You Are What You Think

John Bargh, Mark Chen and Lara Burrows gave word puzzles to 30 psychology undergraduates. The undergraduates were give one of two word-based puzzles to complete. The words in one of the puzzles were associated with the elderly - for example "Florida", "ancient" and "wise" and the words in the second puzzle were neutral, with no firm associations. The students were asked to complete the puzzle and then leave the test room and exit the building.

The research team had no interest the results of the word-puzzles themselves. What they were interested in was the impact of the words in puzzle upon subsequent behaviour. What the researchers did was to discreetly time the subjects on their exit from the assessment room, down the hall to an elevator:

• "Students who had been given the puzzle featuring elderly related words took, on average, a whole second longer to make the walk - an increase from 7.3 to 8.3 seconds. They had picked up one of the perceived traits of the elderly: slower walking speed." (Mind Hacks by Tom Stafford and Matt Webb)

This idea fascinates me (the experiment itself is given another airing with a bit more analysis in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink) . What I especially like is that just as using a simple 'desert island' concept to convey the whole notion of the paleo diet (to the extent that ANYONE can pretty much 'get it' in the course of a minute, the romanticised connotation which subsequently come to mind can lead to a positive feed back mechanism which supports the approach. This is in stark contrast to the standard food pyramid and it prescription of hunger or narcissistic pursuit of muscle (which may lead to or be an expression of body dysmorphia).

The cold showers, the fasting, the Vibram Five Fingers, the sprinting in the woods and the Kill Carries - all tick the paleo cliches - but serve to bolster my application and resolve to train. To train hard and to train well. To focus beyond appearance and beyond the self, on towards the immediate environment around and our interaction with it.

Sounds like a recipe for success to me!

Don't Make Time. Spend The Time You Have Wisely

I have heard a lot in my time about having 'no time' to do some exercise. Worse still I see people stress themselves out by trying to 'make time'. There is a third way; choose to develop the benefit of a task you already HAVE to do. Let me explain.

I have to drop off CK at school each day and/or pick her up in the evening. This is something I do en route to and from work. In addition I have been trying to walk a lot more. Usually during my lunch hour (actually 30 minutes) each day I will head out for a walk of 30 minutes or so. My phone has an inbuilt radio which I may listen to, or I might simply let my mind wander.

Occasionally I get to work from home. Now on these days I could try to save time by dropping CK off at school in the morning and pick her up in the afternoon using the car. By using the car I save 20 minutes on each return journey. So with 40 minutes I have saved in a day, I guess I can fit my daily walk in. But there is a better way.

When working from home I choose to escort CK to and from school on foot. Walking to the school takes 15 minutes each way. But as I see it, these are the benefits:

• During the walk to school in the morning and the walk from school in the evening I am accompanied by Captain Kid. This is a great time to chat and interact with her.
  
  I have noticed that if I pick her up in the car (me in the front and her in the back), she is MUCH less communicative. The car is not optimised for 'interaction', we cannot see each other, we are not facing one another, the seats form a barrier and I am concentrating on driving. It is difficult to get anything out of her! She ignores my questions and this can lead to a tension that can permeate the evening. But, on foot the interaction is all the sweeter.
  
  During the walk we embrace 'play'. We can hold hands. We can engage in sprints (she rarely walks at the same speed anywhere), and we simply have quality TIME to spend with one another. It is a most relaxing walk and good fun. She opens up and tells me about her day. We are equals rather than driver and passenger. The whole travelling dynamic is different.

The other side of the task:

• Walking back from school in the morning and to school in the afternoon (to pick CK up)are legs of the journey where I walk alone. During this time I can relax and let my mind wander. I tend to focus on my posture - imagining I am being pulled upwards by the top of my head. My shoulders drop back and my arms swing gently by my side. I also try to spend some time working on my breathing, pushing my stomach out gently as I breathe in to increase the volume of my lungs. This is a quality training session without the stress of a limited 'window' in which it must be completed as I am already in transition to my next task.

So all in all, I get an hour total - of which thirty minutes is quality time with CK and the other thirty minutes is quality time to myself. I tick off the 'daily walk' task and the pick up/drop off CK task. I reduce my carbon footprint. It is a low stress activity and does not involve the anxiety often associated with 'making time' nor spending 'made time' on a specific task it was originally intended for.

The world is parallel so best to interact with it as such!

Volume Wk1 W/O3

Continuing on with the deloaded workout. I am itching to ramp stuff up. Weights are approximate. Hunger and drive is high:

Warm Up (5 mins)
Main (25 mins)

1a. Deadlift (one or two warm up sets, 5x82, 5x95, 5x107)
1b. HSPU/Press/Snatch (12x12kg, 12x12kg, 12x12kg)
2a. Tucked Ice Cream Maker (8, 8, 8)
2b. Assisted One Arm Chins (12x24kg, 12x24kg, 12x24kg)

Evening Workout

3a. Wall Planche Press Ups (8, 8, 8)
3b. Splits (2x10s 2x10x 2x10s)

I sacked the fingerboard session as I am going to climb this weekend so need to save some gas in my hands and forearms.

The first part of this workout felt pretty steady, although the last reps or two of the last set of ICMs approached 'brutal'.

Minerals

I don't normally do supplements but have taken to dropping 10k IU of D3 this winter. After some digging around and background reading, I have just added potassium and magnesium to the mix. The consequence of getting the doses wrong is that I should be looking forwards to sound sleep and diarrhoea!

Volume Wk1 W/O2

This is the second of my volume workouts. Effort is about 85%. The emphasis was on lower body. I could put some more exercises in here but I need to be mindful of the demands of kickboxing tonight!

Warm Up (5 mins)
Main (25 mins)

1. Rowing (00:01:45x500m)
2. Pistols (8x32kg, 8x32kg, 8x32kg)*
3a. Wall Walk/BackBridge (2, 2, 2)
3b. Splits (20s, 20s, 20s)

The pistols are hurting after the fact! Even though this was a deloaded workout. On the upside, the wall walks felt pretty easy so I doubled up on them (and still had plenty left in the tank).

It was a fantastic day with blue skies, so I finished off with some handstands and cart-wheels outside. Spring has sprung.

* The weight shown is achieved by offsetting BW (83kg) using an O/H cable machine. So I set the machine to assist with a weight of 50kg.

Did Cooking Make Us Human?

Tonight's episode of Horizon should be a good one:

• We are the only species on earth that cooks its food - and we are also the cleverest species on the planet. The question is: do we cook because we're clever and imaginative, or are we clever and imaginative because our ancestors discovered cooking?}
  
  Horizon examines the evidence that our ancestors' changing diet and their mastery of fire prompted anatomical and neurological changes that resulted in taking us out of the trees and into the kitchen.

It is usually available on iPlayer.

Volume Wk1 W/O1

The 12-8-4 pyramid phase has come to an end. I cannot really tell much of a difference in my body composition - I am still very happy with it. Did I lose fat? Dunno. I know I did not gain any. W3 was an instinctive rest and W4....well I got sidetracked in to reassessing my 1RM and 8RM.

I am going to move in to a period of focusing on volume for the next eight weeks. I intend to gradually ramp up my numbers.

The plan is five day split ABABAB. There is alternation between focus on upper body and lower body. The three sections above will fall on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This routine constitutes a bit of a throw back to my gym monkey days, but I need to get a handle on my strength gains and work capacity. This is to drive my ever lagging planche work......!

During the BAB week where I undertake two lower body focused sessions, I will throw in some freeform leg work (play oriented) rather than doing a more formal leg training session. This will involve jumping or some such activity (I guess). The weights above for things like MUs require a ballast system. The numbers will not be exact.

The first workout:

Warm Up (5 mins)
Main (30 mins)
1a. Sprinting (10s, 10s, 10s)
1b. Planche (5x2s, 5x2s, 5x2s)
2a. Ring Routine to Chins (kg) (8, 8, 8)
2b. Cuts to Splits (3x1 each way)
2c. Fingerboard (5x1, 5x1, 5x1, 5x1, 5x1, )
3. Handstand Straddle (Play@LGKF for time)

A 'light/deloaded' phase.