do much good.  After connecting in Honolulu and arriving in Maui we picked up our bags at the baggage claim, and headed to the hotel.  When we arrived at the room I heard a scream as Stacy opened our carry on bag and immediately noticed that the underwater camera and it’s inflatable wrist strap were both missing.

I immediately tried calling Hawaiian Airlines but their offices were closed for the day.  We decided we couldn’t do anything over the phone.  I decided to try tweeting.

@HawaiianAir we had a camera stolen out of a gate checked bag on a flight today. Can you help?

June 11, 2012 9:15 pm via Mobile WebReplyRetweetFavorite

@perfy

Michael Melillo

And then again the next day.

They did eventually tweet back telling us to call an 800 number, but they have since deleted the tweet.

Stacy tried contacting them via their facebook page.  That got a response to send an email to mahalo@hawaiianair.com.  By the time we got those responses we had already started to make some progress via the phone, or so we thought.  After calling all morning, the customer service office finally opened and I spoke to an agent who took down all of our information and logged a case.  I received an email that confirmed the notes she took and gave me our case number.

I realized the phone number that I had called was different than the one given to Stacy on facebook so I decided to call that number too.  It turns out that was the “claims department.”  The gentleman at the claims department seemed to be much more experienced with phone calls like this one, but he was also very honest with us.  After explaining the situation to him, he said that he will log the case, but that it will be denied.  I was a little startled by the honesty, but he explained to me that cameras are on a list of excluded items that airlines do not take responsibility for.  He asked if we had purchased the tickets with an American Express card since they often cover stolen luggage items like this.

This is where things take a turn for the worse.  We didn’t use my American Express card like we normally would, because we used Hawaiian Airlines frequent flyer miles.  Apparently tickets purchased with miles don’t come with any similar insurance.

So before hanging up with the gentleman from the claims department, I wanted to be certain that I understood the situation completely.  I was filing a claim with Hawaiian Airlines, that would 100% be denied, and I would receive a letter in a few days that told me as much.  He said that I understood the situation.

He did say that when the letter arrived I could respond to it.  Just like clockwork, a few days after returning from our trip we received the letter.  To top it all off, it wasn’t even addressed to my correct name.  I’ve never been called “Jack” before, but it was insult to injury to have the letter that said the claim was denied be addressed to “Jack.”

I have written that response letter and I am still waiting to hear back from Hawaiian Airlines. But it’s disappointing that things have gone this far.  Our vacation was severely negatively effected by not having a camera to take pictures while we snorkeled.  Some employee of Hawaiian Airlines stole our camera.  They have taken no responsibility for it.

Our buddy Henry/Fitbomb wrote a nice little post today so I thought I would share it.  Without question, Chipotle is the number one place for me to be able to get lunch thats healthy and paleo.  The only other option is the Whole Foods buffet, which is also nice, but can be pricey since it’s based on weight.  It’s crazy to think Chipotle started from McDonalds.

The reviews have started to come in on the new book “It Starts With Food” by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig.  I’m a big fan of the Whole 9/Whole 30, and currently enjoying a run thru the Whole 30 as I type.  I interviewed Dallas and Melissa about a year ago when they first announced that they would be doing a book on my podcast.

• 5 reasons to read “It Starts With Food”
• Easy Paleo’s review
• Whole 9′s sneak peak

I’ve already pre-ordered the book, but I’ll be on vacation when it arrives at my house, so I may pick up a second copy if we come across a Barnes & Noble while we are traveling.

See larger image It Starts with Food: Discover the Whole30 and Change Your Life in Unexpected Ways (Hardcover) By (author) Melissa Hartwig, Dallas Hartwig List Price: $26.95 USD New From: $16.36 In Stock Used from: $15.93 In Stock Release date June 12, 2012.

Almost 2 years ago I bought a pair of Levi’s 501 raw selvedge denim jeans. I wore them a lot. Almost every day. For over a year. They are still wearable but there are the beginnings of a few holes that I would prefer to have taken care of before they get worse. Enter Denim Therapy. They will repair your jeans and mail them back to you. They come highly recommended so I wanted to pass the info on.

We’ve been asked if there is a discount code for Denim Therapy. Use discount code PREFALL12

Wow things have been incredibly busy around here. I didn’t intend there to be such a long delay since the last update in the series, but let’s just say that there have been other things keeping me from writing.

Stacy and I found a property in San Jose that we thought could work in January. It wasn’t perfect, but the layout worked for us. It had 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a large kitchen, and a small yard. The condition of things wasn’t great and it was hard for me to see past that. Stacy saw a lot more potential in the house.

At the exact same time, I found a house that I really saw potential in. It had a different style layout, and a larger and better condition yard, but there were somethings that Stacy just couldn’t see past.

After some discussion, we decided to make an offer for the house that she liked. This was going against our original plan of waiting until more inventory came on the market in the spring, but we thought we had an opportunity to get a property at a price that allowed us to immediately renovate some things.

Our realtor was very helpful during this process. Even though the property had its price reduced quite a bit before we came to see it, we decided that we wanted to offer less than what it was currently listed at. Quite a bit less, and hoped that the sellers would agree to the price.

We were in luck. Our offer was $25,000 less than the current asking price, and it was accepted. Next up, we get to learn about the closing process in California and how it differs from other states.

If you know me at all, you know that I love eggs benedict.  When I lived in Salem, it would be my weekend routine to head down to Red’s early enough to get them there.  If you showed up too late, they would be sold out.  There was no worse feeling than showing up, and hearing that they were sold out of bennies as you walked in.  I had never even heard of eating paleo back then, so I could care less about the health benefits, or lack there of for the english muffin underneath that beautifully poached egg.

But fear not.  Thanks to the great work of Aimee Everett, we have a recipe for Paleo Eggs Benedict.  I think this will be one of the first things we make in our new kitchen.

We’re back.  After getting pre-approved, we had to figure out where we wanted to look for our new home.  The blue square on the map shows about where we live now.  The green square is where I have to get to for work.  You can see that I have a short commute.

We would have loved to buy a home near our current apartment.  But that’s where step 1 saved us a lot of time.  We could have looked around Sunnyvale until the cows came home, but we would have never found a place that was both big enough for us, and in our price range.

We decided to target the purple area of the map. This included Campbell and other southern San Jose neighborhoods of Cambrian and Willow Glen.  Since we had teamed up with a realtor who was recommended by our Mortgage guy, they helped us locate properties for us to look at on the weekends.  Some of the properties were open houses, and others were shown by appointment.

Our strategy was to begin looking at houses in January, which is the off season for real estate.  This would allow us to have a good foundational understanding of the market, so that we would be prepared for the onslaught of new inventory that we expect to come on the market this spring.

We also considered the chances of buying a foreclosure or bank owned property.

Well I think I found my next video game.

Watch this video on YouTube.

While I don’t really want to support Curt Schilling, this does look pretty good.  Review coming soon once I play it some more.  Also for those on Xbox 360, it does have a downloadable free demo that gives 45 minutes of play time if you want to try it out.

See larger image Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (Video Game) List Price: $19.99 USD New From: $18.81 In Stock Used from: $15.60 In Stock Release date February 7, 2012.

Sami Reiss for Vice:

Not everyone has the time or the inclination to follow sports full-time, or even real-time. So, VICE, the bastion of sports knowledge that you’ve come to trust since the newsprint era (trust us on this), combs the latest, greatest, and bestest stories from the world of sports this past week—Super Bowl, Puppy Bowl, and otherwise—so you can hobnob with the weird regular people at the office, your doorman, or your minions. Or so you can use all the new-fangled statistical knowledge as a ways to figure out the lottery like some sort of 5 percenter. Whichever.

(ht AJ)

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While I found this from a friend suggesting to NOT eat it, I couldn’t help but think that some of my readers would enjoy it.  Simple recipe.

You’ll have to wait a while for this one, but you can now pre-order Kinect Star Wars for Xbox 360.  

One other benefit to us buying a new house, is that our living room will be much better set up to use Kinect.  For those that need to play a Star Wars game sooner than December 2012, there is Star Wars: The Old Republic

I’m sure that we have all heard people say things like “I’ve been a member of ___ party for ___ years.”  Replace the blanks with either Republican/Democrat  and the some long amount of time.  I think those days should be in the past, and Americans should consider a new idea.  When a Democrat is in the white house, all Americans should register with the Republican party, and vice versa.

Why?

The reason is simple.  Imagine that you had to choose between two candidates for president.  You decide which one you would prefer pretty easily.  Now, would you prefer the second candidate to be the polar opposite of your choice, or would you prefer them to me as similar as possible?

That is basically the system that we live in.  If you want to vote for Obama in November, is it worth of a few moments of your time to change your party and vote in your primary?  Now a days most states have forms to fill out on their web sites to register with a different party.

You may be of the opinion that none of the Republican candidates are remotely close to Obama.  That’s your opinion to have, and if you’d like, you can take this concept and implement the opposite strategy.  If you are so certain that Obama is the right choice, then you could register in the primary to try and nominate the least electable candidate.  That’s also your freedom in our system.

So many new characters to will be introduced this season. If you haven’t read the books, you would probably think you are watching a different show entirely.  Can’t wait.

Watch this video on YouTube.

The first step of home buying starts with your mortgage. I know that’s boring, but well, it’s the truth. You can’t buy a house without one, and you can’t even seriously look. The pre-approval process is similar here in California to that in Massachusetts. It also starts with finding a mortgage lender and talking to them about what you are looking for. If you don’t know any personally, a good place to start is your bank. In our case, we are members of Keypoint Credit Union, so I decided to fill out the form on their web site.

Within a day or so I was contacted by Ross Huffman and we talked through what we were looking for (single family home), our time frame (sometime in the new year), and price.  Once we had gone over all of that, Ross let us know what kinds of documentation we would need in order to get our pre-approval letter.  Most realtors will ask their clients to have a pre-approval letter if they are going to go out and show them properties.  It makes the process easier if and when you find a property that you want to buy.

The few things that you will need are:

• pay stubs
• bank statements
• tax returns
• credit report

With those key items, your mortgage lender will be able to determine how big of a mortgage you could afford.  Then you can decide if you are comfortable with borrowing that much money and what your monthly payment would be.  It’s possible that based on your salary and the amount of debt you have, that you might qualify for a larger mortgage than you would feel comfortable with.  These are all topics that you can discuss with your broker.

The entire pre-approval process does not take very long.  A good mortgage lender should be able to give you an idea of what you will be pre-approved for just by having a conversation with you, so long as you are honest with them about how much money you earn, have in savings, and the amount of debt you have.  The full process can take a few days, depending on how long it takes you to provide all of the information to your mortgage lender.

So now that you know your price ceiling, it makes part 2 of the process a lot easier.  In the next couple of days, I’ll post part 2.  Selecting your search radius.

If you are having trouble with pre-approval, you may want to look into some private funding options.  Here is a link to an e-book about private funding.

Big news. Stacy and I are buying a house in San Jose. I don’t want to reveal too many of the details, because I thought it would be fun to write a series of posts about the process. Needless to say there are many things that are different about buying a home in California than in Massachusetts where we bought our condo.

So this is just a teaser of what’s to come.

Apple did pretty well last quarter.

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It’s hard to believe that just a few years ago it was still hard to get a Wii because they were sold out at most stores all the time. And now it looks like nintendo will be losing money this quarter. Combined with the fact that the greatest video game designer ever is retiring. That said, Nintendo has completely surprised people before. The Wii was a complete surprise hit. Who knows what they will come up with next.

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I’ve been thinking more about SOPA/PIPA day or so, and throw in the mix the fact that megaupload.com has been shutdown and is now in the middle of a lawsuit for facilitating piracy.

Marco Arment has some good thoughts of what will likely happen over the next few years, or maybe even sooner.  One reason, probably the only reason in my mind, that these bills failed is because congress did something they don’t usually do.  They spelled out the laws in plain english.  Both SOPA and PIPA are acronyms that can be understood by anyone who uses a computer, and the bills themselves were the focus of attention.  Contrast that with the norm of bundling all of the provisions of a bill they are trying to pass with a more popular bill.  The next SOPA, as Marco describes, most likely won’t be named SOPA 2, or something similar.  It will be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a trojan horse.

But if/when something passes, the question remains of whether or not it will be effective.

The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. - Princess Leia

There will always be people who choose to pirate over pay.  I don’t think anyone really has a good idea whether or not  this behavior is truly is increasing or decreasing.  I’d like to take some time to discuss this “seedy underworld.”

A decade or so ago, long gone services like Napster, SoulSeek, Kazaa, Audiogalaxy and others provided one thing.  The ability to download any music you wanted without having to pay for it.  There is a reason that these services are no longer around, and that is because they were blatant stealing.  However,  they set a tone with their users that has remained long after their servers have gone cold.  A sense of entitlement.  Let me present to you what I am calling “The Millenial’s Law of the Internet.”

