Training the pianist

I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner, but better now than never, I suppose.  A friend came to me with an exercise related question, and being the guy I am gave great advice that turned out to work in her favor.

I then had the stroke of genius to help all of my musician friends by writing this post.

Valentina Lisitsa plays one of my favorite renditions of Beethoven's Moonlight  Sonata

One of the guiding principles of The Movement is working within our limits to expand them.  This is preferable as opposed to trying to do some shit you may or may not be able to do and risking injury.  Without having met Valentina, let's use what we can figure out as a starting point to help out with training piano players.

First thing is first.  She is a concert pianist.  spends a good portion of her life in the position above--flexed/translated neck, flexed hips, knees and shoulders are the obvious examples.

If you are a piano player, here are some things you might consider as starting points for your training.

If your movement quality is really shitty, you might try push ups done on your knees (also called girl push ups though I am not a fan of the term).  I suggest these to work out the arms first, and focus on extending the wrists, and elbows in the event that you might be too limited to mess around with anything else.

If you're extra fucked up, you might try using the machine to do some partial rows and work up to full rows (starting from full extension and pulling back) and then moving towards the knee pushups.

From there, perhaps full pushups with the body straightened and/or goblet squats to parallel or higher depending on how you sit on the piano bench.  Better, us a bench/box at the gym to figure that out.

Sara Daneshpour playing Tchaikovsky

This is by no means a definitive list on how to train if you are a piano player.  I just made the hypothetical assumption that the player is untrained and started from there.  Depending on your age, activity level and time spent playing, your mileage may vary.  Stay tuned for more.


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Traditions might fucking kill you

Buy this shirt. Or at the very least, look on it and laugh.  It's a more specific sentiment on traditions.  I don't think they all are useless.  But they should be critiqued.

Here's a good one: the father giving the daughter away at a wedding.  Back when women were property and people worked all the time, the family of the daughter had to get rid of a valuable, working piece of property.  The bride price was paid, the daughter was effectively sold to another family.

Warming up is one directly related to lifting.  In fact, I have talked to no less than five people, in person, who have fucked their shit up doing a warm up set.  Some had it worse than others.  Often unquestioned, yet is it still worth it?

Poor bastard took his warm up too seriously

The latter tradition is one that's testable, thankfully.

I'll keep this brief.  There's all sorts of shit to question.  Depending on your sport, you can question a myriad of things to a great extent.  For lifting, here are some questions you can ask first:

Can I do my goal movement today?
Can I PR in it?
Can I do it more often?
How will I be able to attain the ability to do it more often if I can't?
Can I run myself or should someone else tell me exactly what to do?

The less adaptable you become, the less movement you create.  You know what happens next.

A few pullup variations so you don't get bored to tears.

Last year when I couldn't deadlift much, I did a fuck load of pull ups. I only did two variations, but the best part was that one expanded my range of motion--I was able to do wide grip pull ups and not fuck my shoulders up.  Many people also have lofty pull up goals. Hopefully these will help.

Around this time, I was doing pull ups 2 to 3 times a week, and as a result my volume and intensity escalated quickly.  Needless to say, I had to ask myself what was next.  Some of the following I have seen from Adam, and others I concocted on my own. 

Towel Pull ups:


It's pretty simple. Take the towels, loop them over the bars and grab the damn things and do some pull ups.  This is a good way to train your grip, and though I am no Adam, I get the feeling everyone can benefit from grip training.

Rolling Thunder/Vertical Bar Pull ups

These are pretty cool.  If you have two vertical bars, you can use 1 for each hand.  These are great because most movements with barbells don't allow for ulnar deviation, and both the vertical bar pull up and the vertical bar deadlift allow that position to be trained.  Another option is to use two rolling thunder handles.  I have one handle and one loading pin, hence the set up.  Another option is two hands one one vertical bar.

Eagle Loops:

That is an eagle loop. They come in pairs from ironmind.  You can also do pull ups with these, and concentrate on individual finger groups, if it suits you.  My favorite thing to test is an eagle loop and a rolling thunder handle.  Find the variation that tests best for you.

Crush Pull Up:

I like to get better at clinching by clinching, so I call this the crush pullup because you have to crush the shit out of the kettlebell to do it.  Instead of taking the intensity out by using a rubber bell, use an iron bell.  I like using dragondoor bells since they have different sizes.  The bigger the bell, the more difficult it is.  Use a lot of chalk.  Also, the closer your finger tips the easier they become.  Plan and test accordingly.

The options are limited by your imagination, and this is not a complete list.  The important thing is to test your variation, and find which is best.  The more often you can do a pullup, the better you will get at them.

Non Specificity and You

But first, an aside:

People are going nuts about the history changing shit going on in Washington (be it nefarious, or otherwise).  People are going nuts about celebrities and personalities who have little to no stake in how much better you can be. 

I will pose some questions for you to mull over regarding these issues. 

