Eten Glofiish M800 Review

For those that don't know, the Eten Glofiish m800 is a phone. And a PDA. With GPS. And keyboard. And it runs Windows. And...

OK, so it's more than a phone. It's a windows mobile smartphone that is as feature packed as it gets these days. The full specs:

  • Quad band world phone (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)
  • Tri-band data (GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA 1.8 Mbit/s/HSDPA 3.6 Mbit/s)
  • 480x640 (vga) resolution
  • Full qwerty keyboard
  • Touch screen
  • Windows Mobile Professional 6.0
  • Wifi
  • GPS
  • Bluetooth
  • microSD slot
  • 2mp camera
  • Kitchen sink
  • Around $600 (unlocked)
In short, it has just about everything. The design isn't as pretty as an iPhone, but it's not terrible either. The size and weight are reasonable for a phone that does this much. It even comes with a carrying case and a headset. Overall, it looks wonderful - on paper.

So why did I end up sending this phone back?

Well, the phone falls just short of expectations in just about everything. No one flaw would have been enough to reject it, but the numerous small issues added up really quickly to a very frustrating experience.

The Screen


The VGA resolution is fantastic. It offers significantly more screen real estate than the average smart phone (which is qvga) and provides a great experience when web browsing, navigating via gps, writing notes, etc. Everything is crisp and the colors are solid. That is of course, until you step outside. In the sun, the screen is VERY difficult to read. As if you don't already look like a dork for carrying around such a gizmo in public, you have to bring this thing to within an inch of your face just to read the time.

The screen does a good job of interpreting the stylus and is even effective when you use your fingers. I was impressed with the recognition of light taps, holding down the stylus (for right click) and had a far better experience than I did with an expensive tablet PC I had used years ago. My only gripe would be the handwriting recognition - there are several different modes, each of which suck horribly. Their primary use is to entertain yourself by seeing them misinterpret your writing in unexpected and hilarious ways. However, it's not much of an issue given the presence of a physical keyboard and even an on-screen touch sensitive keyboard you can use that works very well with the stylus.

The Buttons


The keys on the keyboard aren't raised or particularly distinct feeling, but somehow, typing is still fairly easy and you don't make too many mistakes. It's a vast improvement over typing on any of the other phones I've tried, including those with a standard phone keypad (3 letters per button), blackberry style keypad (2 letters per button), and it's certainly better than touch screen "keyboards".

However, the buttons on the front of the phone, just below the screen, are abysmal. Instead of normal push buttons, as used on the rest of the phone, these are special touch sensitive buttons - they don't move, but just glow when they have detected a touch. These buttons are so ingeniously designed they they can interpret your desires: every time you want to push them, they cleverly pretend to be asleep and do nothing. And every time you brush them accidentally as you type, slide the phone open, put the phone in the carrying case, or admire some other phone, they delightfully glow and immediately open up whatever process is going to be most CPU intensive and inconvenient to run at that moment. These things are a travesty and largely useless anyway, so you end up using a key combo to lock them and hope to never use them again.

They keyboard also gave me an odd issue where the light indicating caps lock was activated would remain in the on position, even though caps lock wasn't actually on. When I did turn caps lock on, the light would shut off. This could have been more clever, counterintuitive Eten design... But more likely, just a silly bug.

Performance

The m800 has a 500Mhz processor, which is a pretty good work horse. However, as is clearly a trend with this phone, each good feature is handicapped in some way. In this case, it's by the paltry 64MB of RAM. Oh, and the total lack of any sort of video acceleration. The result is a slow experience that only gets slower.

Everything on screen is just not quite as zippy as you'd want it to be. Menus take a few seconds to open, switching to landscape mode takes anywhere from 2 to 10 seconds (depending on the application running), web pages are slow to render, and programs take a while to open and just as long to close. Scrolling and animations tend to be twitchy (probably due to the lack of graphics acceleration), there are no fancy effects on the phone (like the iPhone has) and nothing is pretty. Music files play just fine but every video I tried was twitchy and largely unwatchable.

