{"id":339,"date":"2014-02-03T07:00:09","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T15:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/health\/?p=339"},"modified":"2014-03-09T12:59:48","modified_gmt":"2014-03-09T19:59:48","slug":"lessons-mars-barbarino-vs-albright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/health\/2014\/02\/03\/lessons-mars-barbarino-vs-albright\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from Mars: Barbarino vs. Albright"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0By Jay Diamond<\/strong><\/p>\n

How much can you leg press?<\/h2>\n

\"Mars<\/a>Those of you who frequent the gym can answer this without pause, but those who don\u2019t generally answer \u201cI don\u2019t have a clue<\/strong>\u201d.\u00a0<\/i>But that\u2019s just wrong \u2013 you have a pretty good idea. If you are able to get out of bed in the morning, you can leg-press your body weight. That was my starting point when first attempting weight training.\u00a0A healthy adult should\u00a0at least<\/i>\u00a0be able to leg press their own weight.<\/p>\n

But getting out of bed wasn’t my goal\u2013 it was to be healthy, and I thought a reasonable measure of a healthy male in the prime of life should be a \u201cFireman\u2019s Carry<\/a>\u201d (when you can carry another person over your shoulder of roughly equivalent size out of a burning building). \u00a0That\u2019s roughly TWICE your body weight.<\/p>\n

If you’ve read my\u00a0earlier blogs<\/a>, you know that 5 years ago I\u00a0didn’t\u00a0have a clue<\/i>\u00a0about fitness, going from the worst shape of my life to the best (today). After starting with some basic cardio (trying not to die), I wanted to take the process further, and weight training was the next logical step. With a new goal in mind, I sat down for the first time on a\u00a0seated leg press<\/a>\u00a0at my\u00a0swanky London gym<\/a>, loaded up to twice my body weight, and proceeded to fail miserably.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t\u00a0budge<\/i>\u00a0the weight. While generally failure\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0success in weight training (that\u2019s the subject of another blog), this was failure out the gate.<\/p>\n

Completely demotivating. Pathetic.<\/p>\n

Dropping the weight to match my body weight, I could still only\u00a0barely<\/i>\u00a0move the press.\u00a0Was I really that badly out of shape?<\/em>\u00a0The answer was yes, but that\u2019s not why I was struggling.<\/p>\n

In 1999,\u00a0NASA\u2019s Mars Climate Orbiter<\/a>\u00a0came ~100km closer to the planet than planned, the engines overheated, and the probe was lost. The reason? A Lockheed Martin engineering team had used Imperial units while the in-house NASA team used metric units. The two teams didn’t realize the mistake until the orbiter was lost.<\/p>\n

Returning to my gym disaster, I was frustrated, dejected, but realized that it was more likely that I\u2019d misused or miscalculated than was truly the wimpiest human to ever use the machine.\u00a0 I tried the press with no weight \u2013 it worked without a problem. Then I realized that\u00a0Dorothy wasn’t in Kansas anymore<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 the UK is on the metric system and I was originally trying to push 360 kg (almost 800 lbs.), not 360 lbs (about 160 kg). That wasn’t going to happen, especially for a guy who\u2019d never completed a leg press in his life.<\/p>\n

A quick recalculation and I was easily pressing my body weight, and struggling with twice that amount. \u00a0A mistake costing NASA $125M had only cost me pride, which in my humble estimation was worth much more (my math may be off on this calculation as well).<\/p>\n

After a few weeks, I was proudly hitting my Fireman\u2019s Carry goal and strutting around London like\u00a0Vinnie Barbarino<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d met my goal. I was content. Complacent.<\/p>\n

Then I made my another mistake.\u00a0I decided to validate my assumption that a reasonable goal for a healthy male was to leg press twice his body weight. A quick online search yielded an odd result.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s when
\nMadeleine Albright
\nruined my life.<\/span><\/h2>\n

I stumbled on a story that described how former US Secretary of State\u00a0Madeleine Albright<\/span><\/a>, then about 70 years old, claimed to be able to leg press 400 pounds. 10 reps.<\/span><\/p>\n

A 70 year old woman was besting Vinnie Barbarino.
\nIt\u00a0must<\/em>\u00a0be factually incorrect.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Like any good skeptic, I sought other sources seeking to falsify this preposterous lie<\/em> only to have the claim verified by many reputable sources. Confirmation bias had been overpowered by evidence. She’s simply in remarkable shape.<\/p>\n

I was crushed. \u00a0Completely demotivated. Pathetic.<\/p>\n

Albright became my nemesis.<\/strong>\u00a0If there was one thing I\u2019d accomplish in life, it would be to better Madeleine Albright. Eventually I surpassed her, although I\u2019ll admit it wasn’t easy. It took several weeks of incremental increases. Today I\u2019m vastly exceeding those goals \u2013 and\u00a0I owe it all to Ms. Albright, the Mars Orbiter, and a lot of hard work<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

LESSONS LEARNED:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Set reasonable goals that stretch your limits.<\/li>\n
  2. Once you’ve reached your goals, avoid complacency and reset for new stretch goals.<\/li>\n
  3. Save the $125M and your pride – \u00a0check your math.<\/li>\n
  4. Madeleine Albright is coming for you. Be prepared.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    References:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n