We had a pretty tough stair workout today. It was quite cold this morning, which made me move practice indoors. It warmed up in the early afternoon, but I'm still glad that we had the workout that we did because it was pretty darn cold by the time that practice ended. I also think that workouts like stair workouts are important, as they work muscles that we wouldn't necessarily work through sprinting (further building our explosive power) and they aren't as brutal on our knees. Personally, three consecutive days of parking lot workouts completely wear down on my joints. I know that several other members of my team feel the same way. Stair workouts are the hardest on my shin splints, though, which aren't feeling so hot.
We did the same stair workout that we did the last time that our entire team convened at Lederle (not the workout that we did the Friday before last, when only Babbit, Tim, Ryan, and I showed for a makeup workout and we let ourselves go rather easy). I believe that I posted that workout on this blog a few entries back, so I won't waste my time and yours by rewriting it. Suffice to say, it was a pretty extensive workout, and I'm quite tired. Hard workouts are important, but we've worked ourselves into suitable enough shape that it's starting to take a long time to get through a practice that is difficult enough to tire everybody on the team. I suppose that being in too good shape is never a problem that I can really complain about, but it does make for longer practices.
Having a strained rotator cuff is annoying because I can't do pushups until it has had a chance to heal. In the meantime, I have been holding a six inch leg lift during the time that the rest of the team is doing a set of pushups. Additionally, as a team we hold thirty second six inch leg lifts as our recovery between sets of pushups. Therefore, instead of doing four sets of twenty pushups and three thirty second leg lifts, I have to do seven six in leg lifts in a row. That's a pretty good way to shred my abs, and that's before we even start our ab workout! Henry commented, not complaining, that our ab regimen might be a bit excessive. That may be so, but I'd rather have excessively strong abs than excessively weak ones. As long as we are continuing to run hard and stretch at the end of every workout, I can't imagine that iron abs could possibly be a detriment to our playing conditions. Anyway, as Henry put it, at least we're going to develop fantastic beach bodies for Spring Break. So why not?
I forgot to take my pills for a few days in a row, and my knees are feeling much worse than they felt last week. I'm really kicking myself for letting my supplement routine slide, since these chemicals build up in your body to work the way that they do. When the reserves start to run thin, they don't really do so much to protect my joints. I just hope that it doesn't take long for me to get back on schedule and renew the balance of knee-healing chemicals in my body.
Speaking of supplements, I had a funny conversation with my creative writing professor this afternoon. We were walking in the same direction when we left Bartlett, and we started talking about running and suchnot. Apparently, this professor runs all year in the woods behind his house. In the winter, he straps spikes to his shoes and prays that he doesnt break a leg on a log concealed buried beneath the snow and ice. It sounds terrifying, but he says that he can't run on the pavement because of his knee problems. I advised him to start taking the type of supplements that I have been taking since the beginning of the semester, but he seemed cynical of such things. Well, I suppose it wasn't actually that funny of a conversation, but it was a noteworthy occurance for me so I figured I might as well log it down. It seems ridiculous to me that somebody will run in the snow in the woods and won't even try joint healing supplements.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
Some other stuff.
I actually ran out of time before I had to leave for class, so I came back to the library to toss up some stuff that I hadn't been able to chronicle during my last type-sesh.
As a team, we have quit drinking, smoking, and otherwise abusing substances for the duration of the 2009 season. This is official as of last night, the final weekend where drinking was allowed. Our team celebrated this final weekend with a fair amount of the aforementioned soon-to-be-banned activities.
Several of us drank Thursday night while we watched indoor pickup - when Clayton showed up and asked for money, we quit playing and I went with Mitch to the local liquor store. Indoor pickup is kind of stupid and boring, and I'd already been able to play for an hour before Clayton even showed up. I couldn't bear to go from free shitty ultimate to ten dollar shitty ultimate and, anyway, that dude is a douche bag and I love to just stick it to him, so several of us moved to the sideline and watched from the bleachers. I really only went because we wanted to give Gaylon a try-out, since he had transferred to Umass just this semester and has yet to miss a practice or workout. He seems like a really nice guy and he's a very hard worker, even if he is quite inexperienced as an ultimate player. It was almost as if he was not yet good enough to take but not bad enough to justify cutting - another one of those bubble newbies of which we have so many. Hopefully a few more weeks of practice will sharpen his skills and his field awareness and make him a viable addition to the team, since we decided in the end to take him.
Friday afternoon, I started drinking at about 1 o'clock. Ryan swung by my house to wait for his bus to leave for Needham - he was going back for the weekend to hang with his girlfriend - and we decided that a drunk bus ride was far more exciting than a sober bus ride. I also wanted to get a little liquored up before class, since I wouldn't have the opportunity again this semester, but I ended up drinking 6 shots and deciding to play Babbitt's zombie video game instead. That night we had an early birthday party for Babbitt, who turns 21 on March 5 (in the no-drink zone). It was a really fun party, actually. A lot of the team showed up, so there was a pretty decent crowd, but it wasn't enough people to make moving around uncomfortable or to make us worry about a noise complaint or something. And we got capital h Hammered. I was short on cash, so I only bought myself a growler of Opa-Opa Porter to drink, but the profusion of available hard liquor actually caused me to forget about my beer about 3/4 of the way through the growler. Mitch had bought a handle of 100 proof vodka for Bonta and her friends, and those silly girls got too drunk and left it unoccupied on my kitchen table. A bunch of us ended up standing around that table, slamming shots of vodka and yelling at each other. Kasarah had made a rum and coke in a giant punch bowl, using half a handle of rum. I started chanting, "Drink from the well! Drink from the well!" and insisting that people drink directly from the ladle that I was pulling from the punch bowl. I soon dumped the rest of the handle of rum into the mix, and when the level started to drop I added the rest of the handle of vodka. By the end, it was a caustic mixture of almost pure alcohol with just a little coke coloration. Awesome. That's pretty much the last thing that I remember; apparentely, we all got high and both Jesse and I blacked out and threw up on my bedroom floor.
I was hung over all Saturday, a wreck collapsed across the living room sofa. We watched a couple movies on television, and then Jesse, Patuluk and I went to watch Taken in the theater. I thought it was excellent. We went to bed early to prepare for plyos the next morning.
Plyos yesterday went alright, though there were some hitches in our plans. Babbitt, Patuluk and I were about to leave when Robin called, having left early by himself. Apparently, Boyden was filled with some convention of future women athletes (a.k.a. little girls being taught rudamentary field hockey techniques), so that space would be unavailable for a while. I wanted to move practice to our parking lot, but it was cold and there was a steady downpour of freezing rain (it later became snow, and we accumulated about an inch and a half). On the way to Boyden, we decided that we would tell everybody that we were going to lead them to a secret field where we could practice outside, get everybody's hopes nice and low, and then take them bowling instead. Of course, once we got there with this plan, the women in Boyden told us that they would only be there for another half an hour, so we had to just wait it out and then hold our workout. It was really disappointing. I had gotten excited to bowl!
Our workout was alright. In the interest of time, I really dropped down the number and the duration of our rests, which made the workout difficult even though we actually did fewer sets. We did two plyometric circuits with only a two minute break in between each one and limited our in-set recoveries to 18-21 seconds. We also did sprint and backpedal shuttle runs instead of suicides. Individually, I didn't find these shuttles too difficult, but they definitely were tiring by the end. Afterwards, a bunch of us stayed behind and played basketball. While I was too tired to play hard, I think that this was the first plyo workout that didn't leave me too dead to even attempt to play basketball. It certainly wasn't as hard of a workout as some that we have done, but I think that it was okay.
Last night, our final night of drinking, all the people in my house except Robin got together to drink white russians and watch The Big Lebowski. Babbitt initially tried to keep up with the number of white russians that The Dude drinks over the course of this movie, but that quickly proved impossible. I think I drank six or so, and I was feeling pretty drunk (and sick) by the final couple. Maybe we'll get through the Big Lebowski Challenge, but last night was not the night. We then watched Annie and some other stuff on television before a late bedtime.
I'm pretty content with that as my last drinking night of the spring semester. It was a relaxed, pleasant evening where I got pretty drunk but kept things pretty. I mean, I'm glad that Friday night worked out the way that it did, but I'm equally glad that things didn't get as ridiculous last night. We're going to be able to drink a bit on Spring Break, so we can better bond as a team and all that, but I think that I'm going to try to keep it fairly reasonable. I'm too old to drink hard and play effective ultimate, and I'm old enough to understand that.
Ho, Shit! Oh Holy Day! I just got an email that my cleats were delivered to Needham! This is an exciting day for me, even though I don't know when I'm going to actually have them in my grubby little hands. I designed the most audacious, outrageous, stupendous cleats this past winter, and Nike has taken their time putting them together special for me. My dad said that he would buy me a pair of customized cleats for Christmas, so I went online and found Nike's top-rated cleat and ordered it in some funky colors. They cost $180 and look, in my mother's words, "very interesting", "like a five year old got at them with a set of poster paints," but it's my last year playing ultimate so I decided to just fucking go for it.
I'm fucking pumped. I can't wait to put them on for the first time!
As a team, we have quit drinking, smoking, and otherwise abusing substances for the duration of the 2009 season. This is official as of last night, the final weekend where drinking was allowed. Our team celebrated this final weekend with a fair amount of the aforementioned soon-to-be-banned activities.
Several of us drank Thursday night while we watched indoor pickup - when Clayton showed up and asked for money, we quit playing and I went with Mitch to the local liquor store. Indoor pickup is kind of stupid and boring, and I'd already been able to play for an hour before Clayton even showed up. I couldn't bear to go from free shitty ultimate to ten dollar shitty ultimate and, anyway, that dude is a douche bag and I love to just stick it to him, so several of us moved to the sideline and watched from the bleachers. I really only went because we wanted to give Gaylon a try-out, since he had transferred to Umass just this semester and has yet to miss a practice or workout. He seems like a really nice guy and he's a very hard worker, even if he is quite inexperienced as an ultimate player. It was almost as if he was not yet good enough to take but not bad enough to justify cutting - another one of those bubble newbies of which we have so many. Hopefully a few more weeks of practice will sharpen his skills and his field awareness and make him a viable addition to the team, since we decided in the end to take him.
Friday afternoon, I started drinking at about 1 o'clock. Ryan swung by my house to wait for his bus to leave for Needham - he was going back for the weekend to hang with his girlfriend - and we decided that a drunk bus ride was far more exciting than a sober bus ride. I also wanted to get a little liquored up before class, since I wouldn't have the opportunity again this semester, but I ended up drinking 6 shots and deciding to play Babbitt's zombie video game instead. That night we had an early birthday party for Babbitt, who turns 21 on March 5 (in the no-drink zone). It was a really fun party, actually. A lot of the team showed up, so there was a pretty decent crowd, but it wasn't enough people to make moving around uncomfortable or to make us worry about a noise complaint or something. And we got capital h Hammered. I was short on cash, so I only bought myself a growler of Opa-Opa Porter to drink, but the profusion of available hard liquor actually caused me to forget about my beer about 3/4 of the way through the growler. Mitch had bought a handle of 100 proof vodka for Bonta and her friends, and those silly girls got too drunk and left it unoccupied on my kitchen table. A bunch of us ended up standing around that table, slamming shots of vodka and yelling at each other. Kasarah had made a rum and coke in a giant punch bowl, using half a handle of rum. I started chanting, "Drink from the well! Drink from the well!" and insisting that people drink directly from the ladle that I was pulling from the punch bowl. I soon dumped the rest of the handle of rum into the mix, and when the level started to drop I added the rest of the handle of vodka. By the end, it was a caustic mixture of almost pure alcohol with just a little coke coloration. Awesome. That's pretty much the last thing that I remember; apparentely, we all got high and both Jesse and I blacked out and threw up on my bedroom floor.
I was hung over all Saturday, a wreck collapsed across the living room sofa. We watched a couple movies on television, and then Jesse, Patuluk and I went to watch Taken in the theater. I thought it was excellent. We went to bed early to prepare for plyos the next morning.
Plyos yesterday went alright, though there were some hitches in our plans. Babbitt, Patuluk and I were about to leave when Robin called, having left early by himself. Apparently, Boyden was filled with some convention of future women athletes (a.k.a. little girls being taught rudamentary field hockey techniques), so that space would be unavailable for a while. I wanted to move practice to our parking lot, but it was cold and there was a steady downpour of freezing rain (it later became snow, and we accumulated about an inch and a half). On the way to Boyden, we decided that we would tell everybody that we were going to lead them to a secret field where we could practice outside, get everybody's hopes nice and low, and then take them bowling instead. Of course, once we got there with this plan, the women in Boyden told us that they would only be there for another half an hour, so we had to just wait it out and then hold our workout. It was really disappointing. I had gotten excited to bowl!
