Spent an hour on the patio, gradually pushing my chair back, keeping in the sweet spot—in the shade but not in the puddle produced by the gutter—until my feet and shanks had been exposed to as much sun as I thought wise.
2020-08-08 12:50
Category: News
New kettlebell! 🏋🏻♂️
I finally got my new kettlebell!
Kettlebells have been completely unavailable since March, when all of a sudden nobody could just share the kettlebells at their fitness center, so everybody who used them went out to buy their own. I’d been looking around on-line every few days all through April, May, and June, checking at WalMart, and Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Amazon, and Onnit, all of which were perpetually sold out. But back on July 1st, I found a place via Amazon that had the size of kettlebell I wanted (53 lbs = 24 KG = 1.5 pood). It was expensive, but after waiting for months I was ready to pay up.
And yet, that was not the end of my story of woe. The package went to FedEx which said it would be delivered the next day. It made it as far as Ellenwood, GA, at which point they said it would be delivered in two days. But it never departed Ellenwood. On the day it was supposed to be delivered they claimed it would be delivered by the end of the day until it was the end of the day, at which point its expected delivery date changed to “Pending.” After two more weeks I contacted the vendor who said, “Oops, looks like FedEx lost it. We’ll send another.” And then exactly the same thing happened: It made it as far as Ellenwood, GA changed from “next day” to “two days” to “pending” and then stayed there.
But this time it didn’t vanish forever. FedEx eventually found it, and yesterday the FedEx guy muscled my 53 lb package up to my doorstep!
I’d been working out with kettlebells for maybe 4 years before the pandemic started, using the one kettlebell in the fitness room (the only one I had access to), which was 45 lb (= 20 kg = 1.25 pood). Over the first few weeks I’d worked up to doing 3×25 swings, which is probably enough to be a good workout for the posterior chain. Then I’d experimented with doing it as a HIIT workout and tried various alternative workout plans. For a while I was doing 30 seconds of work followed by 30 seconds of rest for (eventually) 10 rounds. Then I switched back to doing them in sets of 25 and had just worked my way up to 5×25 when we had to go into quarantine, and I lost access to the kettlebell.
After 4 months of not doing them, I was inclined to be quite careful about swinging this one, especially since this kettlebell is 8 lbs heavier. Yesterday by the time it’d arrived, I’d already had a beer, and I decided not to even try to swing my new kettlebell while even slightly under the influence.
Today though I got it out and did 6×10 swings, which was a pretty good workout.
I’m sure I’ll be able to work up to sets of 25 swings pretty quickly once again. Or maybe I’ll stick with 30-second intervals and go back to doing them as HIIT workouts.
Whatever I do, I’m delighted to have my new, heavier kettlebell!
2020-08-02 15:08
My workouts these days have tended toward circuits, and each circuit usually ends with a core exercise—often hollow-body holds. When I workout under the sycamore tree, this is what I see during that exercise. 🏋🏻♂️ #mbaug
2020-08-01 13:30
The immature Bald Eagles that I saw last year have grown up! You can’t see it, but I saw an adult Bald Eagle soar over this grassy area, then perch on that tall tree near the center. #mbaug
A much better run 🏃🏻♂️🏋🏻♂️
Looking at my “readiness” score for today I’m perhaps slightly less ready than I was five days ago, when I let my Oura ring mislead me into postponing a rest day in favor of some hill sprints.
In fact, I felt enormously better today, and my performance shows that. Today’s run was a bare one minute longer than my run at the beginning of the week, but I ran a full mile further:
[sgpx gpx=”/wp-content/uploads/gpx/Philip_Brewer_2020-07-31_08-49-32.GPX”]
I’m not sure there’s anything to learn from this. Maybe “don’t skip rest days” would be a good start. I’m sure “listen to your body” is always good advice. Whatever lame platitude you want to go with is fine with me. As for me, I’m just glad I got in a good run.
In other news, the replacement kettlebell for the one I ordered on July 1st, but which vanished into some black hole at FedEx’s Ellenwood, GA location, only to vanish itself in exactly the same way, seems to have been discovered, and is now supposed to be delivered next week! We shall see.
2020-07-20 13:58
Ran to Jones Park and did a couple of almost pull ups (chin to bar, but not over bar), brachiated just a bit, then ran on home. 🏃🏻♂️
#PolarBeat
2020-07-19 6:36
Taking my coffee out on the patio, watching the dawn light up the trees. A nice change from sitting at the computer.
2020-07-17 13:29
By @kategalliett, a useful tip:
“Interviewer once asked me ‘how long do you walk for’ when we were discussing the value of taking short walks during your day. I responded with ‘I walk until I notice something.’”
Dips!
I’ve been working on dips for a while, but not with great consistency until just the past three or four months.
For a long time I was doing bench dips (where you put your hands behind you on a bench, stretch your legs out in front of you with your heels on the floor, and then push with your hands to raise your hips up to the level of the bench), to try to get my triceps strong enough to do real dips. In the fitness room there are some bars that can be put on the squat rack so you can do bar dips. I wasn’t really strong enough to do a good bar dip, but I’d sometimes do partials or negatives.
For parkour, you want to do wall dips, but I don’t know of any good chest-high walls in Savoy, so I haven’t practiced those in a long time.
Since I got my gymnastic rings around the end of March, I’ve been working pretty steadily on ring dips. (Which are much harder, because while pushing yourself up you also have to be able to stabilize your body.)
I’ve been following pretty much the usual progression—working on just a ring support (where you hold yourself in the top position for a dip), on negative dips (where you just lower yourself), and on partial dips (where you lower yourself only part of the way down, and then back up).
I’ve been gradually increasing the range of my partials, and a few days ago I thought I was doing a full, proper dip. I wasn’t really sure though—there aren’t any mirrors out under the sycamore tree where I hang my rings. So today I got Jackie to come and video me, so I could watch what I was doing:
I think those first two—especially the second—are legit dips. (The third, of course, is just a negative.)
Minimal doomscrolling
The New York Times offers up a widely-shared article on doomscrolling, which prompts me to realize that I’m actually doing pretty well at staying away from that.
In large measure I credit my decision from right after the election to minimize my exposure to internet content designed to maximize my outrage. Outrage comes with its own little dopamine hit, which makes it a treadmill that’s hard to get off of, but I realized that it was a treadmill that didn’t suit me:
I’m going to follow fewer links—so often they go to articles calculated to produce outrage, and I don’t need more outrage. It’s a fine line, because there has been and will be much that is deserving of outrage. Yet: I do not worry that I will suffer from outrage deficiency.
I did pretty well at that, and I doubled down on it after coming across the ideas of (and then reading several books by) Cal Newport. His book Deep Work reminded me of the satisfaction involved in taking the time and putting in the energy to focus deeply on doing something important and doing it well. (I recommended the book at the time.) His book Digital Minimalism helped me understand the harm that comes from participating in the faux social interactions of social media (things that feel like social interactions, but aren’t—things like hitting “like” on a facebook post).
I don’t want to give an impression of smugness here. I’m certainly not holding myself out as a role model. I’m all-to-well aware that at every moment I’m only a few clicks away from leaping headlong down the rabbit hole of internet outrage. But I’m doing okay. I feel the outrage, but I’m not compelled to feed it. I tend not to share the posts that feed the outrage in others (while still sharing the ones that suggest ways to make things better, both individually, and across society).
Maybe one or another of those ideas would be helpful to you.