Search?

Sunday, November 26, 2017

Post Sandow's system training with heavier weights

Hello, everyone reading this!
After I finished training by Sandow's system I had a choice to follow Sandows suggestion and take up on heavier equipment like barbells and stuff and do it his way (there a part in his book about it) or use some more modern way of training. I chose the latter and embarked on a great journey of lifting weights using contemporary way of doing so.

I chose a natural bodybuilder who is a vegetarian on top of that to be my virtual mentor. Yet he uses dairy products so maybe he is a lactovegetarian, I am not sure about his vegetarianism's name, but I am sure that he gained quite a good size for his muscles. I found him on Youtube and watched his explanation on training and exercises and I liked them so I adopted his suggestions and started to train accordingly.

My results are humble yet since I want to take it easy and raise my food intake very slowly. I started with 150 grams of food each meal (3 meals a day) plus a chicken breast each time. Then after a while I ate 175 grams and now I am at 200 grams a meal. I'll keep raising it once or twice a month until I see that my muscles grow and that I become stronger. For now there is no growth, but it doesn't matter much to me since I want to take it easy and slowly.

I use my parallel bars and a horizontal bar for dips and pull-ups, dumbbells and a barbell for various exercises for different parts of my body plus a bench with adjustable angle of its back.

I had 24 training sessions so far and here are my results (which are almost none)
after approximately one month of training (12 sessions) all in centimeters:
Weight: 70.55kg
Neck: 39.5
Biceps LR: 35.5; 36
Forearms LR: 29.2; 30
Chest (inhaled): 106
Waist: 76.5
Thighs LR: 56.5; 57
Calves LR: 38; 37.8
The training targeted: forearms, shoulders, broadest muscle of back, abs, chest, trapezius.

Results after another 12 sessions:
Weight: 70.55kg
Neck: 38.5
Biceps LR: 35.5; 36.5
Forearms LR: 29; 29.5
Chest (inhaled): 106
Waist: 76
Thighs LR: 56.5; 57
Calves LR: 38; 37.7
The training targeted: chest,shoulders,broadest muscle of back, frontal muscles of legs, trapezius, back muscles of legs and waist.

Here are my photos after 24 training sesssions with heavier equipment -






I made my wife lift weights too!



I also trained her to do her first pull-up and a chin-up! Proud of her!



Sunday, October 29, 2017

Transformers choujin master force

When the Japanese overtook the Transformers series something had happened. To some it was a change for the best, to some it was for the worst, as for me - I don't know what to make of it. The continuity improved without a doubt, but the nonsensical plot twists and events maybe even worsened. The Japanese love crazy stuff wich is not really compatible with science fiction which the Transformers once were.

I found a mistake in the animation, Lightfoot has a writing on his chest "RACING" which became inverted once:

They look alike to me!

These two females look alike to my eye. Do you agree?
The girl on the right


looks like this girl (Kathryn Taylor)


Broken English and SpongeBob advertising Chinese ice-cream

Hello. Could you discern what was meant by those seemingly English writings on a wall in an unknown Chinese photo-studio?



It seems that SpongeBob Squarepants advertises some Chinese ice-cream without any permission from the trademark holder. I contacted them but they ignored my letter, so I'm just putting the ice-cream cover photos here.



Thursday, October 12, 2017

Parodying the great Eugen Sandow!

My first pick up of a human being and holding it over my head!

I continue my fitness

Hello, everyone!
After I finished my training by Sandow's system I still keep to do exercises, only using a different method. I use heavier dumbbells and a barbell, I do a different set of exercises which  I hope can make me stronger and more muscular.
These are the tools I use:




In these photos I just caught a good angle and lighting which made me look good, I think :)



I also made my wife do some exercises so she could achieve a pull-up or a chin-up because she finished her Sandow's training and still can't do even one pull-up. I think it's a shame and I make her train for it. This is how she can't do a pull-up:

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

FINAL FANTASY XIII stupidity


Hello
I recently beat FINAL FANTASY XIII and I want to tell you my impressions.
First of all the game is terrible as a FINAL FANTASY main title as it has very little to do with the main series mechanics and gameplay. This game should have been called a spin-off, not the main title entry.
The game lacks all the charming points of a FF RPG and it falls flat at delivering the old fans of the series good things. I was excited to try the next gen game after finishing PS2 FF title and some NDS spin-offs. FF XII was quite alright but I still couldn't forgive the developers for not including the ability of a free roaming on a world map which was included in FF IX last time skipping next two entries in the series. In any case both PS2 FF titles were much more limited in terms of exploration and your actions compared to PS1 FF games, but at least they were still "FINAL FANTASY" games, you could feel it and you could still enjoy it. With the coming of the next gen console (PS3) and the FF title on it I expected all the limitations to be lifted and I thought the new game would give me freedom like never before plus amazing graphical improvements  which didn't happen.

The game became even more limited and almost completely lost all RPG parts which before made me a FINAL FANTASY fan. There are no cities, there are no villages, there are no NPCs to interact with and get some hints on finding treasures or secret places because there is no world map to explore, no big locations to roam, only a corridor style levels with the same boring battles with the same boring monsters which lack in variety. All the interaction goes between party members but the player is not involved as he is not given any choice in dialogues, the player just watches and listens to animated cut scenes and he is never given any choice. The story of the game has a main idea of not giving up and not agreeing with your destiny or whatsoever, but to fight and to follow your own choice and heart. Surprisingly the game doesn't give any choice to the player who blindly follows the plot unable to make any changes to any aspects of the story or even to dialogues between the party members or those rare and fake NPCs which don't bear any meaning at all, were they absent in the game, it would change nothing. Those few NPCs are in the game only for the sole purpose of telling the players that the developers put them there and they are there! That's all.
There are no mini games here which were very popular in previous FF games. The game is easy and the only place where the difficulty suddenly rises to an inadequate level is chapter 11 (there are 13 chapters in total) where I had to switch to EASY difficulty level as killing monsters became too difficult and impossible in many cases without a long and boring grinding which still doesn't help as the party members' levels are limited by the story. You just can't level up unless you go farther in the story and when you do you will have already lost the interest to come back and fight those tough monsters because you have already beaten the game! You saw the end credits, you saw the THE END screen, you don't want to play more since there is no point. Getting some stronger weapons or rare armor or making more money loses its point since the game is over and you don't feel like continuing playing when nothing will happen, no story advancement, no new twists or anything.

I am not afraid to say that FF13 was the worst game in the series. If they called it something like "FINAL FANTASY the defenders of Cocoon" without putting number XIII in the title and considered it as an experimental spin-off then I wouldn't have any complaints because it wouldn't fail at satisfying my expectations, but since it was called "FINAL FANTASY XIII" I had the right to imagine a FINAL FANTASY game only improved and better than the previous ones.

I forgot to mention how stupidly the invisible walls are placed in this game. You can't move your character anywhere except the straight path in front of you, you can't fall off a cliff and such - everywhere are the invisible walls. Jump points are stupid too, where developers put the jump points you can jump like a flea flying over huge crevices and taking up on 20 meters heights or more, but when there is no jump point placed by the developers then you become a toddler who can't climb or jump even on half meter height or jump over a crack in the floor of the same size. Looks really stupid.
I hate this game on which I wasted about 70 hours of my life and unfortunately there are two more of the same shit quality fake Final Fantasy titles with the same protagonist female called Lightning. :(
You may say that I can skip the two, yet I can't because I must play them all being the fan of the series and all. I heard that the next number entry (FF14) is much better than this spawn of the otherwise great series and goes back to an RPG game style. So while waiting for its release for PC I can go through the worst to enjoy the better even more than I would if I had never played "FINAL FANTASY XIII, XIII-2, XIII Lightning returns.

Now, there are some really idiotic designer decisions in the game concerning monsters. It may be the same in some previous games but I somehow didn't notice these things before and in this game they popped right in my eyes so I couldn't let them go.
Some monsters in the game wear clothes and use some tools and equipment which is hard to believe since you never see anything like monster towns and cities nor factories where they would produce all the needed equipment for themselves. You never see them sitting and making clothes or braiding their hair. You can't imagine that too because there are no prerequisites for it in the game.
So you have a complete feeling of an utter nonsense and falseness of the world of the game. You can clearly see that it's just some dumb developers silly ideas and not "real" monsters of this game universe. Everything is false from the beginning to the end starting with invisible walls around you and ending with disappearance of monsters or humans after a battle (they promptly disintegrate instead of their bodies falling to the ground at least).
Look for yourself and try to imagine all those beasts sewing clothes and making tools (just some examples, there are more monsters like this):

This Ahriman has a cape on him, but I don't see any hands on him which could sew the garment

 The goblin chieftain has a neat pair of goggles, leather pants and a hat which were all produced by who and how? Do goblins rob humans of their clothes? How do they make sure the size is correct? Do they make them on their own? How? When? Where? Goggles, how? Wheels and boots on them is a unique feather of goblins so I think these items couldn't be stolen from humans, then how do they make them?
 The humbaba monster has huge leather sleeves and laces on them, leather shorts, bracelets and a giant sword. Then there must be humbaba clothes makers, humbaba smiths and humbaba armorers to produce these things. Do humbabas buy the equipment from their kin? then do they also have money? then do they have cities somewhere? Families? Tribes?
 Tonberries were present in other FF games too and now I can ask the same questions to the creators of older games - who makes the clothes for them? There must be big settlements of Tonberries somewhere where they live their lives making the shoes, clothes and knives with lamps, right? Why we never see that?
 This Yaksha has his hair (is it hair?) braided and obviously he has clothes on him but he doesn't have arms and hands so it's a mystery how does he make it. So there must be times when all yakshas and their friends get together and help each other with their beaks or something to do the hair and put up some clothes, yes?


The whole idea of this so called Cie'th stones is a total bullshit. Not a single word of truth behind it, nor logic. The story of these stones has it that they are crystallized people who once were chosen by Fal'Cies to do some missions but failed and firstly became Cie'ths (a mindless zombie-like monster only not rotting but crystallizing)  and then after a long-long time of wandering about in the form of Cie'th and finally losing all the energy they became these stones who still try to relay their missions on other chosen ones who happen to pass by.
What is so stupid about it you may ask? The stupid thing is that all the missions are still available for our party. The background story of the stones clearly said that they became like that only after a very long time (hundreds of years) of staying in a form of a mindless "zombie" which is Cie'th. Their missions are usually to defeat a usual monster or another Cie'th. How the hell all those very specific to the mission monsters survived through centuries and are still available in the same place where those Cie'ths were supposed to find them? How those other Cie'ths who were supposed to be defeated by the chosen ones didn't become Cie'th stones? The chosen ones failed at defeating them and became Cie'ths themselves and then after a long time became the stones, but their original Cie'th targets outlived them and didn't become those stones? Why and how could that be? The game doesn't follow it's own rules and logic because there are seems no rules and logic in this game even it pretends to have them. So, if only the mission target is not some immortal never aging and never moving from its place creature the whole "stones missions" crap is just a crap and impossible to exist which gives us another blatant smack in the face of the falseness of this game's "world".







Spoiler alert! Don't read further if you still plan to play this game!
































The whole story is actually a piece of shit which doesn't make any sense.
Our playable characters were talking the whole was through the game up to the last battle about fighting against their mission and not following the plan of the biggest baddie in the game but all their actions were playing along his master plan. As the ultimate purpose for our heroes the bad guy wanted them to fight and kill the Orphan which would make the whole world collapse and kill off all the inhabitants in it as a sacrifice to summon the original god who created the world and Fal'cies in it. So our heroes were always blah-blah about not letting that happen and about killing off the bad guy and not the Orphan, yet in the end they fought the Orphan and successfully killed him which should have invoked the end of the world and deaths of all the people and animals in it. Somehow nothing like that ever happened and we had a happy end! How the hell? Again just no logic or any explanation. They did everything to the last letter what the bad guy Barthandelus wanted but his plan didn't trigger the end result of what he hoped to achieve. In other words it goes like this: you, cut off your finger and throw it away, then you'll live the rest of your life without your precious finger! then you really start cutting off your finger and successfully manage to do so and throw it away, but the next minute instead of 100% guaranteed result of the lost digit on your hand forever and ever you find that your finger is still on it's place and maybe there is only a little scratch. Wouldn't you be surprised by such a twist in your tale?

Saturday, September 30, 2017

Sandow's system female trainee finale (post 4.5 kg dumbbells)

Greetings!
Not long ago I posted about the end of my trials in teh world of Eugen Sandow's system and this time it's the turn of my partner who has completed the cycles successfully. She went through the path of rigorous training with 1.5 kg dumbbells up to 4.5 kg adding half a kilo after every 15th training session. She didn't train very regularly and allowed herself several days breaks between the training sessions but the last cycle was done almost on daily basis.

Let's observe her anthropometric data, how did it change since the beginning and to the end of the system.
This is the data after the first cycle with 1.5 kg dumbbells:
Weight: 40 kg
Biceps LR: 22.5; 23 cm
Forearms LR: 20.5; 21 cm
Chest (inhaled): 76 cm
Waist: 60 cm
Thighs LR: 43.5; 44 cm
Calves LR: 29.5; 30 cm


This is the final data - 
Weight: 37.65 kg
Neck: 29.5 cm
Biceps LR: 23; 23.5 cm
Forearms LR: 20.8; 21.1 cm
Chest (inhaled): 76 cm
Waist: 59.5 cm
Thighs LR: 45; 45.3 cm
Calves LR: 29.2; 30 cm

Let's see her photos after all the training she had:








Saturday, September 23, 2017

Alien boy mannequin

Hello. This Kid Castle preschool institution has a very weird looking mannequin which is supposed to represent a human boy. Strangely enough the other mannequin which represents a human girl looks totally normal.


Wednesday, September 13, 2017

My experiment is over - I finished training by Sandow's system! (Final results after 9 kg dumbbells)

Hello!
It's time to publish the results of my experiment. I think that I couldn't make it pure enough to finally give Sandow's system a solid YES or solid NO, because I strayed from his prescriptions significantly, such as I had my training sessions on a several-days-between-them basis and not on a daily basis like it was supposed to be, I went dieting which undermined my power and size gains and reflected on the results making them minute. 

Yet from what I have felt during my training when I was eating a lot with no limitations I can say that I would still not reach the same or even close muscle mass as Sandow had himself. The same goes for the power, even if I wouldn't be on a diet during several last cycles of the system I would still not be able to perform power feats which Sandow could perform. Not even close and that's for sure. Nevertheless this system can really improve your strength and add some muscles on you but you need to eat well. It will not take away any of your body fat unless you go on a diet.

It was quite a good and pleasurable experience to grow muscles on arms and legs while using just up to 5 kilo dumbbells. Give it a try if you don't feel like using big weights. With just 2-5 kilo dumbbells and good hearty meals every day you can add on average 3 cm to your arms girth and other places.

As for the impressions from the last 9 kilo cycle I can say that it was hard, many of the exercises fell down below the minimum repetitions recommended by Sandow, for example if I needed to do 14 reps of one exercise then I could do only, say 10. One of the hardest was the first exercise (bicep curls) which I usually did only 50 reps without going higher at all. Sometimes I could do 60 or 80 but I have never done 100 or the maximum of 120 reps of bicep curls. My hands were aching too much during the exercise.
Here is day 7 of 9 kg dumbbells training cycle -


Here are videos of me doing push-ups and chin-ups after several days have passed since the end of the last cycle - 





Now the measurements of my body after finishing the last cycle of the system using 9 kg dumbbells.
I took them the next day after the last training, all data is given in cm:
Height: 170
Weight: 70.1 kg
Neck: 38.5
Biceps LR: 35.3; 36.1
Forearms LR: 29; 29.5
Chest (inhaled): 106.9
Waist: 76
Thighs LR: 55.5; 57.5
Calves LR: 38; 37.7











Huang Fei Hong '92 zhi long xing tian xia THE MASTER


Huang Fei Hong '92 zhi long xing tian xia THE MASTER
The voice acting is terrible, lipsync is all wrong whether it's a Cantonese or Putonghua version. English voices are the same for both versions and they are similarly terrible.
Fighting scenes are more or less good because at that time they still didn't use too much of wirework so fights look more or less realistic.
At first it seemed that Jet Li didn't even do simplest tricks or stunts such as just running and jumping over some obstacles not to mention participate in fighting scenes. All the work was done by his "doubles", but later on he did more action job although far from doing all of it. Like this I wonder why there are these "stars" who do almost nothing except showing their faces and moving their mouths if those stuntmen could do it as well plus all the cool things they do instead of the "stars"?

Some bloopers I found in the version I watched. I remember watching another version of this film and there were even more goofs like visible mats lying on the ground for actors' safety and such.

Here Jet Li or starts running after a car but next shots it's his double for some reason:




Here in the fighting sequence a double does most of the job instead of Jet Li:

Here a double of Jet Li does a simple trick of pulling a woman in the bus:

Here a double of Jet Li does a simple work of standing on a platform and holding himself on a rope instead of teh actual Jet Li:
Here a road cop stops at the rear of the car and the road on the right side of him has a central reservation, but the next shot the cop is far behind the car plus the road is different, there is no central reservation:


Here Jet Li's character has his hat blown off his head, but the next moment it's back on his head:



Here the protagonist puts on his sneaker without tightening his shoelaces and we can see one end of the shoelace hanging down, but a bit later after a lot of fighting the lace is in a pretty knot, tight and nice: