4-28

Circuit day
4 times through, 15 reps each:

Push Up
Reverse Lunge from Deficit
Roman Chair Sit Up
DB Fly
Bulgarian Split Squat
Reverse Curl
DB Row

Pilot Speed - Wooden Bones

Everyone has an opinion on what makes a great album; some say it's the inclusion of several big hits and some others might say that it's the ability to keep your feet thumping through every track.

Toronto-based Pilot Speed does both on Wooden Bones. Since I'm not really a radio guy, I get the rare opportunty to select what I think would be the hit singles myself. Because of this, it's always a pleasant surprise when a band can turn that into a tough decision.

There are only a few weak tracks on this album, but to say they are weak is only due to comparison to high standards set by the first four tracks: Put the Phone Down, Light You Up, Bluff, and Ain't No Life. If I had to choose, I would most likely have placed Light You Up as my first radio single, but it turns out that Pilot Speed has already chosen Put the Phone Down in that spot. I like both, but I think the chorus and driving beat of Light You Up separates it from a slightly repetative Put the Phone Down.

Pilot Speed's lyricist and frontman, Todd Clark, tends to drag you into his record at will. His voice is slightly airy, comes with a rasp at times and is always emotionally-charged (see the last minute of track #10, Wooden Bones). The band tends to pull from a Keane or Coldplay vibe in their more piano-driven tunes, but Clark's voice quickly reminds you that you're listening to something a bit more raw.

If I had to recommend three tracks?
- #2 Light You Up
- #3 Bluff
- #10 Wooden Bones

I'm not big into dropping arbitrary numbers around, but I'd rate this in the A-range along with their other albums: "Into the West" (Released in Canada as "Sell Control for Life's Speed") and "Caught By the Window" (When the band was known as "Pilate").

4-27

Legs today
Squats
185x6
225x6
225x6
225x6

Still missing some explosion on the way back up on the squats... hope I can remedy that.

Rack Pull
225x6

Then decided just to do deads....
245x6
275x5
295x4
Then Jim maxed at 330, I got pissed it was more than mine and threw on 350... Did it, then Jim did it too. Good joooooorb, Jim!

4-26 - Castle Crashers, Bacon Explosion, New Plants

Bench Press
185x7
205x5
205x5
205x4
4x4 Chin Up (BW+30lbs.)
3x8 Suspended Inverted Row Superset with
3x6 Dumbbell Bench (with my new 90lbs. dumbbells.... pretty heavy, but doable)
3x8 Dumbbell Row (this was sort of stupid... did 90's, then 60's because I didn't think I was using good tech., then did 105 on the EZ Curl) superset with
3x10 Dumbbell Shrug (90lbs. dumbbells)
Finished up with some curls, kickbacks, reverse crunches and planks.

I downloaded this sweet new game on XBox arcade called Castle Crashers. You can play up to 4 players and it sort of has that Golden Axe feel from the arcades in the 90s. It's got some fun medieval trance music going on throughout the gameplay, and there's a role-playing element to it with character customization that's pretty cool..

Looking forward to the Alumni game this weekend. We're going to attempt the Bacon Explosion Sunday morning... We'll probably do the oven recipe though, but it looks delicious!

Bri and I also went over to the Franciscan Monestary by my house to buy some vegetables and herbs for the extra space in the yard. Who knows how this will work out, but from their limited selection (we went on Sunday of the weekend sale) we picked up some little herb that smelled like bacon (can't remember the name, but it's not one you eat), Parsley, two spaghetti squash plants, and a pumpkin plant. We'll see how all that goes... The vegetables should be interesting with the dog wanting to dig up the yard...

4-23

Legs today... We did a circuit 4-21 that included two sets of 20 minutes:

Push up
Pull Up
Roman Chair Sit Up
Inverted Row
Lunge
Rear Delt Raise (I don't really know what this thing is called)

Reverse Lunge from deficit
Back Ext
Skull Crusher
Bicep Curl
Single Leg Romanian Deadlift
Med Ball V-Ups

Todays workout looked like this:

Box Squat 5x4 (I did 195 for 4 sets and 205 for the last... First time doing box squats...)
Speed Deadlift 10x3 (all reps were fast and done with 165lbs.)
Bulgarian Split Squat 4x6 (50lbs. DB's in each hand)
Reverse Crunch 3x15
Plank 3x30sec.

And ended with a round of disc golf on campus...

