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Read It Later Button

Matt — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:57:15 +0000

It’s no secret that I’m a verbose writer. I try to keep my articles under a 4000 word cut-off, but that’s still a chunk of text to digest on a computer screen. As much as I love to read, even I don’t have the patience to sit staring at the window for 10-20 minutes to [...]

A Systems View of Exercise

Matt — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:00:08 +0000

This article began to take shape after reading another well-intended internet complaint about how mock-quote “science” has no relevance to practical get-in-the-gym exercise. As pro-science as I am, I have to admit there’s a lot of truth to that point of view. You don’t have to look much further than the papers passed around the [...]

Brain States & Willpower

Matt — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 23:13:01 +0000

Now that we’ve officially flipped into another new year, activity at the gym — and in the kitchen — is about to boil over into that first-quarter frenzy of new goals, new resolutions, and the hard determination that only the buzz of the holiday season can kindle. For the starry-eyed masses recently-committed to laying down [...]

My Favorite Books from 2011

Matt — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 19:00:15 +0000

I read a lot. Have I mentioned that? This year I managed to put back more than a few books, and now that we’re winding up 2011 I want to give a nod to those that really stuck out to me (a list which, in the interest of brevity, only covers books published in 2011) [...]

Outside Context Problem

Matt — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 19:00:59 +0000

I rank Iain M. Banks as one of my favorite authors. Banks’ Culture series was one of my first exposures to so-called “literary science fiction”, which uses the backdrop of science and technology but also focuses on interesting characters and quality prose not always associated with “sci-fi”. The Culture books deal with the eponymous anarchistic [...]

Knowing Stuff [How to Learn a New Subject]

Matt — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 19:00:17 +0000

A question I’ve been asked a lot, and never really sat down to answer, is how I go about learning new things. Before going there, I want to tackle the whole “smart” matter. I think that, firstly, “smart” — or “knowing lots of stuff” — has more to do with the amount of time you’re [...]

Brogram Design 101

Matt — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 19:00:04 +0000

The last few months, during my yearly layoff from hard training (I’d rather spend my free time at the pub during New Zealand’s nice summer weather, and “yearly layoff” sounds nicer than “lazy slug”), I’ve been gravitating towards less demanding, more fun kinds of lifting. Regular readers will know of my love for autoregulated daily [...]

Research of Interest [28 Nov 2011]

Matt — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 21:54:38 +0000

Since I get Pubmed updates every Sunday, I usually find one or two papers that catch my eye. I figure it’s worth having a look at them, what they mean, and why they’re interesting to me. First up, here’s a new one from Stu Phillips’s team up at McMaster University. Associations of exercise-induced hormone profiles [...]

A Fresh Start

Matt — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:00:08 +0000

Back in early 2007, when I first decided to start a website, I had a mission in mind: to parody, satirize, and criticize the Fitness Industry. For those of you that aren’t aware, even the “Amped Training” brand name was meant as a riff on the hype-filled ad-copy used to sell supplements and diets and [...]

What is Genius?

Matt — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 02:39:51 +0000

We throw around the words smart and intelligent and genius casually, and I'm not sure that really applies to someone who writes articles about pumping biceps or how to eat Paleo. I don't think there's any such thing as genius in strength & conditioning. When I think genius, I'm thinking names like Isaac Newton, Bernhard Riemann, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Albert Einstein, Claude Shannon, Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing, Richard Feynman, Douglas Hofstadter. (If none of these names ring a bell, then you may not understand why my bar for genius is set so high.) Reading anything written by those names (and plenty of others I've left out for brevity) leaves me feeling roughly the intellectual size of an ant scaled against Mt. Everest. At least one valid definition of genius must be that its sheer capability leaves you profoundly aware of your own limitations.