A word about wheelbarrows

Ok so I am fortunate enough to have two staircases in the home in which I dwell. This offers a great circuit for traveling through the house. The differences in these stairwells are that they are on different ends of the house and that one is carpeted and one is not. The circuit goes as follows. Have someone hold your legs for wheelbarrows as you walk on your hands down the hall down the wooden stairs through the dining room, the kitchen and then up the carpeted stairs. Or reverse. Let me tell you this: when going down stairs you are at a very steep angle. This could be difficult for your partner to have proper grip as you decend. If you partner happens to be wearing socks, his/her grip may be inadequate and the two of you shall tumble down the stairs; your partner bustin up ass bones while you smash your face, arms and elbows in to stairs, concrete flooring and walls.

Slowly Improving

Today I did 3x15 Rowing from the rafters. Then I did 2x5 Pullups where one arm was like 18inches down from the bar and holding on to a really fat towel. So it was grip strength for the off hand and almost all pull up on the other hand then I switched hands. Then I finished by grabbing each side of the towel wich was over the bar and did 8 more pull ups. Then I went in to the basement and started listening to another interview from the handbalance master course and practices alot of the hand balancing exercises. I'm starting to hold em more consistantly now. I also am gradually improving in chess. It doesn't feel like it but the people I used to have trouble with I am beating more often. I also now how myself up on the arms of the chair and hold my legs up. Like I am gonna do dips but I am just workin my abs while they move and then sometimes I stretch my legs straigh out and hold the L shape.

Hand Balance Mastery Course

So I got my handbalance mastery course inthe mail. Its filled wit sweet exercises. It also has interviews on cd. I listened to the one while I hit the heavy bag. The dude was from beast skills http://www.beastskills.com/ I heard the guy talking about crazy stuff he was striving for and it was things like the one handed rope climb! This guy is crazy strong check out his site hes got good stuff on there. Then I was doing all kinds of different hand balancin positions. I need to strengthen my core so much to do this stuff. Yesterday I did Pull ups my workout was 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1. For some reason it wasnt that hard. Maybe I rested too long. I'm gonna try it again with shorter rest and then I am gonna try it by starting at 11. I'd thing 66 pullups oughta wear me out. Maybe I'll change grips or use the towel and have one hand lower so its focused more on one arm. Meanwhile I gotta do alot more core stuff I need to find a way to get from doing the wheel on the knees to doing it from standing. It such a large gap in ability.

GIANT TIRE!!

sweeeeeet....i got a giant tractor tire today. i plan on smashing it with a sledgehammer in the near future and flipping it across the yard in tabata intervals. i'll let you know how it goes.

my new method

i discovered a fantastic new way to train this weekend. i wake up about 20 minutes earlier than usual, and when i go out to do the morning chores, i workout in between each chore. a sample of the morning yesterday:
6:00 - wake up, do fingertip pushups to get forearms and 'bows ready
6:05 - get milking gear ready, do fingertip pushups
6:07 - put on boots, hat, go outside
6:09 - climb rope twice to get going
6:11 - milk baby
6:15 - decline pushups on the rings 2x15
6:18 - milk gracie, start filling water bucket
6:23 - decline flies on rings 2x12, set of fingertip pushups
6:27 - take baby and gracie out on pasture with water, feed other goats
6:29 - do upside down rows on rings 2x12 (hard!)
6:33 - feed chickens, collect eggs, make sure sheep are watered
6:38 - inverted pushups and two more rope climbs
6:42 - filter milk, do 2 more sets pushups

so usually it takes me a little under half an hour to do the morning chores. i added an entire workout and only tacked on about 15 more minutes. nice! plus i feel solid to start the day, and without telling anna i did the workout she comes down while im cooking breakfast and says "your arms are freakin huge!" obviously.

as for iron mind - got deep into why NPK fertilizing not only doesn't work, but is the worst idea ever. NPK fertilizing is like taking the EV1 off the road, but doing it in the 1930s and using lobbyists to continue keeping it off the road. i just watched who killed the electric car, so sorry for the comparisons. really, the two are very related since its all about the chemical companies. thats where the shit be at.

also, i started getting into animal physiology. its time to break this respiration thing down to the cellular level to see where our deficiencies really come from!

Crushin

The one thing I have been diligent about of late has been my crush strength. I have been closing the grippers every other day and now incorporated the extensor band on the opposite days. But I didn't go buy IronMind brand bands. Seriously the one I pulled off the broccoli is working great. I completely forgot about wall walks. I need to incorporate them back in to my routine. I just dropped a hundred bones on the hand balancing mastery course from the hand balancing kid. It should be worth it. Its a huge folder with like a zillion workouts to do some of the craziest shit ever. Plus Cds with interviews with the best gymnast, hand balancing super humans ever. I was rocking some one legged squats the other day and doing pushups on the pipe and board have become a staple of my workout. If you keep your feet together it makes it really hard to balance and sometimes it can be rough doing like twenty pushups. Some days I work on making the board real uneven so I am doing 1 handed pushups essentially. I have been making it to the attic to use the rock rings now too. I was doing 4 sets of 8 or 10 I forget. I would start on the top grip for the 1st set and then work my way down to the tiny crimper for the last set.

Iron Mind has been school work. I was enjoying watching movies and playing chess the past month and now all of my large projects are due so I am spending all my time doing those. It was however worth it. I'll come visit when the semester ends before I go to Japan.

first joint workout with kaj

for the first time today, ii worked out with my son, kaj. he was doing his "tummy time," which is when we put him on his stomach and he works on whatever he wants to try - holding his head up, squirming forward a bit, or just chilling, and i did explosive pushups and wall walks. kaj lasted a good 10 minutes, so i got 3 sets of pushups in and 1 set of wall walks.

over the weekend, i cleaned out my space in the barn and started finally using my chains and handles for some serious stuff. i did a lot of rope climbing this weekend, too. not for time, but i'd do 2 climbs every time i walked past while i was building a new sheep shelter that could be used in winter or summer weather.

as for iron mind, i have been thinking of the whole election deal coming up next year. i have only been thinking of ron paul so far. i don't think he has much of a chance because he's pro life, which will immediately turn off most democrats, despite the common sense he uses to form policy. he wants to negate roe v. wade on the grounds that it is unconstitutional, the federal government meddling in state affairs, which is how he views most issues. the big issue for me, though, is not the fact that he wants to negate roe v. wade and make the abortion thing a state issue, but because of the sanctity of life act. he tried to pass a bill defining life as beginning at conception, which i think is not for any government to define. i personally don't think abortion should be addressed federally. making it a state issue is more in line with how our government was supposed to work, but still not addressing the heart of the matter. why let any government body draw conclusions about situations that are not provable? it should be a person by person basis, case by case decision, made by the parties actually affected by the decision. and, really, i don't see why we're trying to stop abortion anyway. the world is so overpopulated with poorly raised people, adding "50 million" more into the mix would only make things worse. abortion is good population control, and it will happen either way - legal or not. i think it's ridiculous how pro lifers are allowed to show pictures of aborted fetuses, but if you show a picture of a mangled soldier (especially american) its poor taste.

s long as there are enough democrats in the senate to not pass the sanctity of life act i think he's the man to have in charge, mostly because he's about having a local government run most everything while the federal government does the big stuff like defense and infrastructure. i normally include health care in there too, but he doesn't. i suppose if you provide universal health care, the government gets to decide what health is and what falls under its various headings, which i would oppose. more later i guess.

Football

I played football on Thanksgiving. It hurts. I have also been addicted to ChessMaster and get nothing else done in my life. I started doing pushups on the wobble board. I almost have the captains of crush 1.5 closed. I started using the wheel for abs. And my rope is getting soggy and nasty at the bottom.

motivitation

i think its the coming home from work in the dark that kills motivation. i actually started doing the volume thing too, trying to do as much as possible every chance i got, but even that has been tough to keep up with. tomorrow i plan on a serious workout - possibly riding in to work, to start my time off.

for the mind, i designed and built a portable sheep shelter. it has removable side walls for winter and summer use. i will post a picture soon. i have also continued with the plant propagation techniques, and as long as it stay cold this next week, we'll be making hardwood cuttings of all our fruits and nuts.

Countin

I am doing the volume idea I had, but I am gonna start counting. I am constantly doing push-ups on stability ball and now on the board on the pipe. Its good stuff. I am going to get my pump rocks out of the attic so I use those more too. I have also been doing alot of inverted pushups.

I am also reviewing lots of Japanese on my drives to school.

brooks in the house

hello.

this is brooks. my latest iron mind has been raising a newborn. he's a genius, or a wizard. he's trained us to have him pee and poop in our sinks or other liquid catching basins. also, i've been reading up on plant propagation and edible forest gardening as my wife and i are preparing to propagate several of our fruit plants from root cuttings so we have seedlings to take with us to newport when we move. we'll be propagating clove currants, red currants, hardy kiwis, nanking cherries (bush cherry), and probably some rosemary and blueberries as well.

my last workout was friday. well, sort of. i spent all day sat and sunday dumping loads of wood chips onto our garden paths. but friday i rode a hilly 17 miles each way on my commute to and from work. lately i've been trying on the ride in to incorporate tabata intervals, but since i dont have a watch on me i just do 80 pedal strokes at like 80% and then 40 at a resting pace. it gets me to work faster and gets me a better workout.

i haven't balanced much lately.

New Method

Iron Mind - So I have been playing loads of chess and doing chess lessons on Chess Master. Also I got this game called goblet which is really good.

Iron Body - Hit the heavy bag for awhile and did lots of inverted pushups.

I just cant motivate myself to set a large chunk of time aside for exercising for somereason so my new method is Volume. I am just gonna do workouts throughout the day whenever there is free time. Like crush grippin while I drive, doing pull ups on everything I see, a handstand here, claf raises there. Just continuous little workouts all the time. We'll see what happens.

My New Favorite Exercise

So Today I climbed the rope and did some pull ups where I had one hand grabbing a towel and the other on the pull up bar. But my new favorite exercise was doing squats on the wheelie board (the board on the pvc pipe) super fun super hard I did 3 sets of 10

Motivation

So my motivation has been sub-par of late. Its dark out when I get home and then I'm hungry and then I eat and then I dont feel like workin out. I have however got good at inverted shrugs. And am getting better on standing on the rings and doing splits. Believe me I am not at a full split level yet but its a great groind and balance workout. I dont need to hold the ropes any more. Also balancing on the shelf on top of a pipe was getting ridiculously simple so in my infinite quest for making things dificult I was going to do inverted pushups on it. And here begins the short story.

I laid the board on the pipe. I place my right hand on the low side my left on the high. I step back in to a deep sprinters lung; preparing to kick my legs up to the wall and then balance on the board and do the pushups. Deep breath in. KICK! CRACK! My heel was a back a bit far. Far enough to be under the two inch overhang of the stairs behind my. The loud crack was my explosive heel kick in to those stairs. It hurt. Its balck and blue. I am an idiot. Maybe it was an omen saying "Look we are gonna fuck up your heel now because if you get up to the wall your gonna crack you F'ing face on the board and brack your nose. So I should be thankful. I am gonna start slacklining now though in order to get some more balancing skills.

Oh I finally installed my Chessmaster 10th edition. And I am addicted to chess. It is crazy fun. When I get some free time I really need to add some pictures to this mutha.

My New Favorite Exercise

So I was super busy with school this week and have been slacking on the workouts but I got so much work doen that I didn't have to go to school today like I usually do. This left me plenty of time to play pikmin2 which has nothing to do with IronMind IronBody although it does involve strategy. Anyhow my new favorite exercise is get a pipe. I am using like a 3 inch pvc pipe. Get a board. I found some shelf thats like 14x36. Put the pipe under the board. Now stand on it and balance like you grew up in a circus. Its so much fun! I feel it in my ankles and my arches alot but Im sure my IT and groin are gettin a good work out and its most likely doin some stuff in my core.