Lifting Breakdowns

I found this on www.t-nation.com in one of their articles. It's supposed to be a breakdown of where a well-balanced lifter should be. It definitely makes me seem a little out-of-proportion. Here are the percentages:

Deadlift — 100%
Back squat — 71.4 %
Bench press and pull-up — 55.6 %
Front squat and close-grip bench press — 50 %
Hang clean — 45 %
Dumbbell bench press (two dumbbell total) and one-arm row (two dumbbell total) — 43 %
Push press, jerk, and dumbbell incline bench press (two dumbbell total) — 40 %
Dumbbell overhead press (two dumbbell total) — 32.5 %
Hammer curl (two dumbbell total) — 31.5 %
Dumbbell curl (two dumbbell total), barbell curl, and dumbbell overhead triceps extension (one dumbbell) — 30 %
Bulgarian squat (weighted) — 27.5 %
Lunge (weighted), split squat (weighted), and press-down — 25 %
E-Z bar skull crusher — 24 %
Dumbbell skull crusher (two dumbbell total), preacher curl, and concentration curl (two dumbbell total) — 22 %
Seated calf raise and pec fly (two dumbbell total) — 20 %
Single-leg Romanian deadlift (one dumbbell) and standing calf raise (one dumbbell) — 13 %

So, basically, based on my deadlift, the lifts should be:
Deads - 325
Back Squat - 232
Bench and Pull - 180

Based on Squat, they should be:
Deads - 370
Back Squat - 265
Bench and Pull - 206

Based on Bench:
Deads - 450
Back Squat - 320
Bench and Pull - 250

Damn, my legs suck. I should've linked the article in, maybe I'll find it again later. You should check your numbers and see what you come up with. I guess my ideal plan would be to get to the numbers based on my bench!

4-20

Maxed on squat and deadlift today... Here are the numbers:

Stills
- 325lbs. Squat
- 315lbs. Deadlift

Alan
- 265lbs. Squat
- 325lbs. Deadlift

Like I said... need some work on the squats, but we're posting somewhat better numbers than we expected.

4-19

Before I go into today, I'll just mention that we did a nice, short, 23-mile ride yesterday at Sligo. It went pretty well, but I need to be able to finish a short ride like that a little stronger.

Today we decided to max out a few lifts. Bench and 3RM on Chin-up.

I pushed 250lbs. on the bench and pulled BW+60lbs. 3 times on my chin-ups.
Stills did 200lbs. and 15lbs, a good start. Hopefully I'll be able to post better numbers for both of us in a month or so.

We did a quick workout afterwards:
Shrugs
10x155lbs.
10x175lbs.
10x175lbs.
Superset with Inverted Row
3x10xBW

Then, Prone Trap Raise
3x10x10

DB Shoulder Press
3x6x50lbs.

Close-Grip Bench
3x8x145lbs.

DB Hammer Curl (Turning palm flat on negative portion of lift)
8x35lbs
2x10x25lbs. (I thought I picked up the 30's for the first set, so I dropped to 25's for the second! WHoops!)
Superset with Roman Chair Sit Up w/6lbs Med Ball
3x12

It went ok today. I was a little tired, so I think my workout might have reflected that a bit... We'll max our leg lifts tomorrow and see how that goes.

CUA Alumni Game 2009

The game is currently scheduled for 4:00 p.m., Sunday, May 3rd on the turf field at the Dufour Center.

I wanted to just go ahead and post a couple clips from last year's game to get people excited. Here are the first two:





Enjoy!

4-16

Good workout yesterday... Did lower body (Going to start posting weight so I can keep track of it).

Warmed up with 3x15 40lbs. DB Swings and 3x10 Step up into reverse lunge w/body weight - superset
Back Squats (I said I need a lot of improvement, but feel free to laugh a bit if you need to...)
8x135lbs
8x185lbs.
6x205lbs.
5x205lbs.
5x205lbs.

Deadlift (first time doing these as part of a regular workout, sort of had to dial it in)
8x115lbs.
8x165lbs.
8x195lbs.
6x215lbs.

Walking Lunge (60lbs.) and Back Ext. (25lbs.) - Superset
Suspension Leg Curl and Roman Chair Sit up - Superset

Then I was wondering about 3RM in Chin up so I had to try it with the 45lbs. plate... Pulled off 6 reps with BW+45lbs.!

And we're done! Hoping to start pushing a little more weight in the next few weeks...

