Lean & Hungry Fitness

Pretty crazy, goalie Tim Howard’s goal. From the wide angle you wonder how the other goalie let that happen, but then there’s a side view replay and that thing is moving.

Nicely produced and impressive parkour video, with one guy doing it all on rollerblades. Very cool.

Another totally, totally awesome Danny Macaskill street trials biking video: Industrial Revolutions. The railroad tracks! The flip! The ROPE! Good god.

Sitting for long periods of time is looking pretty harmful. I’ve read other reports that suggests the 8 hours in the chair pretty much negates the hour in the gym, perhaps not for sports, but for long-term health (and for sports I’m sure the glute deactivation, hip flexor tightening, and back rounding don’t help). I have toyed off and on with the idea of a treadmill desk, but in the end I just don’t want to sink the money or space into a treadmill.

So a standing workstation has looked like a nice compromise, and today I put one together. I wanted cheap and easy, so I built something to sit on top of my workbench rather than my office desk, because the workbench is already higher, and I know I can build something that looks nice enough for the workshop, but not really nice enough for the office. Here it is:

Cost about $90, almost all of that in 3/4” pipe nipples (8) and floor flanges (12). The MDF shelves are 16” x 36” by 3/4”. The legs have a flange on one end and rubber feet on the other end, and the flanges screw into the bottom of the unit. The uprights between the first shelf and the second shelf have flanges on both ends. In all cases, you thread the flanges onto the pipes really tight and then you screw all the flanges to the shelves. The top shelf is set slightly to the back relative to the bottom shelf.

I don’t think I’ll want to stand all day, so I’ll probably move from my office to the workshop periodically.

Rock solid, very happy with it. Posting this from it right now.

P.S. I also bought this wireless keyboard/mouse combo ($45) to keep in the workshop, and this router ($70) to get better wireless coverage in my house. Pleased with both so far.

Ross Enamait, whose training products are my favorites, has a new double DVD set out on training the hands, neck, and core: The Missing Links. If you’re new to Ross, he walks the walk, total monster:

Tony Gentilcore turns in this great piece on improving your squat: Squat Like You Mean It. A bunch of useful mobility exercises that should help you (and hopefully me) get deeper.

Interesting piece on how detrimental all that sitting is to your health. Even if you exercise:

In 2009 Dr Peter Katzmarzyk and colleagues at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center published an influential longitudinal paper examining the links between time spent sitting and mortality in a sample of more than 17,000 Canadians (available here). Not surprisingly, they report that time spent sitting was associated with increased risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality (there was no association between sitting and deaths due to cancer). But what is fascinating is that the relationship between sitting time and mortality was independent of physical activity levels. In fact, individuals who sat the most were roughly 50% more likely to die during the follow-up period than individuals who sat the least, even after controlling for age, smoking, and physical activity levels. Further analyses suggested that the relationship between sitting time and mortality was also independent of body weight. This suggests that all things being equal (body weight, physical activity levels, smoking, alcohol intake, age, and sex) the person who sits more is at a higher risk of death than the person who sits less.

Time in the gym does not reverse time in the chair. Sounds like lots of breaks from sitting is the way to go, if not a treadmill desk.

My push to have donuts declared the Breakfast of Champions probably won’t get anywhere, so I’m turning to oatmeal. I’ve been loving two oatmeal dishes I concocted—Blueberry Pie Oatmeal and Egg Fried Oatmeal—and wanted to share them with you.

The Oats

Both dishes start with the oats. No quick or instant oats for us, it’s steel cut or nothing, and Bob’s Red Mill Steel Cut Oats are the way to fly. The only non-Scottish oat to win the Golden Spurtle, and the Scots know their oats. Yummy. They take awhile to cook though, so I usually make a big batch and then reheat each morning. They don’t seem any the worse the wear to me, but a Scot may beg to differ. Anyway, this makes me about a week’s worth:

1. Bring six cups of water to a boil.
2. Add 2 cups of oats (half the bag, so next time you can just add the other half) and half a teaspoon of salt to the water, stir, and reduce the heat to low.
3. 10 minutes later, stir.
4. 10 minutes later stir again and remove from the heat.

