Mens Guide To Entertainment, Fitness, Fine Living, and Becoming A Finished Man
Health & Fitness
Whether you’re too skinny, overweight, or simply have an interest in the latest and greatest medical breakthroughs and technologies, the Health & Fitness category is the place for you. Most of us have an unhealthy obsession with muscle-bound weight-lifters as well as breakthroughs in human augmentation, so if any of that interests you, enjoy the bounty that this category has to offer. You know, I could really use a pair of metal legs. It’s a risky operation, but well worth it.
Watching this TED talk reminded me of a simple truth I realized years ago but never gave more than brief reflection; talking about your goals bleeds your mind of all ambition to complete them. This may not be true for everyone, but I’ve found that the mere mention of a particular goal or worthwhile habit I intend to work towards is enough to sate my mind and guarantee that I probably won’t actually go through with it.
It’s interesting that this should happen, because logically it makes sense to tell people what you plan to achieve or work towards. They may provide support, and their congratulations and praise should propel you towards you goal… not so.
This brief talk by Derek Sivers explains why talking about your goals is a form of masturbation for your ego, and a simple way to avoid it.
I’ve seen thousands of Parkour videos over the years, and as the discipline grows in popularity, so too does the number of idiots filming themselves doing simple or retarded things. It’s with that in mind that I present this video by Professor Longhorn and his compadre Big Chief. Though their names are silly and nonsensical, they clearly have some skill.
Watching this makes me envy my fellow Traceurs across the ocean. Instead of bland concrete buildings, they have endless kilometers of decorative walls to climb. Oh to be a Brit… if only they didn’t have such wacky accents.
Unfinished Man: Thank you for the chance to interview you Bill. Please tell the readers a little bit about yourself.
Bill You: I am a 41 year old single lift power lifter and strength athlete. I stand 5’10” and compete in the Masters 1, 75kg/165lb class. I compete in the British Columbia Powerlifting Association under sanction of the Canadian Powerlifting Union – An International Powerlifting Federation affiliate. I am a two time British Columbia Provincial Bench-press Champion – respective to class – and am ranked number 1 in British Columbia, and 4th in Canada.
UM: How long have you been involved in Powerlifting?
BY: I have always been around in strength training since I was in high school, but only started actively competing for the last two years. continue reading →
Do your feet stink and make people run in horror once you slip them off? Out of the ten pairs of shoes that I own, I have this one pair of Nikes that turn my feet into a weapon of mass destruction. No joke, it’s disgusting. The whole shoe rack area stinks thanks to those shoes.
So below is a list of things you can do to make your shoes and feet less lethal. Not all are guaranteed to work and it depends on how bad it is.
Buy shoes that are well ventilated so your feet can breathe. Less air flow and sweat will attract bacteria which causes that god awful smell.
Jam a bunch of baking soda into your shoes. Let the baking soda sit in there for at least 24 hours. This is actually one of my favorite methods. It’s amazing how it absorbs everything up.
If your shoes don’t stink too much then Febreze will do the trick as well.
Dr. Scholls Odor Destroyers Shoe Shot will work as well. It kills that foot odor with Zinoxol. This product also has baking soda and zinc oxide.
Wear cotton socks. Cotton will help reduce perspiration.
Wear white socks. Dye causes your feet to sweat more.
Stick your shoes in a plastic bag and freeze them over night. This won’t kill the bacteria but it will slow it down. Sounds crazy but it works.
Get a cotton ball and rubbing alcohol. Remove the insole and give it a good rub down. Do the same with the inside of the shoe as well. continue reading →
A very wise man once said “There’s a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path.“; that man is Morpheus, the trench coat sporting bald man from The Matrix. Though he isn’t real, that quote has always stuck with me. In part because I watched the movie more than 11 times in theaters, but mostly because I’ve found it to be a truism. We may know that doing a particular action would be a good idea, but we tend to avoid the things that scare us, or that we believe may cause us embarrassment. The things that we most fear doing are usually exactly what we should be doing.