It states, that which I can download, I may download.

While the services listed above are no longer around, there is still Bit Torrent for those that choose the 100% free, 100% of the time route.  It isn’t rocket science to know  you can search google for any movie or tv show with the word torrent after it, and lots of links will appear.  And here we get to the economics of things.  The sites that you will see in your search results are, in one man’s opinion, the sewer of the internet.  The sites are designed for you to specifically click on ads, sign up for services that you think will enable your download, and in general fool the user into thinking they are getting something other than what they are getting.

Without realizing it, these users who are unwilling to pay anything to watch a movie, are providing money to the parties that leech off the companies that create the content.

There is another tier above the users described above.  There are people out there that are willing to pay SOMETHING, just not the amount asked to the general public.  Services like mega upload sold premium memberships for faster download speeds, and unlimited bandwidth.  Since the site has been shut down, I’ve been unable to find the cost of their premium service, but needless to say, it was less than the cost of going to the movies twice per month.

I know a fair amount of people that either subscribe to premium download services, or something similar like unlimited usenet news hosting services.  The arguments that most of them make two-fold: price and convenience.

On price, most of them are willing to pay for premium content, just not at the going rate.  A Blu-Ray movie costs over $20.  For less than that, they can download every movie that comes out that month.  The big flaw with this logic is that the money is received by the wrong party, and that is where I understand the complaint of the music and movie industries.  Companies, you could say entire industries, are created to facilitate this type of black/grey market for content distribution.

On convenience, it really comes down to the purely digital format.  Having a non-DRM digital copy of a movie means they can watch it on any of their computers, their TV, as well as their phones and tablets.  This doesn’t have to be unique to this distribution method, and that is why many people are not sympathetic to the music and movie industries.  I think this was best communicated by Nat Torkington in his response to the president’s challenge.  It was over ten years ago when I first read the Perl Cookbook that Nat wrote.  He still knows how to write.

All I can think is: we gave you the Internet. We gave you the Web. We gave you MP3 and MP4. We gave you e-commerce, micropayments, PayPal, Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, the iPad, the iPhone, the laptop, 3G, wifi–hell, you can even get online while you’re on an AIRPLANE. What the hell more do you want from us?

Then there is another tier of user.  This user isn’t a pirate at all.  They pay for all of their content.  Whether or not they are going to the movies, buying DVDs, or purchasing movies from from iTunes, they follow the rules to the letter of the law.  How are they rewarded?  I’ll focus on the movie theater experience.  According to the list from Roger Ebert, both ticket prices and refreshments are too expensive.  Imagine a world where customer’s could actually purchase refreshments at a discount at the theater, a benefit from paying the ticket price.  Wouldn’t that make more economic sense?  If you put a store front behind a barrier, reducing demand, the prices should be lower.  This doesn’t play out in practice because the theaters artificially reduce supply by prohibiting customers from bringing their own refreshments.

Customers would likely be a lot more willing to pay for an expensive movie ticket if it meant they were able to buy bucket of popcorn for 50 cents.  But instead having to pay $5 for a soda that would cost them $1 at any near by fast food restaurant, doesn’t leave them with the same taste in their mouth.

It will be interesting to see what happens over the next few years.  It looks like people are mobilizing.  The key to how this plays out will be what do people do now, before the next SOPA is drafted and voted on in congress.  If the answer is wait, and protest when it comes up for vote, then nothing will change.  Chris Dodd couldn’t win when he tried to run for president, so he’s trying to be one of the next most powerful people in the country.

Think about this.

The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their demise.

Over and over I have heard Hollywood executives repeat the doctrine: “We don’t want to make the same mistakes that the music industry made.”  But when asked what that meant in terms of what they would do differently, they had no answers.  You can say the music industry was blissfully ignorant about music downloads, and were therefore blind-sided by services like Napster, and if it wasn’t for the iTunes store, they would be a lot worse off today.

But what about the movie industry?  They had a decade of warnings.  They didn’t do anything, and now their approach is to try and take away freedom from people that have no interest in pirating their content.

Think about this over the weekend.  Five years from know what will entertainment look like?  Spending $50 for a movie ticket and popcorn, or something completely different but equally if not more entertaining?

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Big announcement today, so I thought I would just link to the support document that explains how to get started.

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via The Oatmeal

Just a quick though, I think Christina Warren put it best:

I do realize I'm in the minority, but I think good research skills are invaluable and Wiki has helped erode that.

January 18, 2012 7:51 am via Tweetbot for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@film_girl

Christina Warren

I remember a point in elementary school when the teacher told us that we needed to use sources other than an encyclopedia for our research reports.  It’s sad that college students and adults are relying on an internet encyclopedia for this level of work.  This isn’t a slight against Wikipedia, but it is what it is.

I don’t know if that is a fair name or not for Mark Sisson but hopefully he does’t find it offensive.  I wanted to give a shout out to him for his new product The Primal Leap, A 30-day action plan to lose weight, keep it off and change your life forever and if you aren’t familiar, he wrote The Primal Blueprint.

And now she is going to be a spokesperson for Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical giant that provides her with diabetes medication.

“Here’s the thing, you know, I’ve always encouraged moderation,” she said. “On my show, you know, I share with you all these yummy, fattening recipes, but I tell people ‘in moderation… You can have that little piece of pie …’”

via FitBomb

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A friend asked me today who I use for hosting, and I realized that I have never given a shout out to Blue Host.  I have been with Blue Host ever since I shut down my own hosting company, and they have been great.  Great service, and when I need to get in touch with them, they are very quick to respond.  If you need good reliable web hosting, and a very reasonable price, check them out.

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and here is the link.  The recent matches view is nice.  The app runs really fast as well.  Now if we can just get clan XP added to the game, we will have almost everything that was promised of an elite membership.

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My mornings are pretty great.

Watch this video on YouTube.

From time to time BodyBuilding.com has some pretty good free samples in their web store.  They always have something, but it’s a matter of if it’s anything that you’d want to take or try out.  Right now their is a free sample of MyoFusion protein.  I point this out, because while I am not a big fan of protein powder shakes anymore, I did have a sample of this before, and it tastes so much better than any other protein shake, that I thought other people should try it once too.

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I’m sure there will be a rush of people asking if it’s a good idea to drink Coke and eat Butterfingers on their gluten-free diets.

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Every year I look forward to this update to see what directions things are headed.  It’s great to see Objective-C growing for iOS development.  Multiple SQL languages shows the continued growth of data, and even R makes an appearance showing the increase of Statistics in the programming world.  I wonder how high SAS(#32) would be if there wasn’t such a high cost of entry to using it.

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I’m posting this link more as a reminder to look at it more.  I’m told it’s easier to follow than lean gains.  Let me know what you think.

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Watch this video on YouTube.

I might not be a huge fan of EVERY Wes Anderson movie, but you have to give him credit for having a very unique and identifiable style.

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Jamie and I first met when I was 15 at the Tune Inn in New Haven, CT.  Years later we’d be roommates in Boston (briefly).  Now he is one of the best chefs in the country and I’d fight anyone that disagreed.  Here’s a little list of places to hit in Boston that was a feature in GQ.  Of course I disagree with his choices.

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Jenn Abelson:

Baker, an information technology executive, reluctantly joined in May when the company’s president, Uli Becker – also out of shape – spotted her buying a soda in the company cafeteria and pressured her to give CrossFit a try.

Needless to say, it’s very impressive that as a group, the Canton-based Reebok employees lost 4,000 pounds last year.

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A strong showing in Iowa, a strong showing in New Hampshire.  It’s a few weeks until South Carolina, but things look promising for Ron Paul.  Stacy thinks he needs to find a tailor to get his suits to fit better, but realistically I think he is probably the only republican candidate that can beat Obama in November just based on my unscientific polling of people that voted for Obama in 2008.

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I thought this letter and response was interesting for one main reason.  In the letter submitted, statements by both people on the paleo diet AND the RD sending in the letter show a lack of knowledge when it comes to nutrition.

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I am pretty excited about this.  The sky seems to be the limit when it comes to Thunderbolt.  Imagine your Macbook Air transforming into a powerful gaming machine just by plugging it into an external graphics card and playing the most graphics demanding games on the market.  Count me in.

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It took a little while, but it looks like it will finally be here.  I just started uploading videos to youtube as well.  Coincidentally.

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I know I just linked to Calculated Risk the other day, but over the weekend they updated one of their graphs that I think BY FAR illustrates what our current recession looks like compared to the other recessions since WWII.

Click on the image below for a full size version of the chart.  Each line represents one of the 11 recessions that have occurred since WWII.  The chart represents employment during those recessions.  The far left of the chart is the beginning of each recession, and the further down a line goes, the more jobs were lost during that recession.  The dotted line in the center shows the deepest job loss, or put simply, “the worst it got.”

You can see that this recession has suffered more job loss than any other previous recession, and by quite a large margin.  It took 2 years from the start of the current recession until hitting the bottom, but the recovery is looking a lot flatter than the descent.  We are almost 2 years past the bottom point, but nowhere near back to where we started.

For most people my age, the only other recession on this chart that they will be able to associate with is the 2001 “dot com bubble” recession.  Comparing that brown line to the red line you can see that the “dot com bubble” didn’t suffer as severe of job losses, and it was over by this time.

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For those that missed the announcement last week, Apple will be reporting Q1 earnings on the 24th.  The link to the audio webcast is here.

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My favorite site, by far, on the economy is Calculated Risk.  They do a great job of explaining the news reports, and visualizing what is going on with some really great graphs.  Today’s post is no exception.  Pay particularly close attention to both the “unemployment by duration” and “unemployment by level of education.”

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This isn’t surprising, but 3D TV keeps getting pushed and nobody wants to hear it.  Why would you spend hundreds on glasses, when there is almost nothing to watch in 3D?  And is the content in 3D any good anyway?

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Interesting article from the Wall Street Journal.  The future is data.  We use the term “decision science” a lot.

A warning awaits, of course. As Mr. Rajaram explains, analytics will eventually become the norm, which will push adaptation and business cycles even faster than they are today. “As computers become better and better, our lives are becoming more and more complex. They create new problems as much as they solve old ones.”

 

My advice for people not comfortable with data?  Get comfortable with data.

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This post is a little on the harsh side, but raises some valid points.   When that video of the continental cleans went around I cringed when I first saw it.  If there is one thing that I have learned over the years is that goals are the most important part of your training.  If you don’t have goals, then you are lost.  If you train incorrectly for your goals, then you will not reach them.

via Jim Wendler

UPDATE:  I wanted to point out that the article definitely has some factually incorrect statements, specifically around scaling.  It reads as if it was written by someone who looks at crossfit web sites but has never spent time in a gym.

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The good folks at Whole 9 have updated their seasonal produce guide (PDF).  Their main web site is currently migrating servers, but the direct link to the PDF should work.

There are lots of advantages to buying seasonal, but the two biggest are 1) cheaper and 2) fresher and more tasty.

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It’s been a while since I’ve really gotten into a new iPhone/iPad game.  I’m wondering what other people are playing right now?

There has to be a great new angry birds or monster dash out there.  Or maybe a new classic like Final Fantasy or Phantasy Star.

David Imus has created the greatest map of the United States that you will ever see.  Sadly, it will probably never be used in schools.

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Roger Ebert writes a common sense summary of why movies had a bad year for revenue. Put simply: we love movies, and hate pretty much everything about movie theaters, but mostly the price of admission and refreshments.

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Star Wars: The Old Republic launched on December 20th, and I’ve been playing it for almost two weeks now.  I have been compiling some thoughts as I’ve been playing, and wanted to get them all down in one place.

Leveling Guides

There is a lot of story line to enjoy when it comes to SWTOR.  For that reason, I’d rather sit back and enjoy the story line, and follow a leveling guide so I don’t need to worry about that. I highly recommend this one – SWTOR Savior and AEON GUIDE.

World of Warcraft comparison

Every new MMO that launches is compared to World of Warcraft.  Without question, there are similarities between the two games, but it’s hard to imagine any MMO without some of the features from WOW.  The game has a lot of differences from WOW as well.  Almost every quest (called missions) is delivered by actual voice dialogue spoken by real actors.

The game features a lot of the things that Bioware is known for.  I have never played Mass Effect, but the conversation and companion gift systems are very similar to Dragon Age as well.

So what do you get when you take the basic game play of World of Warcraft and merge that with the developers of the companion and conversation systems of Dragon Age set in the Star Wars universe?  SWTOR.

Story line

One of the biggest selling points of the game is the complex story lines that your character will travel through.  Unlike World of Warcraft which allows you to skip quest text and basically remove all aspects of lore from the game, your characters story line is probably the biggest reason to play the game in the first place.

There are eight distinct story lines in the game, one for each class.  The four republic classes are Jedi Knight, Jedi Consular, Trooper, and Smugger.  The four empire classes are Sith Warrior, Sith Inquisitor, Bounty Hunter, and Imperial Agent.  Each class can choose from two different advanced classes, but they share the same story line.

