Nat Arem's Blog

I posted a few weeks back about the guys from Average Broz Gym (an Olympic lifting gym here in Las Vegas) and how they were going to be lifting at the US Weightlifting Senior National Championships in Council Bluffs, IA (basically Omaha, NE). The meet was this past weekend and I think it was a pretty big success for ABG overall. Here’s a video of their top lifters (one of their lifters, Tyler Thuente, is not in the video):

The medalists were Ian Droze (3rd snatch, 3rd C&J, 3rd total in the -69kg division) and Pat Mendes (1st snatch, 1st C&J, 1st total in the +105kg division). Pat also qualified for the world team so he’ll be competing at the World Weightlifting Championships (WWC) in Paris in November. Billy Bybee finished just off the podium in 4th place in the total.

I’m debating going to the WWC in Paris this year. I probably won’t but I’m going to see if I can find decently priced tickets.

I’ve been on Google+ for almost a week now and I’ve spent a fair amount of time on it playing around. Overall I’m impressed with the interface but I’m not sold on likely widespread adoption of Google+ by the masses anytime soon. Here are some of the major problems:

Circles. First of all, I personally think circles are great. I love the concept of selective sharing while allowing people to add anyone without the need for confirmation. It’s like the perfect merge of facebook and twitter. One problem: it’s complicated. People are not good at figuring things like this out. I just read an article today that 34% of iPhone users think they already have a 4G phone. And Google thinks that mainstream users are going to understand a system involving asymmetrical follow and selective sharing? C’mon. They have a huge hurdle to overcome to get people to understand Circles.

Public posts and comments. Right now I’m mainly seeing posts marked as “Public” in my stream. And a lot of them are from people who are in a lot of peoples’ circles so the posts get a ton of comments. Unlike twitter, those comments are shown in the stream (although only like three comments or so). The conversation is poorly organized without a proper threading system. Without quoting (which I think would be a mistake) or threading, following conversation in a huge number of comments is futile at best. What’s even worse about the Google+ comment system is that you can’t collapse the comments once you expand them without refreshing your stream. This is a really unusable system at the moment although I do think it can be fixed.

Sparks. I love the concept of Sparks. I’d love to be able to see the most-shared links for things that I’m interested in. Unfortunately the algorithm behind Sparks is currently quite weak. I added a spark for “Cycling” given that I’m a fan of pro cycling and the Tour de France is currently going on. What’s my top story in my cycling spark? Some random spammy press release article about Autumn Cycling Vacations. The second highest story is about how running beats out cycling as an exercise. The rest of the spark is somewhat better but it’s still pretty weak. There’s also no indication of how anything is being determined in the spark. Is it there because X number of other people posted it? Because someone in my circles posted it? Because some Google News-like algorithm thinks it’s good? Maybe I’m doing it wrong with the spark but there need to be huge strides on the spark-side for Google+ to be engaging.

Those are some of the major problems. There are probably dozens of problems I could list off with the Google+ interface but I’m sure that no one relevant at Google will ever read this post. And if they did I’m sure they don’t care what I think. But I think the Google+ interface has a long long way to go. They still don’t understand social anywhere near as well as Facebook (and to a certain degree Twitter… in my opinion Facebook crushes Twitter interface-wise). The good news for Google is that they can still improve and tweak the Google+ interface and eventually they’ll get really good adoption rates simply because of the Google toolbar and the network effects they can leverage with their existing traffic, Gmail and Android. Those network effects are going to be enormous for Google+ in the long run and it’ll give Google dozens of chances to turn occasional G+ users into regular G+ users. Eventually Google just might get it right.

Jan 22nd, 2012 Update:

These Adidas Adipower shoes have been released. You can purchase them for $199 with free shipping here: 2012 Adidas Adipower Shoes

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I know 98% of the people who read this blog won’t care but today I went down to Paris (the casino in Vegas, not the city) for the NSCA convention. It’s basically just a huge fitness equipment and training convention revolving around strength and conditioning. All of the major equipment suppliers were there with booths. And given that Adidas is the premier shoemaker for Olympic weightlifting (they make a new shoe for every Olympic cycle), they obviously had a booth.

I currently own and use the 2008 Beijing Adidas Adistars which many consider to be the best weightlifting shoe currently on the market. And today I got to see (for the first time) what the 2012 shoe is going to look like. This shoe won’t be on the market for around six months or so but I’m pretty sure I will get it as soon as it comes out.

You can click on either picture for a higher res image.

For those unaware of why a lifting shoe is necessary, contrary to common belief it has nothing to do with protecting your toes from falling weights. In fact, regardless of what shoe you’re wearing (including steel-toe boots), your feet will not be happy if you drop a weight on them. The reason you wear a lifting shoe is to give your heel a bit of a rise to make it easier to get into a full squat when doing back squats, front squats, full cleans, etc. And while the shoe is helping you do that, you also need it to be extremely stable and the heel can’t compress at all (ie, no padding). Lifting in something like running shoes would be unsafe and counterproductive. This new shoe seems like it’s got the best of all worlds: light, stiff heel, grippy tongue interior (so it won’t slip), flexible toe area, breathable fabric, etc.

Anyway, enough about something you guys don’t care about. But if you’re lifting (and no, by “lifting” I don’t mean tricep cable extensions) without a proper shoe, you should think about getting some Adistars. Once again, you can purchase the shoes here: Adipower shoes

(I put the watermark on the images because people tend to take these types of images and not properly attribute them)

I’ve written a few times before (post #1, post #2) about my baseball card habit. I’ve picked up a number of cards since those posts but most recently, yellowsub and I bought four graded vintage packs. I know that you’re not supposed to open them but we bought them to open them, not to preserve value. The packs we bought were: 1968 Topps GAI 7, 1969 Topps GAI 9.5, 1973 Topps PSA 8, 1973 Topps PSA 9. All of them are pictured below. I also took a picture of some of the cooler cards that I found. In addition to the good ones I found, yellowsub found some really good ones too (1969 Clemente among them).

We also took video of the pack breaks so I may edit that down and put it up on YouTube if there’s any interest.

I’ve posted about this before but I’ve been spending a fair amount of time with the guys from Average Broz Gym. ABG is an Olympic lifting gym here in Las Vegas and they have some really impressive lifters. A few of them have really really good shots at winning Nationals in a week or two in Council Bluffs, IA.

While at the gym today I snapped this pic (with a vintage effect) of Pat Mendes (the heaviest and strongest lifter at ABG) doing a 270kg (594 lb) front squat – I like how it turned out. Click on it for the full size image.

It’s hard to describe how absurd a 600 lb front squat is until you try to do a 200 lb front squat. It’s really hard to comprehend 600 lbs. Pat has done an 800 lb back squat (see the video here).

Anyway, I hope those guys do well at Nationals. I will post results here in a few weeks when the meet is over.