And the more things you have open, the worse it gets. In fact, even when you think you've closed a program, it sometimes continues to run in the background, eating up RAM. See the Windows Mobile 6.0 section for more on this. Eventually, after you've opened and (thought you) closed enough programs, the RAM starts to run out and the system grinds to a halt. You can try to use the memory management software to kill all running programs, but for some reason, this rarely restores all memory and everything continues to crawl. Eventually, the only option is to completely reboot the phone.

This takes roughly 2-3 minutes, which is quite irritating. You don't have to do it often, but it's always at a bad time when you do. The good news is that during normal usage, you typically put the phone on standby, which shuts off the screen, saves lots of batteries and turns back on in a couple of seconds.

I can't help but to think that an extra 64MB of RAM would have significantly improved the speed of the phone and the entire user experience at relatively little cost. All the latest powerful smartphones (HTC TYTN II, I-Mate Ultimate 9502, etc) come with 128MB of RAM and it's a shame to handicap a phone in such a way.

Battery Life

I didn't expect battery life to be great for a device like this, and it definitely wasn't. From very moderate daily usage - for example, 10 minutes of phone calls, using the calendar for 10 minutes, connecting to wifi and checking my email and spending the rest of the day on standby - the phone would drop to ~50% battery life. That means you'd have to charge it every other day, at least. Things only got worse if you used the GPS, did any real web browsing, or used any other heavy-weight apps (e.g. google maps).

In short, I would typically leave the phone plugged in (via USB) to my computer every night so it could charge. The phone does come with a modular AC adapter which allows you to attach many types of plugs, which is great for traveling. Unfortunately, my phone only came with two plugs: a UK plug (which was useless to me) and a US plug that did not fit the adapter. It was a different color and definitely looked like it belong to a different phone. I don't know if this was the fault of E-ten or eXpansys (the store I ordered the phone from), but it made the AC adapter into a wired paperweight.

GPS

The GPS typically connected in under a minute, although occasionally I had to wait several minutes and once, it wouldn't connect at all. I used it with TomTom 6 and the results were fairly pleasant: the UI worked and looked good on the high res screen and the GPS seemed fairly accurate. It took a little while to set up TomTom the first time to recognize the built in GPS unit (the configuration is less than intuitive), but this has nothing to do with the phone itself. Calculating routes took ~10-20 seconds, which is not terrible, but not great. Including the time it takes to connect to the satellites, enter your destination info, calculate the route and start displaying the map, you can expect a ~2 minute overhead per trip. Not the end of the world, but again, just not quite as zippy and responsive as I wanted.

Windows Mobile 6.0

I had limited experience with Windows Mobile before using this phone and can say that the 6.0 version is less than impressive. For the most part, it's a crappy OS with an ugly UI that does a good job of supporting touch screens and is saved by the availability of lots of decent software.

There were two issues that drove me nuts and both were very un-windows-like. The first was the lack of a task bar, leaving you no obvious or easy way to see what programs are running or switch between them. Each program would typically take up the full screen and the only way to get back to a different one was to "run" it again from the start menu or programs folder. The second issue was that pushing the x button to close a program... didn't always close the program. Quite often, the program would disappear from view, but continue running in the background. Oddly enough, these are both issues present in OS X, but at least OS X offers some reasonable solutions, such as expose, apple + tab, and the dock (which is like an unintuitive task bar).

As I mentioned in the performance section, there are precious few system resources to work with as it is, so wasting them on programs you thought were closed is unacceptable. And with the lack of a task bar, you just don't know it's happening. Moreover, it's unclear just how you'd close these programs completely. The only solution I found was to use the memory manager, which is like a retarded half brother of Windows' task manager (which is the ugly cousin of OS X's Activity Monitor). This program would at least show you what is actively running and give you the option to close each program. Unfortunately, this menu option never worked for me. Instead, I'd have to use the "kill all" option, which would shut down every running program, which is not always desirable.

