Lauren Fisher at the 2014 Junior World Championship

Those female weightlifters sure are bulky, right, ladies?

Earlier, I wrote about CrossFit athlete Lauren Fisher sweeping her weight class at the 2014 USA Weightlifting Junior National Championship.  She also earned the title "Best Female Lifter" at that competition.  It would be an amazing accomplishment for anyone, but it's even more impressive for
Ms Fisher, because she's not exclusively an Olympic weightlifter.

“I do a lot of Olympic lifting, but I don’t do as much as most of these lifters do.” ~ Lauren Fisher

Unfortunately, the US is not as competitive on the world weightlifting stage as a country of its size should be.  On the men's side, I think that's primarily because the most genetically gifted power athletes in the US go to the NFL (where they stand to make millions) not to the USAW (where they'd have to keep a "day job" [night job?] to make ends meet).

Of course, there is no women's equivalent of the NFL, so that reason may be invalid.



This month, Ms Fisher competed at the Junior World Championship of Weightlifting.  She took 10th in the 63 kg (138.6 lb) weight class.  She weighed in at 60.53 kg (133.17 lb), and is probably the only woman I've ever read complain about losing weight.

60.15... I'm losing weight here @cjinvictus! 😩
— Lauren Fisher (@ltfisher12) June 20, 2014

Ms Fishers lifts went as follows:

• Snatch: 75 kg (165 lb), 79 kg (173.8 lb) [fail], 79 kg (173.8 lb) [fail]
• Clean and jerk: 102 kg (224.4 lb), 107 kg (235.4 lb), 110 kg (242 lb)
• Total: 185 kg (407 lb) 

This time, her American teammate, Martha Ann Rogers, beat her by one place.  Ms Rogers's lifts went as follows:

• Snatch: 88 kg (193.6 lb), 91 kg (200.2 lb) [fail], 91 kg (200.2 lb) [fail]
• Clean and jerk: 98 kg (215.6 lb), 102 kg (224.4 lb), 104 kg (228.8 lb) [fail]
• Total: 190 kg (418 lb)

The first place finisher was Diana Akhmetova of Russia (big surprise).  Her lifts went as follows:

• Snatch: 102 kg (224.4 lb), 106 kg (233.2 lb), 108 kg (237.6 lb)
• Clean and jerk: 124 kg (272.8 lb), 126 kg (277.2 lb), 128 (281.6 lb)
• Total: 236 kg (519.2 lb)

See what I mean about the US not being as competitive as other countries in weightlifting?  Still, a 10th place finish in a world championship is outstanding, and even more so for someone who doesn't specialize in the sport.

Here's a video clip of Ms Fisher's opening clean and jerk.



This clip is of her final clean and jerk.


Holding 242 lb overhead isn't easy when you weigh a mere 133 lb.  Notice how her midsection moves around as she waits for the judges to give her the signal that she executed a good lift.  Every muscle underneath the bar (i.e., all of them) is fighting to keep the bar balanced over her midline, which is a perfect example of why isolation movements waste your time.

Ms Fisher recently placed third in the 2014 CrossFit Southern California Regional competition, and qualified for the CrossFit Games.  Here's a short video clip of highlights from the competition.



You can watch a much longer summary here.



All the current elite CrossFit athletes transitioned into CrossFit after competing in some other sport.  Most of the top female athletes are former gymnasts.  Lauren Fisher is the first of a new generation of elite CrossFit athletes.  She started training with CrossFit when she was 12.  She used to play soccer and other sports back then.  She's been training exclusively with CrossFit since she was 16.  Now at 20, she's one of the best examples of CrossFit's efficacy as a training program.  The next few years should be exciting, as more kids who grew up training with CrossFit make it onto the international stage.

UPDATE: The Olympic weightlifting enthusiasts at Hokkgrip posted two more videos of Ms Fisher on their Instagram page.

Isolation Movements Waste Your Time

Hang around people in the fitness industry long enough, and you'll undoubtedly hear/read the term "muscle imbalance".  Muscles apply tension on joints, and that tension keeps joints operating like they're supposed to.  But some athletic pursuits strengthen the muscles that apply tension on one side of a joint more than their opposite counterparts.  That's an imbalance.

