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If you post this on your gym wall, I’m pretty sure eyes will roll around in sockets. An International Meet?! At our gym?!

The poster is available on the promote page at Virtualmeet.net. It is black and white, will print nicely on both Legal and A4 paper sizes and will not degrade when photocopied. Thanks to Theresa for bringing this whole thing up!
 

…as you can see from the übercool new banner in my sidebar. Lots of sizes to select from!

http://virtualmeet.net/promote/

Interrupting the regular program, I want to extend my sincerest congratulations to fellow powerlifting blogger Chris and his family on account of the birth of his daughter Caitlin. I may be a sentimental fool, but seeing the sweet photo brought back a stream of emotional memories from when Rufus was born almost two years ago now.

As a first step towards releasing the full beast and to boost troop morale, Virtualmeet.net has received a proper front page. Stay tuned, there’s MUCH MORE to come!

As I do realize that the inaugural meet is approaching fast, I encourage anyone who feel a need to ask questions about the upcoming event to do so. The rules draft will go out to all of those who have pre-registered soonish.

Best of luck to all of those who are preparing for the meet!! Can’t wait!
 
 

As a gentle reminder to all those participating in the virtual meet: WE ARE NOOOOOW TEN WEEEEEEEEEKS OUT!!!!!! In this continuing series of meta notes, I finished the ketogenic diet last week and did the first peaking workout with Måns today. We are using the 9-week Extended Russian Routine. Based on my current surprising post-diet strength, I’ve revised my goals towards a 150 kg/330 lbs squat, a 115 kg/253 lbs bench and a 162.5 kg/358 lbs deadlift. Whether I will meet my maker before I get that far remains to be seen. Since workout reports are not scheduled to arrive here quite yet, I suggest you keep an eye on the action via Måns who has tentatively decided to blog his first powerlifting experience. Has anyone else begun their meet preparations yet?

After becoming a happy father, this blog has gone through its share of backblogging efforts. And here we are again, official hiatus, sporadic posts… Buried in virtualmeet.net, I feel no need to be apologetic for not being able to give the blog the demanding love it so craves, but I am starting to feel increasingly sorry for my readers who never know when to expect a new post. Not everyone is an avid feedreader. In fact, based on the server logs, I know that many of you are browsing in at least once a day, bravely defying the odds. And others… sayonara and sorry.

Without elaborating further on the misery my dear readers face from time to time, I shall attempt to cut to the chase. Following in Scott’s footsteps, I went ahead and outsourced my subscription services to FeedBurner. This brings with it the opportunity to receive a daily e-mail digest if, and only if, new content has appeared at Under the Bar. Separate subscriptions exist for posts and comments. Secondly, this allows me to consolidate all my feeds into one as FeedBurner intelligently delivers a format (Atom or RSS) your feedreader understands. As an auspicious side-effect, comments are now also available in the Atom format. Those of you already subscribed to one of my old feeds should be redirected seamlessly to the new one.

You can subscribe in the sidebar.

Hopefully, this will help make some of your lives a bit less painful while allowing those with a masochistic bent to continue their daily foraging for posts. At least it makes me sleep better at night. No more nightmares involving hordes of readers banging on my door asking whether an update has been posted. No more lost legs. Speaking of sleep, or lack thereof, I have finally corrected a long-standing two hour time offset for my blog; now the ghastly truth of my late habits will be revealed to all. In case you didn’t know, this blog slaves under Finnish time, i.e. GMT +2.

Now, who is ready to be surprised when you least expect it?

Theresa has set some astonishing VRs in this lush virtual outdoor gym lovingly created for her by husband Sam Ward (click the image for a larger view). I love the separate stations for the squat, bench and deadlift which, in my book, are the key to a true multi-user gym. Theresa might let us lift in this iron grove from time to time if we make extra sure to protect the environment from the perils of empty protein jars.

A BIG thanks to both Sam and Theresa for letting me publish this spectacular spot for the enjoyment of us all. I hear Sam is working on a website for his 3D modeling projects, a link will be forthcoming for those of you who wish to peruse further virtual worlds. Good job, Sam!

I’m working on finishing the details for the virtual meet site. Until that work is done, I will not even pretend to post anything here, except for replying to possible comments. In fact, I’ve posted a whole lot of lengthy stuff lately, summarizing findings on topics ranging from hypertrophy to strength loss during dieting, only it is to be found in a recent comment thread. This blog is known to rebound back, so don’t worry. Just you wait.