Stupid Traineo Retard Wednesday

It is time for another rendition of stupid traineo retards. Fear not, the time of New Years Resolutionerz is still at hand, and the message boards of traineo are rife with confused idiots. It is my job and right as an American to point them out and laugh at their misfortune and misplaced confidence. Even if it is just me that is laughing.

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Seriously, what's up with everyone getting debilitating knee injuries? Every other thread on this board is some whine-fest about how some 300-lb monstrosity tore out his ACL walking on the treadmill at 3 mph. Anyway, Jeff Bristow adds this pearly gem of wisdom

"If you are able to get a Gym membership maybe you could use the rowing machine to get some cardio in using your upper body."

...

Rowing is an upper body workout???



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Our next misguided simpleton is completely befuddled by the fact that 10 minutes on an elliptical at low resistance could not get his heart rate above 100. What a shocker.

"After 10 minutes of warmup, I checked my heart rate, barely over 100...WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?! I've checked another machine's heart rate, same thing.

THe bottom line is that for 25 minutes, I could NOT get my heart rate to 125 which is where I like to keep it for a really good sweat..."

...

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

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Monique is apparently an alien who doesn't require sugar to power her cells. She subsists on the tears of babies...babies crying at the sight of her.



"I also find that making little bets with my husband helps me to have more self control. For example, we used to have a deal that if I didn't eat sugar at all for two weeks at a time, he'd buy me a new book of my choice (I love to read). "

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Stephen doesn't just love to run....he loves while he runs.


"I have started to find my hands throb when I finish well from about the 50 minute mark and although its not painful its a wierd sensation I was wondering if anyone has experience of this before I bother a Doc."

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Release the Hounds, unsatisfied with the fact that he has no real-life friends, asks his internet buddies to jiggle his junk and congratulate him in running 3.1 miles in 36 minutes.



"...but I feel the need for just a bit of self-congratulation. I'm currently living a very hermit-ish lifestyle. All my close friends are spread across the country and I'm keeping my fitness kick a secret from them until I go on a cross country trip in a few months and can exhibit my new body in person. But enough with the introduction...

Today, I ran my first 5k! Ever!

(OK, OK, it was on the treadmill and it was at the blazing speed of 5mph/36 minutes, but still..) "
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Ahhhh Cliff.

Cliff wants to let people know that he could bench 225 (+, whatever that means) if he wanted to impress people, but ya know, he isn't in it for the ladies. Apparently he feels much better benching 125 lbs 18 times than he ever could benching 225 lbs, probably due to the fact that his single, half-way rep at 225 often falls on his face, mashing his face into oblivion.

Remind me to promptly stop lifting any heavy weight, as I probably can't master the "execution." Ronnie Coleman certainly got to his current stature by repeatedly curling 15lbs over the course of 7 hours.

This type of exercise is perfectly well and good if you want to end up looking like Lance Armstrong, but something about "Clifford Chinnn" makes me think that he is lacking the specific components in his exercise regime to ever achieve that goal.



"I can easily bench 225+ if I want to impress people, but since I don't care to, right now I'm repping 125-150 which could seem light to me (I come from a background of pretty intense lifting in the oh-so-distant past) but I could care less; at the end of my workout I've probably pushed myself a lot further at 150 than I would have at 225 since I could focus on proper execution.

You'd be amazed at how good a workout you can get doing arm curls with 15 lbs if you:
a) control the weights on the way up and down (I go 3 counts up and 3 counts down for each rep on curls)
b) force yourself to maintain proper form (no swinging your shoulders or trying to find momentum to carry the weight up)."

Stupid Traineo Retard Wednesdays

From the depths of the fitness abyss comes the first installment of the sham that is traineo. Zoidberg has hinted at past rants about this cesspool of self congratulatory circle-jerkers, but without evidence to back up the negative adjectives I so willingly thrust upon you, I am no better than them. Suffice it to say, most of my rants about the ineffectiveness of certain exercise regimens, diet fads, and neurological foibles stem 100% from the idiots that cavort about traineo. They lay heaps of praise on those who manage to run a mile in 14 minutes, or bench 85 lbs.

