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Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: a fast and explosive donkey!

« on: August 16, 2016, 04:33:16 pm »

alright, alright, i bought the damn under armour ball.

didn't get much exercise this weekend apart from hauling lots of booze and dancing. last night was just spent. i did play tennis with my dad on sunday night, which was nice. i can consistently whip him now. back in the gym tonight and for a few more days before beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeach.

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Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: ADARQ's journal

« on: August 16, 2016, 12:34:31 pm »

Happy Birthday! Congrats on another age

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Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Two Hands Two Feet

« on: August 16, 2016, 09:53:22 am »

i do MB tosses with a 12lb ball on a squash or racquetball court. high ceilings mean it's easy to "measure" improvement: the harder (louder) it hits the ceiling, the more powerful the throw.

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Sports Discussion / Re: 2016 Rio Olympics - open thread

« on: August 16, 2016, 09:47:49 am »

fair points. i still don't think that the spirit behind the "AI could have been great at lots of sports" hypothetical implies laziness -- at least not in my head; i certainly would never claim that iverson didn't bust his ass for his whole life to become as great as he was -- but i concede that it exists in a context where black athletes are stereotyped as talented and white ones as scrappy. and that i got it from a demonstrably racist writer. the bullshit about him and practice DEFINITELY implied laziness and was racist, but picturing him nutmegging central defenders on his way to goal after goal or crushing returns off the rise like agassi implies, to me, just different lifetimes of hard work. don't know shit about boxing so i'll take your word for it about taking a punch. but you can't divorce the specific from the general and in general we live in a racist country, so point taken.

anyway fuck bill simmons.

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Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Recovery from quadricep tendonitis

« on: August 16, 2016, 08:02:24 am »

nice! great-looking lob, too. need to work on that...

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Sports Discussion / Re: 2016 Rio Olympics - open thread

« on: August 16, 2016, 07:58:13 am »

bill simmons is definitely racist, but i don't take his "what if" thing about iverson that way. to me it's more just a way of trying to appreciate or describe obliquely iverson's unbelievable combination of quickness, hand-eye coordination, body awareness, and intelligence.

of course hypotheticals like that don't hold much water, in the same way that "randy moss would have been better if he hadn't smoked so much weed" or "usain bolt is lazy he could have run sub-9.5 if he weren't so lazy" don't. still kind of fun to think about iverson growing up in liverpool and spending his career going head-to-head with zidane.

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Sports Discussion / Re: 2016 Rio Olympics - open thread

« on: August 15, 2016, 04:43:17 pm »

let's not forget about AI. i remember years ago bill simmons making the argument that iverson, had he grown up in a different place or chosen a different direction as a kid, could have been one of the greatest soccer players of all time, one of the greatest welterweight boxers of all time, one of the greatest cornerbacks of all time, one of the greatest tennis players of all time, one of the greatest (insert non-height/weight-dependent identity here) of all time. he was a freak's freak.

cool to learn about don bradman. gonna need to know about him in pakistan, they're nuts for cricket over there.

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Sports Discussion / Re: 2016 Rio Olympics - open thread

« on: August 15, 2016, 01:52:46 pm »

not rio specific, but someone shared this on fb, cool story: http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/the-white-man-in-that-photo/

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Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Two Hands Two Feet

« on: August 15, 2016, 10:08:38 am »

i had whooping cough in college. do not get whooping cough, it's common to break a rib from the violence of the coughing. managed to avoid that fate but i didn't get a full night's sleep for six weeks.

that was the last time i had a serious cough (11 years ago) and by god i hope i never have one again. sucks.

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Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Loopie's Log

« on: August 15, 2016, 09:40:14 am »

i've decided that full breaks are underrated for most amateur athletes. 4500 miles is a hell of a lot of driving time, where'd you go?

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Sports Discussion / Re: 2016 Rio Olympics - open thread

« on: August 15, 2016, 09:13:12 am »

i'm with t0ddday, ashton eaton is the greatest athlete of all time.

another knock on phelps as greatest athlete of all time: swimming is awkward for humans. we're bad at it! even watching katie ledecky (who is arguably a greater swimmer than phelps, historically speaking, given how thoroughly she's trashed her competition over the last few years*), you realize just how thrashy and inefficient we are in the water as a species. humans are built to run, and even though we're slower than our four-legged friends, at our fastest we still look graceful. i don't know, call it the aesthetic argument to gracefulness.

that said, phelps is still, empirically speaking, the greatest olympic champion. obviously.

*also she went grew up like 20 minutes from me and went to my ex's high school. thanks to her and phelps maryland is still top-5 in gold medals won as a country.

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