Compression Learning

This is really just the nucleus of an idea I've had while I've been writing for a client, but then that's what this BioBlog is really for - for the ideas and experiments that don't quite yet warrant a full article.

Here I'm thinking of learning and memory. Already I use the sheet technique I devised to remember things which means using shorter and shorter hand as your remember things until you can fit everything you need for your exam or speech onto one page. Here the shorter notes trigger the larger memories you've managed to lay down. This is compressing the ideas to the point where there's less to remember.

I also came up with the theory of compressing our language so that we could 'think faster' and do maths faster as we wouldn't have to sound out the large amount of syllables. I was thinking lately you could even write in this massive short hand and use a programme to translate it back. This form of compression then could be related to memory too - we can remember 7 +/- 2 (meaning dumbasses can remember 5 bits of information and smart-arses can remember 9). 'Chunking' information means that you combine two bits to make one bit so there's less to remember. You can't remember '5,6,2,3,4,5,6,7,2' using short term memory, but you can remember '5,623' '4,567' and '2' (or five thousand and twenty three, four thousand and sixty seven and two). So you could do the same with qualitative data. You could turn 'hey guys I'm going out' into '! gys m going ut' or something similar.

How this would work I'm unsure, you would either just shorten the actual words, or somehow 'chunk' them too to create a whole new language system. This thing has to actually be learnable though and come fairly naturally. Things like 'm' instead of 'I'm' would also be contextual to work (you know it means I'm because of the words surrounding it), so it would have it's own rules. But again these seem to be innate. You could even use a coding system such as '!' to mean greating (choosing vocabulary wouldn't matter in terms of productivity and this language would be universal). This could also be used for computer programmes as a better way for them to communicate.

The question of course is how do you go about learning a language to a point where it's natural in your mind if no one else speeks it and you're inventing it? I wonder which language would be the best base language to start on? I'll get to work on this guys and get back to you when I have it figured. Until then asdajkhfa (translation: keep on thinking of different ways to learn stuff and improve yourself and also have a nice day. I'm eating a banana now).

Ninja Reactions

I've been a bit slow updating the site lately, but in my defence I've been in Paris. By way of apology then and to keep you going for the time being, here is something I pulled out of the archives:

Improving your reactions to almost ninja-like degrees involves two things – training your fast muscle twitch fibres (and converting slow muscle twitch fibres into fast ones) and increasing the speed at which your neurons fire and communicate.

The latter point is like upgrading a computer’s processing speed, and accounts for the lag between your brain sending a signal and your muscle receiving in (and somewhere in between you need to see and interpret the stimuli too). If you can train both these things while finding some way to measure your progress then you will quickly be able to develop lightning reactions that will help you in every aspect of life – from dodging low flying planes, to catching vases that you drop (mostly when no-one is looking), to winning fights.

Firstly, to measure the current state of your reactions you’ll need a friend (you’ve got one of those right?) and ruler. Now get the friend to hold the ruler above your hand by the finger and thumb and then have your hand open around the bottom of the ruler. Get your friend to drop the ruler randomly without warning and see if you can catch it before it falls to the floor. Now measure the distance the ruler travelled which will give you an idea of how quickly you reacted. Do this as you train and you should notice the distance slowly getting smaller as your speed improves.

Another test is to try and grab a coin from a friend’s hand. Get them to stand with their palm open a coin lying in it. Have your hands hanging limply by your sides then try to dart your hand into the palm and steel the coin before they can close their hand at all. This obviously requires significant speed on your part but you should be considerably faster if they aren’t also training. Bruce Lee could do this trick and as an added showy-offy element he would swap the coin for a different one without the other person even realising.

Now to train your fast twitch muscle fibres you need to engage in lots of ‘plyometric’ exercises, which are the kinds that require sudden explosive movements. Reactions generally refer to reactions of the arms, so this is what you need to speed up. Plyometric exercises for the arms include clapping press ups, shadow boxing, or even clapping handstands if you’re truly immense…

This will give you the physical ability you need to be able to dart your hand in reaction to stimuli, but in order to increase the speed of your brain signals you need to improve the transmission of neurotransmitters across the ‘synapses’ (the gaps between neurons). You can do this by simply strengthening the connections through use, or by ‘oiling’ them through the use of various drugs that aid the process. One product that aims to do this is CX717, which is currently being tested for military use with the potential for commercial marketing. Another is interestingly nicotine, though it’s not recommended that you supplement your reactions with nicotine as nicotine is addictive. If you must use it however, steer away from the cancer sticks and instead stick to the healthier options – nicotine gum and nicotine water.

