Tuesday, January 27, 2009

League zone is so dumb

This post is barely even worth the number of words used to type it. WL game, other team played zone for 3 quarters. Barely a workout in anything other than patience. Ankle hurts. Won 23ish-16. Playing old people can end up in call fests.

The scale did say 209.8 tonight though. Halfway.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Vegas

Saturday: 3 games < CoorsLight.
Sunday: 3 games < HighLife.

It was great to play with the throwback team rocking the throwback jerseys. I had some difficulty playing the roles I currently play instead of lapsing back into the roles I played 3-5 years ago with these guys. Much like when I go home to see my folks, and can't help but act more like myself as a kid than anywhere else with anyone else. Something about the repeating of similar circumstances.

I could have played better, but I put in the work (as much possible given the wind and the incessant zoning) and played passably.
We lost in the Finals to Wiscolums, which to our extreme displeasure, included losing to Jammin, our old E-Pig (etc) nemesis. Boo.

No more than that for this, for this is a workout blog, not a "Break the First Rule of Vegas" blog. But I will say that GWBuhl is lunatic with the crazy eyes.

In the best possible way for Vegas.

Next Up: New Year's Fest.

(166)

Catching up

Been way too long, kinda had a hectic few days without realizing it.

Last week sucked, my only good day to workout was Wednesday, and then I got some food poisoning business on Wednesday afternoon which wiped out the possibility of working out.

Fri - WL game, easy victory. Missed a Callahan because of happy hour. General thrashing. It helped that Trey was in Vegas.

Sat - Ultisquash. Only got about an hour in before my right foot found Ben's right foot and caused a pretty un-fun sprained ankle. The double whammy was that this injury took me out of the Chilly Cheeks trail run on Sunday.

Today - Now I'm nursing a cold. Still motivated to hit the gym and get some work in.

.5 mile warm up at 3.0 incline
active stretching
2 x 10 x 25lbs dumbell press
1 x 15 x 30lbs dumbell press
15 dips
3 x 10 x 100lbs pec machine? Arms out to the side bringing them in front of me for one rep.
1 x 10 x 205lbs leg press, realized this was easy and wanted to push my knee
1 x 15 x 275lbs leg press, oh what the hell
1 x 15 x 375lbs leg press. Lets say, strength wise my knee is back
3 x 10 25lbs russian twists

(211)

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Actual Ultimate

New Brunswick.

This was not my best run, but it'll do.

~2.5 hours ultimate
~? throwing
~1 JTizzle Sighting

(165)

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Actual Trail Running

Talked some new folks into going trail running with me today because Tous had to work so Stacy Huffstetler, Ben Kleaveland and I headed out at 8:30am. We actually ran trails this time as opposed to the path at forbidden drive and while I believe the overall distance was shorter the run was significantly more difficult due to all the elevation changes, ice, roots, rocks, and dog running around under foot. However the run was phenomenal. About an hour of running hills and uneven terrain total distance was probably about 4.5-5 miles. All in what started out as 8 degree (feels like -4) and finished at something like 11 degree weather. These trail runs before Ultisquash are going to become a habit.

After the run I headed off to Haverford for Ultisquash. Fairly low numbers and it took me about 45 minutes to hit my next wind and start playing normally. I had a few good games, a couple of abysmal ones where my team couldn't connect passes but once I got my next wind I started to play aggressively and attack the disc wherever it was. I also got an abnormally high number of point blocks. Unlikely for that to continue.

(211)

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Winter League

Game tonight. Played much better in terms of possessing the disc and not forcing throw. Had a couple of nice D's. I'm remembering/learning that because of how small the space is in indoor its much hard to set up a block. Many of them are reactionary and on short quick cuts you are frequently getting D's due to throws that are to covered people. Need to improve on my quick, reactionary layouts. My closing speed, however, feels great. The game is beginning to slow down for me again.

(214 but there was a point this week when my scale said 211...so close to being under 210...)

Inefficient movements and proper rest

[Edited for brevity]... Below is another person's experience with crossfit. As an aside, i'm a fan of crossfit workouts.
With his first rationales, I thought this guy did a good job of describing one of the three ways of how I feel an athlete is physically defeated by him/herself. That is the lack of efficiency, especially when tired. FYI, the other two being lack of strength/explosiveness and lack of endurance.
Just something to think about as everyone is indoors for their off-season, fine-tuning their neuro-muscle recruitment and form (which should also include your running form). Moral of the story being, especially now in the off-season, focus on quality/execution over quantity, and make sure you rest your body when it is deserving of rest.

[again, this is not me]...
I do have a two part theory. First, my movement quality was much higher than anyone else in the session. When I had a chance to sneak a glimpse at someone else in the workout I inevitably saw major breakdowns in execution, especially during the full cleans in the later rounds. Besides that fact that these breakdowns are scary from an injury potential standpoint, they also represent major "energy leaks".

These energy leaks from inefficient movement meant that they had to expend more energy that I did to accomplish each rep. This meant that even though my raw work capacity was probably lower I was able to make better use of it. If you have a large work capacity but are applying it to a lot of inefficient movement then you waste so much energy that you can get beat by a "less fit", more efficient athlete.

The second thing that I think was happening was that I was just fresher than they were. I was pretty wiped out after that workout and I can not imagine training like that 4-6 days per week as is recommended by the CrossFit program. I think that after a while of pounding on your body and not allowing for full recovery you eventually reach a continual state of low grade overtraining.

Again, if you can not effectively utilize your fitness because of this low grade overtrained state (also called overreaching in some circles) you find yourself in then you can get beat by a fresher athlete, even if he is "less fit"...

Eeck of Cards and Two Days Ago

Today:

Deck of cards. Pushups, Burpees, Mahlers, Squats: 18:46, bitches. Burpess w/ pushup+jump. You know, like a man.

Two Days Ago:

Tabata Medball Squat Lifts
Tabata Medball Balance Pushups

Winter Leaugue. W 18-12. Or something.

Monday, January 12, 2009

The pro's and con's of living near the Finks

The pros are they have a cute new puppy. And host lots of team BBQ's. And are generally fun people. The cons are that they like to do painful workouts like 2.25 mile fartleks (3 mins on 2 off) through the city. This is really both a pro and a con. But we ran a total of 3.4 miles through the city with the middle 2.25 miles being run as a fartlek tonight. Considering the last time I ran a fartlek with Jon in November he completely toasted me (and TC) it felt real good to be keeping within a reasonable distance of him. I'm not going to be able to convince anyone that I'm a runner any time soon but more workouts like this will keep me on my way.

Total workout:
3.4 miles, 2.25 as Fartlek.
8 minutes abs after dinner
assorted push ups
foam rolling

(213)

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Brumfizzle

!Men, women, children, anyone of all ages! ! !Come play indoor ultimate!
!Men, women, ultimate players, players of all ages, come play ultisquash!

Onlyneed the twisted journey to midsnowindswept Buccleuch Park pickup on fields of proprIoCEptive awareness.

2.5 hours WOOJIE-gear recommended.

If you can catch it here, you can catch it anywhere.
Even applies to the chumps who wear gloves to cheat.

(168lbs of dono-defeating force)

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Doin' work

Tous and I hit it hard today. Met him at 8:30 (ok 8:45 Tous time) at Forbidden Drive in Philly. We did some stretching and then ran the trail all the way to Valley Green and back (approx. 5.2 miles round trip at about an 8 minute mile pace give or take). We then stretched a bit and hopped in the car and drove out to TC country to play Ultisquash at Ursinus. We got there just in time for game time and jumped right in. Played until the heat radiating from our bodies caused the cold air in the court to condense on the walls/floor (that's science) thus making for an unplayable surface. Went and got lunch with people, came home and collapsed to watch football. Will do foam rolling later.

Feeling really, really tired. But good tired.

I went running with Tous, TC, and Fink back in November and was definitely laboring the whole time. I was thrilled with how I performed today. Looking forward to more days filled with work like this.

(214)

Friday, January 9, 2009

Choppin' Wood

Always choppin' wood.

That is, no matter the day, I do work.
That is existence. Either choose the work, or have the work chosen...

[ed: much babbling cut here]

Anyway, my goals recently have been to not eat when I'm not genuinely hungry, to walk after the biggest meal of the day, and to not take more than 4 hours between activity (excepting sleep). I work to be mindful of the notion that whatever I ask of my body, others have achieved more using less.

"I'm tired/I ate too much/I blah blah blah"

Fuck that.
Quit or Commit.

