Set Higher Standards by YogiRavi

The concert was really great. Dave Matthews rally stole the show (IMHO), and his little duet with Mick Jagger really topped it all off! I must say, with the energy The Stones showed today, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them still touring 10 years from now!

My Flickr slideshow is here.

To top it off, The Dave Matthews Band (one of my favorite all time bands) is opening for them! This will be my first big stadium concert. It is all going down tonight at Qwest Field (Seahawks Stadium). Will let you know how it goes!

After yoga this morning I made my way over to Chaco Canyon for some lunch. I figured that it was safe bet. Everything on their menu is either Vegan or 100% Raw-Vegan. You can only mess up your diet so much in that place. I was starving and ordered the Peanut Stew with whole wheat toast (which was amazing) and the Grilled Vegan Reuban sandwich and chips (which I will never ever order again).

These types of places end up attracting some interesting characters. They tend to fit into one of three camps:

1. die-hard raw foodists and/or vegans who definitely look the part.
2. health conscious and/or curious people who want to see what this type of food is all about.
3. university students who were hungry and stumbled into the place, only to leave confused and dejected (but satiated) after learning that their Tuna Melt did not contain a single ounce of mercury…I mean seafood.

The place was fairly crowded today and I invited some first camp folks to join me at my table. Turns out that Dan has been raw for 4 years and his girlfriend has only been 100% raw for two months. He couldn’t rave enough about it and the wonders it has done for his body and “spirit.” He gave up a heavy meat-eating diet (he use to be a bodybuilder apparently) and switched to a Raw food diet literally overnight.

The change was so impactful that he is trying to start a business around helping and educating other people to become aware of and transition to a raw-food diet.

At any rate, this chance run-in reminded me about how I felt when I was raw (amazing) before I started to detox (which wasn’t so fun). I am not going to jump back into the totally raw food thing just yet, but am going to continue making a concerted effort to increase my raw food intake steadily over time. Perhaps through this gradual approach I will alleviate the detox symptoms and actually end up with a dietary change that sticks for the long term.

Also, Dan informed me that wheatgrass is da bomb (he takes it everyday) but that Jamba Juice wheatgrass is a waste of money. Apparently, it is hydroponic (grown in water) and is lacking many of the micronutrients that soil-grown grass contains. If you want the good stuff, try going to a real juice bar.

As per the slogan to this website…we are raising the bar again! Lets call this release Beta 2. This site now features the following improvements:

• I have implemented a new theme that should make the posts much easier to read. The Cutline theme is absolutely awesome. Chris Pearson has done a great job. Some things I really like about this theme:
• The layout is very clean.
• The theme is super easy to customize.
• Clickable “Tags” are listed at the bottom of the post, making it easier to sort through things and see related content.
• Image controls allow you to add borders to images, making them look more professional.
• The Subscribe to Comments feature allows you to leave a comment for a post AND choose to be notified by email when anyone else replies to your comment! Very handy. Just leave a comment to see the “subscribe” option. Click it and you are good to go.
• The Notable Social Networking add-in allows you to add any post to one of several different media, including Digg or Yahoo.
• I am now using Post Slugs & Pretty Permalinks. Basically, this means that the direct links to my posts will not be a series of numbers, but a friendly name. So the link to this post will be www.sethigherstandards.com\pimpin-a-website instead of www.sethigherstandards.com\109. This will help search engines index the posts.
• I added Google Adsense. Frankly, I only have about 5 people who ready this blog with any regularity, but I was am curious about how it works, so I am doing it as a learning experience more than anything else.

I was scheduled to train Chest and Back in the weight room after my “off” day yesterday. The off days are never really off, it just means that I don’t do any weight training on those days. Yesterday I did a 90 minute yoga class. It was an intense workout and just what I needed.

Today however, I wasnt feeling fully recovered. My chest and arms were still sore from Tuesday and Wednesday’s training!

I mentioned in a previous post about limiting beliefs, and how keeping a log has helped me greatly in the weight room. I noticed that my lifts on Wednesday and Thursday were slightly less during my previous session doing the same exercises. This was a sign that I was a bit overtrained.

Therefore, today I decided to go for a little run instead. Felt good. Will surely be ready to hit the weights tomorrow!

The RSS feeds on my site are all messed up. Feedburner isn’t working. Hope to have it fixed this weekend.

Limiting beliefs are false assumptions you make about a specific action and its result. Your repetitive actions create your values. Your values, well they turn into your beliefs. When your beliefs actually impede your ability to make progress…they are limiting beliefs.

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Since I was in my early teens, I have been weightlifting on and off. You would never guess by looking at me! The issue has been consistency.

My weight training has always been as a supplement to some other sport, such as running, swimming or tennis in high school; and triathlons in college and beyond. The longest consistent duration of weight training has been 5 months. I say consistent as getting into the gym at least twice a week with a dedicated and focused purpose.

During this 5 month period I actually made decent gains (about 10 pounds). This was back in spring of 2001. I then turned vegan, started doing lots of cardio and lost all the weight and then some!

Right now I am again nearing 5 months of consistent training. I am also taking a much more focused approach to my nutrition and overall training routine. Looking back at my workout logs, I have clearly gained a lot of strength, and I feel much much better. I am also starting to see subtle changes in body size/shape, specifically around my hips/thighs, waist, chest and neck/jaw.

Making any lasting change takes time. In the case of my body, making any gains at all in the gym took a lot of time. For the first few months I saw some gains, but then they slowed down. It was as if my body was fighting itself to maintain status quo. Call it a plateau. For the past month or so, I am growing again. Who knows how long it will last before the next plateau.

When I was a swimmer in High School, we lived through the most grueling workouts known to man. I am actually amazed I survived six years of that training. What was most amazing, was that rapid progress that was made practically by everyone on the team, over the course of a relatively short 4 month season.

Many folks on the team would not swim at all during the summer/fall, which made the progress even more suprising. The key here was consistency. You trained on a regular basis, in a very scientific manner (intervals, racing, paddles/buoys). Even though the swimmers didn’t keep track of training sessions (w were total drones!) you can be sure our coach did.

Training on our own requires the same type of discipline and consistency. The biggest mistake I have made in the past was not being consistent. In a best case scenario, this will just result in poor gains, at worst, injury.

As other reference points, training for my past two Ironmans required consistent training over 8 months for each event. This was really the longest I consistently trained in a set of related sports. The progress made during this period was slow at first, but rapid in the final 3-4 months. In fact, for many things that I do, I tend to be a slow-starter….but ramp and accelerate very quickly towards the end.

I am hoping for a similar “fast-ramp” over the coming 3-4 months!

I just discovered the new Google Docs and Spreadsheets feature . Looks like they’ve finally managed to integrate the Writely acquisition into the fold. In fact, I typed this post in the product and it auto-publishes directly to my blog! Pretty useful.

I reinstalled the OS 10.4.8 software update and magically my bluetooth is now fully functional! Disaster averted. From reading the Mac support forums, looks like this update has caused quite a few problems for people. If were you I would avoid installing it right away. Let other folks (like me) work out the kinks.