I have spent most of my time playing an Imperial Agent character, and a small amount of time with a Bounty Hunter.

Gear/loot

One thing that SWTOR seems to have really gotten right is gear.  If you played WOW when it first launched, you might remember some of the gear that just didn’t make any sense.  Some items would have stats that wouldn’t make any sense, and other items would be good for multiple classes and cause arguments.  Both of these problems are nonexistent in SWTOR so far.

As I said before, there are four classes per faction in SWTOR.  There are 3 armor types: light, medium, and heavy.  Only one class, Sith Warrior(or Jedi Knight on republic side), has the choice of medium or heavy armor depending on their advanced class.  Every other class only wears one type of armor. Sith Inquisitor wears light, Imperial Agent wears medium, and Bounty Hunter wears heavy.  Simple so far.  It stays simple.

Each class has one primary stat.  Strength, Willpower, Cunning or Aim.  What’s more, you will only see aim on heavy armor.  Willpower is only on light armor.  There will never be an argument over loot across classes.  The system feels very well thought out in the game.  What’s more, if you run an instance (called flash points), only loot will drop for the classes that are in the group.

Summary

I don’t even really have a summary right now.  I just wanted to write a few things, and probably give a more thorough update at a later date.  There are a number of bugs in the game that make things annoying, but I’m working under the assumption that they will be fixed.  After all, it’s been barely two weeks since the game was launched.  Most of the feedback I’ve read is positive, and similar to what I’ve written.

One interesting thing is that there are currently no add-ons, and no means to customize the game interface at all.  I’m not sure if that will be permanent, but it could leave a lot of people very upset.

Dallas and Melissa from Whole9 have been busy working on their book.  Tomorrow starts a new year, and, for many people, a new round of Whole 30.  If you aren’t familiar with Whole 9, you can check out the interview I did with them for the UNRX podcast.

Start the new year out right'" class="glyph">«

Yesterday I decided to finally try a recipe that I had heard of on a recent Robb Wolf podcast.  The topic of discussion was the common one of “is paleo just a low carb diet like Atkins?”  Robb reminisced on a dish that Greg has made several years back, so far back that it seemed that Robb remembered the details of it better than Greg did.  The gist of the recipe was cutting up some apples and sweet potatoes and baking them all covered together in the oven for a few hours.  As for spices, the vague recollection was that it called for a healthy portion of nutmeg and cinnamon.  It was starting to sound like a great dish for Thanksgiving.  Since the seasons are turning, and I don’t like to risk making a dish for the first time on Thanksgiving, I decided to give it a shot last night.  Greg also mentioned that you could add some chicken to the dish, which I also did.

So here is what I went with for the “recipe”:

3 granny smith apples

1 large garnet yam

2 large sweet potato

4 chicken breasts

cinnamon

nutmeg

ghee (optional)

I decided to mix up the yam and sweet potato together for no particular reason.  I thought it might add a little variety, but to be honest, once it all bakes together, the flavors merge so much that it really made no difference that I used too different ingredients.  The see-saw in this recipe is the ratio between apples and yams/sweet potatoes.  The more apples, the sweeter the dish will end up.

Here is how things looked at the beginning.  I peeled the potatoes and apples, and diced them up.  These pieces may look on the large side, but as they baked, they reduced.

I decided to attempt to fill the dish in layers to make sure things were even.  Here is the same casserole dish after I tossed in the cinnamon and nutmeg, but pre-chicken.

In terms of the chicken, the key is cutting up the pieces as small as possible.  Chicken by itself is bland.  The best way for the flavor of the apples, potatoes, cinnamon and nutmeg to absorb into the chicken, is to cut up the pieces small.  Think bite size, and then a little smaller than that.  Once you fill up your dish with all of the ingredients it will look like the full casserole dish below.  Now before I threw it in the oven, I got a little nervous that there wouldn’t be enough moisture in there.  This concern was unfounded, as the apples provide plenty of moisture.  However, I decided that I would drizzle three tablespoons of ghee over the top of things.  I don’t think this either helped or hurt the recipe, so it’s up to you if you really want to include it.

And then when it was done it looked like this.

We ate this last night as our main course, with a side dish of bacon-sauteed brussel sprouts.  Those 2 dishes fed 3 people with a small amount of left overs.  I don’t know what the macro nutrients of this dish are, but given the ingredients, I’d say its moderately high in protein from the chicken, and a very healthy portion of carbs from the apples and potatoes.

Every year on thanksgiving I make sausage stuffing with the turkey.  I’d probably be in the dog house if I didn’t make it again this year, but I might also make this next to it.

Going forward my training logs will cover shorter periods of time, say a week or so, or maybe a couple of days, but for this initial entry I wanted to make more of a foundational post. Luckily for me I have kept some workout logs on the bodybuilding.com forums, so I am able to look back and copy from their. Just another reason why logs are important. You can’t improve upon what you don’t know needs improving. This includes workouts, food, and sleep.

Back in early February I attended a Crossfit Football seminar with John Welbourn and Raph Ruiz. I really took to their approach to things, focusing on ways to improve on the field. To paraphrase, if it’s not going to make you stronger, run faster, or jump higher, then it doesn’t go in the training. Depending on your goals, this philosophy may not work for you.

GOALS

This brings me to my goals. When it comes to goal setting, I am a big believer in the SMART system. Making sure that your goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound will ensure that you have efficient goals in place that you can reach. I have one main current goal.

I want to perform a 2x bodyweight back squat by the end of 2011.

Does it meet the SMART criteria? It’s very specific. It’s 100% measurable. Is it attainable? That’s a good question. My current 1RM back squat is 305. So if I weighed 150 pounds, I’d be all set. The issue is that I weigh 185, so I am still a way off. There are only four months left in 2011 to add 65 pounds to my squat. That might be too much too soon, but there are two variables at play in this goal. My max squat and also my body weight. Any combination of weight and squat that equals 2x could work. Is the goal relevant? I want to get stronger, so using the squat as a proxy for overall strength, this seems highly relevant. Lastly, the goal is time-bound because I am trying to do this by the end of 2011.

The importance of a timeframe for your goals isn’t because it is a drop dead deadline, but rather to make sure you are making progress towards the goal. A goal might meet all the SMART criteria when it is created, but if you wait 6 months before you make any progress, it may no longer be attainable. If I don’t reach my goal by the end of the year, I will evaluate the goal, and set it again with an updated timeframe, so long as it remains relevant.

Back to the log

Following the CF Football seminar, I began following their programming. They have multiple tiers of programming and I chose the “amateur” level for a few reasons. 1) It was the simplest program to fit on a weekly schedule, 2) it offered the fastest gains so long as you didn’t plateau, 3) it is designed to feed into the “collegiate” level if and when you do plateau.

The programming is basically a 50/50 split between strength work and conditioning work. The strength work closely resembles Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength program with all of the big lifts, 3 sets of 5 reps. The conditioning workouts are short and intense. Sprints, box jumps, kettle bell swings are frequently present. There is lots of focus on explosive hip drive.

I made great strength progress on the CFFB programming. I added 50 pounds to my 5RM back squat in one month. I had planned on continuing this programming, but I developed some shoulder impingement in both shoulders, although mostly in my right. I decided to ease up a bit on things as I was training about 6 days a week, and began some basic PT/rehab work on my shoulders.

I continued to squat multiple times per week during the spring and summer, and was able to hit a full depth 1RM of 305 pounds. I decided I wanted to really focus on squats for the rest of the year and it was around this time that I set my goal of the 2x bodyweight squat. This goal also ties back to the CFFB seminar, where John told us that a 2x bodyweight squat is the beginning of what he considers strong.

Enter Smolov

Sometime around the month of June I was put onto a squat routine known as Smolov. After reading about it for a few weeks, I felt like I was properly mentally prepared for it. Everything that I read was that it was the hardest program to get through.  It will make you hate squatting.  I got through the first week of the program when we got the news that it was time for Baby Addie to come into this world.

I don’t want to over simplify the program, but it’s a kind of ladder type program starting each week with 4 sets of 9, and sliding down towards 10 sets of 3 at the end of the week with stops of 5×7 and 7×5 along the way.  Physically it’s a tough program, mentally it may be even harder, but i barely hit the tip of the iceberg since I only did a week of it.

5/3/1 BBB

After a few weeks off of training to spend time with Addie, I finally made my way back to the gym towards the end of August.  I knew that I wouldn’t be able to jump back into Smolov because of my schedule with work and life, so I decided to go with an old reliable, Wendler’s 5/3/1.  There are a few variations on Wendler’s and I chose to go with “boring but big” (BBB) program.  The variations mostly differ by what they prescribe IN ADDITION to the core 5/3/1 exercises.  You can see a few of the options here at this 5/3/1 program generator. In the BBB program, after you do your 5/3/1 work of the 4 major lifts, you do 5 sets of 10 at 50% of your 1RM.  Then you do 5 sets of 10 of 1 specific assistance exercise such as chin ups, or dumbbell rows.

The nice thing about 5/3/1 programs is that if you entered your 1RM properly into your spreadsheet, you should never fail on any of your sets, and the only set you need to write down your results on is your plus set when you go until failure.  So I can sum up three weeks of training in a nice little color coded box below.

You can see at a quick glance that the deadlift has cause for concern.  The biggest issue I had during this training period was lack of grip strength.  I was surprised how much it deteriorated during my time of non-training, and/or lack of chalk in the gym had on my deadlifts.  In the meantime I ordered a captain crush grip trainer to work on this.

I think this update has gone long enough.  Coming in the next update, a return to kettlebell training, and some nutrition updates as well. (hint: intermittent fasting)

I haven’t blogged too much lately, and part of that reason is because I’ve been incredibly busy with our new daughter Adeline, (see below) but also because I have lacked a direction. I have a few posts that are partially written, on topics that I feel are valid and important, but I haven’t been able to finish them up.

I’d like to kick this fall season off by starting a new chapter for the blog. The blog will have two main focuses, my training log, and my coaching log of my wife, Stacy. Neither of these may seem very interesting or original, but I plan to keep the posts interesting one way or another.

Why logs? Why now?

The biggest reason why I am looking to add my training log on here is fairly simple. I’ve taken ownership of my own programming over the past few months, and I am happy with my progress. I want to have a place where I can go back and refer to, and for other people to do the same. I’ve kept workout logs before in the past on other sites, but I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t be the host of my own logs. I’ll be making a separate post that gives an update on what I have been up to (5/3/1 BBB) and what my goals are.

So what about this coaching log? Over the past year, I’ve been working on earning certifications in coaching. I now have a few of them, and combining that with about 20 years of personal gym experience, I think that I am more than qualified to instruct someone who wants to get in better shape. Luckily, I have just that in my wife Stacy. Stacy was cleared to exercise by her doctor last week as it has been 6 weeks since she gave birth to Adeline. As of now, we are doing most of the training in the apartment with our limited equipment. This hasn’t proven to be an obstacle at this point, since body weight movements and a small kettle bell have proven to be more than enough to give her a good workout.

What else?

I mentioned earlier that I had a couple posts partially written. These are somewhat longer and philosophical posts that I haven’t quite been able to complete. One of the most important parts of the writing process is revision, and these have gone thru a lot of it. I simply want to get them right. I have something I am trying to say and I need some extra time to say it properly. I hope that you will enjoy reading them once they are ready.

Where do you come in?

This last part is important. At the end of every post, there is a comments section. In fact, there are two of them. You can leave a comment via Facebook or via Disqus. So please choose whichever one you prefer and leave me some thoughts. Whether you like what I’m doing or not, I thrive on feedback. If you think what I’m doing is idiotic, I’d like to hear it. And most importantly, if you have ways that you think I can improve, I am all ears.

I’ve been reading so many little anecdotes of people working or interacting with Steve.  I never got a chance to have a meeting directly with Steve, but I did have one encounter that I will always remember.  When I came to work at Apple it was via a position in an Apple retail store.  During my first week on campus there were some orientation meetings with my new manager, and other training type meetings.  But really there was just a ton of excitement in the air because my first week working at Apple HQ was also the week that the original iPhone launched.  I showed up on Monday, and it was launching on Friday.  At 6 p.m.

Every summer Apple has their executives give lunch time talks to their interns.  While I wasn’t an intern, I was eligible to attend these talks, so I decided to check them out.  The schedule of which executive would be speaking wasn’t posted ahead of time, so it could have been anyone from Steve, to Jonny Ive, to Peter Oppenheimer.  You get the picture.  The talk was at noon, and the iPhone was launching at 6.

Probably the biggest product launch in the history of the company since the Apple ][ and Steve took an hour to talk to the future of the company.

