Dancing in the Light

Sitting in His Presence ... can't stand right now.

2011-12-29T11:49:00.000-08:00

Wow! The Shekinah Glory of the L~rd!
I sit amazed and how much He loves us ... how much!
I can't stand right now ... its amazing. Colors seem so much richer ... light warmer and kinder.
I feel a great comfort ... a great response to His Glory ... His Presence.
What did Paul say about this? "Eye has not seen, neither have ears heard the things G~d has prepared for those who love Him. But G~d has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of G~d." 1Cor.2:9-10
"Only Believe; all things are possible for those who believe." Mark 9:23
Here I am ... one who has done horrible sins, some kind deeds, trusting in His Love, His Redemption. That's Christmas to me ... one who believes, trusts ... tries to deal with the logs in my eye.
There is a deeper walk ... its not flippant to say He desires a Personal Relationship/Fellowship with us. Its so much more than a philosophy of the head ... as a matter of fact, His Spirit resists pride and arrogance (I know) and gives Grace to those of humility.
I bow my knee before Him Who was, Who is, and Who is to come.
He is my Shield, my Strength, and my King.
By life or by death, I pledge my head to His Gospel.
Maranatha!

Walking in the Valley of Shadows

2011-12-11T05:57:00.001-08:00

Sometimes He makes me read and re-read something four or five times.
Psalm 23:3 He restores my soul;
He guides me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil, for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You have anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

So, here we are ... walking in this temporary shadow time ... with Him. There is evil, there is the shadow of death, there are enemies ... but so much more ... There is Messiah, Yeshua, the Way, the Truth, the Life ... there is His provision, His Spirit, His minister angels. Oh, Lord, I have kept those angels busy so many times!
Sometimes I'm walking in the shadows; but sometimes I'm Dancing in the Light!

Reminding us of God's Love this Season

2011-11-20T07:11:00.001-08:00

Every year at Christmas the world is reminded of God’s love for mankind. As we celebrate, eyes are turned toward the light of the gospel, ears are opened to faith and hearts are rekindled with hope—because Jesus came onto the stage of history changed everything!

Jesus was God’s ultimate gift of love—His plan for the world from the beginning.

Acts 3:26 says God sent His Son Jesus to BLESS you.

This Christmas, let’s thank our Father for all He gave us in His Son. The Names of Jesus recorded in Isaiah 9:6—“Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (New King James Version)— express THE BLESSING and the fullness of our faith, hope and love.

Throughout the coming year let’s continue to celebrate all God has given us in Him. This year we were assured, “Every thing is going to be ALL-Right for the household of faith.” God gave us that word, and it stands true as we head into 2012. It is an eternal word. God has a plan. The plan has always been Jesus, and He will not fail!
.... We pray you will receive a fresh word from the Lord for you and your loved ones.

Remember, when God unfolded His plan in Jesus, you were part of it. Think about that. See yourself in His plan and enjoy His marvelous love.
....
We love you!

Merry Christmas!
http://www.kcm.org/sites/kcm.org/files/dec%2011%20d.pdf

jQuery rocks

2011-09-10T23:31:00.001-07:00

jQuery Project –http://jquery.com
•jQuery UI Project –http://jqueryui.com
•BluePrintCSS Framework –http://www.blueprintcss.org
•jQuery Tools –http://flowplayer.org/tools/index.html
•DataTables–http://www.datatables.net/
•FusionChartsfor jQuery –http://www.fusioncharts.com/jquery/
•Star Rating Widget –http://orkans-tmp.22web.net/star_rating/

http://iamlug.org/iamlug/IamLug2010.nsf/0/73FA4D37EB70BDBA86257729006FBB4B/$FILE/iamlug.domino.makeover.jquery.burgess.pdf

Chinese understanding emotions of brands

2011-04-25T09:27:00.000-07:00

I found this a very thought-provoking article:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1748843/how-the-chinese-once-tone-deaf-to-brands-became-global-branding-geniuses?partner=homepage_newsletter

And a really cool visual. Hi!

A Somber Prophecy ... a sign of desolation

2011-04-23T05:54:00.000-07:00

Reading in Matthew (ch.24), I came across this:
15"Therefore when you see the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand),
16then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains. "

Referring to these passages:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Dan9:27;11:31;12:11&version=NASB

But my hope is in the L~rd; He is my Rock and my Strength, my G~d in Whom I trust. He is my Light and my Shield, my Wisdom and my Truth.

"Hear, Oh Israel, the L~rd our G~d is One!" (Deu.6:4) 5"You shall love the L~RD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. " Even so, Come L~rd Jesus!

Visiting my Mom & Dad in Tyler

2011-04-22T18:21:00.001-07:00

Here's a picture from March, 2011, of my Mom & Dad, Don and Shirley Chase, in Tyler, Texas.

Michael Jo and I were able to drive up from Houston on Good Friday ... get a great golf lesson from my brother, Darrell, and visit with Mom & Dad. I cherish this time together with them. I don't take it for granted. My heart is full and I am grateful. Thanks be to G~d!

A Historical Moment in State Finances

2011-02-21T18:29:00.000-08:00

If we take a moment we might see a pivot point in the finance crisis in state governments. 44 states have expenses exceeding their incomes, there is a ground-swell of citizens demanding fiscal responsibility ... that what is required of a citizen, to pay their bills, is required of a government. In the struggle hard decisions are being proposed, like cutting back pensions, threating state bankruptcy .... hard decisions.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/22/lawmakers-in-44-states-warn-congress/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703800204576158851079665840.html

For You, My Love, My Friend

2011-02-14T09:08:00.000-08:00

Valentine's for lovers and for friends.
All my love goes out to you this day!
Love is something different from desire:
Even, silent, peaceful as the sky.
Nor is love interested in means or ends.
There are no selfish needs that it must weigh.
Instead, love's plenitude itself inspires,
Needing neither cause nor reason why.
Each day my thoughts enchanted with you lie.

by Turlough O'Carolan.

The L~rd's Blessing on You

2011-02-14T08:58:00.000-08:00

The LORD bless you, and keep you;
The LORD make His face shine on you,
And be gracious to you;
The LORD lift up His countenance on you,
And give you peace.'

"So they shall invoke My name on the sons of Israel, and I then will bless them."

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=numbers%206:24-27&version=NASB

IBM Lotus Knows It has to Explain IT Better

2011-02-08T20:22:00.000-08:00

http://www.qtzar.com/blogs/qtzar.nsf/Blog.xsp?entry=DSLH-7V7KBT

Great blog by Declan on the Lotus IdeaJam. IBM Lotus knows we need to clearly show why the social-tools help businesses focus, innovate, collaborate with customers easier.

Innovation in Learning

2011-02-02T07:17:00.000-08:00

"Children learn from three teachers: the first is the instructor, the second are students' peers, and the third is their environment." - Loris Malaguzzi
Here is information on an innovative company, Steelcase, who helps design change in classrooms to allow better collaboration in learning: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662898/how-steelcase-redesigned-the-21st-century-college-classroom

And its interesting to hear this perspective: http://studentofthemonth.steelcase.com/student/trung-le

When instant messaging first came out I couldn't see its benefits for work, until I worked for IBM ... being able to find an expert in a certain area based on their blogs and articles, then being able to chat with that person allowed us to quickly deliver solutions at companies we were engaged with .... tools to help sift through information and help deliver knowledge. I think about the Steelcase innovation in classrooms in a similar light ... an environment to make it easier to collaborate in learning. Who hasn't sat with one or more people and worked through a sticking point on a project? Who hasn't experienced the joy of playing "What if?" to innovate in a certain area ... or awakened in the middle of the night and write down a solution to a challenge? To then share that in a group area, be that a team workspace, blog, project quickplace, allows synergy ... and that is exciting.

We talk at times about management by walking around ... rubbing shoulders helps us be aware of victories, frustrations, flow in the team ... that's collaborating ... if I, as a team leader, can remove some of the 'friction' a teammember is experiencing ... I've made the situation better ... and that's a blessing.

At Cameron I was allowed to work with the London software development team for a couple of months in London. Our desks were shoved up to each other in an open room without cubicles ... they got the idea from engineering. It was easy to fly ideas by each other, to help in sticking points, to joke and laugh, and share. It was great. That same concept, with diverse, scattered teams, be they in college or a company, could benefit with collaborative tools ... what if Steelcase helped us innovate, learn easier, helped us remove some of the 'friction' in our projects?

Sharing with your Senator & Congressman

2011-01-26T07:29:00.001-08:00

Did you listen to the State of the Union Speech yesterday? I did ... and I appreciated reading Senator John Cornyn's comments afterward. You need to share your thoughts with you Senator and Congressman. I contacted both Senator Cornyn and Rep Culberson and shared this:
"I heard the State of the Union speech and heard him talk of improving clarity in the tax laws .... I urge the flat tax for individuals and corporations ... simple, clear. Also, how much of our budget is given in foreign aid? cut subsidies to foreign nations by 30% and use that to pay down our debt ... simple, clear."

Enigma

2011-01-23T06:27:00.000-08:00

Enigma ... something hard to understand or explain; obscure, inscrutable, or mysterious.

We walk this walk of faith together and alone; some consciously, some oblivious to the walk.

We struggle, we choose, we deal with the consequences, some intentionally, some unaware.

"If we walk in the Light, as He is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the Blood of Yeshua, His Son, cleanses us of all sin." If. If. If only.

Our souls reason, make excuses, rejoice, avoid. But our spirits yearn for Light, some consciously, some reactionary. Horrible choices can scar our spirits, build a callous separator between us and Him. But repentence, faith, acceptance can clean, excise, open our spirits.

I've heard it said there are no athiests in foxholes. Holy desperation seems to open us, clear the spiritual ears, make the heart available to Him Who was, Who is, and Who truely is to come.

Thanks be to G~d for His inexpressible Gift! Baruk Hashim, Adoni!

Beautiful Sunset in Corpus Christi, TX

2011-01-22T16:38:00.000-08:00

Enjoying a beautiful sunset in Corpus Christi at the condo. It is cold, but the hot tub is working great! Thanks to G~d!

Inspiring return of Zach Krych

2011-01-20T08:06:00.000-08:00

You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity. – Walt Schmidt

http://rosstraining.com/blog/2011/01/06/the-return-of-zach-krych/

I needed this. I've been waking up at 3 AM in the morning with worry thoughts bombarding me ... to which I say "Thank you" and then pray to the L~rd. Several times, through gritted teeth I've repeated the promises out loud, so many more times in my heart. "The L~rd IS the Strength of my life, my Rock, and my G~d in Whom I trust." "Trust in the L~rd with all my heart ... lean not on my own understanding ... in all my ways acknowledge Him and He WILL direct my path." G~d is Faithful and a very Present Help in time of trouble, adversity, tribulation!

Maybe we're asking the wrong questions

2011-01-18T07:36:00.000-08:00

I had an interesting, albeit short conversation yesterday on U.S. government effects on the economy with my brother-in-law .... I know, tread lightly.
http://www.johnmauldin.com/frontlinethoughts/the-subprime-debacle-act-2-part-2-mwo102310/

I thought maybe we are asking the wrong questions. I've learned questions can be worded in such a way to try to redirect thought away from certain areas. This article is a good example in the Atlantic about the Politics of Fear, also known as F.U.D. (Fear, Uncertainty, and Dread) marketing that I learned from the dark empire/also known as Microsoft:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/01/the-politics-of-economic-fear/69663/

Sometimes its good to step back and ask if the questions being asked are really the right questions. What really matters? Is it righteous?

Five Minutes to Reflect on the Day

2011-01-10T11:00:00.000-08:00

http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2011/01/the-best-way-to-use-the-last-f.html
I do enjoy reading Peter Bregman's thoughts ... better yet, applying them personally.
At the end of the workday I need to "... take the time to pause, breathe, and think about what's working and what's not."

"I was once asked: if an organization could teach only one thing to its employees, what single thing would have the most impact? My answer was immediate and clear: teach people how to learn. How to look at their past behavior, figure out what worked, and repeat it while admitting honestly what didn't and change it. "

"If a person can do that well, everything else takes care of itself. That's how people become life-long learners. And it's how companies become learning organizations. It requires confidence, openness, and letting go of defenses."

"Every day, before leaving the office, save a few minutes to think about what just happened. Look at your calendar and compare what actually happened — the meetings you attended, the work you got done, the conversations you had, the people with whom you interacted, even the breaks you took — with your plan for what you wanted to have happen. Then ask yourself three sets of questions:
•How did the day go? What success did I experience? What challenges did I endure?
•What did I learn today? About myself? About others? What do I plan to do — differently or the same — tomorrow?
•Who did I interact with? Anyone I need to update? Thank? Ask a question? Share feedback?"

That is great advice for me to follow ... and, as a follower of Christ, I am not alone. I can pray, not just think ... I can ask the Holy Spirit for advice, correction, wisdom, and revelation on what worked and didn't work today. "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin." 1John 1:7

225 BackSquat & 135 CleanPress

2011-01-10T10:57:00.000-08:00

Accomplished 225# on the BackSquat and 135# on the PowerClean & Press with 5 sets of 5 pullups, some crunches & back extensions today at the gym.

Some good leadership reminders from a running coach

2011-01-09T04:12:00.001-08:00

I've enjoyed following the blog of running coach Steve Magness. http://www.scienceofrunning.com/

He has shared some good reminders for leaders of teams.

http://www.scienceofrunning.com/2010/07/buying-into-program.html

http://www.scienceofrunning.com/2010/12/escaping-running-world-why-learning.html

Random Musings on a Saturday

2011-01-08T11:32:00.000-08:00

Got to sprint/walk two miles along the bayou with Matt's dog, Boulder, amidst barking dogs, laughing children, and vigilant turtles. Its a sunny Saturday.

Got to study micro-expressions:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/53621/lie-to-me-expressions-sadness

http://www.hulu.com/watch/53608/lie-to-me-expressions-anger

Got to think about play for creative children:

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662826/frog-design-the-four-secrets-of-playtime-that-foster-creative-kids

Why is Jade considered Significant?

2011-01-07T12:34:00.000-08:00

"Stone of heaven," a term used by the Chinese to describe what they view as the most precious of gems--jade. Also, it is called "Dragons' Tears".
Jade is generally classified into soft jade (nephrite) and hard jade (jadeite). To understand the importance of jade to the Chinese is to gain insight into their culture and history.

The use of carved jade has been a integral part of Chinese society for more than 7,000 years, playing significant roles in Chinese politics, economics, philosophy, and religion. Considered the sacred stone of China, the use of jade spans all ranks and classes and holds spiritual as well as commercial values. To the ancient Chinese, it embodied qualities of beauty, nobility, purity, constancy, and immortality; a symbolic link between man and the spiritual world. It is interesting to note that the Supreme Deity of Taoism has the name, Yuhuang Dadi (the Jade Emperor).

As Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC) said there are 11 De (virtues) in jade. The following is a translation:
'The wise have likened jade to virtue. For them, its polish and brilliancy represent the whole of purity; its perfect compactness and extreme hardness represent the sureness of intelligence; its angles, which do not cut, although they seem sharp, represent justice; the pure and prolonged sound, which it gives forth when one strikes it, represents music. Its color represents loyalty; its interior flaws, always showing themselves through the transparency, call to mind sincerity; its iridescent brightness represents heaven; its admirable substance, born of mountain and of water, represents the earth. Used alone without ornamentation it represents chastity. The price that the entire world attaches to it represents the truth. To support these comparisons, the Book of Verse says: "When I think of a wise man, his merits appear to be like jade."'

Thinking about The Agonizing Last Words of Programmer Bill Zeller

2011-01-07T09:17:00.000-08:00

The Agonizing Last Words of Programmer Bill Zeller was a disturbing read for me. Horribly raped as a child, growing up with 'Darkness' inside, choosing to destroy himself, hating his religious parents who didn't show him love, mercy, grace, compassion, forgiveness, help.

I'm grieving over this .... knowing I've come up way, way short in the mercy and compassion realm to others. Messiah kept rebuking the Pharisees, "Go and learn what this means ... I desire mercy rather than sacrifice." (Matt.9:13) (Lu.13:14-17) I'm weeping inside considering that this man felt killing himself was the best solution ... that he didn't find the love and compassion of G~d, the true comfort of the Holy Spirit as I, by G~d's grace, have. If it wasn't for receiving the comfort of G~d, His help, I would truly be crazy.

I pray, I pray, I pray that when hurting people, like Bill Zeller was, cross my path I give mercy, compassion, time, encouragement ... may I be like a Samaritan who binds up wounds, than a Pharisee that passes by on the other side of the road ignoring the need. (Lu.10:30-37) I pray for devine appointments.

Oh, that hurting people would get deliverance from 'Darkness', compassion from us, and the Love that passes understanding from the Father of Lights.

Exercise effects much more than just your muscles

2011-01-06T07:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-you-can-become-more-p

I've noticed I feel much healthier, happier, even confident since I improved my deadlifts, squats, pullups, and sprints. That added prayer and faith.

Tolkien On Saying "Good Morning"

2011-01-03T06:58:00.000-08:00

"Do you wish me a good morning,
or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not;
or that you feel good this morning;
or that it is a morning to be good on?"

"All that is gold does not glitter;
Not all those that wander are lost."

"I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness,
nor the arrow for its swiftness,
nor the warrior for his glory.
I love only that which they defend."

"It is not the strength of the body that counts,
but the strength of the spirit."

* "It is useless to meet revenge with revenge; it will heal nothing."

from J. R. R. Tolkien, 1892 - 1973

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born at Bloemfontein, Orange Free State on this day in 1892, and grew up at Birmingham, England. He studied English Language and Literature at Exeter College, Oxford, graduating in 1915, got married, spent time in the trenches of France, and returned with trench fever. When war ended he worked on the etymology of words of Germanic origin for the Oxford English Dictionary, then became the youngest professor at the University of Leeds. He became one of the foremost authorities on Anglo-Saxon and other languages that were predecessors to English, which came in handy when he created a complete new language. He decided it would be called High Elvish.
http://www.qotd.org/search/search.html?aid=2373

Holding on to the the Light ... Chanukah

2010-12-28T16:26:00.000-08:00

Great video of the Maccabean Revolt and Chanukah:
http://truthpraiseandhelp.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/holding-on-to-the-light/

Week 1 Progression

2010-12-28T16:23:00.000-08:00

%BS65,75,85=150x5,175x5,195x3
DL65,75,85=150x5,175x5,195x3
CP65,75,85=95x5,105x5,120x3
Pullups 4 sets of 5

Aspirin vs. Vitamins ... What my customers perceive matters

2010-12-27T14:46:00.000-08:00

I needed reminded of this ... it doesn't matter if my solutions can fix or improve things. If my customers don't believe they really must have the solution to solve pain, its not going to fly.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/150/the-felt-need.html

A new way to visualize pi

2010-12-27T09:27:00.000-08:00

Here is a creative way of visualizing pi:
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662943/robot-creates-the-worlds-nerdiest-light-paintings

Art that speaks to the heart

2010-12-22T07:06:00.000-08:00

I get quotes sent to me daily. Today's quotes were gathered by Larkin Jean Van Horn. The quotes blessed me. But even more, her artwork is full of joy ... vibrant faith and joy come to mind.
Enjoy:
http://www.larkinart.com/html/shattered.html

http://www.larkinart.com/html/rocks.html

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.... We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it. - Pablo Picasso, 1881 - 1973

It is possible to be different and still be all right. - Anne Wilson Schaef

One's prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must live it to the full. - Muriel Spark, 1918 - 2006

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going. - Beverly Sills, 1929 - 2007

The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous. - Margot Fonteyn, 1919 - 1991

Passionate about Practice ... Technique, Excellence

2010-12-21T13:26:00.000-08:00

I was really challenged by this interview of Daniel Coyle, author of http://thetalentcode.com/.

http://kska.org/2010/11/15/line-one-the-talent-code/
Download the mp3 file and ask yourself if we are encouraging ourselves and others to be persistent, tenacious, accurate, dedicated, and specific.

Taking a moment to Invoke the Good, to Respect the Activity

2010-12-21T11:44:00.000-08:00

This is a great article by Peter Bregman in the Harvard Business Review, called The Value of Ritual in Your Workdate: http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2010/12/the-value-of-ritual-in-your-wo.html
In it, Bregman says, "Imagine if we started each meeting with a recognition of the power of bringing a group of people together to collaborate and an intention to dedicate ourselves, without distraction, to achieving the goals of the meeting. Perhaps even an acknowledgement that each person's views, goals, and priorities are important and need to be heard. Of course, that would require that every meeting have a clear goal, an agenda, and a purpose."

I used that as a jumping off point. Imagine if I looked at every woman and said, "That is someone's daughter ... G~d love's that person." Imagine if, before speaking, I contemplate the reminder that G~d looks at the heart. I've been a hard, rude, lusty hell-raiser in my past ... hopefully not in my present. I'm on this journey of faith ... as Andrew Womack has said, "I haven't arrived, but Thank God I'm not where I was." I remember process facilitation training where each process or activity has an introduction ("This is why"), a body, and a conclusion/summary ("This is what was done and here are the consequences").

Imagine if, before reading His Word, I looked at the Bible and said "This is truely God's reveal Will, sharp and powerful, the Spirit's Sword! I pray my heart is open, my mind is receptive, that I will hear G~d and be open to what ever He wills."

Imagine if, when my world has been shattered, a heart-wrenching thing has happened, my spirit is bleeding on the ground, if I stood and worshipped Him Who Is, Who Was, and Who Is to Come! Habakkuk 3:17-19

Merry Christmas, Everyone! Shabbat Shalom!

A time to Reflect and ask the right questions

2010-12-21T09:38:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, Everyone! Pull up a chair, sit by the fire, get a hot cup of spiced cider!
The trees here in Houston have now agreed with me that it is winter ... the tallow trees have turned red!

In sharping the saw, Stephen Covey asks us to step back from Fire-Fighter mode, to contemplative, proactive, innovative review mode. And Adam Stanecki writes about asking the right questions. Many ask the what questions, fewer ask the why questions.
http://www.adamstanecki.com.au/2010/12/20/the-most-powerful-question-you-can-ask-yourself-before-2011/

I'm proud of what Meagan, Michael and Matt each accomplished this past year. I'm thankful for God's hand on each of us. I continue to pray for Kathy's healing. And I strengthen myself in the Lord in the middle of a job change. Proverbs 3:5-6 keeps rining in my ears, "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. "

Yahoo shutting down Delicious

2010-12-16T14:20:00.000-08:00

Files under: News I didn't want to hear.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/16/is-yahoo-shutting-down-del-icio-us/

so, I guess I can use category spreadsheets in Google Docs? or http://www.diigo.com/

What's a boy to do????

Pray for the President of the United States of America

2010-12-16T04:57:00.000-08:00

From Intercessors for America:

Pray that God would sift the motives and intentions of the President's heart, that he would have an increasing desire for integrity on every level and be sensitive to the Lord's direction. Intercede that the President would represent America's godly heritage both at home and abroad. Pray also for his protection, encouragement, strength and health. Pray that godly advisers would not only have the opportunity to offer the President counsel, but that their lives would be a living testimony of the wisdom they offer. (MEC: I pray that righteous counsel would be exalted in his presence and that unrighteous counsel would be exposed and cast down. I pray he hear the leading of the Holy Spirit and choose the righteous decision.)

Forty-two members of Congress have signed a letter to President Barack Obama, asking him to issue a correction of the speech he gave on Nov. 10, 2010 at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta. The letter contests three of the President's statements and expresses concern that his speech did not "accurately reflect America" to the rest of the word.

WebMD website ... so much for fair & unbiased

2010-12-14T04:41:00.000-08:00

This is disturbing .... I've relied on webmd.com for medical information, expecting it to be fair and unbiased. I was wrong.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/12/14/webmd-not-the-independent-health-source-you-expected.aspx

Agravating ads when visiting a website?

2010-12-11T08:04:00.000-08:00

I sent this to an ad director at FastCompany.com today:
I was enjoying the slideshows of innovation on the FastCompany website and then the Hitachi ad wouldn't let me see the content ... it was agravating! I've attached a snapshot (adsgonewild.gif) to show you in hopes you can make the site more friendly.

Reading the Lotus Notes Domino 8 Upgraders' Guide by Tim Speed

2010-12-08T13:30:00.000-08:00

So I took my own advice and paid for a monthly subscription to http://www.safaribooksonline.com to help prepare for the IBM Lotus Domino 8 certification tests. And so I came across the Lotus Notes Domino 8 Upgraders' Guide by Tim Speed ... who I worked with briefly on an Exxon-Mobil engagement ... good stuff!

May you be blessed this Christmas!

2010-12-07T10:41:00.000-08:00

Season for Virtues?

2010-12-07T06:34:00.000-08:00

Noam Chomsky said, "We shouldn't be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas."

I've said that America needs heroes. What I mean by that is that these ideals of honor, integrity, virtue, perseverence, faithfulness, hope, love (these character traits that please G~d) are desperately needed here, applied in daily circumstances.

I have incredible regret for past attitudes and actions as a youth and the dearth of those virtues that please G~d, and the horrible consequences that resulted. For me these virtues were hard won. For my children, and my childrens' children, may they be easily acquired and understood through my encouragement and my walk.

G~d resists the proud, the selfish, the mean, the lazy. He gives amazing Grace to the humble, faithful, loving, merciful. Messiah loves us so much He willing emptied Himself of His Godliness, was born into a simple family, grew up choosing YWHY's Righteousness, Love, Mercy, tempted on every point, yet chose Right, willingly offered Himself as the True Sacrifice Lamb to remove the Sin of Adam for whoever will believe in Him. This is Christmas, Christ Mass, Celebration of Salvation, Thanksgiving for Redemption. This is Love and Truth.

I have regrets for my past. I have grateful thanksgiving for my present. I have exciting expectations for my future with Christ in His Amazing Grace! Christ In You is the Hope of Glory! Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!

Passed the 1st of 3 tests for IBM Lotus 8.5 Certification

2010-12-06T14:02:00.000-08:00

I just passed the IBM Lotus Notes Domio 8 Application Development Foundation Skills exam, IBM LOT-834. It has been five years since I took a certification exam and was grateful I studied for it as I did. Now I'm on to prepare for the intermediate exam!

Udemy: online free university

2010-12-06T10:18:00.000-08:00

Maybe this is worth looking into:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/151/fast-talk-gagan-biyani.html

Organization = Achievement

2010-12-03T07:46:00.000-08:00

http://garagegymblueprint.com/?p=1742

Do you have clutter ? What about your office, storage area, equipment or even your house? If you do – then you’re not performing to the best of your abilities and this seemingly trivial “clutter” or “dis-organization” is actually holding you back from achieving. This might seem slightly dramatic; but I assure you, it’s the truth.

When things are well organized, clean and neat you and your staff are less stressful and in turn feel more organized. This clears space in your head for more important things like creativity and running your business effectively.

The Organized Experience @ Central:
Everything has a place. The rowers, boxes, dumbbells, kettlebells – everything! Having and sticking to a standard for our equipment allows us to focus on what’s important – training our clients. Each time our clients come to class they know they will walk into a clean and well organized space allowing them to focus on their workout.

The Not-So-Organized Experience @ Central – The back storage room:
Our back storage room has been cleaned out and re-organized many many times. It’s a place where we store event and marketing things, retail, cleaning equipment, excess equipment, broken equipment, chairs, tables, etc etc etc. Left unchecked this room gets more and more cluttered as people store more and more things in the room. Since only coaches and staff see the back room and only on occasion, it’s organization sometimes falls by the way-side. Without having a clearly defined plan for where things belong coaches and staff put things where they can find an open spot – which breeds more unorganized clutter.

The Solution:
Our New Year Challenges and Holiday parties are only weeks away, knowing that we’ll need to get into the event area we decided it was time to clearly define and organize where things belong and stick to it! I wish we took a before photo but we were too excited to get busy organizing! Picture this – we couldn’t even get to the event area. We first had to organize and clear out everything in front of it. It was literally a mound of “stuff”. We only ended up throwing/giving away 3-4 items. This means we use everything that’s stored on a fairly regular basis; however, none of it had a permanent space.

Action Steps
◦Clean, Organize and Clear
◦Label EVERYTHING
(Including what is inside of the storage bins so you don’t have to dig through them to find out)
◦Put a system in place and a person or team in charge
(Susan Bender is now in charge of this area. Anyone wanting to get things out of it or store things in it will have to talk to Susan and her marketing team first)
◦Announce to the group the new system
◦Check the space weekly – adjust accordingly

Pondering this interview with Rick Warren ... on why. this is Christmas.

2010-12-01T10:55:00.000-08:00

I really enjoyed this interview with Rick Warren on the purpose of life: http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/17175.htm
I believe that we have an opportunity to love, to lift up, and to leave a legacy ... thank God for His inestimable Grace! This is Christmas! MEC

AN INTERVIEW WITH RICK WARREN (AUTHOR OF “A PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE”and pastor of Saddleback Church in California) .

In the interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, Rick said:

People ask me, What is the purpose of life? And I respond: In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven.

One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body– but not the end of me.

I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act – the dress rehearsal.

God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity. We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn’t going to make sense.

Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you’re just coming out of one, or you’re getting ready to go into another one.

The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort.

God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy.

We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that’s not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.

This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife getting cancer.

