Breaking Plateaus in Squat and Bench Press

(Note: This post has turned out to be the most viewed post on my blog. I strongly testify to the routine I suggest here, and it is a definite ball-buster. I am curious to know how many people actually implement the routine I suggest. I am a little suspicious that a lot of people read this post only in hope of finding some tweak or short-cut, and do not actually go for such a non-orthodox routine. So, please drop a comment if you have implemented this routine, or a variation, along with your gains. )

Plateaus are very common in Weightlifting. I have only been training for about 4.5 years, so I'm not sure if I can label my no-gain periods as plateaus. Most of the time, I wasn't focusing on any single lift and hence it hadn't improved. Especially my squats- I squat throughout the year with a frequency of about twice a week. And yet my gains did not reflect my training- I have been improving about 10-12kg per year. The slow improvement is quite frustrating. What I write now is the routine I used to speed up my gains. Although I haven't used it to break through a plateau, I believe the same can be used to break plateaus. First, I'll briefly mention the gains I'm talking about.
In 2009, my max squat was 100kg. In 2010, my max squat was 110kg, in 2011 it was 117.5kg. In April 2012, I hit a max of 127.5kg in a Powerlifting competition.
In my 9th semester (Aug-Nov 2012), I was focused on Olympic lifting. I did not hit a max squat during the summer. The improvement in my lifts from August 15 to November 5 was:
Back squat: 130kg to 150kg
Front squat: 115kg to 132.5kg
Push press: 70kg to 87kg
Power snatch: 70kg to 77kg
Power clean: 90kg to 97kg
Snatch: 80kg to 92kg
Clean: 105kg to 117kg
Jerk: 105kg to 117kg
Even after these significant gains, I was hungry for more improvement. Instead of going easy on the intensity, I maintained it through November. Around December 10, I injured a knee (still recovering from it) and a rhomboid (recovered at the end of January)
During this time, my bodyweight went from 73kg to 77kg, which is kind of inevitable.

My bench press max was 80kg in 2010, 85kg in 2011, and 82.5kg in 2012. I do bench press only from January to mid-April. The rest of the year, I never do bench press, except some close grip bench press 2-3 times a month. On January 10th this year, I benched 80kg. But in the first week of March, I benched 95kg for 2 reps and 99kg for 1 rep.

During both periods, my improvements were quite significant for me. In 2.5 months, I improved more than what I would usually improve in an year.
Please keep in mind that I have been training for 4 years when I tried my new routine. Such routines may not be suited for beginners and must be used only in times of desperation. 

I once read this somewhere (not the exact lines, but with the same gist)-
"How much would you usually improve on your squat in a month? 5 lb? 10 lb? What if someone came along and kidnapped your family and said that they would be released only if you improved 50lb on your squat in 1 month, or else they will kill your family? Would you still squat only once a week? F**k that, you'll be squatting every freaking day. You would either gain 50lb in that month, or kill your legs trying to do that."
"A lot of people talk about why its not good to squat more than once or twice a week. But look at factory workers, or workers in construction and in mines. They lift some serious weights. In the first few months, they may find it very taxing on themselves. But later on, they get used to it. They get used not only to lifting heavy loads, but also to lifting them everyday. You can do the same to your squat or your bench press. If you start squatting everyday, your body will get used to squatting everyday."

So, between August and November 2012, I started squatting 4 times a week instead of my usual 2 times a week. I cycled the intensity and reps. One day I would do 105kg for 3 reps, one day I'd do 100kg for 5 reps, one day I'd do 115kg for 2 reps, or 120kg for 1 rep. Sometimes front squat, sometimes back squat. But I kept squatting in every training session. I did good mornings and push presses on alternate days, with the same approach - varying intensity and reps. I did the same on my pulls. Usually I'd do snatch or clean pulls only once or twice a week, I started doing pulls 4 days a week. I trained for about 15-20 days like this. The following week, I dropped down on the volume- only singles upto 120kg, and squatting only twice a week. I took 3-4 days of rest after my previous squat session, and boom, I hit a max after that. 2 cycles of this routine, and I hit 150kg back squat and 87kg push press.

To summarize the routine:
1) First 15 days: Perform the exercise more often- 4 or 5 times a week. Cycle the load and the reps between 5 reps at 80%, 3 reps at 85%, and singles at 92%, all of them for multiple sets. Maintain a sufficiently high volume. Expect to feel like shit after the two sessions.
2) Next 7 days: Reduce the frequency of the exercise to twice a week. Reduce the volume drastically. Hit heavy singles- around 90% -95% for 3 to 5 sets.
3) Next 5 days: The second or third day after the previous session, do the exercise with very light weights for very low volume- 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps each at 50% should do. Two more days after this, attempt your max.
For a week after your max attempt, train with light weights- 50-60%. Go for another cycle if you dare.

Do not start on this routine right after a break from training. I have left out a lot of details such as warm-up, rest periods, assistance works, diet, etc.. This routine is not intended for beginners, and I expect anyone with a few years of training experience to fill out the details depending on their goals, conditioning and weaknesses.

Notes of caution:
1) There is a strong reason for not training like this through out the year- there is an increased chance of injury, and you'll hate going to the gym. So attempt this only in times of desperation.
2) When training with a team, it'll be very hard to use an exclusive routine. Adapt it accordingly.
3) In routines like this, weights must be properly chosen. They must be light enough to allow you to train continuously for 8-10 sessions, but heavy enough to stimulate growth.
4) Its very easy to give up with these kinda routines- after 3-4 sessions you may not even want to set foot in the gym. You must go through that phase and keep training.
5) Attempt this only if you can listen to your body. There is a fine line between massive gains and serious injury, ensure that you can differentiate them.

I did get injured, but about a month after the gains I mentioned. I was preparing for a competition due to be held on December 20. My training from November 25 to December 10 was unforgiving. My body was already screwed up, and I was doing 110kg cleans and 80kg snatches everyday (and training 3 times in 2 days, as opposed to 4 times in 7 days). It was just bad management on my part. But the routine I mentioned was very good.

The above is all about my routine from Aug-Nov 2012. During Jan-March 2013 I used a similar routine, plus one addition, to add 15kg to my bench press. I benched 4-6 days a week. I alternated heavy sessions (80kg for singles or 70kg for 3 reps, multiple sets) with dynamic sessions (40kg or 45kg for 10 sets of 3 reps). I hit 95kg for 2 reps and 99kg for a single during the routine itself. The difference between this routine and the one I used for squats was the dynamic work- sets of 3 fast-reps at 50%.
I didn't build up to a max as I'd usually do for a competition or as I did for my squat. The basic idea for this routine is based on what Louie Simmons uses at Westside Barbell (google it up), and the one I explained earlier (of squatting everyday).

I didn't try anything new. I took principles of periodization, high frequency training and westside barbell's conjugate training and mixed them all up. I was training with a team and hence couldn't try any particular training routine exclusively. I had to adapt, and I experimented with this routine. Fortunately, it was a great success for me.

A beginner's journey through research

With 2 more months left before I have to finish my Dual Degree Project (DDP), I am now in a restless position. I have always been interested in my work, but I procrastinate a lot. My work is computational. I have written codes for two techniques, both part of my DDP, by January. Since then I have just been debugging my codes and modifying my approach. I now have proper codes and accurate results, but the results are not what I have expected. I'm now left with only one option- to tweak my approach in whatever ways I can till I can make some sense out of my results. If this were a textbook problem, I would have had some feel for the answer and tried to work towards that. But with my DDP, not even my guide knows what the answer would be, and so goes on my search for sense.

I have taken up a decent number of projects in my insti life- a few experiments and models for course work, some simulations, hazaar codes, and three big ones -
1) An SOE (Spirit of engineering) project (sems 2 - 5)
2) Internship at GE (Summer 2011)
3) DDP ( July 2012 - present)
And all of my course projects, I did myself.
As I'm now clueless about how to proceed, and pretty frustrated for being in such a situation, I was reflecting on the way I've approached my project so far and realized that there is a common trend among my approaches to projects. In this post, I'll outline that approach. It may help other beginners who are about to start taking on new projects, and hopefully I may realize something I've been missing as I put it in words.

Phase 1: Groundwork, reading
The most boring part. I'm very enthued to do something but I know very little about it. Sometimes, as in the case of my internship, I'm not even aware of the problem. I do know that reading some stuff will help me later. Reading things when needed has always been more appealing to me. I'd just glance through the textbooks, just to know what it is all about, without trying to remember anything. Later, when I am faced with the real problem, I come back to the textbook and read the relevant part thoroughly.

Phase 2: Let's do this s**t
The problem is introduced. I think I understand what the issue. I lay down a strategy to attack it and get to work. I would be quite sure about the outcome when I start working. This phase ends as quickly as it begins

Phase 3: Problems, problems
I get stuck. Sometimes I can't get results - code doesn't work, code gives infinity or NaN, experimental setup  does nothing, Simulation won't start, software won't install, software won't run, and so on and on... Sometimes I get results that are garbage. The strategy I was so confident about cups badly.

Phasae 4: Loss of enthu, infinite procrastination
After the initial enthu and the spectacular cupping, with no obvious route to take, I start losing enthu. I'm so pained with the cupping that I don't try to look for ways to make it work and desperately, but with huge time delays, keep trying the same thing over and over.

Phase 5: More reading, problem definition
After a lot of procrastination, I would lazily explore other options. When searching for new ways to attack the problem, I usually end up questioning my understanding of the problem itself. I would then set down to clearly define the problem itself and what I expect from it. This will be accompanied by a round of reading existing literature to see if I can relate my problem to something that already has been studied. At the end of this phase, I'd gain a better understanding of the problem and a better appreciation of the challenges it offers.
A lot of times, phase 5 is accelerated by talking to others- mentors, guides, colleagues, etc.. Most of the time, what I would realize in phase 5 is that I did not pay enough attention to detail- to the assumptions usually. Like in 11th or 12th I might have sometimes applied conservation of mechanical energy when there is friction in the system. In the context of my DDP, I usually work assuming that the system is close to a linear system without trying to verify that assumption. Or when I get results that don't seem to make sense, I do not analyze them properly.
Bad results tell a lot more about the system than results that seem meaningful. They usually tell us why the system is not ideal, or to which parameter it is most sensitive. Analyzing them is a very important part of research, but I rarely do that out of laziness.

