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I was never a big swimmer when I went to the gym, but this Summer, my girlfriend and I moved to an apartment with a pool, and I’ve fallen in love. How did I go this many years without realizing what an amazing workout swimming is? It’s like a machine which hits every muscle equally, [...]

When mastering any discipline, you’re bound to run into the Plateau Effect from time to time. For awhile, your mastery increases steadily through training or studying, but then you begin to experience diminishing returns. The slope of mastery versus time evens out, until you reach the plateau point, when it seems like further investment just [...]

I’m currently right at the half-way point through my latest 30 day challenge, a second 30 day workout challenge. It’s really heightened my understanding of progressive training: starting small and gradually increasing the difficulty. The idea is simple: if you want to be able to lift a huge weight, something way out of your league, [...]

While I’m ashamed to admit it, I’ve been neglecting my body for the past few months. I have lots of excuses I can make: the Spring quarter was so busy, my girlfriend took up so much time, yadda yadda yadda, but really there’s no excuse to neglect the body. Training the body does so much [...]

In the past few years that I’ve been studying Japanese, I’ve gone through a lot of changes. Japanese (as well as mathematics) has been kind of a background anchor behind it all while the rest of my life has been a constant whirlwind of evolution and revolution. As I go through new phases in life, [...]

Lately, when it comes to the bench press, I’ve been experimenting with bench pressing to exhaustion. That means you do high reps with low weights, until you can’t do any more, then lower the weight a little, and repeat. Last time I was at the gym, I started with 100 lbs and did somewhere around [...]

I just recently finished a 30-day challenge to work out every day, and now I’m continuing that habit, going for a 60-day challenge. I’ve never felt better, or looked sexier, in my life. Before I started this challenge, I had done my fair share of running- I was even on a track-and-field team as a [...]

I just ran six-and-a-quarter miles after a long day of tutoring and teaching and studying. And I feel great. Exhausted, but great. Today was actually my 32nd consecutive day of working out. I would have posted exactly on the 30-day mark, but I’ve been really busy. Insanely, mind-bendingly busy. In fact, this quarter I feel [...]

Friday night, I didn’t get much sleep. Saturday night, I was starting to notice a slight sore throat. Hoping it would go away, I went to a party anyway and got drunk. Sunday, the sore throat had developed into an outright cold. I decided to go to bed early to let my body rest and [...]

All my life, I’ve been blessed with a fierce, demonic metabolism of destruction. My stomach was like the gates of oblivion, because evidently no matter how much food I devoured, I couldn’t gain a pound. When I started weight lifting with my power-lifting friend, each pound was an epic struggle to pack on, and the [...]