100 Push Up Challenge, Week 4

Life

Last week saw the completion of the third week in the one hundred push up challenge. After a mixed bag of results in week 3 of the program and realising that the expectation was going to be lifted considerably – week 4 in the push up challenge felt like it was going to be a complete unknown.

The first session in week four required five sets and each set had at least 21 push ups in them with the fifth expecting not less than 32. After having a strong finish in the third set in week 3 and pushing more repetitions on each set than required – it meant that I only needed to match my previous total work output in a different format to reach the goal. Thankfully I managed to make scrape through but only increased my total output by 2 to 132.

Session two was again five sets and each set had at least 25 repetitions in it with the fifth requiring not less than 36. I was reasonably confident that I’d make it through session two, based on the logic that I’d improved in the last two sessions and that I should theoretically have slightly more endurance. The assumption was correct and I managed to match or exceed the requirements for each set, pushing out 45 in the fifth for a total of 152.

Third and final session for the week was a doozie, five sets with a minimum of 29 per set and at least 40 in the fifth set. This session was really quite difficult to complete and I had to work really hard for it. While I’ve been completing more total push ups than required, this session required more than my peak output from the previous push up workout. I still managed to match or better the requirements but only just – requiring a total of 160 and I managed 164 – the perfect workout.

Week five is going to be a blinder as the second and third sessions increase to eight sets instead of five. Thankfully, however each set is on a lower repetition count initially but for a higher total output. I think more sets but lower rep count is going to suit me more, as each session is closer to the power style exercise I’d normally do at the gym but I’ll wait and see how I go before making a judgement call!

Kyle Sandilands & Jackie O Debarcle

News

The media are always on the prowl for something to latch onto an nail and the current flavour of the week is Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O.

Kyle & Jackie O are known for pushing the boundaries of what is allowed on the radio and they are normally just labelled as stunts to get even more publicity. As a by product of their previous behaviour, while intentionally pushing the limits – it would seem as though their latest stunt which involved hooking up a 14 year old girl to a lie detector and asking her questions about her sex life went horribly wrong.

The media around the country are calling for their scalps after the 14 year old devulged that amongst other sexual activity that she’d been involved with – that she had been raped. The media are suggesting it should have been pulled immediately from air, however Kyle and Jackie O are saying that they don’t have that facility in their studio. I find that hard to believe, given that everyone else commenting on it suggests thats a common facility for a radio studio.

Whichever way it happened, their stunt involved hooking up the 14 year old the the lie detector, with her legal gardians permission to sort out once and for all whether she had been having sex. As it turned out, the mother not only confirmed that she’d been having sex but that she’d allegedly been raped as well – which supposedly wasn’t part of the expected outcome.

While it was poor judgement from the two and their radio station to allow a 14 year old to be hooked up to a lie detector, it wasn’t done in an interrogation style like you’d normally see in the movies. On top of that, it was done with the concent of the mother – who I believe suggested the idea in the first place.

I think that the media should be directing the majority of their anger at the mother and less at Kyle and Jackie O for their poor judgement. Should Kyle and Jackie O be repremanded, I think so as it was a gross error in judgement and in poor taste. Should they lose their jobs over it and their radio show, no I don’t think so. Should Austereo take a hit, absolutely as I’m quite sure they approved directly or indirectly that the stunt was okay for air and ultimately they are responsible.

Who do you think should be in the firing line and to what do you think their punishment should be?

Controversial Super Fast Swimming Suits

Sport

There has been an impressive amount of media coverage in the last three months regarding the super fast swimming suits that different athletes have been wearing at various medium and high level swimming events.

You might be wondering how a swimming suit can actually make you swim faster, well there is an impressive amount of technology and science behind them. As it turns out, human skin even when shaved or waxed isn’t as slick through the water as other surfaces. The first iteration of the super suits essentially provided a lower drag coefficient to the swimmer which essentially meant less of their energy was lost to the water slowing them down. The current generation super fast race suits take that to a whole new level and there are suggestions that the costumes are in fact making the swimmers more buoyant – however independent studies so far can’t prove that.

To my surprise, there has been a mixed response from the swimmers themselves – some suggesting that they are great and others such as Michael Phelps all but condemning their use and verging on suggesting that their use was cheating.

