Do you have an MP3 player? Load it up with montage music and lose yourself to the drama.
Oh hell yes. "You're the Best Around", "Eye of the Tiger", "Gonna Fly Now"... good times.
Problem is, he doesn't want to add too much bulk, as that would probably actually hinder his running. I would honestly work more on tone (muscular endurance) than strength for now. The strength will come with tone, just not as quickly.
You're right there. I do want to be stronger, but one of my main advantages as a runner is that I only have to move 120 pounds for three miles instead of, say, 150. The way things are right now, a large fraction of my weight is in my legs. To the point where pushups are staggeringly easy because in general I get heavier the closer you get to the fulcrum (the feet). In fact, here's a hilarious anecdote.
There's this physics experiment that my class was doing a couple weeks ago that had to do with center of mass. Apparently, if you stand two footlengths (the length of your foot) away from a wall and bend over at 90 degrees so that your head is touching the wall, it is very difficult to lift a chair placed between you and the wall. The goal of the experiment was to illustrate the principle of 'toppling', wherein changing your center of mass to be no longer over your base of support would cause you to fall down. According the the experiment, women could usually pick up the chair with no difficulty because of their wider hips and therefore lower center of mass. Because men typically have narrower hips and wider upper bodies, it was said to be impossible for them to pick up the chair, as their center of mass wouldn't be over their feet and therefore their heads would fall back to the wall to provide a wider base of support. Now, the interesting part. I have really dense (not gigantic, just dense) leg muscles and not the greatest of upper body strength. Because of this, my center of gravity ended up being right on top of the area bounded by my two big toes. What this meant is that it was possible for me to lift the chair, but only with extreme effort. My classmates didn't really understand the logic behind the experiment at the time, just that generally the gender of the lifter affects the outcome. They immediately assumed that I could only lift the chair because I tried
really hard. Cue all of them attempting the experiment again, but with far more gusto. One of them actually lifted the chair off of the ground for a split second, but then he rotated forward again and smacked his head on the wall. Encouraged by this success, he kept trying. After he hit his head about a dozen times, my physics teacher finally told him to stop. It was pretty funny watching my teacher's face though - he didn't like that kid very much at all.
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9720994 times)