pratty

I'd focus on stretching, massage and the stablisation and rear/postural aspects of the shoulders. So less pressing, and more pulling, holds and carries. Get started now before it becomes chronic, the longer you don't address it the harder it becomes to fix. Band pull aparts sound like a good idea, in the absence of a band you could do rear delt flies (aka bent over flies) with light weights, (if you don't have weights at home, make some with waterbotles and sand/dirt, just make them even). You'll want to stengthen your mid back and rear delt (the back of the shoulder) as this will improve posture and shoulder fuction. If you're used to liftign I'd probably chill with horizontal pressing for a while, maybe overhead pressing too, as your pecs may be too tight. It is likely you have developed posture and tightness issues. Massage, even just self massage would help (using fingers, tennis balls etc), as well as paying close attention to your posture, avoiding rounded shoulders and upper back, and forward head posture. When sitting at a desk sit straight up and close to the desk so you're not always reaching forward. When standing think chest up, shoulders back and down, eyes on the horizon. Pay constant attention to minimse falling back into poor postural habits. Put postit notes around your desk to remind yourself not to slouch. Make every day walking your 'posture time', consiously pulling your shoulders bakc and now for a prolonged isometric hold exercise as you walk (you should feel the muscles between your shoulder blades tiring), almost like a famers walk without the weight. Also be aware that the issue may not only be the shoulders (the shoulder joint and muscles) themselves, but could be connected to, if not actually caused by neighbouring muscles. Your shoulder problems could be a result of tight pecs (often the pec minor), weak back muscles (eg rear delts, rhomboids, lower traps), tight bicep, tight upper traps and neck muscles. So stretch your biceps, pecs, traps and neck just incase. The traps and neck muscles are expecially prone to tightness due to stress, as well as bad posture, so don't neglect stretching and massaging them just becasue you feel the issue in your shoulder. (I have a bad left shoulder but my entire left side from my neck to my forarm is chronically tight and painful, I think it's all conncected, I feel the most pai nin my shoulder by the most tightness in my neck and forearm.) For exercise I would consider doing front and rear/reverse planks to expose you shoulder to the heavier load of your body, but in safe (in this case static) ranges of motion. Unloaded, I would just work on presses without weight and focus on shruggng our shoulders at the top so that the should blades rotate freely to avoid impingement (see Mark Rippetoes videos on the press) essentially to just stretch out any tightness that may be restricting the full range of motion. * Famers Walk would be a good exercise to improve posture in a safe shoulder range of motion. Once confident I might suggest a 2 handed overhead carry (shoulders shrugged) to build up the strength further, then progress to one arm overhead carries to improve stablisation. If overhead range of motion of any kind is a problem look up this site by b-reddy, he suggests going overhead stretching horizontally so you don't even have to resist gravity with your arm, which is itself a load. http://b-reddy.org/2013/09/05/a-progression-to-lifting-your-arms-overhead-pain-free/ Hope that gives you some ideas to reasrch and is of some help. I do sympathise with shoulder issues as my left shoulder has been giving me a lot of trouble for years now and has left me unable to workout as i'd ideally as i'd like. It's even affected my gaming. *On a side note I've never really understood the concept of 'shoulder packing' for overhead moves, I'd appreacite it anyone here could explain it, the way I see it packing suggests pulling the shoulder down and in but i find that difficult to do at the same time as keeping my shoulder shrugged.

Good news. However I'm not comfortable with the level of American and Christian generalising and bashing that often accompanies these sorts of issues, ironically by some of the so-called 'liberals' preaching 'tolerance'. Tolerance is putting up with something you don't like, meaning you don't have to like something to tolerate it. Therefore I don't think American Christians have to like homosexuality, they just need to tolerate it. So why do Christians not approve of homosexuality? Is it simply pure irrational hate? Perhaps for some, or is it largely because their religion, and by extension their god forbides it. If you are a believer God's say so is kind of a big deal, it must be difficult to tolerate something your god has fobidden. And of course should we not also have to be tolerant of their religion and their right to believe their god is correct? Or is it only minority views and faiths that have the right to be protected? Of course it's a different matter when opinions extend into actions that cause other people harm, that's crossing the tolerance line. I say live and let live, and do no harm, let gays get married and let christians disapprove. : peace:

Overall I enjoyed season 5, it did feel dragged out though, as though they wanted to get through the season without advancing things too fast. Part of the issue may be too many story branches, I mean what happened with Bran in season 5? I can't even remember, he was barely in it. Was it just me or did the epsiodes feel slightly shorter?

Intersting idea. Whether it works or not I welcome this kind of out of the box thinking. Whenever there is an issue within economics such as the 2008 crash, the solutions on the table are always how to prop up and paint over the cracks of the current fragile economic system, the idea that it might need drastic change, if not completely replacing, is never on the table for consideration. Of course it's easier said than done, but surely all the clever economists out there could put their heads together and think of a mutually beneficial alternative system, instead of simply thinking about new ways to exploit the current one. Things like this are at least a start in the right direction.

I think it could go either way for him, maybe a new club/coach would iprove him, though I could just as easily see him suffering an injury or two in the future that reduces his pace, which might expose him as a bit of a one trick pony, I don't think he has enough quality to the other aspects of his game as yet to remain a world class talent without his pace.

Courtois for me too. Sterling has been poor, I probably have a stronger left foot shot than him. On current form I don't think he gets into the first eleven of the top teams, so he could very well warm the bench wherever he goes.

I quite like Sandow but equally I'm not bothered if he doesn't win any titles. I think there's a feeling amongst some fans that all things being fair, any half decent wrestler should have success, "pushes", "runs" and "moments", and they expect his should happen to all and any wrestlers. But it doesn't work like that, for everbody that moves up the card, somebody has to move down, trouble is these fans have have a hard time accepting any of their many favourties suffering any kind of demotion. For example they take the demotion of Ziggler as a personal burial, when in fact the people ahead of him are arguably better, guys like Brock, Cena, Rollins, Bryan, and the same people criticising the 'burial' of Ziggler applaud the push of Ambrose. You can't push everyone at the same time. So if Sandow (and Rusev) never win gold, so be it, not everybody does, nor should they.

I know what you mean, that's how it works, perhaps agenda would be a better word than vision, (from all the spelling mistakes you can tell I bashed out my previous post pretty quickly haha), they at least need to be more flexible to adapt to public opinion. But even so, how refreshing would it be for a politician to say "My vision for the country is... actually I have no vision or agenda of my own, my only concern is carrying out the will of the people, so tell me what your vision for the country is, this isn't about what I want, what do you want?" My other frustration is when you hear people talk about politics, both politicans and the media, how much they focus on the game of politics, the party infighting, the back stabbing, the back scratching, the alliances, the personal life scandals, the speaches, the scoring of political points, how one party/politican defeated another, personal achievements as opposed to improvign the lives of the people etc. As though that is what politics is all about, a game to be played and won and lost, instead of a means to improve and progress civilsation. It's almost covered like a spectator sport and everybody supports their favourite team, even betting on who'll win like a sport. How much debate and analysis is lost to that stuff, which has little to no bearing on actually improving the lives of the people.