Phases 2 to 5 repeat a few times, with each round giving me better insight into the problem (irrespective of whether I'm actually getting closer to solving the problem or not). Phase 5 usually ends prematurely. Once I realize that my previous approach was wrong and that there is another route I can take, I go back to phase 2 without completely considering the results of the previous round. That is usually a very big problem, but its very hard to fight the drive to try a new, promising, approach.
I do not know what comes after phase 5. I have just realized that in the last 5 years, I have never gotten past phase 5. I have never had problems with classroom problems or the simple tutorial questions. But I'm yet to solve a real problem. I had given up on my SOE project, left my internship before I could see the project through completition, and am still working on my DDP. There were several course assignments that were quite challenging. In my 9th sem, 2 courses required some computational assignments to be completed and another course required me to make an experimental measurement. Aerospace Engineering Department at IITM has some very good professors who give interesting assignments. My course projects gave results that were sufficiently satisfactory to earn a good grade. Throughout my coursework and with my 3 big projects, I have always ended up appreciating the problem far better than when I started working on it. But completely exploring the problem- that is something I haven't done yet.
With my DDP, I am now hopeful that I will see it to completion. I have already been through phases 2 to 5 atleast 5 times (I am using a technique called 'Dynamic Mode Decomposition'. Right now the code I'm running is called "dmd_mixlayer_ver7" - the 7th version since January). I believe I have a fair understanding of the problem. Hopefully I'll have explored it fully before I pass out.

Yoga and Meditation

                A yoga workshop was conducted in insti on 3rd March. It was announced in smail and I registered for it (it was free). I went to the place and there were about 30 people there. The instructor asked each of us why we were there. People had different, but related, reasons - to learn yoga, to get toned, to lose weight, to get healthy, for a change in their usual physical exercise, etc.. I wasn't there for any of those reasons. I was just curious. Yoga has been around for a millenium may be. It has spread to the west too and quite a lot of people practice it. I wanted to know why so many people believe in it, and maybe pick up something interesting from it. There had to be something in it if so many people approved it for so long (but then people blindly follow religion too, so I was skeptical). When I was in 6th grade, I practiced yoga for a couple of weeks in my school, before karate appealed more to me and I switched to it. Unfortunately, the karate classes in that school were packed after some 6 months after I joined.

                In the yoga workshop, after the usual "we all have problems, yoga will help you to fix them, it will help you with this, it will help you in that, etc..", the instructor started us up on some warm up exercises - stretching and rotating wrists, elbows, shoulders, knees, etc... Then came the famous Suryanamaskara. With all the tightness accumulated from weight training and the loss in conditioning due my laziness in the last 2 years, I found the asanas a little uncomfortable, but I went through them. After 2 hours, I felt I understood what this was all about. I know its not fair to judge an art based on just a 2 hour intro session, but I believe the rest is all an extension of whatever was taught in those 2 hours.

Apparently, yoga is a series of exercises involving static stretching and bodyweight isometrics performed with synchronized breathing. In addition to that, the practitioner's mind becomes peaceful due to the slow pace and focused stretching and breathing. And there are a lot of asanas and mastering them all is quite challenging. There seems to be a spiritual side to it too, but I'm not really interested in that. Ofcourse, as with any such art, a lot of discipline and rules for lifestyle are involved.

                So, after the 2 hours, I decided that if anyone ever asks me about yoga, I'd definitely recommend it. It involves a fair bit of exercise, good breathing and gives a peace of mind. A pretty decent package. For a guy who's just lying in his room for most of the time, it must work wonders. But I didn't find anything that may be useful to me. At some point or the other in the last 4 years, I had already done all of the stretching that was taught. There are a lot of exotic asanas that involve a lot of flexibility and strength at uncomfortable positions, but I do not expect them to carry over to any of the things I'm interested in. So, for a committed sportsman who knows a fair bit about stretching, muscle mechanisms and injuries, yoga won't be very appealing. It is okay to try it for a change of pace, but I do not expect any significant returns. Ofcourse, there is the improvement in breathing and the peace of mind. But then, I get these from a set of heavy squats or an all-out sprint too, and they make may stronger and faster.

                Then we had a break for lunch. After the lunch, we had some breathing exercises (go for a long run, or put a sprint. Nothing beats that). A lecture on healthy diet (I don't care much for that, I'm okay with eating whatever I can find, unless I'm on a strict diet aimed at something). How asanas can affect your behavior and thinking (I felt the claims to be greatly exaggerated). Then some general discussion which I didn't find interesting. Finally, we came to meditation. The meditation, according to the instructor, is not a part of yoga per say, but she wanted to teach us.

                Meditation has always intrigued me. I hear a lot of claims on it and always wonder how it can be so effective. So we all sit down and close our eyes. The instructor says things that usually hypnotists may say, like "you'll feel relaxed now, you are fully stress free, etc...". Before we started the meditation, the instructor told us that the mind has a frequency - 6 corresponding to our normal life, 8 to a stressed state, and 4 to a time when we're consciously not very aware, but are in sync with our subconscious. I understand that the mind may be divided into the conscious and the subconscious (the intuitive part as I understand it, nothing magical/spiritual). The instructor said that if we can tune down our mind to the frequency of 4, we can get into contact with the universe around us and reach wherever we want to. I didn't believe the theory, and as an engineer, was itching to ask for how this frequency is defined and also the units in which it's measured. But I decided not to argue, so I just listened.

                Towards the end of the meditation, she (the instructor) asked us to tell ourselves, not out loud, that we will make whatever changes we wish to make in ourselves. She asked us to fix this deeply in our subconscious. She said that if we did this kind of meditation enough times, it would get strongly fixed in our mind. I didn't find it new at all. We tell ourselves the same thing enough times, we start to believe in it. And belief in ourselves can be very effective. An incident from the summer before last comes to my mind. I was in Bangalore, training in my office gym. My squat had hit a plateau at around 100 or 105kg. A friend of mine, who dropped out of insti, was telling me about a training routine he was following and in the conversation he said something like, "squatting is all in the mind. If you believe you can't squat more than your old max, you won't. But if you believe you can push your max, you definitely will". After 3-4 days I decided to squat heavy. I was a little scared but decided to to give an all out effort and not back down - I pushed my max to 115kg, an improvement that would usually take me about 3-4 months. So what we were asked to do as part of meditation is nothing new, it is a very old principle- if you want to do something, you must start believing in it. Half efforts rarely succeed.

                This brings me to the very last part of the meditation. The instructor asked us to visualize white light all around us, and I did. Then she asked us to think of "a lot of positive energy coming into you from the universe, the universe is helping you to get strong". All my focus and peace of mind broke at that point. I tried hard to regain focus, but the best I could do was think about dragon ball Z, how the characters in that anime get very strong by taking in stuff from the universe. After a while, the meditation session ended. The instructor went on telling others how the universe cares about each of us and will help us if we can connect to it through meditation.

Some time last year, I was in full mood to watch documentaries and started downloading a lot of them on LAN. There was someting called  - 'The secret'. Expecting some kind of medieval conspiracy, I downloaded it. It started with mentioning the names of a lot of thinkers, scientists and politicians and claimed they all knew the secret, and the documentary was going to give it to me. Then came a series of people claiming to be quantum physicists, psycologists, etc... who reiterated the power of the secret and how the life of the audience can change by the knowledge of it. I was curious. After watching it for 10 more minutes, when the secret was slowly being revealed, I closed the video, unable to watch any further. It was the same thing that was told to us at the end of the meditation - if I want to do something very badly, the whole universe conspires to give it to me. I only have to wish for it very hard. Though this was not mentioned in the meditation session, the documentary went on to say that our thoughts attract things towards us, so whatever we think about too often, it just happens- good or bad. So they say we must always think positively.

                All the time, when watching that documentary and during the meditation, only 1 thing kept flashing in my mind- 'The universe is like 300 billion years old, many billion light years wide. Why does it give a damn about any of us?' I was very tempted to say this to the instructor, but decided against getting into an argument in her workshop. I did get into one though. She asked if any of us believed that we were not controlled by something outside ourself. I said I believe I have freewill, so I did not believe I was controlled. Then she went on to give examples of luck, failures despite best efforts, etc, trying to show that I don't have full control of myself, or atleast that's what it seemed like to me. I decided not to argue further. Actually, I wasn't even listening. That was the end of the workshop and I was trying to address the reason I attended the workshop. What is this all about? Why do so many people believe in it? After some thought, I reached a conclusion.

                The exercise and breathing part, it obviously benefits all those people not involved in a lot of physical activity, or those that don't know how to stretch in case of spasms and injuries. The meditation, well it gives people some peace of mind. A little time to reflect on life, make resolutions and keep telling themselves what they want to do. The thing in the end, about the whole universe trying to help us, I didn't buy that. But then, people don't care for reason. People who meditate are usually those who are stressed out. Spiritual gurus and saints meditate too, but then I think they are just jobless people not contributing to society at all, and instead living off others' hard work. If someone tells a depressed or a stressed out guy that there is hope for him and that the entire universe wants him to succeed, that's a lot of good news. They'd probably become more confident and work better, believing that they have the whole universe helping them and hence their problems can be overcome.

                So, bottomline, for a normal person who isn't skeptical and believes everything their instructors teach, yoga and meditation can do wonders. For a person who already knows his stuff, they don't make any difference and are just plain old principles given in an illusive package with lots of exotic names. If anyone asks for my opinion, I'd definitely recommend yoga and meditation to them. 

What does it mean to be human?

After workouts in the gym, me and some of my teammates usually go to Taramani to get some meat and drink some fruit juice, etc.. A couple of days back we were in Tarams having a glass of juice when we started talking about what each of us wanted to do 10 years down the line. The popular opinion was to open up a business that offers a higher potential for income than conventional jobs. I have been clear about what kind of career I want for atleast 3 years now. The details keep evolving with time, but the basic idea remained the same. But when we were talking about what options we have and how much money we can make through each of those, I started to explore my options. I still knew I would go into a career of research. But this time I really felt the need to justify my decision to go for one thing and not the other. We drank the juice, got chicken fried rice parceled and returned to insti. When I was going back to my room, I started asking a lot of questions but finally landed on one that seemed to be the most important- What is my life all about?

     These kinds of questions have no single answer. We can have groups of people debating forever without ever coming to an agreement. Not surprisingly, these are the kind of questions religions try to answer. A lot of people are satisfied with answers given to them by someone else, I am not. I decided to go atleast as far as I can comprehend. I have found that the best way to propose answers to this kind of questions is by comparing our modern civilization to tribals or animals. A lot of questions, including those about religion and ethics can be investigated by this kind of comparisons (I've been planning to write on these, but never got around to do that). So I started to look for the things that make us different from animals.

    I believe that the most important factors that have shaped human history are the following: comfort, domination and passion.
From living in caves to peacing out in AC rooms, from walking for miles to driving cars, from hunting animals to industrialized farming, it has always been about leading a comfortable life. That's the major reason for doing science and developing new technology.
War- political, religious or otherwise, is always about one group dominating another. Very rarely two countries may go to war because of reasons like scarcity of resources and such, but even in this case, one country wants to live at the expense of the other. The point of most sports or even job positions is the same, showing that you are better than someone else.
Comfort and domination are something that we share in common with even animals. Animals also want to have food without trying too hard, they want to sit in shade, lay down and sleep, etc... A lot of animal groups have alpha and beta males that are the most powerful in the group, they enjoy more privileges than the others. There is another thing that affects our lives- emotions. Everyone wants to be happy. I prefer not to talk about it here.

             But the third factor I mentioned- passion to do things, is one thing that is specific to humans.Animals care first about their survival. Once there is no threat to survival, they seek comfort and/or domination over the others in their group. They just do whatever they feel like without really bothering about anything else. But with us it has been a different story. We have long term goals.We want to do things, not because someone asked us to do it, not because our survival depends on it, not because we expect something out of it, but just because we want to do it. Animals, even the smartest ones like say apes, don't really bother about any long term stuff. They live in the moment, and maybe plan ahead out of caution when there seems to be some threat, but that's all.
             This passion is why the human race is the way it is today. For as long as we have existed, people always sat down and said, "Ok, This thing is interesting. I think I can do something about this. I will spend more time on this and see what I'll get." Sometimes it was to make life comfortable, sometimes it was to win wars, sometimes to impress others, but a lot of times we decided to do things for no reason other than that we wanted to do something. This was how philosophy was born, this was how science was born. Suppose everyone stuck to religion, spirituality, ethics etc and no one bothered to venture on new ideas. Suppose no one ever tried to think beyond the absolute requirements for survival and the rules prescribed by religion. In that case, we would still be living in caves, probably without even inventing fire or weapons.
             Another thing that we do is, we try to define some values and stick to them. Like say, honesty. Or gratitude. Or plain sadism. Why do we have such values? Why do we try to stick to them? The only answer I can find is, because we choose to. Animals don't seem to care much about values. Atleast not on an individual basis. Very often an entire species has a particular trait, such as loyalty for dogs. They are probably just made that way. We, humans, on the other hand are not. We decide what values we want to have in our life.
             So finally, what I realized is, it is our passions and our values that make us different from animals. Do I really want to be different from animals? Or rather, why should I be different from animals? Simply because I can be and I have chosen to. That has always been the most important thing about humans. We choose to do things, we choose to follow some rules. If we, as a species, stop being passionate about our goals or give up all our values and just live like whatever we want to live like, our whole civilization would collapse into anarchy and we'll live like animals (ofcourse, if an individual chooses to have a radical set of ideals, the society, whose most important value is to punish those who fall out of line, would just kill the individual).

              Now my choices are justified. I have some values that restrict what kind of careers I can choose. I have a passion for some particular thing. I can go after only money and try to live comfortably, but then I'd be ditching my passion and my values, which are what make me human. These days there is a lot of stuff going around about careers, what you should do in life and all. I'd never tell anyone what to do and what is right, because the other person has his own set of values and passions and what is important to him may be just a load of crap to me. If you have patiently gone through the whole article, I urge you to take a few more minutes to sit down and list a set of values that you want to live by and make a very small list of things that you are most passionate about. Stick them both on your wall and try to live exactly by the lists for just a couple of days. Most people cannot. But after you try this, you will definitely have a better clarity about what you are and what you want.

Why scientists cannot be atheists

A lot of people nowadays fashion themselves to be atheists. Some even consider themselves to be more intellectual when compared to religious people just because they subscribe to the idea that God does not exist. Before I write further on this, I'd first define some of the words I'm using.