This excerpt is only a minor mistake, but it hints at two things that bother me on a core level.

1) The use of science as a metaphor. Science is not a metaphor, it is objective fact based on observation, theory, and proof.

2) The attack on my wondersubstance, caffeine.
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HOW TO AVOID THE 10 WORD ENERGY ZAPPERS



I'll summarize what that woman said:
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3. Caffeine. I'm sorry, but caffeine is the big lie. Don't hate me. It's simply the laws of physics. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Caffeine follows this law. Initially you will see a kick of energy from caffeine, but everyone pays the price later in terms of tiredness, insomnia, or irritability. This is obviously a personal choice, but there are many, including myself, who have improved their life by eliminating or decreasing their caffeine intake. Here is an article with both pros and cons to help you decide if you want to kick the caffiene habit.

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I always love it when stupid stupid people try and apply scientific theory to very specific, and completely unrelated circumstances. What this waste of life is trying to do is compare the consumption of caffeine to Newton's third law, which states:

"If a body impinge upon another, and by its force change the motion of the other, that body also (because of the equality of the mutual pressure) will undergo an equal change, in its own motion, toward the contrary part" (thanks wiki)

Now, besides the fact that Newtons 3rd law has been disproven, this comparison doesn't make any sense the way she uses it. The correct interpretation of this law with regards to caffeine statement would be, "energy provided to your body from the chemical absportion and utilization of caffeine is then used by your body to reconsitute and form molecules of caffeine."

In short, you are fucking wrong you lump of congealed grease.

What this female Hulkster meant to say was that caffeine follows the first law of thermodynamics, which states:

"for a thermodynamic cycle the sum of net heat supplied to the system and the net work done by the system is equal to zero. Or, energy cannot be created or destroyed; rather, the amount of energy lost in a steady state process cannot be greater than the amount of energy gained." (again, thanks wiki)

So this would mean that caffeine provides chemical energy to your body, but such energy is not created, merely exchanged through a variety of other biological processes and sooner or later this net expenditure of energy will require more energy uptake in order to balance the equation (like food). So, caffeine will spike your energy level but will require you to consume more energy in order to pay for this increase.

She is once again wrong in assuming that this will immediately manifest itself in the form of tiredness, insomnia, and irritability. These characteristics will only appear if you fail to ingest more energy to account for the fact that your body is running at a deficit (maybe). So as long as you drink a moderate amount of coffee, and eat well, nothing bad will every fucking happen.

This Machine is Useless

Often times, Zoidberg reads snippets of comedic gold such as this:

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"So, I can do 4 miles on the elliptical machine now with zero problem.
Because I was so impressed with myself, I decided to give the treadmill a go for the first time.

I was totally gassed at .3 miles!
Are you really burning as many calories as it tells you on the elliptical machine I wonder?"
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Hmm...thats a tough one Copernicus. One must approach all machines with reticence as the formulas they employ to compute how much lard you are vaporizing is largely nothing more than a conglomeration of simple math pieced together by a marketing department to make your minute effort compare directly to the competition (which is another elliptical, not another person).

I actually spoke with a Precor rep who was installing the latest set mechanical contraptions on our base gym and I asked him how each machine calculates an accurate figure of energy output. His verbatim response was:

"Sheeeeit...I can put basically anything up in there and have it spit out whatever you want to see. Hell, I can have you on there burning a thousand calories in 5 minutes. The only true indicator of effort is exhaustion, not what the numbers say."

True that.

Let me go out on a limb here and say that if you are covering 4 miles on an elliptical "no problem" then your level of exertion is somewhere between nail clipping and enjoying a wet fart.