There was a recent post made that claimed that the barbell hated a certain type of person.  At least that’s what the page view whoring headline stated.  The post then went on to say things like the barbell doesn’t discriminate, that is of course unless you are Skinny, then it hates you.  I get the author’s point.  Skinny is what society has praised.  Skinny is anorexic super models that don’t eat and have champagne addictions.  From that perspective, Skinny is not viewed as healthy. I get it.

But there is another Skinny.  I don’t know anything about this type of Skinny personally, but some people actually claim that they are naturally Skinny.  They eat a lot, they eat a little, they are Skinny.  They exercise, or they don’t, but they remain Skinny.  Many people would be jealous regardless of society’s stereotypes of what is beautiful and what isn’t.  These people still exist.  And I have news for you, the barbell still wants to fuck them.

The barbell is not your friend.  Don’t be the barbell’s friend.  The barbell is a slut, and doesn’t want your friendship.

The barbell does not hate Skinny, because it is a slut and wants to fuck all kinds of people.  Pudgy and fat? Climb on board, you are going for a ride.  Skinny? Hell yes, it’s been a while since I’ve had a spinner.  Weak, strong, it doesn’t matter, because the barbell is DTF.  The only difference is who enjoys it more.  First time?  You probably won’t enjoy getting fucked by the barbell.  It might not last very long, and/or it might even be a little painful and there could be some blood.  Listen to their advice when people tell you it get’s better.  Why else would people keep doing it?  It sure as hell isn’t to make babies.

The results can be amazing. Like Arnold said, “It’s like heaven…it’s like coming day and night.“

My buddy Fitbomb has a nice recap of the Crossfit games going over on this blog.  He’s currently on part 2.  Check it out.

This has been long overdue, but here is what’s going on.

Two weeks ago Stacy gave birth to our first child, our daughter Adeline Rose Melillo.  She was born 7 pounds, 12 ounces and 19 inches tall.  She is doing very well, and is healthy.  Here is a video of her kicking a toy bird.

Watch this video on YouTube.

In other news, I traded in my BMW about a month ago and got a Mazda 3 hatchback.  My extended warranty and maintenance plan had expired and I wasn’t looking forward to the bills just to keep it on the road.

A few months ago I started a podcast called The UnRx (pronounced Unprescribed) Podcast.  You can check it out in iTunes or on it’s web site.  The show is about Crossfit, nutrition (mostly paleo related), and not much else really.

I finished reading A Dance with Dragons not too long ago.  No spoilers.  I liked the book, but it was also my least favorite of the five books so far.

Now that regionals are all over, and the results have been tallied, I wanted to take a little time and look into one of the most talked about workouts.  Amanda, 9-7-5 muscle ups and squat snatches.  The workout first made its appearance on the big stage at last year’s 2010 Crossfit games finals.   I believe the rules then were the same as they were at this year’s regionals.  For athletes that did not complete the entire workout within the time cap, 1 second would be added to their score for every rep they did not complete.

With all do respect to the male athletes, I am going to focus on the women.  You can click here to see the results of the 2010 games Amanda.  The graph below shows how many athletes were able to successfully complete the workout within the time cap at this year’s regional competitions.  Since Amanda was performed on day 3 after the cut down to 14 competitors, the numbers are relatively small.  In seven of the regions all 14 men completed the workout, and 92% of them across all the regions.  I intentionally omitted the Africa, Asia and Latin America regions due to the small number of competitors.

As you can see in from the blue line above, the women athletes finished the workout far less often, in fact, only 30% of them.  You can look at this information in a lot of different ways.  One common line of thinking that I heard during the regionals, was that this was similar to the results of the 2010 games.  That is actually a pretty accurate statement.  If you take a look at the link above to the 2010 results, 11 out of 41 women finished within the time cap, or 27%.  Granted the time cap was 12 minutes last year and 15 minutes this year.  There are some incredible individual stories if you look at last year vs. this year.  Take Elyse Umeda for example.  She didn’t complete the workout last year and had a scored time of 12:10, yet this year improved to 6:33.  That’s incredible progress.  Rebecca Voigt went from 11:21 to 9:42.  Clearly the women who experienced this workout first hand at last year’s games were not going to let it stand in the way of their journey this year.

What surprised me was the overall rate of completions.  One year later I would have expected that more of the top athletes in each region would be able to complete a workout that had already been used.  Most people think that this year’s games will feature workouts that are even harder than last year’s.  When you combine the extra three minutes of time cap, and the year of preparation for a workout, it has to be considered surprising that more female athletes didn’t complete the workout.

One reason could be the new format for the sectionals.  The idea of the Open was to allow for more athletes to have access to the competition.  I know that there were athletes competing at regionals that weren’t even doing Crossfit when last year’s games were happening.  These new comers could partially contribute to these results.

Now all of this is well and good, but regionals are over.  We only want to think about the games.  Alright, well here is some food for thought.  I analyzed the data from 14 of the regions, again, omitting Africa, Asia and Latin America.  Out of those regions, 13 athletes qualified for the games by finishing in the top 3 but did not complete Amanda within the time cap.   If my math is right, it may not be, but for the 14 regions I analyzed, I believe there are 40 women advancing to the games (if the canada regions send 2, and the others send 3).  If that’s right then roughly 33% of the female qualifiers for the games, did not finish Amanda within the time cap.

So what does all this mean?  Well like I said before, you could look at this a lot of different ways.  If you will allow me some freedom to play devil’s advocate. Maybe this workout isn’t a good indicator of work capacity?  Maybe it should have been on day 1 or 2 before the cut so that athletes who did not complete it would have been penalized more?  Maybe some workouts will always have a lower percentage of completion than others.  I wanted to keep the discussion of these results in the aggregate and not focus on individuals.   It is too easy for emotion to interfere with reason once you begin to compare one athlete’s results to another.

I bring this up mostly in the spirit of Kaizen.  We all want things to get better.  The athletes, the events, the experience for the fans, everything.

This weekend I had one of those times where you kind of reflect on things.  How is my training going?  Am I overly focused on one aspect?  Am I neglecting something?  I’ve been focusing on my squats a lot lately, which continue to get stronger.  But I think that I have neglected my conditioning.  Specifically the longer time domain metcons.

I decided that I needed to do something about that, and no better time than the present.  On Sunday I took a look through the hero WODs on crossfit.com and picked out five of them for this week.  Some I had done before, and others I hadn’t.

Monday – Michael (26:21)
Tuesday – Lumberjack 20 (34:29)
Wednesday – Daniel (25:23)
Thursday – Badger
Friday – The Seven

I finished Michael this evening in 26:21 right in line with the time domain that I am looking to work.  Anything over 20 minutes is what I am trying to improve.   I’ll post an update to this post at the end of the week with all my times.

Update 1: It was 99 degrees when we did Lumberjack 20 tonight.  Running the 400s was absolutely brutal.  I estimated it would take me around 35-40 minutes, and came in at 34:29.  Most of the tasks of 20 were done in 2 or 3 sets, but the running killed me.  The workout was slightly scaled.  Due to space constraints I wanted to use the same bar for deadlifts and squats.  I did the deadlifts at 205 which allowed me to strip the outer 45 pound plates off and be at 115 for the squats.  Due to my shoulder still bothering me, I did front squats instead of overhead squats.  Everything else was as Rx.

Update 2: It was slightly cooler today, probably only 85-90 degrees.  Daniel went mostly as expected.  I finished the first 50 pullups in a a few sets.  The running wasn’t nearly as bad today as it was yesterday.  I got off to a slow start on the thrusters.  I was hoping to get close to 15 on my first set, and only pulled off 3.  I was able to eventually get my second wind, and finished with a set of 8.  The second set of thrusters was better, doing mostly sets of 5 and 6.  The real roadblock was on the second set of 50 pullups.  When I jumped onto the bar I realized that I had torn my hand in 2 places.  I had to scavenge for some tape, wrap the hand, and finish with quick sets of 2-3 reps.  Overall I think it went pretty well.  Tomorrow I will be substituting push ups for the pull ups in Badger.  The movements aren’t similar, but looking in hindsight at the week, there is a lot of pulling, and not a lot of pushing, so this is as much a programatic substitution as it is an injury substitution.

It has come to my attention that some friends of mine are unclear on which teams I root for.  So I have come to give the history of all things sports in my life.  I originally had the idea to post this back when I read this tweet.

FANDOM PRIMER:You can root for:1. team from where you grew up.2. team from where you live.3. team your dad rooted for.In that order.

April 2, 2011 8:56 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@Mike_FTW

Mike Monteiro

I think I fall into line with most of these, but with some exceptions.

BASEBALL

Everything with me starts and comes back to the New York Yankees.  Baseball was the first sport I played as a kid, as young as I can remember.  Growing up in southern Connecticut, there was a split between Yankees and Red Sox fans.  It might have been 50/50, but maybe something more like 50/40/10 because there were some Mets fans around too.  In any case, you knew the Red Sox fans on sight.  Most of them were Irish, and/or had relatives up north.  Some even spoke with a Boston accent if they had recently moved.  The Yankees fans were the Italians, and those who might have had relatives in New York and/or New Jersey.  The 80′s were a rough time to be a Yankees fan.  They had some great players like Don Mattingly and Dave Winfield, but they never came close to winning a world series.  Being that Yankee Stadium was the closest major league stadium to where I lived, I consider this following rule number 1.

FOOTBALL

As a kid growing up, the last thing you want to do is argue with other kids during the summer, and then bro down with them during the winter.  So when it came to football, those same Red Sox fans were also Patriots fans.  Now if we want to talk about a rough time to be a sports fan, the 80′s and early 90′s for the Pats were the pits (except 85 and 86).  This choice practically made itself for me, because my father was a huge Giants fan.  Every Sunday there would be screaming and yelling from the livingroom.  The Giants won the superbowls XXI and XXV so things were pretty good.

HOCKEY

At around the age of 10, I started playing hockey.  My hometown of Hamden, CT is a hockey town.  Our high school won the national championship in 1977, the banner hanging in the rink that I practiced and played all my home games in.  If you didn’t play hockey you may not realize just how late that is to get into the game.  Most kids start skating around age 4 or 5, and join a Mites team for ages 8 and under.  At 10 I was too old to start out in Mites, so I started in the next age bracket up, Squirts, which is for ages 10 and under.  After a rough start playing with kids who had been skating for 5 years to my 1, I finally got up to speed in time to move up to Pee Wees, the first age group where you are allowed to hit other players.  Here is where things get a little interesting for my team selections.  Unlike football and baseball, Connecticut had a pro hockey team, the Hartford Whalers.  If I was going to follow any of the rules, I had to be a Whalers fan.  They were where I grew up, where I lived, and my father didn’t know anything about hockey.

There was one problem.  The Whalers were garbage.

The Whalers were never as successful in the NHL as they had been in the WHA, yet they attracted a passionate fan base over the years. They recorded three winning seasons in their eighteen years in the NHL, made the playoffs eight times, and won one playoff series, earning the nickname “Forever .500s” from Bruin fans.

Even before I played hockey I knew the Whalers sucked.  So what was I to do.  If I followed in the footsteps of baseball and football, I had 2 choices I could go with.  New York has two NHL teams, the Rangers and Islanders, but neither team felt right.  The Bruins were in the Adams division and the NY teams were in the Patrick division.  I needed a team that would let me stay on the same side of all my other arguments.  I needed to remain against all things Red Sox, Patriots and Bruins.  The choice was easy.  The Montreal Canadiens.

Montreal would play the Bruins as division rivals all thru the season, and were almost guaranteed to meet in the playoffs in either the first or second round.  The players of that era became and remained some of my favorite hockey players even long after they retired or were traded. Chris Chelios, Patrick Roy, Guy Carbonneau, Denis Savard, Stephane Richer, Eric Desjardins, Mathieu Schneider, and the list goes on.  I’ve never been to Montreal, but they are my team.

BASKETBALL

So that leaves basketball.  All of the teams above were decided upon and set in stone by the wisdom of a pre-pubescent child.  Basketball was a little different.  Let me explain why.  I never played much organized basketball.  I think I went to a summer camp once, but it wasn’t my sport.  I was too short and too round.  Then I was introduced to the man known as the round mound of rebound, Charles Barkley.  His play style appealed to me.  He was shorter than most of the other guys on the court, but he would out rebound them.  He would shoot over them, he would DUNK over them.  If you don’t believe me or remember Barkley in his prime, just watch this video.  But for as much as I liked Barkley, I never really had any allegiance to his teams.  I wanted HIM to win, I wanted HIM to get a championship.  When he was traded to Phoenix, I never even thought for a split second about rooting for Philly.  I’m fairly sure that the only book that I read in it’s entirety during high school was Charles’ book Outrageous!

