RoryQ

Made a candied pecan and apple salad last night for the missus. 25g caster sugar and 25g butter carmelised in a pan on low heat, then stir in about 100g of pecans. Let them cool (and make sure to seperate them out or they'll end up like a brittle). Meanwhile mix up a dressing with juice and zest of an orange, a teaspoon of djion mustard, 3-4 desert spoons of good quality olive oil and a desert spoon of white wine vinegar. Add salt and pepper and whisk. Then serve all of the above on rocket with a few good chunks of cored apple. Made home-made burgers for afterwards, served them without a bun but with bacon and cheese. Lo-carb for the win.

If you're doing your back first I can understand specifying that you want to keep the front of the thighs clear for future work (if that's more important than whatever the guy doing your backpiece might want to do with the space). After that - by the time your back is finished maybe you'll have a clearer idea of what you want, or will have narrowed it down. Unless you're planning on doing it all concurrently then you probably don't need to decide now, right?

Obviously everyone is different, but if I were a betting man I bet this was definitley the problem. I wonder if you'd had a proper night's sleep would have have had a totally different experience? I know I mentioned this before, but I got my chest panels done on different days (one side one day, other side the next). The first day I had gotten little sleep and was badly hungover. It was pretty hellish and I tapped out before we could outline the other side as planned. The next day I was much fresher and it was a way, way easier sitting. It was, in my head, as close as I will get to a controlled test of sleep versus no sleep for me when it comes to being tattooed. I find that burning / pins and needles / stinging sensation comes and goes after I get something... One minute you're feeling grand, the next it's like someone has poured iodine on it or something.

Yep, that's a good one... I love the way they they're doing chrysantheums in Yellow Blaze - really making them pop out.

Holy crap, that looks mental. The way it's painted it looks like it might belong on a building site.

Kyle- When I was o-lifting in the main I high bar squatted but mainly I preferred the front squat, I felt like there was a more direct carry-over in terms of the movement pattern. There's no doubt I could low bar back squat a fair bit more, but I was never super comfortable under the bar and with that movement pattern. I think for sports performance and leg development high bar or front squats are better, but that's a very anecdotal / personal opinion. While I've always aimed to break parallel when I squat I never actually went 'ass to grass' - felt like it was overkill, and also like I was going quite slack at the very end range of that movement at the bottom, whereas just going under parallel I felt like I was loading tension and ready to come up out of the hole. I think I've exhausted this cycle of GVT. Gained 2kg but I think i'm a little leaner too so quite happy with it. Despite all the benching my shoulders feel good. I wondered how I would know it was time to switch things up, and the simple answer is that about a fortnight ago I felt like I was going into the gym and just couldn't face the 10x10 and wasn't giving it my 'all'. I think variety is important to keep motivated and I gather it's probably no harm when it comes to hypertrophy either so I have gone to this for now- Upper body day A1 Flat bench variation A2 Inverted row / bent over row variation B1 Incline bench variation B2 Pull down variation / pull up variation C1 Bicep variation C2 Tricep variation D Core Lower body day A1 Leg press A2 Leg curl B1 Single leg squat variation B2 Single leg posterior chain varation C1 Supplementary work C2 Supplementary work D Core Keeping the rest between super sets to 90 seconds, keeping the rep ranges in 8-10 for the big exercises, 12-15 on the supplementary stuff. I know you guys hate the leg press but I still want to steer clear of putting a bar on my back at the moment. Back to bulgarians on the single leg work, single leg RDLs for the other exercise in that super set. Getting about 3 sessions in a week, plus 1-2 escrima classes.

I feel only slightly guilty when I benefit from a bartender's ignorance / newness. A couple of times I've ordered a really good whiskey, something that's like 12-18 years old, and they can't be bothered hunting for the correct price on the till, so they just ring it up as the generic cheap whiskey button that they're used to pressing. From the equivalent of $15 to $4 as if by magic...

They used to trot him out to do Christmas day shows every year a while ago.. He would perform from a wheelchair. I'm not sure whether there was something wrong with his legs back then, or it was simply a way of stopping him from falling off stage. He puked during his 'performance' two years in a row. Met him once when I was bartending during college. His drink was a pint glass, half full with a spirit, and topped up with a mixer.

I just pulled a bottle of brewdogg 77 lager from the fridge... And a glass from the freezer. Stuck it in there for about 10 minutes and it got that nice frosted outer and inner coating. any longer and it would probably have cracked or something, but drinking beer from it now puts me right back to sitting in Japan... Almost all of the beer there seemed to come in ice-encrusted glasses. If you're going to drink icy cold lager this is the way to do it.

Tom- Tim Hendricks was recently asked to recommend two Irish tattoo shops on Twitter, and I'd probably agree with his responses (if we exclude Belfast shops, at least). In Dublin 'Classic Ink' on Crow St. is probably the best bet for traditional stuff. The guys in there paint a lot of their own flash- worth having a look at. I haven't been tattooed by the guys in there, but Oliver Peck did a guest spot in there recently and I ended up dropping in for that - it was a cool shop. https://www.facebook.com/classicinktattoodublin Outside Dublin if you are prepared to get on the train or drive down to Limerick you've got Ross Nagle in 'Allstar Tattoo'. He has been knocking it out of the park lately, super bright and distinct traditional style stuff. Gets a lot of guest artists, he's had Chad Koeplinger, Tim Pausinger, Grant Cobb etc in the past.

Heavy duty food weekend. Had cured monkfish and some of that sauternes-aged Glenmorangie on Saturday night. The whiskey was amazing... Really mild and almost sweet - quite different from the Islay offerings I normally drink. Yesterday I took a weird notion and cooked for several hours, because I'm working 7 shifts of ten hours this week and won't have time to cook up anything much I reckon. So I made stuff in advance to try and (a) save money and (b) eat right. So there's about 2kg of beef chilli all done- 1. Onions and minced garlic in a pan 2. Add 1 chopped good quality chorizo and either beef chunks or mince and brown the whole lot 3. Add 1-2 tins of chopped tomato depending on the amount of mince 4. Add pre-soaked dried chillis (20 minutes in boiled water beforehand), ideally chipotle, and season with salt and pepper 5. Bring to boil and then simmer for about an hour or so, adding 1-2 cans of black beans in the last ten minutes Then a sheperd's pie (or a cottage pie, really, because I used beef mince)- 1. Onions and carrots, diced, in a pan until softened... Followed by mince, oregano and cumin, fresh thyme 2. Add in mince and brown the whole lot 3. Cumble in a stock cube and add 110ml or so of a good quality red ale or bitter and bring to the boil before simmering for an hour 4. Meanwhile quarter and boil in salted water the mashed potato and steam for 2-3 minutes before mashing with butter and salt 5. Add mushrooms and some cream to the mince mixture, and bring to boil again 6. When the consistency looks good - put the mince into a dish that's going to go in the oven, and grate cheddar over it before layering the mashed potato on top of that 7. Bang in the oven for 40 minutes or so or until golden I'd take pictures but I was too lazy. Put those aside for the week ahead and we ended up eating a 25oz cote de boef between two of us, with smoky baked beans and sage onion rings. Whisky sour on the side.

That's the tattooing covered... More importantly, where are the essential places to eat!? The Purple Pig, Lou Malinati's, XOCO... I'll be hitting those up again. Want to make it down for a burger at Kuma's Corner this time too. And I know Original Pancake House is probably 'meh' for you North Americans, but we don't get many such well-executed heart-exploding breakfast establishments here, so I'll be popping back in there too...

Heating up a griddle pan to cook some flat iron steaks... I believe they're a shoulder cut from the cow, and are relatively cheap but tasty cuts. A fair bit of marbling on them. My steak method is derived from the Hawksmoor At Home cookbook. 1. Let the meat rest at room temp for at least an hour 2. Pat dry, you don't want it in a soupy juice 3. Season heavily with salt and pepper - almost forming a crust on the surface of the meat 4. Get a heavy cast-iron pan and get it so hot you can't put your hand near it even 5. Rather than using oil or anything else try and cut a piece of fat from a steak and rub that on the pan if you think it needs it 6. Personally I like to flip the steak every 60 seconds until it's cooked to taste, rather than letting it bed in on one side for longer than that. This method probably works better if you're *not* using a griddle type pan. If it's a heavy Le Creuset griddle or something then if, like me, you like the black char lines then you wait longer. 7. Remember to allow time to let the steak rest for a few minutes, and bear in mind that it'll keep cooking during this period Om nom nom nom

The guy getting tattooed is Chris' shop manager / front of house guy. One of those eastern European dudes who appears to be made of solid iron.

