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Archive for May, 2012

Holiday: Celebrate.

May 29th, 2012 No comments

I hope everybody had an enjoyable long weekend. Mine could not possibly have been less restful, and for once my children aren’t entirely to blame. Only, you know, mostly.


The elder 66% of my children have birthdays this month, so Sunday we had a large birthday party for them. I’ll get to more on that later, but wanted to establish that fact to explain why I took Friday off from work: preparation.


The day actually started with an early morning workout, during which I established why perhaps it’s time to pick a new workout routine: I wrenched my upper-middle back doing squats, and it’s still a little jacked up. It’s a spot that I routinely injured in college, but hadn’t bothered me in a while. I think the issue was the dieting; even on my kickass Lean Gains protocol, was keeping me from recovering properly, and squatting heavy twice a week (with deadlifts on the other training day) isn’t going to work until I start eating surplus again. Last Monday’s workout felt pretty bad, and Friday’s was just a crapsaster. I’m taking this week off, and I’ll get back to it next week, with a new routine that only has me squatting once a week.


After that, I got to go to Charles’s school for “Donuts for Dads,” which was awfully cute. Everybody’s dad got a donut and some juice, and then Charles read me a story and showed me some of his schoolwork, and then the class sang a song about the importance of composting. (Side note: I don’t know how recently you may have graduated kindergarten, but when I was there we spent a fair amount of time working on letters and phonics with an eye towards learning to read in 1st grade. All the kids in Charles’s class can just flat-out read. I would have assumed it’s because it’s a “gifted” class, but parents of kids in other classes say their kids read pretty well too. I guess we’re playing catch-up with Japan, where all the kids can speak 3 languages by age 2.)


Once “Donuts” was done, I got to go home and spend pretty much the rest of the day in the yard: mowing, raking, cleaning, weed-whacking, doing everything I could to make the property somewhat safe and pleasant for small children. Of course, this meant that I awoke Saturday morning with my injured back tighter than Rick Santorum’s anus. I could barely walk. This did not, of course, keep us from loading everybody into the car and heading out to Lancaster for my cousin Carolyn’s wedding, at which my children utterly destroyed the dance floor.

Weddings, I have to say, are surprisingly fun with children around. Sure, you have to keep them from sticking their hands into the wedding cake, but once the dancing starts they can be pretty much left to their own devices.


Sunday was the big party day. The theme was “Knights and Princesses,” so we rented a big castle moon bounce, decorated with medieval-y tapestries and a replica suit of armor provided by Sarah’s mom, and the kids made posterboard princess hats and knightly shields. We managed to get through the whole day without anyone being injured, even after I made the beer-induced decision to get into the bounce and do backflips. (You may not believe it, but my back did not approve, and reminded me of my folly the next morning.)


On Memorial Day, we celebrated by “sleeping in;” everyone in the house was up by 7am, except for Josephine, who slept solidly until almost 10:30. After doing some clean-up, we piled back into the car to go to my sister’s housewarming, where we ate faaaaaaaaar too much, as one is wont to do on Memorial Day.


Additional bullet points:


  • Our friend Mary devised some kind of butterscotch-flavored Rice Krispy Treats, which made an appearance at the party on Sunday, and which are now required fare for all future parties. I think she had to email the recipe to like 75 people.

  • If you like moon bounces, get one that inexplicably has a 7-foot high soft basketball hoop on the outside. You’d think it would result in a really stellar slam dunk contest, but what ended up being FAR more fun was 3 adult men taking turns trying to fling a soccer ball through it from 50-60 feet away while drinking a lot. Only one of us managed to do it (get the ball through the hoop, that is, not the drinking; we were all very successful at that), although I did at least hit the rim once.


Stay thistly, my friends.

Categories: dear diary Tags:

Discuss ALL the things!

May 18th, 2012 No comments

Let’s blast through a number of interesting topics on this Freaky Friday:


  • I’m always amazed at people who think that stuff happens to them in some kind of vacuum. Folks who associate with douchebags, and then are surprised when those douchebags treat them like crap. Folks who have 4 kids with 3 different partners and wonder why their children act crazy. Folks who do everything in their power to hold up traffic and complain about tailgaters.


    I know sometimes cause and effect can be difficult to see, but c’mon, y’all. Please, just stop being dumb. I know it’s a lot to ask, but please try.


  • This is a detailed article about Junior Seau, and why the middle linebacker position is the most dangerous in football, and probably in all sports that don’t involve being gored by a bull:
    A middle linebacker is taught from his first organized game to use his head and helmet as the first contact point when tackling and when shedding drive blocks of linemen and fullbacks who have the advantage of a running head start.

