Fitness, Health, Diet, Crossfit, Weightlifting, Musings and fun. Please comment on what you read.
Beer your “Permanent Weight loss Solution”… I can’t help but think that they should give this girl a job doing governmental educational videos, she’d be great:
Farmer Giles wondered where all Daisy’s milk was going, mystery solved. It’s the look the cow gives the camera man at the end that cracks me up:
And there’s nothing like finishing with a double car crash:
As recommended by my friend Ian Sturrock, tonight I went for a 2 hour self defence class called Core Combatives (or C2 for short) in Cardiff. Run by Mick Coup, who has spent his career in the forces and various self protection roles.
Mick has a rather abrupt style and his colourful use of language certainly isn’t Sunday best, but he cuts straight to the point: what’s going to work in a real fight? From his lifetime of experience in martial arts he has condensed everything he’s been taught and gained first hand knowledge of, down to a very simple system of self defence.
So my first lesson consisted quite simply of this: Learning how to hit someone, in the head, hard, repeatedly! In essence that’s it. Everything else was pretty much poo poo’ed: neck strikes, body blows, jabs, kicks, keying, eye gouges, shin scrapes etc, much of the usual stuff “self defence” classes teach, all have their weaknesses it seems. The argument goes, that nothing is going to end a fight quicker, than knocking your opponent out, and that can be most effectively achieved by hitting the head, hard. And you keep going till the guy is no longer a threat.
I say “the guy” because the chances are you’ll be fighting a fella, but I have to say that I was most impressed with a woman who was in the class. At about 5 foot nothing, she had a pretty ordinary figure (i.e. she wasn’t some she-hulk or some super ripped gym junky, not even a typical Crossfit physique) yet she could pack one hell of a punch. Certainly if she’d been hitting me rather than the pads I was holding, she’d have knocked me on my ass with the first blow. If it can work for her, it can work for anyone.
Physically it wasn’t that hard. Sparing was most intense at the end and even 2 minutes of repeating hitting pads as hard as you can, is going to tire you out, and it did. It will be interesting to see how things develop, as I know that simple punches aren’t the only thing taught, however they are the mainstay: simple, short, and effective. Already I’m looking forward to next week.
I don’t know what happened to the blog this week, but I couldn’t login as administrator yesterday. I managed to fix that, though I don’t actually know how. Then I was told that comments weren’t working, somehow the option to force people to be logged in to comment was turned back on?!? Weird. It should be fixed now though.
This is quality, if only life was this simple, I can’t wait to try it out:
Last week was a relatively normal week: I left home on Monday morning for the working week away, went shopping Monday night for food for the week, went to work Tuesday, went to the gym Tuesday evening… all pretty normal. Until that is, on Wednesday morning I spotted something that was decidedly NOT normal!
My neck normally looks like this:
But on Wednesday morning whilst shaving, I noticed it instead looking like this:
Where the hell did that hickey come from?!? I couldn’t believe, what’s more I didn’t think my wife would believe it either! I go away for 5 days on business and come home with a mystery love bite on my neck, this I’m reliably lead to believe, is just not the done thing. This was seriously bad news in it’s own right, but even more so because I had no idea how it had happened.
After some thought and no small amount of panic, I came to the inescapable conclusion, that it was Crossfit’s fault. You see on Tuesday I’d been to the gym. Now I don’t actually follow the Workout of the Day (WOD) from the main Crossfit.com site, instead I do the previous day’s WOD from Crossfit Manchester, my regular gym back home. I do this because it guarantees an hours workout, it helps me to keep in touch with the members of the gym whilst I’m away, and I get an element of competition because I can see what weight / time my peers have done.
As it happens, the workout I should have done at Aspire Fitness (my Cardiff gym, more on them another day, I still owe them a setting the record straight post for erroneously calling them a “globo gym”, my bad) was this:
Deadlift: 5 – 5 – 5
Then 7 Rounds of:
- Run 200m
- 15 Wall Ball
- 10 Pull Ups
- 5 Push Press, 55kg
- Rest 1 min
But I’d done heavy deadlifts the last time I was there, and they don’t quite have the setup for things like wall balls. So instead I did this from the Crossfit Manchester WOD the Thursday before, which was:
Clean and Jerk: Doubles
Then:
- Run 860m
- 3 Rounds of;
— 5 Knees to Elbows
— 10 KB Swing
— 15 Box Jump
- Run 860m
There was my love biting culprit: the clean and jerk doubles. I’d worked up to 85kg and was getting pretty tired. I made a last effort for a 90kg double, I got the first one but it was an effort, I repositioned my grip on the bar, I set myself, I pulled for all I was worth, the bar was faster than the eye:
But I was trying too hard, was off balance, my legs were tired, I twisted slightly, over pulled, dropped under and promptly smacked myself in the neck with 90kg (200lbs) of Olympic Weightlifting bar! Not surprisingly, I didn’t make the clean and tried not to gag as I threw the bar away.
Still 85kg was respectable and I moved on to the rest of the workout.
