Playing with Med Balls

I figured if Dusty's so into this there's gotta be something good about it.

3 miles biking at level 15 in 10 minutes

Med Ball 200 from this Menshealth article.
Kicked my ass! Of course I felt like I needed to do it with a 12 lbs ball.

Workout is as follows:

While standing:
10 clockwise circles

10 counter clockwise circles

20 squats holding the ball above your head and swinging it through your legs on the squat

20 Standing Russian Twists (this is where the ball starts to get real heavy)

20 Squats holding the ball at your chest and pressing the ball to the sky when you stand up

20 Sit ups holding the ball on your chest

10 Rocky twists to the left and 10 to the right. Rocky twist is you sit and turn to your left and leave the ball behind your back, you then twist to the right and pick it up and bring it around again. Like in Rocky.

20 Toe Touch, holding the ball straight out while laying down you pick it up and touch your toes in the air

20 twists while seated (in theory you hold your legs off the ground, my core couldn't take that)

20 suitcase crunches, again holding the ball straight out while laying down you crunch up and put the ball over alternating left and right legs. Once you've put the ball over both your right and your left, that's 1 rep.

20 Diagonal crunches - lie on the ground with your legs spread, hold the ball at 10 o'clock, sit up, put the ball between your legs, and then go down in the other direction to hold the ball at 2 o'clock (that's one, and this is where my core started to cramp)

And you're done. Loved it. Going to do it twice next time with a lighter med ball.

Then went and did 3 x 12 incline presses with 35 lbs dumbells.

(209)

okay, so...

I didn't do the medball lunges as described in yesterday's post-- my legs didn't want to fire up again like that. These things happen. Did some slower strength based lower body stuff-- focusing on the sore spots and stretching/callenging them without being quite so eccentric (not eccentric like the nutty professor, but eccentric as opposed to concentric). Tomorrow or Thursday instead for those.

I did try something new that occurred to me for changing up my pushups:

The clapping one-hand-landing pushup.

That is, do a clap pushup, but when you land, do your best to land on one hand. I find that I can almost land on one hand, but I need to cushion the very bottom of it with the off hand. Repeat. Alternate hands on the landing. These are pretty sweet. I am going to work until I can land w/ one arm. "Because you gotta have goals..." (My favorite fake cereal is Horkin' Fiber Chunks, btw, if you ever want to give me a fake gift.)

Also did some balance board work. Man, it was a tight 1-2 race between the medball and the balance board for "Training tools I missed while on my trip." Medball (won/=one), but you know... both of them are very important to enabling my body to play the style of ultimate I play. (That said, there is a shit-ton of stuff to work on without any sort of tools/machine/whatever. And the best travel-workout item are the three highest tension therabands. FWIW. BTW, gfy.)

And I'm finally beginning to understand what, exactly, my style is.

Watch out, bitches.

(165)

Kaimana Basics, Winterleague, Back to Building

Kaimana:

3-1 on day one (take that, the pulse!)
1-1 on day two (take that, the japan!)
1-1 on day thr (take that, the count!)

5-3 overall. I played okay. Had some good looks, and good points on D. Minimized dumb turnovers. Did well enough downfield when needed. Didn't get too tired except for in the first game against Stanford where I overheated for a moment. Then I got iced down. Then again, I was wearing a black women's jersey because those Stanford bitches made us change out of pinstripes. It looked like a rashguard.

Lost in Semis to Voltron (perennial quarters/semis), who Trey feels we could have beaten. Sure, I guess. Except that they would have been our first back-to-back good games all weekend. We had the talent physically, but we fell apart mentally.

The rest of my stuff on Kaimana will be over on ultimatejournal as soon as I get the newly coerced hired editorial board to give it a once-over.

I'm 15-13 on the outdoor season in three tourneys with 1 finals loss and 2 semis losses. In true Pike fashion, I'm making the most out of every win and the least out of every loss.

----

Had my first winterleague game since, well... the very first game. This is the only one before the playoffs and we're playing against Trey's team sans Trey (who we left in Hawai'i for dead after the Bag-O-Wine incident.)

These fields are really small and without a warmup, well... a guy like me throws 3 or 4 out the back of the endzone due to trying to cut through the nonexistant wind. I'm a dumbass. We were up early, let the lead slip away, then we fought back to be up 1 or 2 before they took it to us and won by 4 or something. We faded. Hard. Ah well. We're in the tournament, and I got my one free game to dial in and be a dick before Playoff Dusty comes out (Playoffs? Playoffs?).

I didn't play terribly, I just have to adjust, and I just didn't. I will.

I'm 1-1 on the indoor season. Playoffs ahead. All-night hat tourney This Weekend in NJ.

----

Back to the basics that I couldn't do on the trip (well, no exactly at least) with a set of Tabata Medball Squats (12,11,11,12,11,11,11,11) and various exercises of low reps (20 or a smaller number) spread throughout the day which I will not elaborate upon here.

Exercise on the docket for tomorrow: Sets of lateral lunges with the Medball. That is, I'll start with the medball over my head and then lunge to the right as far as possible and reach the medball down and out just past my right foot w/ minimal core (twist/bend)ing, come back up to start position (medball high over head, feet shoulder-width apart) and then go to the left, doing a mirror of the same thing. These are hard, and I'm not sure what number of set/reps I'll do. Total will be at least 80 on the day though.

----

Finally, I plan to head to NB pickup this weekend at high noon to get my game on. Then get some burritos and a nap and then head to the aforementioned all night hat tourney. Hope to see y'all at both!

I'm sure I've won more than I've lost at NB pickup. I keep manhandling Dono AND DubTeeKayNine...

(164)

2/20/09 - 2/21/09 - WL Pick-up - Running

2/20/09: Our team was scheduled for a game of winter league against Ross' but Ross is down in Baton Rouge for Mardi Gras. We organized some indoor pick up and had a good hour+ run with some folks. Got to play with Nick M., Ringo and Will Reed and in turn I also got to be "Will Reeded" as I got plowed into a wall. Good run overall, my body is still feeling the 3 days tournament and the 12 hours on the plane.

2/21/09: Tous and I met up at Forbidden Drive and ran the 6ish mile path in about an hour which comes out to about a 10 minute mile pace. He was headed to Ultisquash afterwards, I was taking it easy having just played WL the night before. Nice easy workout though. I need to get un-jetlagged so that I can start to rest in ways that allow my body to recover from these workouts.

Another one bites the dust

After 6 days in paradise I can cross another tournament off my lifetime list of tournaments I have to go to at least once. Kaimana 2009 is in the books and what an experience it was. I'd heard from a lot of people that the tournament was comparable or better than Paganello and while I found that hard to believe I can now say they are equal but different. Paganello has a spirit and an aura about every game you play and every team you play that makes it completely unique. And its in Italy so the food and wine is incredible. However the city is only so-so as its a resort town. All of the teams at Kaimana are not as bought into the spirit that they preach at the opening ceremonies. However the environment of camping, the main tent with food, alcohol all day, and parties all night, and the backdrop of being in easily the most beautiful place I've ever been to make the two equal in my mind.

My Kaimana experience started on Thursday morning 2/12. I hopped on the first of my many flights. My itinerary was Philly to Atlanta, Atlanta to LA, LA to Honolulu. As someone who has only flown west coming back from Europe or going to the West Coast I didn't realize how much further Hawaii was and how the time difference really messes with you. Its an 1:30 flight to ATL. 4:30 to LAX plus you lose 3 hours in the time difference. And then another 5+ to Hawaii with another 2 lost in time difference. Needless to say...ouch. But when you walk out of the terminal and its 10pm at night at 70 degrees all your frustrations melt away instantly. My former co-worker recently moved to Honolulu with a new job and she picked me up from the airport and gave me a little tour of downtown and then we headed back to her apartment where we stayed up tile 12:30ish catching up.

