Niall's Weblog

I’ve always been under the impression that there was an important distinction between the “natural flavours” and “artificial flavours” listed on food ingredients. After having read this food science article (adapted from Fast Food Nation) Why McDonald’s Fries Taste So Good, I realise the difference is essentially meaningless:

Natural flavors and artificial flavors sometimes contain [...]

I saw a lot of this lift at the CrossFit NorCal Qualifier over the weekend. One of the workouts was:
For time:
Row 500m
30 Burpees
10 Shoulder-to-Overhead (Men: 165#, Women: 95#)
It’s up to you to decide on the technique to employ for the shoulder-to-overhead movement (shoulder press, push press, push jerk, etc.). Efficient technique will be rewarded.

Of [...]

Although I enjoyed both the taste and ritual aspect of coffee, around six weeks ago I decided I was too dependent and that it was having a negative effect on me. Specifically, I felt like it was sapping my energy and leaving me with a kind of brain fog around mid afternoon that nothing [...]

Through CrossFit, I’ve recently heard about the benefits of training with gymnastics rings. Today my rings, which I purchased from RingTraining.com (affiliate link) for a pretty reasonable price, arrived – and I’ve been using them a bit. To get an idea of the kind of strength training you can do with rings, check [...]

Today on my ride home from work, along Fell St. between Divisadero and Broderick, I saw the guy cycling just in front of me get hit by a car which made a sudden left turn, into the bicycle lane, and into a parking lot.

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The car was moving slowly at the time, but the guy was [...]

So it was Friday and the WOD posted on CrossFit.com was “Nicole”:
Complete as many rounds in 20 minutes as you can of:
Run 400 meters
Max rep Pull-ups

I live near the Inner Sunset in San Francisco, around a mile from Kezar Stadium. Kezar is a fantastic training resource – it has a decent running track (one [...]

One of my personal challenges in physical activities (martial arts, Yoga, weightlifting) has always been flexibility. Some people have quite naturally good flexibility, others have to work on it. What exactly is flexibility? There is a very common perception that flexibility is a physical characteristic – that its a question of muscle, [...]

I’m in Ireland for the holidays, and I’m trying to keep up some training while I’m away from the gym. At least I managed to find a couple of 30lbs dumbbells at the house, that increased versatility a lot:

150 dumbbell squats.
100 push ups.
50 dumbbell thrusters.
50 dumbbell swings.

The squat is an exercise I’ve really come to appreciate of late. The difficulty and importance of this movement cannot be underestimated. While the squat is in fact a very natural and innate movement – witness young children doing this effortlessly all the time. However, years of sitting in chairs and other [...]

I mentioned the Fran routine in a post last week. Along with pull-ups, the workout consists of thrusters. Although I don’t think my thruster is terrible, I definitely need to improve it. I find my shoulder flexibility a limiting factor, causing me to expend more energy than necessary, and power is definitely [...]