Tag Archives: training

Leg day

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Unlike many memes regarding physical fitness and bodybuilding, I don’t usually skip leg day. In fact, most days I start my workout walking on my treadmill at a fast pace, on an incline, in a 40lb weighted vest, for 20 or more minutes. So, I do work my legs… but they are still chicken legs that make me look like I skip leg day.

I have seen some gains in the past year, but these gains have come at a cost. The cost is that when I work my legs with weights, they always hurt 2 and 3 days later. I worked my legs pretty hard yesterday and my quads and glutes are aching today. I know I’m going to wake up feeling them again tomorrow.

It’s weird, since I started taking creatine a few years ago, that two-day later ache has been drastically reduced. My buddy and I did back and chest workout today that would normally have me aching for days with after workout soreness, yet I can tell it won’t be that bad. Thank you creatine. However, creatine or not, when I work my legs they ache for longer than I find comfortable.

And the reality is that while I work my legs, I don’t work them as hard as I did yesterday all that often. Why? Because it’s not fun feeling like I need to hold the railing going up and down the stairs because my legs feel like jelly. So while I don’t skip leg day, I do skip hard leg days, and really don’t push them as hard as other parts of my body.

Until I join a gym and start using equipment designed specifically for legs, I don’t think I’m going to see too much in the way of gains… I’m just not willing to do the real work it would take. That said, I’m still never going to skip leg day.

Team Sport Roots

Some days in the gym can feel really strong. My buddy and I were both having one of those workouts yesterday. We both lifted a little heavier than we usually do, and felt strong throughout our sets.

We were discussing how working out with someone is a real motivator compared to working out on our own. It was at this point that I realized we had something in common, and that’s playing competitive team sports.

For both of us, working out with someone and doing more than we would on our own is not about showing off, it has much more to do with giving our best for the team. He’s relying on me to perform well, and I’m wanting to do the same for him.

When you’ve played team sports, you understand that the team relies on you and there is a kind of pressure to be better than if you were just doing the practice, workout, or even game for yourself. There is a mutual understanding that ‘we rely on each other’, and that not giving full effort is letting down everyone, not just yourself.

I wonder if this is something felt greater in people who have been on a competitive team compared to someone else? I wonder if people who choose solo sports rather than team sports get that same boost from some else? Or if they just innately feel that extra push and don’t need an outside influence?

I for one thrive on it. Most of my workouts happen alone, at home, in my basement. There are days I push, and days I kind of just go through the motions. But when I’ve got a workout buddy, that’s the motivation I need to thrive and have a really good workout every time!

The very best and the second best

I haven’t watched a lot of the Olympics, but I’ve enjoyed everything I have seen. I love watching athletes give everything they have, and finding extra reserves or incredible composure in the face of exceptional competition.

For some athletes who dream of gold, the only acceptable place to come in is first. For others, the silver medal is an incredible achievement, that seemed almost impossible before the competition.

To one person second best is amazing and to another it is the first loser. It’s the same medal, but it means so much more or less, depending on what they believed they could achieve. It’s a good reminder of what our expectations do to our experience.

To decide or to deny

I love this Seth Godin quote:

“You don’t need more time, you just need to decide.”

I have goals that I set, and that I hit. I have other goals, call them lofty, call them challenging, or call them unrealistic, that I don’t tend to hit. Two examples of lofty goals include doing pistol squats, and doing 30 consecutive pull-ups. These are really difficult goals to achieve, they involve considerable effort, and diligent practice… and the practice is hard, it hurts. And yes, they take time.

But time isn’t the issue. I can find the time. I can do less of some activities and put more dedicated effort into these goals. So why don’t I? I haven’t decided that these goals are important enough. I haven’t decided that the pain and effort necessary to accomplish these goals is worth doing.

These aren’t real goals (yet?), they are wishes. I will be denied success because I haven’t decided that I’m ready to put in the time and effort required. I haven’t decided, and so I will not achieve.

I did a set of 15 pull-ups yesterday, followed by two sets of ten. Every set ended with my will power quitting before my body. I am not ready to put my body through the pain required to reach 30. I’m not mentally ready for the pain. Ultimately I’m not ready to push to 18, then 20, then 22, and so on. I simply haven’t yet decided. Of course even if I decided, 30 might be unrealistic, but I won’t know until I decide to try… first I just need to decide.