Does the fact this fat bitch called someone a "nigger" really matter in the context is being made out to matter? Does it affect you negatively in any way?

I grew up in a redneck town called Plant City.  We have a lot of strawberries, and a festival dedicated to them, wherein washed up country stars play to a moderate sized venue.  We also have a lot of racists, rednecks, Black people, and Mexicans to go along with the predominantly white population. 

Back to the question at hand.  Yes, it matters if you use racial slurs in a hateful context.  It makes you appear to be a racist asshole.  Is being a racist asshole the best way to develop yourself as an individual? Probably not. 

Does it matter that this woman said it? No.  In my hometown alone I can encounter hundreds of fat, old white women who have comparable cooking skills who call Black people "niggers," Mexicans "spics," and any other horrendous things you can think of.  I have also witnessed my Black cousin be verbally assaulted by other residents of my town.  Why should you give a shit about a famous one? I don't think it's a good use of time.  At least if I encounter the ones in my community who behave the same way, I could at least have some influence on them and help lead them to a better place regarding their ingrained racism.

This just in: DOMA got defeated.  Why is this an issue? Oh wait, because somewhere along the way the religious people who give a shit about marriage let the state take control over it.  We let the state infiltrate something personal--again.  You lose.  Not only do you lose because you relinquished your control of a dated institution, you lose because it was never your own dated institution to begin with, since it predates Jesus, The Bible, Christianity, and Judaism.   You lose because its now a federal matter.  Since I can't have my way and get rid of this nonsense and our funding of it altogether, suck it up and accept the fact that homosexuals can finally come closer to having rights of the rest of us so graciously given to them.  Is someone else's marriage really going to affect you? I mean aside from the fact you can't free load on alcohol.  All I want is one good argument not based on religion as to why only some people can get married and others can't.  At this point in time, nobody has been able to deliver one.

I guess this rant brings me to what I wanted to talk about in the first place.  I wanted to address contra specificity/non specificity. 
If you find yourself falling in the same traps repeatedly--like maybe you support famous racists, or hate the fact that people are getting equal treatment--you might want to act differently than you already do.  It might be stressful, at first.  But the result might be worth it. 

In the testing model, we try to be as specific as we can, first.  Then we move towards contra specificity and non specificity.  I am a big fan of the latter.  From a movement perspective, it has helped me relieve pain I spoke of before, and it has helped me gain flexibility.  The non specific activity being Jiu-Jitsu, of course.  It has also helped me relax more. 

Another way I like to practice non specificity is when Arielle and I go out to eat.  I am not a picky eater, so I have no qualms with telling my server to surprise me with any dish from the menu, with few parameters.  It gives me new ideas to implement at home, lets me know I like things I didn't think about trying before, and it saves time and decision making.   I have not been let down yet, and have loved all the strange things given to me.

This idea can especially apply to relationships of any kind.  Especially those that stress out.  I had a friend who had MS.  It was a stressful task to prepare to even talk to him on the phone, given the gravity of topics we would talk about.  I would literally have to plan time to talk and set it aside so I couldn't do anything else.  Of course, it was a huge pain in the ass for me, but even though the stress built up because of the fact that it wasn't something I would normally do often, the relief of going through with it was worth it, even though it was a distressing activity. 

So, think of people you think you need to talk to.  People you might need to apologize to.  It might stress you out, but the end result will be worth it. 

Lastly, one of my favorite ways to do non specific things is to learn multiple routes to get to and from home and what not.  I found the plus sides to be that I can find cooler gas stations (perhaps cheaper, too), cooler landmarks, eating establishments, and I can avoid the stress of traffic--which is absurd to get stressed over to begin with, even though I do all the time.

Add some contra/non specificity to your life. You might be glad you did.

Honoring your mentors: The Greater Implications of 'Smashing the Head'

I got into training for stuff because I got tired of being a lazy fuck.  I did not know that I could later apply the principles (and with greater accuracy on down the road) to the rest of my life.  I am pleasantly surprised and delighted that I can (and do).



Rob Kahn: Owner of Gracie Tampa North, and  Royce Gracie black belt

 Recently, I started thinking about something Rob Kahn (above) says often--so often it's the tag line for the Gracie Tampa shirts.  "When in doubt, smash the head," or some variant. The rationale being that the one who controls the head will control the fight. 

I make it a point to take Rob's classes whenever I get the chance, and true to form he focuses on controlling the head whenever possible. 

One of the neat things about Jiu Jitsu is that it involves an opponent.  In powerlifting, your opponent is mainly yourself and an unmoving object. Metaphorically speaking, in powerlifting you will inevitably (and metaphorically) smash your own head if you are not careful.  In Jiu Jitsu, you can either smash or be smashed. 

Like all physical endeavors I now undertake in, I like to apply head smashing to my way of being.  Figuratively speaking, every interaction we engage in with people we are engaging in game theory.  In many of the interactions we engage in we are impressing our will upon another human.  This happens actively, passively, to a greater extent, and to a lesser extent, with all sorts of nefarious and benign intentions in between.