I used to think that life was hills and valleys – you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don’t believe that anymore.

Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it’s kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life.

No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on.

And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for.

You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems.

If you focus on your problems, you’re going into self-centeredness, “which is my problem, my issues, my pain.”

But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.

We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal my wife or make it easy for her.

It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people.

You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life. Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy.

It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don’t think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease.

So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72.

First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases.

Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church.

Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation.

Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.

We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God’s purposes (for my life)?

When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don’t get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better … God didn’t put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He’s more interested in what I am than what I do. That’s why we’re called human beings, not human doings.

Happy moments, PRAISE GOD.

Difficult moments, SEEK GOD.

Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD.

Painful moments, TRUST GOD.

Every moment, THANK GOD

Fueling Excellence ... something to ponder

2010-11-16T08:33:00.000-08:00

http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2010/11/six-ways-leaders-can-fuel-exce.html
by Tony Schwartz

also: http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2010/08/six-keys-to-being-excellent-at.html

The notion that we can be excellent at anything prompted passionate debate. On the one hand, it's empowering and inspiring to believe that excellence is within our reach in any area to which we devote ourselves with sufficient diligence — something the researcher Anders Ericsson calls "deliberate practice."
http://hbr.org/2007/07/the-making-of-an-expert/ar/1

Just think of how many movies — often based on true stories — tell the story of inspiring teachers, coaches and mentors helping undervalued kids become extraordinary performers: The Blind Side, Stand and Deliver, Lean On Me, Mr. Holland's Opus, The Bad News Bears, and Dangerous Minds, among many others

At the same time, it's daunting to consider that when we ourselves fall short of excellence, it's not that we lack talent but rather we haven't put in the right kind of effort.

There is precious little scientific evidence to suggest that genes are our destiny — and more and more evidence of neuroplasticity — the capacity to influence the way our genes express themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity
So what, then, can leaders do to most effectively inspire and nurture excellence in those they lead?
Here are six keys:

1. Ban words like "talented," "gifted," and "special" from your vocabulary. Well meaning as these words may be, they tend to give people credit for something they did nothing to earn, while also suggesting that others don't have equal potential. Consider replacing these words with ones like "effective," "determined," "accomplished," "skilled," "persevering," and "masterful," all of which give due credit to effort.

2. Regularly, genuinely, and specifically acknowledge and appreciate people's successes. Believe deeply in their potential, enthusiastically encourage their passions, and don't be overly fazed by their failures. There may be nothing more motivating to the people you lead than to notice what they're doing well, and to express your appreciation with detail and specificity. Likewise, there may be no single more powerful act than to handwrite and mail someone a personal note of appreciation.

3. Provide constant feedback. Annual or semi-annual reviews are vastly insufficient and often worthless. Most people don't improve their skills over time, in large part because they don't get consistent, specific feedback. That's different than judgment or criticism. As often as possible, resist pointing out people's deficits, and focus instead on where you can help them improve or take it to the next level in any given area.

4. Create and protect periods of uninterrupted focus. Don't demand instant responses from your people all day long. Interruptions fracture their attention, and absorbed focus is a prerequisite to high quality work, especially on the most challenging tasks. Stop measuring your people by how many hours they work, and assess them instead based on the value they produce.

5. Encourage and model intermittent renewal throughout the day. Great performers, the research shows, work intensely for periods no longer than 90 minutes and then stop to recover and refuel. Create a "renewal room" so people have a place to truly chill out. Nothing better fuels productivity in the afternoons than a 20-30 minute nap between 12 and 2 p.m, and encouraging people to exercise at midday runs a close second.

6. Tie the pursuit of excellence to a larger mission. Excellence requires enormous effort. You need to give your people a compelling reason to push beyond their comfort zones. What most of us hunger for is evidence that what we're doing truly matter and serves something beyond the bottom line. CEOs such as Alan Mullally at Ford, John Chambers at Cisco, and Steve Jobs at Apple have done a great job rallying their people around a higher mission. Start by defining what you truly stand for, share with others what gets you up in the morning as often as you can, and encourage people to go through the same exercise for themselves.

Seven Skills You Might Not have Learned in College

2010-11-08T07:29:00.000-08:00

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/09/ff_wiredu/all/1

This is well worth reading

To the brave men of Jabesh-Gilead

2010-11-05T15:40:00.001-07:00

Sometimes you read the Bible and something just leaps out at you. That's what happened reading 1 Samuel 31. Saul and his sons had died on Mount Gilboa ... and when the Phillistines came to pillage the dead they abused their bodies and tied them to the wall of Beth-Shan. All Israelites in the nearby cities had fled for refuge.

But the men of Jabesh-Gilead, hearing of the actions of the Phillistines, walked all night to Beth-Shan, took down the bodies of Saul and his sons and burned them, buried their bones under a tamarisk tree and fasted seven days. (They fasted during war.)

They were brave ... and the Word gives them credit.

Questioning the Credibility of Medical Research

2010-11-03T10:07:00.000-07:00

This is an article well worth reading:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/

its about asking the right questions.

Pondering the layoffs in IT at RSC Equipment

2010-10-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

In pondering the layoffs at RSC Equipment Rental IT department, this crossed my mind:
A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five. -Groucho Marx-

I have had a perfectly wonderful day, but this wasn't it. -Groucho Marx paraphrased-
Hope that helps you smile. :-)

"People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them." -Jean Monnet-

I believe it is G~d Who gave me this job to support my family, and it is G~d I trust with all my heart, Him I acknowledge in all my ways, He, I pray, Who directs my path. I rely on His Name.

Using physics to save a life

2010-10-24T05:02:00.001-07:00

This is a wonderful story of thinking fast while driving to save a life.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2013215629_hero21m.html

Candidates positions on family values

2010-10-23T05:06:00.001-07:00

Please study these issues and the candidates opinions on them for the election in Texas. http://www.citizenlink.com/voter/
And please vote ... just think, with voter apathy out there, your vote will have a good effect.

Remember, we have to speak up for righteous issues. Michah 6:8, "What does the L~rd require of you, Oh Man? But to love mercy, do justice, and walk humble with your G~d."

Michael Chase
ne cede malis

Beginner's work on Parallette Bars

2010-10-20T08:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.american-gymnast.com/tt/index.cfm?Entity=3&Department=19&Dept_Order=1&Preview=0&This_TopicOrder=4&This_SubtopicOrder=5

From our experience, we have found that the single most important piece of men's equipment for training at home is a set of parallettes. It's astounding the number of exercises that can be performed on this one piece of equipment alone. If you are not familiar with what parallettes are, these are a miniature version of the men's parallel bars. L-sits, planches, and handstands are essentials of gymnastics that every gymnast must perfect, and these are JUST A FEW of the elements gymnasts can perform safely at home on a set of parallettes.

In our guide, we provide an exercise regimine according to your gymnastics level. But remember, our training guide is just that - a guide. Every gymnast is unique, so depending on individual strength and ability, you may find the need to vary or adapt the reps, times, or the exercises themselves. We recommend that your gymnast follow this guide an average of 3 times per week.

Feel free to print the guide to have to look at as you train. And, as always in gymnastics, training should be done only with proper matting and under the supervision of a safety certified coach or adult.

So, let's get started. Good luck!

Jay Thornton
World Championship Team Member
American Gymnast

here's a guide to make them: http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/13_03_Parallettes.pdf

A Paralette Training Guide

Beginners

Tuck Sit 3-5 sets of 10 sec.
Knees together and tight against chest
Back should be vertical and shoulders directly over hands
Hips slightly in front of hands
Head stays in neutral position

L Sit 3-5 sets of 10 sec.
Legs and hips just at or slightly above bar height
Hips extended so they are even with the hands
Legs should be parallel with bars and floor

Tuck Planche 3-5 sets of 10 sec.
Knees together and tight against chest
Push down in shoulders
Round back position

Straddle Press to Handstand Against Wall 2 sets of 3-5 reps.
Start with feet on bars and hands placed on bars slightly away from wall
Shoulders lean forward in front of hands until against wall
Continue to lean forward until upper back, just at base of neck, is against wall
Press with head in until body rolls up against the wall
Maintain wide straddle until back and hips are completely against wall
Bring feet together slowly to handstand position
Press down to starting position (feet on bars) reversing the procedure

Handstand Against Wall 2 reps. of 30 sec.
Place parallettes against a wall
Hands should be as close to wall as possible while still maintaining balance
Back, shoulders, & head should be in a straight line away from wall
Maintain slight hollow chest position with stomach sucked in
Slight arch is allowed in lower body to rest against wall
Push down in shoulders
Head in neutral position
Eyes look through eyebrows at a spot on the floor between the hands

Handstand Pushups Against Wall 2 sets of 5-7 reps.
Upper body stays straight or slightly hollow
Slight arch in lower body is allowed to place feet on wall
Arms should bend 90 degrees
Tight body position should be maintained while pressing back up to the handstand

Push-ups 2 sets of 7-10 reps.
Starting position should be done with hollow chest and straight line in lower body
Lean forward until shoulders are directly over the hands on the parallettes
Parallettes should be slightly wider than shoulder-width apart
Keep body tight and in a straight line as you press downward in the pushup
In the "down" position, the chest should go at least to the tops of the parallettes
When pushing up, the body should finish in starting position 1 with the back in the rounded, hollow position

Handstand Forward 1/2 Pirouettes 5-7 reps.
Kick all the way to handstand before initiating first 1/4 turn
Bodyweight shifts on top (or slightly inside) bar being stepped to
Head stays neutral throughout pirouette
Shoulders stay directly over hands throughout pirouette
Tght lower back and buttocks maintained throughout pirouette

The 10 GENERAL PHYSICAL SKILLS

2010-10-20T06:29:00.000-07:00

1. Cardiovascular/respiratory endurance - The ability of body systems to gather, process, and deliver oxygen.

2. Stamina - The ability of body systems to process, deliver, store, and utilize energy.

3. Strength - The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply force.

4. Flexibility - the ability to maximize the range of motion at a given joint.

5. Power - The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply maximum force in minimum time.

6. Speed - The ability to minimize the time cycle of a repeated movement.

7. Coordination - The ability to combine several distinct movement patterns into a singular distinct movement.

8. Agility - The ability to minimize transition time from one movement pattern to another.

9. Balance - The ability to control the placement of the bodies center of gravity in relation to its support base.

10. Accuracy - The ability to control movement in a given direction or at a given intensity.

Four Capacities of Good Leaders to Consider

2010-10-19T08:40:00.000-07:00

http://www.fastcompany.com/1695382/the-four-capacities-every-great-leader-needs-and-very-few-have
by Tony SchwartzFri Oct 15, 2010

When I was a very young journalist, full of bravado and barely concealed insecurity, Ed Kosner, editor of Newsweek, hired me to do a job I wasn't sure I was capable of doing. Thrown into deep water, I had no choice but to swim. But I also knew he wouldn't let me drown. His confidence buoyed me.

Some years later, I was hired away by Arthur Gelb, the managing editor of The New York Times. This time, I was seduced by Gelb's contagious exuberance about being part of a noble fraternity committed to putting out the world's greatest newspaper.

Over the last dozen years, I've worked with scores of CEOs and senior executives to help them build more engaged, high performance cultures by energizing their employees. Along the way, I've landed on four key capacities that show up, to one degree or another, in the most inspiring leaders I've met.

1. Great leaders recognize strengths in us that we don't always yet fully see in ourselves.

This is precisely what Kosner did with me. He provided belief where I didn't yet have it, and I trusted his judgment more than my own. It's the Pygmalion effect: expectations become self-fulfilling.

Both positive and negative emotions feed on themselves. In the absence of Kosner's confidence, I simply wouldn't have assumed I was ready to write at that level.

Because he seemed so sure I could--he saw better than I did how my ambition and relentlessness would eventually help me prevail--I wasted little energy in corrosive worry and doubt.

Instead, I simply invested myself in getting better, day by day, step by step. Because we can achieve excellent in almost anything we practice with sufficient focus and intention, I did get better, which fed my own confidence and satisfaction, and my willingness to keep pushing myself.

2. Rather than simply trying to get more out of us, great leaders seek to understand and meet our needs, above all a compelling mission beyond our immediate self-interest, or theirs.

Great leaders understand that how they make people feel, day in and day out, has a profound influence on how they perform.

We each have a range of core needs--physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Great leaders focus on helping their employees meet each of these needs, recognizing that it helps them to perform better and more sustainably.

Arthur Gelb helped my meet not just my emotional need to be valued, but also my spiritual need to be engaged in a mission bigger than my own success. Far too few leaders take the time to figure out what they truly stand for, beyond the bottom line, and why we should feel excited to work for them.

3. Great leaders take the time to clearly define what success looks like, and then empower and trust us to figure out the best way to achieve it.

One of our core needs is for self-expression. One of the most demoralizing and infantilizing experiences at work is to feel micromanaged.

The job of leaders is not to do the work of those they lead, but to serve as Chief Energy Officer -- to free and fuel us to bring the best of ourselves to work every day.

Part of that responsibility is defining, in the clearest possible way, what's expected of us--our concrete deliverables. This is a time-consuming and challenging process, and most leaders I've met do very little of it. When they do it effectively, the next step for leaders is to get out of the way.

That requires trusting that employees will figure out for themselves the best way to get their work done, and that even though they'll take wrong turns and make mistakes, they learn and grow stronger along the way.

4. The best of all leaders--a tiny fraction--have the capacity to embrace their own opposites, most notably vulnerability alongside strength, and confidence balanced by humility.

This capacity is uniquely powerful because all of us struggle, whether we're aware of it or not, with our self worth. We're each vulnerable to believing, at any given moment, that we're not good enough.

Great leaders don't feel the need to be right, or to be perfect, because they've learned to value themselves in spite of shortcomings they freely acknowledge. In turn, they bring this generous spirit to those they lead.

The more leaders make us feel valued, in spite of our imperfections, the less energy we will spend asserting, defending and restoring our value, and the more energy we have available to create value.

All four capacities are grounded in one overarching insight. Great leaders recognize that the best way to get the highest value is to give the highest value.

(MEC: this is the law of the farm ... you reap what you sow. Sow mercy, encouragement, love, faith, hope in others ... that's prosperity thinking, that's healthy.)

What consumes my thought life?

2010-10-19T08:19:00.000-07:00

"For as a man thinks in his heart, so he is." Prov.23:7a

And Jesus said to him, " 'If You can?' All things are possible to him who believes." Mark 9:23

"Death and life are in the power of the tongue,And those who love it will eat its fruit." Prov.18:21

* So, do you tear yourself down, or build yourself up inside?
* Do you stay focused, or are easily sidetracked?
* Are you seeking others approval, or seeking to please G~d?
* Do you have G~d's love and peace inside, or strife and worry?
* Do you see yourself overcoming with G~d's help, or see yourself a failure?
* Are you choosing to go forward, or give up?

I don't deserve it, but G~d loves me; He is my Father Who loves me perfectly. Through my faith in the death and resurrection of Jeshua as an atoning sacrifice for me, I receive His salvation. I trust, I rest and rely on His Word and promises. He loves me and His plans for me are good! I've given my life to Him and He really is my Shepherd. He guides me, He corrects me, He has had to discipline me, because I am His son, adopted into His family and made an heir with Messiah. That's amazing! That's comforting. He lives inside me, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit!

In my darkest hour, when anxiety and stress is attacking me, when horrible thoughts seek to overwhelm me, I confess His promises to me that I have hid in my heart. No matter how high the wave, how seemingly impossible the outcome, how devasting the hurt, I strengthen myself in the L~rd of all lords, the King of all kings, the Maker and the Finisher of my faith. G~d is able and the joy of the L~rd is my strength.

Dr. Joyce Brothers said,"Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success." I choose to see myself forgiven, merciful, loved and loving, faithful. "For what does the L~rd require of you, Oh Man? But to love justice, do mercy, and walk humbly with your G~d!" Micah 6:8

On benefits of strength training for youths

2010-10-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

http://talktomejohnnie.com/lifting-weights/strength-training-for-young-athletes

When asked what his take was on the appropriate age to start training young athletes with weights, John Welborn replied that before puberty there will not be bulking up, but there will be neurological improvements for more efficient muscle recruitment. Children doing strength training with light weights before puberty improve agility, strength, and see better improvements in lifting after puberty than children who do not weight train. Also, "strength-training programs have no apparent adverse effect on linear growth, growth plates, or the cardiovascular system." Strength Training by Children and Adolescents published in the Joural of Pediatrics.

…what should the training look like in pre-puberty?

In the prepubescent stage boys and girls have similar strength, and at this age children are working on developing their neuromuscular systems. Strength training for kids should consist of skills, cooridnation, stablity, movement, agility, kinesthetic awareness, flexibility and balance. This should include big muscle groups the utilize body weight movements and free weights with light manageable loads. Things like Olympic weightlifting, gymnastics and plyometric movements. If these exercises and movement patterns are taught at a young the athlete will have a greater advantage in technique as they progress in age and strength. On a side note, strength training in youngsters has been shown to promote increased bone mineral density. The gymnastics movements teach strength in the trunk, shoulders and limbs that is not found anywhere else. Plyometric movements have great carry over to speed, aid in the Olympic movements and vice versa.

Ran today on the Addicks Reservoir Dam

2010-10-15T12:18:00.000-07:00

A beautiful day today, 80 degrees and I ran in huaraches on the Addicks Reservoir Dam.
Its a deload week on weight training. Worked out yesterday with Jeremiah Denner & David Gomez critiquing my squat technique. Need to sit back farther for shin to be parallel. Need to keep wrists straight with the fists on the bar. Need to have a wide stance with feet at 45 degrees and squat deep.

An oak tree was an acorn that stood its ground and grew.

2010-10-15T07:17:00.000-07:00

Be encouraged!

Am I missing something?

2010-10-08T07:51:00.000-07:00

It takes a live fish to swim upstream against the current.

Make the effort.

Am I being sidetracked, or living a life fulfilling?

2010-10-07T14:40:00.000-07:00

'When diversion and entertainment become a way of life, we avoid the very issues to which we should be most attentive. We are diverted from the grim, unpleasant truth that our lives lack meaning without God, that consumption does not satisfy, that the differential between wealth and poverty is unjust, and that appropriate human response to people in need is sleeves rolled-up service, not simply watching.

Please hear me, God's blessing is a promise in Scripture, but it should never be seen as "entitlement" and not in purely financial terms."
-Untamed; Alan Hirsch and Debra Hirsch

Even to those who believe in His Name

2010-10-03T08:25:00.000-07:00

John 1:12-13 "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. "Even to those who believe in His Name, Yeshua, Jehovah our Salvation!

Are you ringing the bell?

2010-09-30T08:18:00.000-07:00

Potential.
From http://crossfitmobile.blogspot.com/2010/09/fitness-is.html

Everybody has it. Few reach it.

It's easy to assume that people despise mediocrity because the world is littered with evidence of humanity's desire to excel—our obsession with talent, our reverence for heroes, even our love of money. It's easy to assume that everyone wants to be his or her physical best because everywhere there are those wishing for a better body type or a better lifestyle. They fill our virgin ears with a symphony of sincerity and aspiration, but listen closer. They clamor with empty voices.

The truth is that 90% of people just want to get by. We pretend our ultimate goal is to be the best version of ourselves, reading the right literature, quoting the right sources, joining the right gyms; but the reality is far less compelling. If we are truly honest we will admit that
the level to which we might possibly rise is rarely our chief concern. More important is reaching the level where we can merely survive or, at the very least, mock survival. Getting there is much easier. Getting there requires less time, less pain, and less effort. Getting there is too often there enough.

I was speaking with my father the other day about a friend of ours whose son wanted to be a college football player. He had good size and natural talent, but he was a little slow and lacked the explosive quality most big programs look for in an athlete. One evening while having dinner with this family my dad suggested that the kid hang a bell at the top of the hill abutting their property and ring it every morning before going to school. Not only would sprinting up the hill begin to build the explosive power needed for speed and acceleration but the sound of the bell would become a symbol of his dedication to the goal. I wish I could say the kid went out
and rang that bell every day, or committed himself to some other program in its place, but this isn't that kind of story. He, like many others like him, chose instead to remain a card-carrying member of that mediocre 90%.

Why? Because greatness is HARD. Our bodies don't care about potential. They were built to survive, not to excel, and survival has gotten pretty easy as of late. Our bodies don't know that by being stronger and faster and leaner the likelihood of illness, disease, and injury drop dramatically. Our bodies only know that it hurts like hell getting there. It takes supreme
physical and mental fortitude and an unflinching, genuine ambition to overcome these hurdles. Most of us lack this and it shows.

Now, maybe this kid would never have been great like Peyton Manning or Jerry Rice or Ray Lewis, just like some of us will always be at a higher risk for diabetes or arthritis than others, but that really isn't the point. In this story his ability wasn't being measured against theirs or
any others, only against his own potential as an individual. He claimed that he wanted to be the best that he could be, to give himself the best chance to be a college football player. But when faced with the reality of what it would take to reach that goal he balked, exposing his ambitions as half-hearted and insincere, and his athletic future to be one ridden along the tired road to the middle. This is an all too common tragedy.

After hearing this story, I sat for a minute and observed my father. He was visibly disappointed by the kid's inability to commit himself to his goal. Yet I knew for a fact that my dad had wanted to lose weight for years and failed to commit himself to doing so in much the same way. This struck me as a prevailing irony, not just in this conversation but in our culture in general, so I decided to ask him when was the last time he "rang the bell." He was lost for a second, then smiled wryly as he got my meaning. "Too long" he replied.

Sadly, it seems that our praise of greatness and our distaste for mediocrity is an appreciation and expectation reserved for others. We expect Jordan or Tiger or Ronaldo to reach their potential every time they compete and we shake our heads when they fall short. But we shrug off our love handles and that occasional chocolate cake as acceptable losses. We cry for the children growing up without physical opportunities, yet lie on the couch and amicably waste ours away. We claim we're too old, too fat, too injured, or too tired. The truth is we're too obsessed with getting by.

The good news is that physical potential does not expire. It has no shelf life. Whatever state you're in at whatever moment, you can always be better. SO BE BETTER. Too often people try to do this by setting a number to hit, a person to beat, or a mirror to impress, implicitly attaching a finite quality to the process. This focus is flawed. As you change and improve, so too should your potential grow and your ambition swell. Remember that fitness is a goal inadvertently attained through the systematic overestimation of yourself in all fields. It's a byproduct of
setting the bar too high, of striving for perfection and falling just short. It's knowing that you'll never get there but trying your damndest nonetheless. It's constantly pushing your limits in every direction regardless of your skill. It's finding a way to keep ringing the bell.

Do this and we inevitably yield the best version of ourselves.

Here is another take on the matter ... Difficult-difficult -vs- Difficult-easy
by http://www.geoffthompson.com/
I bumped into an old friend from the distant past. In my early days as a hard-nosed knuckle-dragger he was one of my compatriots, and one of the hardest working martial artists around. He had always prided himself on his sinewy mentality when it came to all things physical, and he had a prolific work rate. After a brief (and predictable) catch up (how’s the work, the car, the kids, the wife and the mum – in that order) he said ‘hey, you still doing animal day?’
Animal day, for those that do not know, is a form of knock-out or submission fighting (any range, any technique) that I pioneered in the mad, bad (and often sad) 90’s. A time I absolutely loved, but a time I am also grateful to have left behind.

I shook my head in the negative. It had been a many years since I engaged in my last animal day fight.
‘Why not?’ he asked, adding, ‘I’m still mad for it.’

‘Because it is difficult easy,’ I said, ‘and in order for me to continue growing my character, I don’t need difficult easy. In order for me to grow my character I need difficult difficult.’
He gave me one of those loud, squinty eyed confused looks that shouted from a hundred feet ‘Explain!’

So I explained.

Even as a veteran of thousands of fights, animal days were still a scary experience for me, it was violent and dangerous and extremely difficult. But because I had fought so many times and knew the terrain well it no longer stretched me.

Whatever it was that I needed to reap from that hard period of my life had been well and truly harvested; there was nothing left for me to learn there. Animal day was still difficult, and from the outside looking in it probably looked as though it was mad difficult, but for me it wasn’t, in fact it had become difficult easy.

My friend was still in love with the ground-and-pound style fighting and whilst his physical prowess was evident he had not grown even a single inch in any other area of his life, probably not for the last ten years. His was the mistake made by many; they presume that if something is difficult then they are in the arena. But experience has taught me that the only time you are truly in the arena is when you are (ever so slightly) out of your depth.

Difficult easy is when you are on familiar terrain, not matter how hard the going.

Difficult difficult is when you find your self at the bottom of someone else’s class with three crazy training partners; fear at your left, doubt on your right and (that big bastard) uncertainty squaring up in front of you.

Difficult easy is treading water whilst kidding yourself that you are swimming against the tide.

Difficult difficult doesn’t need to employ pretence because it is drowning and swimming for its life.

I see many people suffering stalled development because they are so busy occupying themselves with very worthy, respectably, difficult easy tasks that they use to avoid the difficult difficult areas of their lives.

I am doing it right now as it happens. I should be doing a re-write of a difficult (difficult) film script that is over due, but instead I am busying myself with a piece of difficult (easy) work that is not really due to be in print for another fortnight (damn, caught myself out again!)

Some (more) examples; you bury your relationship problems (difficult difficult) under hundreds of miles of road running (difficult…but easy).

You fill every spare moment with hard lists of worthy causes (difficult easy) so that you don’t have the time to invest in the book that you were always going to write, or the film you would love to make (if only you were not so committed in other areas) or the (difficult…very difficult) painting career that you had always intended to create.

You immerse yourself in course after course, book after book (so difficult, and yet….so deliciously easy) on becoming a life coach/property developer/master chef instead of just getting out there (difficult, oh so difficult) and actually doing it.

Listen. Let me tell you, the moment a task becomes difficult easy you stop growing. That is a fact. In order to re-establish your vital development you need to take an honest inventory (difficult very difficult – I have done it) of your life, ditch the pretence, and embrace the black that is….difficult difficult.

And stop chasing ostentatious challenges (that are difficult easy for you) and sort out your health; you are three stone over weight and your blood pressure is off the scale.

Kill the worthy endeavours that you think other people will think are impressive and do something truly and uniquely impressive; take your (secret) addictions to task and kill the porn (in all its forms).

Stop collecting trophies and certificates and belts that tell the word how successful you are and actually BE a success, by taking a hammer to that creepily burgeoning fear that you are harbouring.

And don’t, please (like my old mate) fall into the trap of mistaking hard work – even extremely hard (easy) work – for progress. Because, let’s be frank, difficult easy is really just another way of saying ‘easy’, and there is no growth in easy.

We aspirants are into the hard game, the long game, the difficult difficult game. What we are not into, or what we should not be into is the game of easy

What's the big deal about the Maker Faire?

2010-09-29T07:30:00.000-07:00

What's the big deal? From Mark Frauenfelder:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/10/school-for-hackers/8218

Imagine a school where kids could do the following: clone jellyfish DNA; build gadgets to measure the electrical impulses of cockroach neurons; make robotic blackjack dealers; design machines that can distinguish between glass, plastic, and aluminum beverage containers and sort them into separate bins; and convert gasoline-burning cars to run on electric power.

No such school exists, but in August I went to Detroit and met the kids who did all these things, and more. They—along with 22,000 other people—had come from all over the United States and Canada to demo their creations at Maker Faire, a two-day festival of do-it-yourselfers, crafters, musicians, urban homesteaders, kit makers, scientists, engineers, and curious visitors who congregated to present projects, give performances, and swap ideas. Having attended eight Maker Faire events since 2006 (they’re put on by the same company that owns the magazine I edit), I’ve become convinced of two things about children and education: (1) making things is a terrific way to learn, and (2) schools are failing to teach kids to learn with their hands.

Week 3 of Squats-Cleans-Presses-Deadlifts

2010-09-27T14:46:00.000-07:00

Week3 Monday: 75%x5,85%x3, 95%x1
CP75%x5=105, 5 pullups, 85%x3=120, 5 pullups, 95%x1=135, 5 pullups
BS75%x5=175, 85%x3=195, 95%x1=220
DL75%x5=175, 85%x3=195, 95%x1=220

PR RLES110, BS230, DL230, CP140

Problem or Possibility? Choice

2010-09-27T07:55:00.000-07:00

"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." - Albert Einstein

http://squatrx.blogspot.com/2010/08/true-but-useless.html
In 1990, Jerry Sternin was working for Save The Children, the international organization that helps children in need. He'd been asked to open a new office in Vietnam. The government had invited Save The Children into the country to fight malnutrition. But when Sternin arrived, the welcome was rather chilly. The foreign minister let him know that not everyone in the government appreciated his presence. The minister told Sternin, "You have six months to make a difference.'

Sternin was traveling with his wife and 10-year-old son. None of them spoke Vietnamese. "We were like orphans at the airport when we arrived in Vietnam," he recalled. "We had no idea what we were going to do." Sternin had minimal staff and meager resources.

Sternin had read as much as he could about the malnutrition problem. The conventional wisdom was that malnutrition was the result of an intertwined set of problems: Sanitation was poor. Poverty was nearly universal. Clean water was not readily available. The rural people tented to be ignorant about nutrition.

In Sternin's judgement, all of this analysis was "TBU" - true but useless. "Millions of kids can't wait for those issues to be addresed," he said. If addressing malnutrition required ending poverty and purifying water and building sanitation systems, then it would never happen. Especially in six months, with almost no money to spend.

