Weight Training With A Weight Loss Goal

In a weight loss, or fat loss phase as I prefer to call it, weight training is considered a very important ingredient to the equation. The main emphasis of weight training in the fat loss phase is maintenance of muscle tissue.

Muscle tissue shapes and forms the contours of the body. I'm not saying you can change the shape of a muscle because that's physically impossible. It does, however, have a discernable shape that is reflected on the male or female body. So, if all emphasis were placed on cardiovascular or energy system development (ESD), as I call it, there would definitely be some muscle wasting going on.

This causes a loss in shape or lack of shape improvement when in a weight loss phase. Muscle is considered the primary indicator of metabolism. Basically, it single handedly determines how many calories the body burns. So if you lose muscle through exercise or dieting, you burn fewer calories through daily processes.

So, in a weight loss training program, we want to maintain or even add muscle to our frame through proper exercise prescription. The use of compound movements needs to be emphasized. This includes, but is not limited to, various forms of: squats ,deadlifts , pulls and pushes. Specific examples would be barbell squats, barbell bench press, chin ups, etc.

The frequency of weight training can vary, but keep in mind that maintenance of muscle tissue is the goal. The majority of training should be based on ESD. Weight workouts should include circuit training, supersets, tri sets, etc. to burn up energy and/or stimulate growth hormone which has been linked to fat mobilization and usage. Still, one session of the week should be devoted to lifting as heavy a weight as possible in good form. This is the most important lifting session of the week as far as muscle is concerned in a weight loss phase. By placing an overload on the system, the body has little choice but to hold onto that energy consuming tissue called muscle.

Repetitions for all lifts during each training session are going to be highly individual to the trainee. Beginners and women need to use a higher repetition range due to having less neurologically efficient central nervous systems. Basically, this means they aren't able to use as much muscle per repetition as someone with more experience. Both populations obviously improve with training. Intermediate and advanced trainees, on the other hand, need to use lower ranges. The one exception is when growth hormone or lactate producing workouts are to be performed. For this type of workout the range needs to be from 12-20.

One quick side note. Women shouldn't be afraid to lift heavy weights. I see it all the time at every gym I've ever been to. Lots of cardio and very little weight training. Most women need to get stronger. The concern of getting "big, bulky muscles" is so outdated it makes me sick. If you sit and worry about getting these "big, bulky muscles", consider all the men out there who are doing everything they know to get "big, bulky muscles" and are having a hard time achieving that. Men have a distinct advantage, with few exceptions from the female population, in stimulating muscle growth. The hormone, testosterone, is one of the main factors in this process. Women produce much less of it and therefore have a harder time adding muscle mass. I'm not saying women can't add muscle, it just might take a little longer or be a little harder to accomplish. Now make the necessary changes in your program and get started!

About the Author:
Paul Yost is the Owner/Operator of Paramount Training Systems, a personal training company based in Houston, TX. He also works as a Strength and Conditioning Coach in professional baseball. Find more about his services and information at: http://www.paramount-training.org

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Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

A while ago, I read about women who were donating their hair in order to make wigs for those who needed them (ie cancer patients etc). I wanted to do that and have been considering it for some time, but have kind of been a little scared... You have to have ten inches, which is basically all my hair. So I have been dragging my feet a little bit. However, last night I finally got up the gumption to do it.

Chris volunteered (he almost peed his pants he was so excited to do it) to cut it off for me. You have to put your hair in a ponytail or braid and then chop it off, stick it in a bag and mail it in. So I put my hair in a ponytail and Chris took up the scissors and 10 seconds later I was minus a foot of hair. I knew it would be short, but I guess I didnt think about the fact that when you cut at the ponytail, the back is shorter than the front...so, I went to the hairdresser today and he fixed Chris´ hack job, but it is still pretty short!! Anyway, some photos are below:

Before:

After:


Click here to see why I did this crazy thing...

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Love at the BSA

Today is Valentine's day .... so here are some of the romances at the BSA (and BSR) before the First World War.