Friday 2/13: My friend had to go to work in the morning so I got up, had coffee and breakfast on her 21st floor apartment balcony overlooking this view

I spent all morning there waiting to hear from Dusty and his crew of people who were flying back into Honolulu from Maui where they had spent the past few days. The Rhodes traveling circus consisting of Jamie, Dusty, Jamie's girlfriend Jess, Future Philthy teammate Jimmy, and two Phine ladies June and Lauren, picked me up around 11:30 and we set our straight for the Kona Brewing company to wait for the rest of our teammates to land around 4:30. The drive around the Island was absolutely breathtaking. Ocean on one side, varying beautiful lush landscapes on the other all with Dusty spinning tunes on his laptop, songs which have now forever been intertwined with my Kaimana experience.

We arrive at the Kona brewing company around 1pm? We order lunch and sampler's all around. Little did we know, happy hour started at 3pm and needless to say quite a few rounds were ordered at the reduced rate. Around 4:30 we start to get the texts and phone calls indicating the rest of our teammates have landed. We finish up and head off to the campsite to set up our tents. Lets just say that my engineering degree could not overcome the alcohol and I proceeded to have issues with my tent all weekend. This was partly due to the constant 15-20 mph winds on the beach where we were camping. We set up and head over to the opening night party. Much more beer is consumed. The night starts to get fuzzy. I ran into a few ex Upenn-ers who have relocated to the West Coast. Dusty and I got into a heated discussion about Pike 09 and beyond which I don't remember most of but we were both really fired up. At some point I walk back to the tents to go to bed. Needless to say I wake up still feeling intoxicated.

Sat 2/14: Happy Valentine's day! Our team basically won the schedule game all weekend. We roll over to the fields for breakfast at 7:30 and enjoy the opening ceremony at about 8am. We then have 2 hours until our first game for us to sober up, hydrate, and get ready to play. Our first game was against The Pulse led Stanford Bloodthirsty. The game started off with Stanford telling us they only had light jerseys because of 5ultimate and they made us change out of the best ultimate jersey I've ever owned.

This game was definitely a feeling out process for us. We had players from a lot of different teams all trying to mesh together. We played well despite our lack of intensity and cohesion and pulled out the game 11-8 (I think). Second game was against Skeletor the defending champions who are Stanford alums. Apparently they brought an army last year and had very low numbers this year. This didn't stop us from having a classic let-down game that we lost 8-7. Our last two were against local Hawaii teams where we pretty much coasted and started drinking.

We were pretty sure we ended up in second and had a game at 10:15 the next day (winning the schedule game again). Dinner was mexican. There was a lot of throwing tin foil balls into people's beers at the dinner table. We went back and took cold showers at the campsite in the dark (not fun) and headed back for the party. There was a pretty good live band, some hula dancers, and then lots of flip cup. We introduced some Aussie's to the game and some old guy who was terrible but comical. We ended up voting him out in the first round of survivor even though that round he hit it on the first flip. The tournament was trying to be more "green" so we all only had one cup. This made survivor interesting as people were moving around on the table to go more than once in a round. Went to bed much more sober and was awoken by the wind again and had to fix my tent at like 4:30am.


Sunday 2/15: Woke up and headed to breakfast. On the way there ran into Dusty who informed us that we had actually won our pool and had a bye until 11:30 against Sanban who was easily the most fun team at the tournament. They were recent college grads from Japan who had tons of energy, great cheers, awesome spirit and a great attitude. The game ended up being a bit of a dogfight early. They loved risky throws, specifically inside out breaks to get the disc moving. When they worked they were great, however it was windy enough that they were very risky at points. We had a ton of fun playing against them and they learned what it was like to play against the Trey last back defense where he had numerous D's just boxing out the smaller Japanese players.

We then played Ono, a Jam/West Coast team that is typically one of the best teams at the tournament. We knew we had secured our spot in the A bracket and our fire was lacking for this game and it seriously hurt us. We also knew in the back of our minds that we were playing with 12 guys and this game really didn't matter for us. We ended up getting blown out pretty badly, something like 15-6? We got over it pretty quickly with a bunch of beer, showers, and watching the women's game.

Sunday night was the spirit ceremony where they gave out a shot of tequila and a disc to a spirit player from each team. For some reason Eugene decided this was me which was kind of flattering but I think the main reason I was picked was because it was my first Kaimana. And because Trey wasn't at the party. The ceremony dragged on way too long and we all started getting bored. Eventually the DJ got going and we all got dancing. The downside was the DJ wasn't really all that good so the music left something to be desired. Had a blast dancing with some of the Phine ladies and then went back to the tent to get some sleep for our early game.

Monday 2/16: We had our first early game of the tournament. And it showed by our complete lack of effort to make it to the fields on-time. About 20 minutes before game time we had Trey, Butter and I at the field. About 5 minutes before game time we had maybe 6 with 3-4 on their way. Very little throwing occurred before the game, almost no running. It didn't look good. We were playing the Southern Dandies. A team with the Kid, The Count, Jim Paranella, Asa Wilson, Hensley, and others. We throw our 7 on the line to receive. We proceed to throw about 30 passes but we score. We then force a turn and I hit Trey on a bendy flick when his guy poached and suddenly we're up 2-0. Then we decided to give up 3-4 in a row to go down. And we proceeded to start chipping away, working our asses off, and earning our way back in. We ended up winning something like 15-11 in a truly awesome win.

We then got a bye and then played Voltron (and I'll form the head) who is a combo Seattle team. We finally started to really run out of gas in this game. It didn't stop us from fighting extremely hard for every point we lost which was something to be proud of but it was frustrating to not represent as well as we wanted to. We ended up losing something like 15-6. There were some flashes of good and some prolonged periods of bad but all in all, it was pretty hard for any of us to be upset about it. Hell, we were in Hawaii.

We re-filled our beers and headed over to watch the finals, ate some poki, and headed to take down our tents and go to the house we'd rented for the next 3 days.

Tues 2/17 - Awesome, awesome 6+ mile hike to a waterfall.

Wed 2/18 - 2 hours of body surfing in ridiculous currents/breaks and then some jumping from rocks at Waimea bay.

What a trip...I'm ready to go back.

Case Rase 2010, That's what she said, I'll form the head, BUTTER! sha-shu shu shu sha-shu BUTTER! sha-shu shu shu sha-shu

Pre-Paradise Workout

Couldn't make the organized workout at Franklin Field so I hit up the Art Museum with Matt Glazer and put my last workout prior to heading to Hawaii.

Total Workout:
Short jog followed by one set of stairs.

Active stretching

Fartlek run, 4 sets of 3 minutes on 2 minutes off for about 3 miles along the river. Felt much better than the last time I did this with the Finks.

The did a strength/core workout
10 Crunches with 5 sec pause at top
5 Pushups
20 Lying Hip Swings (10 Each Side)
6 Pushups
20 Toe touches (10 Each Side)
7 Pushups
50 Bicycles
8 Pushups
10 Crunches with 5 sec pause at top
9 Pushups
30 second flat, left, and right planks
10 Pushups

Tried to convince him to do some stairs afterwards but he had to get to quizzo and was my ride home so I didn't have much bargaining power.

(209)

Sunday Stroll

Substituted running on the trail along the river in Philly for running through the forest as we were worried that the forest trail would be covered in mud/snow.

Total Workout:
2 mile run to the art museum (approx. 7:30 pace)
8 sets of stairs alternating singles and doubles
2 mile run back (approx. 8:00 pace)

(210)

Saturday 2/7

I got dragged out to Ultisquah despite my wanting to recover from the long week and sleep in. We had really good numbers and played some really good games. Felt really good overall. And learned that Fido is a really solidly built person that I'd love to have playing for Pike.

Total Workout:
2 hours of ultisquash
Tabata pushups 26-26-16-14-9-5-11-3
Tabata body weight squats: 25-28-25-27-27-28-28-30

(211)

Turtlehead Peak

(1/28/09)

Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area

Turtlehead Peak.

Walked up with force, ran down with speed.