For example, long distance runners' hamstrings are often weaker than their quadriceps.  The difference in tension between the hamstrings and quads often results in knee injuries after years of running.

The conventional method of balancing the strength of muscle groups acting on opposite sides of a joint is to isolate the muscle groups and exercise them individually, often using machines.  Most physical therapists would advise a long distance runner with weak hamstrings to strengthen the quads and hamstrings separately with leg extensions and leg curls.

But that brings up a fairly obvious question.  Or, it should, anyway.  How does an athlete performing leg extensions and leg curls know if  his/her quads and hamstrings are balanced?  How does he/she know if they are operating as they are designed to?  Put simply, he/she can't know.  It's impossible.  Because the movements he/she is performing are movements his/her body is not designed to perform.  In fact, the human body can't perform those movements without the assistance of machines that were invented in the 1970s.

So, how can an athlete strengthen his/her quads and hamstrings evenly and help prevent knee injuries?

Simple.  Squat.

Unlike leg extensions and leg curls, the squat is a natural movement our bodies are designed to perform.  Because of that, when an athlete performs a squat correctly, all the muscles involved in the squat are automatically balanced.  The athlete doesn't need to think about which muscles to "fire" (I hate that term, by the way) because his/her nervous system does it instinctively.

You can find the following illustration on page 19 of the third edition of "Starting Strength".

Figure 2-11, page 19, Starting Strength Basic Barbell Training 3rd Edition

It demonstrates how the quads and hamstrings work together to help perform the squat.  As helpful as this illustration is, however, I recently ran across a video that I think makes this point much more effectively.



In the video clip above, CrossFit athlete Brooke Ence performs the squat with excellent technique, and you can watch the quads and hamstrings engage, contract and stretch in perfect concert with each other.  And it's not just her quads and hamstrings.  Her hip adductors, tensors, glutes, etc. work together to flex and extend her hips and keep her knees pointing over her toes.  Simultaneously, her abs and the muscles in her back maintain proper spine alignment and thus transfer force from the ground all the way to the bar.  And every muscle from the bar to her feet works to keep the weight balanced and centered over her feet.

That's why isolation movements waste your time.  It would take hours to train all those muscle groups by isolating each of them.  A 5x5 set of squats does it in minutes.  And even if you did manage to train all those muscle groups by isolating them, you'd never know if they were really in balance with each other.

Are there cases in which isolation movements are not a waste of time?  Sure.  Competitive body builders need isolation movements to compete in their sport.  Besides, they get judged on appearance, not performance.  Also, if an athlete is injured and can't perform compound movements like the squat, it's better to do something than nothing.

If, however, an athlete is not injured and wants to improve performance and prevent injury, compound movements - squats, deadlifts, presses, the Olympic lifts, etc. - are the way to go.  For such an athlete, isolation movements are an unnecessary, counterproductive waste of time.

Flying Jeep Outside Manhattan, KS

This craziness isn't quite "flying", but... it's... well... just watch.

 

From Fox4kc.com:

According to the crash report, the accident happened eight miles east of Manhattan Exit 313 in the westbound lanes of I-70. The driver “for an unknown reason” drove onto the shoulder of the highway, striking an unattended vehicle and then traveled airborne before coming to rest in a ditch. 

The driver, identified as Greg A. Harris, 41, was wearing a seatbelt. He was transported to an area hospital with unknown injuries.

What baffles me is why the driver of the Jeep would drive at that speed on the shoulder of the freeway.

Gotta love Kansas!

Islamic State of Iraq & the Levant Supports "Gun Control"

Totalitarian regimes of all stripes have many things in common.  The one feature they share most ardently is a pathological obsession with restricting their subjects' behavior.  In that spirit, the terrorist organization currently taking over Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, AKA the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham; ISIS), released a set of rules they imposed on the people of Mosul (Nineveh) in northern Iraq. 

Firstly it tells "anyone who is asking," who its members are and what it is about: "We are soldiers of Islam and we've taken on our responsibility to bring back glory of the Islamic Caliphate."

Obviously, they understand the utility of a mission statement.

It confirms that it seized up to half a billion dollars from the Mosul branch of the Bank of Iraq but states it can be trusted with the funds.

"Comrades, turn in your arms!"

Stealing coupled with assurances of moral purity - another common feature of totalitarian regimes.  Here's the best part.

No public gathering other than those organised by ISIS will be allowed at any stage. No guns will be allowed outside of its ranks. 

From Lenin, to Hitler, to Stalin, to Mao, to Castro - and now ISIL/ISIS - totalitarians agree.  Oppressing people is much easier after you've disarmed them.

Ironically, the Iraqi government, impotent against ISIL/ISIS' advance, asked Iraqi civilians to fight the terrorists in its stead.

Iraq’s embattled government urged the terrified residents of Mosul to set up armed vigilante groups and fight Islamic militants who have taken over  the city, the country’s second-largest and in Nineveh province. 

In a meeting in Baghdad presided by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, members of the Nineveh Crisis Team said the city vigilantes should help the Iraqi police and security forces in their fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which stormed into Mosul on Sunday, after about 24 hours of clashes with the police and army.

It's ironic because the Iraqi government already did a great deal of ISIL/ISIS' job for them.

Dhia al-Wakil, spokesman for the office of the armed forces commander-in-chief, suggested that the firearm registration scheme made sense for "organisational and statistical" reasons. 

“It is designed to limit the numbers of arms owned by civilians, and hence it’s in the interests of people's safety and security," Wakil said. 

Officials at the interior ministry, whose police will issue the gun licenses, said the process would be properly conducted. 

"The people who get gun licenses will undergo checks," deputy interior minister Ahmed al-Khafaji said. "The decision permits possession of a firearm inside houses, not outside them, and just one per home – no more.” 

By limiting gun ownership to one gun per household, the Iraqi government made it impossible for law abiding Iraqis to defend their communities against ISIL/ISIS.  And by forcing law-abiding Iraqis to register their guns, they made it easier for ISIL/ISIS to finish disarming decent Iraqis.  All the terrorists have to do is go to each local police station (most of which are abandoned anyway), take the list of registered weapons owners, then go house-to-house confiscating their guns.  With only one gun per house, there's no way a family could defend themselves against a group of armed, battle-hardened men.  An entire neighborhood, with only one gun per house, would be unlikely to defend themselves.

How do mostly-disarmed people defend themselves against this?

Fast Car With Weird Name Built in West Richland, WA

This one is for my friends and family back in Washington State, particularly the Tri-Cities.

It looks like American supercar builder SSC is finally getting ready to start construction of its new factory in West Richland, WA. Planning for the facility to build the Tuatara (pictured above) goes back to at least 2011, but, according to the local Tri-City Herald, a delay in funding is the cause for the setback. 

Now, things finally appear to be back on track. Construction is scheduled for August with completion in early 2015, according to the report. However, it will be several months after that before deliveries will begin. With approximately 40,000 square feet of floor space, SSC will be able to finish one car a month at first with production ramping up later. 

The planned Tuatara supercar packs a claimed 1,350 horsepower and 1,280 pound-feet of torque, allowing a prototype model reached 200 miles per hour in an impressive 16 seconds. Deliveries were slated to begin by January 2014. 

I think my Sprinter van reaches 60 mph in 16 seconds.  Maybe.  Plus, the Tuatara is supposedly designed for a 275 mph top speed.  You can read a lot more information on SSC and their Tuatara by following this link to Autoblog.com.  This is the link to the article from the Tri-City Hearald.

In case you're not from the Pacific Northwest, the Tri-City area (Richland, Kennewick and Pasco) is best known for the Hanford nuclear site and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.  It's not exactly a hotbed of manufacturing, so SSC's choice is definitely unconventional.  Whatever their reasons for choosing West Richland, I wish them great success, and I hope to visit the factory some day.

That's One Way to Test Body Armor

I've never been shot, but I've heard from people who have that - even while wearing body armor - it's painful.  This fellow, however, appears no worse for wear.


Is there an Italian version of OSHA?

Las Vegas Cop Killers Were Occupy Protesters

Main stream (i.e., Leftist) media outlets did their best to link Las Vegas cop killers, Jerad and Amanda Miller, to the Tea Party...

The Wingnut Bonnie and Clyde duo, Jerad and Amanda Miller, stormed into CiCi’s Pizza and shot two metro cops, Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo, at close range while shouting “This is a revolution!” They flung the Tea Party’s favorite coiled snake Gadsden flag and a swastika on the still-warm corpses and then moved to a nearby Walmart to murder a shopper before turning the guns on themselves.

...but here's a little detail they ignored.  Jerad and Amanda Miller were part of the "Occupy" movement.

While living in Lafayette [Indiana], Jerad and his wife Amanda took part in last November’s “Million Mask March” – a gathering of protesters from the Occupy movement, anarchists, and hacktivists. 

Of course, the Occupiers have nothing to do with the Millers.

Nick Wertz, one of the organizers of the Lafayette march, said it attracted many people upset over a lot of issues. 

“Everyone there just seem kind of like normal people. At least they were going to stick up with what they thought was right,” he said.
Wertz said he didn’t really know the Millers, but weeks after the march, Amanda Miller contacted him. 

“She was moving to Vegas for whatever reason and they had a dog they couldn’t take with – and I was like, ‘If I can help,’” Wertz said.
But that was the end of it, he said.

Nothing at all, right?

The Millers left a swastika and a “Don’t tread on me” flag on the body of one of the two officers they killed, and promoted an ideology shared by “militia and white supremacists,” including the belief that law enforcement was the “oppressor,” authorities said Monday.

Gosh, where have I heard that before?  Oh, yeah.  That's right.

In fact, Occupiers hate cops so much that they refused to report crimes committed in their camps cesspools to police...

...when people in Zuccotti Park become aware of crimes, instead of calling police, they form a circle around the perpetrator, chastise him or her and chase him or her out into the rest of the city to do who knows what to who knows whom

...and threatened to kill people who reported crimes to police.

"You got our friend arrested. We're gonna kill you! Watch your back!" the trio warned the young woman on Monday - two days after her complaint led to the arrest of Garfield Leslie, police said Tuesday.

And there were a lot of crimes committed by Occupiers during their nationwide reign of terror infantile, entitled temper tantrum.  You can browse a long list of their crimes at this link.  They include everything from vandalism and petty theft, to assault, rape and murder.  There's even a case of conspiracy to commit terrorism in Cleveland.

Three self-described anarchists were sentenced to prison Tuesday for trying to blow up a highway bridge between Cleveland and Akron using dummy explosives provided by an undercover FBI agent. 

Douglas Wright

Douglas Wright, 26, of Indianapolis, whom federal authorities described as the ringleader, received an 11½-year term. He apologized to his family and the community, saying he was an addict and needed help, the Akron Beacon Journal reports. 

Brandon Baxter, 20, of Lakewood, Ohio, was sentenced to nearly 10 years, and Connor Stevens, 20, of Berea, Ohio, got eight years.
... 

The five were arrested April 30 as they tried to detonate dud bombs at the base of the Ohio 82 bridge over Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The FBI said Wright recruited the group from the Occupy Cleveland movement.

Yep.  Occupiers hate cops, love crime and love, love, love cop killers.

Brandon Baxter

Dorner, who had been on the run as a suspect in a recent killing spree, was reportedly killed Tuesday during a shootout that left one law enforcement officer dead and another wounded. Dorner’s body was apparently burned in a fire that swept through a cabin he had held up in for the gunfight. 

The statement of support and solidarity was posted on the Occupy Los Angeles’ official Facebook page Wednesday. The statement came in the form of a posted picture captioned with the phrases “Rest In Power Chris Dorner” and “Assassinated By The Police for Trying To Expose LAPD Corruption.”

Connor Stevens

There are no riots at Tea Party rallies.  There are no assaults on police officers at Tea Party rallies.  There are no chants of "f**k the police" at Tea Party rallies.
 Nobody praises cop killers at Tea Party rallies or on Tea Party websites.

At violent, disease ridden, parasite (human and otherwise) infested, urine and feces splattered "Occupy" rallies, on the other hand...



Face it, Lefties.  Jerad and Amanda Miller have a hell of a lot more in common with your darlings, the Occupiers, than with the Tea Party.