But then Charles retired.  I had no team, and it didn’t really matter.  The NBA just wasn’t interesting without Charles.  Over time though things changed a little.  I was now living in Boston, the city of sports teams that I opposed.  The Patriots had become a dynasty in the NFL, the Red Sox finally won a world series, though I would wear my Yankees hat around town including to the Boston Globe when I was working there.  The Bruins, well, they were still the non-championship-winning-but-above-average team they had always been in my life time.  But as of this writing, they are awaiting game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals against Vancouver.  I hope they win.  For the Adams division.

While living in Boston, the Celtics became an interesting team.  Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker made for some entertainment.  At one point I was even selling shirts outside of the FleetCenter after games.  I would consider myself not much more than a casual fan.  But it wasn’t until something happened to me that I really started to become a big Celtics fan.  I moved away.  Leaving the East coast, with all of my friends and family, for California, with a new job, I missed and still miss, living there.  If you count my four years of college in Amherst, I lived in Massachusetts for 12 years, 8 of them in and around the city of Boston.  As far as my adult life goes, it’s where I have lived the most.  I can not, in good faith, grant the city my support of a baseball, football, or hockey team.  Those are my big three.  But according to rule number 2 above, you can root for the team where you live.  That team is the Boston Celtics.  Say I’m lying.

When I started doing my podcast a few weeks ago, I decided that I didn’t want to do it the usual way of adding a new domain to my current hosting plan, I wanted to try something different.  I decided to create a Tumblr site for the web pages, and eventually added our own custom domain to it.  In order to host and deliver the large podcast files, I am using Amazon’s S3 service.  It’s an a la carte service where you only pay for the storage and bandwidth that you use.  Since I figured I wouldn’t have many listeners at first, and I was right, it only cost me about 11 cents for my first month.

After a few days I realized there was one major downside to this approach.  There were no statistics for my traffic either via Tumblr or Amazon.  A quick google search brought me to S3stat.  What a great find for me.  At a very affordable $5 per month, the service will automatically generate log files for you, and run Webalizer on it to create graphs and charts of all of your monthly, daily, hourly traffic.

At first I thought the lack of statistics was only a minor inconvenience, but over time I realized just how important it is for a podcast.  Since Tumblr doesn’t provide web stats on the main web site, I don’t know how many people are coming to the site.  Also, many listeners will subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.  That would go around the Tumblr stats even if they existed, but S3stat catches all of that traffic.  Most posts that I can find about podcasting statistics suggest using Feedburner for your “best guess” at how many subscribers you have, but I have found it to be incredibly inconsistent which is a fairly common complaint with Feedburner.

For all these issues, S3stat comes through and fills in the shortcomings of all of the other systems.

One last item, the S3Stat team of customer service is awesome.  When I signed up I changed a few things of my original logging settings, and I had to email them to fix it.  They had it taken care of in a few hours.  Really great service.

OVERALL

This past weekend I was a judge at the Crossfit Regional competition for the Northern California region.  It was an amazing weekend for the NorCal Crossfit community, and for some exceptional displays of physical performance.  I don’t think anyone could have predicted what would go down this weekend if they had a crystal ball.  I don’t know when the last time it rained like it did in the month of June out here, but Saturday’s competition basically took place in a monsoon.  Some of the videos on the games web site shows this pretty well, but others don’t really do the situation justice.  The amount of rain, wind, mud, extremely uneven ground, and general poor conditions made the results of the weekend’s performances that much more impressive.

For me, the highlight of Friday was Danny Nichols performing a 325 pound thruster.  Danny is competing on TJ’s Gym team, who finished first after the weekend and will be a serious force to be reckoned with at the Crossfit Games in LA.  Saturday was when the shit really hit the fan on the weather and workouts.  I was incredibly siked and proud of our team at Crossfit Santa Clara for winning the deadlift/box jump workout.  Alex and Hillary really crushed the workout considering the conditions.  Not to mention Jason winning both workouts of the day for individual men.  On workout 4 he had an amazing comeback that I really wished I could have watched more of, but I was busy judging.  I had to go on what I heard from the crowd and our MC on the microphone.

The last day was all about who would advance to the games.  All of the divisions had spots up for grabs at the start of the day, and even going into the last workout, the final spots for teams, women and men were not finalized.  The energy levels in the stadium were so high off the charts that I can’t even convey.  Even the photos and videos I have seen online do not do the environment justice.  All I can suggest is that if you still have your region’s competition coming up, GO TO IT.  It will be worth your time to be a part of this.

JUDGING

I don’t know exactly what my expectations were for judging, but I’m fairly sure it surpassed them in every regard.  The experience was more challenging than I expected, the environment more energized, and the overall experience and service more rewarding.  If you’ve read this far there is a good chance that you competed in and/or judged workouts in the Open.  Judging at the regionals in no way compares to judging in the Open much in the same way as competing in the Open no way compares to competing in the regionals.  The pressure is on to perform.  You either get it right or you get it wrong.  You can’t redo the judging of the workout any more than you can redo the workout.

Logistically some of the movements were more difficult to judge than I expected due to the specific standards of this weekend.  The one that comes to mind first is handstand pushups.  Anecdotally I have heard from other regions that some athletes had as many as 30+ reps taken away from them.  I would guess this has more to do with the athlete executing the exact and specific requirements and/or judges interpretation of the movement than it does the athletes ability and work capacity.   This movement proved difficult to judge on tall athletes as you need to see both the lockout of the arms and the placement of the feet on the wall because of the specific requirement for the regionals that both feet be touch the wall at lockout.  I have no doubt that most HSPUs that were taken away during the past 2 weeks of regionals would have counted in a standard workout, and probably even during the Open.

I don’t want to go on and on with the challenges of every workout, but I will add one more note in summary.  The movement names in the regional workouts may all sound familiar to anyone who has been doing Crossfit for any length of time, but that doesn’t mean that an athlete could walk onto the field without being briefed and do them as required.  That may be part of the problem with the regionals that some people have.  If you are still reading, I bet you have done a burpee.  And you probably think it ends with a jump and a clap over head, but not at the regionals.  You’ve done a kettlebell swing that you were told wasn’t complete until I can see your ears in front of your arms at the top of the swing, but not at the regionals.  In the Open a box jump had one definition and in the regionals it has another one.

None of this is inherently a problem if it is clearly communicated  to AND understood by all parties.  Athletes, judges, fans, everyone needs to understand in order for things to run smoothly.  I think this was the case in NorCal.  Were there situations where judges made mistakes? Probably, but the most honest answer I can give is that I don’t know for certain.  The reason for that is that I realized early on that I couldn’t pay attention to another athlete and/or judge and still provide the best service to my athlete.

SUMMARY

I got to see some of the most impressive performances of physical fitness in my life this weekend.  Both in horrific weather and when the sun was out.  One thing that never wavered was the athletes’ attitudes.  I can’t tell you how many times I would look around the athletes tent and see the women dancing to the music the DJ was playing just moments before they were about to face these brutal workouts.  Or DURING the team workouts, you would see the non-active athletes getting down.  Or the smile and nod that an athlete gave you when you told them what rep they were on.  The weekend was an experience that couldn’t be learned any other way than learning it.  I didn’t know every athletes name when they began, and some of them I had pre-existing opinions of.  The one thing that was incredibly clear this weekend was just how human all of our amazing Crossfit athletes are.  They cry, smile, laugh and bleed.  I remember one specific moment when I was in the athletes tent introducing myself to my athlete and going over the last minute briefing.  Before I knew it were were laughing and joking around about how they would PR.  The next thought I had was how I had this person all wrong based on a video I had watched of them.  It made me re-evaluate how to think about the people of our community, and how there can be so much shit talk on this internet, and how undeserving many of the recipients probably are.

And lastly, I could not be more proud of Jason Khalipa.  I’ve been in Jason’s gym for about a year now and his personal performance is inspiring, his energy levels when coaching are motivating, but his attitude is why everyone loves him.  I don’t think there was more than a few moments of this weekend when you didn’t see a smile on his face or running around high-fiving.  He won the workouts he was supposed to, and then he won the ones he wasn’t supposed to win.  I can’t wait to see what he does at the games in July.

Having recently gone through the process of learning how to properly record a podcast involving a remote party, I figured I would document it all here since a lot of the posts that I found on the subject were old, and many of the software applications have updated their versions and the configurations have changed even if only slightly.  I’d like to give credit to the post that got me most of the way through which was this one from 2005.  Sadly the author gave up on making this work.  I’d also like to give a lot of credit to Dan Benjamin at 5by5 for this Podcasting Equipment guide and his archived episodes of The Mixdown which taught me a TON about getting a podcast off the ground.  If you are interested, my podcast, UnRx, can be found via iTunes.

Here is a list of the applications that I used to record my podcast:

Garageband (This could be substituted with Logic Express, Audacity, Protools, or any multitrack recording application.)

Skype (Any VOIP program would work, but Skype is free and popular.)

LineIn (a free little app that directs the audio around.)

SoundFlower (Much like LineIn, I’m honestly not certain why both are needed but that’s what seems to work.)

Let’s start with Skype.  Here is how I have things configured under the preferences menu.

In previous versions, “Microphone” and “Speakers” were replaced with “Input” and “Output.”  I should state here that I have opted to use the 16 channel version of Soundflower.  It is also possible to use the 2 channel version.  The advantage of using the 16 channel is that you can record your vocals to one track and the person you are talking to on Skype to another track.  This has many advantages, for example, if you talk over each other, you can mute the volume on one track during your editing to make things sound better.

Speaking of Soundflower, the app itself has no interface, but has a small companion app called SoundFlowerBed which shows up in the menu bar.  My configuration looks like this:

This might seem a little counter-intuitive, because both the 2 channel and 16 channel are set to None.  However, the reason that I have things setup like this is because it prevents echo in the headset.  If I change the setting from None to the USB Headset, the recording will still work perfectly, but I will hear my own voice in the headphones which causes serious issues if you are talking for more than just a few seconds.  At first you feel like you can deal with it, but over time it becomes more and more annoying.

Next up is LineIn.  The app contains nothing but it’s settings, so here you go:

There are a couple of things to look out for here.  If you are following my instructions exactly, note that in the advanced options I have changed the left and right output settings from the defaults.  Setting these to 3 and 4 is what enables the secondary recording track in garageband (or whichever recording app you use.)  If you don’t care about this, and are using the 2 channel method, you can leave everything set to default.  Lastly, BUT MOST IMPORTANT, you NEED to click the pass thru button in order for any of this to work.  It’s what enables all of your audio to get from where it starts to where it needs to go.

Next up we have the Garageband settings.  We’ll start with the preferences:

I could have also selected the headset for the output here if I wanted it here, but I like keeping this as the built in speakers of my iMac so I can separate what’s being recorded from what I am playing back during the editing process.  This is purely a preference, and you can change this to whatever you want.

When you create a new podcast project in Garageband, you are presented with a project that has 1 track of male voice and another track of female voice. You need to change the input source on them so that they match what is shown below.  You may then want to rename them something that you like better, such as “My Voice” and “Skype recording” or something along those lines.

Then on the next track be sure to have the Monitor on so you can hear what’s recording.

And that is pretty much all there is to it.  Fire up your call in Skype, press the big red record button in garageband, and make sure the pass thru button is clicked in LineIn.  Other than that, you are ready to go.  If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments.  Otherwise, good luck!

UPDATE: I just picked up an M-Audio Fast Track to start the process of replacing my USB headset and mic with an XLR microphone. I have my eye on two of them, one by røde and one by heil.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I started to read the rumors that Microsoft was going to buy Skype, but what I really didn’t understand was the price.

I first wrote about Skype way back when in 2008 when I talked about eBay paying $2.6B for them , and then again when eBay got rid of it for the same price they paid for it in September of 2009.

How is it that in less than two years, after having not increased in value during the previous four years, did the value of Skype more than triple?  I don’t really know.

Update: Crossfitters! Save 10% on Progenex using coupon code UNRX
I went to the doctor today and he said I’ve got some shoulder impingement.  Being the supple leopard-in-training that I am, I was insulted, but accepted the doctor to be telling the truth.  I went onto mobilitywod.com for some refreshers in how to avoid impingement. Here are a few that I will be focusing on for the next few weeks.

Prepping for Fight Gone Bad – Sumo Deadlift Highpulls

Watch this video on YouTube.

Watch this video on YouTube.

Shoulder extension

Watch this video on YouTube.

Improving shoulder organization

Watch this video on YouTube.

Internal shoulder rotation

Watch this video on YouTube.

Last but definitely not least, UN-IMPINGE yourself

Watch this video on YouTube.

Normally I would wait until the end of the year to award the best app.  But I have no doubt that HBO GO will not be beat.  So without further ado:

HBO GO is an iPhone and iPad app that provides streaming video of HBO content.  Not only only can you watch the current movies that are running on HBO, but you also get every episode of every season of every HBO original series.  This is an amazing step for HBO to embrace mobile in such a strong way.  EVERY EPISODE. Do you want to watch Junior shoot Tony?  Do you want to see Wild Bill get shot?  Do you want to see Omar stick up a Barksdale joint?  Do you want to see prisoner penis?  Kenny Powers? The sky is the limit.  No ceilings.