Our workout was alright. In the interest of time, I really dropped down the number and the duration of our rests, which made the workout difficult even though we actually did fewer sets. We did two plyometric circuits with only a two minute break in between each one and limited our in-set recoveries to 18-21 seconds. We also did sprint and backpedal shuttle runs instead of suicides. Individually, I didn't find these shuttles too difficult, but they definitely were tiring by the end. Afterwards, a bunch of us stayed behind and played basketball. While I was too tired to play hard, I think that this was the first plyo workout that didn't leave me too dead to even attempt to play basketball. It certainly wasn't as hard of a workout as some that we have done, but I think that it was okay.
Last night, our final night of drinking, all the people in my house except Robin got together to drink white russians and watch The Big Lebowski. Babbitt initially tried to keep up with the number of white russians that The Dude drinks over the course of this movie, but that quickly proved impossible. I think I drank six or so, and I was feeling pretty drunk (and sick) by the final couple. Maybe we'll get through the Big Lebowski Challenge, but last night was not the night. We then watched Annie and some other stuff on television before a late bedtime.
I'm pretty content with that as my last drinking night of the spring semester. It was a relaxed, pleasant evening where I got pretty drunk but kept things pretty. I mean, I'm glad that Friday night worked out the way that it did, but I'm equally glad that things didn't get as ridiculous last night. We're going to be able to drink a bit on Spring Break, so we can better bond as a team and all that, but I think that I'm going to try to keep it fairly reasonable. I'm too old to drink hard and play effective ultimate, and I'm old enough to understand that.
Ho, Shit! Oh Holy Day! I just got an email that my cleats were delivered to Needham! This is an exciting day for me, even though I don't know when I'm going to actually have them in my grubby little hands. I designed the most audacious, outrageous, stupendous cleats this past winter, and Nike has taken their time putting them together special for me. My dad said that he would buy me a pair of customized cleats for Christmas, so I went online and found Nike's top-rated cleat and ordered it in some funky colors. They cost $180 and look, in my mother's words, "very interesting", "like a five year old got at them with a set of poster paints," but it's my last year playing ultimate so I decided to just fucking go for it.
I'm fucking pumped. I can't wait to put them on for the first time!
Okay, got some time.
For the first time in ages, it feels as though I have a little time to myself to get some of my thoughts down here. I've been a little disappointed in my ability to regularly post on this blog, but this semester has been far busier than I ever expected it to be. Being a captain is truly a full time job, what with the planning and management of dozens of senseless ultimate players, and it becomes even more difficult when I try to remain a good boyfriend and a decent student while still trying to preserve some semblance of sanity. Kids, don't become captain. Unless there really isn't anybody else who can get the job done. In that case, well... I warned you.
While I put something up towards the end of last week, that wasn't exactly an exhaustive picture of our team situation. This post is going to be a little more detailed, and I guess it's going to have to cover about three weeks of Zoodiscery.
Plyos three Sundays ago had its ups and its downs. That morning was really the beginning of my battle with the disease that crippled our team for the better part of two weeks. I had been feeling a little ill (congested, headache) since the end of the week before that, but it wasn't really a big deal. Of course, like the genius that I am, I drank really hard that Friday night and totally unbalanced my imune system, which probably tipped me into the realm of completely fucked.
On a side note, however, that Friday night was a Lot of fun. A bunch of my teammates came over to drink, and I made everybody have a bunch of peppermint patties. For anybody who doesn't know, a peppermint pattie is when you pour Hershey's chocolate syrup into your mouth to coat your tongue, hold a shot of peppermint schnapps in your mouth, and shake your head back and forth so that the two sugary liquids mix. Swallow. Delicious. I drank about seventy of them that night (note: exaggeration). After almost dying of diabetic shock and alcohol poisioning, the following Saturday was a hung over waste. I was probably sick for most of that day, but I was way too hung over to even realize it. Which brings me back to my story.
I woke up that Sunday morning for plyos and felt absolutely horrible. I decided that I would push myself until I threw up, but only made it to the Boyden parking lot before I lost my breakfast. Several other veterans from the team were sick and had to sit out of practice as well. Henry and Mitch had been sick for the entire last week, and though they tried to participate both had to pull out of the workout. Josh's ankle was still bothering him from when he rolled it playing basketball the week before. Babbitt and Robin were sick, but they looked remarkably better than I felt. I think that the lack of veteran leadership in that plyometric workout resulted in a mostly lackluster performance by our team. It's hard to push yourself through one of these workouts. While everybody does the same excercises, plyos are almost entirely an individual activity because you can pussy out at any point. If you're doing calf jumps, for example, and you start to feel tired, you can jump more slowly or jump for less height. While it appears to the casual observer that you are still killing the workout, you really aren't getting the benefits that you would be if you were pushing yourself through the entire set. This is what I saw for most of the workout that Sunday.
While it can't be helped that some of the more experienced players were sick, I don't think that everybody did what they needed to do to help motivate the teammates who were taking part in the workout. Babbitt and Robin and Patuluk, for example, were on the next basketball court during portions of the workout, shooting baskets and giggling. This behavior is extremely distracting and a detriment to the team morale during the workout. It should suck to sit on the sideline during a workout. You should have to be dragged from the gym floor during Sunday Plyos, wanting so badly to support your team but too hurt or too sick to get it done. You should be in agony. When people look over and see you, instead, giggling like a twelve year old girl, it makes them doubt your sincerity. I was very disappointed in those guys; they should have known better, and I let them know exactly how I felt. Hopefully that isn't a problem that we encounter again.
There were some high points to that workout, however. One of the most notable occurances of that plyo workout was during the last set of suicides. Our entire team had crossed the finish line for our second to last set of suicides in under six minutes and thirty five seconds. Then we did pushups, holding leg lifts between each set. For the following set of suicides, I told the team that they would be done with running if they could all finish in under six minutes and forty-five seconds. It seemed like an accomplishable goal. People, however, felt more fatigued than I had expected. They fell well behind the pace that they would need to hold to meet our goal, and it seemed as if I was going to have to make them run another set of suicides (which I absolutely did not want to do - everybody was already lagging pretty hard, and it was obvious that doing more work wasn't going to do us much good). It all came down to Brandon, Little Pancake, and I had already written the team off as having failed. However, he exploded off of the line, running the first two legs of his suicide at an absolute sprint. I kept waiting for him to slow, surely nobody could run an entire suicide at top speed, but he refused to let the team down. Brandon knew that he needed to run an outrageously quick suicide to keep us under 6:45, and that's exactly what he did. Each individual on our team, on average, runs about a 35 second suicide. Brandon ran his final suicide in under 28 seconds, allowing the team to finish in 6:43.8 - about a second below our goal. It was fantastic. Watching him run that last suicide gave me shivers. If each one of us, when our number is called, can put the team on our shoulders and just get shit done, there isn't anybody who can beat us. Brandon made me believe that we can do it.
Practice the last couple weeks has been pretty good. We've gotten decent numbers from the A team for most of our practices, which has helped to keep people in good spirits. We also had pretty good weather, though it was at times cold and at times rainy. In keeping with my goals at the beginning of this semester, we have been working whenever possible to improve our fundamentals as a team. Right now, we are a team that struggles to make a simple throw, a simple catch, or to put on a hard mark. Practice has been good these last couple weeks because the weather has been good enough to do some work on these skills. We spent several days doing almost nothing but the Go To drill, working on our ability to run at a disc at a full sprint and make a catch. As a team, we practiced making pancake catches, claw catches, right handed catches, and left handed catches. While our results were often woefully inadequate (and frustrating as all hell), I think that a couple of hours of concentrated catches are exactly what our team needs right now. Zoodisc needs to get our drops out of the way now so that they won't be such a pestilence when we actually get onto some fields. We also did a number of marking and pivoting drills, which is an area where our team has never excelled, in my five years of experience.
As time progressed, the parking lot even became dry enough to run an End Zone Drill. The first time that we did this was last Tuesday. I figured that we would run it for a while, get a number, and then move on to some sprints and some other drills. After five minutes or so, I yelled out that we should get twenty scores in a row before we switch sides. Forty-five minutes later, we finally achieved our goal. It seems like, as I noted earlier in this post, our team struggles to complete simple throws and catches, even when there is no defense and negligible wind. While it is frustrating now, we are working through our problems now so that our fundamentals will be automatic when the season is on the line (or so we hope). At least it's nice to be running after a frisbee, even if it does come down to doing simple drills in a parking lot.
Our focus on throwing and catching has meant that practices haven't been as physically exhausting in the last couple of weeks. Running End Zone Drill for a couple hours is not nearly as tiring as running straight sprints with little rest. But it does turn out to be a fair amount of running, even if the recovery time is much too long. Hopefully what we lose in physical fitness during practices like this gained in our ultimate skills. Hopefully.
I've been feeling a bit worse for wear since last week. My calves had been bothering me since I first started getting sick, and I believed it to be muscle tightness on the insides of my calves. A doctor told me Thursday that it was a "classic case" of shin splints (in a different area from the shin splints that I am familiar with), so he gave me some stretches to help fight the shin splints. I also hurt my shoulder lifting weights last Wednesday night. I was doing the military press. The weights felt easier to heft than usual, so I wasn't giving the excercise my usual care. All of a sudden, my left shoulder wrench backwards and I felt the joint give way. I immediately stopped and went to the doctor the very next day. He said that he thinks that it's probably nothing more than a strained rotator cuff, but it was very disconcerting. It doesn't much hurt now, but it is still a little stiff and the doctor advised me not to use it much until it feels significantly improved. Again, he gave me some stretches and excercises that should presumably help my shoulder to heal.
Until then, it seems, I shall be limited in the gym and shall not be doing my pushups. Ah, the setbacks may be minor, but they sure are annoying.
While I put something up towards the end of last week, that wasn't exactly an exhaustive picture of our team situation. This post is going to be a little more detailed, and I guess it's going to have to cover about three weeks of Zoodiscery.
Plyos three Sundays ago had its ups and its downs. That morning was really the beginning of my battle with the disease that crippled our team for the better part of two weeks. I had been feeling a little ill (congested, headache) since the end of the week before that, but it wasn't really a big deal. Of course, like the genius that I am, I drank really hard that Friday night and totally unbalanced my imune system, which probably tipped me into the realm of completely fucked.
On a side note, however, that Friday night was a Lot of fun. A bunch of my teammates came over to drink, and I made everybody have a bunch of peppermint patties. For anybody who doesn't know, a peppermint pattie is when you pour Hershey's chocolate syrup into your mouth to coat your tongue, hold a shot of peppermint schnapps in your mouth, and shake your head back and forth so that the two sugary liquids mix. Swallow. Delicious. I drank about seventy of them that night (note: exaggeration). After almost dying of diabetic shock and alcohol poisioning, the following Saturday was a hung over waste. I was probably sick for most of that day, but I was way too hung over to even realize it. Which brings me back to my story.
I woke up that Sunday morning for plyos and felt absolutely horrible. I decided that I would push myself until I threw up, but only made it to the Boyden parking lot before I lost my breakfast. Several other veterans from the team were sick and had to sit out of practice as well. Henry and Mitch had been sick for the entire last week, and though they tried to participate both had to pull out of the workout. Josh's ankle was still bothering him from when he rolled it playing basketball the week before. Babbitt and Robin were sick, but they looked remarkably better than I felt. I think that the lack of veteran leadership in that plyometric workout resulted in a mostly lackluster performance by our team. It's hard to push yourself through one of these workouts. While everybody does the same excercises, plyos are almost entirely an individual activity because you can pussy out at any point. If you're doing calf jumps, for example, and you start to feel tired, you can jump more slowly or jump for less height. While it appears to the casual observer that you are still killing the workout, you really aren't getting the benefits that you would be if you were pushing yourself through the entire set. This is what I saw for most of the workout that Sunday.
While it can't be helped that some of the more experienced players were sick, I don't think that everybody did what they needed to do to help motivate the teammates who were taking part in the workout. Babbitt and Robin and Patuluk, for example, were on the next basketball court during portions of the workout, shooting baskets and giggling. This behavior is extremely distracting and a detriment to the team morale during the workout. It should suck to sit on the sideline during a workout. You should have to be dragged from the gym floor during Sunday Plyos, wanting so badly to support your team but too hurt or too sick to get it done. You should be in agony. When people look over and see you, instead, giggling like a twelve year old girl, it makes them doubt your sincerity. I was very disappointed in those guys; they should have known better, and I let them know exactly how I felt. Hopefully that isn't a problem that we encounter again.
There were some high points to that workout, however. One of the most notable occurances of that plyo workout was during the last set of suicides. Our entire team had crossed the finish line for our second to last set of suicides in under six minutes and thirty five seconds. Then we did pushups, holding leg lifts between each set. For the following set of suicides, I told the team that they would be done with running if they could all finish in under six minutes and forty-five seconds. It seemed like an accomplishable goal. People, however, felt more fatigued than I had expected. They fell well behind the pace that they would need to hold to meet our goal, and it seemed as if I was going to have to make them run another set of suicides (which I absolutely did not want to do - everybody was already lagging pretty hard, and it was obvious that doing more work wasn't going to do us much good). It all came down to Brandon, Little Pancake, and I had already written the team off as having failed. However, he exploded off of the line, running the first two legs of his suicide at an absolute sprint. I kept waiting for him to slow, surely nobody could run an entire suicide at top speed, but he refused to let the team down. Brandon knew that he needed to run an outrageously quick suicide to keep us under 6:45, and that's exactly what he did. Each individual on our team, on average, runs about a 35 second suicide. Brandon ran his final suicide in under 28 seconds, allowing the team to finish in 6:43.8 - about a second below our goal. It was fantastic. Watching him run that last suicide gave me shivers. If each one of us, when our number is called, can put the team on our shoulders and just get shit done, there isn't anybody who can beat us. Brandon made me believe that we can do it.
Practice the last couple weeks has been pretty good. We've gotten decent numbers from the A team for most of our practices, which has helped to keep people in good spirits. We also had pretty good weather, though it was at times cold and at times rainy. In keeping with my goals at the beginning of this semester, we have been working whenever possible to improve our fundamentals as a team. Right now, we are a team that struggles to make a simple throw, a simple catch, or to put on a hard mark. Practice has been good these last couple weeks because the weather has been good enough to do some work on these skills. We spent several days doing almost nothing but the Go To drill, working on our ability to run at a disc at a full sprint and make a catch. As a team, we practiced making pancake catches, claw catches, right handed catches, and left handed catches. While our results were often woefully inadequate (and frustrating as all hell), I think that a couple of hours of concentrated catches are exactly what our team needs right now. Zoodisc needs to get our drops out of the way now so that they won't be such a pestilence when we actually get onto some fields. We also did a number of marking and pivoting drills, which is an area where our team has never excelled, in my five years of experience.
As time progressed, the parking lot even became dry enough to run an End Zone Drill. The first time that we did this was last Tuesday. I figured that we would run it for a while, get a number, and then move on to some sprints and some other drills. After five minutes or so, I yelled out that we should get twenty scores in a row before we switch sides. Forty-five minutes later, we finally achieved our goal. It seems like, as I noted earlier in this post, our team struggles to complete simple throws and catches, even when there is no defense and negligible wind. While it is frustrating now, we are working through our problems now so that our fundamentals will be automatic when the season is on the line (or so we hope). At least it's nice to be running after a frisbee, even if it does come down to doing simple drills in a parking lot.
Our focus on throwing and catching has meant that practices haven't been as physically exhausting in the last couple of weeks. Running End Zone Drill for a couple hours is not nearly as tiring as running straight sprints with little rest. But it does turn out to be a fair amount of running, even if the recovery time is much too long. Hopefully what we lose in physical fitness during practices like this gained in our ultimate skills. Hopefully.
I've been feeling a bit worse for wear since last week. My calves had been bothering me since I first started getting sick, and I believed it to be muscle tightness on the insides of my calves. A doctor told me Thursday that it was a "classic case" of shin splints (in a different area from the shin splints that I am familiar with), so he gave me some stretches to help fight the shin splints. I also hurt my shoulder lifting weights last Wednesday night. I was doing the military press. The weights felt easier to heft than usual, so I wasn't giving the excercise my usual care. All of a sudden, my left shoulder wrench backwards and I felt the joint give way. I immediately stopped and went to the doctor the very next day. He said that he thinks that it's probably nothing more than a strained rotator cuff, but it was very disconcerting. It doesn't much hurt now, but it is still a little stiff and the doctor advised me not to use it much until it feels significantly improved. Again, he gave me some stretches and excercises that should presumably help my shoulder to heal.
Until then, it seems, I shall be limited in the gym and shall not be doing my pushups. Ah, the setbacks may be minor, but they sure are annoying.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Long time no post
It's been a while since I've made a post, so I figured I'd throw a short one out there while I have a few minutes between classes. I'll put up something more extensive within the next couple of days.
I was sick for all of last week, which is a lot of the reason why I didn't make any posts. I was pretty much in bed during that entire period, coming out only to lead practices. Let me tell you: it sucks to get through an entire workout, but it sucks Much More to have to tell other people to get through a tough workout while I stand off to the side. It was a miserable week. I'm still not feeling completely better, but at least I can participate in all of our drills and sprints now, so that's good.
Plyos last Sunday wasn't the best, but I think that had a lot to do with some of our team's more experienced members having to sit it out due to illness. The young guys work hard, but it's difficult for them to push themselves without an older teammate working beside them to show them how hard they can go. People were definitely lagging during that plyometric workout. However, there were some good parts, including Branden's heroic sprint at the end of practice to ensure that the team wouldn't have to run another set of suicides (more on that in my more extensive post). It was, by far, the most inspirational thing to happen to our team this year. I'm just sad that I wasn't a part of it.
We've been working on getting our uniform orders together, but there seems to be some sort of complication in our correspondence with Patagonia. I don't know what's taking them so long to send the proper forms in to the school so that we can get that shit rolling, but this whole process has been very frustrating. We are considering going with another manufacturer if Patagonia can't get it together soon.
We also had a meeting with Greg, our adviser. We talked about possible dates for our home tournament, sent in our final tournament fee (for Roll Call), discussed the process for paying for gas and reserving hotels, talked about buying parachutes and resistance bands to help with speed training, and a variety of other things. I think Babbitt and I are going to go in there on Friday to pay for everybody's UPA membership, and we're going to work on the hotel reservations sometime in the next couple of days as well.
I'd never met Greg before today. He seems like a fairly cool dude, and he was most helpful. I'm glad that we have somebody like Greg working on our side. It makes me believe that things will go the way that we've been hoping.
Anyway, that's all the time that I have right now. I have to go get changed for practice and then go to American Philosophy, so that I can run down to practice as soon as class gets out. I'll try to write a more detailed overview of the last two weeks whenever I have the time.
I was sick for all of last week, which is a lot of the reason why I didn't make any posts. I was pretty much in bed during that entire period, coming out only to lead practices. Let me tell you: it sucks to get through an entire workout, but it sucks Much More to have to tell other people to get through a tough workout while I stand off to the side. It was a miserable week. I'm still not feeling completely better, but at least I can participate in all of our drills and sprints now, so that's good.
Plyos last Sunday wasn't the best, but I think that had a lot to do with some of our team's more experienced members having to sit it out due to illness. The young guys work hard, but it's difficult for them to push themselves without an older teammate working beside them to show them how hard they can go. People were definitely lagging during that plyometric workout. However, there were some good parts, including Branden's heroic sprint at the end of practice to ensure that the team wouldn't have to run another set of suicides (more on that in my more extensive post). It was, by far, the most inspirational thing to happen to our team this year. I'm just sad that I wasn't a part of it.
We've been working on getting our uniform orders together, but there seems to be some sort of complication in our correspondence with Patagonia. I don't know what's taking them so long to send the proper forms in to the school so that we can get that shit rolling, but this whole process has been very frustrating. We are considering going with another manufacturer if Patagonia can't get it together soon.
We also had a meeting with Greg, our adviser. We talked about possible dates for our home tournament, sent in our final tournament fee (for Roll Call), discussed the process for paying for gas and reserving hotels, talked about buying parachutes and resistance bands to help with speed training, and a variety of other things. I think Babbitt and I are going to go in there on Friday to pay for everybody's UPA membership, and we're going to work on the hotel reservations sometime in the next couple of days as well.
I'd never met Greg before today. He seems like a fairly cool dude, and he was most helpful. I'm glad that we have somebody like Greg working on our side. It makes me believe that things will go the way that we've been hoping.
Anyway, that's all the time that I have right now. I have to go get changed for practice and then go to American Philosophy, so that I can run down to practice as soon as class gets out. I'll try to write a more detailed overview of the last two weeks whenever I have the time.
Friday, February 6, 2009
We just keep working.
Wednesday's practice was alright. We met at the Curry Hicks Cage to run a track workout (I believe I referenced my plans to do this in my last post), and ran a brief warmup. My intention was to run a 200 repeat workout. That track, however, is only about 165 meters long. I thought that the slightly reduced track length wouldn't make too much of a difference in the workout, so I told Tim and Ryan to pace us at about 30 seconds per 165. We ran 3 sets of 4 of these laps, with 30 seconds of rest between each lap and 2 minutes of rest between each set. While this workout was a little tiring, it wasn't really the brutal pace that I had anticipated. Everybody was able to get through each of the sprints with very little problem.
Ah, disappointment. Next time will be harder.
We ran a pretty tough stair workout at Lederle yesterday. This workout consisted of:
2 floors of 2 up 1 down
2 floors of 3 up 2 down
2 floors of 2 up 1 down
2 floors of 3 up 2 down
3 floors of singles
4 floors of doubles
2 floors of 2 up 1 down
2 floors of 3 up 2 down
4 floors of singles
5 floors of doubles
2 floors of 2 up 1 down
3 floors of doubles
3 sets of 10 squat jumps.
We did this entire stair workout twice, and then we did 4 sets of 15 pushups, holding leg lifts for 20 seconds between each set, and then we did our usual ab workout. All in all, a good practice.
I said this last night and I'll say it again. And again. And again. We are Not working this year to make Nationals. We will make Nationals this year, based on our hard work and our attitude. We will make it because we have players on this team who desire the win more than anybody else. We will make it because we refuse Not to make it.
No, we are working this year to contend for the crown once we get there. Zoodisc is going to outwork every other team in the country this year. Hands down. We may not have the best skill players or the best athletes, but we will beat quality teams by outworking them all winter. We are going to get to Nationals. That much is certain. Once we get there, we are going to take down one of those teams whose hype and potential outpaces their work ethic. They are out there, and we are gunning for them.
We had been planning on going to indoor pickup in Greenfield to give Galen an impromptu tryout last night. Galen is a new transfer this spring who seems to be totally pumped to join us this semester. He has worked his ass off every practice so far and is a regular at the weight room. He's fairly tall and seems moderately fast, but is not very good at jumping. Oh, and his throws look alright, but we haven't seen them in a game situation. I don't know how much experience he has playing real ultimate, but I want to give him a shot to earn his way on to the A team.
Yesterday's practice took away a lot of our inclination to go to indoor. To Galen's credit, he enthusiastically assured us that he was ready for his tryout when we offered him the chance to bail due to fatigue. I respect that. However, when we got home, Babbitt saw that his car was blocked in by Robin's and called off the entire excursion. It was too bad, as I really want to get this tryout over with (Galen is stuck in the "new kid suckup" phase, where he seems to be working really hard to get in everybody's good graces - it's just awkward), but there wasn't any easy way to get to Greenfield and we were exhausted. Hopefully we will be able to get this whole thing over with next Thursday.
I don't mind giving kids tryouts. Everybody deserves due opportunity to be part of this team, especially if they are willing to put in the work that it requires. The time leading up to a tryout, however, is vaguely uncomfortable. Nobody knows where their place is, the hierarchy hasn't been established. This is how I feel about Galen right now. When we finally get him his tryout, he is either on the A team or he is not on the A team, and everybody can get used to their respective roles. We can start thinking of him as a member of our team. Or we can start thinking of him as another hard working B teamer who can hopefully work himself into a viable contributor on the A team next year. Either way, I'm okay with that. I just want to know what the situation is so that I can act accordingly.
I am afraid, however, that Galen might not be as talented as I hope he is. Babbitt put it pretty well last night when he said that he was afraid that Galen would turn out to be a moderately athletic kid with no field sense and halfway decent throws, and that we were going to have to break his heart. Moderate skills and a lack of sense is probably the worst combination to have in terms of feeling hopefully and being let down. A kid who can throw and catch is often a kid who believes that he can make the A team. He thinks that he knows how to play, he thinks that he deserves a spot on the team. What that kid doesn't understand, however, is that field awareness and defensive tenacity are much more important characteristics when it comes to making our team. We have throwers; if you are going to make the team, it is unlikely that you are going to make it as a handler. It is much much Much more likely that we take a kid who is willing and able to work his ass off on defense or who knows how to be a downfield cutter. We can teach an athlete how to throw. We can't necessarilly teach a thrower how to be an athlete.
Anyway, I hope that Galen turns out to be a baller. More than that, I hope that he can keep things in perspective if he turns out to be more of a thrower than a baller, and we can't take him.
Ah, disappointment. Next time will be harder.
We ran a pretty tough stair workout at Lederle yesterday. This workout consisted of:
2 floors of 2 up 1 down
2 floors of 3 up 2 down
2 floors of 2 up 1 down
2 floors of 3 up 2 down
3 floors of singles
4 floors of doubles
2 floors of 2 up 1 down
2 floors of 3 up 2 down
4 floors of singles
5 floors of doubles
2 floors of 2 up 1 down
3 floors of doubles
3 sets of 10 squat jumps.
We did this entire stair workout twice, and then we did 4 sets of 15 pushups, holding leg lifts for 20 seconds between each set, and then we did our usual ab workout. All in all, a good practice.
I said this last night and I'll say it again. And again. And again. We are Not working this year to make Nationals. We will make Nationals this year, based on our hard work and our attitude. We will make it because we have players on this team who desire the win more than anybody else. We will make it because we refuse Not to make it.
No, we are working this year to contend for the crown once we get there. Zoodisc is going to outwork every other team in the country this year. Hands down. We may not have the best skill players or the best athletes, but we will beat quality teams by outworking them all winter. We are going to get to Nationals. That much is certain. Once we get there, we are going to take down one of those teams whose hype and potential outpaces their work ethic. They are out there, and we are gunning for them.
We had been planning on going to indoor pickup in Greenfield to give Galen an impromptu tryout last night. Galen is a new transfer this spring who seems to be totally pumped to join us this semester. He has worked his ass off every practice so far and is a regular at the weight room. He's fairly tall and seems moderately fast, but is not very good at jumping. Oh, and his throws look alright, but we haven't seen them in a game situation. I don't know how much experience he has playing real ultimate, but I want to give him a shot to earn his way on to the A team.
Yesterday's practice took away a lot of our inclination to go to indoor. To Galen's credit, he enthusiastically assured us that he was ready for his tryout when we offered him the chance to bail due to fatigue. I respect that. However, when we got home, Babbitt saw that his car was blocked in by Robin's and called off the entire excursion. It was too bad, as I really want to get this tryout over with (Galen is stuck in the "new kid suckup" phase, where he seems to be working really hard to get in everybody's good graces - it's just awkward), but there wasn't any easy way to get to Greenfield and we were exhausted. Hopefully we will be able to get this whole thing over with next Thursday.
I don't mind giving kids tryouts. Everybody deserves due opportunity to be part of this team, especially if they are willing to put in the work that it requires. The time leading up to a tryout, however, is vaguely uncomfortable. Nobody knows where their place is, the hierarchy hasn't been established. This is how I feel about Galen right now. When we finally get him his tryout, he is either on the A team or he is not on the A team, and everybody can get used to their respective roles. We can start thinking of him as a member of our team. Or we can start thinking of him as another hard working B teamer who can hopefully work himself into a viable contributor on the A team next year. Either way, I'm okay with that. I just want to know what the situation is so that I can act accordingly.
I am afraid, however, that Galen might not be as talented as I hope he is. Babbitt put it pretty well last night when he said that he was afraid that Galen would turn out to be a moderately athletic kid with no field sense and halfway decent throws, and that we were going to have to break his heart. Moderate skills and a lack of sense is probably the worst combination to have in terms of feeling hopefully and being let down. A kid who can throw and catch is often a kid who believes that he can make the A team. He thinks that he knows how to play, he thinks that he deserves a spot on the team. What that kid doesn't understand, however, is that field awareness and defensive tenacity are much more important characteristics when it comes to making our team. We have throwers; if you are going to make the team, it is unlikely that you are going to make it as a handler. It is much much Much more likely that we take a kid who is willing and able to work his ass off on defense or who knows how to be a downfield cutter. We can teach an athlete how to throw. We can't necessarilly teach a thrower how to be an athlete.
Anyway, I hope that Galen turns out to be a baller. More than that, I hope that he can keep things in perspective if he turns out to be more of a thrower than a baller, and we can't take him.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Update continued.
Right. So I said that I would post the workout that we did on Sunday for plyos. Well, here it is:
Six Stations:
1) Box Shuffles
2) Box Jumps for speed/Slalom Jumps for height/Slalom Jumps for speed (we did a different one of these three every time we rotated through the stations)
3) Squat Thrusts
4) Wall Touches (off of rapid hops)
5) Frog Leaps
6) Scissor Jumps
First, we each did 2 full court suicides in relay groups of 2. We then divided into six groups and split amongst the stations, doing 45 seconds per station and then rotating to the next station. Before starting the next station, we would do 20 seconds of a stationary workout. These stationary workouts were: foot fires, high knees, butt kicks, shadow drill, shadow drill, and then foot fires. We took a short break and then jumped off each foot and off of both feet multiples times at the basketball rims. Then we did each of the six stations (and the 20 second stationary workouts that went with them) twice again. Then we divided into relay groups of 4 and did 3 full court suicides. Then we did 4 sets of 20 pushups with six inch leglifts held for 20 seconds between each set of pushups. Then we did 3 full court suicides in our groups of 4. Then we did an ab workout with 40 repetitions of each of the abdominal excercises we do (somebody told me that it amounted to 420 crunches or so). Then we did 2 full court suicides in our groups of 4.
So, yeah. It was a pretty tough workout. My legs were pretty sore for a couple days after, and I'm sure most other people felt the same way. It's that kind of workout, though, that's going to get us into the shape we need to be in when the season really gets going. A couple sad notes, however. Josh sprained his ankle playing basketball between sets of plyos and will be out for at least a couple weeks, it looks like. He's keeping a good outlook about it, though, continuing to work out however he can and eat relatively healthily. I believe that he will rebound well from this injury and be a dominant force for our team. John, my brother, also hurt himself during that workout. He pulled a hamstring, which he has done at least once a season for the last several years (ever since falling over backwards out of a chair, which misaligned his hips). He says it doesn't feel too horrible and that he will be back as soon as possible.
Today's track workout wasn't nearly as miserable as I had anticipated. The indoor track at Curry Hicks is only 165 meters long instead of 200, but I set us up to run 200 times (30 seconds per rep, 30 seconds rest between reps, 4 rep sets). We did 3 sets of 4 sprints. It was tiring, but certainly nothing terribly difficult. Next time, we'll have to increase the pace and drop the rest, or something. It's an inexact science and I'm still trying to get the hang of it. When we finished running, we did 4 sets of 15 pushups (with six inch leglifts held between each set) and my ab workout to 40 of each exercise. Next week, I think we're going to up it to 50 crunches per exercise. It's going to be glorious.
My conversation with the track coach this morning was pretty entertaining. He was pumped to hear that the Ultimate Frisbee team wanted to use Curry Hicks to get in shape ("You guys gotta come get your asses in shape!"), and told me that we could come there any day after 5pm to work out. He then cautioned me about the dusty floor of the track (it is pretty filthy), telling me to be careful that nobody hurts an ankle. He explained that the facilities guys usually only sweep one lane because they know that they can get away with leaving dirt on the track. "They only clean the things that people care about," he said, "like the basketball court." He then seemed to get a glimmer of hope and asked me whether the Ultimate team could pull some strings and get the school to start cleaning the track, therebye helping everybody. Sadly, I had to reply that the Ultimate team doesn't have any clout with Anybody in the administration. But that's okay. I'm just glad that I got to see the athletic hierarchy of Umass in action. I guess Basketball is pretty set in the pecking order above Track, but both are miles ahead of Ultimate.
Six Stations:
1) Box Shuffles
2) Box Jumps for speed/Slalom Jumps for height/Slalom Jumps for speed (we did a different one of these three every time we rotated through the stations)
3) Squat Thrusts
4) Wall Touches (off of rapid hops)
5) Frog Leaps
6) Scissor Jumps
First, we each did 2 full court suicides in relay groups of 2. We then divided into six groups and split amongst the stations, doing 45 seconds per station and then rotating to the next station. Before starting the next station, we would do 20 seconds of a stationary workout. These stationary workouts were: foot fires, high knees, butt kicks, shadow drill, shadow drill, and then foot fires. We took a short break and then jumped off each foot and off of both feet multiples times at the basketball rims. Then we did each of the six stations (and the 20 second stationary workouts that went with them) twice again. Then we divided into relay groups of 4 and did 3 full court suicides. Then we did 4 sets of 20 pushups with six inch leglifts held for 20 seconds between each set of pushups. Then we did 3 full court suicides in our groups of 4. Then we did an ab workout with 40 repetitions of each of the abdominal excercises we do (somebody told me that it amounted to 420 crunches or so). Then we did 2 full court suicides in our groups of 4.
So, yeah. It was a pretty tough workout. My legs were pretty sore for a couple days after, and I'm sure most other people felt the same way. It's that kind of workout, though, that's going to get us into the shape we need to be in when the season really gets going. A couple sad notes, however. Josh sprained his ankle playing basketball between sets of plyos and will be out for at least a couple weeks, it looks like. He's keeping a good outlook about it, though, continuing to work out however he can and eat relatively healthily. I believe that he will rebound well from this injury and be a dominant force for our team. John, my brother, also hurt himself during that workout. He pulled a hamstring, which he has done at least once a season for the last several years (ever since falling over backwards out of a chair, which misaligned his hips). He says it doesn't feel too horrible and that he will be back as soon as possible.
Today's track workout wasn't nearly as miserable as I had anticipated. The indoor track at Curry Hicks is only 165 meters long instead of 200, but I set us up to run 200 times (30 seconds per rep, 30 seconds rest between reps, 4 rep sets). We did 3 sets of 4 sprints. It was tiring, but certainly nothing terribly difficult. Next time, we'll have to increase the pace and drop the rest, or something. It's an inexact science and I'm still trying to get the hang of it. When we finished running, we did 4 sets of 15 pushups (with six inch leglifts held between each set) and my ab workout to 40 of each exercise. Next week, I think we're going to up it to 50 crunches per exercise. It's going to be glorious.
My conversation with the track coach this morning was pretty entertaining. He was pumped to hear that the Ultimate Frisbee team wanted to use Curry Hicks to get in shape ("You guys gotta come get your asses in shape!"), and told me that we could come there any day after 5pm to work out. He then cautioned me about the dusty floor of the track (it is pretty filthy), telling me to be careful that nobody hurts an ankle. He explained that the facilities guys usually only sweep one lane because they know that they can get away with leaving dirt on the track. "They only clean the things that people care about," he said, "like the basketball court." He then seemed to get a glimmer of hope and asked me whether the Ultimate team could pull some strings and get the school to start cleaning the track, therebye helping everybody. Sadly, I had to reply that the Ultimate team doesn't have any clout with Anybody in the administration. But that's okay. I'm just glad that I got to see the athletic hierarchy of Umass in action. I guess Basketball is pretty set in the pecking order above Track, but both are miles ahead of Ultimate.
Update
I haven't been able to get to a computer the last couple days, so I really wanted to post an update. I don't have much time, so this is going to have to be pretty brief, but I'll post something longer tonight.
Sunday morning was our first plyo workout. I would have been perfectly happy letting this first one slide, since it was the first weekend of the year, but luckily Babbitt didn't let my laziness get in the way of a great team workout. And it was a Great workout. We absolutely pounded our bodies for about 3 hours. I'll post a description of the workout later, but rest assured that it was intense. I think that my legs still haven't fully recovered.
We also had our first makeup workout on Monday. While a bunch of people should have participated, a bunch had valid excuses and only five ended up taking part in the workout. I had intended to run it myself, to set a good example, but I ended up being far too sore from the plyos and just stood by the side and ordered others through the workout. Which was just fine. Afterwards, I played our first intramural basketball game (we got blown out), and I lifted.
It snowed yesterday. In spite of some complaint, I decided to hold practice outside on our parking lot. However, it was Quite slippery, so we only ran a couple sprints. We also had several 20 second sessions of high knees, butt kicks, and footfires. Finally, we partnered up and threw for about half an hour. When we were finished, a fair dusting of snow had accumulated and it was definitely too slippery to run, so we all went to Boyden for an ab workout in one of the dusty hallways. That was alright, but it wasn't a very difficult practice.
Today we are meeting at 5 at the Curry Hicks Cage for an indoor track workout. This should be much more strenuous than yesterday's practice, so half of me is looking forward to it and the rest of me is a little more reluctant. Since practice is later than usual, I am going to lift before practice rather than after. We shall see how that works out.
Sunday morning was our first plyo workout. I would have been perfectly happy letting this first one slide, since it was the first weekend of the year, but luckily Babbitt didn't let my laziness get in the way of a great team workout. And it was a Great workout. We absolutely pounded our bodies for about 3 hours. I'll post a description of the workout later, but rest assured that it was intense. I think that my legs still haven't fully recovered.
We also had our first makeup workout on Monday. While a bunch of people should have participated, a bunch had valid excuses and only five ended up taking part in the workout. I had intended to run it myself, to set a good example, but I ended up being far too sore from the plyos and just stood by the side and ordered others through the workout. Which was just fine. Afterwards, I played our first intramural basketball game (we got blown out), and I lifted.
It snowed yesterday. In spite of some complaint, I decided to hold practice outside on our parking lot. However, it was Quite slippery, so we only ran a couple sprints. We also had several 20 second sessions of high knees, butt kicks, and footfires. Finally, we partnered up and threw for about half an hour. When we were finished, a fair dusting of snow had accumulated and it was definitely too slippery to run, so we all went to Boyden for an ab workout in one of the dusty hallways. That was alright, but it wasn't a very difficult practice.
Today we are meeting at 5 at the Curry Hicks Cage for an indoor track workout. This should be much more strenuous than yesterday's practice, so half of me is looking forward to it and the rest of me is a little more reluctant. Since practice is later than usual, I am going to lift before practice rather than after. We shall see how that works out.
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