• Margery Katharine Daniel (1880-1960; Newnham College; BSA 1903/04) married Augustus Moore Daniel (1866-1950; associate student of the BSA; assistant director of the BSR), at All Saints, Ennismore Gardens, Tuesday 23 August 1904
• Mary Hamilton (St Andrews; BSA 1905/06, 1906/07) married Guy Dickins (1881-1915; New College; BSA 1904/05, 1905/06, 1906/07, 1907/08, 1908/09, 1912/13)
  
• Margaret Masson Hardie (1885-1948; Aberdeen; Newnham College; BSA 1911/12) married Frederick William Hasluck (1878-1920; King's College; BSA 1901-06; Assistant Director and Librarian 1906-15), at Pluscarden, NB, 26 September 1912
  
• Mary N.L. Taylor (Newnham College; BSA 1913/14) married Harold Chalton Bradshaw (BSR, Rome Scholar in Fine Arts, 1913), at Kings Norton, 1918
  

The monastery of Voulkano, Mount Ithome © David Gill

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Ernest Gardner and the study of sculpture

Ernest Gardner was the first Cambridge student at the BSA (1886/87). One of the tasks for his first year was a survey of Greek sculpture including a description of Cavvadias' installation in the Athenian Central Museum (later known as The National Archaeological Museum). Gardner mentioned works from Tegea, Delos, and Epidauros now on display in Athens, and then reviewed the displays in the Acropolis Museum, noting the newly discovered archaic statues, and the museum at Olympia. The archaic sculptures from the Athenian akropolis were the subject of a longer, separate study.

Gardner researched the technique of ancient Greek sculpture through the study of unfinished pieces. These included an kouros from Naxos (Athens NM 14; cat. no. 67), a late classical piece from Rheneia, and other unfinished pieces in the Archaeological Museum.

A further study published from Gardner's time as director was a head from his excavations at Paphos on Cyprus, and the stela of Kephisodotos, possibly from Lerna, in the museum at Argos.

After his move to University College London, Gardner prepared a Handbook of Greek Sculpture.

References
Gardner, E. A. 1887. "Recently discovered archaic statues." Journal of Hellenic Studies 8: 159-93. [JSTOR]
—. 1887. "Sculpture and epigraphy, 1886-1887." Journal of Hellenic Studies 8: 278-85. [JSTOR]
—. 1890. "The processes of Greek sculpture as shown by some unfinished statues at Athens." Journal of Hellenic Studies 11: 129-42. [JSTOR]
—. 1890. "Two fourth century children's heads." Journal of Hellenic Studies 11: 100-08. [JSTOR]
—. 1896. A handbook of Greek sculpture. Handbooks of archaeology and antiquities, vol. 1. London: Macmillan and Co. [WorldCat]
—. 1897. A handbook of Greek sculpture. Handbooks of archaeology and antiquities, vol. 2. London: Macmillan and Co. [WorldCat]

Unfinished kouros from Naxos. © David Gill.

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'Enough to satisfy the most ardent enthusiast for Greek ceramography'

As students arrived at the BSA they were faced with quantities of unpublished pots and fragments from excavations, chance finds and old collections. As George C. Richards expressed it in relation to his study of fragments from the Athenian akropolis, there is ‘enough to satisfy the most ardent enthusiast for Greek ceramography’.

Richards had studied under Percy Gardner at Oxford, and went to Athens as Craven University Fellow (1889/90). He was invited to work on the fragments from the Akropolis Museum by Kavvadias, the Ephor of Antiquities; Jane Harrison had earlier worked on part of the same collection. The drawings were prepared by Gilliéron.

Richards was followed to Athens by Henry Stuart-Jones (best known for his work on the Greek Lexicon), also from Balliol, also influenced by Percy Gardner, and also holding a Craven University Fellowship. One of the pieces he studied was a red-figured cup in the National Museum found at Tanagra which carried the inscription Phintias epoiesen and this was discussed in a paper read to a meeting of the BSA in March 1891. However, as this cup was due to be published by P. Hartwig, Stuart-Jones changed the focus of his final version.

Eugénie Sellers published three white-ground lekythoi excavated at Eretria in 1888. Ernest Gardner, the director of the BSA, bought a further white-ground lekythos, said to be from Eretria, for the BSA’s collection in 1893. This type of pottery was to form the subject of research by the Cambridge-educated Robert Carr Bosanquet. He went to Athens in the spring of 1895 to work on Attic white ground lekythoi. In November of the same year he was in Dresden working on ‘the Athenian white-ground vases of he fifth century’, and the following month in Mannheim discussing his project with Adolph Furtwängler.

After the lecture I caught him in the passage—a German lecturer enters at a run, begins at once, and utters his last words as he bangs the door at the end—and explained that I was working at Lekythi and wanted to photograph some of his vases. He answered me … with a test question—I suppose they want to see whether one is only an amateur or serious. ‘Lekythi’ he said, ‘you have some interesting lekythi in the British Museum—the “Orestes” and the “Patroclus, Farewell” for instance.’ Now those are just the two about whose genuineness—at least as far as their inscriptions go—I have always had doubts. And F. is one of the most unerring—and, I must say, positive authorities on the question of forgeries, and I knew he had been in London lately—I saw him in the Museum—and must know the truth. So I plunged, sink or swim, and said I believed the inscriptions to be false. His whole face changed. All the fire in his eyes flashed up and he said—‘Ja! Ich halte die Beide für falsch’—then quiet and dry again—‘Sie können ruhig studieren und photographieren.’ So I was saved.

This research, that included a series of lekythoi from Eretria in the National Museum, was published in 1896. He published a further study based on a white-ground lekythos discovered at Eretria in 1889.

John H. Hopkinson, another student of Percy Gardner, went to Athens as Craven University Fellow in 1899/1900 to work on ‘the history of vase-painting’. He worked with John Baker-Penoyre, Keble College, on a study of the figure-decorated pottery of Melos. This had been prompted by the discovery of ‘Melian’ pottery in the Rheneia deposits in 1898. (Cecil Harcourt-Smith had also purchased a piece for the BSA’s collection.) This interest in pottery from the islands was continued by John L. Stokes, Pembroke College, Cambridge, who worked on Rhodian relief pithoi in 1903/04.

Economic issues were addressed by Gisela M.A. Richter in her study of the distribution of Attic pottery. She later worked on Protoattic pottery based on a new acquisition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A further student to work on figure-decorated pottery was John P. Droop, Trinity College, Cambridge. He excavated in Laconia and became interested in the archaic Laconian ('Cyrenaic') pottery. The focus of his study were two Laconian cups: one said to have been found at Corinth and subsequently acquired by the Fitzwilliam Museum, and a second in the National Museum, Athens, which had been acquired on the Athenian market. Following further ‘stratified’ excavations at Sparta by the BSA Droop developed a chronological structure for this type of Laconian pottery. He further revised this scheme after the First World War.

There were two other Cambridge students working on figure-decorated pottery. Eustace M.W. Tillyard, who was admitted in 1911/12, was subsequently awarded a prize fellowship at Jesus College to work on the catalogue of the Hope Collection of Greek pottery. Evelyn Radford, Newnham College, Cambridge, was admitted to the BSA in 1913/14 and published a study on Euphronios.

