How Things Work

It just seems so interesting, how the brain works, or the mind-body connection, or the CNS-PNS. However you'd describe it. It's just fascinating. Afferent and efferent nerves. Same as sensory and motor nerves. Only two sorts of neurons, inward and outward, to the brain or away. Inward is sensory, information about everything other than the brain, whether within the body or from the great wide world. Outward is motor, to get things done, either muscles or organs, somatic or autonomic. Neuron axons bundled in the peripheral nervous system are nerves; axon bundles in the CNS are called tracts. Isn't it fascinating?

The brain communicates with the body in only two ways: through motor nerves or through hormones. Nerves are a direct line, like telegraph wires. Hormones float through the bloodstream hoping to be picked up by cell receptors -- like fish and nets, without the hope. Isn't that interesting? In order to explain things, you need facts. Why does exercise make muscles grow? An exercised fiber becomes more receptive to hormones. Hormones are released when enough fibers are exercised. So it's central nervous system, and it's endocrinal. Obvious of course, but so interesting.

It's easy to gush -- it's so interesting.

And the way the CNS develops -- the brain and spinal cord. It starts as a sort of looped tube, eventually with, well, six parts, spinal cord and the five parts of the brain. A tube. See? It's not an addition thing, this development, not one part of the brain developing, then another one, more advanced, then yet another, and so on. New parts of the tube just appearing one day, or epoch. It's all there, inherent in the beginning. See? It's not an Evolutionary development. It all happens more or less all at once, with all vertebrates, the way you'd blow up a plastic bag. There is no fish brain and lizard brain and mammal brain. There are just bigger and smaller parts of the brain, depending on class. A fish's cerebrum is smaller than its eyeball. A rat's cerebrum is the size of its ear. Humans' fill up everything behind the eyes and up. But it's all the same basic plastic bag -- just different shapes.

That's the body, and the brain. Not quite the same as mind, or as some would have it, the soul. Think of it as music. Flute music. What makes it? The breath of the player? The shape of the instrument? Neither, alone. Both, but not only both. Music is not breath and flute -- that might very well be just noise. We are made by genetics and shaped by experience -- but we are not just both of these, together. We are not breath through a flute, not experience acting through genes. We are music. There is a musician, a spirit if you will, inspiring as well as respiring.

Well. It's about being excellent. Utilizing our gifts. We can't save anyone. We can help each other, though, help a human, with a body, achieve a level of physical excellence.  You do it, if you will. We help.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Boxes

It seems intimidating, at the beginning.

But it's not so much.

All honest effort is honorable.

We start at the beginning ...

and keep striving...

  

until we earn our rest.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Mindful of Small Things

God? Who is this "God" person people keep yammering about on TV and the radio? What proof is there of this "God"? Man, those religionists are so superstitious and unscientifical. Randomness explains it all.  Didn't they go to school, and learn all about science?

A horse fly. Horse flies are for killing. Who knew that they were beautiful.

Flies. Beelzebub is the lord of flies. But they can't be all bad.

The grasshopper. Very discreet -- deadpan.

A bee. And its pollen.

A harvestman. Seems to be missing a leg. Life is hard.

Jumping spider, male.

Jumping spider, female.

Body shot. She's hot.

Ladybug. Not a good name.

There are dragons -- Chinese dragons. They're just an inch long, is all.

Even a weevil -- such crasftsmanship.

You don't have to get along with God. But surely you must believe in him. Him. There has to be an explanation, for beauty. An explanation that isn't casuistic. But maybe there's no such thing after all.  Maybe rationality itself is random.

Anyways.

What matters is results. If you'd like to be beautiful as a bug, eat right, and exercise effectively.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Marketing

Are you sad?

-->

-->

Distressed?

-->

At your wits’ end?

Moody?

Irascible?

Snippy?

No pep?

No vim?

Life got y0u 

DOWN?!?

-->

Fit W 0rks!!! 

All your  ills  will  
tota lly  disappear,

100% GUARENTEED!!!

(Guarantee not valid.)

CrossFitBurbank

Inquire immediately!!!

FitWorks

-----

Who could resist such a compelling presentation?  It's irresistible.    But regardless of how subtle the message, it's results that matter.  Do what is effective.  We'll leave the rest for you to intuit, deduce, or stumble onto.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Unforgiven

Deserves got nothing to do with it.

Has to do with justice. An illusive thing. Hybrid of the unicorn and the snipe. Or is that just cynical. Point is, we deserve what we earn. We earn what we work at -- where we put our effort and time. If you spend a lot of time, oh, say, eating, then you most certainly do deserve those extra pounds.

An unsympathetic judgment? Reality is ever so unforgiving. Gravity doesn't call a timeout. You stumble, you fall -- or catch yourself; in neither case does gravity bend its rules.

We deserve what we earn, whether or not we get it. Wanting fitness, or an attractiveness of figure or physique -- well, that's just an emotion, the wanting. Do you deserve what you want? Only if you've earned it. We exclude of course such basic human rights as air and justice. We deserve justice, although we may not want it. Depends what our conduct has been, eh?

So when advertisers tickle our ears by suggesting we deserve every wonderful thing, yeah, there's the part of us that says, "Yep, that's right -- I deserve it! Cuz I'm so great! Yeeeah!" Then there's the rational part of the brain, that remembers cause and effect.

You rewarded yourself with that half-gallon in one sitting of rocky road ice cream because you earned it by having a hard day at work, or by having your paramour disrespect you so that you required some other comforting. That was the intent of eating all that ice cream. And you were comforted. But those 2700 calories amount to almost one sexy pound of body fat. You earned that too, by eating the ice cream -- and hoping that your body uses it to give you Angelina Jolie lips may not be a desire thoroughly grounded in reality.

We deserve what we earn. Physics is not forgiving. Entropy is the presiding law of the universe. Miracles come from outside of the universe, and, like forgiveness, have to do with grace, with unmerited favor. We hope for it, but we don't deserve it. Hardly ever.

A dark message? But no! -- a message of hope. Because when we apply intelligence to any mechanistic system, entropy is reversed. Order increases rather than declines. Beauty is generated. We grow fit. We become, in a very real way, younger. Why, it's almost miraculous! Strange, how going through some ritual can change reality. Working out, then -- that most mundane of processes -- is where magic comes from.

You deserve what you earn. You earn what you work for. They call it "working" out for a reason. Of course we all know this. But if that's the case, why do the advertisers try to tell us otherwise? You deserve a break today? Maybe. How would they know? Indeed, they know as well as we do, that people only deserve what they earn. And if they know it, why are they lying? -- and if they're not lying, how did they get so crazy? Bewildering.

How to earn what you want? In this context, effective exercise, and responsible diet. It's not about tickling your ears, unless its from beads of sweat running down the side of your head.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Some Mockery, Then Some Information

People are saying that they're feeling differently about you. Ever since they saw you naked that one time, they're saying they've lost all respect for you. They say they can't understand how anyone could let happen to them what you've let happen to you. It's astonishing. Clothes sure do make the man. Clothes, and buckets and buckets of pork rinds. It's like pudding poured into a canvass sack. There is a sort of shape. But are there any bones in there? Or is it all, uh, stuffing. That's what they're saying.

Food is about health. Exercise is about fitness. You can have fit people, elite athletes, who get by on genetics and training. Are they healthy? If health is the absence of sickness, then yes they are. But health is a reservoir of potentials. It's not just what's on the surface. The question is, are you able to fight off sickness, and not just avoid it somehow. Can you confront it, and beat it before it gets a hold. And all those diseases awaiting some person down the line -- are they dormant or incipient or festering now? If so, that's not health.

Same with healthy people, with their great diets. It's not the same as fitness. Diet makes fitness easier, but fitness is about performance, and that has to be practiced. Training. By these standards, though, it is clear that the starting point is health, and fitness follows. Diet, followed by training.

Here's the upshot, about why carbs are bad. All calories can be made into fat. Free fatty acids. That's just a form of usable energy in your blood. These fats are stored in cells as FAT -- blubber fat -- by being bound together as triglycerides. The glue that turns the good free fatty acids into the bad blubber is glycerol. Your body gets glycerol by burning carbs -- glucose. So the more carbs you burn, the more glue there is to bind fats. Glycerol is the limiting factor.

Isn't that interesting? It's exactly the same idea as with omega 3. You can't make anti-inflammatory hormones unless you have omega 3. The more you have, the more you can make, and that's a good thing. The more glycerol you have, the more blubber you can make, and that's a bad thing. The wrong lesson to draw from this is that you shouldn't eat carbs. Plants are carbs. Eat plants. Don't eat glue factories. Grains. Some bread? Sure, once in a while. All the time, at every meal? What, is there a famine? Wheat is great if you're starting a neolithic civilization. But too few calories is not the problem, in 21st century America.

The observation has been made that Canadians don't seem nearly as fat as Americans. Well, the Canadian government didn't start to sponsor a poisonous -- low fat -- diet, beginning in the 80s. Exactly the time when obesity started its meteoric rise. Although meteors don't rise. Sure, low fat generally means fewer calories. But it also means low ESSENTIAL fats. You can turns carbs into fat, but never into essential fats. So it's a malnutrition diet. Brilliant. Thanks for that. Instead of getting the essentials, we got hydrogenated- and transfats.

Where's a coup when you need one? Start with yourself. Sensible diet, sensible exercise.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

A Product Review

I made the mistake of going to the so-called "Infinite Dinosaurs Total Fitness Personal Training Boutique" for about three times. Total ripoff. Unbelievably bad. First of all, it's in a storage shed behind The Liquor Barn, and the place stinks of bum urine and there are broken syringes all over the sidewalk. There's like one 40 watt bulb hanging from a cord in the middle of the space, that keeps getting broken when you do the idiotic "exercises."

Bob Dude -- I think that's his real name -- runs the place and is a total amateur conman, and he charges $175 per session. It's like he makes it up on the spot, when he runs the so-called "workout". One time he had me flapping my arms like a chicken for 45 minutes. He called it the "mega-delt-lat-blaster" or some garbage like that. Said it would give me shoulders like a "bunt cake" whatever that is. And he's always hitting on the chicks in this really cheesy old-guy way. He says "Hey, qt, how's it playin" and then he says, "that's 'q' and 't', as in 'quite tasty'." And then he giggles through his nose. Just embarrassing.

He's always pushing his garbagy products, and I saw his storeroom full of unsold junk from like the 80s. Now it's his InfidiNopro thing. It's a bunch of photocopied pages stapled together. Want to know what "Tonal Tonics" is? It's you, with your nose pressed to the bathroom mirror, screaming at the top of your lungs for 15 minutes nonstop. The noise is supposed to reflect back and "tone" not just your face muscle -- he calls it an "instant mega minifacelift" -- but it does your abs too, he says. Doofus. His "MacroFascial Flexic Blast" is about 3 feet of 7 inch by 5/8 rubberbands hooked together like you did when you were in 4th grade. I kid you not. It is literally garbage. You wrap it around your head and make faces. The doofus doesn't even know what fascia means.

Instead of Infinite Dino-sucks I recommend, FitWorks, which is CrossFit Burbank. Focus is on sensible exercise, sensible diet -- not a lot of big-sounding promises -- do the work and get the benefits. Not a lot of wasted motion. Necessary motion. No chicken-wing flapping. Sheesh. FitWorks is about being competent. Functionality, not poser appearance. And you won't end up with scabies from touching that Infamous Dino-sores scandalous floor. Bob Dude doesn't even own a mop.


A Reviewer

*************************************************

COMMENTS:


3:51 AM
Anonymous said...
Do not believe this review! It is totally bogus! I have been a patron of this highly elite INFINITE DINOSAURS™ TOTAL FITNESS PERSONAL TRAINING BOUTIQUE! for many years, and it is ABSOLUTELY AWESOME! Bob Dude is an AMAZING trainer, the best ever, and his abs are totally OFF THE HOOK! The chicks all really dig him, and his products sell at an amazing rate, and he owns lots of mops.


3:54 AM
Blogger Bob Dude said...
And furthermore, I know this dude who wrote that review, and HE'S the one who's a doofus. So I kicked him out and now he's all mad like a P-Factor™ baby.


3:54 AM
Blogger Bob Dude said...
And also, this poser reviewer has violated trademark law by not including the trademark symbol when he mentioned Bob Dudes proprietorial products and ideas. All rights commercial and/or otherwise of INFINITE DINOSAURS!™ and/or any of its concepts and/or products, including but not limited to Tonal Tonics™ and MacroFascial Flexic Blast™, are hereby asserted and affirmed by their respective legal owner(s). Violators will be prosecuted.


4:01 AM
Anonymous said...
Oh, and never mind that the heading in those other two comments was of Bob Dude. It's just a glitch or something in the internet. It's very common, as a search of the relevant websites on the net will prove. I'm a disinterested and VERY totally satisfied customer. Honest.

-------------

Well. That was weird. Ever get the feeling that not everything is as it should be, in the fitness world? So many promises. So much hype. So many, so very many posers. How sad.

Just be excellent, is all. You get that way by doing constantly varied functional movements at high intensity with consistency. Easy. Don't do useless things. Work hard.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Getting Serious

Being sedentary is certainly not the same as sloth. Working at the computer is work, and productive. Not a deadly sin at all. A virtue, even. Not sloth -- sedentary. But the body doesn’t know the difference. Bodies don’t get it, about morality and wickedness. They just feel and react, like animals. The thing that distinguishes our bodies from those of animals is our magnificent brains, what with their intellects and wills and, uh, other good human stuff. Ambition. The ambition to excel.

We say it a lot, because simple truths resonate the loudest: As easy as it was to get out of shape, that’s how hard it is to get back into shape. On the other hand, getting back into shape is like forgiveness. It’s like redemption. It’s almost religious. Hallelujah. The cliché is, the more you put in, the more you get out. True, but that’s a sort of euphemistic way of saying it. The harsher, more accurate way to say it is that it takes intensity. That’s harsh because intensity really means suffering. Breathing a little hard is not intense at all. Gasping like you’re terrified is intense.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that most folks don’t aspire to be world class, elite athletes, so they don’t need to suffer quite that much. Their intensity level can be much lower, and they can still attain very respectable goals. The other bad news though is that their intensity must be much, much, very much more than just breathing a little hard.

It really isn’t about the effort. It’s not about desire or will power. It’s about your body’s hormonal response, the signals to and from your brain that tell the body to store or burn fat, or build muscle, or the like. Wanting such messages to be sent isn’t enough. Sending a clear signal is what it’s about. We send those messages by stressing the body. The bigger the stress -- not, mind you, distress -- the clearer the signal, and the more beneficial the response. In this case, intensity equals effectiveness.

Effectiveness matters, because most people are not genetically gifted. The dudes you see on the muscleman mag covers, they didn’t get that way because they had effective workouts. Barring steroids, they’d look like that by doing pretty much any workout. They have bodies that respond to motion, whereas most of us have to do actual exercise -- the effective kind, that we’ve talked about before.

So, depending on your genes to keep you healthy and looking good is a bad plan. It’s like depending on luck. It’s not a plan at all. It’s depending on your body, your animal body, rather than your magnificent human brain. Your body is what got you out of shape. Your brain will get you back into shape -- by disciplining the beast, the way a lion tamer works his craft. Crack the whip.

If people could do it on their own, there would be no fitness specialists. On the other hand, if people could set their own broken bones or treat their diabetes, there would be no doctors. Point is, we need help. Help with what’s effective, rather than what’s a waste of effort, and help with motivation -- it’s all so emotional, after all. It’s on you, you know, your health and appearance and the way you feel. But feel free to ask for help.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Bob's Photo Album

Bob is a bodybuilder. Bob Dude. He is totally jazzed about his phenomenal training!!! He's emailed FW a number of photos he'd like to post, enthusing people about his life!!!!!!!

Here's the house Bob says he grew up in, on the road up to the Hollywood reservoir. Bob says he still lives there.

He says it has a lot of stairs.


This is Bob's old "psycho" girl friend Gwen. Bob says he is "so totally over her." Bob says that some wisenheimers say Gwen is a man, but Bob thinks that's just ignorant. He thinks they are ignorant of basic anatomy.

Bob says Gwen totally cut up his comic book collection with pinking shears.


This is Bob's dog Yoda, that cost $1700.

That's Gwen holding him. "Before she got totally fat," Bob adds. Bob says she claimed it was a glandular problem. "Yeah," says Bob, "if a spoon is a gland." He asks, "Where can you hide ice cream?"


Here's Ursula, Bob's latest girlfriend. Bob made an inappropriate comment about her, which shall not be repeated.
Then Bob got a little abusive and insulting toward other men, and calls them "epicene little babbits." Bob may have a hormonal imbalance that affects his judgment and civility.


Bob says this is his workout buddy, who is "something big in the entertainment industry." Bob declines to drop any names, but says "you have definitely heard of him." The italics are his.



Bob maintains that this is the product of "hard work and perseverance," and that "you too can look this good, if you really want it."  The emphases are again his.

Here's Bob, he says. He says he's a bit unsatisfied with his left latissimus dorsi, which he says seems a little puny compared to the right, but he thinks it may be the lighting. He says it feels symmetrical, what he can reach of it.
Bob thinks people stare at him, and is often heard to say, "Hey, I'm up here. A little privacy?"


Bob has many photos of himself and his life. If you would like to see more, he says, on his private subscription website, he wants you to email him and he will send you an application form. He says you will not be sorry.

So that's Bob and what he thought he'd like to share of his life in pictures. Who are we to judge? If his aesthetics and common sense are a tad different than our own, at least he seems to be doing no harm.

Most people have different goals than Bob's. Most folks want to increase their level of fitness, so that they feel and function at a level better than they have ever known. We think those are excellent goals. Most people, deep down, admit that appearance is important, but health is even more important. We agree. It's a package deal, where fitness, health and appearance are highly correlated.  Sensible and beneficial goals, well, how sensible.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank