More Snow…Yuck!

Workout notes I slept in again; I didn’t get to the gym until 6:52.

Swim: 4000 yards; 500 slow warm up, then 6 x (5 x 100) all on the 2:00: (25 front, 75 free) (low 1:50s), (25 sfs, 75 free) (low 1:50s), (25 3g, 75 free) (1:45), (100 fist) (1:41-1:44), (25 catch up, 75 free) (1:46-49), (25 fly, 75 free) (1:48-1:49). Then 10 x 50 fins (50 fly, 50 back)

The pool was all but empty when I go there and then there were three waves of dog-paddlers. I found out that the only thing worse than “pregnant guys” in boxers are “pregnant guys” in speedos.

Run 5K plus (33 minutes) on the treadmill; XC course (last incline was at 7). It was enough for a recovery day workout.

Then I did my calf exercises which are designed to keep my Achilles tendon healthy.

For example, in a separate study carried out at the University Hospital of Northern Sweden, researchers found that 12 weeks of heavy-load eccentric-calf-muscle training had a very positive effect on Achilles tendinosis (“Heavy-Load Eccentric Calf Muscle Training for the Treatment of Chronic Achilles Tendinosis”, The American Journal of Sports Medicine, Vol. 26, pp. 360-366, 1998). In this investigation, 15 athletes (12 men and three women) with a long duration of symptoms (18 months) of Achilles tendinosis were unable to engage in their normal running training because of tendinosis-related pain. The athletes had tried conventional treatments (rest, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications, changes of shoes, orthoses, physical therapy, and ordinary training programmes), to no avail. These 15 athletes were matched with a group of 15 similar athletes (11 men and four women) with the same diagnosis who underwent Achilles-tendon surgery instead of the heavy-duty eccentric training. All 30 individuals had the typical signs and symptoms of Achilles tendinosis, including thickened Achilles tendons, irregular tendon structure, disarray of the protein fibres within the tendon, separated tendon fibres, stiffness, and pain during running.

What the workouts involved

Two eccentric workouts were performed per day, seven days a week, for 12 weeks. Each workout consisted of three sets of 15 repetitions for two key exercises (to be described in a moment). Normal running training was permitted if it could be completed with only mild discomfort and no significant pain. The exercises proceeded as follows:

The athletes stood on their forefeet only (on both feet) close to the edge of a step, with the non-injured leg providing the force needed to rise up onto the forefeet. The non-injured leg was then lifted off the step, so that full body weight was supported only by the forefoot of the leg with the hurting Achilles tendon; the heel of the hurt leg was then slowly lowered until it came into position well behind and below the edge of the step (basically, the ankle moved from plantar flexion to dorsiflexion as the heel went down). This provided a strong eccentric contraction for the calf muscles attached to the damaged Achilles tendon, since they were contracting actively to slow the descent of the heel and yet were elongating as the heel dropped downward. No subsequent concentric loading of the calf muscles associated with the hurt Achilles tendon was carried out; the non-injured leg was used to provide the force necessary to return to the starting position.

For the first exercise (the first three sets of 15 reps), the injured leg was kept straight at the knee; during the second exercise (the next three sets of 15 reps), the injured leg was bent at the knee to activate the soleus muscle, which lies beneath the main calf muscle, the gastrocnemius. Possibly because there were just two exercises in the workout and because the exercises were straightforward to carry out, there were no drop-outs during the training period; all 15 athletes completed the 12-week programme.

An especially positive feature of this eccentric training was that it was progressive. When the athletes could perform the eccentric, loading exercise without experiencing pain or discomfort, they increased the load by adding weight placed in a backpack. If very high weights were needed, the athletes used a weight machine to increase the eccentric strain.
And the results?

As it turned out, the eccentric training produced dramatically positive effects on both concentric and eccentric calf-muscle strength. Before the eccentric training was begun, the injured-side calf muscles had significantly lower concentric plantar-flexion strengths at 90º and 225º per second (12 and 18%, respectively) and significantly reduced eccentric plantar flexion strength (11%), compared with the non-injured-side calf muscles. After 12 weeks of training, however, the eccentric plantar-flexion strength and also the concentric plantar-flexion strengths at both speeds had improved considerably, and the there were no differences in strength between injured and non-injured sides. In contrast, the 15 athletes who underwent surgery were unable to bring their injured-side strength up to par with the injured side through the utilisation of conventional calf-muscle exercises and physical therapy, even after double the time period (24 weeks). Scores on the VAS were similarly positive. In the group which undertook eccentric calf-muscle training, the average VAS score was 81 before the 12-week training programme commenced but plummeted to a miserly 4.8 after the 12 weeks of daily work. All 15 individuals were able to resume their normal running training in a pain-free manner after 12 weeks of training. In the control group (consisting of the individuals who underwent surgery), VAS scores dropped from 72 to 21 over 24 weeks, but, as mentioned, strength in the injured-Achilles leg remained sub-par. [...]

Snow shoveling. At least it was mostly powder.

Yes, I checked the academic jobs in warm weather places.

I have to admit that it is tough to be a consistent atheist during these times as I’d love to be able to call on some deity to condemn the weather gods while I shovel!

Then again, even Richard Dawkins admits to condemning his broken bicycle chain to eternal torture.

Fantasy During winter, I like to fantasize about open water swims, such as this one.

Humor I have talked about Barbara’s stuffed frog “Froggy”. She tends to let things go right to her little green head.

Well, we got one of those “You are invited to the (public) Inauguration” certificates and of course Froggy thought it was special invitation just for her:

Groan….

More Humor Via Friendly Atheist

Middle East Events

Once again, among the blogs that I read, Mano Singham appears to be the voice of reason:

The rule in the US is that whenever the actions of the Israeli government are criticized, it must be immediately preceded or followed by equal or harsher criticism of the Palestinians. Otherwise one is deemed to be ‘not responsible’, or biased, or worse.

Moreover, the rule requires the opposite behavior when the parties are switched. Harsh criticism of Palestinian atrocities against Israelis need not be accompanied by a similar balancing act, such as pointing out equivalent or worse acts by Israel. In fact, attempting to do so immediately opens one up to criticism, the charge that one is ‘excusing’ the atrocity, or implying ‘moral equivalency’ between the two sides. [...]

I do not choose to follow that rule and will criticize actions that need to be criticized on their own merits without worrying about what motives may be imputed to me. Anyone who has read my writings will know that I think that tribal allegiances based racial, ethnic, religious, and national identities are not only stupid but even evil, and that the resultiing wanton harming of civilians that is a consequence of these allegiances is also an evil, whether done by al Qaeda, the US, Israel, the Palestinians, the Sri Lankan government, the Tamil Tigers, or whoever. Life is precious and ordinary people have the right, wherever they live, to be free of the fear of being the victims of political power plays.

The implication that ‘moral equivalency’ is necessarily a bad thing is another symptom of how these kinds of rules are internalized. It seems to imply that ‘our’ side because of our very nature, by virtue of who we are is morally superior to ‘their’ side. Hence ‘our’ actions can never be evil by definition, but must be due to mistakes or accidents or unavoidable events. Meanwhile ‘their’ actions, even if identical to ‘ours’, are intentionally evil, carried out with cruel deliberation. So again, by definition, there can never be moral equivalency between acts committed by ‘us’ and ‘them’, even if the acts themselves are identical. [...]

The kind of thinking decribed by Avnery illustrates the worst kind of tribalism, where we demand to be judged by the good intentions that we say lie behind our actions, while we judge ‘them’ by their actions alone and the intentions that we get to assign to them. To look at the actual acts and use the same standard of judgment for those committed by both sides is to commit the sin of moral equivalency.

The propaganda system can only work if we internalize the rules of discussion set by the dominant forces and follow them unthinkingly. It is encouraging that more and more people are breaking them.

