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“A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise.” - A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

What's the Point

1002 kg car, sumoman
Lifting the back of this 1002 kg car requires about 350 kg of force.

I was recently scanning the web when I came across author Greg Egan's site. It is a Web 1.0 type site which is static, like all sites were in the early days of the Web. It was much better then, you could type a search into Google and it would actually search what you were looking for rather than what the algorithms today think.

This site, like Greg Egan's site is a Web 1.0 type site, it is mostly about lifting weights, but it will also contain a bit of physics, maths, catapults and anything else of interest which appeals to me...

A Short History

460 kg, sumoman
I shouldered this thinking it was 360 kg, instead it was more like 460 kg.

I started lifting weights in 1981, aged 15, with the goal of becoming the Incredible Hulk or at the very least the next Arnold Schwarzenegger. This didn't happen.

From 1988 to 1991 I did a Sports Science degree and learned the ways of science. I made my own equipment. I entered armwrestling competitions and then strongman competitions; occasionally I didn't come last. I flipped 350 kg tyres, shouldered 1014 lbs, lifted 525 kg off the floor, I lifted the back of decent sized cars off the ground. I slowly got stronger. I'm still getting stronger. I'm a slow learner.

I had a vague notion of becoming some sort of Sports Scientist but somehow ended up as a Quality Engineer. I have a mechanical brain, mainly a Newtonian brain.

Now its 42 years later; if I went back in time I would become a physicist or similar... but that assumes I knew then what I knew now. Perhaps in one of Greg Egan's universes this would happen.

25th July 2019 - Žydrūnas Savickas
25th July 2019 - Žydrūnas Savickas (4 × World's Strongest Man) and Ruler of Lithuania. He's the one in the blue t-shirt.

The Plan

The stuff written here is from my perspective, I couldn't find it written clearly anywhere else, so I wrote it myself. For example has anyone explained Lombard's Paradox properly? Or that aerobic capacity is based on muscle size? Or how to derive the radius of an object from a photo? Or how to design a pair of knickers? Or how to make a sine wave in Inkscape? Or how to fire a ball bearing at 300 fps with a bit of elastic? Or how to calculate the resistance of a non-uniform conductor? The information is out there but it is difficult to put together.

The website is going to go like this;

  1. Clean up the html, links, etc. of the old articles and publish them.

  2. Publish new articles.

  3. Divide the articles into Exercise Physiology/Biomechanics, Open Source Programs, Quality Engineering, Catapults, Shorthand...

27th September 2023