Practicing a specific ability such as catching or blocking will improve the neural network between the stimulus and the response, but this will only be generalised to other activities to an extent. In martial arts, practitioners are taught to constantly repeat the act of blocking an attack in a certain way so that the movement becomes ingrained into their mind and the response becomes automatic and unconscious. This is a state known as ‘no mind’. Train your reactions specifically then in the areas you want to improve through simple repetitions. For general reactions however, just bouncing a ball against a wall and attempting to catch it however will be a great way to increase your general reflexes and response time – particularly if the ball or surface are uneven as this will lead to erratic trajectories forcing you to react quickly and appropriately.

You should also aim to improve your response time to stimuli and your ability to pay attention to images in your peripheral vision. To achieve this you can have a friend attempt to attack you from just out of sight with the objective being to block the attack as soon as it comes into view. Another way to train both this and general reflexes is to use computer games – particularly the simpler 2D ones such as space invaders. Three dimensional flight simulators are also good, and generally the more things there are to dodge and to be aware of the better the brain training. There are actually many games you can find online that are designed specifically for the purpose of testing/improving your reflexes. Another thing that will work well as practice is driving. So play computer games and drive places – now that’s not bad homework!

The final piece of the puzzle is to improve how you react, which means improving your awareness of your own body and your surrounding area. Any physical activity or sport will help you to do this, but a good activity to practice is to find a dripping tap, then attempt to jab your hand between the drops of water without getting wet. Eventually you will be able to dance between the rain drops…

To improve your reactions in the short term you need to be alert and awake. Make sure you’ve had a good night’s sleep and had lots of carbohydrates (creatine may also be useful). Drugs that increase awareness and alertness will also work well, such as caffeine or Guarana. Remove all distractions from your mind so that you’re not thinking about anything other than the environment. Take a second to listen to all of your senses and be aware of the world around you. Feel the wind on your finger tips and listen to the rustling of the trees. Then wait… and REACT! Obviously this only works when you’re expecting you’ll need to react however, truly great reactions come into play when you’re caught off guard. With true ninja-reflexes you’ll be constantly ready…

Build Your Own Dipping Station

All those people who say that bodyweight training can't build you as much muscle or isn't as challenging as weight lifting clearly have never tried to learn handbalancing. Doing handstands and holding yourself horizontal is the ultimate bodyweight workout, and it's also very fun and look very impressive if you get good at it. As such it follows that a dipping station/parallel bars is the most impressive piece of workout equipment you can own. I realised this, and to help me with my new regime and my goal of the one handed hand stand (my traps and lats burn like hellfire by the way) I decided I needed one.

The thing is, to buy a dipping station almost always means buying a massive thing with a pull up bar on it too which won't fit in most people's homes and is incredibly expensive. Parallel bars meanwhile go for roughly $3,000! Outraged I built my own above (ignore the stupid hair, I'm growing it into a style...). Shown in more detail here:


This bad boy cost me £25 to make as opposed to £100 or £3,000 and it's in my living room where I do handstand pressups every time I go to the kitchen. I can also use it for dips, extending the range of movement on press ups, leg raises and all sorts of other shizzle!

So what is it? It's the remains of a chair! Simply the cushioning has been removed, along with the back and the front bar - both sawn off with a hacksaw. Not any chair will work here - you need one that can take your weight. So it needs to be metal, and the arms and legs should be made from one piece of metal. At the same time you need to stop it splaying so it needs bracing. The bar across the back of this chair connecting the two legs provides this function, but we were concerned the front bar would prove integral and the thing would break without it. Fortunately it seems that the two poles going across the from the back legs to the front provide it with enough stability so look for something like this when choosing your chair.

If you can't find a chair like this then some cabinets also provide sections that could conceiveabley make good dipping stations. Don't be afraid to saw bits off and if necessary to add extra bracing by bolting bars of metal or wood across the bottom.

If you get really stuck then contact me on the forum and maybe I'll build you one. You'll probably have to sign a disclaimer or something though... these things are dangerous!

Built any of your own training equipment? Dicuss it on the forum! http://www.the-biomatrix.net/forum/index.php

The New Regime

So I've been staying in pretty good shape now for a pretty long time (okay... I've been in damn good shape...). My intention was never to be a 'bodybuilder' though, but to be in overall better condition and my purpose was always more function than aesthetics (I gave up on aesthetics along time ago...) and I worked out so I'd be better at handstands and climbing and martial arts. I invented the 'Power Quotient' so I could measure how strong I was getting at the same time as measuring how fast I was getting and I trained in multiple disciplines. I also started lifting heavier and heavier weights in the gym.