Depending on the situation you are in, learn how to psychologically "smash the head."  Learn to do so in many ways, and learn to defend your head from being smashed so you can come out victorious in your interactions.  This is one of the best grappling lessons I have learned from Rob Kahn to apply off and on the mat.

Are you a Jedi or a Sith?

I have been seeing an alarming trend, of late.  People come across my blog several ways, not the least of which is a Google search.  Here's a list of things people have searched to end up here:

1. My fucking back hurts
2. how to deadlift
3. Alexis Texas
4. my back hurts from fucking
5. deadlifts
6. i overdid it on deadlifts

Darth Revan

The clear point to most of these searches is that people most likely used a fuck load of effort to achieve whatever it is they were going for--at least for most of the search terms. 

Arielle and I were watching Revenge of the Sith the other day, and she made a point that Jedi always used the minimal effective amount of effort to achieve their task, and that the Sith used great efforts. This was particularly true when Darth Sidious uses his force lighting and Yoda absorbs and redirects it, also in Episode 2, Count Dooku uses his force lightning and Obi-Wan Kenobi effortlessly absorbs it into his lightsaber.   In fact, the effort it takes to wield force lightning becomes so great that it can deform and burn the user (as is the case with Darth Sidious).

I also found out that Frankie uses this as a teaching model as well, and will guide his students to train like the Jedi.

So, how does one train like a Jedi? It is very simple. 

First, test your movements. Here's how:

That's me from two years ago.  The same basic principles still apply.  Substitute any exercise instead of a plate curl, and test.

After you find the movements you want to do, test the variations.  One variation might yield a better test.  Variations include, but are not limited to, stances, implements, and grips.

Third, test your rest periods. After you do a set, and you are resting, do your ROM test and if it is a good test (you moved a lot of checkers, to use the same terminology in the video) practice your movement some more. 

Important things to consider: do not squeeze out one more rep, do not do things to the detriment of your form, and do not move through pain.  Be aware of your speed, your tension, your form and your form you use when you perform your gym movements. If you slow down, your form detoriorates and/or you start to use more tension, calm the fuck down and stop. If you ignore this, you will reach failure, pain and (hopefully not) damage.  Stop well before failure, and if you can help it, stop at loss of speed. The strain is not worth it.  Physiologically, or psychologically.

You will love to fight another day, and things that don't often test well, will test well and your limits will be expanded. 

To be a Sith, ignore this advice at your own discretion.  But remember the cost of being a Sith--betrayal from your apprentices, losing limbs, and dying.  All associated with more effort (and with them, a lot of arrogance). 

There's always room for activities

When did leading an active lifestyle become so fucking hard? Barring cases of being dead, paralyzed, maimed or cryogenically frozen in carbonite there are no real good reasons not to be active.  I don't mean going to the gymnasium, necessarily.  You can literally do any activity you want. Movement co founder Craig Keaton and his wife go out and play or jump and walls and stuff and seem to have a good time doing so.

In fact--and this is really great if you have children--you can go to a playground and play on the monkey bars, the sliding polls, the jungle gym, etc.  You can even sprint, if you are into that sort of thing.

If you have friends, instead of opting for lifting all the time, you can engage in sporting activities.  Recently, I have begun playing racquetball again which is far more exciting than powerlifting (which I still do) and involves way more movement that I don't get out of lifting, or Jiu-Jitsu--namely all the footwork and the eye-hand coordination along with a better grasp of mathematical angles. 

If you don't have friends, make some. 

If you have kids, consider them your friends until they start rebelling and resenting you.  If they see you regaining lost function and being active, they will most likely follow suit and lead active lifestyles growing up.  They might resent you less, too.  If you sit around with your hands on your balls watching Law and Order repeats, they'll likely grow up the same way.  You are their biggest influence for at least the first 13 years of their life, at which point they start hanging around with other idiots their age and doing dumb shit and getting trouble into school. 

Plus, if you engage in activities the majority of the time compared to gym movements, you might get a lot of good socialization out of it, as will your children. 

If you have a job that requires you to work a lot of hours, and you fall into the category of people who make excuses as to why you aren't active (specifically using your job as that crutch) evaluate your current situation in life, and proceed how you see fit.  The direction allowing for more movement will likely make you happier, physically at the very minimum. 

If you're in school and you throw away your whole active lifestyle the moment it's time for finals, evaluate how you learn/study.  Likely, if you are in college, you spend a lot of time fucking around, when you could be looking for better ways of learning that are specific to you. (I graduated. I fucked around a lot in college, never studied, and still made it out above C level). 

Above all, do some other shit so as to move in new directions.  You'll likely get better at your goals, and you won't "plateau." This can be any kind of movement.  Study something new, do a new sport, write differently, watch new movies, or what have you.  Then you will know the true meaning of "PR everyday."