Emphasis mine. He quotes someone else; the quote itself (which gives a version of history that the Nazis might have written had they won World War II) is interesting.

Also of interest is this article that 3-quarks daily alerts us to. It links us to an article written by an Arab in 1948! Here is part of it:

This fascinating essay, written by King Hussein’s grandfather King Abdullah, appeared in the United States six months before the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In the article, King Abdullah disputes the mistaken view that Arab opposition to Zionism (and later the state of Israel) is because of longstanding religious or ethnic hatred. He notes that Jews and Muslims enjoyed a long history of peaceful coexistence in the Middle East, and that Jews have historically suffered far more at the hands of Christian Europe. Pointing to the tragedy of the holocaust that Jews suffered during World War II, the monarch asks why America and Europe are refusing to accept more than a token handful of Jewish immigrants and refugees. It is unfair, he argues, to make Palestine, which is innocent of anti-Semitism, pay for the crimes of Europe. King Abdullah also asks how Jews can claim a historic right to Palestine, when Arabs have been the overwhelming majority there for nearly 1300 uninterrupted years? The essay ends on an ominous note, warning of dire consequences if a peaceful solution cannot be found to protect the rights of the indigenous Arabs of Palestine.

“As the Arabs see the Jews”
His Majesty King Abdullah,
The American Magazine
November, 1947

I am especially delighted to address an American audience, for the tragic problem of Palestine will never be solved without American understanding, American sympathy, American support.

So many billions of words have been written about Palestine—perhaps more than on any other subject in history—that I hesitate to add to them. Yet I am compelled to do so, for I am reluctantly convinced that the world in general, and America in particular, knows almost nothing of the true case for the Arabs.

We Arabs follow, perhaps far more than you think, the press of America. We are frankly disturbed to find that for every word printed on the Arab side, a thousand are printed on the Zionist side. [...]

Our position is so simple and natural that we are amazed it should even be questioned. It is exactly the same position you in America take in regard to the unhappy European Jews. You are sorry for them, but you do not want them in your country.

We do not want them in ours, either. Not because they are Jews, but because they are foreigners. We would not want hundreds of thousands of foreigners in our country, be they Englishmen or Norwegians or Brazilians or whatever.

Think for a moment: In the last 25 years we have had one third of our entire population forced upon us. In America that would be the equivalent of 45,000,000 complete strangers admitted to your country, over your violent protest, since 1921. How would you have reacted to that?

Because of our perfectly natural dislike of being overwhelmed in our own homeland, we are called blind nationalists and heartless anti-Semites. This charge would be ludicrous were it not so dangerous.

No people on earth have been less “anti-Semitic” than the Arabs. The persecution of the Jews has been confined almost entirely to the Christian nations of the West. Jews, themselves, will admit that never since the Great Dispersion did Jews develop so freely and reach such importance as in Spain when it was an Arab possession. With very minor exceptions, Jews have lived for many centuries in the Middle East, in complete peace and friendliness with their Arab neighbours.

Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut and other Arab centres have always contained large and prosperous Jewish colonies. Until the Zionist invasion of Palestine began, these Jews received the most generous treatment—far, far better than in Christian Europe. Now, unhappily, for the first time in history, these Jews are beginning to feel the effects of Arab resistance to the Zionist assault. Most of them are as anxious as Arabs to stop it. Most of these Jews who have found happy homes among us resent, as we do, the coming of these strangers.

I was puzzled for a long time about the odd belief which apparently persists in America that Palestine has somehow “always been a Jewish land.” Recently an American I talked to cleared up this mystery. He pointed out that the only things most Americans know about Palestine are what they read in the Bible. It was a Jewish land in those days, they reason, and they assume it has always remained so.[...]

The article continues and is worth reading.

Note I am reading a book on the history of the US and the Middle East (Power, Faith, and Fantasy America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present by Michael Oren) and am to the period right up to and including the U. S. Civil War.

I am also reading a Peter Irons book called God on Trail; it studies several famous Church-State court cases.

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