Workout Recap - Week of May 12, 2019
Lately, I've found myself thinking a lot about the separation of art from the artist. I may expand on why in a future post, but I think the point is an interesting one in itself.
I am openly and unabashedly a fan of H.P. Lovecraft. He was an absolute genius as an author. He was also a racist and an anti-Semite. I know that the latter statement puts some people off from being able to enjoy his works. Personally, I don't have a problem with it (as I'll come back to a little later), but I can understand why others might. However, given that Lovecraft has been dead for decades and his works are public domain, it seems questionable to justify not reading them because of not wanting to seem to support Lovecraft himself.
Similarly, I am openly and unabashedly a fan of the Kill Bill movies, even though I now know about how bad the filming environment was for Uma Thurman. Tarantino and Weinstein were both completely out of line in how they treated her (and I'm sure that there were issues with others, too, but the situation with Thurman is the only one that I have seen evidence for). Would knowing about that sooner have changed my decision to buy the DVDs of those movies? Honestly, probably not, because even though I dislike having supported them in some way with those purchases, I think those movies are works of art worthy of being part of my meager collection, and there were plenty of people involved in making them who did deserve the support from my purchases.
It becomes a murkier matter when it comes to extant creators who made their works more or less on their own, though. If Lovecraft were alive and writing today, would I still support him? Probably. After all, I use Roll20 to play my online D&D games even though it's run by a racist and sexist person who also bans people for having usernames to previous bans. Granted, I use it with a free account (if I were to pay for a virtual tabletop, I'd use Fantasy Grounds), but just using it at all gives them some ad revenue, I'm sure.
Ultimately, I'm a strong believer in the post-modern ideal of the death of the author, which is to say that I think a work stands as a separate entity from its creator once it is released for consumption, and I'm also a strong believer that most people have done something unsavory at some point, for which only they can truly know if they are repentant. Putting those two beliefs together, it is sensible that I would think a work should be judged on its own merits rather than by the virtues (or vices) of its creator.
Anyway, I only did four workouts this week because spamming challenges is exhausting.
Sunday
Type: Pass/Fail
Close Handstand Push Ups - 2 sets of 6 (pass)
Pull Ups - 2 sets of 15 (pass)
Pistol Squats - 2 sets of 10, each side (pass)
Bonus: 2 sets of 6 Superman push ups
I knew that I had an aggressive plan for my workouts during the week, so I toned things down slightly for the opener. It wasn't a complete joke, though, as doing two sets of fifteen pull ups is something I hadn't quite done before.
Tuesday
Type: As Fast As Possible
100 Burpees
Time = 10:30
Bonus: 4 uneven pull ups (each side)
This was a fantastic result. I tried a new approach of chopping it up into mini-sets of fourteen (of which I managed to do five before needing to cut back), and it paid off nicely. Of course, now this begs of question of what mini-set size I should be aiming at, but that's a trial for another day.
Thursday
Type: As Fast As Possible
6 sets of:
6 Pull Ups
6 Burpees
6 Bridges
Time = 7:00
Bonus: 6 chin ups
This performance was fantastic, too. I haven't got much else to say about it, really, other than I hope I can top it next time.
Saturday
Type: As Fast As Possible
7 sets of:
7 Pull Ups
7 Bridges
Time = 6:30
Bonus: 1 pull up, 1 bridge
And how about capping things off with yet another fantastic result? This may have only tied what I did the last time with this challenge, but that's hardly a fault when that time was so good to begin with.