Sternin had a better idea. He traveled to rural villages and met with groups of local mothers. The mothers divided into teams and went out to weigh and measure every child in their village. They then poured over the results together.

Sternin asked them, "Did you find any very, very poor kids who are bigger and healthier than the typical child?" The women scanning the data, nodded and said, "Co, co, co." (Yes, yes, yes.)

Sternin said, "You mean it's possible today in this village for a very poor family to have a well-nourished child?"

"Co, co, co."

"Then let's go see what they're doing."

- Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (pp. 27-28)

Sternin found that children who were eating four meals a day with calories spread out (rather than the two meals typical in the area) and eating meals supplemented with shrimps, crabs, and sweet-potato greens (not considered "child food" by most families) were the hardiest. He then implemented communal meal preparation "workshops", led by neighborhood mothers, to dispense the information.

The book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, proposes a three-part framework to create behavioral change:

*"Direct The Rider" - Provide clear direction so that the rational mind ("the rider") will not suffer from "paralysis of analysis", or be immobilized by an inability to choose from a mountain of possible solutions.
For most trainees, having a very explicit plan of action makes change easier. People prefer to be told what to do (weights, sets, reps, exercises, training frequency, calories, menu items, supplements, etc).

*"Motivate The Elephant" - Recruit the emotions ("the elephant") to your cause, so that you aren't constantly fighting a battle you can't win. Photos, food logs and training records, videos, etc. can all help create and sustain emotional commitment to getting stronger and into shape - and staying that way.

*"Shape The Path" - Alter your surroundings to make success more likely. Buying the smaller size (even though the "value meal" gives you more calories per dollar), having a home gym or a membership to a 24 hour gym nearby, and using smaller dinner plates are all examples of small, seemingly inconsequential things that may add up to big time change over the longer haul.

How often do we get bogged down by the "TBU" (true but useless) conditions that limit our training and ultimately our potential? What can YOU do to make the changes you've been wanting but haven't gotten around to yet?

What to do when you feel overwhelmed

2010-09-24T06:54:00.000-07:00

Have you every been too busy? overwhelmed? inundated with competing, conflicting demands?

Peter Bregman has a thoughtful article to consider: http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2010/09/a-practical-plan-for-when-you-1.html
If you don't do the homework, you can't step forward in the walk. Our habits reflect our character.

As Dr. Stephen Covey has said, "Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out." "The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities."

Putting the compass before the clock.
"Our struggle to put first things first can be characterized by the contrast between two powerful tools that direct us: the clock and the compass. The clock represents our commitments, appointments, schedules, goals, activities -- what we do with, and how we manage our time. The compass represents our vision, values, principles, mission, conscience, direction -- what we feel is important and how we lead our lives. In an effort to close the gap between the clock and the compass in our lives, many of us turn to the field of 'time management.'"

Great example of trusting in God

2010-09-22T20:11:00.000-07:00

This gives new meaning to Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall directyour paths.

Hearing God on the Job
by Os Hillman
Wednesday, April 22 2009

"But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong" (1 Cor 1:26-27).

My friend, Emeka Nywankpa, was a barrister (lawyer) in Nigeria. Emeka spoke at a conference a few years ago on the subject of how the spiritual impacts the physical.

Emeka shared a story about arguing an important Supreme Court case in his country. There were five points to argue in the case. The morning the trial began, he prayed with his wife and junior lawyers in his chambers. During his prayer time, he sensed that the Holy Spirit was telling him, "Do not argue points one through four. Only argue point five." Imagine making such a change just before you are to argue a case before the Supreme Court!

In the courtroom, Emeka announced that he wished to drop points one through four and only wished to argue point five. The judge was shocked, but gave him permission to proceed. He argued point five and sat down. The other attorney got up, and then for twelve minutes stumbled around trying to defend his position, unable to get a coherent word out.

Finally, he approached the bench and said, "Your Lordship, it is unfortunate that my learned friend has dropped the first four points. I wish to yield the case." The other attorney had only prepared for the first four points. Emeka won the case. God had given him a strategy to win his case supernaturally. It made no sense to him, but he obeyed and God gave him victory in a very unusual way.

Isaiah 48:17 tells us "Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, The Holy One of Israel: 'I am the LORD your God, Who teaches you to profit, Who leads you by the way you should go.'"

When is the last time you allowed God to give you a strategy to be successful in your work life call and bring glory to His name? This is his desire for you.

Blessings!

--
Michael Chase
ne cede malis
cellphone: 281-734-8171; alt: 713-937-1606;
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This e-mail contains confidential and/or privileged information. The information is intended to be only for the use of the person(s) named. If you are not an intended recipient you are hereby notified that any dissemination distribution copying or other use of or reliance upon the information contained in and transmitted with this internet e-mail correspondence is unauthorized and strictly prohibited.

He probably doesn't think he is brave ....

2010-09-20T08:05:00.000-07:00

He probably doesn't think he is brave, but he is. He grew up dealing with
slippery rocks, vertical leaps, unforgiving slips, hard-found snacks.
You might not think you are brave, but you are. Choosing to trust Christ
in situations, inspite of feelings, relying on His Word, inspite of
negative thoughts. Consciously going against the common trends,
choosing the walk of the Spirit.
I'm proud of you.
Dad

What if sprinting makes kids smarter?

2010-09-17T07:03:00.000-07:00

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/phys-ed-can-exercise-make-kids-smarter/?ref=health

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20693803

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20735996

Can Exercise Make Kids Smarter? by Gretchen Reynolds 9/15/2010 New York Times

In an experiment published last month, researchers recruited schoolchildren, ages 9 and 10, who lived near the Champaign-Urbana campus of the University of Illinois and asked them to run on a treadmill. The researchers were hoping to learn more about how fitness affects the immature human brain. Animal studies had already established that, when given access to running wheels, baby rodents bulked up their brains, enlarging certain areas and subsequently outperforming sedentary pups on rodent intelligence tests. But studies of the effect of exercise on the actual shape and function of children's brains had not yet been tried.

So the researchers sorted the children, based on their treadmill runs, into highest-, lowest- and median-fit categories. Only the most- and least-fit groups continued in the study (to provide the greatest contrast). Both groups completed a series of cognitive challenges involving watching
directional arrows on a computer screen and pushing certain keys in order to test how well the children filter out unnecessary information and attend to relevant cues. Finally, the children's brains were scanned, using magnetic resonance imaging technology to measure the volume of specific areas.

Previous studies found that fitter kids generally scored better on such tests. And in this case, too, those children performed better on the tests. But the M.R.I.'s provided a clearer picture of how it might work. They showed that fit children had significantly larger basal ganglia, a key part
of the brain that aids in maintaining attention and "executive control," or the ability to coordinate actions and thoughts crisply. Since both groups of children had similar socioeconomic backgrounds, body mass index and other variables, the researchers concluded that being fit had enlarged that portion of their brains.

Meanwhile, in a separate, newly completed study by many of the same researchers at the University of Illinois, a second group of 9- and 10-year-old children were also categorized by fitness levels and had their brains scanned, but they completed different tests, this time focusing on complex memory. Such thinking is associated with activity in the hippocampus, a structure in the brain's medial temporal lobes. Sure enough, the M.R.I. scans revealed that the fittest children had heftier hippocampi.

The two studies did not directly overlap, but the researchers, in their separate reports, noted that the hippocampus and basal ganglia regions interact in the human brain, structurally and functionally. Together they allow some of the most intricate thinking. If exercise is responsible for increasing the size of these regions and strengthening the connection between them, being fit may "enhance neurocognition" in young people, the authors concluded.

High Fructose Corn Syrup ... guess I'm in the 42%

2010-09-15T06:51:00.000-07:00

Now they want to rename High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) to clear up confusion and call it Corn Sugar. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/a-new-name-for-high-fructose-corn-syrup/?hpw

Those amazing people at the Corn Refiners Association think they need to change their image. Guess I'm in the 42% that believes HFCS causes insuline resistence. Its not about image; its about biochemistry.
http://blogs.mercola.com/sites/vitalvotes/archive/2010/01/20/sugar-may-be-bad-but-this-sweetener-is-far-more-deadly--part-3-of-3.aspx

Squats-Cleans-Presses-Deadlifts

2010-09-13T10:39:00.000-07:00

Week1 Monday:
BS65,75,85=150x5,175x5,195x3
RLES65,75,85=75x5,90x5,100x3
CP65,75,85=95x5,105x5,120x3
DL65,75,85=150x5,175x5,195x3

Then Pullups,too tired for dips
PR RLES110, BS230, DL230, CP140
progression from:
Week 1: 65%x5 of 90% of 1RepMax, 75%x5, 85%x3
Week 2: 70%x3, 80%x3, 90%x3
Week 3: 75%x5,85%x3, 95%x1
Week 4: deload: 40%x5, 50%x5, 60%x5
Every morning planks & flutterkicks.

Wonder Just How Bad the Traffic Really is in Houston?

2010-09-13T10:37:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder just how bad the traffic really is in Houston? Check out the updated Texas Dept of Transportation list.

Check out the Avacen Grip for sports performance

2010-09-08T06:54:00.000-07:00

Check out the Avacen Grip for sports performance:

http://www.crossfitinvictus.com/blog/2010/09/saturday-september-4-2010/

http://www.avacen.com/avacen/action?do=overview&topic=quick

I can see incredible benefits for firefighters, atheletes, construction workers ... but I can also see mini-versions for warriors in the mad-minute of war.

They aren't selling stock right now, I checked.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=DetailsSearch&term=15879169%5Buid%5D&log$=activity

Michael Chase

Backsquats, Cleans, Presses & Deadlifts

2010-09-02T12:50:00.000-07:00

Week3 Thursday: 75%x5,85%x3, 95%x1
BS75%x5=170, 85%x3=190, 95%x1=215
CP75%x5=100, 85%x3=115, 95%x1=130
DL75%x5=170, 85%x3=190, 95%x1=215

Then Pullups
PR BS225, DL225, CP135
progression from:
Week 1: 65%x5 of 90% of 1RepMax, 75%x5, 85%x3
Week 2: 70%x3, 80%x3, 90%x3
Week 3: 75%x5,85%x3, 95%x1
Week 4: deload: 40%x5, 50%x5, 60%x5
Every morning butterfly situps & flutterkicks.

Great Mobility Blog by Kelley Sterrett

2010-08-29T06:52:00.000-07:00

Kelley Starrett is a physical therapist that has really been a great influence on me and he now has a blog you should consider for mobility.
http://www.crossfitinvictus.com/blog/2010/08/wednesday-august-25-2010/

Have you ever seen a fat sprinter?

2010-08-26T08:03:00.000-07:00

http://spartascience.blogspot.com/2010/08/lift-heavy-and-look-good.html

My first coaching mentor used to always ask our Cal athletes if they have
ever seen a fat sprinter, followed by the same question regarding a jogger.
His point was that these more intense activities, lifting weights and
running fast, burn more calories and thus help keep body fat lower.
Nutrition remains most important in affecting body composition (see
SpartaPoint 12/16/09), but exercises producing a greater EPOC, or excess
post-exercise oxygen consumption, also play a part. This process is an
increased rate of oxygen intake to help the body recover following
activity, especially when it's strenuous.

After exercise, oxygen is used in a variety of processes that restore the
body to a resting state, including but not limited to, the hormone
balancing, cell repair, and building muscle. This higher use of oxygen, or
EPOC, causes greater fuel consumption by the body, so fat stores are broken
down and released into the blood for fuel. A 1998 study out of Appalachian
State's Exercise Science Department by Dr. Burleson found that a
weightlifting group produced a greater EPOC response than an aerobic
exercise group that jogged on a treadmill. The authors suggested that the
results were due to the greater global disturbance of the body from
resistance exercise, and the resultant greater demand for recovery.

Some major disturbances found in higher intensity movements, like
weightlifting and sprinting, include elevated blood lactate, and an
increase in circulating catecholamines and anabolic hormones. Blood lactate
levels are increased mainly in high intensity exercise due to the anaerobic
nature of these movements (see SpartaPoint 8/11/10). Catecholomaines,
epinephrine and norepinephrine, are your fight or flight response. For
example, when you are being chased by a tiger, you're not going to jog. As
mentioned in our last Sparta Point Live, anabolic hormones, such as
testosterone, can be found in higher levels among anaerobic athletes.

Taking the above disturbances that occur from high intensity movements, our
athletes take it a step further by training at the highest intensities. By
lifting heavier weights and jumping on higher boxes, the fight or flight
response is enhanced, as well as the lactate production and anabolic
response. The only caveat is that these intensities take some time to
develop in order to be performed safely.
So the next time you press manual start on that stationery bike or feel the
need for more "cardio", perform resistance training more frequently to
allow yourself to eventually train at a higher intensity and provide a
greater overall benefit. That tiger will never catch the lean sprinter
before the jogger.

Progression Week1 of BS-CP-DL

2010-08-18T14:13:00.000-07:00

Week1 Monday:
BS65%,75,85=145x5,170x5,190x3
CP65%,75,85=87x5,101x5,115x3
DL65%,75,85=145x5,170x5,190x3

Then Pullups,Dips, Crunches, GoodMornings with 25#
PR RLES105, BS225, DL225, CP135
progression from:
Week 1: 65%x5 of 90% of 1RepMax, 75%x5, 85%x3
Week 2: 70%x3, 80%x3, 90%x3
Week 3: 75%x5,85%x3, 95%x1
Week 4: deload: 40%x5, 50%x5, 60%x5
Every morning butterfly situps & flutterkicks.

The Cholesterol Myth That Could Be Harming Your Health

2010-08-18T13:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mercola/the-cholesterol-myth-that_b_676817.html

by Joseph Mercola, M.D.

Cholesterol could easily be described as the smoking gun of the last two decades.

It's been responsible for demonizing entire categories of foods (like eggs and saturated fats) and blamed for just about every case of heart disease in the last 20 years.

Yet when I first opened my medical practice in the mid 80s, cholesterol, and the fear that yours was too high was rarely talked about.

Somewhere along the way however, cholesterol became a household word -- something that you must keep as low as possible, or suffer the consequences.

You are probably aware that there are many myths that portray fat and cholesterol as one of the worst foods you can consume. Please understand that these myths are actually harming your health.

Not only is cholesterol most likely not going to destroy your health (as you have been led to believe), but it is also not the cause of heart disease. And for those of you taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, the information that follows could not have been given to you fast enough. But before I delve into this life-changing information, let's get some basics down first.

What is Cholesterol, and Why Do You Need It?

That's right, you do need cholesterol.

This soft, waxy substance is found not only in your bloodstream, but also in every cell in your body, where it helps to produce cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D and bile acids that help you to digest fat. Cholesterol also helps in the formation of your memories and is vital for neurological function.

