Climber

Back when I started to lift weights, I also took up climbing as a way to work out different muscles, and as a way to use said muscles I work out at the gym and climbing will keep me toned and doing it regularly will keep me from getting too big too fast. Now that last part sounds a little odd, but I was seriously scared I would swell up to an unbelievable size very quickly if I weren't somehow making use of the muscles I was building. And even more odd is that I don't seem to really care about how much bigger I am going to get anymore.

So with that said, I bought a membership at Hoosier Heights in Bloomington and would alternate climbing and lifting days. At this time, I didn't like leg workouts at all so I would very rarely do them and you can imagine how much I overworked my upper body. I absolutely loved my overall workout routine as it kept me from getting bored, I got to meet new people, and I got to face my fear of heights head on.

As far as climbing gyms go, Hoosier Heights has been, by far, my favorite one. They have a huge bouldering room, 50 foot ceilings in their top rope room, and a very nice grade on the lead rope wall. In there, I could dick around for hours on end and it didn't even matter how much or little effort I put into actually following the tapes routes I would always walk away exercised. It was awesome. It was there where I learned that even I can get pumped muscles regularly. Within a couple hours I would get jacked and just stay that way for a while. Loved it. But on the rope and the instant pump halfway up a wall never felt good and seriously hindered my progress.

I eventually became able to climb the 50 walls with no problem, though this was largely dependent on who belayed me. With someone near my size or larger and was attentive, I knew I would be in good hands. There were times where I had a female friend belay me and I would only go about two thirds of the way up and then climb back down because she just would not pay attention. I would belay a dude who routinely slipped and fell on his way up so I had to stay on top of it the whole way. He seemed really stressful to belay.

I made a bunch of friends there and introduced a dude to climbing who in turn made it his life. He shoots videos, judges, participates, you name it. I gave this guy a direction.

After I graduated college, I moved about two miles from a climbing gym and find myself just not going. They are designed to be for beginners so most of their routes are just too easy. In addition, they only have 19 foot walls and they have the gri-gris anchored to the floor and they don't want anything attached to the belayer, which is just not how I learned. And the crowd is completely different. People at this gym don't talk to each other. There's no sense of community. The place is alright just to get a change up to my routine but I just don't care for it.

The last time I went was about nine months ago and I've put on twenty pounds of muscle since my heyday of climbing a lot which really makes a difference when go to climb. I stopped lifting to help the muscles needed to climb and just started lifting for size which ironically threw me down to beginner climbing level. And so it goes.

Early workout

My brother was in town for a couple days and due to his lack of communication and planning, I wound up taking him to the airport at three in the morning today. After dropping him off, I headed down to LFF Greenwood to get my workout in and screw around town a little bit before heading home. Keep in mind I had probably all of one hour of sleep the night before, but was on a five hour energy drink and two cups of coffee. My workout started at six in the morning and I have never worked out that early, and decided to work legs and chest since I missed my workout yesterday due to hanging out with my brother. So in short I am completely crazy for going for that combination with no sleep. My legs never seem to wear down enough to just move to a different body part, and the upper part of my legs gets so freaking pumped up now that they rub together when I walk. After getting my legs pumped up ridiculously large, it was time to do the same to my chest. And to that I will just say mission accomplished. I love working out my chest so I always get these workouts right. After that, I did my measurements and found the weight gainer must be working. I only gained one pound but my body fat is way down. So I am definitely getting bigger. That's always good news.

So it was off to my second breakfast of the day so I can get some food down and wait for stores to start opening. After that, I went down the Comics Carnival only to find out they have shut down permanently...That was my favorite comic book store because they had so much cool stuff in addition to the comics. I bought video game soundtracks, toys, obscure movies, and other assorted stuff over the years from them. But they are gone now. So I just went home. Nothing else would have been worth going to. So my day was basically done by nine in the morning. Good thing I chose to sleep the rest of the day away then.

Real Steel

I had a couple free tickets for a preview screening of the movie Real Steel last week, and boy howdy, is this my topic of the day.

Hugh Jackman plays a guy who owns giant robots and uses them to fight for BIG PRIZES only he's kind of an idiot that will take on any appearance and utterly fail right out of the gate. His robot fights a steer at a rodeo only to have the steer completely dismantle the thing within seconds of the right starting. Hugh Jackman just is not doing so hot. And it turns out that he kind of paid to get his kid brought around for a little bit, which kind of makes him a douche as well but who can say no to those muscles, am I right ladies? The kid is your typical whiny child actor and he and his dad fight endlessly.