The majority of the coaches are in agreement that they shouldn’t be allowed. I was however, interested to hear Laurie Laurance’s take on them – his point of view wasn’t so much that they should or shouldn’t be allowed but that their use right now and pending banned use is going to remove the opportunity for young, future athletes to break the more than 30 world records that have fallen at the 2009 Rome World Championships alone. That is something that I think has been underestimated and not covered enough in the press.

My personal opinion is that it is just a progression of the sport, which like virtually every other sport on earth is being driven forward through technology – some more so than others. What is the difference between the advancements in a cyclists bike construction, the shoes from a track star to a swimming suit? I don’t see it and so long as the advancement doesn’t change the basic sport, then it can only be seen as a good thing.

I do however have one simple criteria that the super fast swimming suits be allowed into the sport and that is that every athlete has access to them. Some may choose to use brand A over brand B or not use them at all but the choice and availability needs to be there. It would seem as though not all athletes have access to the slick race suits due to commercial agreements their team or swimming organisation may have with another manufacturer. In that scenario, if there is any chance that the super fast suits are in fact faster in anyway at all and not everyone at least as the option of using them – its unfair and no one should not be allowed to race in them.

100 Push Up Challenge, Week 3

Life

Last weekend was the beginning of the 100 Push Up challenge and I managed to get through 30 consecutive push ups for the initial strength test.

I really have no idea of what ‘normal’ would be for an average guy being asked to do push ups but I generally consider myself reasonably strong – so figured that an initial strength test of 30 was doing pretty well. It wasn’t until I read the training program to complete 100 consecutive push ups that I realised that I was no where near strong enough, in particular completely lacking the endurance. When doing strength training at a gym, I would normally do 3 sets of 10-12 repitions on a much heavier weight but the challenge of five sets with much, much higher repititions is going to be tough.

The first session in week 3 was, in short, an eye opening experience. I had assumed that since the guide placed me into week 3 that it’d be relatively smooth sailing, however I wasn’t able to complete all the requirements on each of the five sets and came up short in sets four and five. Not surprisingly, within 15 minutes of completing the session – my arms felt like they’d recovered and were able to go again. It wasn’t until Tuesday that I realised that doing push ups was working whole new sets of muscle groups, core muscles to be exact which were noticely tired and sore that day.

Session number two and the repitions increased again, which after not completing the first session successfully only two days earlier – I held little hope that I’d make it through. To my surprise, while I didn’t make it through all five sets completely – I only came up by a handful of push ups and incresed my total work output from 70 to 95 push ups.

On to the last session for the week and everything increased again, however after having what I’d consider a successful session two – I entered session three with reasonable expectations that I’d at least complete the strength training completely. Not only did each of the sets get completed, I pushed an additional 10 push ups out of the fifth set giving a total of 130 for the session.

I wasn’t sure what to expect going through last weeks work out with such a weak start, however after the initial shock of strength and endurance training for the first time in 10 months – everything kicked back into gear and I’m hopeful that I won’t fall off the wagon until I can complete at least 100 consecutive push ups!

CoolerMaster Power Supplies Suck

Hardware

At the end of 2008, I felt my geek prowess was fading and I rebuilt my desktop computer to reestablish my geek-fu.

Immediately after I purchased the new computer parts and assembed it, everything went along without a hitch for quite some time. Unfortunately, I had a really bad run of harwdare problems which began with my CoolerMaster 550w Extreme power supply making a whurring noise, which when replaced was essentially dead on arrival. After the next replacement arrived, it worked just fine – however it seemed that I had a problem with my Asus GeForce 8800GT video card; the first Asus product I’ve owned that has not performed flawlessly for its entire lifecycle. After getting that sorted out, happy days and I finally had my working desktop computer back which was great.

Over the last two months, I’ve been hearing reports from Claire that she felt my computer was warmer than it should be. Given that I was always feeling it in the evening after work, I never noticed it so dismissed the comment. Approximately a fortnight ago my older brother Andrew made the same comment, to the extent that he even turned my computer off. At that point, clearly something wasn’t right so I investigated further and to my surprise I find that the second replacement CoolerMaster power supply fan has failed. The machine still boots up fine, however after a relatively short amount of time (less than 2 hours) of operation, it crashes and I’m forced to reboot the machine to continue working.

I cannot believe that the power supply has failed again & it’ll be the last time that I buy a CoolerMaster product – that many failures just isn’t normal.