It’s been a minute since my last post, and I don’t have anything particularly profound to say about the Mavs-Heat series or anything else (the draft is tonight…maybe that will spark my creative juices or something) so I figured I would do a couple of quick-hitters again.
- 195 lb. isn’t usually considered a common benchmark for the bench press…225 lb., 300 lb., even 185 lb. or 200 lb., but 195 lb? It’s not exactly a nice, round number, so why is it a number of interest to me? Well, when our gym just recently installed a standard bench press station, it gave me my first opportunity to use a “real” bench (not a Smith machine or any other hybrid workstation) in probably 4 years. For the entire 3 previous years we had belonged to this gym, they had no such bench press station, and the year prior to that while at the gym we previously belonged to I was nursing an injured shoulder that prevented me from benching. Anyway, 195 lb. was my previous 1-rep max 4 years ago. I’ve sustained some other injuries since then that might have taken away some potential strength, but I’ve also upped my weight from 165 lb. to between 190-195 lb. as well. Even though probably 95% of guys who take weight training even somewhat seriously can bench 195 lb. easily, that number will still always carry a little extra significance for me. For that reason, as I try to reach new 1-rep maxes, whenever I cycle through a day at 195 lb. it triggers a little mental footnote in my head. So, while it wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire, when I was able to do 3 sets of 3 reps each (9 total reps) yesterday at 195 lb. without much difficulty, it reminded me of the progress I’ve made, as back in college 1 total rep for the whole day at that weight pretty much did me in…unfortunately, it also served as a reminder of what I still need to do to get where I eventually want to be. In other words, there’s more work to be done.
- Somehow 2 of my most recent posts involve me discussing the trials and tribulations of my Madden franchise…talking about Madden that much is probably sad and pathetic, but the only people who read this are me and occasionally Krissy, so who’s kidding who here? Anyway, I was given a little bit of false hope as I followed up a 0-16 rookie season with a still terrible but slightly better 2-14 season the following year. That false hope was extinguished pretty quickly early on in my 3rd season, as I’ve stumbled to something like an 0-10 start, and I’m not even sure if I’ve kept any of those games that close either. I believe there are 3 main reasons for this. 1st, my schedule has been ridiculously hard, as I think I’ve only faced 1 team under 0.500. 2nd (and this is something that happens in real life too), as I have begun to plug up certain holes on the roster, other holes have emerged as players have aged, gotten injured, regressed, etc. The prime example of this right now is Donovan McNabb, who even when I call the perfect play and end up with a wide open receiver is routinely spraying the ball 5-10 yards away from wherever the intended target is…sounds eerily familiar I know, but as I’ve mentioned before there isn’t much room for error against the super-human All-Madden CPU’s. The 3rd thing is that I’ve officially decided that I hate Mike Shannahan’s playbook. In Madden ’11 at least (maybe real life too), it’s stale, vanilla, and unimaginative. Maybe I would feel the same way about any playbook after using it for about 54 games, but it just seems like I could do better. Anyway, I finally broke down and started a franchise on All-Pro as well. I will keep the All-Madden franchise too as I do think it has helped me get better, but a guy can only be bludgeoned so much without any positive reinforcement. Case in point: in my 1st game in my new All-Pro franchise I promptly won 13-0 and unlocked a gamer achievement in the process for the 1st time in about 4 months.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Calorie Deficit
By now I should know not to I believe everything I read…especially online. This is especially true with fitness-related stuff, as you never know when the next training or dieting craze will emerge. One site that I at least semi-trusted before was AskMen.com. Most of their fitness stuff is low-level to mid-level, but generally speaking it’s usually pretty good. Today I started reading an article from that site that – get this – made note that the average adult male should consume at least 1,200 calories a day…meaning that some dudes out there are in fact at that minimum level, which seems absolutely crazy to me! I am not a huge guy by any means, but I am in decent shape, and at the very least I am a pretty active person. So, with that being said, maybe me daily caloric intake is slightly higher than the average dude. Still, I feel like I eat maybe 1,200 calories per meal (averaging snacks into meals), not a day. Krissy is constantly trying to lose a pound or two (despite my protests), and as a result one of the things she does is count her calories. Being extremely active as well, she normally burns between 2,600-2,800 calories a day, and consumes between 1,600-1,800. Even when she is at the high end of that, she is usually fighting herself from grabbing a late night snack because 1,800 calories (plain and simple) just isn’t a lot of food to eat in one day. If she only ate 1,200 calories, I would be worried about her passing out somewhere during the day. As a guy, I naturally have more overall body mass and muscle than her, and if I even ate the 1,800 calories a day that she does, I think I would look like a stick figure. At 1,200 calories, I think I would keel over. Now, if I wasn’t going to the gym and playing ball regularly, my metabolism probably wouldn’t be as high, and, therefore, I wouldn’t have to eat quite as many calories a day. Still, based on my sex, age, height, and weight my resting metabolic rate is a shade over 2,000 calories a day…meaning if I just lied in bed all day without moving a muscle, in theory I would still need to consume 2,000 calories a day just to maintain my current weight. By the end of the day, I will probably have eaten about 2,700 calories (and that doesn’t even factor in any type of post-dinner snack). I once read somewhere else (again, not sure how credible the source was) that the human body has to consume at least 1,000 calories a day just to keep from going into starvation mode…being that 1,200 isn’t that far off, I can’t see that being a healthy option for anyone, even if they are trying to drop a couple of pounds.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Driving Like Goofy
I’m a shade over 26 years old, which means that I’ve been driving for around 10 years now, and yet I’ve never had any type of traffic/moving violation. Now, 10 years isn’t exactly a huge sample set (God willing, I could be driving for another 50years), but I think it goes without saying that your average Joe (or Jill) probably drives faster in their teens and 20’s than in their 30’s, 40’s, and beyond. So, I think the fact that I had managed to make it this far without getting a speeding ticket is kind of amazing…fast forward to this past Saturday, when Krissy and I got pulled over on the way to the gym.
There aren’t too many sinking feelings quite like seeing a police car pull off the shoulder as soon as you pass by, followed by seeing the red and blue flashing lights in your rear view mirror. As I pulled off into the shoulder, I knew I was had. The section of road we were traversing goes from 30 mph to 40 mph to 55 mph in only about a mile. Going in the opposite direction, I usually am careful to drive slowly there because it’s an obvious speed trap. In the direction we were going, I usually don’t care as much, and I almost always speed up to about 60 mph before the 55 mph an hour sign. Anyway, as I said before I knew I was caught. If a cop happened to have been sitting in that exact spot, it was just pretty much up to his discretion how big of a dick he wanted to be…and this cop, while not necessarily a dick, decided for whatever reason not to let me off easy. With a spotless driving record up until that point and cited for only driving 55 mph in a 40 mph zone (I didn’t think I was going above 52 or 53 mph, but then again I wasn’t paying that much attention either), I thought he could have possibly let me slide with a warning this one time.
When this officer approached our truck, he asked for my license and registration and asked the typical, “Any reason you were going so fast?” question. Later on, Krissy remembered a time her and her friend got pulled over, and Krissy made herself throw up on the side of the road to get out of the ticket…her friend told the officer that Krissy had her period, started to feel ill, and her friend was simply trying to drive to anywhere with a bathroom quickly so she wouldn’t have to throw up in the car. Somehow, it worked. In fact, Krissy has estimated that she has been pulled over at least a dozen times in her life, and has never – I repeat, never – gotten a ticket. That is quite a legendary streak if you ask me…and also some ridiculous sexism at work. Just goes to show that if a pretty girl bats an eyelash (or induces her own vomiting), she can get out of almost anything. My initial reaction was that if it had been a girl cop who had pulled us over I could’ve gotten out of the ticket…and yet because of the differences between how men and women think I don’t even think it would’ve worked like that. Anyway, my answer to the officer’s question was simply, “I don’t really have a good reason, sir…just lost track of how fast I was going and was maybe anticipating the speed limit bumping up to 55 mph.” I figured maybe shear honesty combined with being a first time offender might work out for me…yea…no…$90 and 2 points on my license. The points I can most likely get out of just by showing up in court and pleading “guilty with an explanation.” Still, it was a definite bruise to my ego. To add insult to injury, we were so close to the 55 mph zone where we got pulled over that I could have picked up a rock and hit the speed limit sign with it. And while my streak of going without a speeding ticket may point to me being a generally safe driver, it mostly points to my luckiness, as there have probably been 50 times that I could have gotten a ticket but never got stopped for one reason or another. In the end, just one more thing to chalk up to experience.
There aren’t too many sinking feelings quite like seeing a police car pull off the shoulder as soon as you pass by, followed by seeing the red and blue flashing lights in your rear view mirror. As I pulled off into the shoulder, I knew I was had. The section of road we were traversing goes from 30 mph to 40 mph to 55 mph in only about a mile. Going in the opposite direction, I usually am careful to drive slowly there because it’s an obvious speed trap. In the direction we were going, I usually don’t care as much, and I almost always speed up to about 60 mph before the 55 mph an hour sign. Anyway, as I said before I knew I was caught. If a cop happened to have been sitting in that exact spot, it was just pretty much up to his discretion how big of a dick he wanted to be…and this cop, while not necessarily a dick, decided for whatever reason not to let me off easy. With a spotless driving record up until that point and cited for only driving 55 mph in a 40 mph zone (I didn’t think I was going above 52 or 53 mph, but then again I wasn’t paying that much attention either), I thought he could have possibly let me slide with a warning this one time.
When this officer approached our truck, he asked for my license and registration and asked the typical, “Any reason you were going so fast?” question. Later on, Krissy remembered a time her and her friend got pulled over, and Krissy made herself throw up on the side of the road to get out of the ticket…her friend told the officer that Krissy had her period, started to feel ill, and her friend was simply trying to drive to anywhere with a bathroom quickly so she wouldn’t have to throw up in the car. Somehow, it worked. In fact, Krissy has estimated that she has been pulled over at least a dozen times in her life, and has never – I repeat, never – gotten a ticket. That is quite a legendary streak if you ask me…and also some ridiculous sexism at work. Just goes to show that if a pretty girl bats an eyelash (or induces her own vomiting), she can get out of almost anything. My initial reaction was that if it had been a girl cop who had pulled us over I could’ve gotten out of the ticket…and yet because of the differences between how men and women think I don’t even think it would’ve worked like that. Anyway, my answer to the officer’s question was simply, “I don’t really have a good reason, sir…just lost track of how fast I was going and was maybe anticipating the speed limit bumping up to 55 mph.” I figured maybe shear honesty combined with being a first time offender might work out for me…yea…no…$90 and 2 points on my license. The points I can most likely get out of just by showing up in court and pleading “guilty with an explanation.” Still, it was a definite bruise to my ego. To add insult to injury, we were so close to the 55 mph zone where we got pulled over that I could have picked up a rock and hit the speed limit sign with it. And while my streak of going without a speeding ticket may point to me being a generally safe driver, it mostly points to my luckiness, as there have probably been 50 times that I could have gotten a ticket but never got stopped for one reason or another. In the end, just one more thing to chalk up to experience.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)