Fitness - Underwear Affair

To support a buddy at work who recovered last year from treatment for a below the waist cancer some of my coworkers and I are participating in the underwear affair. It is a bit of a silly fund raiser in that it encourages people to come out wearing underwear or what else they are comfortable in and have fun. There is a 5k walk (sore) a 10k elite run(not happening) and a 10k fun run (that is the most of my ability). I am in the process of raising money. I put a link below to go to where you can donate to the cause. Not looking for much and every little bit helps!

uncoverthecure.org/site/TR/Events/Calgary2011?px=1863476&pg=personal&fr_id=1200

To give you some more idea about what we are doing a team of about half of dozen of us will be dressing up likely in the style of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, particularly that album where they wore those gym socks... and nothing else, except we will be wearing shorts. It is after all a fun run and not suppose to be a run from the cops! If there is donations, or comments of interest I will post pics here when all is said and done.

Now to prove to myself that I was serious and to see if I could do a 10km run, I hopped on the treadmill and in an hour five did the six mile equivalent. That marks the first time I have ever ran 10km in a single session. In the coming... two weeks (ah shit!) before the run I will be training up several more times. It will be hard, my legs like to scream at me when I run longer then 20 minutes, but none the less training hard to do this. And not make an ass of myself.

So please donate by following to my affair page. Every little bit helps and it is really easy to! Though if you do have questions, please let me know.

Friday's Workout

Hi Internet,

It has been a really busy weekend but I managed to slip a workout in none the less. I worked chest it was moderate to heavy, though I estimate it was only moderate to heavy as I was still sore from the last workout.

Unfortunately left my notepad with the weight distribution at home, so I will be updating in a while with total weight.

Also I had to cut my workout short as I wretched my neck repositioning myself in the inclince press... with the weight up. Feels mostly better now but took the following days off.

Now it is cost report week... YAY!

Update: Weight done was a weak 22,860lbs total. Will shoot for more next time

Wednesday workout

Today's workout was arms, biceps and triceps. The summary total of the weight that was done today is 23,080 total pounds. For this workout I would have to say that it was a moderate to heavy workout. Could barely do any tricep presses by the end. The 21s, which are a bicep curl where you do seven reps from the low to mid position then seven in the mid to high position, then seven more low to high position reps, ie full movement.

Tomorrow will be a day of rest. The way I like to set up my workouts when I am going hard is Day one: Chest and shoulders. Day two: Back. Day three: arms and abs and then day of rest. Rinse and Repeat.

So back to work on Friday.

Going to the Gym - New Measuring scale

Going to the gym. I try to frequent it about 3 days out of the week. Sometimes it is more then that, sometimes less. Last night I was at the gym working out for a bit more than solid two hours, and I only meant to go for less then an hour. Heres how it happened.

The clocks in the gym have some set to the correct time and some an hour back. Not paying too close attention I reasoned that the correct time was on the clocks set back an hour. I left home at 7:30. No way could I have been there for an hour and a half, I must have only been here for a half hour.

Also I decided to try my hand at writing down how much weight I did, overall. For each set, how many reps were done and at what weight. I calced out the numbers an I was only 20 pounds short of moving about 30,000 pounds from this one session of exercise. Considering I was working my back I would call that a moderate session. The challenge of posting higher and higher totals drove me to work harder last night which was nice. I got a great workout in. This method of rating based on sum weight is also a good way to measure how much work was done, though to give it context you have to look at how you are working out. Arms at a total of 20,000 pounds could be a heavy exercise session, versus doing a heavy session on the chest going to around 45,000 pounds. So For the next while to measure performance in a simple manner I will be totalling up the weight done with the muscles worked

April 19th - Back - 2980 lbs

Also as a better more active way of taking and regulating my breaks, I am making it a point to walk the length of the gym floor inbetween set

Ideas to save the World - Gyms powering the Grid Pt 1

Here is one I have had for a while and quite like. You know those stationary bikes you pedal and they power a light bulb through the resistance or a small generator? What if every machine at the gym generated power based on the work you did. This isn't that radical an idea, after all ellipticals, rowing machines and stationary bikes are self powered, having a small generator that produces power and feeds the screen, with a small rechargeable cell to store excess power and draw power on breaks on the machine. The radical idea is having it on each machine including weight stacks.

Imagine it. You are going to the gym, and each person is expending energy to perform various forms of work. And every ounce of work being done is to tone and strengthen one's body. Health and vanity are prime reasons people go the gym, but what if the work you did generated electricity? Your not just working for you, your work out is indirectly benefiting everyone. I have no illusions that the power generated from one whole gym or a network of gyms would be enough to start shutting down gas power plants, but it could help reduce the amount of power those plants would have to use.

And talk about motivation, I imagine with your gym membership you are given a card that you plug into each machine and for as long as your card is in that machine and you are generating power, the amount you generate is recorded and acts as a credit to your gym membership. Go often enough and you could be going for free. If you are going to do it, the work you put in should be proportional to the amount of power generated. So heavy weights produce more power, but more reps at lighter weight can also equate to the same. Would make it easier for people to track their own individual workouts and energy output.

The machines would cost more, I mean it is going require flywheels, generators, cables, custom made pieces and magnets, to start, but with support from a government lobbyist group, long-term I am thinking tax rebates on the machines.

Now I have some ideas, and my buddy Craig and I have been talking and we think we can do this, so we are going to. Simple as that. I am now in the process of putting a team together to research, design and make a functioning model, so I can't go into any technical detail. But really if you read this blog and have any background in power generation, mechanical systems, electrical and control systems, and any practical machine and electrical design knowledge I bet you could probably come to some of the same design solutions that I have.

So from here, team, research, design, bankroll, working model. Then the business stuff, but being an engineer that is always secondary to a design that speaks for itself.

Making it work is easy enough, making it the new norm is the endgame and that will be hard. But any one that knows me knows I like hard.