In other news, I've been pretty much on target in The Bigger Dance so far. 2 surprises for me: Jessica Simpson somehow pulls off an upset against Beyonce and Penelope Cruz (I have her in my final 4!) barely squeaks by Anne Hathaway, 32-31.

Most of the first round has been blowouts so far, but I feel like I have a few more losses coming... I did pick Erin Andrews over Bar Refaeli after all...

Music Reviews

I'm thinking I'll have quite a bit more time on my hands once my capstone paper is turned in, and I want to start to do some CD reviews... I've got a few that are coming in the mail: Nada Surf - Lucky, The Kinks - Konk, Bell XI - Blue Lights on the Runway, and Tool - 10,000 Days, and I think it would be sweet to do a song by song review of each.

Of course, I'm probably not down with all the proper lingo and musical references most professionals use, but I think I'll give it a shot. Hell, I read Paste magazine, I'm sure I've picked up a thing or two.

4-14 Circuits

Stills, Frodo, and I did a pair of 20 minute circuits for some cardio yesterday:

Warm-up:
3x20 dumbbell or kettlebell swings

#1
Reverse Lunge from deficit
Sit up on Roman Chair
Good Morning
DB Row
Med Ball taps
DB Lateral Raise

#2
Step up and reverse lunge
Back Ext
EZ Curl Pullover
Floor Wipers
Suspension Push Ups
DB Front Raise

Yup, pretty sweaty, good stuff....

Bigger Dance

So I read Templon's blog about The Bigger Dance and I just felt motivated to start a bigger discussion here... I know the final results will speak for themselves, but I had some thoughts about who really got snubbed here..

I can honestly say I was surprised by some of the women here. I mean, Lisa Gangel (just plain ole plain... Top 64?!?), Rebecca Stevenson (they have two pics of her... one is old and stuffy and the other is from when she was 15), and Leryn Franco (Her face is way outplayed by her body...)?!?

Anyway, they could've really mixed in some good match-ups! Why didn't Heroes stars Kristen Bell and Hayden Panettiere face off? What about Danica Patrick and the very obviously snubbed Jordana Brewster of Fast and Furious Fame (Or, Jordana vs. Strahovski...battling for Chuck!)? Obama Girl Amber Lee Ettinger should've had a chance to dominate (absolutely destroy is more like it) Sarah Palin... Why couldn't SI swimsuit cover Bar Refaeli knock out Brooklyn Decker (and she sure would based on that cover)? Or, my personal fav, Jennifer Connelly (girlfriend of the Hulk) get put to the test against Eva Mendez (girlfriend of Ghost Rider)?

Seriously though... what a messed up competition. Here are my final four:
Carrie Underwood
Kate Beckinsale
Alessandra Ambrosio
Penelope Cruz (who somehow was knocked out by Panetteire last year???)

With the bloodthirsty Beckinsale winning it all against Underwood!

Wesley Willis

A little random, but I thought I'd share with folks who don't get too uptight about cringe humor...

I was listening to some Tool in my music library this weekend and ran across a song that was improperly labeled as one of Tool's... It was actually Wesley Willis. For those of you who don't know this guy, read the wikipedia entry on him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Willis

He became really popular in the 1990s and had a cult following of sorts... If you don't want to read the wiki, here's a pretty brief overview: Willis was a schizophrenic who was a musician and painter in Chicago. Basically all of his music was recorded with keyboard background music. You know, the stuff where you hit a button and it just plays accompaniment to a single chord? Well, he recorded like 1000 songs before he died. His stuff is pretty nuts, but a lot of it has some truth to it. One of my favorite Willis lines from his song "Cut the Mullet": "Take your ass to the barber shop, tell the barber that you're sick of looking like an asshole." Pretty funny stuff.

If you can avoid most of the cringe-enducing songs, it's actually fairly entertaining...

Here's a link to a site where you can check out a few of his mp3s... http://www.alternativetentacles.com/bandinfo.php?band=wesleywillis.

Surprisingly enough, you can also find him on iTunes.

The end of Easter Weekend (Post #100!)

So, the weekend ends... It was a ridiculously long weekend of Halo 3, Capstone research/writing, and working out...

I'm now sitting at 20 pages on my paper (if you count the 2 attachments I'm at 26), and I need to have 25-30 to be done with it. There are still some small details to finish up, but I'm feeling pretty good about where I stand right now. I should have it in the mail and to my prof. by April 22.