The process of setting things up is really easy as well.  Just put in your login with your cable provider or satellite dish company.  The app does a nice job of organizing all of the shows and content into categories.

There really isn’y much else to say at this point, because what makes this app so amazing is the enormous volume of content available.  It would have been easy for HBO to only release the current season of their current shows, but instead they opened up the vault.   This is a huge statement by HBO that it takes mobile consumption of their content very seriously.

The one feature that would be absolutely killer, and is hopefully coming in the near future, is AirPlay support.  While it’s great to watch a movie or show on an iPad, or an iPhone when on the go, it would also be great to send the content to my TV via the AppleTV and watch things on the larger screen.  When the iPad first launched, ABC player was the app to beat for it’s large selection of content.  HBO GO makes that looks infinitesimal in comparison.  Now let’s just hope we get some AirPlay support.

An interesting perspective on the @CrossFitGames Open by @FuncThat: http://tinyurl.com/3h8qbhw #CrossFit

April 20, 2011 1:28 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@CrossFitChron

Web Smith

There was a good blog post written up today that put in words some of the things that I had been thinking.  Depending on the day of the week, I’m still enthusiastic about the Crossfit Open Sectionals, but it’s not without consequence.  I’ve seen first hand that people are altering their training, and focusing on the weekly workout ahead of their overall performance.  The question is whether or not this is necessarily a bad thing, and if so, to what degree.

I’ve said before how exciting the Open was at the beginning.  That excitement is still present every Saturday in our box where heat after heat of athletes gives everything they have, and then a little bit more.  Most of the competitors are doing the workout more than once, and that is where we have to wonder if re-performing the workout is better than performing your normal training.  I’m not talking about elite athletes here, I’m talking about the everyday folk.  And it obviously depends on which workout we are talking about.  5 minutes of clean and jerks is a much different workout than 15 minutes of deadlifts, pushups and box jumps.

On one hand, you could make the argument that performing a workout multiple times in the same week goes against the constantly varied nature of Crossfit.  Again, I’m not talking about athletes who are doing multiple  workouts a day.  I’m focusing on the 2-5 days a week crowd.  ”Joe Crossfitter” if you will.  It’s possible, to a degree, that athletes could even burn out, for example, their shoulders or hamstrings depending on the workout.  From a mental perspective, the Open does feel a bit like trying to sprint through a marathon.  Grinding all week performing and/or preparing for a workout, just to wait all day Tuesday for the next one to be announced.  But there is a reality to this situation that these criticisms don’t take into consideration.  It’s almost over.

For most athletes, when the Open sectionals end next week it will spell the end of their competition.  There will be no more weekly workouts to prepare for.  No more leaderboarding.  They can return to their  regularly scheduled programming.  They might need a little time to recover, but they might have a few PRs to show for it.  Will their decisions to redo a workout have any major effect on what their work capacity looks like 6 months from now?  Probably not.  Will they have a good benchmark to try and beat next year?  You bet.

I can’t speak for the experience in other affiliates around the globe, but our gym feels incredibly tight-knit right now.  We are pushing each other, discussing strategies, and having a good time doing it.

A few days ago I came across a tweet.

I worry that The Wire needs a better on-boarding process. Such a great show but so many people bounce after first 1-2 shows.

April 14, 2011 9:07 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@cdixon

chris dixon

I thought about that, and how many of my friends love this show.  Pretty much anyone I know that has seen it, is a fan.  I have some friends that aren’t fans, because they have never seen it.  You get the idea.

I don’t understand how a show so great could have people losing interest.  The obvious reaction is that these people are philistines.  But maybe beyond that, it’s possible that their first impression of the show was something less than optimal.  Maybe they turned it on mid-episode  and couldn’t figure out what was happening.  So they decided they didn’t like it.  So without further ado, I present to you a HOWTO.

Step 1)  Watch the opening scene of season 1, episode 1.

“If Snot Boogie always stole the money, why’d you let him play? You got to, this America man.”

Step 2) Watch the rest of the series.

This is a guest post from my friend Wayne. It originally appeared on his Tumblr. Used here with his permission.

Music in Every Room

I had been waiting to share my home entertainment workflow until I had everything perfect, but as anyone who’s dabbled in this area before knows, it is a revolving door of improvements and upgrades. Eva and I recently moved upstairs, to a bigger apartment with a 2nd bedroom. Our old apartment was small enough that I didn’t need a total wireless solution: I could leave a Mac mini hooked up to the TV directly, with a set of wireless speakers in the bedroom, and all was well. The move upstairs gave me an extra bedroom that had to be wired for sound, and the purchase of a new couch meant the Mac mini could no longer live in the living room next to the home entertainment unit due to space constraints.

After a few purchases and some relatively easy hacks, I was able to get the house wired (or unwired, if you will) for audio and video. See the flowchart below for the basic set up of my entertainment system.

http://i54.tinypic.com/2qi4qcx.jpg

The Mac mini with an attached Drobo hosts all the media files (emps and videos). iOS devices are used as remotes to stream audio to the remote speakers, or video to the AppleTV via Plex. The iOS devices can also stream video from the Mac Mini via the Plex iOS app. For traditional DVD playback, the Xbox 360 serves up 5.1 Dolby surround through the AV receiver. The AppleTV or 360 can both handle Netflix duties (I prefer the AppleTV, as the interface is more user friendly.)

To cover the details, we’ll start upstairs with the brains of the system, the Mac mini.

The Mac mini is hooked up to a Drobo, a storage unit that houses all media files (avi, mp4, mp3, etc). iTunes serves as a hub for mp3 files, while Plex serves as a hub for video files. I’ve been meaning to implement a version automated TV and movie downloads through a combination of Usenet, SABnzbd+ and Sick Beard. Once I get to that, I can post a rundown. But until then, it’s Netflix DVD ripping, etc.

In order to take advantage of wireless music throughout the house, iTunes is the center for all the emps. iTunes remains open all the time, and emps are accessed using the Remote app on any iOS device or through screen sharing via laptops. One can then use the Remote app to stream music to individual or multiple speakers wired with Airport Expresses or AppleTVs. Unfortunately, this implementation relies heavily on iOS devices and airport expresses strewn throughout the apartment (ie. not a solution for teamDroid). Also, it’s worth noting that while home sharing in iTunes allows videos to be shared across a network, accessing them in iTunes with large libraries brings the whole operation to a standstill. It becomes laggy to the point of unusable. Plex is a much more graceful solution.

For those that don’t know, Plex Media Center is a media player that organizes and plays any media file from your computer to your TV. Connect a computer with Plex to your home entertainment system and navigate the Plex UI to play whatever media is on your machine. Use your Harmony remote, apple remote, or iOS decive as a remote and it will automatically scan your files, add artwork, ratings, theme music, summaries, and a suite of other details and present them to you in the above format. The UI is highly customizable so one can fool around with it until it’s to your liking. For wireless playback of videos, Plex Media Server (running as a background process) will stream your content to any device with a Plex client (iOS currently, Android soon) or use your Plex client device as a remote. In my setup, I have 2 iPhones, a jailbroken AppleTV, and an iPad that act as my Plex clients. The Plex client has a great UI and works with little to no lag. You can even configure Plex to serve up media over 3G or remote WiFi with little to no loss in quality if the bandwidth is available.

To avoid having the computer run 24/7 or the annoyance of it going to sleep all the time, I’m running an Airport Extreme base station with Wake on Wireless enabled on the Mac Mini. This allows me to wake the computer from sleep via the Remote app and/or the Plex iOS app, so I don’t have to go upstairs and move the mouse every time I want to stream content. It’s these little things that make the implementation of the system shine.

The Living Room

Home Theater specs
Spectre 42” 1080i HDTV (badly needs upgrading)
Sony AV Receiver STR DG810
Xbox 360 Arcade 4GB
AppleTV 2G
Polk Monitor40 Bookshelf Loudspeakers (R and L)
Polk CS1 Center Channel Speaker
Satellite Surround Speakers
Budget Subwoofer

I jailbroke my Apple TV in order to install the Plex client. This allows me to keep the Mac Mini upstairs, away from the TV, while streaming content to the TV via the Plex Media Server. Plex shows up as its own dropdown menu on the AppleTV, and comprises nearly 90% of my AppleTV usage. The only compromise to the Apple TV jailbreak is no plugins, which are scheduled to come to the Plex Apple TV client soon.

The Airplay features on the ATV allow music to be streamed over the home theater system through the AV unit, to the Polk speakers.

Upgrades:
Besides the obvious TV upgrade needed, I plan on upgrading the subwoofer to HSU Research’s STF-2 or VTF-1, which can anchor the entire system. But being on the 2nd floor of a building with no form of sound isolation means this upgrade will have to wait until we have our own house with no neighbors to disturb. Also, the front left and right speakers will be replaced with tower speakers, Polk Monitor 60s, moving the Monitor 40 bookshelf speakers to the surround position.

The Dining Room

Two Audioengine A5 speakers rest above the cupboards, attached in the rear to an Airport Express. These speakers are the best solution for powered speakers with adequate bass response. They are versatile in that they are portable, and can fill a medium-sized room with great sound. Paired with a subwoofer, they sound even better. This is also a good solution for parties when people want to congregate where there is no music. Music in every room, suckers.

The Bedroom

Two Audioengine A2 speakers rest on the dresser. They are the smaller sibling to the A5 and still pack great sound, and adequate bass for their size. They are also hooked up to an Airport Express and enable Airplay connectivity. These are small enough to blend in with the bedroom décor and not mess up the feng shui of the room (no electronics in the bedroom, boys).

Conclusion

Overall, this setup is close to perfect, given today’s technology. I can think of improvements that will likely come (ie. Airplay-enabled devices that eliminate the need for multiple Airport Expresses, a third-party Plex app on the ATV, support for 5.1 surround sound through Plex, etc)
I will expand upon certain aspects of the setup in future posts: I’d like to dedicate a section to jailbreaking the AppleTV and adding Plex, which is an easy way to avoid the high costs of building a HTPC. AppleTV and Plex are all one really needs, and are extremely affordable, even entry level. I’d also like to talk more about the living room and the benefits of a high-quality AV receiver and 5.1 surround sound. It truly changes the experience of watching movies at home. For anyone rocking a large flat panel HD display without a decent AV receiver paired with it — you are doing yourself a disservice.

Viva FPT.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with iMovie lately. I’m such a beginner that I’m still using a lot of things for the first time, like here, slow-motion.

What do you think?

Open WOD 3 from KI Athletics on Vimeo.

For the past month I’ve been doing a little extra at the gym.  A few people have asked me what I’m up to, so I figured I would post a little update on the Crossfit Football programming that I’ve been doing for about one month.  The program was created by John Welbourn and Raphael Ruiz for athletes of all ages and all levels.

When I started doing Crossfit last summer, I was definitely out of shape and was just happy with any of the progress I could make to lose weight, get stronger, whatever.  Things seemed easy enough, I just showed up, worked hard and got stronger, faster, etc.  I kept a spreadsheet of all of my PRs and every day I was putting in a new entry.

But then I reached a point after a few months where I wasn’t getting stronger in my lifts.  My conditioning was still getting better but I was concerned about the plateaus.  It was around this time that Jason started doing a 5/3/1 class at the gym a couple nights a week.  I liked the idea of regularly performing the major lifts every week, but after one cycle thru the 5/3/1 program, the holidays came, a few weeks of vacation, and the 5/3/1 program went bye bye.  It was around this time that I started researching Crossfit Football.  As it states on their web site:

CrossFit Football is a strength and conditioning program designed for football players and participants in contact sports.

What I like about the program is it’s focus on strength, in addition to speed and conditioning.  To be more specific, I’m squatting (at least) twice per week.  I’m deadlifting every week, pressing every week, doing cleans every week.  And so far I am benefiting from that regularity.  I really wish I was doing a program like this when I was younger and playing hockey.

At the beginning of March, when I started the program, my 1 rep max back squat was 245 and I was doing sets of 5 at 215.  Four weeks later, I’m doing sets of 5 at 265.  I almost got 305×1 on Monday.  All my lifts have increased similarly.

Shoulder press from 115×5 to 130×5.

Deadlifts 275×5 to 315×5.  UPDATE: Just yesterday I DL’d 365×1.

Once my back recovers to a point where I can lift again, I’m going to be transitioning from the amateur  program to the collegiate program of Crossfit Football.  For those unfamiliar with Crossfit Football programming, there are three levels directed at three different levels of athletes.  The amateur level is designed for beginners and intermediates who can benefit from a four day per week linear progression program.  While the program works well for high school and college students, it also works well for full-time employed adults because of it’s schedule.

Lift Monday and Tuesday, take off Wednesday, lift Thursday and Friday, off weekends. Repeat.

