My lifting split

im6footLeave a comment

Here’s my current work out split:

Monday – Legs(Quad focus)
Back squat – 4 x 6-8
Leg press – 4 x 15-20
Gobler squat – 4 x 10-12
Walking lunges – 4 x 8-10
Leg extensions – 4 x 12-15
Calf raises – 4 x ♾

Tuesday – Shoulders, Back, Biceps
DB shoulder press – 4 x 8-12
Y-raises – 4 x 8-10
Rear delt push downs – 4 x 10-12
T-bar rows – 4 x 6-8
Kneeling lat rows – 4 x 8-10
Single arm lat pull downs – 4 x 8-10
Spider curls – 4 x 10-12
Seated curls – 4 x 10-12
Curl machine – 4 x 5 (heavy)

Wednesday – Chest, Triceps
DB bench press – 4 x 8-12
Incline press machine – 4 x 6-8 (heavy)
Seated chest flys – 4 x 10-12
PecDec – 4 x 8-10 (banded)
Weighted push ups – 4 x 8-10
Single arm push downs – 4 x 10-12 (each arm)
Long rope push downs – 4 x 8-12
Weighted dips – 4 x 6-8 (heavy)

Thursday – Legs (Hamstring focus)
BB RDLs – 4 x 8-10
DB RDLs – 4 x 6-8 (heavy)
High leg press – 4 x 10-12
Laying leg curls – 4 x 10-12
Seated leg curls – 4 x 12-15
Calf raises – 4 x ♾

Friday – Chest & Back
DB bench press – 4 x 8-10
DB incline bench press – 4 x 8-10
Low to high flys – 4 x 10-12
Seated rows – 4 x 10-12
DB lat rows – 4 x 8-10
Face pulls – 4 x 10-12
Banded pull ups – 4 x ♾

Saturday – SARMs (Shoulders & Arms)
Shoulder DB press – 4 x 6-10
Y- raises – 4 x 10-12
Shoulder press machine – 4 x 6-8 (heavy)
Spider curls – 4 x 10-12
Seated curls – 4 x 10-12
Ez bar curls – 4 x 8-10
Single arm push downs – 4 x 10-12 (each arm)
Long rope push downs – 4 x 10-12
Sing arm machine extensions – 4 x 8-10

Sunday – Active rest day
Bike – 30 minutes

pc: time.com

Living away from home

karolineticoLeave a comment

When I was 4 years old, I lived away from my parents for the first time as I went to a boarding school for kindergarten. At the age of 11, I moved even further away, to a foreign country on the other side of the earth. Through living independently (not completely independent, I had to live with a host family or in a boarding school) at a relatively young age, I’ve experienced both positive and negative sides to it. 

I can have a lot more freedom since my parents are far away, and I can do whatever I want in my free time. But this also brings the major downside— the loss of self-control. I always had a hard time with time management, and after I started to study abroad, the situation became worse. I didn’t know a lot of English, so I didn’t understand anything in class, I tried to take notes without knowing even what they meant, but it didn’t work, and I still can’t keep up with my class.  Being the only Chinese student, the overwhelming foreign language and environment smacked me. I gave up doing any school work, resulting in a row of Fs on my transcript.

Although I don’t regret anything about my experience, my suggestion to parents who are considering sending their kids to another country is: to make sure their child knows what they are doing before sending them off to a place full of strangers. 

morehouse.edu

Poetry, again, again.

im6footLeave a comment

I have a dog,

I walk in the fog,

Built like a pig, like a hog

This is a blog,

I have good dialogue,

In the morning I take a jog,

I love cereal, Kellogg

Barbecue, Hotdog

I jump high, names frog

Around the holidays I drink eggnog

pc: toledolibrary.org

Her Made me Feel Empty

cannassuerLeave a comment

On Wednesday, I had to go through the lovely experience of an almost 20-hour travel day to get back from Barcelona to LA. On the long flight from Frankfurt, I did something quite out of character. Instead of just taking Melatonin and crashing for the whole flight, I only crashed for half and decided to watch a movie to pass the rest of the time. The movie I decided to watch was a movie called Her which I had heard was one of the best-made movies in the 2010s.

Going into this movie I was pretty much expecting a two-hour-long Black Mirror episode with some pretty creepy undertones. Although I was only half right, I was not prepared for what I was about to experience. First of all, watching such a movie with the very heightened emotions that come with flying is not the best idea. Second of all, this movie is one of those Black Mirror-Esque experiences that could actually happen in my lifetime. Which is always an extremely off-putting experience. Before I get into how depressed this movie made me I just want to appraise this movie for how well made it is. Not only does it work with color imagery and contrast so well, but every character is so good and so well acted out it’s almost surreal. The way this movie deals with the depression of separating from a partner, the awkwardness of a new relationship, and even a human falling in love with a brand new Artificial Intelligence experience is genius. Every emotion conveyed in this movie is so real, it makes you want to close down your heart and never open yourself up to human emotion ever again.

Photo Credit: BBC

To someone who’s never watched this movie, it’s probably pretty weird to think that a movie about a man falling in love with a computer could provoke any real emotions, but it does. It really does. Honestly, this movie made me feel more empty than Your Lie in April, The Joker, and Dead Poets Society combined. I mean this movie made me feel like a hollow husk of a human being. It’s actually insane to me that the makers of this film even pulled it off. Her is one of those movies that was drastically ahead of its time. For being made in 2013, it could have easily made a similar if not bigger impact if it were released today.

Photo Credit: Rescu

AP Chemistry Exam

udarsh318Leave a comment

So the AP Chem exam is coming up. May second, which is in like a week and a half and I am beyond screwed. The exam is so impossibly hard that a 44% is passing, you get a 3 for a 44% on the exam which is just crazy. We’re gonna have our class final exam sometime next week which is right before the AP exam, and hopefully, that will prepare me for the AP. I guess in the past the final exam for the class was a pretty good indicator of how you would do on the AP exam so I guess we’ll see how I do next week. I’ve been studying so much, like every night I have FRQ’s or multiple choice questions to do. We had a 54 page slideshow to work on over spring break, which I did ok on but that’s not a very good indicator of the AP exam. Now we have like 8 FRQ’s due on Monday and some of these FRQ’s have like 9 parts (a,b,c,d,e, etc) which is just a crazy amount of questions.

AP Chem Exam Review - PTHS AP CHEMISTRY
Photo Credit- PTHS AP Chemistry https://pthsapchem.weebly.com/ap-chem-exam-review.html

Poetry, again

im6footLeave a comment

I lift weights

I have mates

My least favorite fruit is dates

I’m currently looking for good insurance rates

I love playing Crazy Eight’s

When my mom gets angry she throws plates

I work at the docs, carrying crates

Our future awaits;

This poem needs someone to narrates.

pc: vecteezy.com

Pilgrim Game

udarsh318Leave a comment

Yesterday, we had our second volleyball game against the Pilgrim School. The first time we played them it was at their court which was nice cause it was indoor and stuff, but this time it was a home game. Having it as a home game definitely makes a difference too. We have an outdoor grass court which is far different from an indoor court, you lose a lot of energy jumping on grass compared to jumping on a court, as the grass absorbs a ton of the power you put into the jump to go for a block or spike. Anyway, we did a lot better this time around than when we played them a month or two ago. We were playing our best then but our best was not very good, now we played our best and we held our own. The first time we played them we lost every set and only scored around 12 or 15 points in the three sets, but this time we were able to win two sets which were just awesome. We have never played like that before and we might not again, but honestly, I’m proud of what we did. This is the first year that our school has even had a boys volleyball team ever, and not a single one of us has ever played competitive volleyball in our entire lives. But man do we love it. I think it might be the favorite sports season we’ve had for most if not all of us even though we are probably not going to win the league like we have for the other two sports seasons. Despite our complete lack of experience, we have some incredible players that have held it down for the team in quite a few games. Anyway, next year we are going to beat Pilgrim for sure, we will all have more experience and since none of us are seniors, we will be playing with the same group of guys we have been playing with this year which means we won’t have to relearn the game and how we play with one another. Anyway, I love volleyball and I think our game against Pilgrim only reinforced that love for the sport.

BYU men's volleyball one win away from national title
Photo Credit- Salt Lake Tribune https://www.sltrib.com/sports/byu-cougars/2021/05/06/byu-mens-volleyball-one/

A Pattern

bartholomulethegreatLeave a comment

The reason that we as a class in journalism write these blogs weekly is that some of us enjoy writing about stuff and sharing our opinions but it is also a required project for the class. The blogs are all graded by a rather strongly opinioned small person who very much so has a specific type of blog that they enjoy reading and that they grade highly. For example, if you the reader were to guess what kind of blog that I have written has done the best I’d be willing to bet that you’d probably be wrong in your assumption. Out of all my blogs, there are six about video games, ten about me and my life, and three about music or tv shows. Out of all these blogs on average I tend to receive lower grades on ones about video games and sports, I don’t know if this is because of the fact that I can be a mediocre writer at times or just a consistent thought process from the grader. Also, I don’t know if it’s just because it’s me or something but all my blogs about my various injuries such as breaking my arm or the stitches that I have gotten in the past. But I tend to score higher on injury stories and blogs about music. And it might make sense to lean into that but I ran out of injuries to write about at this point in time. And yes I could write about music but I don’t really have any new music I’m listening to right now it’s just some old stuff. Personally, I feel like it would be interesting to see how the journalism members’ grades would change if the grading of blogs was put in the hands of someone else. Would it be a positive impact or a negative one, there are a couple of students that I think would make my grade go up because of their common interest in video games and anime. But on the other hand, I feel like certain students might grade me poorly just as a general dislike towards my writing topics and or me as a person. I don’t think that I would be a good grader because of the fact that I am not the greatest person at noticing errors in writing.

Image Credit: Readers Digest

Plans For The Future

bartholomulethegreatLeave a comment

So far in my life, I have had many experiences that have shaped me into the person I am now. I have traveled all over places including Canada, Germany, and Mexico and all of these places have shown me different cultures and people. I have had the privilege to learn to snowboard and I have been riding dirt bikes for over ten years now. Even with all this under my belt, all I can wonder about is what is to come for my future. Such as where am I going to go to college and what will I learn to love, for example, I really want to major in some sort of computer-related degree such as computer science or computer engineering. But I also want to do outdoor activities such as snowboarding and dirt-biking. So I will have to find places in which I can do both, the convenient thing about the career path that I would like to have is that it allows me to work in almost any place and almost any category of work. For example, if I wanted to live in the mountains in a place where I could snowboard in the summer and dirt bike in the summer I could and I would be able to do that while also being able to do my work from home or work on the mountain in some way. All I know now is what I can do to help myself go towards that goal, I can learn to code better and I can apply to colleges that may lead to what I want to have in life but all I know now is that the future is a really interesting and scary thing that I have very little control over and I cant wait to see.

Image Credit: Vivente Australia

Using Spanish

navraj22Leave a comment

I have taken Spanish casually for 9 years now and at no point have I thought I have been good at it. I never really paid attention until high school, but completing workbook pages in Spanish was my least favorite homework. The work I was assigned was habitually tedious and boring. On the other hand, I thoroughly enjoy listening to music in Spanish and speaking Spanish with people who speak the language.

Last year, I hated Spanish 3 Honors. I hated learning tenses and rules, what even is the reflexive? This year I am in AP Spanish, which is more conversation and application-based, which is the first Spanish class I have really enjoyed. My speaking ability has improved immensely, and I have a good grades without feeling like I am slaving over the work. This has given me confidence in speaking that I never really had before.

I have also started speaking mostly Spanish to the new girl in my grade from Spain. I have talked to her friends who only speak Spanish for hours on the phone and have gotten only good reviews.

I am very proud of how far I have come in speaking Spanish and feel like I can have a decently fluent conversation with just anyone.

PC: Pintrest