Stills got back from vacation earlier enough for one more workout:

Bench Press 3x10
Chin Up 5x5-6 w/10lbs. extra
Inverted Row and Single Arm DB Bench - Superset
Single Arm Shoulder Press and DB Fly - Superset
Reverse Curl and Plate Drill (call it what you want, moving a plate around your head...) - Superset
DB Kickbacks and Curl - Superset

I felt pretty good about the workout, but I still feel like I should be doing some more weight on the bench. I did sets of 10x185, 5x205 (and then repped out 4 more with a few seconds in between each) and 5x195 because I was pretty much spent from the 2nd set. I'm wondering if I should stick with sets of 4-6 or if I should drop the weight some and keep with the longer sets... I'll have to think on that a bit, but it probably doesn't help that I'm only doing 50lbs with the DB bench stuff. It's definitely too light for me, but bigger dumbbells are so damn expensive!

Ah well, circuits tomorrow and lower body again on Thursday.

D-III Nationals 2009

Well, I don't think I've ever posted twice in a day, but I guess there's a first time for everything... First times like these are meant for 5-day weekends when the gf's off visiting siblings in Lake Tahoe...

Anyway, I just saw this thread on R.S.D. about D-III Nationals and I'd thought I'd paste their rankings here.. Check it out:

D-III Nationals - Top 25
1) 1443 Las Positas
2) 1421 North Park
3) 1384 Truman State
4) 1289 Missouri S&T
5) 1188 Xavier
6) 1184 Reed
7) 1180 Rice
8) 1134 Rhode Island
9) 1130 Pacific Luthern
10) 1117 Dickinson (Lost to these guys by 2)
11) 1109 Chicago
12) 1089 Vassar
13) 1082 Colgate
14) 1074 St. John’s
15) 1003 Amherst
16) 987 Air Force
17) 978 Hope College
18) 972 Stonehill
19) 930 Grinnell
20) 902 Rose-Hulman
21) 900 Ohio Northern
22) 900 Bowdoin
23) 894 Salisbury (Lost to these guys by 4 and then by 1)
24) 891 Hanover
25) 872 Catholic
26) 865 Union
27) 851 RIT
28) 832 Lewis
29) 796 Kalamazoo
30) 794 Worchester Polytech
31) 745 Ohio Wesleyan
32) 726 Denison
33) 694 Swarthmore
34) 681 North Greenville
35) 617 Calvin
36) 572 Merchant Marine Academy
37) 559 Bryant
38) 369 Wilkes
39) 350 Earlham
40) 325 Cedarville
41) 289 Roger Williams
42) 181 SUNY-Potsdam
43) 0 Milwaukee School of Enginnering
44) 0 SUNY-New Paltz

The tournament offers bids to teams in two different ways... The first is for all D-III teams who make Regionals (not us). Those guys get automatic bids to the tourney. Teams who can't get out of the Section (definitely us) have to wait and see if there are wild card spots left for the tournament. Word is that it's going to be a 32 team tourney this year in Versailles. That would mean that we're in a prime position for a wild card bid if only 7 teams below us advance to Regionals.

I guess that's good news. Only problem is that we'll be a completely different team at D-III Nationals than we were at Sectionals. We're still working out who will and who won't be able to attend, but it looks like we'd be missing at least 4 players from our Sectionals roster. To be honest, I don't think I'd like to play this tournament down that many starters (yes, they are starters...), but we'll worry about that if we get the bid.

Legs 4-11

Kyle came to participate today... It's good to have someone drop by to keep me motivated. Here's the workout:

Squats 3x10
Leg Curl on Suspension 3x10 and Bulgarian Split Squat 3x10 - Superset
Reverse lunge from deficit 3x10 and Back Ext. 3x10 - Superset
One arm DB Clean (no press because of ceiling!) 3x10 and DB Swing 3x10 - Superset

Quick workout, but it felt pretty good. Got a good sweat out of the cleans and swings...

I'm a little embarrassed to mention the weight I'm squatting at this point, but I've been slacking on my legs... My summer goals include doing reps at or above my one-rep max on bench (currently 250lbs.). Hopefully I can push that to at least 250 if not 275lbs for 3x10 by the end of summer.

Nice glass of chocolate milk as a finisher! Now back to this capstone paper I'm working on...

Sectionals... I just can't forget you!

Every single time I blow my nose or wipe some sweat I remember this moment....