That’s pretty simple.  I usually come into the gym on Saturdays as well.  Sometimes I just mobilize, a few times I’ve worked on speed or front squats.  Which leads me to the next level of Crossfit Football, Collegiate.  This is a more complex program, that involves working out 5-6 days per week and repeats every three weeks.  It’s designed for athletes that have plateaud on the linear progression (meaning they can no longer do all the prescribed reps while continuing to increase the weight every week.)

Now you may be wondering with all of this lifting, where are the metcon workouts?  They are here too.  Much like “regular” Crossfit workouts, Crossfit Football WODs are often couplets and triplets of moves like kettlebell swings, box jumps, squats, etc.  But you aren’t likely to see longer workout elements like running a mile, or rowing over 500m.  A lot of CFFB WODs contain sprints, which you won’t see that often in crossfit.  As I learned at the cert., if it doesn’t make you stronger or faster, you won’t find it in a Crossfit Football WOD.  Here is an example:

For time:

150 Push Ups

*Everytime you stop and rest with your chest on the ground this constitutes a penalty. If a penalty is counted, you must immediately sprint 40 yards. Once the penalty is completed continue with the push ups.

and also

Complete 5 rounds for time of:

3 Deadlifts 315 lbs
5 Handstand Push Ups
Sprint 50 meters

Now that my back is feeling better, I’ll be picking up again on Monday.  This post has gone on pretty long, and it could go a lot further.  Got any questions let me know at the gym or in the comments.

After Stacy and I used our Nikon D5000 for a little while, we started to look into some other cameras out there on the market that had some features that our D5000 was lacking.  One big thing for me was that the audio recording on the D5000 was pretty poor, and to make matters worse, it didn’t have an input for an external microphone.  The more I shot video, the more I got frustrated.  But on the other hand, I absolutely loved the swivel screen LCD on the D5000 that very few other cameras seemed to have.

How would we go about finding the right camera for us?  Enter Snapsort.com.  This web site is perfect for comparing your existing camera with others.  It goes feature by feature thru both cameras and rates them.  Here is an example:

The comparison is very thorough.  If you want to compare the overall features of two cameras, then it can do that.  But if you want to just look for one particular feature, then you can ignore the rest and just look at one.

If I could improve this site any way, it would be to make it possible to compare three cameras at the same time.  That way you can include your current camera, plus two other cameras that you are considering.

Lastly, the site has one AMAZING feature, that it will add “rumored” cameras to their comparison database.  For example one day I was doing a comparison that I had done before, and was presented with a suggestion.  Did I want to compare the d5000 with the rumored D5100?  Well of course I did.  And just today it looks like the D5100 is coming out.  I had a few weeks head start on research thanks to Snapsort.

I was hoping I wouldn’t have to write this post.  Monday night I pulled a muscle in my back going for a muscle up.  It was one of those things that hurt right away, then didn’t (adrenaline kicked in), but as time went on it really started to hurt.  Doing a side bend test shows I have very little mobility going to my right side.  I have to very strategically get in and out of bed.  I’m not a fan of taking muscle relaxers, as evidenced by the almost full bottle I have left over from a prescription over a year ago, but I took one to help me sleep.  It didn’t help very much as I woke up a lot during the night from pain.

Luckily my desk at home is setup as a standing workstation, so I am able to get work done from home.  I’m hoping that with the proper rest, icing, and mobilization that this won’t be a long lasting injury.  Oh, another milestone, I just sneezed without pain for the first time.

Oh well, water under the bridge now.  On to the next one.

Update: Crossfitters! Save 10% on Progenex using coupon code UNRX

TL;DR: Of all the PAGG components, I highly recommend and still take Alpha-lipoic acid every day.

Back in December I tore thru The Four-Hour Body while on vacation visiting my family.  There were a few big takeaways for me, but the one that I was most excited about was the PAGG stack.  As I wrote in my original review, the components of the PAGG stack, which you can all of at whole foods, gnc, etc, are Policosanol, Alpha-lipoic acid, Green tea extract, Garlic extract.  Tim calls these supplements the “four horseman of fat burning,” so I set out to try them and see whether or not they were worth the time and money.

Policosanol, which I continually mispronounce, is derived from sugar cane.  The main benefits of Policosanol are “cardiovascular health” if you are to believe the label.  But Tim thinks it’s worth including in the stack because of an unintended benefit he discovered while taking it to improve his cholesterol.  He found that taking it before bed, increased his fat loss.

Alpha-lipoic acid is an antioxidant that makes your pee smell like you ate asparagus.  I’m not kidding, one of the first things I noticed when I started taking the PAGG stack was that my pee smelled.  Over time I narrowed it down to the ALA.  Tim’s reasoning for inclusion in the stack can be summed up in one sentence: “ALA helps you store the carbohydrates you eat in muscle or in your liver as opposed to in fat.”

Green tea extract, or EGCG,  is yet another antioxidant.  People have been trying to market the crap out of green tea this past decade and its ability to increase metabolism.  There have even been some “negative calorie” drinks to hit the market that claimed that since there zero calories in the drinks, and they increased metabolism, the net effect is negative calories.  None of these drinks were major successes.  Tim is a believer in EGCG because, similarly to ALA, it increases GLUT-4 recruitment to your muscles.

The last ingredient in the stack is garlic extract. The book includes an interesting story of how Tim came to investigate the benefits of garlic involving a homeless man.  Garlic extract also benefits the heart according to their labels.  Tim says he’s achieved the highest fat-loss when taking high doses of allicin, a component of garlic.

Ok, so now that you know all about it, how do you take it?  Simple, basically you take everything four times a day, with a little bit of a twist.  You only take P(olicosanol) before bed, and when you take it, you don’t take the G(reen tea extract).  So it looks something like:

Before breakfast: AGG (No P)

Before lunch: AGG (Still no P)

Before dinner: AGG (Same as previous two times)

Before bed: PAG (This time we take P, and remove Green Tea)

RESULTS: So how did it work?  At first I thought it was working pretty well, but over time I have grown increasingly skeptical of it’s benefits.  Let me explain my reasoning.  When I began taking the stack in early January, I was also on a new diet of strict paleo.  Over the 45 days of paleo, I lost weight and bodyfat and consistently took PAGG almost every day as instructed.  Which is to say 6 days per week, and 1 week off every 2 months.  Over the last 45 days, I have continued to take PAGG, but have relaxed my paleo ways.*** I have continued to exercise at the same level during this entire period of time, 5-6 days per week of Crossfit Football strength programming, and the WOD from Crossfit Santa Clara.  I haven’t been back to Fitness Wave for a follow up body fat measurement, but I can tell by the mirror that I have not continued to reduce body fat.

SIDE EFFECTS: Basically none.  Like I said before, it did make my pee smell like I had just eaten a ton of asparagus.  If you don’t know what that smells like, well eat some asparagus!  There is a warning section in the book which says not to take it if pregnant or breastfeeding, and a few other things, so like anything, consult your doctor before taking a bunch of pills multiple times a day.

RECOMMENDATION: If I had jumped right in and wrote this review in February, I probably would have really encouraged people to try this.  Now I’m not so sure.  So here is the deal.  Given that there are basically no side effects, if you want to try something new for supplements, the only thing you have to risk is the money.  All of the components, Policosanol, Alpha-lipoic acid, Green tea extract, Garlic extract are available online, as well as local stores like Whole Foods, GNC, Vitamin Shoppe, etc etc.  Compared to other supplements on the market, the PAGG stack isn’t that expensive.  I will warn you that since December and the release of The Four-Hour Body, PAGG companies have been popping up left and right selling high priced pre-bundled PAGG stacks.  You don’t need to spend top dollar on these 4 supplements , they are all readily available and a few of them were likely on clearance shelves at drug stores until recently.  All of that said, some expense is still more than no expense, so if money is tight, pay your bills before buying supplements.

*** I plan on starting strict paleo again on April 1.

See larger image PAGG Stack Supplement System - One Month Supply as specified in 4 Hour Body (Health and Beauty) New From: $59.95 In Stock

When I first walked into Crossfit Santa Clara last July, I didn’t know exactly what to expect and I didn’t know who would be there.  Since that day there’s been a constant progression, a constant feeling that I was a part of something bigger.  But I never could feel it as much as I did last week, the first week of the 2011 Open.  The energy level at the gym has reached such incredible levels and it’s all in the spirit of competition.

It started out with Wednesday afternoon’s session.  A few heats of five or six athletes at a time giving the workout their first shot.  People got paired up with judges, the music got turned up and it was 3, 2, 1, go.  It was inspiring to see Jason complete 8 rounds plus 28 double unders, but that wasn’t the only impressive performance in the gym.  Alex came close to getting 8 full rounds as well.  Everyone set their bar, and started planning their week out for their next attempts.

But that is really only part of the story, because not everyone who was competing could make it at that time.  All of that lead up to Saturday’s competition heats.  Saturday classes always bring in a lot of people, but this Saturday really had a lot going on.  It started at 6 a.m. with 40 marine recruits coming in for a training session, then the 9 am class, and then the OpenWOD competition.  Pulling into the parking lot and seeing all the marine recruits doing their thing, a new business venture setup making paleo omelets and pancakes, and a really big turn out of both new and old faces for the 9 am class really set the tone for the day.  I’d spent the last few days mentally and physically preparing for the OpenWOD, knowing that my performance would be gated by my skill at the double unders.

As the 9 am class continued more and more competitors arrived and began their own preparations, and a bunch of the marine recruits stuck around to see what this Crossfit thing was all about.  The scheduled time for the heats to start was 10:30, and just about that time the music got turned down and instructions were given out.  Your standard fare of what’s a rep, what’s not a rep, etc.  I’d been hanging around the gym for a couple of hours at this point, so I decided I had best go in the first heat before nerves built up anymore.

Once the clock started I was in a complete focus tunnel.  I tried to stay as relaxed as I could, and luckily I didn’t have to keep a bunch of numbers in my head.  That’s one advantage to having a dedicated judge, you can focus on performing and not on counting.  I set a goal for myself that was well above and beyond what I had previously achieved on this workout.  I didn’t achieve that goal but I am fairly close.  I don’t think I would have performed nearly this well if it was not a competition. If it was just another workout I would have been counting my double under attempts, and my result would have been some unreconcilable mess.  Measurable and repeatable.

The energy level only continued to rise heat after heat, and so did the volume.  Crossfit Santa Clara isn’t a small space, so it takes a lot of yelling and cheering to fill it up with sound.  The last 1-2 minutes of each heat filled it up and then some.  Every athlete in the building was firing on all cylinders.  This was it.  This was the something bigger that I felt a part of.  A gym full of athletes, coaches, competitors, judges, spectators, boyfriends, girlfriends, parents, and everything in between.  Competitor in heat 1, judge in heat 2, spectator in heat 3, but one in the same.  I know I wasn’t alone in feeling the energy in the gym.  I was glowing all day on Sautrday, long after I had left the gym.

I didn’t think I’d have anything else that could top that experience until the next OpenWOD was announced, but that’s what is pretty amazing about this format.  At what would seem like a random moment on a Monday afternoon, Ranbir decided to give the OpenWOD another go.  Here’s a snapshot of the gym during his workout.  The picture doesn’t really do the scene justice, as there were probably twice as many people just to the left and the right of the frame.  This wasn’t an organized time, this was just the gym sometime between the 4:30 and 5:30 classes.  The people that just finished were probably exhausted, and the people that just got their could have been mobilizing, but instead everyone was cheering.  Everytime Ranbir hit his 30 double unders unbroken the place erupted.  Ranbir beat this previous workout’s result by something like 11 reps or more.  Energy.  Community.

I can’t wait for the next 5 weeks of this competition.  I am going to savor it all.  Both as a competitor myself and as a member of something bigger.

Update: In the time time that I started writing this, some “discussions” have taken place about who should be in this competition and why.  What I believe was the catalyst for this was the “Open letter to Crossfit HQ“, which then spurred a lot of conversation on twitter.  This morning Jarret wrote a follow up that had one particular quote in it that I think sums things up for me.

The set up for this year is either video your WOD or go to an affiliate. I was the first person to sign up at my box. Do I think I am going to Regionals, no. Am I going to the Crossfit Games, only if I buy a ticket. Is this stopping me from doing the Sectionals WOD, not even close. How will I know how I compare as a Crossfitter outside my box if I never challenge myself to get better, do better, be better.

This is the sentiment that I know some other people in our gym share.  If I am always thinking about competing “next year,” how can I measure my progress from last year?  How do I know I’m doing my best?  How can I improve my weaknesses?

The open format of the sectionals this year has many benefits.  Sure, it may be marketed as a means to discover that absolute beast who has been working out in his garage for the past year with Fran, Helen and Grace times that will give you nightmares, but it’s also allowed for competition to scale.  Compete with the rest of the Crossfit world, compete with the other athletes at your box, compete with yourself.

I. Will. Not. Lose.

To me, Crossfit is about personal progression and being better than the day before, or week before or month before, etc.

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I was talking to a friend last week about spreadsheets to keep track of your workout at the gym, and he mentioned that not only does his spreadsheet have the amount of weight that he should be lifting for each set, but it also tells him which plates to put on the bar to achieve that total weight.

For example, 195 pounds would be 1 45 pound plate, 1 25 pound plate, and 1 5 pound plate on each side of the bar.  Most people that lift weights using a barbell get pretty fast at adding up the weight on the bar, but for beginners there can be times when it takes a minute to stop and think and add everything up, and sometimes you get it wrong.

Unfortunately, Jason’s spreadsheet was manually created and I decided that, with a few Excel formulas, I could automate the process and make it useful for a lot more people.  In particular, Wendler’s 5/3/1 program often requires athletes to use specific weights beyond the standard 135, 225, 315.  Most athletes on this program use spreadsheets to maintain records of their workouts. I am not suggesting that my spreadsheet replace others, but more that they use it as an add-on worksheet for Vlookups as I will demonstrate below.  1 copy and paste and you are good to go.

Below is an example of a very basic spreadsheet for a workout.  If you don’t know how to use a Vlookup formula, you can copy and paste from the spreadsheet in the link at the end of the article.

The result of the formula looks like this:

All of the complicated work is on a separate worksheet with all of the formulas needed to calculate the plates.  Some assumptions are made in the spreadsheet:

• You are using a 45 pound barbell
• You are always using the least amount of plates
• Your gym has every weight size from 45 down to 2.5

I realize that women weightlifters often use 33 pound barbells.  If there is enough interest, I can make an updated version of the spreadsheet that allows for a quick customization of the barbell weight.

So here is the link to DOWNLOAD THE SPREADSHEET: platers per side

When I got to the gym today, I knew it was different than any other normal day.  Tonight was the night that the first workout was supposed to be announced for the Crossfit games “open” sectionals.  I was planning on doing the workout this evening, even if it wasn’t judged so that I could have a baseline result to work towards this week.  I swear the AMRAP in 32 minutes hextuplet WOD that Jason programmed had nothing to do with my decision.

I had some time before the announcement to get my Crossfit Football main site workout done.  I’m in my third week of following their program and have seen some nice gains in strength in a short amount of time.  40 pounds on my 5RM squat and deadlift, and lesser but respectable gains on my bench and shoulder presses.  As I was doing my warm up sets of deadlifts, Jason kept asking if the workout was posted.  It must have been because I was glued to my iPhone in between sets.

So after I finished up my lifts, I went upstairs to hang out with the other people waiting for the workout to post.  There was a certain energy and tension in the air.  We kept checking the web site over and over.  We were checking Facebook, checking Twitter, checking anything we could.

The games site still doesn’t have this week’s workout yet, but when it does, we’re ready.

See larger image Primal Blueprint Quick and Easy Meals: Delicious, Primal-approved meals you can make in under 30 minutes (Primal Blueprint Series) (Hardcover) By (author) Mark Sisson, Jennifer Meier List Price: $29.99 USD New From: $17.49 In Stock Used from: $16.84 In Stock

Mark Sisson does’t need any introduction.  The author of the original Primal Blueprint is back with a new cookbook.  Check it out!

I’m a huge fan of Netflix.  I don’t just mean as a customer, but as an admirer of their business execution and their strategy.  I don’t remember when I initially signed up for the service, but it was a long time ago.  The amount of discs that I had out at one time has gone up and down over the years, but I don’t believe I ever cancelled my membership at any point in time.  From a business perspective, I’m continually impressed with the analytics and advanced usage of data that Netflix uses to improve their service and profitability.  In my eyes, the company has basically done no wrong.  Or have they?

I deserve a bit of a late pass here, but Netflix has removed the ability to have “friends” with your account.  It happened almost a year ago, so maybe it deserved to be removed.  Or maybe it just wasn’t any good, and it should have been made better.  The reason that it was removed was explained on the Netflix blog by their VP of product management.  The short version of the story is that only 2% of the customers used the feature, and the company only has limited engineering resources, so they are redirecting them elsewhere.

Now in most cases, this is where I would commend Netflix on using data analytics to make educated decisions based on their data.  But this seems like this may not have been such a straight forward case.  Let’s look a little closer at the statistic that Netflix gave.

Friends is a feature on the Netflix Web site that’s been used by less than two percent of all subscribers since we added the feature in 2004.

Let’s break that down a bit.  What does this statement tell us?  Friends wasn’t popular?  That’s obvious, but what else?  Let’s look at that date.  2004.  What was your internet footprint in 2004?  Were you on Facebook?  Were you posting on Twitter?  How about Tumblr?  The answer to all three is not likely.  Twitter and Tumblr didn’t exist, and Facebook was still limited to only college students in 2004.  In fact, 2004 was the year that Facebook launched itself.

Think about what that means in terms of a “friends” feature.  Instead of the modern process, maybe using Facebook Connect or Twitter account to automatically discover which of your friends are active Netflix members, you had to enter in email addresses of your friends who you thought were members.  The experience was less than stellar, you could say it sucked.  I’ve got dozens of friends with Netflix accounts, and never had more than a handful of Netflix friends.

The reason that I even discovered that the friends feature had been removed was because my actual friends and I have been creating a real social experience using Google’s Reader application.  All it takes is one of us to click a bookmark while browsing to a movie’s page on Netflix.com.  From their the discussion takes place off of Netlfix.com and on Google.com.  Why is this important?  The answer is data.  The more Netflix knows about it’s customers, the better it can serve them and execute it’s business.  Netflix is a data-driven company.  They are featured in the book Competing on Analytics for having a competitive advantage based on their usage of data, but I feel like this is a case where data may have let them down.

Was the friends feature not used because customers weren’t interested in the functionality?  Or was it not used because it was poorly implemented and then never updated with modern social methods to increase usage?  It may have been a mix of those two things, but I am guessing that as time went on, users were looking for better integration into their social sites.

I decided to take a look on Quora, another social site, to see if there were any existing theories on the removal or “failure” of the feature.  There were a few suggestions, and I thought this one was the most apropos.  It also let me to discover that a new site FriendsOnNetflix.com was launched in an attempt to bring back similar but improved functionality.  I didn’t sign up for the site, but it boasts of Facebook and Twitter connectivity on the front page.

In an age when companies are moving more and more towards social functionality, Netflix has taken a giant step away from it.  Is this their first major mistake?  There is no evidence that it is hurting them right now.  But is that because their main competitor Blockbuster is completely inept when it comes to movie and video subscription service in the current day and age?  Netflix had a business model that was very customer friendly.  Flat  monthly fees, and then, at no extra cost, unlimited streaming, of an albeit limited selection.

If you want any more evidence that Netflix is destroying Blockbuster, then you only need to look at this infographic.

So I am left with one final question.  Does Netflix understand the power of social media?  Or is it blinded by all of it’s success with quantitative data analytics?

So as I have talked about in the past, I’m a fan of the paleo diet.  I’ve had good weight loss results in the past, so when my gym, Crossfit Santa Clara announced that they were doing a Paleo Challenge to start the new year, it was a no brainer to participate.  We had well over 30 people from the gym updating Google docs spreadsheets with their daily meals, keeping track of everything they ate.  In order for this to feel like a true “challenge,” everyone selected from different “levels of paleo” to abide by.  The highest level, 10, called for the removal of all nuts and salt in addition to all other non-paleo foods.

In order to facilitate proper measurement of our success of failure, most of the challenge participants underwent hydrostatic body fat testing at Fitness Wave.  This was done over two dates in December and early January for our “pre-paleo” measurements, and then again on February 15th, 45 days after starting the challenge, for our “post-paleo” measurements.  16 of the participants were kind enough to forward me their results. (Note: If anyone else wants to send me their results, I will gladly update this post with their data included.)

Overall Results

The results of the group were really impressive.  Of the population, all but one participant lost weight, and all sixteen lost body fat!

• Greatest Loss of Body Fat: 11%
• Median Loss of Body Fat: 3.7%
• Greatest weight loss: 29 pounds
• Median weight loss 8.1 pounds

Most of the participants that submitted results selected paleo level six or above.  Here is a scatter plot showing the amount of body fat loss by paleo level.

Beyond the numbers, we also asked everyone if they had reached their goals that they set for themselves at the beginning of the challenge. 69% of the population said that they had met their individual goals during the 45 days of paleo.  We also asked how people felt during the 45 days of paleo.  The biggest concern people normally have is that they will be tired or lack energy due to the lack of grains and sugars.  However, 88% of the people said they felt good or great while eating paleo.

Personal Results

I was also happy with my own personal results.  At my initial weigh-in, I was 187 pounds and 19.6% body fat.  At the end of the challenge, I was down to 182 and 14.9% body fat.  Losing 4.7% of body fat equates to a 24% reduction on body fat.  I was happy with this result, but definitely still driven to get closer to 10%.

I’ve decided to take a little break from paleo over the next few weeks, but will probably start again in April.  I’ve noticed that I seem to get the best results when I alternate thru cycles.  For instance, I did well on 30 days of paleo in October, then plateaued on a not-so-strict diet in November and December, then got good results again in January/February.  I think the strategy of one month on, two off is a good system of moderation that will continue to improve my body composition while not emotionally stressing out from constantly being on a strict diet.  That said, I do think Paleo is something that is easily sustainable so long as most meals are prepared at home.  Eating out for paleo is not difficult, but it doesn’t allow for much variety.

Lastly, if anyone is interested in learning more about the Paleo diet, there is a link below to Robb Wolf’s book on Amazon.

See larger image The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet (Hardcover) By (author) Robb Wolf List Price: $24.95 USD New From: $14.72 In Stock Used from: $12.98 In Stock Release date September 14, 2010.

We’ve had a Nikon D5000 for a little over a year, but we’ve never really gotten into the habit of taking a lot of photos with it.  I’ve decided to really try and get into the hobby.  The first thing I decided to do was to buy a new lens, a 35mm “prime” lens.  I’ve really been happy with the pictures that it has taken so far.  Here is one of an Ice Bot I had laying around the house.  I’ve become a big fan of “Bokeh,” a Japanese word to describe the blurry effects of the out-of-focus parts of an image.  For example, the coffee mug, keyboard and computer in this picture.

I think the next lens I get might be a really wide angle or fish eye lens.  I thought about going for a nice zoom lens, but I am not usually in a situation to shoot at such distances.  Only time will tell.

I’ve been a fan of her web site for a while, and made a lot of her recipes for Thanksgiving this year.  It’d be good to support her and get her book as well.

See larger image Everyday Paleo (Paperback) By (author) Sarah Fragoso List Price: $29.95 USD New From: $18.32 In Stock Used from: $14.25 In Stock Release date April 25, 2011.

This Christmas I was lucky enough to get some new running shoes.  Maybe luck didn’t have that much to do with it, so much as my communication skills to my wife Stacy.  Back in August I bought a pair of the Vibram Five Fingers, and while I initially enjoyed them, I couldn’t get past the foot pain I would get from running in them.  I think I might give them another chance this spring if I start running again, but my knees have been very thankful that I stopped running a weekly 5K.  Maybe monthly is a better frequency.

Anyways, here is what my new Inov-8 195s look like from above.  Technically, the full name of the shoes is the F-Lite 195, but most people just refer to Inov-8′s by their number.  The 195s are known for being light, and flat.  I think I have worn them to every single workout I’ve done since Christmas.  I know lots of people that like to rotate their shoes, but I just don’t ever want to wear anything else.

The shoes are incredibly comfortable and lightweight.  The most I have run in them at once is a mile, so I can’t really speak to them from an endurance running perspective, but my knees and shins have really been feeling great over the past few months.

I guess it makes sense that given how thin the soles are and the rest of the material that the shoes are made of that these shoes are so incredibly lightweight, but I really want to drive the point home.  Your feet feel like you are wearing a running shoe, but your body feels like you are barefoot. I noticed the biggest benefit from this while doing box jumps.  The shoes allow me the comfort to keep jumping repeatedly, but are so light that I feel unburdened and can get more reps in faster.

I do have a slight complaint, and it is very slight because superficial looks of my workout shoes is not something that keeps me up at night.  The red soles are painted on and the paint has already begin to flake off after just a few weeks.  You can see what I am talking about in the picture to the right.  It’s not the end of the world by any means, just a little disappointing.

Overall there really isn’t that much else to say about these shoes other than how much I love them. If you are looking for a flat, lightweight shoe to run in then these are the ones you are looking for.

I’ll include one more photo of the shoes waiting to go for a run on my chair.  They are good looking shoes, although I noticed in the photo that I seem to have an problem lacing them properly.

See larger image Inov-8 F-Lite 195 Lightweight Racing Shoe (Apparel) List Price: $120.00 USD