    Terrifying. Then I read this’n:
    The N.F.L. is making some of its former players aware of a study that found that they are likely to live longer than men in the general population…The government study found a lower death rate among former N.F.L. players than among men in the general population — the institute had expected to find that 625 members of the group it studied would be dead based on estimates from the general population, but instead found that 334 of the retired players had died. Former players also had a lower rate of cancer-related deaths — 85 players died from the disease, compared with the 146 cancer-related deaths researchers at the institute expected. And the rate of deaths from heart disease was lower, too — 126 players died from heart disease; Niosh had expected 186 deaths.

    I guess it shouldn’t be terribly surprising, given the extreme fitness of the skill positions; having a bunch of ex-wide receivers and defensive backs in there is going to make the overall results look pretty good. On the other hand,
    The study did not address the cognitive and mental health issues that have recently been linked to repeated blows to the head and that currently dominate the conversation about player safety.

    They may live longer, but if their brains are leaking slowly out of their ears, I suspect it’s not a particularly pleasant life.


    Note to self: my boys will play tackle football over my cold, stiff corpse.


  • While we’re on the subject of sports:
    • Sshhh…the Phils have won 5 straight, are a game over .500, and while they’re still in last place in the division they’re only 4 games back. Chase Utley has been taking BP and fielding practice in Clearwater. We got high hopes, y’all.

    • The Flyers got knocked out, so I haven’t been paying even a lick of attention to hockey. Are the Whalers still in it? How about the North Stars?

    • I think the Sixers, sadly, have met their match. The Celtics are pretty elderly, but they know exactly how to win. As long as they keep it close, experience will take care of the rest; the best the Sixers can hope for is a 12 point lead with 3 minutes to go. Which can happen if they get hot, but…can they get hot for 3 out of 4 remaining games? At least the Heat seem to be getting manhandled by the Pacers; if LeWade and the Dominos get knocked out in the second round my heart will grow three sizes that day.

    • The Eagles signed Shady McCoy to a big contract…good for him. I’m sure I’ll watch the Eagles, but football tastes pretty sour since the players seem to average about 3 good post-retirement years before developing Alzheimer’s.

    • In Soccer news, Liverpool played crap ball since Christmas. Aside from the League Cup win, that is. On our side of the pond, Philadelphia Union is horrible, but the US Men’s squad has won its last three international matches and has a good chance in the Olympics this summer. They have to play France (awfully tough), Colombia (less tough), and North Korea (which has a team consisting entirely of Oompa Loompas). Are you asleep yet? Let’s move on.

    • In weightlifting news, I squatted 365 and benched 235 today, with which my 410lb deadlift from Wednesday puts me in the “Thousand Pound” club. I may try and bump those numbers next week, because I feel like I can do more, and I’m in an online powerlifting meet, and also the ladies love big squat numbers. Really. Ask any lady.


  • President Obama came out in favor of gay marriage last week, following the vote by a bunch of rednecks to keep homosexuals second class citizens. This is great and all, but forgive my skepticism for not thinking that white trash voters aren’t likely to be swayed by the black guy in the white house.


That’s about all I’ve got for the day, so have a nice weekend, and stay loose, killers.

Categories: link day, sporty spice, wtf Tags:

The search continues…

May 10th, 2012 No comments

It’s been a few months since the last time we looked at the search engine queries that lead people to matthearn.com, but let me tell you: I continue to apparently be America’s main source of information about Dwyane Wade. Some of the searches that led folks here:



dwyane wade muscle 30 (searches)
dwyane wade muscles 18
dwyane wade men’s health 9
dwyane wade shirtless 7
dwayne wade muscle 3
dwyane wade body fat 3
In order to knock out these questions in order: yes, I believe D-Wade has muscles, I am fairly certain he is concerned about men’s health in general and prostate health in particular, his body fat is somewhere around 10%, and he actually looks better IN a shirt because of his skin tone and sad eyes. I’m not sure how to answer this one:



d’wade you mad 2
because I find it difficult to believe that a professional athlete, particularly one in the top 10 players in his sport, could ever really be mad about anything. Then again:


D-Wade IS mad!


