Tag: learning

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I recently started using overcoming isometric exercises, and I’m thoroughly enjoying them. These are exercises where you try to move an immovable object. Last month, I made this DIY isometric trainer setup by Reddit user 16of16 and have been practicing these kinds of exercises since then. It has opened up heavy resistance training for me which has seemed out of reach for the past decade.

I haven’t consistently lifted weights since grad school. When I lifted back then, I really enjoyed it. I liked feeling stronger, and I even enjoyed the actual lifting itself. It’s great to be able to give maximum power without breaking anything or hurting myself. But I stopped.

Weight lifting stopped being fun. After grad school, I didn’t have friends to go to the gym with. I like lifting free-weights, but without a gym buddy spotting me, I couldn’t safely give maximum effort. I tried using the machines, but that wasn’t as fun for me. Also I was commuting into NYC from New Jersey. As anyone who has done it knows, it can be soul-draining. It became very hard to justify regularly going to the gym.

I had another option, calisthenics. I had started doing push-ups as a kid which started me on a life-long practice of calisthenics. I love that I can do these exercises anywhere. I’ve learned a variety of different exercises at this point that I can do until the point of failure. So although I tend to do more reps than I would with weight lifting, I still can challenge myself and get stronger.

But I missed exerting maximum effort and being under a heavy load. Especially with free weights, the whole body becomes a force chain. Every part needs to contribute in order for the weight to be lifted. It is exhilarating.

Recently, I learned about overcoming isometrics which is allowing me to exert maximum force without weights. Isometrics are exercises where you exert force while not moving, for example wall sits. Overcoming isometrics is a variation where you push or pull against something strong that won’t move. It could be pushing against a wall or trying to lift a weight that is much heavier than you can lift. It’s cool because you can exert as much or as little force, for as long as you want. Despite nothing moving it is very much real force, and in a lifting position I feel the same kind of heavy load that I would with free weights.

To try out this kind of exerciese, I built the DIY isometric trainer setup from Reddit user 16of16. The idea is simple: a plywood board that you stand on, a strong bar that you hold, and a strong cargo strap looped under the board and hooked onto either end of the bar. The cargo strap is adjustable, so you can use this for various lifting positions. The exercise involves your feet/body pressing against the board and your hands/legs/back trying to push the bar away from the board. The cargo strap prevents it from moving and provides the resistance force.

Here’s how I made it:

  • I got the following items:
  • I filed the edge of the plywood to make it more rounded so that it doesn’t rip the cargo strap.
  • I removed the carabiners from the small cargo loops, and attached the loops through the circular end of the hooks at the end of the cargo strap.
  • To use it, I lay the cargo strap flat on the floor, lay the plywood on top, insert one of the bars through the loops at then end of the cargo strap, then adjust the length of the cargo strap as desired. Then I am ready to exercise.
Man standing on plywood board and holding a 1 inch diameter metal bar against his chest. The bar has cargo straps looped over the ends, and the cargo straps loop under the plywood board. The man seems to be straining upward against the bar with slightly bent knees. In the background a wood paneled wall and a few pieces of exercise equipment.
Me demonstrating my overcoming isometrics setup

With weights the visible aspect is the motion of the weights. With overcoming isometrics there isn’t much that is visible, although I do notice the strap going taut and the plywood flexing slightly. So I need to focus on what is happening internally: the compression I’m feeling and the effort of my muscles. But when I do that it works; I can challenge myself. I have a similar physical response that I would have after lifting a heavy weight: raised heart rate and faster breathing.

One of the reasons, I looked into isometrics in the first place is that I’ve heard they are good for joints. I struggle with runner’s knee. It tends to flare up if I do things like squats or jumps, and I can usually get better with physical therapy type exercises. So I hoped that overcoming isometrics would allow me to do heavy exercise. Alas my knee pain came back, so it is not a silver bullet. But it does seem to be easier on the body in some ways. I don’t get sore after these exercises.

My current plan is to do a mix of exercises, overcoming isometrics, calisthenics, and physical therapy exercises. Hopefully that will keep the aches and pains at bay. I also plan on periodically tracking the force that I can generate on the isometric setup. I use a crane scale to measure the force. I think it will be fun to see progress. I’m optimistic about it.

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Image of restored specimen of a squat quadruped with knobby back
An ankylosaurus: by Emily Willoughby (e.deinonychus@gmail.com, http://emilywilloughby.com) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30925563

Like many kids, I was into dinosaurs. I had fun reading about the different types of dinosaurs, and trying to figure out which was the biggest, strongest, or most powerful. Over the years, I got interested in other things so dinosaurs have not been in the front of my mind. Recently my son has helped me to reconnect with the amazing world of dinosaurs. My son (two and half years old) loves dinosaurs and has been starting to learn some of their names (like ankylosaurus) so I have naturally been learning with him. To my surprise I’ve found that dinosaur research, and paleontology as a whole, has made tremendous progress since I was a kid.

Here are some specific examples:

  • Spinosaurus is the largest carnivorous dinosaur ever and had a crazy looking spine on its back. The finding of new Spinosaurus fossils as spurred a lot of research trying to understand whether it was aquatic, what the spine was for, and what it ate. The evidence is suggesting that it may have been one of the only swimming dinosaurs!
  • Tyranosaurus Rex was huge, but how fast was it? There has been a lot of back and forth but according to this 2017 paper, they probably weren’t that fast and mostly walked. Very disappointing! I still am hopeful that they could run as fast as a Jeep, but it did get me interested in the general relationship between animal size and speed (see this interesting blog post going into the details about animal speed)
  • Dinosaurs had efficient respiration with air sacs like birds (living dinosaurs!). In addition their bones were often pneumatic meaning that the air passages went through the bone. This made the bones light and strong which may have been one of the traits that allowed dinosaurs to get so big.
  • There is a wealth of evidence and theories about how different dinosaurs and other animals evolved. I really enjoyed this Eons show exploring how pterosaurs evolved the ability to fly.

Dinosaurs remind me that the world has not always been like it is now; it has changed and most likely will continue to change. The dinosaurs showed that huge land animals are possible. Could they evolve again? Could genetic engineering help? Jurassic park made it seem like a bad idea, but I would be for it. On a darker note, the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs (except the birds!) in particular is a reminder that millions of years worth of effort can be erased in a day. But perhaps the survival of our ancestors and the ancestors of other current species is an inspiration that life could survive the next big catastrophe. I like to remember we are part of the same story that includes the dinosaurs, and it is not over yet!

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I was at the the beach this past week, and one of the days we got a chance to do some star gazing. It was a new moon, and the sky was full of stars (and some satellites). I wanted to take a picture to capture the majesty. In the past, I’ve tried to take pictures of the stars and have failed, but recently I’ve been getting better at manual mode on my Galaxy S9, so I tried again. This time it worked! Here was the result:

The night sky at the Jersey Shore.

There were a couple of settings that made the picture possible. With manual mode, I set the focus to infinity so the stars would be resolved. I fully opened the aperture to let in more light, and I set the phone down on a box so that it did not move. When it was taking the picture, the phone automatically determined the exposure time which ended up being around 10 seconds. I also raised the ISO level, but that may not have been the best idea because it can introduce noise. If you’re interested in learning more, there are many guides available, I came across this one today and found it to be informative.

Good luck with your astrophotography! Here’s a picture of the big dipper to close:

The big dipper.

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I was super excited to go skiing for the first time as an 11 year old. My older brother and I had signed up for a ski trip run by our town, and we were on a bus with a bunch of people I didn’t know. Going skiing was something I had dreamed of doing ever since watching Olympic alpine skiing as a very small child. Every winter I would sled fanatically any time it snowed, but I longed to go skiing. This was my chance!

I ended up learning how to ski quickly and loving it. My first day, my brother and I stayed on the beginner hill, but by the end we were flying down that little hill. Since then I have gone on to ski black-diamond slopes.

Why did I learn skiing quickly, while other people struggle greatly? Since then I have failed multiple times trying to “teach” friends how to ski. But then I have another friend, Keith, who learned how to ski even faster than me and was on black diamond slopes on his very first day!

How people learn is a whole field of study that fascinates me. Today, let me share a few of my thoughts about how learning works based on my own experience and from what I have picked up from reading about learning.

I think that there are many, many mini skills that are needed to accomplish any physical skill like skiing, swimming, or even walking. Having a toddler in the house makes that very clear. My son will try all sorts of variations on manipulating objects and repeat again and again. I believe that these games help him to build up a suite of mini skills that can eventually be drawn upon to learn skills like shooting a basket or doing stand up paddle boarding.

Perhaps getting stuck when attempting to learn a new skill is just a sign that one needs to learn some more of those mini skills. I had that experience with snowboarding which I tried for the first time with my friend Keith who was trying skiing. I had hoped that my experience with skiing would help me to pick up snowboarding. No luck! I kept on falling, and just felt very unstable on the board. I couldn’t turn or stop, so I had to fall. Sometimes the falls were awkward half-falls, and other times I would do a face plant into the icy snow. In the end, I gave up and switched my snowboard rental for a ski rental. Then Keith and I had a blast for the rest of the day racing down the advanced hills.

I didn’t try snowboarding again for over a decade, but when I did try snowboarding I picked it up right away and I loved it! I’m not sure how this happened, but I attribute it to learning how to do the RipStik (see the image below). A RipStick is like a skateboard but has only a single wheel at each end attached with swivel casters. To move you have to swivel you legs back and forth which somehow generates motion. It was definitely a challenge to learn but I learned it during a summer living with a group of my friends while going to Rutgers.

RipStik_Classic_BL_Product
The Razor RipStik

Somehow when I returned to snowboarding I felt like I was able to transfer some of the skills I had picked up from the RipStik. I felt much more comfortable balancing on the board. I could swing my legs and hips to enter in to turns and I could control how the edge slid through the snow.

When I tried snowboarding as a teenager, I wasn’t good at it, but when I tried it again over a decade later I was a ‘natural’. This experience and others like it, make me question the idea that some people are inherently good or bad at certain skills or sports. Yes, some people will learn skills much faster than others. But do not write off the slow learners! Once they master the necessary mini-skills they can catch up pretty quickly and perhaps they can experience the joy of flying down a mountain on a snowboard!

Do you have the experience of failing to learn something the first time and then picking it up years later? I’d be curious to hear about it. I’m also interested in learning more about what the scientific research says about how people learn.