SteveEdwardsFitness.com

The Straight Dope will be moving to steveedwardsfitness.com shortly and housed by someone other than Blogger. Something changed recently and Blogger's spam catchers are letting way too much through so, for now, I've stopped posting and begun setting up shop somewhere else. The current site at steveedwardsfitness will be changing, too.

In the mean time, here's a Beachbody success story on "the world's fastest violinist". As you'll see, weight is an important performance factor for things other than sports. Can't say I'm a big fan of this rendition of Flight of the Bumblebee but the talent is impressive nonetheless.

The Year Behind, The Year Ahead

The Year of the Van turned into the year of work. Whattayergonna do? Life happens. Instead of numerous van weekends and holidays exploring unknown lands of the USA I took a total of zero days off and flew 40-something times for my job. What this means, fair readers, is that the year's recap will be short and, in fact, so will the coming year's plans.

An entertaining upside is the I finally stopped yappin' about proper health and fitness topics and instead turned to the stylings of Stevie Haston. His site just kills me, for both it's training psyche and its audacity. And it's madness--ah, so much for "both". Anyway, I think even non-climbers would enjoy his work. It's crazy inspiring. Not one to mince words Stevie's year-end summary went like this:

Winter solstice today, I'm looking at the last 12 months and I had a great year, about 60 new routes in Gozo, all on interesting rock and of high quality....King of Kings is certainly my favorite roof....a project done in Ariège....a new kitten...lots of new projects....

I've lost a little bit of muscles and become more flexible which make me a better climber....and I will get stronger slowly but surely...

Climbing is getting more important to me as the world seems to implode with stupidity. Wars to bolster the economy of the West, make me ashamed. That's it, I'm going bouldering today, to lazy to go climbing.

Short and to the point. And before you blame such focus and carefree mindedness on youth, consider Stevie's in his mid-50s. So I will paraphrase inserting my own measely existence.

Though they didn't go as expected that last 12 months have been a full year of adventures of different sorts. I can't complain about work when I'm able to affect so many people. It's any educator's dream. At home we rescued another maniac. Cattle dogs are not for the faint of heart or those not committed to exercise, especially those who've already been rejected. Our dogs are a challenge but one I wouldn't trade, even when they're doing their best impression of Mitt Romney and absconding us for their own adventures.

Athletically, I never got injured and learned a lot. Not many notches on the old scorecard. Made my one race count, as it appears on many "hardest of" lists, ticked off a handful of epic rides and 11 new routes to boot. Became less ripped but hopefully more functional. Also have been dealing with an illness that's hung around since doing a long ride in smokey air. Don't try that at home--heed air pollution warnings. The upside, always, is that the trickier the illness the more there is to learn. I'm lucky enough to be in the position to pass on newfound knowledge.

For the coming year it's work and all things Yak Attack. After which, we'll see where my psyche takes me. There are new cliffs to be developed, and odd interest in off-widths, and many strange adventures to be concocted that push us into the realm of the unknown.

As for the blog, I'm going to attempt to bring it back towards cutting through the BS that is our health and fitness media. I have a stack of stories to deconstruct, which I'll pick on as time permits. And, of course, there are plenty of training and nutritional theories that bare testing. It shouldn't be boring.

This year's going to be the best one yet. Always.

Voeux 2013

Happy 2013! Exciting new year ahead. Let's make it a good one. We can start by hoping AG2R wins all their races. For me, altitude training starts today. Now time for some exercise...

12 Days of Psyche: Mountain Epics

For your 12th day of Psyche I present... Christmas. For your gift here are a few snowy adventures from climbing prodigy David Lama. As a teenager he dominated the World Cup circuit before parlaying his talents in the mountains. He's already doing some of the hardest and most coveted alpine ascents in history and is basically just warming up as he learns a new craft. We can't even imagine what the future holds.

Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas everyone! The 'dope will get back to business after the first of the year.

12 Days of Psyche: Girls Killin' It

... on hard, local boulders. Here are two vids of Brit Mina Leslie-Wujastyk on a recent trip, making mincemeat of some of America's hardest boulder problems. There's also a short synopsis about the trip in Rock & Ice, punctuated with her thoughts on heading back to training after the trip.

As we turn the corner into real winter, Leslie-Wujastyk, though liking outdoor climbing best, is unperturbed to face gym days.

“I like training,” she says mildly. “I like trying hard. I get a kick out of seeing the improvement.”



And since I said "girls", here's Alex Johnson flashing a very scary V9. And she looks casual. Super rad.

12 Days of Psyche: Why We Climb

This is a great interview with the late Patrick Edlinger. I don't generally find climbing interviews inspiring but this one is different. "Le Blond's" views don't seem tainted with jealously or disdain about the new generation, which is so common it's become cliche. He's extremely positive and insightful, and also gets at the heart of why we climb.

"You're obliged to to focus on here and now. To concentrate totally. All of a sudden you forget your problems. The things that don't interest you."

We also get to hear the story of Ceuse, still probably the single best climbing cliff on earth. How he stumbled upon it on the eve of a trip to the US, tore up his tickets, and stayed there for the next four years. It's like a climbing dream (literally for me as I've had so many dreams of finding epic crags I can't begin to remember them all.)

But, since an interview isn't enough for Psyche, here some "Dreammaker" action from 1982, the brilliant film Life By Your Fintertips. It's got one-arm pinky pull-ups, doing the splits between boulders, a sweet van, high white pants, German techo music about robots, drum solos; basically anything you'd need to get motivated to climb.

12 Days of Psyche: Making Weight

Since it's the weekend and you theoretically have more time, here's a pretty cool movie that's on Netflix play it now called Occupation: Fighter (also on Amazon et al). It's about a no-name fighter training for his shot at the title. It's a pretty good movie but if you aren't into fighting you can load it and just watch the best part, which comes near the end as he's training for his big night and then has to make weight. This section of the film is AWESOME. As anyone who's wrestled well knows, making weight sucks. It's interesting here to see how things have gotten more systematic but that doesn't really make it any easier. It looks miserable and will certainly help you get through your next workout when life has you feeling like eating donuts instead. He also takes a full body ice bath (a couple of shots make the trailer), which is another one of those I'm-more-dedicated-than-you moments. All in all, it's one of those movies that reminds you that you could be training harder. Get after it!