I got a lot of these:



thatching rake 18
thatching race 3
I think we should clear this up; a thatching rake is this:



A thatching race, however, is this:



Know the difference. Since I’ve been posting a lot about diet and training, I of course get a lot of hits from folks who are trying to get in shape.



how to gain 15 pounds of fat 16
before and after running weight loss 9
before and after running 8
running weight loss before and after 8
ideal protein diet before and after pictures 8
running before and after 7
running before and after weight loss 6
weight loss running before and after 5
before and after weight running 5
skinny to muscular before and after 4
Just a gentle reminder to everyone: if you’re running to lose weight, and aren’t being careful about your diet, you will look like this:


Large


If you diet right, you don’t even need to run, which is good, because running hurts, and it sucks. I write one little post like eleventy-bajillion years ago about my car, and the hits just keep on comin’:



protege 98 10
98 mazda protege 9
mazda protege 1998 9
mazda protege 98 8
It’s worth noting that I donated that car roughly 5 years ago. All I can tell you about it was that it was very reliable and utterly boring.



dunkin donuts chocolate glazed donut 3
They are FRICKING DELICIOUS. Please don’t ask about them again, you may have heard I’m on a diet.



maria bamford husband 2
I had forgotten who Maria Bamford is, so I checked Wikipedia, and it turns out she’s a stand-up comedian. The article makes no mention of a husband, just a couple of dogs, so I think just contact her agent and try and get them digitz, playa.



a tired rugby player after 30 minutes 2
is a rugby player who’s not scoring a lot of trys or, uh, what’s the other way you can score in rugby? Wickets? Chukkers? I can’t remember. Speaking of scoring in rugby:



rugby players f***ing 3
chubby rugby player 2
big rugby player testicles 2
naked rugby players 2
hot rugby ass 2
gay pacific rugby 1
Most of these are the result of a post I wrote a few months ago in which I mentioned that rugby players are tough, and American football players are (usually) not. Apparently there’s a demographic for rugby nookie, and at least one person out there interested in getting a little Ring of Fire Homo Rugby Love, which would be an excellent name for a Hindi-Pop band.



rae dawn chong 4
rae dawn chong naked 4
rae dong chong naked 3
rae dawn chong hot 2
rae dawn chong ass 2
I can’t really help y’all with the “nude” part, because this is family website and all, but here’s a nice portrait I stole from afro-style.com, which I visit almost daily:


Afro, in style.


I really, really don’t know what’s going on here:



freddy mercury the only acceptable duckface 3
freddie mercury balancing on a ball 3
freddie mercury on a bench 2
I don’t think the duckface is ever really acceptable, perse, but we do give the late Freddie some allowances, since he was fricking awesome, and everything. I mean, this actually happened:



And this:



And oh god my eyes this:



So you know what? If Freddie Mercury wants to make a duckface…you let him.




freddie mercury teeth 2
Not his finest feature.




woman lifts wieghts with ass 2
That seems…ill-advised, and misguided.



matt hearn gay sports massage 1
Where do I sign up?



plumber’s cleavage photo 1
Yeah, not going there. Unless the plumber in question is Hayley Atwell.



rascal flatts stand on the piano 2
I feel like that would be awfully damaging to the piano. I mean, that lead singer is awfully husky.




“dog flavored cigarettes” 2
I thought Google was blocked in China?



quantum energy slim line carp 2,75 lb 1
Wh…what?



bacon dinosaur 1


That’s about it. I suspect next time we do this there will be nothing but searches for Freddie Mercury’s nipples. I’m okay with that.

Categories: wtf Tags:

Slightly skinnier

May 3rd, 2012 No comments

So as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been doing the Lean Gains diet, along with an RPT routine. Methinks it’s time for an update on progress, and a general review of the programs.


Short version: everything is awesome. Well, pretty much. I’ve been on Lean Gains for about 8 weeks, I’m down 11 pounds, and the bodyfat percentage number is down about 3.5 points. In case you missed the post about it, here’s a bit of detail on how the diet works.


LG was developed by the remarkably shredded Martin Berkhan. It’s based on Intermittent Fasting, the gist of which is that you go for significant periods without eating, usually from 16-40 hours, although some folks go nuts and shoot for 72 hours or more; at that point you’re losing as much muscle as fat so it’s usually not recommended. The Lean Gains protocol calls for 16 hours of fasting and an 8 hour feeding window every day, with macronutrient cycling, which is just a fancy way of saying you eat more on training day (usually lots of extra carbs) and less on rest days.