'God' refers only to the way major religions define their omnipotent being, with all the prayers, creations, sins, heaven and hell and all that stuff.

Atheists are people who strongly believe that God does not exist.

Scientists are just any people who practice the scientific method, not necessarily highly qualified researchers.

Think about how religions describe God. He/She has to be trusted, not questioned. He/She cannot be subjected to any proof or scientific analysis. We only have to “believe” that He/She exists. NO QUESTIONS ASKED. There is no guarantee that every person gets to see an act of God (ofcourse, this again depends on what one calls an “act of God”. It could be something as straight-forward as the existence of life, or more specific stuff like miraculous healing and all).

In science, there is one very important test that any theory has to be subjected to- Falsifiability. I picked this up from wikipedia:

"Falsifiability is the ability of a theory—a working framework for explaining and predicting natural phenomena—to be disproved by an experiment or observation.[1] The ability to evaluate theories against observations is essential to the scientific method, and as such, the falsifiability of theories is key to this and is the prime test for whether a proposition or theory can be described as scientific. “

Now, what would the consequence be if a scientist wants to claim that there is no room for the existence of God within the scientific framework (or simply, that God does not exist). It means he/she has conducted a test (either a physical observation or just a thought experiment), by which he/she has found that God does not exist. Also, falsifiability requires that if God exists, His existence must make sure that the above test would fail. But the way that God is defined, He is free to do whatever He wants, whenever He wants. On one day, He may let the test work and on another day He may let it fail. Or He may let the test work forever and still exist, since it is in His power to do whatever He wishes. 

 

My explanation has been sloppy and I would expect the reader to think about this till he/she is convinced (please comment if you find my observation to be wrong, but not if you couldn't understand it). The bottomline is, it is not possible to assert scientifically that God does not exist, just because of the way God is defined. Science cannot comment on the existence of God. So, any person who says he/she is a man of science and does not believe in God, he/she just does not know even the basics of the scientific method. 

 

The closest a scientist can get to an atheist is to being an agnostic- a person who is ready to believe in God if he/she is convinced in some way of that, and till then just doesn't care to think about the question of His existence. However, it is quite easy for a scientist to believe in a supreme being (but not God in the exact way the religions define Him).

Why I am against religion

I’m not an atheist, I’m an agnostic. I do not reject the existence of God, nor do I say there is one. I have never experienced the god that people usually define. If I do, I shall believe. However, I have experienced nature. It has its own behaviour. The purpose of science is to observe nature and put forward hypotheses to explain the behaviour of nature and predict events.

                As far as explaining and predicting nature goes, religion only looks like a mask to people’s ignorance to me. For example, take the rain, sun, wind, sea, etc.. In quite a lot of religions, each of these have a god associated with them. But now we know that each of these natural phenomena can be broken down in terms of atomic behaviour. If religion has to be updated to keep up with what we do know for sure, then all the above gods must be dumped in favour of an “atom god”. Some religions believe in a heaven and hell, spirituality, soul, etc. I prefer not to worry about things I cannot observe, like souls, the other worlds etc. You can tell me that they exist and I’m just ignorant of them, I prefer to keep things simple and believe in what I perceive. After all, I am what I can ‘feel’. Talk about heaven and hell, the belief was that heaven is up in the sky and hell is down in the earth. Now we do know for sure that there’s no “up in the sky”. Sky is but a vast vacuum and the earth is not special celestially. There are the stars and the planets and there doesn’t seem to be any room for heaven “up there”. And “down there”, we know that the earth has a crust, mantle and core, etc.. Then there is the idea that god created human beings and all. Each religion has its own version of the creation and all of them cannot be true. But we all now believe in fossils, dinosaurs, tectonic movements, micro organisms, etc.. none of which had any mention in any religious texts. Without going into too much detail, I’d just say that all the scientific facts we have point against the way in which religions say mankind came into existence (it could still be that some super power ,  a.k.a nature, “created” mankind).

                So, I just mentioned some reasons that point against religion. Now we’ll look at the one thing that tells me why I should believe in some religion. The first and most important thing- I’ll be rewarded (most probably in an after-life) if I follow what the religion says, or be punished if I don’t. It’s not very hard to see that for a society to survive, there must be some ground-rules. I find it very easy to believe that what religions preach are just some rules that make sure that people work together to make the concept of society work. This appeals more to me- you want the comfort of living in a society, live by the rules. And what better way to tell this to people than to tell them about rewards and punishments?

                Most people believe in religion because their elders told them about religion and that is the way it is. They are told that they must not question religion or god. I prefer to question a lot of things. I believe in something only if I find the argument convincing. Religion does not offer an argument at all and expects people to take it by faith. This is totally against the scientific way. And I guess I must remind everyone that it is because of the scientific way that we now have computers, satellites, internet, televisions, etc. We have them now because someone questioned things, someone did science. If someone wants to be religious, maybe they should give up everything science has offered through the endless work of all the great people who took the effort to question things rather than just take them on faith.