Elbows

So I burnt out my elbow with all this rope climbing pushup super business. So I have been resting them for like 3 dyas now and they stil kind of ache. But I am also an idiot because everytime I injure something I am like oh man Im done I cant workout and I stop doing all of the other workouts that dont involve elbows. So until then lots of leg workouts and core stuff.

Must Be A Wimp

Miller, How many times can you go up and down the rope? Cuz I suck for some reason. Maybe I am pussing out. I dont know. Any how I got this brain puzzles gadge on my iGoogle its so good it has these geometry puzzles that are crazy fun.

Iron Mind - Talked with some huge abortionist group today. They head dude was pretty smart and had many good things to say. I also did those geometry puzzles the other day. I have also been playing alot of tetris.

Iron Body - Rope - 5.5 times (1.5 the first and then up and down the other four)
Pull ups - 3x10 (3 different hand positions)
Tried upside down shrugs. Difficult if you balance right.
You jump up and grab the rafters and then spin ourself upside down so you are hoding on to the rafters like you would if you were shrugging, but instead of pulling weight uptowards your head, you are pulling youself up towards the sky cause your upside down. The hard part is keeping you body straight long, tense and balanced. WOO HOO!

Iron Mind- Break for the brain today. Did one Kakuro puzzle. Have alot of work to do tommorow had to give the old noggin a rest.

Iron Body - Elbow warm ups
Climbed up and down the rope 41/2 Times. One up and down was a timed sprint up the rope.
Pull ups - 3x10 (Palms facing out, In, each other)
Captains of Crush - 3x5 (1.5 test)

And so it begins.

Iron Mind - I did a kakuro puzzle and messed up because I added 8+7+6+1 to be 23 and it put everything else off but I didn't notice till the end what a bitch. I also watched Being John Malkovich. Great for thinking about who you are as well as living forever. The other day I watched I heart Huckabees. A great Existential movie if you haven't seen and you like thinking, watch it. I also put this cube together last night it was pretty hard. I think I might get a rubix cube.

Iron Body - Warmed up the elbos with the grip save and then a dumbbell
(see elbow care in BWEFES)
Then I did Flies - 4x5 On the Rings (not horizontal yet, Maybe eventually)
Dips - 3x8 On the Rings
Standing Pushups - 2 x 25 ( I was beat by the time I got to these)
Kick Ups - 35 (Attempts to go into and stay in a handstand)
Pull Ups - 17 (Done throughout the day)
Longest Hold in hand stand position - 47 seconds
(Not without help but just staying up that long is hard)

Catch Up

So this is what I've been doing recently.
For the Mind - Besides going to school I've been listening to The Joy of thinking which deals with understanding the world through mathematics. It is freaking super good. They are half hour lectures and Ive listened to 12 of them so far. The other seminar that I am listening to is The Origins of Individuality which deals with how the brain works and how it makes you what you are. These are 45 minute lectures and I have listened to the 1st four so far. Other things I am doing for my mind are logic puzzles on the internet and 3d mind games like wooden blocks you have to put together. I am also playing chess and Kakuro (a number crossword puzzle) that is harder and better than sudoku because it uses logic but also mathematics.

For the Body - Well my attempts to run were a bad idea because my stress fractures hurt so I am going to wait for the new year. My legs actually feel good but I dont want to rush anything like i had this summer. I now have a 1and a half inch rope to climb which I climb every other day. Alot of the work outs I am doing come from Body weight exercises for extraordinary strength. I am also doing hand balancing workouts.

I will post a legend on here incase any of the workouts are confusing (possibly with some pictures). Or if they aren't already in BWEFES (thats my new abbreviation for the Body Weight Book). Alright look for the goods starting today.