Windows Mobile also suffers from a crappy web browser (Internet Explorer Mobile), crappy media player (Windows Media Player) and the total lack of support for Flash. The latter means no youtube (or any other sites that depend on Flash), which when added to the twitchy video performance of Windows Media Player, is quite frustrating. Worse yet, if you visit youtube on your mobile phone, you are taken to a page that is designed for mobile phones and really looks like it's going to work. But don't hold your breath, it doesn't. Not only is there no support for Flash, but there is also no support for the RTSP protocol, which is what the mobile youtube site tries to use.

The big saving grace for Windows Mobile is the large amount of quality software available for it. It's easy to make the software (in .Net, for example) and many people have produced some good products. Not all are free, but if you're serious about using this kind of phone, they may be worth the money. Some of the key pieces of software I found:

  • Magic button: adds a proper close button to Windows Mobile that actually closes (most) programs. It also adds a taskbar! This is an absolute must have.
  • Opera mobile: a much better web browsing experience than IE.
  • Fring: multi-protocol chat.
  • Resco Explorer: much nicer file explorer than the default one in Windows Mobile.
  • tcpmp: Windows Media Player replacement.
  • Google Maps: self explanatory and highly useful.
I also like the ability to use remote desktop on Windows Mobile phones so that you can actually control your home computer from your mobile device. It's easy to find and install the software and most of it runs w/o too many issues. These can make Windows Mobile, for the most part, worth it.

Accessories

The headset that came with the phone got the job done, although there was an audible hiss coming from the headphone jack. Speaking of which, the headphone jack was 2.5mm, which is not the standard size. Not a big deal, but it would be nice to be able to use my normal headphones (such as my ipod headphones) without a converter.

The carrying case is not pretty, but well designed to securely hold and protect the phone. It doesn't get in the way when you wear it, which is nice. Unfortunately, it ripped after just several days of normal usage. Sigh.

Data plan

I use AT&T as my carrier and do not have a data plan - I just don't think it's worth paying $40/month to be able to check my email from the bathroom. Moreover, the phone has Wifi (more on that later) so I can still get Internet at hot spots, such as my house, at work, Starbucks, etc. Unfortunately, a couple times while using the phone, I did not notice that the Wifi was off (to save batteries) and I started to browse the web.

As it turns out, neither Windows Mobile, nor E-ten, nor AT&T provide any warning that you are suddenly using a data plan (or lack thereof) and as a result, you can get charged. A lot. I got lucky and "only" had to pay $5, but as there is no clear indication of which network connection you're using (wifi, data plan, bluetooth bridge), it would be very easy to run up quite the fee.

Wifi

The wifi is really useful to get free Internet access at hotspots and when it works, works reasonably well. I didn't benchmark it, but I'd say it was fast enough that most Internet performance was limited by the phone's CPU/RAM and not the bandwidth.

Unfortunately, the wifi really likes to lose wireless passwords. It seems like every time I would switch networks, I would have to reenter that network's password, even if I checked the box asking the phone to save the password. This got to be real annoying, as I would connect alternately to the wifi at home and the wifi at work and had to spend a lot of time entering the damn passwords.

Worse still, the wifi would sometimes refuse to connect all together. I would select a network, enter the password and see the status go to "connecting". Suddenly, the screen would refresh, and the network I was trying to connect to would be gone. I'd have to exit the wifi manager and come back a few seconds later to see it again. I'd click the network again, enter the password again, and quite often, see it vanish once more. This could go on for several iterations before an actual connection was established... or the phone was sailing through the air.

Call Quality

Call quality wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible. Occasionally, I'd be told that I sounded like I was very far away, but in general, it was reasonable. Oh, and the speakerphone worked pretty well too.

The only downside was the random day when the phone refused to allow any calls to connect. For about four hours one day, I could not place or receive calls properly. If someone called me, the phone would ring, but when I answered it, I would hear nothing on the other end. If I tried to place a call, I'd hear at most one ring, and then two quick beeps, followed by silence. The phone showed 3-4 bars of connectivity and did this at home and at work. My other phones (on the same AT&T network) never exhibited such behavior. Other people with AT&T in the same area also had no issues. And after the 4 hours, the phone worked just fine again.