Through my endless search of the vast tract of internet knowledge (wikipedia) I have been unable to unearth how a single elliptical manages to calculate wattage or calories burnt. All I get is a myriad of sites designed to tell you how many calories you burn by chugging away on this malfeasance based on your body weight. The figures (per 60 minutes, 150lb body weight) range from the believable (600 calories) to the celestially hopeful (1000 calories).

Far be it from me to suggest the uselessness of this medieval apparatus, but what the fuck ever happened to this?The simple truth is that the elliptical is yet another macrocosm of the axiom that envelops the health community like a steadily congealing aorta. I want to do easier exercise, for less time and effort, and get more.

Unfortunately, exercise is a bastard of an exponential ratio where effort in always supercedes results out. You cannot be a second hander, leech, or parasite and expect to achieve a high level of fitness. There is no one from whom you can steal effort and expect to evolve as Arnold's iPod jockeying clone.

Let us objectively examine the facts of the matter. The elliptical, despite it's lack of efficacy, is a form of exercise. If you park your ass on it 5 days a week for 45 minutes a go, you will achieve some level of weight loss. However, since your level of input while flailing about is at best the rough equivalent of a slow jog, expect your gains to plateau quite early. At this point, you will have to seek a more efficient form of exercise that will allow you to expend more watts. As a double whammy, the more you elliptical you will presumably lose weight and the amount of energy expenditure your body forfeits will gradually decrease.

At this point, you will probably need to graduate to the mother of all exercises, the shogun of sorrow, the deliverer of hate...

50 calories per 90 seconds at maximal effort.

In summary, you need to set realistic goals for what you can expect out of an elliptical. You can practice your dumbbell weights constantly, but if you are spending all your time with 30 pounders, there is only so far you can go.

Booze Review - Jefferson Reserve 15yr

Over my two-week hiatus from my job surfing the internet, I had the wondrous duty to sample what I now believe fills in the missing gap of bourbons. Indeed, this homo habilis of delicious bourbon fits into a nice price gap that I had a great deal sorting out. Let me reference this list here to help elucidate my problem.

List of Tasty Bourbons to Have Neat, best value for your dollar:

Best $10.00 - $15.00 Bourbon : W.L. Weller

Best $15.00 - $20.00 Bourbon : Sam Houston 10 yr.

Best $20.00 - $27.00 Bourbon : Eagle Rare 10 yr.

Best $27.00 - $40.00 Bourbon : Basil Hayden 8 yr.

Best $40.00 - $60.00 Bourbon : Who the hell knows?

Best >$60.00 Bourbon: Pappy Van Winkle 20 yr.


So as you can see, the market is filled with a surfeit of bourbons at the lower and upper end of the spectrum which fit the bill nicely. However, there is nothing to fill the taste gap between the simple yet satisfying modestly priced bourbons and the upper end of the spectrum. That is, unless you count such rotgut as Bakers, Bookers, or that ridiculously overpriced Blantons.

Problem solved by the wondrous sweet complexity that is Jefferson Reserve. JR comes from the same distillery that makes Sam Houston, McClaine (not from Die Hard) and Kyne. Son Trey and dad Chet (whoa...) are part of a growing trend among bourbon distillers to start selling "ultra small batch" bourbons, something that I am sure is pure and utter BS. Regardless, their bourbons are unbelievably fantastic, so I could care less how they choose to make or market it.

Anyway, JR 15 year sells for about $55.00 at your local ABC store, maybe less across the Key Bridge. JR has a distinct nose that immediately fills you with a buttery scent with the hint of some fruitiness, which is an outright lie because the instant this drink hits your palate you are inundated with a luscious caramel atom bomb that makes you feel like you are drinking 90 proof Aunt Jemima. JR's sweet overtones immediately mellow out to the traditional oaky/toffee bourbon finish of the high end bourbons like Pappy Van Winkle, and it leaves a most excellent warm feeling as its golden brown goodness glides down to your liver.