Lately though, as I talked about in my recent article, people seem to be doing incredible things with their bodies that make some of my handstands and stuff look lame. Sure I maybe look a little more buff than those traceurs and break dancers... but as that's not what I'm going for I'm starting to think maybe they've got the higher PQ and that's what I should be doing. I myself have been practicing with handbalancing and similar moves more and more and have found it has a number of strenght and health benefits. It trains balance at the same time as strength and it has countless other uses besides.

Thus I am changing my training routine as an experiment and I thought I'd let you chaps in on it. From now on I will be doing resistance weights training only twice a week - on a Wednesday I will do pecs (because that's when Simon comes round and that's tradition) and on Monday I will do biceps (because Monday literally was just the first day that came into my head). The rest of the time it will be literally just handstands, press ups, pull ups, dips, handstand pressups, inverted press ups and literally any crazy bodyweight exercise I can come up with. The target? By three months I am going to be able to do a one handed hand stand (argh I wish three months wasn't the first amount of time that came into my head just then... that's tough...). I will also stop using protein shakes to try and build a lighter and more ripped physique (my girlfriend will like that too).

Sp with you as my witness... Let's see how this goes!

Deep Heat

Deep heat is a product designed for muscle pains and aches. It causes the muscle to relax and gives you a feeling of 'deep heat' and a numb sensation. I know what you're thinking… A numb sensation that could maybe be used to power through workouts?? Thinking the same my gym buddy and I put it on and waited for our muscles to go numb and then the workout began. It could be a revolutionary way to train, a great way to power through the burn and to push your body past the limit… A bodybuilding supplement in sheep's clothing (sheep that dress like toothpaste tubes…). Here are the results of our experiment:

Don't bother, it doesn't do anything.

There you have it! Yet another triumph from the Biolab!

Gym Review: Muscle Beach

Having been lucky enough to get to sample a workout at Muscle Beach last week, I thought it was only fair that I share the experience with my fellow readers. It almost seems like sacrilege to review what’s perhaps the most famous gym in the world, but here at the Biomatrix we believe in treating everyone, and every gym, equally. No one get’s special treatment, and so I put this beacon of fitness to the test like any other and asked the ultimate question: is it better than Stokewood Road?
Well actually, while Stokewood road is just my old quaint little gym down the road, in many ways Muscle Beach isn’t actually any better. Okay so it has slightly more pieces of equipment, but then Stokewood road is really lacking in that department (I defend it more out of loyalty than anything). The point is that compared to most decent gyms you’ll go to these days, Muscle Beach doesn’t really have much at all. To summarise they have one of every piece of equipment – so just like any other gym you can expect to queue for the bench press. Half of the stuff they did have while I was there was also wrapped in cellophane – i.e. they hadn’t bothered to unwrap it. And that includes the bench press – it’s wrapped in cellophane in the most boiling heat in the world. They also don’t have any CV machines at all.

But then I kind of like that. This is for bodybuilders after all – not overweight middle aged guys. This is for people who are serious about working out and who don’t care that they’re doing it with minimal equipment. Hell, we could get a workout out of a pile of scrap (in Stallone’s case literally). This is bodybuilding as it should be – down and dirty and covered in sweat.

So Muscle Beach is not a health club, it’s dungeon. Except it’s also for people who are very vain, because unlike most dungeons this one isn’t underground; in fact it’s in the middle of the road with no walls and no ceilings meaning that everyone who guys by gets to stare at you while you do your workout. And in Venice Beach lots of people will go past no matter what time of day it is (and most of them will be very very weird). I was on Holiday in LA and yet tourists were taking photos of me (and Goof) doing a workout as though we were one of the attractions. For lots of people that would be a big turn off, but for proud ‘top off men’ like ourselves this was a good moment. Likewise it will be a good moment for anyone else who is genuinely a bodybuilder, where the idea of the sport is after all pretty much to look good. Again then, this is a place for the hardcore, and if you currently feel a little intimidated by the free weights room in your gym then you just won’t cut the mustard here.
One downside of the open-top policy however was the sun, and after a few sets and reps Goof and I found ourselves close to passing out. Locals I’m sure will be used to this, but even then it’s taxing. But again it’s hardcore, and at the same time it’ll sweat the fat off of you. Our workout then was slightly slowed, marred by the sun, lack of available bench press and Goof’s bad wrist. Still though it was an event and it was certainly inspiring working out by the beach in front of onlookers. More inspiring still were the photos on the wall, the names of bodybuilding legends such as ‘Joe Weider’ and ‘Frank Zane’ immortalised around the outside, and images in my mind of Arnie training there (from Pumping Iron I believe). I feel that if I had regular access to this place then it would have a positive effect on my training and I’d be pushed to train harder. In other words then, this is a gym that subscribes to the ‘less is more’ attitude. It’s a real gym. If you go there expecting that, then you’ll have a great time.