I still don't know what caused it, and it only happened once, but it's worth mentioning.

Other

You can connect the phone to your computer using Microsoft ActiveSync, which worked reasonably well to let you sync your calendar, email, install software and transfer files. Unfortunately, every now and then, ActiveSync would fail to connect to the phone and the only solution was to reboot.

The m800 has 256MB of on board memory, which is plenty to install lots of good apps, and the microSD slot lets you add plenty of additional memory for music, pictures, etc. I used a 4gb microSD (HC) card in the phone without any issues.

The phone also has a camera and an FM radio. The camera is crappy, pretty much standard for mobile phone cameras. It's good enough for quick snapshots, or to take pictures of people's faces to add to their contact info, but that's about it. The FM radio works very well and is a nice, although not terribly useful, addition.

Conclusion

I hope you noticed a trend through out this whole review. Every good thing I had to say about the phone would end with an "unfortunately..." or "but..." or "%&$!D!!". No one of the issues above was a game breaker. But the plethora of problems added up damn quick and just became too much.

The E-Ten m800 is not a bad phone and it certainly has all the bells and whistles, but for $600 I expected more.

Why I probably won't be buying a mac any time soon...

I'll just jump right into it. Since the last blog entry about the Mac, here are:

The new things I like:

  • It boots up quickly
  • I really like the preview feature and desperately miss it on other OS's
The new things I DON'T like:

  • The pinwheel of death. For a computer with a dual core CPU and 3gb of RAM (yes, 3gb, not 2), the pinwheel appears an obscene number of times. When opening more than one webpage, when compiling, when opening NeoOffice, completely at random, when something crashes, and so on. Why does OS X suck so much at distributing processing time over the cores? Why do both cores get pegged down completely so damn often? The hourglass cursor is FAR less prevelant on my Windows computer at home which has similar specs (dual core CPU and 2gb of RAM).
  • Firefox runs like crap. It is noticeably slower on OS X. Pages take longer to load, it eats up a lot of CPU while rendering them, and yes, you get to see a whole lot more of that damn pinwheel. It's especially bad on certain pages (such as Facebook), possibly indicating some AJAX issue. It also eats up a lot of RAM, although that happens with Firefox on any OS. Hopefully version 3.0 will improve this.
  • Mail crashes more often than it should, and when it does, it has a way of taking the whole OS with it. I can rarely (if ever) recover from Mail locking up - force quit can't quite handle it - and usually need to reboot. Moreover, I've become slightly disillusioned with the built in search. It will quite often refuse to find emails that contain text exactly matching your search terms. Finally, its conversation view is inferior to gmail. Having said all that, it is still incomparably better than Outlook.
  • I got a Blackberry Pearl recently (I'll post more about my phone adventures later) and to put it simply, trying to sync a Blackberry with a Mac is damn near impossible. The Mac will find the phone and connect to it via bluetooth... I think you can even transfer files... But the sync will fail every time. Just google for it and you'll find legions of users frustrated by this. Even over a USB cable, the sync is extremely buggy: the sync program seems to hang, the status bar never reaching 100%, and you only get a partial sync. The events on the phone end up on the computer, but not vice-versa. I can't say this is the fault of Apple, but given the popularity of Blackberry devices, this is pretty disappointing.
  • The computer has some graphics driver issues that, according to an article one of our IT guys showed, Apple will not address. The symptoms vary a bit, but on my computer, I will get a complete lock up every now and then. The whole system will freeze and not respond to any kind of input. I have to hold down the power button and reboot. I've tried some manual fixes posted online (which involve booting off an OS X install disc and manually replacing graphic driver files), but they led to some graphics corruption, so I had to revert live with it. The crashes are rare, but very unpleasant. Again, I'm not sure it's Apple's fault - maybe nVidia or ATI are to blame - but Apple's big sell is that they control the hardware, and such problems are quite disappointing.
  • A less severe symptom of the driver issues is that the computer has issues with dual monitor support when booting (or, say, rebooting after a total lockup). If I leave my external monitor plugged in when I turn the computer on, the computer will seem to switch into an extended desktop mode (the desktop on the laptop screen will change appropriately), but the external monitor stays completely black. The ONLY solution I've found is to shut down the computer, unplug the monitor, boot back up and then plug the monitor back in once the OS is running.
  • The keyboard shortcuts are driving me nuts. I know I wrote about this in the previous post, but even after several months of use, they still feel wrong. For example, in many pop-up dialogs (such as an ok/cancel), you can't always switch between the buttons using the keyboard - I've tried arrow keys, tab, apple + arrow keys and several other combos, and none of them do anything. In some programs you can push the apple key plus the first letter of the option (ie apple + D for Don't save in TextWrangler) but this is not consistently available. The keyboard shortcuts themselves for various system operations are not always listed - for example, why are there no keyboard shortcuts next to sleep or logout in the Apple menu? Finally, the inconsistency of keyboard shortcuts can be maddening. In some programs, apple + B makes text bold. In others, it's ctrl + B. In some, switching tabs is done with apple + arrows (in which case, I have no idea how you get to the beginning/end of a line of text), in others, it's ctrl + tab (and apple + arrows instead have a totally different behavior, such as back & forward in a browser). The list goes on and on.
  • Finder sucks. I tried to like it, and I do appreciate the search feature, but it's just a dumb way to handle file management. Not being able to see the whole file structure (ie, anything above your home folder) is maddening. I understand the whole security/permissions setup of Unix can keep the system safer, but on a 1 (power) user system, it would be real nice to be able to just have full access to your own goddamn computer.
  • I hate the blinking, bouncing notifications in the dock. I understand that you want to install update #457 for the OS or give me some mundane, completely unimportant message, but every time a goddamn icon starts hopping incessantly at the periphery of my vision, I just want to put my fist through the screen.
  • I've never found expose useful. It looks gorgeous and is nice in theory, but it just doesn't seem efficient. I'm used to good keyboard shortcuts, so a more powerful alt+tab - as available on Vista - is significantly more useful.
Is Windows that much better?