Jackman bought a new badass samurai looking robot and is now ready to fail harder and faster down at the   robot fighting ring. And fail it does. So after Jackman and the kid go through their silliness, they head out to get pieces to make a new robot from the junkyard.

For some reason they have to sneak in the first few feet of the junkyard and no further. And the kid stupidly falls down a pit and was saved by a robot arm that was sticking out. The kid convinces the dad to take the robot home, clean it up, and see what they can do with it.

From here was somehow even more of an obvious rip-off of "Over The Top" with Sylvester Stallone. The kid takes the robot slowly to the top of the heap and challenges the top robot in the Robot Fighting League (or RoFL) in a joke I just wrote that is so clever I bet your head exploded. I'm patting my own back.

So they take on the robots at the RoFL and win their way to the top only to take a pummeling from a robot shaped like an extreme bodybuilder. Once the tank of a robot breaks the protagonist robot's controls, it gets switched to mimic mode in which it mimics all the moves of Jackman. Thanks to human meddling, the giant robot still wins overall, I guess, but the protagonist robot is congratulated because it was the underdog that made it that far. I think that's what happened. I kind of tuned out by this point.

Basically this movie is an awesome remake of Over The Top. Not a single cliche went unused and way too much time was spent with the hu-mans and not the robots. It's worth a riff once it comes out on dvd.

Charlie Sheen Roast

So last night, I went against all better thought and watched the Charlie Sheen Roast. Given that this guy has basically made a career out of imploding and flameouts, I expected some funny. Too bad I was wrong. Dead wrong. First off, Seth Macfarlane hosted. That douchebag is absolutely unfunny and in addition to smug, he is in love with the sound of his own voice. That's a big ass strike right there. And then they threw in some dude I never heard of and thought he was also a smug asshole. The entire thing came off as over-produced and trying so very hard to be hip and edgy what with the audience constantly making the same stupid reaction to every joke. It was so bad I drove one of my friends down to the gas station so he could buy cigarettes and I could buy a muscle milk and get away from that horrible trainwreck of a tv show. In short, it was as funny as being diagnosed with cancer. Do not watch.

Always gets a laugh

Short post today. Wiki-How has a detailed tutorial on how to hide a boner. And it has over one million views. I always thought this was pretty much instinctual by virtue of being a guy, but apparently I am wrong. Have yourself a laugh and you might just learn something new about yourself.


http://www.wikihow.com/Hide-an-Erection

Today's Stupid Video

Do you remember "Friday" by Rebecca Black? Do you remember just how completely awful that song was especially when paired with a video shot mostly on a green screen with loads of the most world-weary teenagers you've ever seen? Well apparently not a single damn lesson was learned because here is a song and video that are remarkably similar. This plays at my gym job all the time and it's just so stupid I had to make up a dance. Keep in mind that it is likely the funniest dance you will ever see in your life and have a laugh at your imagined comedic genius that I possess.

CXWORX

At my gym job, they unveiled a new core class called CXWORX that I have attended on launch day. Basically this class uses a lot of resistance tube action along with some strange song choices to get your ab workout on.

Now I haven't done a lot of ab workouts since I strained my abs muscles back in February and the weight gainer has me kind of fat right now so this first time didn't go so well for me. Combine this with the fact that I have never done a group fitness class and you can pretty much envision me just trying to take in the atmosphere of this whole thing along with trying to do things right.

To be honest, I really enjoyed it and are planning on getting in there at least once a week for this class. My abs were sore in the good way for the first time in months. Will do again.

Weight Gainer

So yeah, I've been having some difficulty hitting my ultimate goal weight. Granted I'm about 6 pound shy of that goal so it's not too far off. With that said, my co-workers at the gym have been telling me to go to this specific supplement store because the prices are awesome and the owner gives us a ten percent discount on all purchases. And every time I go out to that store I wind up at the comic book store about a mile down the road. I am clearly doing it wrong.

I had the first of three interviews at Costco last week and afterward I just went to the supplement store. I told the owner my ultimate goal weight wise and that I am just a few pounds off. He suggested said weight gainer and wrote down directions for me to use it. I got it for real cheap and went on to get my workout on before closing the gym that night.

So in short I have been using weight gainer for nearly a week now and man this shit makes me sluggish. I sleep at least 12 hours a day and are bloated all the time. My appetite isn't too great either. I haven't weighed myself yet so I don't even know what the outcome has been so far since I haven't weighed myself lately. I can tell you that my workouts have been intense and my shirts are getting smaller. So there's that.