That is, on the way up, my focus was on maintaining balance and stability with at least one foot on the ground at all times but without stopping. Moving constantly, purposefully. Oddly, about 70% of the way up, I scampered up to a rock outcropping instead of going to the very top. I have no explanation other than I went where I wanted to go. I sat, read Camus, drank an Ayinger Celebrator, took some pictures and let my mind woander.

Beautiful.

On the way down, I took portions slowly as necessary. For the most, I worked to keep my pace high and explode off of each footfall. Useful thought: "Shoot your feet wide of your body. Keep your core vertical and slightly tilted back. Rebound."

I ate up distance quickly on the way back. Legs burning, pushing on. Very satisfying.

Exited the NCA via car at reasonable speed.

I don't know what kind of views Actual Trail Running affords, but I'll lay odds that this was much more awesomer.

3hrs=hiking+trunning.
---
(02.04.09)

The second trail run was along the grand canyon from Hermit's Rest to Pima Point. 2.2 miles roundtrip at 7000+ feet counts as my high elevation training for Kaimana. While I definitely wanted to do Tabata runs, I actually had no choice. I really couldn't run at a regular pace for more than ~50-60 seconds. Sprinting for 20 on 10 off was nigh impossible. But I tried.

On the way back, I headed off the paved path and closer to the cliff's edge for some actual trail running. That is, changing directions, unsure footing, crumbly rocks, branches, trees, and the rest of the unknown.

Oh... and the whole time there was this giant ditch on one side...

40min=trailrunning.

Winter League with an extra dose of winter

Braved the ridiculous weather to make it to winter league. Played a very solid team game. Were forced into making some higher risk throws due to a lot of poaching making the breakside more vulnerable. That doesn't excuse 1-2 of my scoobers that double helixed. It does however excuse my IO scoober fake. Two favorite plays of the game, abusing a mismatch on TC and connecting on a full field hammer, and throwing an inside out across the field flick perfectly placed to my cutter in the endzone. Also got to lay some lumber into Blo after which he exclaimed while laying on the ground "you are one solid man," prior to taking an injury sub.

Also picked up 2 (I think) more point blocks. I'm definitely focusing a lot more on my arms and hands. It helps that I have the nets to keep big break throws from happening but I think I'm also settling in on the mark better and overall in a bit better shape that I've been recently and the result is I get on the mark and I'm not catching my breath and I can think and react more quickly.

Good game all in all even though we decided to try and go the whole 4th quarter without scoring.

(210)

Bizzare workout experience

Had about an hour after work before I needed to be somewhere so I ran over to the gym. Got about 10 minutes into my workout when the power went out. Apparently a transformer blew and knocked out a few blocks. I continued working out until the woman running the place came around and told us that her boss told her that the emergency lighting we were working out to was going to die in like 15 minutes and we needed to leave. I resisted making a fuss and telling her that I know that emergency lighting should last longer than that just for safety reasons and rushed through as much of a workout as I could.

3 x 10 x 35 lbs shoulder press
3 x 10 x 35 lbs incline press
3 x 10 x 25 lbs russian twists

Ran home, and did 8 minute abs before I had to drive off to my meeting.

Stupid transformer, unlike awesome transformers

NYF

This was exactly the opposite of Vegas.

No wind, wonderful weather, ample beer, nice fields, unfamiliar teammates, low-cost, better competition and we lost all of our games except the last one. (NYF: 0-4/1-1, Vegas: 3-0, 2-1. I am now 10-10)

Good times, on the whole, as an assortment of Philadelphia-tied players got out in the sun. Including one Dan Sage, Pike alum at large, some jerks from Amp, some Philly Love, some Old Sag, two guys from some kind of flight school (I can't recall the name of the place) and then there's Enoch. And some other-sourced folks I think.

Favorite quotes from the weekend:

1. "Do you know Julie Sussman?"
2. NS: "We're better than this!" d: "No we're not, we're in the loser bracket!"

Great use of a weekend to dial it in with my Philthy Kaimana teammates and to try not to piss Nate Stock off too much with my off-handed mid-point insults and errant bombs.

(165)