To summarize

1.       Religion must be viewed as a set of moral rules that help people live peacefully in a society.

2.       Religious notions have been advanced when science could not explain something. As our scientific knowledge expands, our understanding of things gets better and better and the domain of religion/god would be further reduced.

3.       Remember that computers and cell phones could not have been invented if everyone just prayed and worshipped. Someone had to do science.

4.       Thanks to the freedom taken by all the religious writers in glorifying the role of god, a wealth of knowledge from our ancestors has been lost when legends, myths and scriptures were passed over generations.

               

My inter IIT Journey - Part 4 (2011)

 2011 proved to be a bigger challenge than 2010. We had won the title, now we had to keep it. We were faced with 3 major problems: 1. Moot dropped out of the institute and joined a sports science course in DU. Bala passed out of the insti. ISI had to do a 6 month intern. The 3 of them were worth 9 points (3 silvers). Lalu wanted to focus on acads and placements the following year and so he left the team. I became the new captain. The first task was to find replacements for Moot, Bala and Lalu. The replacements were not expected to perform on par with the seniors and the rest of us had to make up for the lost points. And I had moved into the next weight category- from under 62kg class to under 69kg class. And so I had to fight even harder to get a gold in the heavier class.

Practice in the even sem wasn't very good. It was in the odd sem that we upped the ante. Moot was very seriously missed. It wasn't just the points, but his general attitude towards the sport, the level of psyche he brings into his lifts. Dropping out of IITM to take Sports Science in DU says something about the guy. Without Moot and ISI, my enthu also went down slightly. And then there were 4 new guys in the team- Manoj, Prudhvi, Devendra and Vinayak. Venu, Riyaz and Sai Chand had to be left out of the team.

We introduced Weightlifting in Sportsfest, and we managed to win the Gold. I actually gave one of my worst performance, second only to my performance in inter IIT 2009, but luckily there were no other good lifters in my category and I won Gold. Then, we also participated in Chennai District competition, where our team came second in the amateurs class. I got a silver there. Since Moot left, me, ISI and Vikrant were the guys competing against each other now. Then came Schroeter. It wasn't as good as it was in 2010 since we had already reached a good level and our lifts started to saturate. In trying to break my personal record, I lost the “Best Lifter” title I held in 2009, 2010 to Balaji. The new guys were promising, but they were not ready yet to make their mark in inter IIT.

Main camp came, and this time it was Asif's turn to get injured during Main Camp. Other than that, our practice was going good. We stopped playing cricket in the mornings. When Moot, ISI and Vikrant were in the team, we had a great time, lots of fun. With ISI busy with placements, Moot not in insti and Vikrant busy with his end sems (IIIT had end sems during our main camp), the general attitude of the team towards inter IIT became more serious, more desperate and less psyched. The time came to leave for IIT Kharagpur. In train, I didn't have as much fun as I had the previous 2 years, but it was still very good. Kharagpur was a proper village and that became very clear when we went in the bus from the railway station to IIT Kgp. I guess I saw some 5-6 hospitals in the route, and very few general stores or such other shops.

This inter IIT was more about living up to the reputation (I held all 3 records- Snatch, Clean n Jerk and total life, in the under 62kg class), retaining the gold and guiding the juniors in the team. I was the captain and I'm a 4^th year guy. This time too, there was one major problem. ISI was busy with his placements. He said he would come in time for the competition. He very well might have ended up having an interview on that day. We just hoped that he'd come on time.

The first few days were not that exciting. We didn't want to do anything crazy till our competition ended. We rarely went for cheering. We spent most of our time watching other teams practice, looking out for the best lifters of each team. I don't know how friendly the teams in other sports are, but in Weightlifting, all members of all IITs are good friends. Especially IITM and IITB teams have a good relationship- we meet the team and talk to their coach, we peace out, we encourage each other and we cheer when someone's lifting. No team puts RG to the lifters of other teams. Everyone encourages everyone else when they're attempting heavy weights. And at the end of the day, we're all like “abe yaar, bahut improve karliya tu ne bhi.. congrats dude, see you next year... is baar to theek hai, lekin next time to bahut fight hoga is medal ke liye..”

Our competition started, in the best way it possibly could. Balaji put Gold in under 56kg. It came till the last call and he managed to complete the lift. And then in under 62kg, Dilli came 4^th. The guy who came 2^nd in under 62kg was after my records. He broke the record I set in snatch- mine was 73 and he did 75kg. And when he did that, the referees called me on to the stage and made me congratulate him- probably the first time something like that happened in inter IIT, and it felt good and bad at the same time. Good since it was acknowledged officially that I held a record, and bad because it was broken just the next year. He couldn't break my other 2 records though. That was day 1 of Weightlifting. ISI was still in insti when Balaji got Gold. He got placed that afternoon. He took the next flight to Kolkata, got on a train to Kharagpur and by the time he reached our hostel, it was about 4 AM. He didn't get any sleep and the competition started at 12 noon.

On day 2, it was under 69kg first. There was something interesting about that category- captains of IITB, IITK, IITH, IITG, IITKgp, IITD, and of course myself, were all in that category. And the competition started- my best competition ever. For he first time, I had to put fight for the medal, and I won it. I had to fight for it in inter IIT 2009, but I screwed up. I was 1kg down in snatch, but it didn't matter, I knew I was too good in Clean & Jerk. I just waited for the rest of the lifters to finish their calls. I had to do 98kg for Gold. I did it. I had a slight back pain I had gotten during warm up and I was a little hesitant in attempting 106kg (which would be a new inter IIT record), I wanted to go for 100kg and be done with it. Then it flashed across my mind that I already won Gold and even failing in that lift or a minor injury would mean nothing, I had lots of time to recover, and I went for it. Ofcourse, there was encouragement from everyone, my team obviously, IITB team, and also all other competitors from other teams. And I broke the new record, created a new one.

In under 77kg, ISI did the best he could. He could only manage a bronze. Considering he didn't practice at all and he was totally exhausted, it was a commendable feat. On the 3^rd day, it was above 77kg. It finally came down to this- both Manoj and Asif had 2 calls left for each of them. If one of them lifts one call, the team gets gold, or we'd be tied with Bombay. In the first attempt, Manoj lifted 87kg, and we got our gold and that's how our story ended. I was also the 'Best Lifter' of the competition. From 2008 to 2011, I came from being a new kid in the team to the captain of the Gold winning team in inter IIT.

When our competition was over, we had realized that Kharagpur was a totally free place, you could smoke right on the roads inside the campus. You could booze too. There were a couple of bars right outside their main gate. I'd just say I made good use of the freedom they offered- after all, I deserved it. And what better time to enjoy the freedom than when celebrating with the team and friends?

The night after the competition, we decided to check out the prison cells and the building beside it, that was supposed to be haunted. We visited that place 3 times and had a lot of fun. It would take too much space to describe it here. The rest of inter IIT was spent a little passively. Winning Gold was not very ecstatic, it was only relieving, like a job well done. Everyone gave their best, it was like a perfectly executed plan. They had very good rasgullas and gulab jamuns for only 4 bucks each in a store which was near their version of GC. We spent our time eating, enjoying, and watching other matches. The hockey team- Milli joule, Ganpathy, Bala and others, joined us in the peacing out and enjoying the freedom part. Especially, ISI and Meena were always in “high spirits”, being placed, final inter IIT and all. And there were some junta from the Athletics team too- Suspi, Kass, Praveen,etc who would often join us.

We won Gold in TT. I couldn't see the match, but I heard that the TT finals was one of the best ever played in inter IIT, Gopal, IITM's captain beating Delhi's best player (I think). Like our team bounced back in 2010, Baski team thulped in 2011. The Basketball final was a treat to watch, our players totally dominating the opposition (and we also had a lot of fun cheering). Unfortunately, the footer team lost to IITK when the Kanpur team played 2 illegal players who were just too good for any inter IIT team (IITD won gold and our team actually beat IITD in the leagues). Volley had a bad run, losing to IITKgp in semis, but they managed to put bronze. In Hockey it went to penalties again. I think Ganapathy finished it, with his funny but extremely effective shoot (or whatever they call it). And then on the last day there was Athletics.

Teacher (Siva Teja) told us that we had to put Gold in 4x100 relay for us to win GC. Me, Asif and Milli Joule (Amit Mastud) were sitting there. We didn't win. We lost GC. We started walking out of the stadium, trying to get out as fast as we can so that we don't have to come across IITB junta shouting and taunting. We were almost near the stadium exit when we saw that our insti junta were celebrating. Confused, we ran back, and we heard “Who won the GC? Madras! Madras!”. It was a great feeling to know that it was actually us who won the GC. Teacher had actually bulbed in counting the points of IITB. In the end, we won GC by 0.5 points. And that half point was because of March Past. This time again, when the GC was given, the contingent ran with the trophy on the athletics track. But I didn't, it wasn't the same feeling as we had in 2010. This time it was not excitement, but a silent pride and relief.

And then there is one more thing I realized in inter IIT 2011. Students from all IITs fight it out, literally, on the field. We taunt and abuse. But when its all over, no one cares about all the rivalries. When inter IIT was about to end, every guy from every IIT we met on the street was very friendly, everyone has the same feeling. We're rivals only on the field, but off it, we are not. The sports sec of IITB said that he did some crazy shit during the matches but that was all in the heat of the moment and we all shook hands and left. Then we met some Roorkee guys and we talked like we were old friends meeting after a lot of years.

I guess the insti Weightlifting team is the biggest part of my insti life and it has made me what I am now. I must thank the hockey team, Saurabhnath, Suspi, Kass, Praveen and especially Meena and Millijoule for making inter IIT 2011 as memorable as it is. I'm really happy that the fifth estate gave me the chance to let me describe my experience. Inter IIT truly is the best part of my insti life.

And this for the inter IIT contingent:

~~~ Ale maangdo... ha, hey hey … hi hi, hi hi.. ha hey hey, he he he... ~~~~