"they got Jimmy Deans! these are the GOAT!"

 quote from a boy in the frozen food section while I was grocery shopping tonight

this guy named Arthur Jones basically invented weightlifting machines and he's got a quote about the squat that I really like

Arthur Jones: The squat is the single most important exercise ever discovered by man — and one of the most dangerous. The mafia have a saying: “If you can't lose, you can't win.” The squat provides you with opportunities that are unprecedented by any other exercise you can think of — but it's dangerous as hell. So you have to ask yourself: is the opportunity worth the danger?

Done properly — which, to me, is a barbell squat — it need not be all that dangerous. But of course, very few people do them properly, so they become dangerous.

The barbell squat is capable of producing degrees of muscle mass increase that cannot be produced by any other exercise, or any other combination of exercises. The squat, as an exercise, is almost a miracle — and it's dangerous as hell.

but you gotta listen to him say it: squat propaganda

what a character.

today I deep cleaned my apartment

 it felt good to do

big day today

 I was at the climbing gym for like 10 hours today. 

I showed up a little after 10am to do my session and saw a friend I hadn't seen in a while and then had one of my best moonboard sessions ever. Then I did a private coaching lesson for an hour. Had a very short lunch break. Then coached two sessions of club over 3 hours. Then stayed around and climbed and hung out with folks after.

A good day but I'm hungry and need food!

thoughts on running form

 The track and field world championships are taking place and one thing I've been doing in every race video is watching the stride of the runners in the replays. When they land their leg is basically straight or only very slightly bent. I've taken video of myself and realized that I land with a pretty bent knee. 

My guess is that by landing with a straight leg your center of mass travels more quickly over your foot and you engage your glutes and hamstrings more. I think the form that I've developed is more reliant on my quads and instead of pulling through with each stride I fall into each step and then push at the end to reaccelerate. Sometimes when I watch video of myself running I think that it looks like I'm running with flat tires. I never really knew why that was the case but now I think it has to do with running with squishy bent legs. 

Into the fall and over the winter I'd like to focus on straightening my leg while sprinting and strengthening my glutes and hamstrings. My hope is that by cleaning up my form I can make a big jump in speed and performance.

I think about maw maw every time I write on this blog

 It means a lot that she reads this and believes in me. I don't take for granted what a gift that is.

I had an experience today

 this was my experience.

for many years of my life I have bent over to attempt to touch my toes. I have not always been able to. But I have worked at it and now I can touch my toes while keeping my legs straight. But that was not the significant part of today's experience. I was stretching and touching my toes and normally when I stretch like this I either feel something in one of two places. I either feel it entirely in my lower back or I feel a pull on my hamstrings like they're going to snap. Today I felt a pull at the top of my glutes. It was neither my lower back nor my hamstrings but my buttocks. And then I had a feeling afterwards like, the only way I can describe it was that it felt like my butt was online for the first time. Like it was connected to my legs and the rest of my body. I don't claim to know the significance of this or if anything actually occurred but for a brief moment this afternoon something was happening. We will see.

Also it's raining. And that's nice. We really needed it.