Furthermore it was only $10 for a day pass, which leads me to guess that a year’s pass would be somewhere in the region of $150-$200 (about £90-£130), so it’s definitely affordable. You do away with the swimming pool and Pilates classes and suddenly a gym doesn’t need to break the bank. It was also fairly quiet, though I imagine at weekends that might change.
The best part of the experience possibly for me though was the free bodyweight gym just opposite. This place had ropes dangling from bars, rings for the Iron Cross, stations for dips and everything else you could want. I believe strongly in bodyweight stuff and it’s a lot more impressive to show off with than pumping iron. This facility was still on the beach meanwhile and actually had more stuff than Muscle Beach itself. This leads me to think that perhaps if I lived there I would go to that bit instead for a free and more impressive workout, but that wouldn’t be the case for most people who aren’t so hot on the bodyweight stuff.

The final part of my Muscle Beach experience was trying out the new café they have ‘Muscle Beach Café’ (a clever name). The place it great and gets my special recommendation after they gave Goof and myself the honour of being the first ever customers! Hopefully it’ll be famous some day and we can be smug. We bought Coke.

So that’s that – Muscle Beach = an amazing hardcore gym that despite its fame has not ‘sold out’. However there is an even cooler free gym right next door and I’m pretty sure that that ‘counts’ as Muscle Beach. For other things to do while in LA why not follow in my footsteps and stalk Stallone. I had a nice conversation with his Maid who told me to go away. Oh well…

24 Hours of Productivity

Okay so I realised that the BioBlog hadn't seen much love lately (I've been moving house - sorry!) and thought it was time for something new - preferably one of the awesome Bodylab experiments where I try something ridiculous such as living on just supplements or working out for 12 hours straight. So I thought long and hard about how to punish my body in new ways until I realised that I actually already had only a few days prior when I attempted to work for 24 hours and maintain a constantly high output of work.

Here's what I do for a living other than running the website - I write articles. Hundreds of articles for websites - usually 7,500-10,000 words' worth in a day - and then get paid for those via PayPal on receipt. I have lots of clients and so in other words the more I write, the more I earn. If I need £10 I work for 30-40 mins and I get it. This then makes it pretty tempting to just always work so that's what I tried to do in order to become rich so I could blow it on geeky Iron Man figurines. At the same time I need the money in order to fund my holidays, because if you think about it being paid for productivity means I don't get paid on holiday or sick leave...

So for 24 hours I attempted to work solidly - typing constantly only taking work and food breaks. I've been trying to find different ways to increase my productivity lately, including having the very helpful Guarana stimulant along with my usual caffeine and writing my own 'exo cortex' programme to help make working more streamlined and in some ways fun (I added Megadrive sound effects to the typing...).

Did I make it? In a word no. What I did find out during this duration is that with a little training you can massively increase what you're capable of outputting. Today I've written about 15,000 words and I have brain energy to spare. At the same time you can really affect you ability to work like this in little ways. For example getting more sleep the night before massively improves your ability, and having just a single can of beer will drastically cause you to be able to write less. Other things that help surprisingly are light and carbs. Interestingly since working on such a high output level I've actually lost weight (in the good way don't worry). Here my training is actually paying off and by increasing focus and thinking speed and building a very transhuman-esque programme I've made myself into a 'word machine' (like War Machine but less cool) and made myself to do a job no one else could really do.

But when you try and do 24 hours it's a different ball game. My mind began to drift so badly that I actually couldn't even form coherent sentences in my own head. As in, instead of saying 'I want to go to bed' I'd think 'I want to... what? Go? I want... bed!'. It was weird and quite creapy and I felt like an animal. I continued writing but at this point I was having to write the first half of a sentence and then come back to it and I was a lot slower than normal.

It was at this point I had to give up because my quality of writing was beginning to be affected to the point where I could no longer really sell it. But I did manage 26,000 words in about 15 hours which is probably not all bad. More to the point though I realised that my brain adapated to this ordeal and could now write much more quickly as a result. Like a marathon you simply have to train for it. Maybe next time I try I will manage 40,000.

So what if corporations stopped pouring money into more and more staff, and they stopped looking into new software and programmes to do the job for them and instead started training themselves and the staff they already have to be able to do there job 40 times faster and more efficiently? They'd massively save on their over heads and they'd have a higher quality of work. Meanwhile software they do purchase should be like my exo cortex (or 'Cortez' as I call him) and designed to work with the individual worker to drastically increase their capabilities and automate the 'boring' formulaic parts of their job. Me? I'm more interested in becoming a one-man corporate machine.