I find the very notion of party whips abhorrent. MPs should not be expected to toe the party line, rather they should represent the collective opinion of the people that elected them and it is their line they should toe. It annoys me to hear of politicians talking about their personal "vision" for the country, they should have no more influence of implementing their personal political aspirations than the average voter in the street. To me a politician in a free society is a not decider, rather they are a representive and a conduit for the collective will of the people. Of course this would require the people to take more active responsibility for their political governorship. I think for a start to keep our politicians in their place it would be a big help if we started being more careful how we speak of our 'leaders', both casually in conversation but perhaps more importantly in the media. I'm sick of hearing about government buildings referred to as "the corridors of power". Politicians are not "in power", they are in service, and they do not have power, they have responsibility. On this election I feel fairly neutral on it so far. I don't see the Tories as the big bad evil scum i keep hearing they supposedly are, nor did I see Labour or Lib Dems as the gallant knights in shining amour fighting the good fight, I just don't see it that way. What I've learned is that many people speak in such broad generalities that for many peple the political discussion is often reduced to a simplified and digestable black and white either/or sitaution, good vs evil, us vs them. The us vs them of it is especially interesting, almost like 'political fanboyism' with tit for tat bickering back and forth between die hard life long supporters. It goes for a lot of things in general, some people seem too lazy or simply incapable of handling a nuanced shades of grey opinion, and just want to catergorise people and ideas under black and white labels that they can understand. I can deal with somebody thinking I voted for the wrong people, but I do object to he notion that a person is downright scum, because they happened to vote a different way than somebody else. Voting Tory for example so therefore they must a priviledged upperclass corporate fat-cat wanting to pull the ladder up, or they voted UKIP and therefore must be a racist, or voted Green and therefore must be a naive, lazy, hippy treehugger that just wants to stick it to big business and the motorist. I find these generalisations and stereotypes especially ironic coming from the from so called 'liberals' and 'progressives' from whom you wouldn't expect such prejudice. The best example of this sort generalised mis-represntation is probably UKIP. How many people calling UKIP and their supporters racist actually read their policies? If they were truly racist at their core then why does UKIP have ethnic minority supporters? That kind of throws a spanner in the works for the simple UKIP = rascist representaion of UKIP. When discussing UKIP with my (labour voting) friends one said UKIP (he actually reffered to UKIP numorous times as the BNP until I corrected him lol) were racist and that their voters were "lower class yobs". The other said UKIP was "that man in the pub that says foreigners took his job and that's why he also no longer bathes." Regardless of whatever a person concludes about UKIP and their policies, or any other party, to give them fair consideration you actually have to read their policies as they are in all their nuanced detail, instead of deciding in your own mind what you think they are based on hearsay and media soundbites. My concern is that people like my friends might be making their considerations and voting on simplified and exaggerated charactures of political parties and their policies, where it's more important to be funny and feel self righteous, than be fair and accurate. For the record I surpised myself and voted Green, not because I'm a liberal or anything like that somebody might presume me to be, but because in their literature they seemed to be the most willing to think outside the box. While the other parties argued how best to manage society as it is, the Greens actually seemed to be willing to entertain the idea that we may need a serious re-think about how we live in general, and I think that debate is more necessary than just fighting over income tax percentages and immigration levels and the like within the current status quo. Now, people may say a vote for the smaller parties is a wasted vote, because either that party won't get in, or because that vote won't keep some other party out. I think however that voting for the samll parties, if you believe in them, is good because even if they don't win it may still encourage them to continue and grow in support fro melectio to election. Also they don't have to get elected to have an affect, just by being involved can they contribute ideas to the debate, put their concerns on the table, which the other parties may have to address and even adopt. If we don't vote outside of the big two how else will be break the cycle we're supposedly fed up with, of each election always coming down to the duopoly of the two dominant parties? Sorry for the long post.

Yeah I deadlifted with them. I never directly compared them because I assumed they were the same size, but I owned these 20kg olympic tri-grip plates and a set of 20kg plates with the smaller 'standard' diametre holes at the same time, and never noticed a difference in bar height, if there was a difference there couldn't be much in it. I would assume that if the dimensions aren't listed it's because the 20kg plates are the correct generally accepted size, and the size of the other plates are subsequently of no consequence (assuming you're using the 20s for deadlifts). If you want piece of mind before dropping £278 though, you should probably just email the retailer and get confirmation from them. I actually never used the weights on a hard floor so breaking was never a concern, so I can't really comment for sure on their durability vs regular plates, but if you're not dropping the bar then I can't imagine them breaking. I like the versatility of the tri-grip as I mentioned, but to be honest as that's by far a secondary concern to their primary purpose, I'd probably just go with whichever type is cheapest, but that's just me.

I thought Raw was superb this week.

I doubt there would be a difference, I had a very similar set, different brand but otherwise identical, and I believe the 20kg plates were of the standard weight plate size, ie they positioned the bar at the appropriate deadlift height. Assuming you're not deadlifting less than 60kg the size of the smaller plates won't matter. Of course you might clean a lighter bar for presses or front squats but I should think you'll be fine cleaning a light bar from any deficit the smaller plates cause. Edit: just to clairy, when i say "were of the standard weight plate size", I didn't mean standard as in non-olympic size, I ment the generally accepted standard height of a 20kg weight plate. I think the tri-grip style plates are pretty cool. When I had them I used to use them for other exercises, like rear delt flies with the small ones. You can also do things like swings, turkish get ups and 'bottom up' presses. And the 20kg plates are good for loading step ups and doing light farmers walks, the handles on them are much thicker than dumbbell handles so they hammer your grip. There was an article on tnation if you're interested for alternative uses of these types of plates. https://www.t-nation.com/training/plates-work-better-than-kettlebells I'm actually starting to miss them now. It may just be assuming that newcomers to stronglifts were previously training 'commercial fitness centre/bodybuilding style', using smith-machines, and higher rep schemes etc, and perhaps using questionable non-stronglift approved form (which they'd need to relearn from stronglifts). Because of this advising to start with super low weight is probably just Mehdi (?) just covering himself from these people injuring themselves and claiming the program is dangerous. As for me I'm just starting to experiment with deadlifts again, did about 70kg the other day and it felt really heavy, I've turned into such a week bitch haha.