I recently spent an afternoon trying out an activity that I had been humming and hawing about for months; downhill mountain biking. It’s something I had been wanting to do for ages, and though the conditions were perfect for it, I kept finding convenient ways to put it off. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the idea of it–quite the contrary, I loved biking as a teenager–what worried me was that continue reading →
My initial thought was that this would be a sport involving people with large pompadours doing Parkour. That would have been awesome, but the reality is even better. Pomparkour is similar to Parkour, but with the addition of aluminum ladders. This allows the runners to move vertically in places that would be impossible using just hands and feet.
As interesting as this is to watch, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to lump this in with Parkour. Parkour is a discipline thats key tenet is using the human body to its full potential without the use of extra equipment, and Pomparkour certainly doesn’t fit the bill in that regard.
I’ll be interested to see what other Parkour hybrids pop up in the coming years. Perhaps we’ll see people using pogo-sticks on top of buildings, or stilts, which would be very silly indeed.
Krav Maga is a fighting system that focuses on quick, efficient take-downs, performed using an economy of movement and simple instinctive motions. It’s with these things in mind that Grandmaster Imi Sde-Or developed the Krav Maga fighting style during the events of pre-war Europe.
Since its inception, Krav Maga has been adopted by the Israeli military as their primary means of hand to hand combat. Krav Maga has also been utilized in film and video games, such as the movie Eastern Promises, and the game Splinter Cell: Conviction. Both titles feature strong male leads who tackle waves of enemies trying to slice them into little pieces. Hell, Viggo Mortensen even fights off two big guys while wearing his birthday suit; pretty impressive to be sure.
I took Karate as a young teen hoping to become the next Neo, but it’s obvious that I was looking in the wrong places. In terms of sheer stopping power, Krav Maga seems to be the way to go.
Its been exactly six months since I started my Invisalign orthodontic treatment. My treatment is predicted to be 18 months long and time seems to be flying by pretty fast. But before I go any further, I’ll briefly talk about what Invisalign is and how it works. I’ll also be discussing the pros and cons of the Invisalign treatment.
Basically, it’s an adults dream come true when it comes to straightening teeth. No more ugly braces and wires for people to see! Your orthodontist will determine the length of your treatment and how the teeth will be shifted efficiently into the new position. You will get a series of clear aligners that you must wear 21 to 22 hours a day. Each aligner you wear plays a vital role in applying a certain amount of tension/pressure to the teeth so that the next aligner will fit properly. Pressure increases with every new aligner, which is slowly breaking the bone under the teeth so they are able to move. The bone that is being broken down does not hurt that much. Your teeth will be a little sore for a few days with every aligner, but it’s nothing like getting smoked in the jaw with a baseball bat.
I had a few people show me this video, and when I mentioned it to my fitness trainer he said “That’s been around for ages.” and I said “Yes, since the 1930′s”; hyuk hyuk hyuk. Anyway, I find it interesting how old disciplines seem to re-surface as other things, sometimes many years later. The men and women who moved like this in the 1930′s probably didn’t call it Parkour, but the similarities are quite apparent.
I think my favorite part of the movie is the fellow climbing up the building with the child on his back. My first thought was that he must be doing it for the extra weight associated, but if that were the case he could have just carried a backpack. Instead, I agree with one of the comments in that the boy was probably used as something to soften the blow if the person falls down; he would cushion the fall much better than a backpack.
It’s an interesting time we live in, a time of great technological progress, and though we can build computers powerful enough to create artificial synaptic responses, we still haven’t found a way to create artificial limbs nearing the complexity of our biological one’s. It’s really quite pathetic; thousands of people lose limbs each year and are reduced to wearing prosthetics that are little more than dolled up wooden pegs. It’s on that note that I present Scott Summit’s presentation Using the Body to Design the Body.
Scott’s company creates limbs that are both aesthetically pleasing and more functional than the average prosthetic leg. They are printed out from a computer model using a method known as 3D Printing. The machine allows them to print out legs that are seamless, strong, and curbside recyclable. Not only that, but they are fairly affordable costing roughly continue reading →