No, not really. Windows has its own share of flaws and frustrations and as I said in the first post, neither OS is head & shoulders above the other. The point of this post was to vent a bit and challenge the conception that the Mac is some holy mecca of operating system salvation. Same shit, different smell.

However, for my purposes, Windows does get the job done just a little smoother and cheaper (esp. the hardware). If I can ween myself from gaming (or let the lack of quality games do the job for me), I may even switch to Ubuntu some day. Free definitely has it's advantages.

Weight lifting

I do a lot of things the majority of people really don't understand. For example, software engineering. The average person just doesn't know what it is, often confusing it with IT. If your first thought was "what's the difference?" or "what's IT?", then you are one of those people. You are probably that jerk that, upon learning what I do for a living, immediately asks me to fix your printer or make your "Internet" work. But software engineering is not IT. I do NOT sit around all day cleaning viruses off your computer and making your email work. I create software. If computers were like books, software engineers would be the authors and IT would be the guys that fix the printing press if it malfunctions.

But I didn't want to talk about software engineering today. Instead, I wanted to discuss another misunderstood hobby of mine: weight lifting (aka strength training, resistance training, "going to the gym", "pumping iron", etc). I've been lifting consistently for about 4 years now and my current routine is to workout 3 day a week, 1.5 hours a day. Many people seem to have the impression that I spend all 90 minutes standing in front of a mirror doing bicep curls and grunting. It's as if arms are the only parts of your body that get stronger. My mom has a wonderful habit of pulling up my shirt sleeve in front of her friends and asking me to flex as she makes weird grunt noises on my behalf.

The reality is that when it comes to strength training, my biceps could hardly concern me less. During the average week, I do at most 2 sets of bicep curls, amounting to 10 reps, or all of 2 minutes of grunting a week. So what the hell do I do the rest of the time?