IF you have a Goal, THEN work toward it.
----
Main foci of late:

Tabata Medball Squat Lifts (Variable width foot-position, squat as low as possible, touch ball to ground with fully extended arms, stand up while raising ball over head). I aim for 13 per 20 seconds with a 12lb ball. I can always get 11. 12 is normal.

Medball Slams. I love doing these.

Hill sprints. I hate doing these.

Medball Balance Pushups on Balance Board. These have done wonders for balancing the strength of my arms/chest/back. You simply can't fake it. The exercise itself prevents it.

Warmup adapted from TaiChi warmup. Focuses on twisting upper body while turning hips. Hmm... I smell correlation to ultimate.

Stretching.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Random assortment of running

Good to get out of the house, also good to have a full size track a block away.
This quick circuit was taken from J. Mullen's MIT blog.
4 rounds of :
400 meter run
20 (bodyweight) squats
10 pushups

My time was ~9min 10sec
My 400s sucked: 71, 83, 81, & 79
Post your time in comments.

After that, and not wanting to go home after a 9 min workout, i ran about 1.9miles in 13min (6.86min per mile). Originally supposed to be 4 reps of 3min intervals (2min easy/moderate, 1min harder), i figured i'd finish with a lap on the track, as the highschool track team was getting ready for practice (i can't believe its been over 8 yrs). This time is also very slow; i should be doing 6 min/mile.

Jogged home (2 blocks) and did 4 reps of uphill (maybe 4% grade) sprinting. Not sure of distance, but each rep was about 35secs.

Finished indoors with 3x20 pushups with rotation (into straight armed side plank)

Lastly, I'll admit that i've never bothered to personally compute the title of this blog; i just figured, "ooh, lets see what all my teammates are doing during the offseason." Anyway, as cliche as it is, it is a strong phrase/perspective, for training, ultimate, and many other aspects of our lives.

Advice from Ross

Here's some advice from Ross that I, personally, would do well to heed:
Conditioning is Not Enough

To quote what's already been quoted:
“To perform any physical feat with grace and dexterity, the human being must practice and practice to achieve relaxation of uninvolved muscles." - Dr. Bradley
The nickle version is that, while strenuous workouts are great and all-around fitness is important, you can go overboard and adversely effect your performance in the sport for which you are training. If you want to train for Ultimate and want to improve your Ultimate skills, you absolutely need to play Ultimate and practice the skills that you will need. Being in great shape does not mean you can throw well.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Fight Gone Bad

Warning: This is an aggressive workout. You probably won't like it. It is quite doubtful that you have the strength or dedication to be able to finish a workout of this quality and depth.


Fight Gone Bad:
3 rounds of:
1:00 Wall-ball, 20lb ball (reps)
1:00 Sumo Deadlift, 75lbs (reps)
1:00 Box Jumps, 20" box (reps)
1:00 Push-press, 75 lbs (reps)
1:00 Treadmill, 10mph & 7% incline (Calories)
1:00 Rest
Add up your total points.

Scoring: One point for each rep, except on the treadmill where each Calorie is one point. Ten bonus points for correctly identifying that which the warning references.

NB - I modified this workout from the Crossfit original such that, while I moved from one exercise to the next as fast as possible, I made sure to give a full minute for each exercise. During rounds 1 and 2, that ended up being about 10-15 seconds between exercises. In round 3 it was more like 20-25 seconds between exercises. I also substituted the treadmill for the rower since ours has a busted display. The treadmill is much harder, IMO, since its speed is constant and it doesn't care how much wind you're sucking.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Winter League!

Last night was the opening night for my winter league team. My team, for like the 4th year in a row, consists of a core of TC, Wayne, Brandon Luzar (former Swat and Rage, current father and out of shape), Liz Thompson from Wicked, two Delaware girls, and another mid level woman. We love this league and we click really, really well on the indoor field. And it plays significantly to our strengths, mainly being tall and fairly chilly with the disc.

Tonight we played a team that's more ridiculously stacked than ours (sorry Fink, it is). Main players consisted of Sean Murray from Amp, Brian Felt formally of Amp, The Finks, Beth Pfeiffer, and others.

We got down early as they took the first quarter 8-4. TC, Wayne and I then played almost the whole second quarter (we only had 5 people we're not completely terrible people) and put on a defensive clinic causing many turnovers on dumps and forcing them to work very hard to move the disc up the field. At half it was 14-11 in our favor (I think?). The main reason we were able to pull off the turn around was due to minimizing our dumb turnovers (mostly hucks to not completely open people) and improving our conversion rate when we got turnovers.