Eat some and put the rest in the fridge.

Blueberry Pie Oatmeal

Who doesn’t want pie for breakfast? It’s not really pie, but it tastes like a dessert and it’s all healthy stuff, and it’s ridiculously easy:

1. Stick a ripe banana in your cereal bowl and mash it up with a fork.
2. Add some Wyman’s frozen blueberries to the bowl. These, as near as I can tell, are a million times better than any other frozen blueberries.
3. Add some oatmeal (if leftover add some water) and heat in the microwave for a minute or two (depends on how much you’re making).
4. Stir in some cinnamon (I add a teaspoon) and eat.

Egg Fried Oatmeal

Much like you make fried rice with cold leftover rice, you make this oatmeal with cold leftover oats. Very easy, despite my making it look like a lot of steps:

1. Mince a garlic clove.
2. Start heating your pan.
3. Get out your cold cooked oats, vegetable oil, soy sauce, and 2 or 3 eggs.
4. Scramble the eggs in a bowl.
5. Wait for your pan to get hot enough.
6. Add a tablespoon or so of oil to the pan and swirl it around.
7. Saute the garlic for a few seconds. I tip the pan to the side and saute the garlic in the pooled oil, otherwise it burns.
8. Add the eggs and scramble.
9. While the eggs are still pretty wet add some oatmeal.
10. Pour soy sauce all over the oatmeal.
11. Stir fry, breaking up the oatmeal and eggs and just generally mix everything together real well. You can kinda flatten everything out and let it sit for a bit to make a little crust on the oats, before scraping it up, if you’re into that kind of thing.
12. When it’s hot enough for you and the eggs are cooked enough for you, stop cooking, put it in a bowl, and eat it.

Crazy interception, to not only have the awareness to make the attempt, but to also have the athleticism to pull it off:

Also note #85, who kinda watches the whole thing dumbfounded (not that I blame him) and then gets creamed as he stands there pondering. Best view of that is at 0:40.

Oh man, this is painful to watch.

Always a happy day when Ross Enamait posts a new training video, RossTraining.com Compilation II. Badass, as usual. He also has an accompanying post describing the equipment he uses.

The incomparable Jerry Rice on training and his awesome hill workout. He was such a joy to watch.

Nice, this fantastic catch by Andrew Fleming made SportsCenter.

I love these articles that underscore the huge gaps between pros and everyone else (and the gap between bona fide stars and workaday pros): author Nic Brown plays friend and tennis pro Tripp Phillips with the goal of winning a single point in a three-set match (well, two sets, really).

I’ve only been following the World Cup on my periphery, but after reading The Genius of Messi...

Messi simply does things — little things and big things — that other players here cannot do. He gets a ball in traffic, is surrounded by two or three defenders, and he somehow keeps the ball close even as they jostle him and kick at the ball. He takes long and hard passes up around his eyes and somehow makes the ball drop softly to his feet, like Keanu Reeves making the bullets fall in “The Matrix.” He cuts in and out of traffic — Barry Sanders only with a soccer ball moving with him — sprints through openings that seem only theoretical, races around and between defenders who really are running even if it only looks like they are standing still. He really does seem to make the ball disappear and reappear, like it’s a Vegas act.

… I had to find some video. There’s some real magic in there. The ankle-breaking direction changes look effortless, and all while controlling the ball so precisely. Really, great, even in small screen contextless clips. (via kottke)

Impressive parkour video from Damien Walters. (via conditioning research)

Great Nike commercial not made by Nike. Seeing Tiger in there is a little distracting, looks like this was made a bit before the meltdown:

(via ross)

Ross Enamait has a good post and video up demonstrating a variety of exercises you can do with a $5 pair of furniture sliders/gliders.

Amazing play by pitcher Mark Buehrle. Definitely worth sitting through the commercial MLB sticks you with at the beginning. (via kottke)

Interesting insights into why we need to dream. Get good sleep!