Chris Beardsley's Garage Gym

It’s March already!  I can’t believe it.  The year is flying past and it will be Christmas again before we know it.  In the meantime, you can enjoy these great links…

I have a veritable bounty of Star Wars links for those science fiction geeks amongst us.  In fact, I found so many this week, I’m going to split them out into a separate section: 

• A new Star Wars novel has been written by Troy Denning.  This features some significant developments, with Luke in exile and Han and Leia back on the right side of the law.
• And if you thought you were a Star Wars fan, check out the lengths that some people go to with this picture of a Jabba the Hut birthday cake! 
• For those collectors of paraphernalia amongst you, here is a new stormtrooper figurine with some moving parts.  This post also has a number of other links to stormtrooper sites.  There is a whole subculture out there!
• I’ve enjoyed looking at some of the behind the scenes pictures of the Star Wars films, particularly when filming A New Hope (on Tatooine) and The Empire Strikes Back (on Hoth) but this is the first one I’ve seen from Endor in The Return of the Jedi.
• And this set of digitally manipulated pictures will add a new dimension to your Star Wars fantasies as some of the iconic characters and spaceships come to earth: photographer Cedric Delsaux directed these in Dubai.
• Be warned that you really have to be a geek to appreciate this: find out whether you speak BASIC or if you’re just a Wookie.

And now, the rest of the links…

• Moving away from Star Wars, there’s a dinosaur vibe to this week’s set remaining set of links, kicking off with this rather odd helicopter in the shape of a triceratops, dubbed “the Triceracopter”.  I don’t know, what will they think of next?
• Continuing on the dinosaur theme, a new tyrannosaur has been discovered in Mexico.  Unfortunately, it died over 74m years ago so don’t go rushing off to see it.   Dubbed the “Bisti beast”, this creature differed from the T-Rex in various small ways but it was still 30ft long and weighed 3 tonnes.
• If you like Calvin & Hobbes, or you just want to read about T-Rexes flying F-14s, then check out this great appreciation of the Bill Watterson opus.
• Still on the subject of dinosaurs (I jest! I jest!), this old article by Mike Boyle is one of the great classics of the personal training and strength coach lexica.  In Boyle’s inimitable style, he asks you, are you a chef or a cook?  Find out here.
• I am really excited to try this functional mass gaining scheme by Geoff Neupert the next time that I switch programmes.  It sounds fairly close to what I am doing at the moment but the main benefit is that you can do max effort and rep work on the same day, which means that progress should be accelerated.  I am doing something approximating to WS4SB at the moment and while I am putting on mass, I don’t feel like I am pushing my lifts as hard as I could be.
• This article by Louie Simmons on Zach Even-Esh’s site is a combination of old material but it’s worth re-reading to better understand the principles of the conjugate system. 
• Other than dinosaurs, there isn’t much to share by way of a creature feature this week, apart from this amusing couple of pictures.  And I thought I had some weird stuff in my garage until I saw this…
• And the new world record for breath holding under water is 19 minutes and 21 seconds.  As a former competitive swimmer, I thought I could give most people a kicking with 2 minutes.  I’ll get my coat…
• And finally, I’ve been watching some of the World’s Strongest Man finals on DVD recently, as I received the box sets of the 1980s and 1990s for my birthday in January.  Magnus Samuelsson was one of the standout competitors, with two wins and some very near misses.  Add to these achievements that he was always an easygoing personality and a great performer and I have to confess I am a big fan.  Keep up to date with what he’s up to now with this update from IronMind.

That’s it for this week.  Hope you enjoyed them.

Please subscribe, follow me on Twitter and like my Facebook page.

Tags:   LinksNo Comments