RoryQ

I had a really weird dream a few weeks ago where my girlfriend had gone on holiday, and when she came back, she was like "Hey, I got you this tattoo as a present" ... And somehow we were able to transplant the tattoo from her to me. I kind of vaguely remember it - I think it was some kind of Thomas Hooper blackwork on my belly. It had that magical realism touch where this surrogate tattoo gift didn't seem strange in the slightest. A couple of times where I've been tattooed for long sessions and then been back in the following day I've had unsettled sleep with some dreams where I'm being tattooed endlessly or being jabbed with needles (once it was a guy with a syringe doing it, which I guess is my mind coming up with another way to say 'needle').

I didn't know that about Diageo, Gregor. Unfortunately they own a shitload of Irish distilleries as well. In fact, the very last Irish-owned distiller (Cooley Distillers) sold out to Jim Beam earlier this year / late last year. It's a shame. I've had a few Taliskers, from 10 year old to (I think) 15 year old. All very nice - peaty but not as heavy-duty as most Islay offerings, as the man said.

I hear Ballantine's Finest is a pretty amazing blended whiskey... Jim Murray (Whiskey bible?) seems to consistently rate it highly.

I go to Deluxe Tattoo when I'm in Chicago (Chris Smith, Hanna Aitchison, Miles Maniaci etc). And Asado Coffee is just down the street, so you can get some excellent drip coffee too.

A buddy of mine gave a bottle of this as a late christmas present ... This is the kind of present I can get behind. Finished in bourbon casks first of all and then the sauternes casks for extra maturation. It'll be interesting. Port and sherry finish whisky I've tried from the likes of Balvenie have been very appealing if you're looking for something easy to drink after dinner...

...Yeah, I must admit I probably rarely hit that target amount of protein either, unless I really make an effort.

I shoot for 2g of protein per kg of bodyweight, so 190g of protein a day. I use a fairly generic whey protein to try and hit this target. Periodically I use other supplements - a creapure creatine monohydrate, cherry concentrate in water before bed, carlson's fish oil and (if I can stomach it) glucosamine sulphate.

I'll throw my hat into the ring this month... Oliver Peck!

Oliver Peck panther head. I heard on Thursday that he was in Dublin (in Tommy's Classic Ink) for one day only, and taking walk-ins. Took a half-day's leave from work and... Bob's your uncle... This morning it's not that swollen, but it does appear to be weeping a fair bit - to do with the location, I guess? While I was in the shop I met Ross Nagle and Jordan from Frith Street very briefly.

I'm lagging behind on this ... Just bought the boxed set of season 1 yesterday, watched the first episode today. Been a fan of the books for years. So far, looks like a really faithful adaption.

An old friend of mine recently showed me a sort of icon / statue which looks as if it was hacked off an altar at some stage. He has no idea what the providence of the piece is, but he's reportedly had it for a number of decades and originally bought it in an antique store / flea market type place in Dublin. He's asked me if I know anyone who could tell him a bit more about the piece (guess he's finally gotten around to it) - specifically, who is depicted and what aspect of them? Who are the attendants, is that a turtle or a tortoise etc. Some of you guys are pretty sharp on your buddhist iconography - anyone got any ideas? Since it looks like it might be Chinese (to me, at least) I've e-mailed a Taiwanese artist I know.

Mark Rippetoe on beer drinking and training (from his Q&A forum):- He's speaking to more of a strength-focused approach, as opposed to someone who is interested in losing bodyfat and improving other aspects of their fitness, but it's basically sound advice: Drink in moderation if you can. If someone is trying to lose weight or otherwise get lean then I guess drinking several thousand calories of beer every couple of nights is clearly going to retard that process, no matter how hard you hit the gym during the day.

@Cork I'm convinced that vibrams widen your feet. Some of the other 'barefoot' type sneakers that are available mention having wide toe boxes as a selling point. I have a pair of Vivo Barefoot that are pretty comfortable. A lot of conventional designs just feel really narrow and compressed if you go barefoot a lot. When I wear Converse it's usually just in the gym or shortish periods. If I wore them for days on end they start biting into the corners of my feet.

