First, hookgrip progress is coming along. And by that I mean the actual website. In terms of the facebook page, it passed 10,000 likes a few weeks ago (on January 15th). And on Feb 6th, it will be one year since I started posting pictures on the hookgrip page seriously. I would say that 10,000 likes in a year without having a website and with very minimal advertising spending (I spent around $60 at one point, as an experiment to see how it would perform) is a very successful year simply on the facebook presence front. Of course, facebook traffic is not super valuable and it’s pretty limited with regards to what I can do with it (ie, the moderation options are quite weak, apps are difficult to install on a page, lots of limited functionality, etc) so I really need the site to be up soon. Right now I have two separate programmers working on separate projects related to the site. Once those programmers wrap up their work, it should be relatively simple to bring their work together and launch the site in a matter of weeks. The problem is, neither of them is done yet. So for right now, I’m doing what I can to be as ready as possible for them to finish their projects and get the site rolling when I have their work completed.

Secondly, on a personal level, my gym (CrossFit Center City, in Philadelphia) runs something called the BCCC every quarter. Since I’ve been there for nearly 1.5 years, I’ve seen a number of these come and go. It stands for “Body Composition Change Challenge” and the general idea is to set goals and stick with them for 30 days. Some people want to achieve performance goals, some people want to gain weight, some people want to lose weight, etc. For the most part, my goal over the last 1.5 years was to gain weight and get stronger with the overarching goal of just feeling relatively good. I came into things at around 180lbs and, mostly on purpose, ended up at ~208lbs as of three weeks ago. Of course, not all of the 28lb gain was muscle but that’s how things tend to work when you’re trying to gain weight. My general attitude is that it’s very easy to cut fat on a periodic basis in the long-term process of getting big/strong. So I took the Jan 15-Feb 15 BCCC as an opportunity to do one of those cuts. Of course, my goal was not to starve myself of calories in the hopes of losing as much weight as possible. I want to retain as much strength as I can. Instead, my goal was simply to eat no processed food, very little sugar and lots of protein. Not only did I know that that sort of diet would result in weight/fat loss, I also was curious to see what sort of effect the dietary change would have on me. After all, I’ve never been this strict about my diet ever.

The results have been pretty amazing. First of all, I’ve gone from 208lbs to 195ish in a few weeks. I say 195ish because I’ve been as low as 194 but that was first thing in the AM and I always tend to weigh the least then. If I was to step on a scale right now (11pm at night) I’m sure the number would be between 195 and 196. So given that I’m 17-18 days in, I’m happy with the weight loss. While losing weight was definitely not my number one goal, I am happy to lose some of the fat that came along with my strength gain. I’m sure that I will slowly put fat back on when this cutting period ends but I’m okay with that as long as muscle comes along with it. But, more importantly than the weight loss, I feel absolutely incredible. Sure, I feel hungry here and there. And I’m a little sick of bacon, eggs, beef, chicken, sweet potatoes, other veggies, etc. But for the most part, I look forward to my meals and I enjoy them. And I have higher energy levels. Not to mention that inflammation in my joints is all but gone. It used to be that the first 3-4 warmup sets of squats would be quasi-torture. Even getting up off the couch at night would result in some decent aches and pains. But I wrote a lot of it off as just being a natural side effect of lifting to my max or close to my max on a daily basis. As it turns out, that was wrong. Considering that I’ve been lifting just as frequently (and about 95% as heavy, which is understandable given the weight loss) with zero issues, I think that there’s a pretty good chance that I had some inflammation in my body from my comparatively poor diet. As I’m sure you know, things like gluten can cause a LOT of inflammation for many people and a lot of them are totally unaware of what’s going on. Considering that I’m a very gluten-aware person and I didn’t bother to attribute my stiffness to my diet just goes to show that these things can be hard to track down. I’m noticing a lot of other health-related benefits as well so in that sense, I’m extremely happy with the BCCC thus far. The real issue is how to get back to gaining weight once I come off of this diet. I obviously don’t want to just go back to eating inflammatory foods but it’s also quite hard to gain weight without those foods. I will likely have to research this more and possibly become a better cook as well.

Also, on a sidenote, the BCCC essentially requires (you can opt out, but it’s discouraged to do so) before-after pictures and measurements. So I may or may not post those in a few weeks. We’ll see. Just for my own tracking, I do own an ultrasound bodyfat tester (this one) and I tested myself a few days ago and came away with the following:

This particular tester calculates bodyfat by measuring the thickness of the fat layer at various points. I know that essentially every bodyfat testing method has flaws but, as I understand it, this is probably the best at-home system to use. I certainly wouldn’t bet on it being exactly accurate but it’s a lot better than anything else that I’ve been able to find. And it does seem to reflect my changes in body comp so it’s at least getting the general idea correct. I would have loved to test myself at the beginning but unfortunately the tester stopped working and I had to send it in for repairs and I only got it back about two weeks into things. That’s okay though, the before/afters should tell the story.

Anyway, outside of those two things, the only real news is that my early April trip to Bulgaria has now become an early April trip to Albania. For whatever reason, the European Weightlifting Federation decided to move the European Senior Weightlifting Championships a few months prior to the event. It’s going to cost me a few hundred dollars in change fees but there’s not much I can do about that. So, yea, I’m going to Tirana, Albania. I’m excited because I booked a business class ticket using miles and I’m going to be in a USAirways Envoy Suite (a GREAT product, it’s an amazing seat — I flew it from Frankfurt to Philly this past summer coming home from the Olympics) and then I’m going to be in Austrian Airlines’ new business class product on the way home. They just released a new seat (you can tell that I’m a frequent flier nerd) that’s supposed to be pretty freaking awesome so I’m pumped about that. Sometimes being a little crazy about earning points pays off.

Anyway, that’s the update! Hope everyone has a great February!

I spend most of my free time working on hookgrip. The hookgrip facebook page just recently cracked 8000 likes. I get a lot of interest in the pictures that I’m taking. I am also going to have a booth at The Arnold this year in early March so that’ll be a pretty big step for the business. Right now I’m taking some of the final steps to actually launch the website. I wrote a blog entry here about why the site isn’t launched yet. I’m confident it’ll be up in the next few months though as I’m working on the development of the site itself on a daily basis now.

In training news, I’ve been doing something a bit different since the CrossFit Total a few months back (late October). I’ve been spending almost all of my training time working on my front squat. The reason is that I was developing some bad habits in the back squat and I want to “reset” my form to be more upright and to hold my back/chest position properly. Things are going well in that respect, I feel like my new form is becoming a lot more natural. Fewer and fewer reps are bad. Today I managed a front squat PR of 142.5kg/314lb. While that’s a very easy back squat for me, it’s a whole different ballgame having the bar on your chest. At some point it basically just crushes you. But the good news is that I’ve gotten a LOT stronger in my chest/delts/etc from the front squatting and I feel like I have lost very little when it comes to leg strength. I’m sure my back squat dropped by a bit since I haven’t put anything in the 160kg-170kg range on my back in well over a month but it won’t take long at all to get it back when I go back to it. So the current plan is to just keep front squatting. I would like to do 150kg/330lb for a front squat single by the end of the year. Hopefully it’ll happen!

I’ve been doing a lot of traveling lately. I went to Colorado Springs in the middle of November to visit the US Olympic Training Center. And then I went to Palm Springs (I guess I like places with Springs in the name?) in early December to take pictures at the American Open (one of two big national meets that happens each year in the US). After the American Open I spent a few days with friends and family in the San Diego area before flying home. Both trips went really well. I don’t have anything major planned but I am planning on going to a few regional meets (within a few hour drive) in January and then of course the Arnold in Columbus, Ohio in early March. But the big stuff is after that. I will be attending the European Senior Championships in Varna, Bulgaria in early April. And then I will be attending the Junior World Championships (I went to this year’s Junior Worlds in Guatemala) in Lima, Peru in early May. It’s going to be a TON of traveling! But I think it’ll be worth it.

Anyway, I guess that’s the update for now! Happy holidays to everyone and I hope you have a healthy/safe/fun New Year if I don’t post before then. I’m sure I’ll check in within the next few months though.

The biggest reason BY FAR that I supported Democrats in this election is that I am a social liberal. And I don’t want to support what I consider to be a socially backwards party. And a party that spends altogether too much energy on totally meaningless bullshit and doesn’t seem focused on making the country better. And that party is the Republican party. Forget the economy for a second — I will address that further down. The Republican party is ridiculously backwards — from my point of view. That’s not to say that every Republican is backwards. It’s people in the party leadership and people in the media who are prominent Republicans who make every Republican look bad. For instance, check out the Republican Rape Advisory Chart.

Republicans, to me, seem focused on silly things. Granted, they may be things that are important to their base. But they are not things that are important to me. Things like “protecting marriage” (which should not be regulated by the government in my opinion) and gun-control scare tactics (ie, “Obama is going to take away your guns, he was just laying low during the first term!!”) are total nonsense. Society is moving on. Republicans need to get with it. The Democrats might be silly in some ways but at least they get it to a MUCH greater degree that we live in a socially liberal society and not a Christian country. This is the way things are going and this is the way that things will keep going. Standing in the way of social liberalism is a waste of energy and it is not a winning political strategy — in my opinion. The internet and other communication tools will continue to spread social liberalism and social conservatives will see less and less support as time goes on.

So, the economy. It’s a big problem. Obama took the deficit from 10 trillion to 16 trillion. I am very unhappy about that. I don’t think Obama and other Democrats really take the problem as seriously as they should. They are seemingly fine with continuing to spend our way out of the big deficits. They might say they aren’t fine but their actions don’t seem to reflect that they have concerns. And, frankly, the economy was something that could have swung my vote to the Republican side. I am a social liberal but the economy is more important to me than whether gay marriage gets support. Here’s the problem: I never saw Romney’s plan laid out. I think Obama did a great job of drawing attention to this because his statements are what made me search for details on how Romney planned to cut the deficit. I didn’t find much of anything other than general statements and a couple of statements on cutting taxes. It just doesn’t add up that we’d actually see smart cuts in spending. I guess what it came down to is that I felt like neither candidate would be good for the economy. Romney and the Republicans are so hellbent on cutting taxes that I feel like they would do that whether or not economists recommended such a move. I don’t think cutting taxes is a good idea unless there are definite plans to cut way more in spending. We need to get spending under control and Mitt’s plan lists things that are pretty much peanuts in the grand scheme of things. The big issues are healthcare, military and a few other things that are the big items on the gov’ts bill each year. Privatizing Amtrak is not important. I’d love to see it happen but the bottom line is that Mitt did a very poor job selling me on the idea that he was the guy to reduce the size of our government. I know that Obama certainly will not do a good job of that but at least he wouldn’t try to set our country back socially like Mitt would have done (in my opinion).

Overall, I feel like the Republicans are total idiots. Obama was incredibly defeat-able this election. The Republicans, once again, put forward a terrible ticket. There’s a HUGE market in this country for a socially liberal and fiscally conservative party. Essentially, people find the Democrats more socially appealing (and it will continue to trend that way) but they don’t trust either party to handle the economy well. Firstly, the Republicans could easily move more to the middle on the social level and pick up a huge swath of voters. Way more than they would lose on the other end especially considering that the extreme social conservatives will not have anywhere meaningful to go. Granted, losing support (ie, social conservatives who simply stop voting) or votes to a third party is a potential issue but the current party platform is obviously not working either. Secondly, the Republicans need to convince me that they are not the party of hillbilly idiots who do not believe in science, evidence and smart decision-making. Because I currently think of them like a party of idiots — maybe because the loud voices of their party and outlets like Fox News make them look like total morons. I don’t think that fixing my perception of those things would require Republicans to give up their core values of smaller government, lower taxes, aggressive national security, protection of guns, belief in the free market and so on. They just need to dump some of their socially conservative policies and try to bring in more support from the middle.

Anyway, I feel pretty disgusted with the thought of what the economy is going to look like in four years but hopefully we’ll see something different over the course of the second Obama administration. I don’t think it’ll be different but we can always hope. The best thing I can hope for is that the Republican party stops acting so backwards and realizes that it has a huge opportunity in 2016 if they can get their heads out of their asses.

I don’t know how else to put this but, basically, anyone who thought that Lance wasn’t doping was either ill-informed, naive or an idiot. Anyone who knows anything about sports like cycling knew that the dominance Lance exhibited was not possible without performance-enhancing drugs. Lance OWNED that race. Given that most of the field was doping, how would it be possible for a clean rider to overcome the most determined, skilled, genetically talented and well-trained riders in the world when they are on drugs as well? Let me tell you something: it isn’t. Drugs offer too much of an advantage. There are a lot of naive people, particularly in the Western world, who believe that “grit” and “determination” can overcome chemical advantages all else being equal. Nope. You’re wrong. It’s fine if you want to keep believing that but it simply isn’t true. Of course, a genetic freak who has all of the best training resources and mental strength will overcome a random person off of the street who trains with drugs for a bit. Drugs don’t work magic that overcomes every other advantage. But if you take a big group of people who are all mentally strong, all genetically built for a certain task, all provided with great training resources, etc and then you give drugs to some of them, the ones with drugs will win out. It’s just how it is.

So, armed with that knowledge, it’s quite easy to spot drug usage. Take Lance for example. He went up Alpe D’Huez in 37’36″ in 2004 (source). In the history of the tour, only Marco Pantani has approached that time and Marco Pantani was definitely doping. Everyone on the top of that list on Wikipedia doped. I remember reading an article about the Alpe D’Huez times and the person who was writing the article theorized that it wasn’t possible for someone to go up Alpe D’Huez in less than, at best, about 41 minutes without doping. You can read more about cycling, doping, performance and mountains here, although that is not the article I am thinking of. Point being that as soon as Lance went up that hill in 37.5 minutes, you knew that he was using performance enhancing drugs. Whenever I make statements like that around people (Americans in particular), they usually flip out and say something like “oh, so now everyone who does well is automatically using drugs?” or similar. In a sport like cycling, the answer is, simply, yes. They are using drugs. You might be naive and you don’t want to believe it but they are using drugs if they are doing something that is so far above and beyond what anyone else has ever done.

So I, along with many other people, have known that Lance used drugs. I knew it for many years and, frankly, I was okay with it. He was competing against a field of riders who were going to use drugs also. What else was he supposed to do? He could have stayed clean and been a middle of the pack no-name rider or he could use drugs and become a world-famous champion and do things that no one has ever done before in the sport. I don’t blame him AT ALL for choosing the latter. This is what we as sports fans demand of our athletes. We want them to win and we want them to dominate. We want them to beat people who are on drugs. How do you think the media and public would react if the USA went from winning the most medals at the summer Olympics to winning the 8th most medals? There would be a public outcry, the USOC would be raked over the coals, athletes would lose sponsorships/supporters/funding/gigs, people would bemoan the demise of the USA, Mitt Romney would blame Obama for letting the country’s athletics fall apart, etc. No matter what they say, no one really wants that. People want the USA to win but they don’t want to know the truth of the requirements to win on the world stage. If you truly believe that world-class USA swimmers, track and field and others are not using performance-enhancing drugs and winning on the world stage, you are naive. They are using them. 100%. There is no question about it at all and it’s really not even a debate amongst those who know how these things work. In my mind, it doesn’t take away from their achievements in the least. They are working within the system that exists.

Now, the question about whether drugs are cheating is pretty obvious as well. Of course drugs are cheating. There’s no question about it. The rules say they are banned substances. However, like I said above, you will NOT win at an elite level without drugs in certain sports. So you need to find a way to get around the rules. Whether your tactics consist of micro-dosing (taking small amounts to avoid testing over certain limits), bribing someone, using body doubles (the Chinese are famous for this) or similar, you are finding a way to be competitive. To me, it’s no different from an NBA player hacking someone’s arm when an official isn’t looking. You’re finding an advantage and taking it. Sports are cutthroat. There’s no honor in sports at the top levels. Everyone is going to do what they can to win and that’s just how it is. It isn’t little league where people get trophies for trying hard. If you want to be honorable, enjoy not winning. It’s fine to do that but take note of how much attention sponsors and the media pay attention to honor. Answer: not much. Yes, drugs are cheating but so what? Your choices are winning+cheating or not winning and not cheating. Most of the time, the people who say they would choose the latter are people who never had the opportunity to be a champion. It’s easy to get on your high horse and skewer the people who made the decision to take drugs and have a chance to win. It’s a whole lot harder to train your whole life and say no to the thing that will allow you to compete on the world stage. If you’ve done that, I totally respect your decision.

So what’s the solution to all of this? In my mind, until drug testing is actually effective, out of competition anti-doping should be eliminated. And, frankly, as of right now, it is not even conceivable what effective drug testing would look like because it’s a constant cat-and-mouse game right now and anti-doping officials are losing. In sports like weightlifting, how are you supposed to effectively test North Korean weightlifters when they are training inside of a closed country where it is impossible to test with any measure of surprise? It’s no coincidence that, in weightlifting, North Korea won three golds out of fifteen available at the London 2012 Games. Out of competition testing is wildly unfair and inconsistently applied to athletes around the world. I would keep testing at competitions to keep athletes in line as much as possible but even that sort of testing is pretty unfair and not that useful. Athletes with access to talented chemists are going to be able to find advantages and get a leg up on the poorer athletes without access to the same resources. But, resources and so on are pretty much always spread out unfairly in all aspects of life so that’s nothing new. But at least in competition testing can be applied fairly across the board in terms of surprise, timing and so on.