Before I get to that, it's worth answering the following questions:

What is strength?

In the most basic sense, strength is a measurement of how much force your body can exert in a particular motion. It's worth noting that strength is made up of many components: muscle size, muscular endurance, tendon/ligament strength, skeletal strength, coordination, and much more.

What is strength training?

Strength training is the use of various forms of resistance to increase strength. Please do NOT confuse strength training with "body building", where the goal is not strength, but a particular appearance. To illustrate the difference, compare Arnold Schwarzenegger (world famous body builder) to Andy Bolton (strongest man alive). Body building has made Arnold strong, but his primary goal was a statue-esque physique and enormous muscles. While Bolton is nowhere near as god-like in appearance, he is significantly stronger than Arnold - Bolton has deadlifted over 1000lbs and squatted over 1200lbs, both world records.

Why do strength training?


To set the record straight, I am not trying to look like Andy Bolton (or Arnold, for that matter). But I do want to train like Andy Bolton, with the primary goal being strength. Here are a few reasons why:
  1. Increased muscular power and endurance: useful in sports (run faster, jump higher, etc) & life situations (opening mayonnaise jars, carrying luggage, fighting off assholes).
  2. Increased muscle mass: boosts metabolism, allowing for better weight management. Yup, you'll actually lose more fat with proper strength training than pretending to use that dusty treadmill in your basement.
  3. Improved balance and coordination.
  4. Increased bone density.
  5. Injury prevention: stronger muscles, bones and tendons help protect the body.
  6. Better sleep: after a hard workout, your body needs to heal, and you sleep like a baby.
  7. Better looks.
  8. Better overall health and more energy through out the day.
The list goes on and on. I don't want to turn this into an infomercial, but it's important to explain this stuff. Strength training is a lot more than big biceps.

So, if not bicep curls, what are you doing?

The first thing to understand is that there are many approaches to strength training. Unfortunately, most of them don't work very well. Here are some easy ways to identify bad strength training routines:
  • Anything your friends recommend to you is probably bad.
  • Anything the gym trainer recommends to you is probably bad.
  • Anything you found on the Internet is bad (including anything I write).
I'm only half joking, actually. Exercise and weight loss are a big business and the amount of misinformation out there is ridiculous. Your friends are in no better position to know it than you and are completely untrained to give you advice. Unfortunately, most gym trainers are also very poorly versed in strength training. They are often only taught how to use the machines on the floor (which you should avoid for strength training) and like to spread stupid rumors, like "squatting is bad for your knees".

Of course, as a beginner, you can can try almost anything and see results. Millions of years of evolution have allowed your body to react wonderfully to the shock of peeling your fat ass from the couch and picking up a dumbbell. However, after a very short time, crappy programs become less and less effective. It's not long before you see no progress at all and give up.

The single greatest thing you can do is to follow routines created and endorsed by strength training experts. Not machines advertised at 3am on tv, not fad diets, and not books published by body builders. The difference between something you scrap together by yourself and a proper strength training routine cannot be overstated. Think of taking up strength training like being sued: you could go to court and make up a defense based on the advice of your friends and something you read online... But wouldn't you rather follow the advice of an expert?

Starting Strength

The gold standard is Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore. This is the book, the weight lifting bible, and it should be required reading for ANYONE that sets foot in a gym. This book (make sure to get the 2nd edition) will teach you everything you need to know about proper strength training, including clearly written instructions on each exercise and excellent illustrations and photographs. It not only explains what to do, but also why, and the amount of research put into it is impressive.

If you know me, you know I would never recommend spending money on something you could get for free, but the information in this book is NOT available elsewhere. Your friends don't know it, the gym trainers will get it all wrong, and the morons online will only lead you astray. No, I am not in any way affiliated with the authors/publishers and I don't profit in any way from writing this. But if you do any form of strength training whatsoever, this is a resource that you need to know about.