Embarrassment is the cost of entry

I love this quote,

“Embarrassment is the cost of entry. If you aren’t willing to look like a foolish beginner, you’ll never become a graceful master.” ~ Ed Latimore

How many times have I not tried because in trying I might look bad? How many times have I hesitated to learn, because I would look foolish in my attempt? How many times have I let the fear of embarrassment get in the way of beginning something new?

Probably more often than I’d like to admit.

This was especially true as a kid. This is especially true of many kids today.

How about you?

Martec’s Law in education

In “Martec’s Law: the greatest management challenge of the 21st century” author Scott Brinker states:

“Three years ago, I described a conundrum that I dubbed Martec’s Law:

Technology changes exponentially, but organizations change logarithmically.

As shown in the graph [below], we know that technology changes at an exponential rate. This is the phenomenon of Moore’s Law— and, more broadly, Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns. But we also know that human organizations don’t change that quickly. Changes in behavior and culture take time. There are only so many changes in people, processes, and technology that an organization can productively absorb at once — at least without a major disruption.

So approximately speaking, organizations change at a logarithmic rate — much slower than exponential technological change.

In my opinion, Martec’s Law encapsulates the greatest management challenge of the 21st century: how do we manage relatively slow-changing organizations in a rapidly changing technological environment? It is a hard problem.”

I think this is something significant to consider in education. Schools tend to change quite slowly. It takes a very long time to change curriculum. Textbooks are a sunk cost on a fixed learning tool. Technology costs money and there are limited funds. And access to technology needs to be safe, and keep student information private.

Training is also a challenge. When a new technology is added to an organization, many employees get on-the-job training to learn how to use the technology appropriately. Often between 25-40% of the cost of a new tool could be put into training. That doesn’t happen in education. Teachers are in front of students daily; The technology itself tends to be 90%+ of the funding cost; and teachers get limited training and professional development.

Martec’s Law: “Technology changes exponentially, but organizations change logarithmically,” is exaggerated in education making adaptation to technology much slower. To appropriately integrate new technology requires systems thinking about how to scale.

I used to think that fearless ‘techie’ teachers, the innovators and early adopters, were the ones who really move education forward. I still see how they play an important role, but they transform classrooms not schools, much less districts. Now I see the value of district-wide initiatives where every teacher is given a minimal amount of access and training… in the same tools. Because tech support can’t be sustained when every teacher wants full access (cost and support) to the newest shiny technologies.

Large organizations with rich budgets only advance logarithmically while technology advances exponentially, so to expect schools to do the same on more limited, government funds is hardly realistic. Yes we need the outliers who will try new tools and share their knowledge, but we also need system wide support and training, on tools that are safe and educationally sound.

This is getting harder because technology today is less about purchasing tools and more about subscriptions. A single overhead projector can last a decade with a bulb change or two. A laptop can last 4 years. But a subscription to a tool that teachers become dependent on will have a yearly cost to it. And if that tool isn’t supported at the district level, then that leads to frustrations for educational leaders, teachers, and students alike.

Schools are not about kids having access to all the newest tech tools, they are places where kids learn to think critically and creatively, and to effectively use the tools available to them. Providing access to technology equitably requires sunk costs in tools, and subscriptions, with some training and support. Recognizing that the newest tech will almost always be out of reach for schools doesn’t mean they are falling behind, when even large high-budget organizations have difficulty keeping up. Rather, it’s districts and schools with vision about how to move forward as an entire organization that will keep up as technology exponentially changes.

Incrementally better

I’ve had a cough for 18 days now. The first week was really rough, then I started to feel a bit better. Each day has been slightly better than the day before. Each night has been a slightly better night, with less coughing and waking up… but it has been really slow progress.

This is a challenge with ‘getting better’ in general, not just from recovering from this nasty flu. When we are trying to work out and get stronger, when we are looking for gains in our fitness, we often see them pretty quick in the beginning, but then we get on a slow path of small gains that are hard to notice.

We want to see great gains. We want to be instantly rewarded for our hard work. But the gains are incremental and sometimes unnoticeable for long periods of time. The personal best achievements don’t come every day. And we don’t always notice the gains when we want to. We quickly notice the setbacks, but not always the gains.

Recovering so slowly has made me see improvements I usually ignore… because I’m looking for them, and I’m appreciative of any improvement. But working out I don’t pay attention to tiny gains in pursuit of bigger ones.

I’m going to be a bit more appreciative of the tiny gains in my fitness from now on. I’ll look for them, and know that I’m getting incrementally better. Who knows, these small moments of appreciation might even make me incrementally happier. 😁

Got my gym back

Last night was the first time that I was able to use my home gym since the middle of November. Our main floor home renovation is almost completely done, and we are no longer using the basement as our kitchen, and living room, as well as for storage. The room is reconfigured, and since my wife wants the treadmill outside the room, so she can easily watch tv while on it, the room is even roomier!

I’m excited about this change. I’ve had a tiny spot with my exercise bike and weights for the past few months, but now I have treadmill and row machine access again, and a nice place to stretch and use my incline bench.

Despite not having my full functioning home gym the past few months, it has been a very good few months for me with respect to exercise. I have an extremely knowledgeable teacher that is running weight club with me for our students 3 days a week – once before school, once after, and once at lunch. And under this teachers supervision, and inspiration, I’ve been adding new exercises and longer sessions than I do at home. As a result, I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been when fit.

I was heavier than this in 2018, but that was unhealthy weight. Now, I’m a solid 5-7 pounds heavier than I’ve ever been due to working out. And it feels great!

I’m not overdoing it. I’m not hurting myself trying to lift too heavy. I’m focusing on muscle groups, working then well, and giving them time to recover while I work different areas. I’ve added protein shakes and creatine (which helps with recovery), and I’m still not eating snacks after dinner, although I’m not as strict as I used to be about time restricted eating (or intermittent fasting), I still pay attention to this.

So I’m already on a good path, and now I’ve got my gym space back. I am confident that I’ll be able to stick to my routines even as the end of the school year gets crazy, and continue to make gains in 2022.

This isn’t a race. I have a few long term goals, but the longest one is to stay healthy for another 30+ years. Now I just have to focus on my diet and my too high bad cholesterol… but I’ll save talking about that for another day.

Unlearning is harder than learning

In compound bow archery you use a trigger release to fire the arrow.

Although the trigger is released by the thumb barrel the correct motion is to use back pressure to fire, rather than squeezing your thumb. I tend to squeeze my thumb, trying to time when my sight is right on the bullseye. This technique can only get you so far, and it leaves you prone to target panic. Target panic is a response where you (unconsciously) rush a shot because you see you are lined up for a bullseye, but it’s caused by unintentionally panicking with a reaction that is neither controlled nor steady. It makes for a bad shot.

When you don’t have target panic, the shot feels good, and while it won’t be perfect, it can be consistent. However, you reach a plateau where you just can’t get much better being trigger happy rather than having good technique.

So I’m in the process of trying to stop using thumb pressure and start using back tension. That is, using a pulling back motion to apply pressure on the thumb trigger. A couple days ago I ended up shooting the worst two rounds I’ve shot in over a year. I’m trying to undo, or unlearn, what I’ve been doing for a long time, and it really sucks. But I’ve got to accept some poor scores while I rid myself of this bad habit. I have to trust my aim and not rush to time my shot while my site drifts past the bullseye. I need to unlearn a bad habit which is much harder than learning it right in the first place.

Making adjustments

This week I was talking to a grade 9 who wanted to do some research on how students perform on video games depending on the kind of music they listen to. We had students do this in our early years, with a driving simulator done in silence, with classical music and heavy rock. It can be a well done experiment, or it can have way too many variables and not truly measure anything or provide meaningful results. It’s hard to measure only the thing you want to measure.

I recently received my bow back, and today I shot for only the 3rd time in a while. Nothing feels normal and while my scores aren’t awful, they aren’t where they should be. The challenge is that I’m needing to think of too many things and my thoughts get in my way. I need to be patient, make one adjustment, and then shoot several arrows before making another adjustment. I’m splitting my focus. I’m adjusting too many variables and it’s not helping me. And as a result, I’m not feeling like I’m improving.

It will get better, I just need to shoot 1,000 more arrows… that’s been my archery mantra for a while. The challenge is not making too many adjustments at once along the way. If I keep doing that, it’s going to take a lot more arrows to see the improvements I want to see.