My P90X Nutrition Modifications

Posted on July 19, 2011 by John

Welcome back…

I’m going to use a different nutrition system than P90X recommends I will write about it to explain my reasons and also highlight the information that lead me to these conclusions.

First let me restart my goal with P90X – it is to strengthen my core so I can participate in the outdoor activities I love for the rest of my life – these include snowboarding, skiing, backpacking, running, cycling and soon swimming.

From prior training experience I understand that my body can shed weight quickly as I transition from sedentary to active, and that many man made nutrition supplements give me gastric distress and/or are too sweet for my palate.

I’ve tried different gels, blocks and bars – and I was lucky to find the products at HammerNutrition.com; they’ve got a great system that didn’t cause me any gastric distress or other problems during training, and they educated me to allow me to progress through unexpected events during my events.

I always recommend going directly to the source, to so I recommend that you read Hammer’s The Endurance Athlete’s Guide to Success. You can purchase the paperback book here or you can download the free PDF version.

This is a great resource that educates you about Fueling, Hydration, Electrolyte Replenishment, Caloric intake, Recovery, Top Mistakes, and Protein.

In my future posts I’ll explain how I use Hammer Products and other foods to fuel for an active life!

 

 

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The Timing is right for P90X

Posted on July 18, 2011 by John

A few years ago I read about P90X and the Muscle Confusion concept piqued my interest.

At that time I was in the middle of training for an ultra and realized that I would only be able to keep up one training regimen so I stuck with running; however, P90X it stayed in the back of my mind ever since!

I then read an article in my Fraternity Magazine which educated me on it a bit more, but I was traveling a bunch and didn’t jump in and do it.

Now I’ve been ‘on the couch’ for over a year and I realize I need to get my core back in shape so I can enjoy my favorite activities… luckily P90X can provide the solution – strengthen my core, increase muscle mass and reduce fat.

I’ll admit that spending a weekend with some college friends, including Brian Nopper, one of my best college buddies; it was great to see how P90X transformed him from a desk jockey to a ripped energetic person using P90X.

Having such a good friend do this and seeing the results helped me want to do it… check out his Get Ripped Nation Transformation Video below:

 

I’ll be starting the workouts soon – but I’ll keep my core values in tact:

  1. Listen to my body
  2. Stay injury free
  3. Enjoy life
  4. Cross the ‘finish line’ with a smyle on my face

I’ll also add some of my own twists to the nutrition plan and continuing taking Quantified Self data to look for patterns during in the transformation.

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Open x – a bit more

Posted on November 17, 2010 by John

FYI – I’m approaching this from a hardware designer’s point of view.

Rev0 (first pass of HW) is often tricky, even if we’re putting together known schematic blocks from other designs. Sometimes we learn tricky power supply issues, other times we learn that JTAG/ETM or full speed memory writes won’t work because of signal reflections.

Often these Rev0 boards are useful and available 1-3 months before Rev1 (1st redesign of HW) comes out. As a HW guy I would simply toss the Rev0′s away, but the SW people I work with can start programming and preparing for the real deal on these boards. (I wouldn’t suggest these boards be sold – they would be for the core design group)

Once Rev1 is out it is typically a board that the device driver, bootloader and HW engineers can start testing. Once communication is proven to most of the devices, I think it is a good time to distribute (or sell) these boards to interested parties who want to work on the new technology as early as possible.

The above is my definition of proto-hardware.

My definition of Open Hardware would be defined as the system with none of my special algorithms implemented.

For instance on a Open Hardware Phone it would be able to make calls, the display would work but only a rudimentary UI would be provided, and the driver to the TI WiFi/BT chip would work, but the ANT+ drivers may not be provided yet.

This would give the ANT+ driver developer a chance to play with the TI chip to understand the nuances of bring-up.

For an Open Product Phone – imagine getting a Droid with all the available source code so you could modify it in any manner you wanted – apps, keyboard, UI – anything they did you can simply tweak.

Hopefully this clarifies it a bit more and lets us continue the conversation and help define OHW

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Open x, (x = ProtoHardware, Hardware, Product, Module, Block, y)

Posted on November 12, 2010 by John

This year I decided to attend the Open Hardware Summit in NYC to survey the land and get an understanding of the community. Since I was busy and didn’t know anyone in the OHW community I didn’t do any prep and simply started asking questions as I met people.

I learned that people want Open Hardware (OHW), and they were very passionate about it. It took me a couple hours but then I realized that part of purpose of the meeting was to move the OSHW Draft Definition 0.3 to a released version. The feedback 0.4 compiled document here: http://goo.gl/Dzbe (link from OHW page).

I had a few discussions with people during the day, coupled them with my experience at large companies… from this comes my view of the Open x world.

My personal view of Openness are:

Open Proto-Hardware:

  1. It passes the all critical initial power application smoke test (apply power to ensure that there are no power – ground shorts)
  2. Bootloader/Firmware/Software loads via JTAG
  3. GPIOs are toggled to provide sign of life and relax the HW designer
  4. Rudimentary functionality is proven – memory read/write, communication busses show sign of life
  5. HW Design files provided – this should be same package sent to PCB manufacturer & assembly house that resulted in working HW.
  6. Document which CAD package is used and then provide project files required for original designer to seamlessly continue project work on a new computer. examples: component footprints, symbols, design rules, complete board stackup
  7. SW environment documented, including connectivity tools (Serial or JTAG box) I’m not a SW guy – please provide inputs here.
  8. Written Documentation level is low

The above creates a low level, early access semi-proven innovation platform.

This platform fosters cross discipline collaboration and aligns projects along the proper trajectory early in the design cycle, and if two designs spawn out of this it can be broken into multiple projects which share core technologies, yet may diverge due to different features.

Open Hardware:

  1. Encompasses all of Open ProtoHardware PLUS
  2. Specified devices on board have been proven to communicate and have basic functionality. Example: 802.11b communication, USB enumerates, Bluetooth pairs. Would be acceptable to say that HDMI was placed but not functional and ANT+ functionality is included in the WiFi/BT chip, yet has not yet been activated.
  3. OS functions and is ready for SW designers to start working with APIs (forgive my ignorance in the SW space – someone please reword this for me so it makes sense to SW peeps!)
  4. SW environment is documented and source is provided. (Information threshold should be that the initial designer could take a new computer and continue their work on it once it is set up)

Open Product

  1. Includes all of Open ProtoHardware and Hardware PLUS
  2. All SW, HW documentation, Mechanical Design Files, Assembly Instructions, Test Methodologies are included.
  3. This basically allows you to take a product and completely recreate it. Must change logos – attribution nice, knockoffs are deceiving.

These are my thoughts that I’d like to use to start a discussion about the definition.

I put it on this blog that I’ve cobbled together, I hope comments work – if there is a better place to place it, let me know and I will move it over.

John

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