Knee Tuck Jumps

December 26, 2010 Leave a comment

Knee-Tuck Jumps

Objective: Improve vertical jumping ability and explosive power.

Standing in a vertical position with feet shoulder width apart, jump vertically, bringing the knees up to the chest before returning to the ground.  Land in a standing position and repeat immediately, spending as little time on the ground as possible.

Note: To prevent knee injuries, be sure to land with the knees slightly bent.  To improve explosive power, be sure to spend as little time on the ground in-between jumps as possible.

Filed under Fitness Stuff

Named Ranges

December 25, 2010 2 Comments

If you’re like me, your spreadsheets can become rather unwieldy.  More often than not, a big reason is that I have to refer to a cell in several places.  While using absolute references and relative references appropriately is helpful, they don’t make things as easy as they could be.

Figure 1: Sales Data Table

Say you’re working with the table on the right.  You have been asked to report the  Total males and total females, as well as the total items and dollars sold for each gender

Using the Countif() and Sumif() formulas, the most common ways would be:

for the total person for each gender:
=COUNTIF(B2:B6,”Male”) (the count for female is exactly the same)

for the sum of items sold and dollars collected:
=SUMIF(B2:B6,”Male”,C2:C6) (the sum for females and/or Total Dollars collected is exactly the same) Read more of this post

Filed under Business Stuff

Starting to learn VBA

December 25, 2010 Leave a comment

For years, I’d wanted to learn VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) so that I could leverage more of what Excel, Access, and the whole Microsoft Suite have to offer.  Heck, I also wanted to learn more cool tricks so I could impress my colleagues.  But, like with many things in the academic/learning world, unless you have something specific to relate to, a real-life purpose or application for the material that you are learning, the learned “stuff” resides in your brain only temporarily.  So, it wasn’t until such real-world reasons for using VBA presented themselves that I started to really dig in. Read more of this post

Filed under Business Stuff

We all have a little Brett Favre in us

December 23, 2010 2 Comments

Brett Favre- Just Like Us?

Brett Favre.  The saga.  The drama.  Well, it looks like it’s finally come to an end.  Which brings me to an interesting conversation on the topic I just had with a colleague of mine.  He is a fantasy football player and, although he didn’t play, is very knowledgeable about the game.  I often feel like people (people who have not played the sport at a high level or at all) should not voice their opinion. But I admit that is a pompous attitude.  But, in this case, I think most of the world (or those who follow the Favre saga, which seems to be the whole world) are wrong, even-and especially- former athletes.

As I have said (and will probably continue to say because I just can’t let it go, LOL), I played college football.  And after thirteen years of playing (from the age of eight), giving it up was hard.  Very hard.  Ask anyone who’s had to walk off the field or court or out of the pool for the last time and had to remove that uniform that you will he never wear again and he will tell you.  It is a very, very hard thing to do.  Very, very hard.  I cannot overstate that.

Now imagine if you’d played that sport for over thirty years.  Heck, Brett Favre played in the NFL longer than I played football period.  Now imagine that, after running around the track hundreds of times, or diving into the pool thousands of times, or grounding balls from your dad or coach for hours upon hours- all of a sudden you have to stop! Abruptly stop.  Tomorrow morning when the alarm goes off, you have no practice to go to.  You have no rehab to do.  And most importantly, you have no teammates to joke around with in the locker room.  Again: very, very hard.  Very, very, very hard. Read more of this post

Filed under Deep Thoughts and Philosophy

Squat Jumps

December 21, 2010 Leave a comment

Squat Jumps

Objective: Develop explosive jumping ability.  Improve flexibility in hips and knees.

Beginning in a squat position, and using arms and legs, jump vertically and horizontally forward, maximizing both height and distance.  Land with knees slightly bent, return to squat position, and repeat movement.

Note: The key is to maximize both height and distance, focusing more on height.  Be especially careful to land with knees bent.  Movement can be performed with hands behind head or at sides, used in a swinging upward motion for momentum and added power.

Filed under Fitness Stuff

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