I took a martial arts class on a whim during the week - a Doce Pares escrima class. I don't think jumping back into BJJ or anything with a lot of heavy contact would do my neck any favours this year, so this seemed like a good time for something a bit different. Class was two hours long. The first fifteen minutes turned out to be a warm-up consisting of a circuit of bodyweight exercises (pushups, squats, hindu pushups, mountain climbers plank variations) and skipping for the rest periods... Made me realise how much of my conditioning I've lost. I got through it OK, but a while ago I would have been a little more composed afterwards. The stick-fighting itself was more of a technical mind-fuck than a conditioning challenge. Did a lot of four and six count swinging of sticks in each hand - weaving the sticks around and clacking them off a partner's - totally melted my brain trying to keep track of what hand was supposed to be going which direction. I can see how it would be good for building dexterity and hand-eye-cordination but the overall vibe was quite alien compared to my previous background. The idea of practising flow drills to develop attributes that benefit you when you free spar ... People try to make arguments that some manner of pre-arrange partner drilling exists in BJJ, boxing, Muay Thai and the like, and... Sure... It does... but I don't believe it is lent quite the same emphasis, or has the same central place in training as it seems to have in some traditional martial arts. If you were to take the training methodology of some BJJ schools and apply it to stick fighting I think beginners would have a padded stick in their hand and spar one another at the end of their very first class - just perhaps according to some restricted rules of engagement (maybe striking to particular angles only or something). Someone told me a few years ago that you should hold an escrima stick comparatively loosely. I remember thinking at the time "That's retarded, why would you hold it lightly and let someone smack it out of your hand as a result". I wish I'd listened. Only realised after the class that my death-grip on the sticks had resulted in them carving neat holes in the sides of my thumb. Going to tape up my thumbs before the next class, or they'll never heal.

I must admit, I thought that the mainstream popularity of MMA would result in the rapid fading away of pro-wrestling. It baffles me why people would watch larger-than-life characters having 'worked' fights when they could watch larger-than-life characters having real, unscripted fights. When I read this thread the only thing that really comes to mind is that in every country I have visited I have met people I liked and people I disliked, and usually met a fair number of people who break the national stereotype. I've met warm, funny germans. Ugly swedish women. Tee-total Irish people. Scots who were generous with their money*. Informal, spontaneous Japanese people... etc. Clearly there are movements or trends of some sort within various countries (like, the German public do appear to favour austerity as a response to the economic crisis more than those of other European countries), but if there are exceptions to every rule, then how useful are the stereotypes in our dealings with people day-to-day? *Actually, this is a lie, sorry Gregor. Although if it's any consolation my older brother is even cheaper. He's like the queen of england, he never carries money.

I read that T-Nation article on the leg press, and thought it was reasonably good... Although the thing about T-Nation is that if you wait long enough you will eventually have someone write an article in favour of the most maligned exercise / protocol and try and bring it back into fashion. It's the nature of the site, they get stuck for things to write about and sometimes the easiest approach to take to stand out is to be the contrarian. From my point of view I use the leg-press at the moment, but mainly because it suits the protocol I'm using, in that it's relatively high reps and hypertrophy orientated. I can't imagine trying to use it for a lower rep work. I don't want the spinal loading of conventional squatting, but if I swing back towards a more strength-orientated approach I'd sooner do single leg stuff and heavy drags than try and make the leg press suit that. Speaking of the sort of T-Nation articles I alluded to earlier, Dan John has been writing lately about the value of both machine exercises and hypertrophy work, particularly for older athletes. Mike Boyle recently wrote an article in favour of lat pull-downs and similar cable pulley rows versus pull-ups for some clients.... Maybe it shouldn't be funny to me, but it is. Things seem to come in a circle. In ten years will HIIT on a nautilus machine be hot again (they were before my time but..), and we'll all be eating high carb wholemeal diets? Stranger things have happened.

My schedule for the rest of the year now looks like this- June - Chris Smith (Deluxe Tattoo) for a piece on my right knee September - Ching (East Tattoo) sleeve on right arm ... Bringing down a half/quarter sleeve by another artist November - Tomo (Yellow Blaze) ... Frontspiece getting started. Some of you may notice that I complete crumbled on the Ching booking in September.... My resolution to 'be financially sensible' lasted barely a week.

Duffa - we should definitley try and do beers in Tokyo, if the dates work for us all.

I'm kind of curious about the 'vampire hunter' hand too?

And... ....Today I ate McDonalds for breakfast. So the circle of life is complete.

Well, I've been known to wear slippers down to the shops from time to time. PJs = too cold for Irish weather, dunno how they stick it.

Made some chicken burgers. It's like McDonalds but without having to pretend you're not eating ground up gizzards and chicken lips and whatnot. 3 chicken breasts 1 shredded apple sage nutmeg salt pepper 25g butter flour You shred the apple into a bowl. Then blend the chicken and the sage - pulse it for like 20 seconds. You don't want it to be a mush but you obviously need it de-chunked. Then season well, shave in the nutmeg and coat your hands with flour before you knead it all together with the apple. After that form the chicken into burger sized portions, coating them in flour (flipping 'em etc whatever works). Next melt the butter in a pan on medium to high heat. Chuck the chicken burgers on and cook until they're golden on the outside and cooked through inside. The apple seems to keep them from drying out too much. Apple 'n chicken 'n sage = classic combo.

Woo-hoo - thanks to everyone who voted. Oliver did a great job and I'm really happy with this tattoo. The Sarah Schor dagger is also badass (as indeed are many other tattoos in this thread).

I love both of those crawling panthers - so classic.