Your liver makes about 75 percent of your body's cholesterol ,[i] and according to conventional medicine, there are two types:

High-density lipoprotein, or HDL: This is the "good" cholesterol that helps to keep cholesterol away from your arteries and remove any excess from arterial plaque, which may help to prevent heart disease.

Low-density lipoprotein, or LDL: This "bad" cholesterol circulates in your blood and, according to conventional thinking, may build up in your arteries, forming plaque that makes your arteries narrow and less flexible (a condition called atherosclerosis). If a clot forms in one of these narrowed arteries leading to your heart or brain, a heart attack or stroke may result.

Also making up your total cholesterol count are:

-- Triglycerides: Elevated levels of this dangerous fat have been linked to heart disease and diabetes. Triglyceride levels are known to rise from eating too many grains and sugars, being physically inactive, smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol excessively and being overweight or obese.

-- Lipoprotein (a), or Lp(a): Lp(a) is a substance that is made up of an LDL "bad cholesterol" part plus a protein (apoprotein a). Elevated Lp(a) levels are a very strong risk factor for heart disease. This has been well established, yet very few physicians check for it in their patients.

Understand this:

Your Total Cholesterol Level is NOT a Great Indicator of Your Heart Disease Risk

Health officials in the United States urge everyone over the age of 20 to have their cholesterol tested once every five years. Part of this test is your total cholesterol, or the sum of your blood's cholesterol content, including HDL, LDLs and VLDLs.

The American Heart Association recommends that your total cholesterol is less than 200 mg/dL, but what they do not tell you is that total cholesterol level is just about worthless in determining your risk for heart disease, unless it is above 330.

In addition, the AHA updated their guidelines in 2004, lowering the recommended level of LDL cholesterol from 130 to LDL to less than 100, or even less than 70 for patients at very high risk.

In order to achieve these outrageous and dangerously low targets, you typically need to take multiple cholesterol-lowering drugs. So the guidelines instantly increased the market for these dangerous drugs. Now, with testing children's cholesterol levels, they're increasing their market even more.

I have seen a number of people with total cholesterol levels over 250 who actually were at low heart disease risk due to their HDL levels. Conversely, I have seen even more who had cholesterol levels under 200 that were at a very high risk of heart disease based on the following additional tests:

-- HDL/Cholesterol ratio

-- Triglyceride/HDL ratios

HDL percentage is a very potent heart disease risk factor. Just divide your HDL level by your cholesterol. That percentage should ideally be above 24 percent.

You can also do the same thing with your triglycerides and HDL ratio. That percentage should be below 2.

Keep in mind, however, that these are still simply guidelines, and there's a lot more that goes into your risk of heart disease than any one of these numbers. In fact, it was only after word got out that total cholesterol is a poor predictor of heart disease that HDL and LDL cholesterol were brought into the picture.

They give you a closer idea of what's going on, but they still do not show you everything.

Cholesterol is Neither "Good" Nor "Bad"

Now that we've defined good and bad cholesterol, it has to be said that there is actually only one type of cholesterol. Ron Rosedale, MD, who is widely considered to be one of the leading anti-aging doctor in the United States, does an excellent job of explaining this concept :[ii]

"Notice please that LDL and HDL are lipoproteins -- fats combined with proteins. There is only one cholesterol. There is no such thing as "good" or "bad" cholesterol.
Cholesterol is just cholesterol.

It combines with other fats and proteins to be carried through the bloodstream, since fat and our watery blood do not mix very well.

Fatty substances therefore must be shuttled to and from our tissues and cells using proteins. LDL and HDL are forms of proteins and are far from being just cholesterol.

In fact we now know there are many types of these fat and protein particles. LDL particles come in many sizes and large LDL particles are not a problem. Only the so-called small dense LDL particles can potentially be a problem, because they can squeeze through the lining of the arteries and if they oxidize, otherwise known as turning rancid, they can cause damage and inflammation.

Thus, you might say that there is "good LDL" and "bad LDL."

Also, some HDL particles are better than others. Knowing just your total cholesterol tells you very little. Even knowing your LDL and HDL levels will not tell you very much."

Cholesterol is Your Friend, Not Your Enemy

Before we continue, I really would like you to get your mind around this concept.

In the United States, the idea that cholesterol is evil is very much engrained in most people's minds. But this is a very harmful myth that needs to be put to rest right now.

"First and foremost," Dr. Rosedale points out, "cholesterol is a vital component of every cell membrane on Earth. In other words, there is no life on Earth that can live without cholesterol.
That will automatically tell you that, in and of itself, it cannot be evil. In fact, it is one of our best friends.

We would not be here without it. No wonder lowering cholesterol too much increases one's risk of dying. Cholesterol is also a precursor to all of the steroid hormones. You cannot make estrogen, testosterone, cortisone and a host of other vital hormones without cholesterol."

Vitamin D and Your Cholesterol

You probably are aware of the incredible influence of vitamin D on your health. If you aren't, or need a refresher, you can visit my vitamin D page.

What most people do not realize is that the best way to obtain your vitamin D is from safe exposure to sun on your skin. The UVB rays in sunlight interact with the cholesterol on your skin and convert it to vitamin D.

Bottom line?

If your cholesterol level is too low you will not be able to use the sun to generate sufficient levels of vitamin D.

Additionally, it provides some intuitive feedback that if cholesterol were so dangerous, why would your body use it as precursor for vitamin D and virtually all of the steroid hormones in your body?

Other "evidence" that cholesterol is good for you?

Consider the role of "good" HDL cholesterol. Essentially, HDL takes cholesterol from your body's tissues and arteries, and brings it back to your liver, where most of your cholesterol is produced. If the purpose of this was to eliminate cholesterol from your body, it would make sense that the cholesterol would be shuttled back to your kidneys or intestines so your body could remove it.

Instead, it goes back to your liver. Why?

Because your liver is going to reuse it.

"It is taking it back to your liver so that your liver can recycle it; put it back into other particles to be taken to tissues and cells that need it," Dr. Rosedale explains. "Your body is trying to make and conserve the cholesterol for the precise reason that it is so important, indeed vital, for health."
Cholesterol and Inflammation - What's the Connection?

Inflammation has become a bit of a buzzword in the medical field because it has been linked to so many different diseases. And one of those diseases is heart disease ... the same heart disease that cholesterol is often blamed for.

What am I getting at?

Well, first consider the role of inflammation in your body. In many respects, it's a good thing as it's your body's natural response to invaders it perceives as threats. If you get a cut for instance, the process of inflammation is what allows you to heal.

Specifically during inflammation:

-- Your blood vessels constrict to keep you from bleeding to death

-- Your blood becomes thicker so it can clot

-- Your immune system sends cells and chemicals to fight viruses, bacteria and other "bad guys" that could infect the area

-- Cells multiply to repair the damage

Ultimately, the cut is healed and a protective scar may form over the area.

If your arteries are damaged, a very similar process occurs inside of your body, except that a "scar" in your artery is known as plaque.

This plaque, along with the thickening of your blood and constricting of your blood vessels that normally occur during the inflammatory process, can indeed increase your risk of high blood pressure and heart attacks.

Notice that cholesterol has yet to even enter the picture.

Cholesterol comes in because, in order to replace your damaged cells, it is necessary.

Remember that no cell can form without it.

So if you have damaged cells that need to be replaced, your liver will be notified to make more cholesterol and release it into your bloodstream. This is a deliberate process that takes place in order for your body to produce new, healthy cells.

It's also possible, and quite common, for damage to occur in your body on a regular basis. In this case, you will be in a dangerous state of chronic inflammation.

The test usually used to determine if you have chronic inflammation is a C-reactive protein (CRP) blood test. CRP level is used as a marker of inflammation in your arteries.

Generally speaking:

-- A CRP level under 1 milligrams per liter of blood means you have a low risk for cardiovascular disease

-- 1 to 3 milligrams means your risk is intermediate

-- More than 3 milligrams is high risk

Even conventional medicine is warming up to the idea that chronic inflammation can trigger heart attacks. But they stop short of seeing the big picture.

In the eyes of conventional medicine, when they see increased cholesterol circulating in your bloodstream, they conclude that it -- not the underlying damage to your arteries -- is the cause of heart attacks.

Which brings me to my next point.

The Insanity of Lowering Cholesterol

Sally Fallon, the president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, and Mary Enig, Ph.D, an expert in lipid biochemistry, have gone so far as to call high cholesterol "an invented disease, a 'problem' that emerged when health professionals learned how to measure cholesterol levels in the blood."[iii]

And this explanation is spot on.

If you have increased levels of cholesterol, it is at least in part because of increased inflammation in your body. The cholesterol is there to do a job: help your body to heal and repair.

Conventional medicine misses the boat entirely when they dangerously recommend that lowering cholesterol with drugs is the way to reduce your risk of heart attacks, because what is actually needed is to address whatever is causing your body damage -- and leading to increased inflammation and then increased cholesterol.

As Dr. Rosedale so rightly points out:

"If excessive damage is occurring such that it is necessary to distribute extra cholesterol through the bloodstream, it would not seem very wise to merely lower the cholesterol and forget about why it is there in the first place.
It would seem much smarter to reduce the extra need for the cholesterol -- the excessive damage that is occurring, the reason for the chronic inflammation."

I'll discuss how to do this later in the report, but first let's take a look at the dangers of low cholesterol -- and how it came to be that cholesterol levels needed to be so low in the first place.

If Your Cholesterol is Too Low ...

All kinds of nasty things can happen to your body. Remember, every single one of your cells needs cholesterol to thrive -- including those in your brain. Perhaps this is why low cholesterol wreaks havoc on your psyche.

One large study conducted by Dutch researchers found that men with chronically low cholesterol levels showed a consistently higher risk of having depressive symptoms.[iv]

This may be because cholesterol affects the metabolism of serotonin, a substance involved in the regulation of your mood. On a similar note, Canadian researchers found that those in the lowest quarter of total cholesterol concentration had more than six times the risk of committing suicide as did those in the highest quarter. [v]

Dozens of studies also support a connection between low or lowered cholesterol levels and violent behavior, through this same pathway: lowered cholesterol levels may lead to lowered brain serotonin activity, which may, in turn, lead to increased violence and aggression. [vi]

And one meta-analysis of over 41,000 patient records found that people who take statin drugs to lower their cholesterol as much as possible may have a higher risk of cancer, [vii] while other studies have linked low cholesterol to Parkinson's disease.

What cholesterol level is too low? Brace yourself.

Probably any level much under 150 -- an optimum would be more like 200.

Now I know what you are thinking: "But my doctor tells me my cholesterol needs to be under 200 to be healthy." Well let me enlighten you about how these cholesterol recommendations came to be. And I warn you, it is not a pretty story.

This is a significant issue. I have seen large numbers of people who have their cholesterol lowered below 150, and there is little question in my mind that it is causing far more harm than any benefit they are receiving by lowering their cholesterol this low.

Who Decided What Cholesterol Levels are Healthy or Harmful?

In 2004, the U.S. government's National Cholesterol Education Program panel advised those at risk for heart disease to attempt to reduce their LDL cholesterol to specific, very low, levels.

Before 2004, a 130-milligram LDL cholesterol level was considered healthy. The updated guidelines, however, recommended levels of less than 100, or even less than 70 for patients at very high risk.

Keep in mind that these extremely low targets often require multiple cholesterol-lowering drugs to achieve.

Fortunately, in 2006 a review in the Annals of Internal Medicine [viii] found that there is insufficient evidence to support the target numbers outlined by the panel. The authors of the review were unable to find research providing evidence that achieving a specific LDL target level was important in and of itself, and found that the studies attempting to do so suffered from major flaws.

Several of the scientists who helped develop the guidelines even admitted that the scientific evidence supporting the less-than-70 recommendation was not very strong.

So how did these excessively low cholesterol guidelines come about?

Eight of the nine doctors on the panel that developed the new cholesterol guidelines had been making money from the drug companies that manufacture statin cholesterol-lowering drugs.[ix]

The same drugs that the new guidelines suddenly created a huge new market for in the United States.

Coincidence? I think not.

Now, despite the finding that there is absolutely NO evidence to show that lowering your LDL cholesterol to 100 or below is good for you, what do you think the American Heart Association STILL recommends?

Lowering your LDL cholesterol levels to less than 100. [x]

And to make matters worse, the standard recommendation to get to that level almost always includes one or more cholesterol-lowering drugs.

The Dangers of Cholesterol-Lowering Medications

If you are concerned about your cholesterol levels, taking a drug should be your absolute last resort. And when I say last resort, I'm saying the odds are very high, greater than 100 to 1, that you don't need drugs to lower your cholesterol.

To put it another way, among the more than 20,000 patients who have come to my clinic, only four or five of them truly needed these drugs, as they had genetic challenges of familial hypercholesterolemia that required it..

Contrast this to what is going on in the general population. According to data from Medco Health Solutions Inc., more than half of insured Americans are taking drugs for chronic health conditions. And cholesterol-lowering medications are the second most common variety among this group, with nearly 15 percent of chronic medication users taking them (high blood pressure medications -- another vastly over-prescribed category -- were first). [xi]

Disturbingly, as written in BusinessWeek early in 2008, "Some researchers have even suggested -- half-jokingly -- that the medications should be put in the water supply." [xii]

Count yourself lucky that you probably do NOT need to take cholesterol-lowering medications, because these are some nasty little pills.

Statin drugs work by inhibiting an enzyme in your liver that's needed to manufacture cholesterol. What is so concerning about this is that when you go tinkering around with the delicate workings of the human body, you risk throwing everything off kilter.

Case in point, "statin drugs inhibit not just the production of cholesterol, but a whole family of intermediary substances, many if not all of which have important biochemical functions in their own right," say Enig and Fallon.3

For starters, statin drugs deplete your body of Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), which is beneficial to heart health and muscle function. Because doctors rarely inform people of this risk and advise them to take a CoQ10 supplement, this depletion leads to fatigue, muscle weakness, soreness, and eventually heart failure.

Muscle pain and weakness, a condition called rhabdomyolysis, is actually the most common side effect of statin drugs, which is thought to occur because statins activate the atrogin-1 gene, which plays a key role in muscle atrophy. [xiii]

By the way, muscle pain and weakness may be an indication that your body tissues are actually breaking down -- a condition that can cause kidney damage.

Statin drugs have also been linked to:

-- An increased risk of polyneuropathy (nerve damage that causes pain in the hands and feet and trouble walking)

-- Dizziness

-- Cognitive impairment, including memory loss [xiv]

-- A potential increased risk of cancer [xv]

-- Decreased function of the immune system[xvi]

-- Depression

-- Liver problems, including a potential increase in liver enzymes (so people taking statins must be regularly monitored for normal liver function)

And recently a possible association was found between statins and an increased risk of Lou Gehrig's disease. [xvii]

Other cholesterol-lowering drugs besides statins also have side effects, most notably muscle pain and weakness.

IMPORTANT NOTE

If, for whatever reason, you or someone you know or love does not believe the information in this report and chooses to stay on statin drugs, then please make sure they at least take one to two Ubiquinols per day.

This will help prevent all the side effects mentioned above.

Ubiquinol is the reduced version of Coenzyme Q-10 and is far more effective if you are over 35-40 years old. It is the form of the supplement that actually works, and if you take CoQ-10 and your body can't reduce it to uniquinol you are just fooling yourself and wasting your money.

Are Cholesterol Drugs Even Effective?

With all of these risks, the drugs had better be effective, right? Well, even this is questionable. At least, it depends on how you look at it.

Most cholesterol lowering drugs can effectively lower your cholesterol numbers, but are they actually making you any healthier, and do they help prevent heart disease?

Have you ever heard of the statistic known as NNT, or number needed to treat?

I didn't think so. In fact, most doctors haven't either. And herein lies the problem.

NNT answers the question: How many people have to take a particular drug to avoid one incidence of a medical issue (such as a heart attack)?

For example, if a drug had an NNT of 50 for heart attacks, then 50 people have to take the drug in order to prevent one heart attack.

Easy enough, right?

Well, drug companies would rather that you not focus on NNT, because when you do, you get an entirely different picture of their "miracle" drugs. Take, for instance, Pfizer's Lipitor, which is the most prescribed cholesterol medication in the world and has been prescribed to more than 26 million Americans. [xviii]

According to Lipitor's own Web site, Lipitor is clinically proven to lower bad cholesterol 39-60 percent, depending on the dose. Sounds fairly effective, right?

Well, BusinessWeek actually did an excellent story on this very topic earlier this year, [xix] and they found the REAL numbers right on Pfizer's own newspaper ad for Lipitor.

Upon first glance, the ad boasts that Lipitor reduces heart attacks by 36 percent. But there is an asterisk. And when you follow the asterisk, you find the following in much smaller type:

"That means in a large clinical study, 3% of patients taking a sugar pill or placebo had a heart attack compared to 2% of patients taking Lipitor."
What this means is that for every 100 people who took the drug over 3.3 years, three people on placebos, and two people on Lipitor, had heart attacks. That means that taking Lipitor resulted in just one fewer heart attack per 100 people.

The NNT, in this case, is 100. One hundred people have to take Lipitor for more than three years to prevent one heart attack. And the other 99 people, well, they've just dished out hundreds of dollars and increased their risk of a multitude of side effects for nothing.

So you can see how the true effectiveness of cholesterol drugs like Lipitor is hidden behind a smokescreen.

Or in some cases, not hidden at all.

Zetia and Vytorin: No Medical Benefits

Early in 2008, it came out that Zetia, which works by inhibiting absorption of cholesterol from your intestines, and Vytorin, which is a combination of Zetia and Zocor (a statin drug), do not work.

This was discovered AFTER the drugs acquired close to 20 percent of the U.S. market for cholesterol-lowering drugs. And also after close to 1 million prescriptions for the drugs were being written each week in the United States, bringing in close to $4 billion in 2007. [xx]

It was only after the results of a trial by the drugs' makers, Merck and Schering-Plough, were released that this was found out. Never mind that the trial was completed in April 2006, and results were not released until January 2008.

And it's no wonder the drug companies wanted to hide these results.

While Zetia does lower cholesterol by 15 percent to 20 percent, trials did not show that it reduces heart attacks or strokes, or that it reduces plaques in arteries that can lead to heart problems.

The trial by the drugs' makers, which studied whether Zetia could reduce the growth of plaques, found that plaques grew nearly twice as fast in patients taking Zetia along with Zocor (Vytorin) than in those taking Zocor alone. [xxi]

Of course, the answer is not to turn back to typical statin drugs to lower your cholesterol, as many of the so-called experts would have you believe.

You see, statins are thought to have a beneficial effect on inflammation in your body, thereby lowering your risk of heart attack and stroke.

But you can lower inflammation in your body naturally, without risking any of the numerous side effects of statin drugs. This should also explain why my guidelines for lowering cholesterol are identical to those to lower inflammation.

For more in-depth information about cholesterol-lowering drugs, please see my recently updated statin drug index page.

How to Lower Inflammation, and Thereby Your Risk of Heart Disease, Naturally

There is a major misconception that you must avoid foods like eggs and saturated fat to protect your heart. While it's true that fats from animal sources contain cholesterol, I've explained earlier in this article why this should not scare you -- but I'll explain even further here.

This misguided principle is based on the "lipid hypothesis" -- developed in the 1950s by nutrition pioneer Ancel Keys -- that linked dietary fat to coronary heart disease.

The nutrition community of that time completely accepted the hypothesis, and encouraged the public to cut out butter, red meat, animal fats, eggs, dairy and other "artery clogging" fats from their diets -- a radical change at that time.

What you may not know is that when Keys published his analysis that claimed to prove the link between dietary fats and coronary heart disease, he selectively analyzed information from only six countries to prove his correlation, rather than comparing all the data available at the time -- from 22 countries.

As a result of this "cherry-picked" data, government health organizations began bombarding the public with advice that has contributed to the diabetes and obesity epidemics going on today: eat a low-fat diet.

Not surprisingly, numerous studies have actually shown that Keys' theory was wrong and saturated fats are healthy, including these studies from Fallon and Enig's classic article The Skinny on Fats: [xxii]

A survey of South Carolina adults found no correlation of blood cholesterol levels with "bad" dietary habits, such as use of red meat, animal fats, fried foods, butter, eggs, whole milk, bacon, sausage and cheese. [xxiii]
A Medical Research Council survey showed that men eating butter ran half the risk of developing heart disease as those using margarine. [xxiv]
Of course, as Americans cut out nutritious animal fats from their diets, they were left hungry. So they began eating more processed grains, more vegetable oils, and more high-fructose corn syrup, all of which are nutritional disasters.

It is this latter type of diet that will eventually lead to increased inflammation, and therefore cholesterol, in your body. So don't let anyone scare you away from saturated fat anymore.

Chronic inflammation is actually caused by a laundry list of items such as:

-- Oxidized cholesterol (cholesterol that has gone rancid, such as that from overcooked, scrambled eggs)

-- Eating lots of sugar and grains

-- Eating foods cooked at high temperatures

-- Eating trans fats

-- A sedentary lifestyle

-- Smoking

-- Emotional stress

So to sum it all up, in order to lower your inflammation and cholesterol levels naturally, you must address the items on this list.

How to Lower Your Cholesterol Naturally...

1. Make sure you're getting plenty of high-quality, animal-based omega3-fats. I prefer those from krill oil. New research suggests that as little as 500 mg may lower your total cholesterol and triglycerides and will likely increase your HDL cholesterol.

2. Reduce, with the plan of eliminating, grains and sugars in your daily diet. It is especially important to eliminate dangerous sugars such as fructose. If your HDL/Cholesterol ratio is abnormal and needs to be improved it would also serve you well to virtually eliminate fruits from your diet, as that it also a source of fructose. Once your cholesterol improves you can gradually reintroduce it to levels that don't raise your cholesterol.

3. Eat the right foods for your nutritional type. You can learn your nutritional type by taking our FREE test.

4. Eat a good portion of your food raw.

5. Eat healthy, preferably raw, fats that correspond to your nutritional type. This includes:

-- Olive oil

-- Coconut and coconut oil

-- Organic raw dairy products (including butter, cream, sour cream, cheese, etc.)

-- Avocados

-- Raw nuts

-- Seeds

-- Eggs (lightly cooked with yolks intact or raw)

-- Organic, grass-fed meats

6. Get the right amount of exercise, especially Peak Fitness type of exercise. When you exercise you increase your circulation and the blood flow throughout your body. The components of your immune system are also better circulated, which means your immune system has a better chance of fighting an illness before it has the opportunity to spread.

7. Avoid smoking and drinking excessive amounts of alcohol.

8. Address your emotional challenges. I particularly love the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) for stress management.

So there you have it; the reasons why high cholesterol is a worry that many of you simply do not need to have, along with a simple plan to optimize yours.

If someone you love is currently taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, I urge you to share this information with them as well, and take advantage of the thousands of free pages of information on www.Mercola.com.

For the majority of you reading this right now, there's no reason to risk your health with cholesterol-lowering drugs. With the plan I've just outlined, you'll achieve the cholesterol levels you were meant to have, along with the very welcome "side effects" of increased energy, mood and mental clarity.

Too good to be true?

Hardly.

For the vast majority of people, making a few lifestyle changes causes healthy cholesterol levels to naturally occur.

As always, your health really is in your hands. Now it's up to you to take control -- and shape it into something great.

Dr. Joseph Mercola is the founder and director of Mercola.com. Become a fan of Dr. Mercola on Facebook, on Twitter and check out Dr. Mercola's report on sun exposure!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

References

[i] American Heart Association January 23, 2008

[ii] Mercola.com, Cholesterol is NOT the Cause of Heart Disease, Ron Rosedale May 28, 2005

[iii] Fallon, S. and Mary Enig. "Dangers of Statin Drugs: What You Haven't Been Told About Popular Cholesterol-Lowering Medicines," The Weston A. Price Foundation

[iv] Psychosomatic Medicine 2000;62.

[v] Epidemiology 2001 Mar;12:168-72

[vi] Annals of Internal Medicine (1998;128(6):478-487) The Journal of the American Medical Association (1997;278:313-321)

[vii] Journal of the American College of Cardiology July 31, 2007; 50:409-418

[viii] Annals of Internal Medicine October 3, 2006; 145(7): 520-530

[ix] USAToday.com October 16, 2004

[x] American Heart Association, "What Your Cholesterol Level Means," accessed May 22, 2008

[xi] MSNBC.com More than half of Americans on chronic meds May 14, 2008(accessed June 9, 2008)

[xii] BusinessWeek Do Cholesterol Drugs Do Any Good? January 17, 2008 (accessed June 9, 2008)

[xiii] The Journal of Clinical Investigation December 2007; 117(12):3940-51

[xiv] Mercola.com Sudden Memory Loss Linked to Cholesterol Drugs

[xv] Nature Medicine September, 2000;6:965-966, 1004-1010.

[xvi] Nature Medicine, December, 2000; 6: 1311-1312, 1399-1402

[xvii] Edwards, I. Ralph; Star, Kristina; Kiuru, Anne, "Statins, Neuromuscular Degenerative Disease and an Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis-Like Syndrome," Drug Safety, Volume 30, Number 6, 2007 , pp. 515-525(11)

[xviii] IMS Heallth. IMS National Prescription Audit Plus July 2007.

[xix] BusinessWeek.com, "Do Cholesterol Drugs Do Any Good?" January 17, 2008 (accessed June 10, 2008)

[xx] New York Times, "Cardiologists Question Delay of Data on 2 Drugs," November 21, 2007 (accessed June 10, 2008)

[xxi] New York Times, "Drug Has No Benefit in Trial, Makers Say," January 14, 2008 (accessed June 10, 2008)

[xxii] Enig, M and Sally Fallon, "The Skinny on Fats," The Weston A. Price Foundation,

[xxiii] Lackland, D T, et al, J Nutr, Nov 1990, 120:11S:1433-1436

[xxiv] Nutr Week, Mar 22, 1991, 21:12:2-3

Chemistry of Stress ... effects of life under pressure

2010-08-12T13:20:00.000-07:00

This is a very thought-provoking article:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/07/ff_stress_cure/all/1
Under Pressure: The Search of a Stress Vaccine, by Jonah Lehrer.
I don't consider the last part of the article relevant ... seeking a new drug to counteract stress ... but the first part of the article is incredible.

Stress, chronic stress, has a debilitating effect on the body. Maybe that is not true. Maybe how we react to stress has a debilitating effect on the body. Are we joyful, optomists, full of faith and hope, enthusiastic, able to see good in all situations? Or is our inner-dialog fearful, tormented, defeating? The article points out our attitudes effect our health. The Word says, "The Joy of the Lord is your strength" in 2nd Chronicles. Psalm 37 says to "Trust in the Lord and do good .... cultivate faithfulness."

Add Life to your years ... tribute to Dr. George Sheehan

2010-08-11T07:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.georgesheehan.com/essays/essay17.html

Dr. George Sheehan was a runner.
"Don't be concerned if running or exercise will add years to your life," he would say, "be concerned with adding life to your years." He liked to quote William James, who said, "The strenuous life tastes better."

He became "bored" with medicine, with getting "bombed out" every weekend, with falling asleep in front of the TV. He went back to reading philosophy. He read The Greeks, Emerson, Thoreau, Ortega, and James. Then he read Ireneus, one of the early church fathers, who wrote, "The glory of God is man fully functioning." George Sheehan knew he wasn't fully functioning. He started to run.

George Sheehan never stopped searching for the truths of his life. "We are all unique, never-to-be-repeated events," he said. His goal was to be the best George Sheehan possible. He was fond of quoting Robert Frost's line, "I am no longer concerned with good and evil. What concerns me is whether my offering will be acceptable."

Life is not a spectator sport.

Some statistics to consider on food choices

2010-08-10T11:43:00.000-07:00

You've heard my perspective on starches. sugars, and colored vegetables ...
maybe considering this statistics will help:

http://hbfser.wordpress.com/2010/07/31/lets-talk-numbers/

http://talktomejohnnie.com/diet/egg-on-their-face

"asking people to take personal ownership in their health and fitness." John Welborn, 2010.

Exercises for Running

2010-08-09T20:15:00.000-07:00

From BW in the google group Minimalist Running:

I found some nice videos on sportskool with Mark Verstegen (you know
CORE performance and stuff) and triathlete Jessi Stensland. Lots of
valuable stuff for free :) (more than 1 hour material)
warm-up and strength //
http://www.sportskool.com/videos/running-training-1
pre-hab //
http://www.sportskool.com/videos/running-training-2
recovery and rehabilitation (especially foam rolling and stretching
with a rope) //
http://www.sportskool.com/videos/running-training-3
I found the third episode especially valuable.

new PR on Clean&Press

2010-08-04T10:23:00.000-07:00

Week3 Wednesday: 75%x5,85%x3, 95%x1
RLES75%x5=80, 85%x3=95, 95%x1=105
CP75%x5=102, 85%x3=115, 95%x1=128
DL75%x5=169, 85%x3=191, 95%x1=214
Then Pullups,Dips
New PR on Clean&Press CP145
PR RLES105, DL225, RLES=ReverseLegElevatedSquat (Bulgarian Squat)
progression from:
Week 1: 65%x5 of 90% of 1RepMax, 75%x5, 85%x3
Week 2: 70%x3, 80%x3, 90%x3
Week 3: 75%x5,85%x3, 95%x1
Week 4: deload: 40%x5, 50%x5, 60%x5
Every morning butterfly situps & flutterkicks.

Helping Girls to have Strong Self Image

2010-07-28T18:08:00.001-07:00

http://www.socalsc.com/page/index.php?menu=blog&page=blog&hide&id=14253

Standing at the gym watching my 2 year old niece doing air squats made me think about what goes into becoming a strong girl.

So...how do we make strong girls?

Start early. Never to early to get them into gymnastics, CrossFit, Olympic Weightlifting, Track or what not.

Beginning in her infancy, praise her for what she can do more than for the way she looks. "You're so pretty!" will make her the appearance as her greatest attribute, but "You worked so hard on that sand castle!" lets her know she's valued for her skills.

Step 2- Think through the pink. Make sure her clothes and her room are made of many colors, and not just light pink, dark pink and magenta. It may seem like a small factor, but it helps take her beyond the only "girls wear/do this and boys wear/do that."

Step 3- Strong girls need less "Cinderella" and more stories in which the girl is the hero. They need strong female role models in their lives. Kelly Starrett prides himself on his daughters having strong women role models in their lives.

Step 4- Make sure her toy box includes trucks, play tools, barbells and kettlebells, as well as dolls. Include some action hero costumes in her dress-up clothes collection.

Step 5- Deconstruct the Barbie. It's difficult for parents to escape Barbie dolls altogether, but make sure your daughter knows that Barbie is unrealistically proportioned and has an unhealthy focus on her looks. You may feel silly explaining that to a 3-year-old, but it's never too early to plant the seed. Don't be critical about her appearance, get her into sports and teach her about eating right.

Step 6- Surround her with strong and caring people of both sexes. Dad needs to be encouraged to share a variety of activities such as building a birdhouse, changing a tire or baking bread. When she's old enough, take her to work with you.

Step 7- Take her out to the ball game, car show or the CrossFit Games, as well as the ballet. Introduce her to a variety of interests.

Step 8- Don't be sabotaged by Grandma and Grandpa. When well-meaning relatives fuss over her curly hair and big eyes, remind them-in front of her-that she just learned to tie her shoes and do a cartwheel.

Step 9- Encourage her academically. Tell her, "You can do it," instead of, "Well most girls aren't good at math."

Movement makes us smarter

2010-07-28T07:36:00.000-07:00

http://www.begin2dig.com/2010/07/why-try-to-find-less-time-to-move-we.html

Just how important is Sleep for our Health?

2010-07-28T06:52:00.000-07:00

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkup/2010/07/what_puts_you_to_sleep.html?wprss=checkup

There are things you can do to maximize your chances of sleeping well. Maintaining a regular sleep schedule, getting adequate exercise, reserving your bed for sleep and only sleep (well, and sex) -- no reading, watching TV or playing with your smartphone. Keep the room cool and dark. Here's a long list of tips.

Bear in mind that losing sleep isn't just frustrating (and exhausting!). Sleep deprivation has been linked to obesity, particularly among children, and to increased diabetes risk.

Squat-CleanPress-DeadLifts-Pullups

2010-07-27T07:22:00.000-07:00

Week2 Monday:
BS70%x3=158, 80%x3=180, 90%x3=203
CP70%x3=95, 80%x3=108, 90%x3=122 interspersed with pullups.
DL70%x3=158, 80%x3=180, 90%x3=203

progression from:
Week 1: 65%x5 of 90% of 1RepMax, 75%x5, 85%x3
Week 2: 70%x3, 80%x3, 90%x3
Week 3: 75%x5,85%x3, 95%x1
Week 4: deload: 40%x5, 50%x5, 60%x5

Not all colleges are in it for the teaching

2010-07-27T07:19:00.000-07:00

I've read an interesting article here:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/208978-steve-eismans-epic-takedown-of-the-for-profit-education-industry

Of Steve Eisman of FrontPoint Partners, who became rich by betting against companies leveraged with subprime mortgages. He now shows that some colleges are really marketing machines to suck up government funds with horrible graduation rates. It speaks of the revolving door between lobby and government agency positions for education.

Steve's report is here:
http://www.marketfolly.com/2010/05/steve-eisman-frontpoint-partners-ira.html

Shouldn't we ask our federal representatives about this ... ask what they
think about this?

Michael

Some science behind why Sprint Intervals are so effective

2010-07-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

http://conditioningresearch.blogspot.com/2010/06/another-sprint-interval-study.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20571821?dopt=Abstract

Mitochondrial gene expression in elite cyclists: effects of high-intensity
interval exercise.
by Niklas P, Li W, Jens W, Michail T, Kent S.
Astrand Laboratory, GIH, The Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences,
Box 5626, SE 114 86, Stockholm, Sweden.

Abstract
Little is known about the effect of training on genetic markers for
mitochondrial biogenesis in elite athletes. We tested the hypothesis that
low-volume sprint interval exercise (SIE) would be as effective as
high-volume interval exercise (IE). Ten male cyclists competing on national
elite level (W (max) 403 +/- 13 W, VO(2peak) 68 +/- 1 mL kg(-1) min(-1))
performed two interval exercise protocols: 7 x 30-s "all-out" bouts (SIE)
and 3 x 20-min bouts at ~87% of VO(2peak) (IE). During IE, the work was
eightfold larger (1,095 +/- 43 vs. 135 +/- 5 kJ) and the exercise duration
17 times longer (60 vs. 3.5 min) than during SIE. Muscle samples were taken
before and 3 h after exercise. The mRNA of upstream markers of
mitochondrial biogenesis [peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma
coactivator-1 (PGC-1alpha), PGC-1alpha-related coactivator (PRC) and
peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor delta (PPARdelta)] increased to
the same extent after SIE and IE (6-, 1.5- and 1.5-fold increase,
respectively). Of the downstream targets of PGC-1alpha, mitochondrial
transcription factor A (Tfam) increased only after SIE and was
significantly different from that after IE (P < 0.05), whereas others
increased to the same extent (pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase, PDK4) or was
unchanged (nuclear respiratory factor 2, NRF2). We conclude that upstream
genetic markers of mitochondrial biogenesis increase in a similar way in
elite athletes after one exercise session of SIE and IE. However, since the
volume and duration of work was considerably lower during SIE and since
Tfam, the downstream target of PGC-1alpha, increased only after SIE, we
conclude that SIE might be a time-efficient training strategy for highly
trained individuals.

Encouragement to physical activities ... get the kids moving

2010-07-20T12:08:00.000-07:00

http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/ijo2010140a.html

Diet vs exercise for the prevention of pediatric obesity: the role of
exercise
Submitted to the International Journal of Obesity, by invitation of the
editors, April, 2010.

As pediatric obesity is commonly viewed as the result of an excessively
positive energy balance, preventive efforts typically emphasize reduction
of energy intake, with increases in physical activity (PA) having a
supporting role. However, recent research that has focused on body
composition rather than weight has found that PA stimulates development of
lean tissue rather than fat tissue. Preventive interventions that emphasize
vigorous PA rather than restriction of energy intake can help youths to
develop lean bodies, at the same time that they ingest sufficient amounts
of the energy and accompanying nutrients needed for healthy growth.
by Dr. B. Gutin
1Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC,
USA
2Department of Pediatrics, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, GA, USA

65% Week on SquatCleanDeadlift

2010-07-19T13:37:00.000-07:00

Week1 Monday:
BS65,75,85=145x5,170x5,190x3
CP65,75,85=87x5,101x5,115x3
DL65,75,85=145x5,170x5,190x3
Then Pullups,Dips, Crunches, GoodMornings with 25#

PR BS225, DL225, CP135 progression from:
Week 1: 65%x5 of 90% of 1RepMax, 75%x5, 85%x3
Week 2: 70%x3, 80%x3, 90%x3
Week 3: 75%x5,85%x3, 95%x1
Week 4: deload: 40%x5, 50%x5, 60%x5
Every morning butterfly situps & flutterkicks.

Only a fool or a prophet would dare complain

2010-07-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

Turing's Cathedral: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dyson05/dyson05_index.html

I just read this twice and will read George Dyson's essary at least one more time. It would behove you, oh curious one, to read it yourself.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/hillis10/hillis10_index.html

Ten Websites to make you Think

2010-07-19T07:10:00.001-07:00

http://blog.study2u.com/373/10-websites-to-make-you-think/

beside these ten, commentors mention these:

http://www.edge.org/

http://www.gapminder.org/

Two Types of Teaching ... by Seth Godin

2010-07-16T14:23:00.000-07:00

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/07/two-kinds-of-schooling.html

Two kinds of schooling
Type 1. You can take a class where you learn technique, facts and procedures.

Type 2. You can take a class where you learn to see, learn to lead and learn to solve interesting problems.

The first type of teaching isn't particularly difficult to do, and it's something most of us are trained to absorb. The first type of schooling can even be accomplished with self-discipline and a Dummies book. The first type of class is important but not scarce.

The second kind, on the other hand, is where all real success comes from. It's really tricky to find and train people to do this sort of teaching, and anytime you can find some of it, you should grab it.

The sad thing is that we often conflate the two. We think we're hiring someone to do the second type, a once in a lifetime teacher, someone who will change the outlook of stellar students. But then we give them rules and procedures and feedback that turn them into a type 1 teacher.

Even worse, we often pay as if we're getting the scarce and valuable type 2 teachers but we end up hiring and managing type 1 teachers.

I spend a lot of time in colleges and other teaching institutions. Over and over I see the same thing--organizations that have painted themselves into a corner, keeping themselves busy but refusing to do the difficult work of teaching people to see. The dean of one college was so stuck in his type-1ness that he couldn't even bring himself to participate in a session run by a gifted type 2 teacher.

Is there anything more important to you and your organization (or your kids or your town) than figuring out how to obtain and share the wisdom that real teaching can deliver?

On character

2010-07-16T08:13:00.000-07:00

Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are, to some extent, a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it, piece by piece -- by thought, choice, courage, and determination. -H. Jackson Brown

Everyone tries to define this thing called Character. It's not hard. Character is doing what's right when nobody's looking. -J. C. Watts

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all. -Sam Ewig

When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends. -Japanese Proverb

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

It wasn't the reward that mattered or the recognition you might harvest. It was your depth of commitment, your quality of service, the product of your devotion -- these were the things that counted in a life. When you gave purely, the honor came in the giving, and that was honor enough. -Scott O'Grady [On June 2, 1995, while 29-year-old Air Force Captain Scott O'Grady flew his 47th mission over Bosnia, his F-16 fighter plane was downed by a Serbian land missile. O'Grady related the events of his six-day, harrowing adventure after parachuting from his disabled plane.]

The fear of the LORD is the instruction for wisdom,And before honor comes humility. -Proverbs 15:33

Think about this: http://workplacepsychology.net/2009/12/13/people-with-situational-value-system/

then consider this: http://workplacepsychology.net/2010/06/23/the-4-character-strengths-of-a-leader/

Rubicon ... a point of no return on a commitment

2010-07-12T21:35:00.000-07:00

This is interesting ... coming in August.

http://www.amctv.com/videos/rubicon/

What's the big deal with cruciferous vegetables?

2010-07-09T06:32:00.000-07:00

http://spartascience.blogspot.com/2010/07/are-you-eating-cruciferous.html

Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Are you eating cruciferous?

BY DR. PHIL WAGNER

Over the past couple decades; the salad has evolved into the ultimate
representation of a healthy diet, something only the most nutritious
conscious people choose for a meal in order to get the recommended 5 fruits
and vegetables a day. In an attempt to make salads more appetizing though,
the nutritious value has dropped dramatically. For example, salads now
usually contain iceberg lettuce to provide more crunch, conveying to the
consumer that what they're eating is so fresh that the food crunches in
their mouth. Yet this "vegetable" is devoid of the nutrients found in
darker leaves such as spinach. Furthermore, salad dressings have evolved
into an ingredient list that looks like a chemistry experiment, generally
containing higher amounts of sugar in some form rather than the more
healthy fats such as olive oil (see SpartaPoint 11/20/09).

One of the driving factors behind the recommendation for 5 servings of
fruits and vegetables is the antioxidants, fiber, and other nutrients that
help fight chronic disease such as cancer. Perhaps the most effective
vegetable in this regard is the cruciferous family, plants whose four
petals resemble a cross. Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, bok choy, arugula,
and kale are just some of the examples of cruciferous vegetables.

A research study out of Arizona State in 2000 found iceberg lettuce,
tomatoes, french fried potatoes, bananas and orange juice were the most
commonly consumed fruits and vegetables. Besides the fact that orange juice
is only useful to cure a diabetic coma (see SpartaPoint 9/24/09),
vegetables were not even in among the top 5 (remember iceberg lettuce
doesn't count!). In fact, dark green vegetable consumption averaged 0.2
servings a day, and the study specifically cited the extremely low intake
of cruciferous vegetable intake.

At Sparta, most of our athletes do not arrive in our care with a solid
regimen of cruciferous vegetables because they don't taste very good.
Convincing them is simple - cruciferous vegetables provide unique nutrients
and fiber to protect against disease and help recovery, therefore
subsequent workouts and sport performance can be maintained and performed
at a higher level. In fact, these plants even reduce the effects that
estrogen has in your body, increasing the benefits of testosterone such as
greater strength.

[Sarcasm:] So you don't have to eat cruciferous, in fact if you're
competing against our athletes, just stick to that iceberg lettuce with
processed salad dressing, as it's much easier.

Booklist: Budo Mind and Body

2010-07-07T12:02:00.000-07:00

The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, 17th century swordsman.
The Art of Peace: Teachings of the Founder of Aikido by John Stevens about Ueshiba Morihei.
The Sword of No Sword by John Stevens about Yamaoka Tesshu, meiji period swordsman
Hagakure by Yamamoto Tsunetomo, samurai lamenting passing of bushido.
Bushido by Nitobe Inazo, introduces bushido.
The Art of War by Sun Tzu.

235 PR on Back Squat

2010-07-07T10:12:00.000-07:00

The plan was Week3 Wednesday: 75%x5,85%x3, 95%x1
BS75%x5=169, 85%x3=191, 95%x1=214, but I PR'd with 235.
Though I tried deadlifts and cleans after this, I had no gas in the hamstrings left.
DL75%x5=169, 85%x3=191, 95%x1=214, but could only go to 205 ... exhausted.
CP75%x5=109, 85%x3=123, 95%x1=138, but I only went to 125 3x.
then dips and pullups.

modified active isolated stretching

2010-07-07T07:35:00.000-07:00

http://zeroparallax.com/blog/2010/04/modified-active-isolated-stretching/

http://zeroparallax.com/blog/2010/04/active-isolated-stretching-with-adarsh-williams

also consider this:

http://www.onefourfourone.com/services/static-mobility-complex/