Some random thoughts, not from a position of claiming expertise... But just my few cents:- Footwear:- I started training in Chuck Taylors more or less by accident, and they were perfectly adequate. I'm pretty sure some of the strongest guys in the planet did a significant amount of training just wearing Chucks rather than expensive lifting shoes. Flat, stable sole and less give in the hard rubber heel of them than most athletic shoes. With that said, I did eventually buy a pair of olympic lifting shoes for competing in the o-lifts, and they do make a difference: Even less give in the heel (because it's usually rubber-soled wood) and an elevated angle that basically mimicks the trick mentioned earlier in the thread, of squatting with someone under the heel. I only wore them when I was practising the olympic lifts but I guess the difference they made was probably something marginal but worth it if you were trying to come up out of a max effort snatch or clean. Haven't o-lifted in months but maybe I'll break them out again. Oddly enough I read a blog post the other day about how oly shoes are catching on with kettlebell sport competitors, which kind of makes sense. The third thing I tried and pretty much wear the most (with Cons some days) were vibram five-fingers. They look retarded and I wouldn't like to run long distances in them like some people do, but they're essentially gloves for your feet. I reckon if you want to train barefoot but want some added grip and sole protection then these are a no-brainer. I've been wearing them for training for years and a strange side effect has been that my feet basically flattened and spread out. I can kind of grip the ground with my toes. I'm not sure I buy into the 'science' that vibram promote regarding the health benefits of all this, but I do think it's more natural than encasing your feet in something like a very padded athletic shoe if you're going to be lifting heavy objects. Kettlebells:- Never trained with Pavel, Dan John or any of the greats but I really like them. I've been using kettlebell fundamentals like swing variations (1 handed, 2 handed etc), snatches, TGUs, windmills, goblet squats etc for years as part of short metabolic conditioning blocks. I know there's an argument that they're essentially no more versatile than a dumbell, but I don't think that's the case. There's something about the KB that lends itself to quick changes and smooth transitions - clean and jerks and complexes and whatnot. If I could keep just one KB exercise it would probably be the turkish get up - I've started using it as a whole body warm-up lately, I feel like it incorporates pretty much every joint in the body to execute. I think Gray Cook, the Functional Movement Screening guy, has made a whole DVD on this idea, but I haven't seen it. I never understood why anyone would train exclusively with kettlebells or regard them as the ultimate tool for every occasion, but they're compact, portable and very useful for conditioning work.

I'm a big fan of home-training. At the moment we're kind of limited in the appartment, but I've got a doorframe pull-up bar (which I hang rings from), couple of different kettlebells, resistance bands and that's about the height of it. It's possible to do some kettlebell conditioning workouts and occassionaly if I'm stuck I'll work out a way to do my GVT, but mainly I try to use one of two gyms - either work's 'globogym' type set up, or the main strongman/olympic/powerlifting gym I train in. Got a hammer strength rack in storage, another bench and rack, oly bar and plates, dumbells etc. in storage but they'll stay there until we sort out a house with a shed/garden. Seeing as hill sprints were mentioned - this is one of my favourite types of interval training : They gym I was in (in the video, now closed) referred to them as 'spider blocks'. Guess it's a variation of shuttle runs, but because of the slightly convoluted / spidery route, you can do them anywhere you've got space about half the size of a squash court. Ideally you need some markers to touch off, but you can do them without. The way I do this for conditioning is to do 6 complete runs, with 30 seconds recovery between them. Takes about 10 minutes. I'll rest 5 minutes and then repeat at least once more. In the video they're doing a different variation - a test - to measure progress.

@cibo Is that an artisugu knife?

Overhead work is out then, I take it...? Unless you do some zotts' presses or something...!

Stocked up on Anchor Porter and Anchor Steam last night ... I love a special offer...

@hogg I've tried them - great exercise to say the least, but punishing. Before I started GVT I had deliberately gone to using single leg work for all my lower body stuff - split squats, bulgarians, single leg squats etc. Probably for the reasons you're thinking - less spinal loading, basically. My rationale for not using them as part of GVT is not that I don't think they can be condusive to hypertrophy but just that I want to be in and out of the gym relatively sharpish since I'm often in there during my lunchbreak from work, and if I do a single leg variation then it means It's 10 on the left side, 10 on the right etc. x 10. Aside from being b-r-u-t-a-l it just takes yonks. I know I'm being pretty cautious in terms of avoiding putting a barbell on my back but I'd just like to get a good few months of incident free training under my belt before I push things again. It's quite annoying, but while there's plenty of stuff about lumbar spine issues (Stuart McGill etc) there's not that much out there on c-spine related issues other than the idea that you need to get your neck strong and then keep it in a neutral position (or even in retrusion) when lifting.

