2010: review

Lifting
I didn’t reach my ‘Road to 400 Goals’ but I did end the year with a personal record for deadlift and weighted in 10 lbs lighter by the end of the year. Most of my lifts remained the same or went up, so I’m happy to have retained muscle mass while loosing a bit of extra weight.

Since I’ve been doing so much heavy work, I’m going to start off the year with a couple months of high-rep, low-weight work with an emphasis on getting my heart rate up.

Reading
51 books this year, not all of them winners, but as I get older I’m getting better at cutting out the garbage quicker. It’s easy to tell the time of year based on what I’m reading, more serious work during the start/end of the year and light stuff over the summer.

Top Ten Books:

  1. Everything Matters – Ron Currie, Jr.
  2. Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace – David Lipsky
  3. After the Workshop – John McNally
  4. Switch – Chip & Dan Heath
  5. Drive – Daniel Pink
  6. Listen to This – Alex Ross
  7. The Creative Writers Survival Guide – John McNally
  8. The Big Short – Michael Lewis
  9. Where Good Ideas Come From – Steven Johnson
  10. A Guide to the Good Life – William Irvin

Music: Listening

Music stuff that last.fm says that I listened to this year(mostly at work):

Artist Play Count
Autechre 657
The Beatles 547
The Rolling Stones 423
Aphex Twin 415
Peter Gabriel 376
Nine Inch Nails 313
Tom Waits 283
Amon Tobin 262
The Kleptones 256
Steely Dan 245
Neil Young 242
The Mountain Goats 218
Galactic 214
Frank Zappa 202
Andrew Bird 197
Uncle Tupelo 195
Son Volt 190
Lyle Lovett 190
Andy McKee 186
Max Richter 181

Other music stuff I remember listening to a whole bunch to in 2010:

Music: Written
I put out three EPs and one full project of music this year, (about 108 minutes of sound). I’m pretty happy with the output and I see a lot of change and progress.

Next Year:
I already have a reading list about 15 items deep. For music I want to get back into Max/MSP and build more interactive processing in Reaktor. I also have a pile of Abersold jazz books that I should spend more time with. The older I get the more I feel a need to dig deeper into harmony.

January 2, 2011 | Filed Under Books, music, personal, Uncategorized | Comments Off 

P4W1D1

Starting a new lifting phase. I was getting pretty burned out and needed to change things around a bit. I’m going to try this phase for the next two weeks before going on vacation. I’ll see how I feel after some time off and work out where I need to focus on lifting wise.

press: 45×10, 95×5, 115×5, 135×5 (three sets) 65×10 (five sets)
chins: x3 (five sets)
zercher squat: 95×6 (three sets)
medicine ball rotation: x12 (two sets)
medicine ball crunch: x12 (two sets)
bike: HIIT (10 min)

March 15, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off 

DC Trip Photos

A few pictures from the trip to DC on the photos page. Hard to believe it was over a week ago, this week went by so fast.

October 29, 2009 | Filed Under personal, Uncategorized | Comments Off 

W6D4

Pretty quick Sunday morning workout, added a complex to the plan and a couple extra lifts for out-of-breath-red-faced-heart-pounding fun.

medicine ball rotation: x15 (two sets)
medicine ball crunch: x10 (two sets)
medicine ball leg raise: x8 (two sets)
good mornings: 45×8, 85×6 (three sets)
clean + front squat + press: 95×5,4,3,2,1
zottman curl: 30×8 (three sets)
front plate raise: 35×18
reverse grip barbell curl: 40×12

October 11, 2009 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off 

rubber ducks

Jen had a bunch of rubber ducks that I thought would be good to test out the new camera with.

duck 1

duck 1


duck 2

duck 2


duck_03

July 25, 2009 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment 

workout: r1w1 upper-body

Semi-decent workout this morning, spent all of yesterday asleep and trying to get over some bug. I was probably only 80% at the gym but I always feel better by going.

barbell-press: 45×12, 95×10, 115×8, 135×5 (three sets)
barbell-shrug: 135×10, 185×8, 225×5 (three sets)
dumbbell-raise (bent): 20×8, 25×6 (three sets)
dumbbell push-press: 40×10, 50×8, 60×5 (two sets)
standing curl: 25×10, 30×8, 40×5 (two sets)
hammer curl: 25×10, 30×8, 40×5 (two sets)

April 2, 2009 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off 

workout: upper-body p1w2b

Good upper-body day, changed things around a bit and added single-arm bench in replacement of push-ups. Good energy and weighed in a couple pounds lighter (even though it looks like I had plenty of calories the previous day.

Barbell Press: 115×6 (four sets)
Dumbbell Row: 95×7 (three sets)
Dumbbell Neutral Press: 55×6 (four sets)
Single Arm Bench: 55×6, 65×5, 70×5

February 13, 2009 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off 

groove

Finally (nearly) over the last bout of cold-type fun and back in the groove for the gym. Great workout this morning that will probably make walking difficult come later today and tomorrow morning. It felt good to have over 300lbs on the squat rack. I’ve been working without a real program for the past few months and need to focus on getting my goals set and progress monitored. It’s looking like a variation of the Cressy program I did last summer with modifications for heavier weights and more powerlifting. My knees felt pretty trashed by all of the lunge work, so I’ll be replacing the lunge work with squat and deadlift variations.

I need to keep up with some mobility work, but I think I’ll be focusing the first part of the year on strength growth. After the three months of this program I’ll start adding more cardio and mobility work. I feel like I lost a lot of ground after being sick twice in the last two months.

In other news, here’s the front of the fantastic shirt that Jen bought me for my b-day.

balloons

balloons

January 30, 2009 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off 

Start of the year – back in the gym

Low-impact workout this morning, 30 min of bike and some upper-back work. Feeling 100% health wise but still weak from the 10 days off. Tomorrow will be squat day, good time to test how the strength is coming along. Missed my goal for the year by about 10 lbs on deadlift but I hit everything else across the board.

Trying to focus on thinning out a bit for the start of the year, I bulked up a lot over the last couple of months. Oddly enough, all of the compound lifts actually build up the abs, I now have the hint of some abdominal work without a single crunch. Deadlifts and squatting solve all problems.

January 6, 2009 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off 

The wisdom of Fripp

From Robert Fripp:

“We are only ready to undertake a piece of work when we have completed that piece of work. Doing the task prepares us to do the task: we are learning on the job. So, clearly, we don’t understand how to do the job until we’ve already done it.”

It always drove me nuts to attempt to estimate time for project managers.  Estimates would be tossed out with no basis in reality and I could only say “I don’t know.” A best guess is as useful as no guess at all. Project management seems like a weak use of the term ‘management’ but there’s lots of pretty pictures, charts and numbers to make folks warm and fuzzy.

Things are done when they are done.  When Scott was my boss he pointed this out often and I have yet to see any contrary evidence.

December 10, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off 

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