References
Bosanquet, R. C. 1896. "On a group of early Attic lekythoi." Journal of Hellenic Studies 16: 164-77. [JSTOR]
—. 1899. "Some early funeral lekythoi." Journal of Hellenic Studies 19: 169-84. [JSTOR]
Droop, J. P. 1908. "Two Cyrenaic kylikes." Journal of Hellenic Studies 28: 175-79. [JSTOR]
—. 1910. "The dates of the vases called 'Cyrenaic'." Journal of Hellenic Studies 30: 1-34. [JSTOR]
Gardner, E. A. 1894. "A lecythus from Eretria with the death of Priam." Journal of Hellenic Studies 14: 170-85. [JSTOR]
Hopkinson, J. H., and J. Baker-Penoyre. 1902. "New evidence on the Melian amphorae." Journal of Hellenic Studies 22: 46-75. [JSTOR]
Radford, E. 1915. "Euphronios and His Colleagues." Journal of Hellenic Studies 35: 107-39. [JSTOR]
Richards, G. C. 1892/3. "Selected vase-fragments from the Acropolis of Athens, Part I." Journal of Hellenic Studies 13: 281-92. [JSTOR]
—. 1894a. "Selected vase-fragments from the Acropolis of Athens, Part II." Journal of Hellenic Studies 14: 186-97. [JSTOR]
—. 1894b. "Selected vase-fragments from the Acropolis of Athens, Part III." Journal of Hellenic Studies 14: 381-87. [JSTOR]
Richter, G. M. A. 1904/5. "The distribution of Attic vases." Annual of the British School at Athens 11: 224-42.
—. 1912. "A new early Attic vase." Journal of Hellenic Studies 32: 370-84. [JSTOR]
Sellers, E. 1892/3. "Three Attic lekythoi from Etretria." Journal of Hellenic Studies 13: 1-12. [JSTOR]
Stokes, J. L. 1905/06. "Stamped pithos-fragments from Cameiros." Annual of the British School at Athens 12: 71-79.
Stuart-Jones, H. 1891. "Two vases by Phintias." Journal of Hellenic Studies 12: 366-80. [JSTOR]
Tillyard, E. M. W. 1923. The Hope vases: a catalogue and a discussion of the Hope collection of Greek vases with an introduction on the history of the collection and on late Attic and south Italian vases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [WorldCat]

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Damophon of Messene

Several BSA students worked on Greek sculpture as their project. One of the key projects was undertaken by Guy Dickins who was invited to publish the sculptures from the sanctuary at Lykosoura in Arcadia. The site had been excavated by the Greek Archaeological Service under P. Kavvadias and the statues were found in the summer of 1889. The remains were quickly reported (by Charles Waldstein [see AJA 1890, pp. 209-10]) as the cult statues described by Pausanias (8.37.1-6) in the temple of Despoina. These colossal statues, created by Damophon of Messene, represented Despoina and Demeter, seated on a throne, with Artemis and Anytos alongside.

Waldstein wrote:

Of these statues, nearly all the fragments apparently have been recovered. There are over a hundred fragments, most of which have already been brought here, though not unpacked and not visible to the public, while some of the torsos were so large that they could not be transported on the roads that exist there. Special arrangements will be made for transporting them soon.

What Waldstein stressed was that this was the discovery of an original cult statue in situ.

Interest in Damophon was stirred by an article (1904) by Augustus M. Daniel, an associate student of the BSA, who restated a case for dating his work to the fourth century. Waldstein responded in a short note restating the case for a date in the early fourth century BCE. The case for a second century BCE date was presented by Ida Carleton Thallon (1906), who had been a student at ASCSA in 1899-901.

Dickins, a student of Percy Gardner, was admitted to the BSA in 1904/05 and started to work on Damophon (alongside his contribution to excavations in Laconia). During his second year at the BSA the Greek Government invited Dickins to ‘help in the re-erection of the colossal group at Lycosura’. At the annual meeting of the Hellenic Society in June 1908 it was reported that Dickins had reconstructed ‘out of unnumbered fragments, of the great group by Damophon of Messene … giving us for the first time satisfactory evidence in regard to monumental sculpture in Greece in the second century B.C.’ He continued this work on Damophon in the study of the sculptures in collections at Rome.