You can see how it’s easily done, the above mid-clean photo was actually taken this weekend at Crossfit Manchester doing power cleans followed by front squats, here’s the bottom of the front squat position, which is where I would have been receiving the flying bar at the bottom of the clean (there’s 85kg on the bar in the pic):
And so there you have it. Doing Crossfit = doing clean & jerks with heavy weights = getting tired = hitting yourself in the neck = bursting a blood vessel = a dodgy looking bruise which gets you into trouble with the missus when you get home from a week away! Actually to be fair, I didn’t really get into trouble, well at least I don’t think so, yet….
This is such a simple gag: high fiving people on the underground (subway) yet I defy you not to smile watching this:
And this just makes me laugh: all about farting in public and the judicious application of the “test fart”:
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Last year I posted about raw milk (i.e. unpasteurized milk) and discussed whether we should be drinking it. It provoked an interesting response, including from an American anti-raw milk lawyer.
I decided to give it a try, but have been somewhat frustrated in my search for a unpasteurised milk supplier (often it’s called “Green Top Milk” here in the UK). I did find a farm in Cheshire (H S Bourne) who would sell it on demand at my local farmers market, but I ran into a stumbling block, because the farmer in question refused to let me see his milk safety / quality test results. Whilst he could claim till he was blue in the face, that his milk was clean and good, I’d be remiss both as a consumer, and parent, if I didn’t make every effort to ascertain that for myself. Especially as the Chief Scientist of the Food Standards Agency (the main dept in England for food safety) has likened unpasteurised milk to eating raw poultry!!
So that was a no go. I of course wondered what he had to hide? I have continued to look however and have now found another farmer, this one near Hereford, who sells green top milk and this farmer was prepared to send me a copy of his test results and discuss them openly. Even more amazingly, I’ve discovered the reason this farmer does so well in the bacteria tests, is that he is an ex British Army Biological Weapons Training Officer come ice cream farmer!
So as soon as I get the chance, I’m off to Hereford to stock up on some good quality raw milk and see if the hype is all it’s cracked up to be.
These videos are amazing, especially the fire breather. This is shot by a 1,000 frame per second camera:
This video is the opposite, it’s time lapse and very beautiful:
Last year I wrote about the Gurkha Justice Campaign and how some Gurkhas, after spending years in the British Army, are then denied the right to live in England. I believe this is deeply wrong and a severe mis-calculation of the public’s mood by the British Government.
In a nutshell, only Gurkhas who left the British Army after 1997 had an automatic right to settle in the UK. The Gurkhas for Justice Campaign successfully took the case to the High Court who ruled that Gurkhas who left before 1997 do have a right to settle in the UK. So I was pleased then when I heard that the government was going to be issuing new guidance. I was however completely appalled by what they published:
Permission to settle in the United Kingdom may be granted if you meet one of the following:
1) You spent at least three years continuous lawful residence in the UK during or after service;
2) You have close family settled in the United Kingdom with whom you enjoy family life;
3) You received a Level 1-3 Award for gallantry, leadership or bravery for service in the Brigade;
4) You completed 20 or more years’ service in the Brigade;
5) You have a chronic/long term medical condition which is attributable to, or was aggravated by, service in the Brigade.
Let’s take these points in turn:
1) How can a Gurkha, on active duty, ever spend 3 years continuously in the UK? And how can they after service, if they don’t have the residency that they are applying for?!? It’s an impossible point to meet.
2) Most Gurkhas don’t already have family in the country, they are recruited mostly from Nepal after all. That’s the point.
3) A level 1-3 medal is an extremely high bar (level 1 is the Victoria Cross), but even if it was less, you have to take extraordinary risks to be allowed in? Is a career of duty and service not enough?
4) Only the officers are allowed 20 years service, so this immediately discounts all the enlisted men.
5) So perhaps if you lose a leg, you’ll be allowed in?
It’s a disgrace. In my mind the situation is simple, any Gurhka who gives let’s say 10 years of their life, serving this country in the armed forces, in whatever capacity that happens to be, should more than qualify them for a right to settle here. I would welcome any Gurkha as a neighbour of mine. In fact, so annoyed was I, that when there was a vote in Parliament last week, I wrote to my MP for the first time ever. Here’s the letter:
Dear Andrew Stunell,
This is just a short note to ask you to support the Gurkha Justice motion on Wednesday 19th April (I believe). I have the greatest respect for the Gurkhas, who have supported our armed forces admirably for many decades.
I feel strongly that a Gurkha who has decided to put his life at risk by serving in our armed forces, he should have a right to settle in the country he has helped defend. They are clearly not work shy fops or freeloaders out for what they can get, they are a dedicated, respectful and hard working people. Please support this motion.
Yours sincerely,
Colin McNulty BEng(Hons) CEng MIET
I of course got no reply, but I did laugh when the vote was carried by 267 votes to 246, the first, first day motion defeat for a UK government for 31 years! The people have spoken Mr Brown, it’s time to listen and end this shame.