Be careful with weights

I'm learning that weights are hard to do right. I felt my shoulder slide while I was doing bicep curls last Saturday. The only logical explanation I can come up with for that is I went up a weight on a couple of exercises in too short of a time period. So right now I have to stop for now. Though I had been training for strength in the past. I'm going to go more for toning after I recover, which is still rigorous but from what I understand, I probably won't be pushing the limits of the other parts of my body as hard. So I'm asking a friend about how to train for tone instead of strength and post that information on here.

The reason why it's so important to watch your shoulder is damage done to your shoulder can get pretty nasty if you aren't careful and it builds up over time. A guy in my ward explained it like "Everything feels more or less normal, it aches a little but you keep going and one day, you throw a ball and your shoulder goes out." My Dad had a similar experience. So it's a good idea to be careful with your shoulder and make sure it's getting the training and rest it needs.

I did some reading and it said yoga was really good for swimmers. So I'm thinking about doing that instead of weights. I probably won't get as big, but I might be a better swimmer in the end.

A little bit of Guilt....

I talked to my oldest brother yesterday, he called wishing me a late happy birthday. Then he talked to me about his life and told me about how he has a long commute. He has to commute an hour and a half each way to work and told me how he feels bad that he doesn't have time for much else other than work. It showed me how people get stuck in a long commute against their will in the D.C. area. When they get a new job in the area a bit further away or their work moves to a new building, then their commute gets longer. That's one of the main reasons I don't want to go back there.

I miss some people from there though. I'm starting to realize I still haven't seen some of my friends from there in way too long. It feels weird not having seen my oldest brother in over a year.

Drills/Training Tips.

So today I went swimming with a friend from my ward who was involved on a swimming team during high school. He gave me some ideas for drills, and I hope I'm remembering them properly for posting here.

1) For Freestyle - swim on your side while flutter kicking a few kicks (with one arm out like you just put it forward and the other back), and then switch by doing a stroke. It's supposed to help you practice proper rotation/balance.

2) For Breaststroke - practice doing a stroke and gliding for a few seconds over and over again. This is supposed to help you train proper breathing/stroke movement. Today he told me that your hands aren't supposed to stop at your chest to help you breathe, you're supposed to breathe during the pull and not stop your arms until they're in front of you for the glide. It's supposed to give you more power. When I do this, I tire more easily, but I did realize I was going faster.

EDIT: A book on coaching swimming I found said that you shouldn't worry about your ankles/hips bending when you kick. So I don't know which is better, keeping straight or bending.

The Death of the Man that Started it all....

Reading the news of the death of a man that transformed the lives of millions of Americans during 9/11 leaves only a bittersweet feeling.

His death doesn't bring back the mother of a Junior in my high school at the time. It doesn't bring back the woman that died in a different unit of the LDS faith in the Washington area.

Osama's death doesn't bring back the lives of our people lost in Afghanistan or even Iraq (as terrorism was the excuse for the invasion). His death doesn't undo the creation of the Department of Homeland security and bring back the millions or even billions of dollars we have sunk into it and will sink into it in the future. Heck or even the trillion plus dollars we've been sinking into wars since 9/11. Osama's death doesn't bring back our dignity we lose every time we step through a TSA scanner. Or even give us the ability to carry liquids onto a plane again. Or erase the nightmare 9/11 was for many of us, even if we didn't lose anyone personally.

Did Osama deserve what he got? Totally. But the scars he's dealt to the personal lives of a select few of our people and on us as a people cannot even be recompensed by his death. I'm sure many Americans will agree, he got off easy being able to just die and not have to in any way repay all the damage he's done to our people.

And the big question: Has it really been almost 10 years? Did it really take us this long?