And no, you don't have to do the Rippetoe Starting Strength routine itself. It's a fantastic routine, but there are other very effective alternatives available. However, they all focus on the same basic principles:

  • Working every part of the body (this includes legs!!) several times a week.
  • Repeat a relatively small number of exercises each time to become very proficient at them.
  • The most effective exercises are compound movements - those that involve multiple muscle groups and joints. This is in direct contrast to what most people do at the gym, which are isolation movements that focus on just one muscle/joint at a time. The bicep curl is an isolation exercise and as such, largely ignored in effective strength training programs.
  • Most exercises are done with barbells.
  • Most exercises are done with high weight and low reps (sets of 5, typically).
  • The main exercises are the squat, bench press, deadlift, overhead press, rows, clean & jerk, pull-ups and dips.
  • Most workouts are focused around the squat, as this is the best bang-for-the-buck exercise for total body development. It works something like 65% (if not more) of the muscles in your body and produces a massive hormonal response. Translation: your biceps will get much bigger if you do squats + curls than just curls alone, even though the squat doesn't directly work your biceps. As an added advantage, the squat will also give you strong legs, back, hips, butt, abs, balance, and so on.
The only differences between the various routines are exactly which exercises are done, for how many sets and for how many reps. As such, Starting Strength is a wonderful how-to guide for any of these routines.

Some of the most effective routines are:

  • Rippetoe Starting Strength (a partial writeup is available here, but definitely buy the book!!)
  • Stronglifts 5x5 - very similar to starting strength.
  • Bill Star 5x5 - a program focused on intermediate lifters
  • Crossfit - a program focused on not just strength, but also endurance, agility, coordination, power, etc.
Reservations

When I try to convince people to start strength training, I get a lot of stupid responses:

  • Oh, I've been meaning to go... but... (insert stupid excuse here)
  • I don't have time
  • I don't want to get "huge"
Yes, almost any excuse you give is bound to be dumb. Just about everyone out there, young and old, male or female, healthy or not, will see serious benefits from strength training. You can argue with me till you're blue in the face, but try a proper strength training routine for 10 weeks - and actually stick with it for more than 2 days this time - and report back to me. If you didn't see noticeable results, you did something wrong.

The time issue is a bunch of BS. Exercise is something you make time for. It's as important as making time for doctor's appointments, getting your car fixed and watching (insert your favorite show here).

As for the "getting huge" issue, I need to warn you: it's kind of insulting to say that to someone who has been working out for a long time. Getting huge is NOT EASY. It doesn't just happen. You don't walk into a gym, pick up a dumbbell, and suddenly swell to Arnold proportions. It takes years of hard work, a very specific routine, and proper dieting to get "huge". The vast majority of people that do strength training - even those who are pretty damn strong - will never get particularly huge. Strength training is NOT body building and muscle size is not the goal.

So when you nonchalantly use this excuse in front of someone who has spent hundreds of hours working their ass off at a gym, it's like a slap to the face. Either you're insulting them because they haven't gotten huge despite their efforts - where as you, in your grand arrogance, would grow like mario on mushrooms just from signing up for a gym membership... Or you're directly telling them you don't want to look anything like them. Way to go.

Moreover, if you are female, it's almost impossible for you to become huge without steroids or other extreme measures. There are dozens of articles online about this and suffice it to say that strength training will only make you look more attractive. Checkout some of the pictures of the women of crossfit (many of whom are incredibly strong) to see what I mean.

So, at last, my routine

Well, I promised I'd tell you what I spend all my time doing, so at last, here it is:



Tuesday: bicep curls, 90 minutes
Thursday: bicep curls, 90 minutes
Saturday: bicep curls, 80 minutes followed by 10 minutes of flexing in front of the mirror.






Ok, ok, my real routine


For the last half a year, I've been doing the Bill Star 5x5 routine - see the website for the full details. Just for the record, and also for the all important purpose of flexing the biceps of my ego, I will list my personal records for each lift:

Exercise: Weight (in lbs) x reps

Squat: 325x4
Bench: 315x4
Deadlift: 405x4
Rows: 225x5
Press: 165x4