References
Daniel, A. M. 1904. "Damophon." Journal of Hellenic Studies 24: 41-57. [JSTOR]
Dickins, G. 1904/05. "A head in connexion with Damophon." Annual of the British School at Athens 11: 173-80.
—. 1905/06. "Damophon of Messene." Annual of the British School at Athens 12: 109-36.
—. 1906/07. "Damophon of Messene. II." Annual of the British School at Athens 13: 357-404.
—. 1910/11. "Damophon of Messene. III." Annual of the British School at Athens 17: 80-87.
Thallon, I. C. 1906. "The date of Damophon of Messene." American Journal of Archaeology 10: 302-29. [JSTOR]
Waldstein, C. 1904. "Damophon." Journal of Hellenic Studies 24: 330-31. [JSTOR]

• Reconstruction of group (Perseus).

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Guanaco Hike, Ushuaia

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Rapido Por Favor!!

Well, wow, I FINALLY got some photos online!! We are staying at a hostel with not only free internet, but fast enough internet that I can upload pics! Yay! So, enjoy a few photos here...

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"How different the bare limbs of the stalwart British undergraduates!"

One of the themes for research at Athens was ancient Greek drama. Ernest Gardner excavated the theatre at Megalopolis in the early 1890s. The combination of the continuing interest in Greek theatre and the appearance of new sculptural finds available for study - such as the painted korai from the Athenian akropolis - probably lay behind Ethel B. Abrahams’ research into Greek dress during the 1905-6 session (published as Greek Dress [1908]).

As part of the first International Archaeological Congress at Athens in April 1905 the Antigone was performed in the stadion (as it had been for the 1896 Olympics) and it was observed in The Times that the actors ‘were incomparably superior to most of those who have interpreted the Greek drama at Oxford and Cambridge’. The choice of venue was criticised:

The enormous Stadion, on the restoration of which immense sums have been spent and much magnificent material wasted, was never a beautiful structure and can hardly be adapted to any useful purpose in modern times, least of all to a dramatic representation.

The contrast was made with the Oxford and Cambridge plays ‘in which every detail was scientifically worked out in accordance with the ascertained usage of the Greek stage’. The report noted

the incorrectness of the costumes, the inartistic arrangement of the drapery, the negligent grouping of actors and chorus, and the inadequate decoration of the architectural background. There was, in fact, a total absence of the picturesque and the sculpturesque, although Athens abounds in ancient models and in archaeologists whose advice might have been sought to ensure accuracy in drapery and architectural detail. Thus Ismene wore a chiton like a modern petticoat, and the armed attendants, who resembled Roman legionaries rather than Greek hoplites, wore, like the other actors, opéra comique “tights”—how different the bare limbs of the stalwart British undergraduates!—while no attempt was made at polychrome decoration of the architectural scena.

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Brrrr...It´s Chile

No wait, it´s Argentina. Wait, where am I? No, really, we are in Bariloche, Argentina right now. We were travelling up Chile, going north, with no intention of going back in to Argentina for at least three more weeks, but we ended up flying from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt instead of taking the bus, which would have taken us about 30 hours (the flight was about 2) and then missing out on a couple of National Parks that we wanted to hit up, so the bottom line is...we have extra time! So we flagged down a bus (literally flagged down and didn't have a seat and had to negotiate a price with the driver) and headed back into Argentina.

Before this, we have been hanging out in the Lake District of Chile, which has been great. It reminds me of Tahoe a little bit; it is beautiful, but not too hot, only about 70 degrees (sorry, North-easterners!! ONLY 70?!) It has been nice to do some hiking, hanging out at the lake, eating empanadas and seafood and just enjoying the Chilenos and their way of life, which is NOT bad at all! We went to a beach on the Pacific (Maicopue) that was ¨off the gringo grid¨. Nobody spoke English, we mingled with the locals on the beach and ate lots of cheap fried food and swam in the freezing cold Pacific... It was great!!

Next up is... a few more days here in Bariloche (nice to relax and not have to worry about where we are going next) and then its back to Chile for a festival in Valdivia and then onto the Lago Villarica, where there is a nice beach and a massive volcano...activity and relaxation all in one... Then we will contiue our quest north towards Santiago.

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