A. Dynamic warm-up with lower body focus B. 10X10 Leg press @ 150kg / 330lbs, 60 secs rest between sets C. 10x10 Leg curl @ 40kg / 88lbs, 60 secs rest between sets D. Supplementary arm and shoulder work I would really prefer to sub something like a back squat or front squat for the leg press, but to be frank I seem to see some flare up for radiculopathy through my arm when I do. The leg press seems a little more forgiving, even if it's not optimum. Kind of novel after years of barbell squat variations.

I'm curious about 'Cabin the woods' too. Sometimes I think Whedon gets a bit too clever in his dialogue and attempts to tackle particular issues, but he's got a great feel for what's a compelling story. I read an interview with him where he was talking about the movie and cautioned people to watch out for spoilers - apparently there's a central plot premise that, if you know it too early, ruins the surprise of the movie. Saw trailer (and teaser-trailer) for 'Prometheus' and 'Total Recall'. 'Prometheus' looks pretty awesome to me - great cast, great visuals... 'Avatar' for grown-ups, maybe. 'Total Recall' I'm a bit more wary of. Looks like it's based more on the Phillip K. Dick source material than the Arnie movie. No bad thing, but to be honest I'm not a huge fan of Farrell lately - seems like he's just on autopilot, making movies to pay the bills but not really capturing some of the excitement of his early roles in the likes of 'Tigerland'. Speaking of Arnie movies, though - just watching 'The Running Man'. Now there's a classic 80s action movie. Surely its ripe for a reboot or sequel.... I recently read the original Stephen King novella the movie is based on - pretty good, and surprising how good the Arnie movie is, considering it diverges from it pretty radically. Whoever came up with the concept for the movie version actually did a damn good job of it.

Good luck man, fingers crossed for you.

I don't mind logging, but it'll probably not be very consistent. Still doing German volume, after a bit of a write-off of last week due to boozing. Yesterday got back to it- A/ Dynamic warm-up in the vein of Mike Boyle and similar B/ Static neck strengthening exercises C/ 10X10 pushups adding resistance with dynaband (10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 8, 7, 5, 5, 5) 60 secs rest between sets D/ 10x10 ring rows, feet elevated (10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 8, 7, 7, 6) 60 secs rest between sets This was done at home, because I'm busy studying something and decided not to lose the time going to and from the gym. The band idea with the pushups was improvised but it worked OK. Same principle as a weighted vest or bar pushups with a weight on your back, just making the conventional pushup that much harder. Not quite the same placement of band that this guy used, but thereabouts. The numbers dropped off indicating it wasn't too easy for me, at any rate. Typically I'll use a bench variation in the gym. Any thoughts welcome.

Some people have no survival instinct!

It was / is similar in Ireland, @Scott R. In the early days of MMA I think all the coaches of all the gyms new each other. In fact, I think most of the gyms still running just grew out of the one - John Kavanagh's original place. Even in BJJ circles I think people training probably personally knew every blue, purple, brown and black belt (just the one) in the country. Then, within a matter of a couple of years it exploded and now there are browns and blacks around who I've never even laid eyes on. It gets big quick. Which, from a business point of view, is great for the guys trying to make a living from coaching the sport. But the last few local MMA shows (or bigger ones like Cage Rage or UFC) have been weird. You've got these guys going around in Tapout gear, arms spread out like they're carrying buckets of water and who appear to think that going to an MMA show means they absolutely must look like they're practically ready to climb into the cage themselves. There's a lot of drinking, a lot of snarling and staring and a lot of booing when fights go to the ground (because that's not real fighting, right?). It's kind of annoying because I can remember when local shows were practically sedate and kid-friendly, because you'd have more or less just people who trained in various gyms and their famillies coming along - really educated about what they were watching. Ian Freeman (Cage Rage commentator) used to get complained about when he did the M.C's job, because he swore too much. That said, amateur boxing and muay thai shows seem to attract the same crowd of tools, it's not just MMA.