We pushed to a relative draw through most of the next two quarters. Then with 2-3 minutes left they put on a run that included a bad turnover by one of our players when they didn't turn to commit to the dump and an iffy throw came off. And capping off the tie was one of our players rushing to the disc with 45 seconds left, up by 1 (iffy decision #1) as no one on our team was really rushing to get in position. Followed by a laser cross field dump (iffy decision #2) that I bid for and just missed, but caused a turnover on our own goaline. They converted to tie it up and then proceeded to win the sudden death flip, receive the disc, and march it in to score.

Bleh!

Overall though I was very pleased, both with our team and our two stellar pick ups who came last night and also with my own ability to pretty much play a savage game (again only 5 guys were there) and still be able to be effective for most of the game. My knee was sore afterwards but considering the speed of the indoor game and quick cutting involved in Winter League plus the fact that I was chasing Jon Fink or Sean Murray around for significant portions of the game I'm very pleased with my current level of fitness. I am looking forward to not losing anymore in Winter League though. And pushing myself to make the switch from chasing too much to directing my offensive cutter when playing defense. This was where I was prior to getting hurt last year and getting back to it in time for Kaimana and Paganello is really important to me. I have the rest of Winter League to continue working on it and all my time away to work on my speed and quickness to help with it.

(215)

Sunday, January 4, 2009

New Years Ultimate

Saturday was PADA's annual Toilet Bowl tournament at Edgely. I decided to brave the cold and head out for a day of ultimate. For years I've had issues staying motivated to play as hard as possible at Hat Tournaments or Pick Up mostly because the level of play is fairly low. I find that the challenge of staying legitimately motivated during these events is a very useful one as in a way it provides a similar experience to playing games against "lesser" competition at tournaments. We have stressed numerous times that every game be taken both with respect for the other team and for ourselves by playing every game, even those against "lesser" opponents, with the same precision and dedication that we take to the field in the game against Nationals level opponents.

Needless to stay, this somewhat lofty goal was difficult to achieve yesterday. We had limited subs and it was pretty crappy weather. So by the middle of the second game I was pretty much going through the motions and just enjoying trying to make good throws and testing myself in that regard. The ground was also frozen so it was playing on uneven hard ground which was not the most fun either. But it was a good run overall. I look forward to pushing myself to take every opportunity in the future to continue to push myself at all Ultimate events to treat them with the respect they deserve and working on the mental aspect of taking every time I step on to an Ultimate field seriously.

Looking forward to getting inside to play winter league tonight though which will undoubtedly be a blast.

Total workout: 4 hours of ultimate

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Red Fish Run

The following is a track workout used by Sockeye last season in preparation for their trip to Japan. It's a hard and quick workout that builds cardiovascular fitness while still focusing on fast-twitch muscle fibers and short/active recovery periods.

Tabata Sprints:
8 sets of :20 sprint, :10 rest
40/40s:
10 sets of 40 yard jog, 40 yard sprint

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Happy New Year

Just catching up a bit.

Tuesday night: Played some more indoor soccer goalie. This game I actually got to warm up vs. just jumping out on the field to play. The result was much better overall play by me which I was pleased with. We ended up tying 4-4 which was disappointing. I did have a couple of really nice saves that I felt very pleased with and they involved exploding horizontally off my bad knee which I didn't even think about until after the save.

Today: Tried out my new Christmas present which is a foam roll. I know Dusty uses this type of thing extensively so he and I will have to talk about some strategies but basically the point is that you use your own body weight to roll out and massage knots and tired muscles. I knew this thing would be good but I didn't think I was going to feel great after using it. A good 20 minute session on my legs and they now feel completely loose and relaxed. This is made more impressive by the fact that I wasn't feeling all that sore and tired when I started. Clearly this means I have tighter/sorer legs than I realize and also that its going to feel incredible after a day of ultimate.

New Years Resolution:
2008 was a pretty rough year for me. Ultimate wise it was due to the havoc wreaked on my life by my knee injury . I'm looking forward to kicking 2009's ass to make up for everything that was difficult for me in 2008. This starts with my resolution being to lose another 15 lbs by May 1st and to be in better shape than I've ever been to start an Ultimate season. It finishes with a return to Nationals. I challenge all of you to meet this resolution with me.

Here's to 2009, and a resurgence for Pike.