The reality is that drugs are part of the sports landscape and they have been for a long time now. They are not going away. You will not win on the world level without them. Once you get over that fact, it becomes a matter of how to best deal with it. Many choose to put their head in the sand and pretend the issue will go away or that drug usage is being effectively controlled. It isn’t. It’s estimated that 80-90% of the NFL uses Human Growth Hormone (it isn’t being tested for yet). Even in poker, there is RAMPANT drug usage to help boost concentration in marathon sessions. It may not be against the rules but it’s no different from taking EPO as a cyclist. The rules are really pretty arbitrary and inconsistent. Lance did what he had to do. To me, the recent news about Lance doesn’t change the fact that he DOMINATED the Tour for years against a bunch of the best riders/teams/coaches in the world and all those teams were systematically doping as well. He still won those races and put in years and years of incredibly difficult training, effort, dedication and so on. To me, he’s still one of the greatest American sports heroes of my lifetime and he’ll always hold that spot in my mind. I applaud his decision to be competitive.

So I’m headed to Atlanta mainly for some meetings at Bluff (now a part of Churchill Downs) about a few different things. I haven’t been into the Bluff offices in a few years so it’ll be interesting to be back. I’m also going because I have made it a yearly tradition to visit Atlanta/Athens in the fall. Of course, I was living in Atlanta in the fall of 06 and 07 but in 2008 I came back for UFC 88 (post one, post two, post three), in 2009 I stopped on my way back from South Africa (and I came back again for the Auburn game a bit later on), in 2010 I came back for the Vanderbilt game and in 2011 I came down for Thanksgiving with yellowsub86′s family (they’re awesome by the way). So this will count as my 2012 trip.

In other news, a few hours ago I just finished doing something called the CrossFit Total at my gym. I’ve posted about this before but the basic idea is that you get three chances each at squat, deadlift and standing press. In this case, we did deadlifts first. I warmed up by doing about 6-7 sets with my last warmup being about 375lbs. I then took my first attempt at 404 and made it pretty easily. I then put 20 lbs on to make the bar 424 and I made it again although it was actually a little tough off the floor but I locked it out pretty easily. I decided to go for 15 additional pounds so I was up to 439 which is just under 200kg and was a PR attempt. This time I psyched myself up a bit because I knew that I would need to stay tighter off the floor in order to make the lift. Well, the mental prep worked as the 439 actually felt similar to the 404! I was really excited to make the lift. I asked one of the coaches if I could get one more attempt in order to set a higher weight. He agreed and I put on 10 more lbs to get up to 449 or about 204kg (I really wanted to definitively break the 200kg barrier, which I’d never done). So I waited a few minutes and did the same mental routine with the 449 and, once again, I made it! Pretty awesome. It wasn’t even that hard once I got it about 2 inches off the floor. I felt like I could stand there with it at the top for several minutes (although I didn’t try that). So overall I’m really happy with the 449. This now puts my PR squat at 365lbs and my PR deadlift at 449lbs. I want them to be 400 and 500 so I’m not too far away. Assuming I stay injury free (a big if), both 400 and 500 are less than six months away and possibly a decent amount sooner. I’m excited about it.

So in hookgrip news, things have been clicking along pretty well. The Facebook page is up to something like 6200 likes, I put some shirts up for sale and they’ve sold very well (I’m out of stock in a bunch of sizes so I have an refill order on tap, hopefully I will get it soon), I have a lot of information on old lifting meets that I plan on getting online soon and so on. I’m really excited to see what the site can become in 2013. As of now I plan on attending the following meets: 2013 European championships in Valencia Spain, 2013 Junior World championships in Lima Peru, 2013 US National championships in Cincinnati Ohio and the 2013 World Championships in Warsaw Poland. If I were to drop any from that schedule, the Europeans would probably be the first to go. It’s kind of frustrating but the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) hasn’t even scheduled the European championships yet even though, traditionally, they are held in April. So I haven’t been able to get tickets or hotel so far. I plan on traveling using miles/points so it really depends on what sorts of fares are available for frequent flier seats. As soon as I know the dates I will start looking into things. The Lima event is scheduled but I’m currently waiting until I have enough American Airlines miles to fly down there in first class — it should be another month or two at most. Overall it’s actually pretty cheap to go to all of these events if you’re smart with miles/points and you find good hotel deals. I really enjoy the whole experience so I hope things keep going at this pace. I actually need to get a backup camera body because I’m worried that I’ll end up at one of these competitions and my shutter will go and I’ll be totally out of luck! So I am going to look into buying one in the next month or two.

Well, it’s about time to pack up and head to the gate. Off to Atlanta!