That' what annoys me, how we can have 'no stikers' whilst simulataneously having 4 strikers. Sturridge should be 100% fit by now but even so that still leaves another 3, and Rodgers is saying we need to sign a reliable striker in the summer, (what we should have done last summer). Maybe Mario was a club signing forced on him and maybe he always had low expectations of Lambert for the price we paid, but Borini was literally the first player he bought for Liverpool, for a considerable £10mil. As a club we have to admit we got these transfers badly wrong, because it's farcial to have 4 senior strikers on the books and still say we're in desperate need of a stiker, to the extent we'd prefer to play Sterling upfront. That said, really glad Gerrard got the winner the way he did, he's had poor farewell to his Liverpool career and the pen miss just summed it up, actually had a bad feeling he would miss it, just sod's law. But to win it later the way he did was good theatre.

To be fair it was, as you say, the media that hyped us during this cup run, every fan I've spoke to didn't give a toss about Gerrard's birthday and wouldn't even start him for the cup final (I wouldn't), it was all the media that one. Obviously I'm sorry to be out but I'm glad don't have to hear any more about Gerrard's birthday. Heard Villa deserved it so well played them, hope they make a game of it in the final.

Didn't see the lunchtime game, but fair play to Arsenal, sounded like they were the better team. Frustrating though that once again we shot ourselves in the foot with indiscipline and being crap infront of goal.

I'd go with the second one, the cycling will give you a warm up/warm down.

Really enjoyed Wrestlemania, the following Raw was very good as well.

I'm looking forward to Mania. I don't think it's as predictable as people say. If it were that then there should be lots of rich wrestling fans on monday after all the winning bets they surely placed on the matches, I mean it is that predictable right? Even if you judge all the non-kayfabe reasons for matches to go a certain way, WWE usually book one or two matches to go against conventional logic, eg Edge beating Del Rio, Henry beating Ryback, Brock beating Taker, Christian beating Jericho, Matt beating Jeff, Matt Hardy beating Rey etc. But even if the results go the way you expected it doesn't spoil the show, it's the little doubt at the time while you watch that makes it still worth watching. I think Brock vs Reigns can be a good match, forget 'movesets' and 'workrate' and all that crap, to me it's all about who's gonna win between two beasts, if they do it right it could be really dramatic and exciting. A lot of people say Reigns isn't strong enough to beat Brock, but he hardly loses, has wins over main eventers like of Orton, Bryan, and Punk, smacks around big guys like Henry, Kane and Big Show on the reg, and his spear is ideal to beat Brock with his history if intestinal problems.

I think pens are better. They allow for one team to score more goals than the other, which is ultimately the measure of how one team beats another. Away goals are also unfair in instances where the game has gone to extra time and one team has 120 minutes to score away goals where as the other team only has 90.

I don't like away goals very much. Too much is made of a team winning or losing on away goals, it's the narrowist thing a team can 'win' or 'lose' by. A team beats another on away goals and people act like the winning team was vastly superior to the other and gave them a football lesson, in what was essentially a draw. At the same time though, everybody knows the rules, so not point complaining about away goals after you lose. I imagine the concept of away goals exists purely to appease the cry-babies that can't accept penalty shootouts. Player's and fans literally plead for penalties during normal time, but don't want 5 free pens at the end of the game?

Bold predcition there regarding Cena, I don't think it's impossible that he loses but the "never give up" man tapping out, I just can't can't see it, would almost be like a shocking moment like the streak ending if he did.

Sounds strange to say, but I think it's fair to say we are officially better without Gerrard now.

Again. Countinho was the man once more, but I thought Joe allen was a bit of an unsung hero for us today, I've not been overly impressed with him since he joined us but I thought he was class in an understated way today.

I was reminded of this quote: “It has been the one song of those who thirst after absolute power that the interest of the state requires that its affairs should be conducted in secret... But the more such arguments disguise themselves under the mask of public welfare, the more oppressive is the slavery to which they will lead... Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.” Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy

Yes I believe it's on 4OD. It's a documentary that chronicles the Edward Snowden revelations. It was filmed at the time, so it actually shows the meetings in Snowden's Hong Kong hotel room where he first meets the journalists and reveals what's going on in the NSA.