Workout/Rehab time

Now that Ultimate season is basically over with/slowing down, it's time to start hitting the weights a little harder and time to let my left heel and right shin repair themselves (unconfirmed, but I think the shin might be a stress fracture... it's kept me up a few nights since our last tournament).

I was a little hesitant to mention that I'm doing my second circuit workout of this week, but I heard some information yesterday that made me feel better about not being 100% over the soreness from last weekend. I would only feel guilty because I should start hitting the legs harder now that I'm not prepping for a tournament every weekend. Anyway, I was told that I played 135 of our 161 points this weekend! Now I don't feel so bad about walking around like an old man...

Anyway, I just hooked up some new weight equipment... I've been hearing about this TRX stuff for a while and I figured I could do something cheaper in my basement gym, so I went to Home Depot and bought 2 lengths of chain, a couple carabiners (to adjust the lengths), and 2 short lengths of hose for handles and created my own suspension system. I'm pretty excited because it means I can add that to the workouts for an added boost to the core.

So here's the circuit for today:
Reverse lunge from deficit (basically, reverse lunge with your front leg elevated)
Back Extension
V-Ups w/Med. Ball
Stiff Leg Deadlift w/Shrug
Close grip bench press
Bulgarian Single leg Split Squat
Inverted Row (on the chains)
Kettlebell Swing
Push Ups alternating hands on a medicine ball

I think we'll probably go for 25-30 minutes with 10 reps at each exercise... I think Jim's joining me today, so maybe I'll think of a second set to punish him with once we're done with this one.... hmmmmmmmm.....

College Sectionals 2009: The Last One?!?

Well, that's it. I'm sort of done with the college series at this point... I only say that because I technically have another year of eligibility that's still hanging around, but I don't really think I'll be using it. It was a tough year overall, but I think we ended on a good note.

Here's the final tally from Sectionals:
L v. Johns Hopkins 8-9
W v. Maryland B 8-5
W v. Delaware B 13-1
L v. George Washington 3-13
L v. Salisbury 9-13
W v. George Mason 16-15
W v. St. Mary's 13-8
L v. Salisbury 13-14

We ended the year (so far, we have 1, possibly 2, more tournaments to play) with a 15-8 record and an 8th place finish at Sectionals.

I keep trying to tell everyone to not have regrets about how things went this year, but I'm continually forced to discuss the things that went wrong for us. Since that's the case, I'm going to tell you the one goal I'm sad I was unable to accomplish. I had really hoped to be able to bring this team to Regionals, but now that I've told you that, I'll tell you about a few things that did happen:

- We beat Penn State in 2008.
- 1st place at Cupid's Revenge in 2008.
- 2nd place at IUP Nutbuster in 2009.
- Two games that stand out above all others were against Carleton-GOP at D-III Nationals in 2008 and against Carleton University at Delaware's SHOWdown in 2007. Although we lost those two games, our offense was the most in sync it has ever been. Not to mention the spirit in those games was mostly unmatched in some of our other big games (PSU being one of them...).
- Although our team as a whole doesn't work as hard as most, I think we have one of the hardest workers in college ultimate on our team. Thanks for all of your hard work, Frodo. I'm constantly encouraged by your work ethic and I hope that everyone else can find motivation from it in the future.
- Jess had one of the best catches I've seen from Bad Habit at SHOWdown 2008.
- Moustache's for Cancer. One of the best and worst fundraisers of all time.
- Round Robin Blooper Reel. Although it wasn't funny as it happened, it sure is hilarious to look back at.
- John has still not caught a Callahan.
- Ranjo's Callahan, seconds after Kyle shut off the video camera at HoTI 2008!
- I think Stills and I hooked up for 100+ scores in the last 3 semesters we played together.
- Jim and Dan started laying it out on defense.
- Members of Bad Habit beat members of Mamabird at Wildwood 2008.
- Coach Dave. Thank you for everything!
- "Fat" everything...
- Finding Arin's contact at Roll Call 2008

And that's about all for now... I guess I'll get back to work. Don't take this to mean that the season's over. Here's the remaining schedule:

CUA Alumni Game - May 3, Washington, DC
D-III Nationals??? - May 30-21, Versailles, OH

College Sectionals 2009

Pools are up: http://www.upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=18&id=5864

Getting prepped to break some seed tomorrow. Follow along on Score Reporter, I'll be updating after each game.

Get some, Habit!