Thoughts about life, crap, training, and stuff

So as most of you know my elbows have been a problem for a while.  Well a few days I got some good bands and went through a whole routine of pushdowns with lots of pronation, overhead triceps with it, and band curls with lots of supination.  I then did upright rows with my hands turned over.  Three days later?  Elbow pain almost completely gone.  I have figured out over the last few weeks that it's just a tendon problem and that it needs to get stretched out.  Then my pain lessens considerably.  The other factor is that I can't bench reps without elbow wraps.  I banged out 315x10 close grip easily last week and could have done 12-15 if not for the pain limiting me.  Which puts me squarely in that 450 close grip range I know I should be in.  I am going to spend a lot of time working the pushdowns with a ton of pronation and the supination on curls to see if I can help it out even more.  I may try to get a video up of what I am doing to see if it helps any of you guys with elbow pain out as well.

I have scaled back my routine a ton and boy do I feel better.  I wrote about this recently but I wanted to bring it up again.  When your training is dialed in from a recovery standpoint you should....

- Feel better after you are done training than when you started.
- Feel energetic most of of the time.
- Feel strong at the majority of the workouts, able to move your weights with good speed.
- Sleep better at night.
- Not dread training.

Obviously the balance here is about intensity (perceived and actual), volume, and frequency.  I feel great now training twice a week again and doing conditioning 2-3 times a week.  This feels optimal to me.  That could change in the future, or not.  Every few years I find myself doing less and less and I keep getting stronger.  A powerlifter known as JPS wrote about this very same thing (more on that in a future post).

Starship Troopers, wow.  I didn't realize what a steaming pile of shit this movie was until I saw it again a few weeks ago.  I hadn't seen it since it came out, and I was in my early 20's.  I remember thinking it wasn't that bad at the time, but ho-boy, now?  That thing is absolute stir fried garbage.  The main guy trying to act like a tough guy was brutally funny.  It's like if Adam Lambert were trying to play a Navy Seal.  I'm just not buying it.  Denise Richards was hot though, there is no denying that but her eyebrows were pretty burly.  Don't ask why I noticed but I have a thing for great eyebrows.  I watched the whole movie BTW.  I couldn't stop laughing at how ridiculous it all was.  So I suppose I was entertained.

It's coming up on Christmas and I want to give a plug to Matt Wilson and his tie shop based out of Tennessee.  Having a couple of quality ties is important in your alpha male wardrobe, I don't care what anyone says.  If you don't believe me ask the ladies.  Being able to dress well, and not like a 17 year old who reads Metal Edge all day, is important.  So get a good tie from Matt.  If you need help ask a pretty lady to help you pick one out.  That's a good pick up line too.  Print the pages out and ask them to pick one out.  After it works you can thank Matt for getting a date if you're savvy enough to pull that off.

http://wilsonandbow.com

Winter is here dammit, and I'm not happy about it.  It won't be long before I don't feel like running in the ice and snow and I will be back to do circuits and/or treadmill sprints for conditioning and I hate that.

I have never published my bucket scale for rating women so here it is in full detail.

Let me explain the bucket scale first and how it came to be.  The 1-10 scale is flawed.  Why?  Because the truth is, if a chic is a 2 or a 4, it doesn't matter.  She's not attractive.  Right?  So why bother?  Second, if a chic is an 8 or 9, she's hot.  Why the need for the differentiation?  So here it is, in full detail......

0 - aka The Death Bucket
This is where the 1-10 scale is also flawed.  The death bucket is a small bucket.  Reserved for only the ugliest of the horrifying.  No amount of alcohol or darkness in the world can overcome a death bucket.  It's called the death bucket because if someone put a gun to your only son and said "mate with that women or your son dies" you would retort with something like "I can have more" or "I will see you in heaven Jr."  You thought it meant you'd rather die than hit it?  Oh no, I'm not going to make it that easy.  Remember, this is a small bucket.  You might only run across a few TRUE death buckets in your lifetime.

1 - 4 - aka The Armageddon Bucket
This is reserved for women you would in fact mate with.....but only to repopulate the Earth after the Apocalypse.  A weak Armageddon bucket would be someone who would be close to death bucket status, while a strong Armageddon bucket would be someone you wouldn't be seen with in public, but wouldn't mind procreating with while no one was looking.  This bucket is decent sized.

5 - 6 - aka The Kansas Bucket
This is probably the largest bucket.  This is reserved for just plain jane.  Like the planes of Kansas.  Just......whatever.

7 - aka The Mall Bucket.
This is where dating based on looks starts.  How do you know if she's cute/hot/pretty?  Ask yourself "would I kiss her in the mall?" where people will see, and judge my standards?  If so, she is at least a Mall Bucket.  This is good.  This is reserved for "yeah she's cute" kind of girls.  You can also have strong and weak malls.  Like if she is just cute enough, she would be a weak mall.  So like your local shitty small town small.  If she's a strong mall, that's Mall of America.  Attitude matters a lot with Mall buckets.  If she's just cute enough, but she has a total bitch attitude, she could in fact drop into the Kansas bucket based on that.  If she's a strong mall and is awesome to be around, she could jump up a bucket.  Which would be......

8 - 9 - aka The $16 Whiskey Bucket
I got this name because when I was in Cali with a couple of buddies, one offered to get the first two rounds.  My other buddy then proceeded to order a whiskey that was $16 for a single.  First off, I never buy a girl a drink, but if I were the type to do so and she wanted a $16 single, she'd have to fall within this bucket to get it.  This is reserved for super hot women.  Top to bottom, everything is top shelf material and quality.

10 - aka The Salome bucket
This bucket is the opposite of the death bucket in terms of looks.  So it too, is very very small.  Only reserved for the hottest women you will ever see.  Generally, like a death bucket, you might only ever see a few of these in your lifetime in person.  It's the kind of women that takes your breath away, that makes your heart beat faster just upon gazing at her.  The kind of women that if she told you to cut the head off a guy so she could dance with it on a platter, you would (you can't already be a sociopath/psychopath either.  It flaws the scale).

11 - aka The Personal Bucket
So this scale goes to 11 (Spinal Tap reference).  There really is no 11, however I give it an 11 because I think the personal bucket is the best bucket ever.  This is reserved for the women you see or know, that you know your friends might not think she is very attractive, however she really makes your meat loaf.  She creams your Twinkie, she floats your boat, and does all of those other cliches to you as well.  I think these are the best because she does something just to you (that you know of, she could be someone else's personal bucket as well).  You know she probably falls in the Kansas Bucket or weak mall (which isn't bad), and could even fall in the Armageddon Bucket if judged by all your buddies.  However you don't care.  You like her for reasons that don't make complete sense to you.