• John Hackleman puts Chuck Liddel through some great workouts.
• Two running links: Art De Vany on sprinting, and an interesting piece on Clyde Hart (Michael Johnson and Jeremy Wariner's coach).
• Yet another good video attached to the CrossFit WOD. This one is Greg Amundson's warm-up. As a bonus, at the end they show you the Samson Stretch, which is a fantastic stretch. If you put your front foot far enough forward you get a great hamstring stretch on one leg, and a great hip flexor stretch on the other leg. And you feel it in a bunch of other places as well.
• A ballboy's story. Don Mattingly: "Great to meet you, Matt. I have a very big job to ask of you. I just unpacked all my bats from spring training and I don't know if it was the altitude of the flight from Florida or the humidity down there, or what, but all my bats came up short. The game starts in about two hours and I need you to find me a bat stretcher."

Another excellent Crossfit video linked to from the WOD: the air squat. I really must resume my hamstring stretching program.

The New Yorker is running a piece on Parkour titled No Obstacles. I only skimmed the first page, as I'll read it full when my print edition arrives, but this paragraph leapt out at me:

The video of Belle that traceurs seem to find most compelling, judging from how often they mention it, is one in which he crashes into a cement wall. I have found it on YouTube, using "David Belle fall" as the search term. Belle is attempting to leap over a double-wide ramp that leads to an underground parking garage. The ramp is enclosed by cinder-block walls, about three feet high. Belle arrives at a run from the left. He lowers his hands but they appear to miss the first wall entirely; he seems to be looking at where he means to land. Incredibly, while aloft, he turns, so that his shoulder, not his head, strikes the opposite wall. Ten feet beneath him, at the bottom of the ramp, a cameraman is lying on his back in order to shoot from below. Belle manages not to land on him. His first gesture is to see if the cameraman is all right. Then he begins walking briskly up the ramp. Toward the top, he turns and can be seen to be grinning.

I hadn't seen that video, so did a quick search and found it easily. Then I went back and watched this popular video of Belle. It's much harder to watch without cringing now, as you really appreciate how death-defying the building-to-building leaps are. A similar slip—a slip I now know he has in him—at those heights... Shudder.

Anyway, happier thoughts: I really like this commerical and this one.

One of the most interesting things I've read in weeks: if Joshua Bell played a DC metro during morning rush hour, would anyone notice?

Google just launched My Maps, which provides a nice interface for creating your own custom maps with shapes, placemarks, etc. Idris posted the idea of using this as a tool for creating field maps.

Cool idea, I'm going to do this for our various pickup locations. I just played with this for five minutes, and it's really nice. You can draw fields. You can stick in placemarks, which users can click on to get the "directions to here" command. One thing: when you share the link, make sure you use the "Link to this Page" link. If you use your "My Maps" link then stuff like the Zoom and View (map, satellite, or hybrid) are not shared with the user, and the tool just zooms in as close as possible while still displaying all your custom objects (which is no good around here, since we live in the sticks and Google doesn't have imagery at that resolution).

Anyway, here's the result of my five minutes of fiddling.

Just a little diversion for you: talk about awkward moments in sports!

T-Nation is running a great article, Strength Exercises That Work Your Core. Forgive their customary T&A shot (if that sort of thing bothers you); the exercises are excellent, and the embedded video demos are very helpful.

Generally I find exercise research fairly straightforward, and nutrition research a quagmire. My recent readings on soy are no exception. First, I read this T-Nation article, The Soy Conspiracy, which certainly sounds damning. It's an interview with Kaayla Daniel, author of The Whole Soy Story. But then Syd Baumel's critique of the book gave me pause. Especially since he's not one-sided, as evidenced by his piece, Should We be Scared of Soy?. I don't eat too much of it anyway, so you're on your own deciding this one. :-)

This is devolving into a link blog. That's okay though, as I feel like I've covered most of what I want to cover (check the guide and the archives). As I try new stuff I'll post it, but until then...

• Gregg's favorite exercise is one of my favorites too. The difference between us is that he uses kettlebells instead of DBs, and he includes pictures.
• There are some great ideas (and workout names) in this Crossfit thread, Hardest Metcon Workouts ("metabolic conditioning").
• With the outdoor season right around the corner here in the NE, it might be worth having a look at this article on preventing quad soreness.
• Patrick Beith: Summer Training for Speed (and Part II).
• Finally, Dispelling The Top 10 Nutrition Myths (update: this guy slams this piece; update 2: see discussion below).

Two interesting posts that might seem unrelated, but they both say the same thing: you are not stuck with the hand you're dealt. Read on:

• The Genius in All of Us has a nice post up on "the nature and nurture of muscles."
• Jason Ferruggia interviews Patrick Beith: Speed Training Secrets.

A few of the links that caught my eye recently:

• All Around Strength posts a nice collection of back exercises.
• Static stretching still has its place: Jason Ferruggia on stretching.
• It doesn't get much simpler, and I bet it works: simplefit.org.

I recently discovered that four quarter-inch (1/4") neodymium disc magnets (“rare earth” magnets) will not only fit nicely inside the body of a Bic pen, but they are strong enough to hold both the pen and a shopping list to my refrigerator:

Perfect! The list and the pen will always be right where I want them. And I can just use scrap paper for lists instead of buying ridiculous magnetic notepads. I had disc magnets on hand, but I bet a cylinder magnet would be a great choice as well. You might have to trim a bit off the ink sleeve to make room for the magnet in the barrel (hasn’t leaked on me yet, even when you trim down to where there’s still ink).