The original design specified that on training days, you eat 20% more than your “maintenance level” (the amount of calories you would eat to remain at exactly the same weight), with about 3 times as many calories coming from carbs as fat, and on rest days you eat 20% less than your maintenance, with fat and carb calories being fairly equal. The idea is that on training day, you build muscle with plenty of protein and carbs, and then on rest days you’re cutting fat by eating fewer calories overall, and reducing insulin response by keeping carbs low. It was designed to help guys and gals who are already at low bodyfats get into shape for bodybuilding competitions without having to crash diet, and while building muscle at the same time. It basically turns the “cut and bulk” process, wherein you spend months building muscle and then months cutting fat, into a daily system that keeps you relatively lean all the time (instead of developing the major chubbiness that pro bodybuilders usually have in the offseason when bulking up).


While it was designed for those already in pretty good shape, an enterprising young man named Andy realized that there really was no reason that an out-of-shape person couldn’t do the program and lose a bunch of fat while maintaining, or even gaining, muscle. So instead of the -20/+20, he devised the -35/+10, which is what I’m doing. My maintenance level is approximately 3000 calories (based on weight, height, age, gender, and general level of activity), so on my rest days I eat 35% less (about 1950), with half of the calories coming from protein and the rest coming roughly equally from carbs and fat. On workout days, I eat 10% more, with about a third of of the calories from protein, and at least 50% from carbs.


My feeding window is usually about 1pm to 9pm, which means of course that I don’t eat breakfast. This has been less difficult than I thought, to be honest. Coffee helps a lot, but even without it, it’s not really THAT hard to just not eat. In fact, to compensate for going away to the beach a few weeks ago (where I ate and drank like a Walmart shopper for 3 days), I did two 40-hour fasts (one before the trip, and one after), where I took in nothing but water and coffee. 40 hours. I won’t say it was easy, but it sure was interesting, particularly after the hallucinations started (just kidding, I’m sure that talking pink moose was totally real).


As to the workout, I honestly can’t say I’m enjoying it, but I don’t think I’d really enjoy any routine while losing fat. If your lift numbers aren’t going up, it’s not fun. It’s almost like practicing the piano for weeks and never getting any better at the song. I do see the results at the scale and tape measure, but it’s awfully slow, and adding weight to the bar at every workout is nice and fast. Also, I’ve been fighting a weird hip pain that doesn’t want to go away; I injured it squatting over a month ago, stopped all the lower body stuff for a few weeks until it felt better, and it basically came back as soon as I lifted again. Right now I’m working around it (a narrower squatting stance results in almost no pain at all during the actual workout), but it’s a nuisance.


Still, I think the Reverse Pyramid Training workout is generally easier on the body than SS and Madcow, while achieving similar volume. It makes more sense to do the heaviest set when the body is freshest, and then tack on longer/lighter sets afterwards to achieve the necessary volume. I’ve got my squat numbers back to maybe 25 pounds under my January maxes, my bench press is down only about 10 pounds, my overhead press is about the same, and my deadlift is almost back to the 405 max I pulled in February before the lack of carbs hit me. I’ll probably be on the “Lean Gains cut” for another 5-6 months (gotta get that 6-pack, son), and if I can keep my bench press over 200 pounds until then I’ll be pretty happy. Plus, I can do chins again (4 in a row!).


The gist of my program is that it’s a bit of Madcow plus Starting Strength plus RPT:


  • Monday:

    • Back squats – Warmups, then a top set of 5, then 6 at 90% of that weight, and 7 at 80%.

    • Bench press – Warmups, then a top set of 5, then 7 at 85% of that weight, and 9 at 70%.

    • Chins – I do at least 15 total reps, divided into however many sets that takes. When I can get 5 reps a set, I’ll start just doing 3 sets of however many reps I get. When I reach 8 rep sets, I plan to start adding weight, but that’s months away.

  • Wednesday:

    • Front squats – Warmups, then a top set of 5, and 6 at 90% of that weight. Really just resting my legs from Monday’s heavy routine, and preparing for deadlifts

    • Overhead presses – Warmups, then a top set of 5, 7@85%, 9@70%.

    • Deadlifts – Warmups, top set of 5, then 6@90%.

  • Friday:

    • Back squats – Warmups, then a set of 6 at about 94% of Monday’s max, 7 at 90% of the 6 rep set, and 8@80%.

    • Bench press – Warmups, then a set of 6 at about 94% of Monday’s max, 8 at 85% of the 6 rep set, and 10@70%.

    • Chins – Same drill as Monday.

I’m very happy with the routine. Fairly quick (under an hour), and only three workouts a week.


If you’re having trouble losing fat and getting/staying strong, I’d give LG and RPT a look. It’s working like gangbusters on my big ol’ gutty gut.

Categories: rolling with the fatness Tags: