Super Stacks

Two of the more popular workout methods, if you will, are Super-Sets and Stacking, also known as drop sets.  With the HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) I’ve been doing lately, I do a lot of the former.  The same can’t be said for the latter.  I used drop sets, a great way to break through strength and size plateaus, regularly when I was younger, especially when I was playing football in college and couldn’t gain weight to save my life. (There are days I wish I had that problem still.)  But with a hectic schedule that forced me to reduce the time I spend in the gym and, frankly, a change in goals from wanting to be the strongest and biggest I could (while still athletic, of course) to aspiring to be lean and fit, I’ve all but eliminated them from my regimen.

Welcome back, Drop Sets!  And meet your cousin, Super, “Set” that is.   Read more of this post

Calculated Decision-Making

Cracking the code to the safe is hard enough. You better write down the misses as you go along!

If you were trying to break into a safe that had a five-digit combination, how would you do it? Would you haphazardly guess at the sequence of numbers, hoping you’d stumble upon the correct digits in the right order? Not very efficient, right? Would you try to uncover any clues that might help you decipher what those numbers might be? A better approach, certainly, but still difficult. Knowing on what the combination was based—birthday, favorite numbers, anniversary maybe—is difficult enough. But then you’d need to figure out what the answer to those clues might be. Whatever approach taken, cracking the code of any safe is almost impossible. That’s a good thing, right? Unless you’re a thief, that is. With 100,000 combinations (10 possibilities, including ‘0’, for each digit, raised to the power of 5 for the number of digits in the combination), you have a better chance of becoming a pro athlete (a good thing: 1 in 22,000) or getting audited by the IRS (a bad thing: 1 in 175). But if you were stupid enough to try this feat, what would be the one thing you would have to do? Document all of the failed attempts. After all, if a combination is not correct, you surely don’t want to repeat it.

But that’s exactly what happens a lot of times in business. Especially in small businesses. Often, even, in successful ones. Let’s be honest; the reasons entrepreneurs start businesses are many. But one of the more common ones is to escape the rules, policies, and overall bureaucracy they have faced as employees in other companies. And as we can all attest, there are certainly reasons to dislike these rigid systems, often designed more to play ‘big brother’ and keep employees in line than to get real work done. Read more of this post

The right to (bare) arms

People have always given me a hard time about my arms  It used to irritate– no, anger– me when people would insist that my arms were the only body part I worked on.  One of my best friends still teases me.  “Put some sleeves on for goodness sake!” he always tells me.

Okay, the truth is I do like to work on my biceps and triceps.  And even though I’ve always worked on my whole body– after all, one can’t really play college football without at least a little focus on chest, legs, and back–I’ll let the worst kept secret out of the bag; I like doing arms.  Heck, on most days I’ll even admit that I like the way they look.  Moreover, it’s become my signature body part.  Kind of like Angelina Jolie’s lips, “The Situation’s” abs, Frank Sinatra’s baby blues, or Kim Kardashian’s backside.  Well, maybe they’re not quite to those levels of fame and recognition.  But a guy can dream, right? Read more of this post

Schock Your Abs into Summer Shape (and yes, I know how to spell shock!)

By: Julie Manriquez (jamwritingservices@gmail.com)

Congressman Aaron Schock's abs on the cover of June's Men's Health

Last week freshman congressman, Aaron Schock, opened his shirt for the cover of the June issue of Men’s Health. Holy House of Representatives, Batman! There’s no denying that even with the airbrushing and Photoshop® removal of every bodily hair, this 8-pack (yes, with the transverse abdominus, it’s an 8-pack) is worthy of some superhero Spandex. But, Mr. Schock is 29-years-old and a Republican, which means that gravity is currently working in his favor and he enjoys sporting at least a couple of guns at all times (I’m pretty sure I see them under the shirt sleeves!). Some of my best pals are Republicans and occasionally I find myself wavering in a moderate or even (gasp!) right hand direction on issues, but these conservative abs and hyper-masculine peacocking are simply not enough to urge this mostly leftwingin’ mother of two to inch my pinkie toe across the aisle. Mr. Schock’s stance on women’s rights (he voted to defund Planned Parenthood) and global warming (opposes the reduction of coal and oil usage and believes there is little, if any, evidence of global warming and it’s effects) does not fall in line with his reported desire to reach out to the MTV generation.

Not much makes me waver from my usual news sources (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central, and Chelsea Lately on E!), but this kind of hypocrisy offers the kind of intrigue that even the most credible installment of TMZ might miss. Read more of this post

Top n Lists with Excel

I love data! I love collecting it, analyzing it, finding answers inside it, and ultimately presenting it. But even I find it hard at times to sort through and make sense of it all. That’s why I love dashboards and really encourage all business owners, managers, and employees to incorporate them into their daily work lives. Whether it’s having a clear look into the health of the company, figuring out which expenses are out of hand, or understanding how fast (or slow) customers are paying their bills; well prepared and presented dashboards can save decision makers a lot of time and money.

One of the most fundamental things you can achieve with dashboards is the filtering of data, narrowing information into the most pertinent, important, or actionable. Commonly in the form of top n lists, where n is any number of items you care to look at, using MS Excel to organize this type of information is actually fairly simple. Even if you are allergic to dashboards or any structured system for understanding information, there are certainly other applications for it. Maybe you’re keeping a running total of the minutes your basketball players are logging, trying to avoid fatigue. Or you want to continually look at which products are your best sellers. Or maybe you just want to keep track of and reward your top sales people. Again, all of this is easy and made possible with Excel. Read more of this post