Learning, Trying

Been talking to the trainers at the power gym, trying to pick up what information I can. Apparently some erector spinae work will help me with that pesky lower back pain, correcting what may be an imbalance between the abs and lumbar spine. I also plodded my way through this workout:

Uncounted attempts at a muscle-up (1 successful)
8 front squats at 45lb
8 hang cleans at 89lb
8 snatches at 89, 8 at 111lb
SL DB RDL: 8 at 25, 8 at 30, 8 at 35lb
8 pinch-grip upright plate rows, 22lb (1 rubber plate each hand)
8 pinch-grip upright plate rows, 22lb (2 plates each hand)

Run, Lift

1mi in 7:51
2.15mi in 17:24
Bench press: 10 at 95, 8 at 115, 8 at 125, 3 at 135lb
Squats: 10 at 95, 8 at 125, 8 at 145, 6 at 155lb
DB incline bench: 10 at 40, 8 at 45, 5 at 45, 4 at 40lb

Plyometrics:
12 wall taps
12 vertical line hops
12 horizontal line hops
2x12 tuck jumps
12 max jumps
12 single leg max jumps, from motion

Lift, Practice

1 muscle-up (plus other attempts)
Overhead squats: 8 at 45, 8 at 67, 8 at 78lb
8x(deadlift to hang clean to push press) at 89lb
8x(hang clean to push press) at 1332lb
8 clean and jerk at 111lb

Practice in the rain. Sucked.

Hair of the Dog

After playing 20 games over 7 days without getting enough sleep on any of their preceding nights, I needed to do something to get my body back. The bruises and scrapes are healing, the bursitis is smaller but still very much there, the muscles tired but not too tight, and overall I'm feeling the season but looking forward to the next few steps.

Yesterday, I stretched for over an hour at the gym. I hit all the muscle groups while breathing nice and deep, and threw in a set of 10 DB overhead squats at 15lb for good measure. I also competed my first unassisted muscle-up, but couldn't repeat the feat in subsequent tries. It took some good momentum and the knurled bar, but I did it and it felt good.

Today, I hit the pool to work the lungs and work out the kinks in my muscles. With limited rest after each lap, here's what I did:

4x50 freestyle
2x50 backstroke
50 breaststroke
50 butterfly
4x50 freestyle
2x50 backstroke
50 breaststroke
50 butterfly
4x50 freestyle

Total was 1000yds. For the last 4x50 free, I tried to take as few breaths as possible for each length. It ended up being 3/4, 2/3, 1/2, 1/3. After the swim I threw with Abe for 45 minutes, then did the following ab workout with Frenchy:

1 round Marine Abs
(50 crunches, plank, 20 scissor kicks, right plank, 20 flutter kicks, left plank, 50 crunches, legs raised for 20 counts)
3x10 hanging knees-to-elbows
1 round Angry Dave Abs
(10 hip raises, 10 leg raises, 10 leg raises right, 10 leg raises left, 10 leg raises, 10 hip raises)
10 pushups at +45lb (weight plate on back)
15 full body crunches

Practice

I don't wanna talk about it. No clue where people's heads were. I had two hucks: one a completed bad decision, the other an almost-completed good decision that didn't come out well. My handler motion was good, but things did not go well when I cleared out of the handler area to cut downfield. Apparently my downfield cutting was not great. I played really good defense in the drills, then not so good defense in the scrimmage. The team's offense sucked.

Spring Break!

Lift

Bench press: 10 at 115, 3 at 135, 4 at 125, 8 at 95lb
2x4 mixed grip pullups, 1 L-hang pullup
Deadlifts: 8 at 115, 6 at 135, 6 at 185, 1 at 235lb
T-bar rows: 8 at 45, 6 at 70, 8 at 70, 6 at 80lb
8 DB snatch 45lb
Marine Abs part 1*
8 DB snatch 50lb
Marine Abs part 2**
8 DB snatch 55lb

*Marine Abs is a partner workout. X holds a plank while Y does 50 crunches, then they switch. Then X holds a side plank while Y does 20x4 sideways flutter kicks, switch. Then X holds the other side plank while Y does 20x4 vertical flutter kicks, switch. Then both partners hold their legs off the ground for a countdown of 20 "seconds."
**Part 2 is to do part 1 all over again.

I felt weak overall. The bench presses sucked. The abs sucked. The rows and snatches were not bad, and I didn't push myself for the pullups. But I'm looking forward to a lot more body weight workouts for spring break. I'm thinking pushups, squats, burpees, and a murderous rampage all over the abdominals. Can't wait.

Not Pushing It

Still trying to recover from the weekend and from this persnickety illness. Two weeks and it hasn't really gone away. So I went to the gym and stretched for a little more than an hour, then threw outside in the grass for thirty minutes. Gotta be ready for Spring Break!

Anti-HOTI

So, with HOTI cancelled we had the weekend to ourselves...NOT! Saturday pickup was mandatory for A-teamers, and a solid group of Others (including, gasp, girls from the RWUF team) came out to Buccleuch for some rousing pickup. I tried to play a lot, but didn't always have good energy. I probably did some cool things and some dumb things, but I don't really remember. Afterwards, I hit up Brower and then headed over to the B-team tournament going down on Busch Campus. I watched them lose games for the rest of the day and evening, then finally put my cleats back on for their last game--a rematch against UDel-B. With either me or DB on the field (but never both at the same time) we shut them out in the first half of a game to 11, before they asked nicely to go home without having to finish the game. I just think it's cool that adding one more handler to the line makes the B-team that much more successful, so I'm pretty psyched to see those guys step their game up and come to the A-team next year.

We hosted a party at the apartment that night, which started out slow but became legit before too long. I tried to go to bed somewhere around 5am. Funny enough, the party didn't even seem to be the major reason why so many people failed to show at our (required!) Sunday practice. We had 11 dudes by the end, and though it was a small group we got to work on skills with a little more focus and attention--clearing space and man-to-man defense were the priorities of the practice. It was challenging, I was already feeling beat from Thursday and Saturday, but easily one of the most useful practices of the past couple months. It's too bad more people weren't there to benefit from it.

So, Ultimax

It wasn't as cold or windy as it is in Salisbury every year, but it was cold and windy. It rained a lot. We got to the fields in time to look out in lust at the gorgeous grass that was supposed to be our field site, but the rain was coming down in sheets so we stayed in our cars as the TD scrambled for backup fields. The backup fields were crappy--short, graded, lacking grass--but we were happy (sort of) to at least have somewhere to play. We warmed up for the first game, and I was not enthused. It would be a day of dealing with discomfort, and while that kind of opportunity is expected and even welcomed by the mind, the body grumbles nonetheless.

Game 1 vs Kenyon, we received with wind and they immediately threw zone. I catch the swing, break the cup to a popper who drops the catch, Kenyon scores. Something else happens against wind, they score again. The D team goes on and gets scored on at least once, maybe twice, and then I think we finally get on the board. At some point in this game we abandoned the O/D split and caught up a bit, but things didn't go well overall. We lost at the cap, 5-12 according to the score reporter.

I don't remember the order in which we played Duke and UNCG, but I do remember what happened in each game. We sucked. Drops after drops, and though there were some times where we played solid D--enough to force turns with the help of the weather, anyway--for some reason we struggled even to score with wind. Upwind breaks were few and far between, but we got a couple against Duke and a couple more against UNCG, and basically both games were shitshows. We lost 4-7 to Duke--who, by the way, has an average height twice ours--and beat UNCG 8-4. Man, we had a lot of drops. I think I dodged most of them myself, maybe had one on the day, but I definitely threw some garbage--including one awful backhand to Growney, who saved it with a spectacular layout for the goal. I don't remember much else about the games overall, except that Duke had some unspirited play...nothing too incredible, but a bad call here and there and a sideline that for some reason thought it would be fun to celebrate every Rutgers mistake with drawn-out howls of "OHHHHHHH!"

Then we had a bye, during which we all huddled in the locker room of whatever building that was. I spent almost the whole time pouring hot water from the handheld showerhead over my hands and feet, trying to trick myself into believing I was in a hottub. We wrung out our underarmour, beat the water out of our jerseys, noshed on Chex Mix and then put our wet shit back on so we could play Pitt.

I don't know how much I want to talk about this game. They were in control from the beginning, and though it might have been closer than the 2-13 score, between the weather and their pressure we were overmatched. We never got much going on downfield, and stagnant cutting probably made it that much easier to shut down our offense when it was already difficult to put a forehand more than fifteen yards. The most frustrating thing, though, was how unspirited a number of the Pitt players were. It felt like there were more bad calls in this one game than I've seen in whole tournaments, some of them completely unjustifiable. I mean straight-up bullshit, as opposed to the standard arguments you might get when two people have different perspectives on what went down...it felt pretty egregious, and entirely unnecessary given the circumstances. As for the way some of their players disrespected my team from the sideline, or when they were chatting on the line waiting for the pull, all I can say is the game overall left a bad taste in my mouth.

But it ended, we went back to the hotel, waited entirely too long before eating, then watched movies all night. I made a run to the laundromat to dry the team's wet crap, we were woken up at 5am by the worst car-alarm episode of my life, and in the morning we decided to bag. Just bag all of Sunday. Cool, cuz the whole tournament bagged, but it was good that we got out of there early. The drive back was fine, definitely improved by the visit to our captain's parents' house for a home-cooked dinner, but a 10-hour drive is still a 10-hour drive. I had a lot of time to dwell on the Pitt game between naps.

Cool, HOTI was cancelled this year. I'm not surprised, because there's no way that event could have happened in nice weather. It would ruin its reputation.

Team Workout, League Chumpionships

We started out with two separate 1.5mi fartlek runs, at roughly 2 minutes off / 1 minute on. We fit in four hards for each 1.5mi lap, with some walking rest between them. I hit this hard, especially on the second lap. Afterwards, back into the gym for some plyos. With no rest: 10 forward/backward line hops, 10 side-to-side line hops, 10 squat-thrust-(tuck-jump)s, 10 split jumps. 2x3x40yds bounding. 4x40yd full speed sprints, with rest. The sprints were easy, the plyos a good hard set, the bounding too hard on the shins and calves.

Chumpionships went surprisingly well for my team, we went up by a lot early on and keep the lid down to win by double digits. I goaded Pippin into calling for jump balls whenever I was covering him, but he pretty much dominated me until the end of the game, when he got greedy for a goal and came up over me to grab a blade, twisting his ankle on the landing. It wouldn't be funny, except before the game we were joking about trying to end as many seasons as possible that night, and I said he'd be fine because he had plenty of time to recover before the club season. Okay, maybe it still isn't funny, but he did ask for it. I played well on offense, moving the disc and notching some goals/assists. I played a lot of points, especially in the second half, felt alright overall but I knew I'd pay for it later.

Catching up

Last night I benched. 9 at 120, 3 at 140, 4 at 130, 1 at 145, 7 at 120lb

Tonight I lifted a little:

8 overhead DB squats at 15lb
Back squats: 6 at 135, 6 at 145, 4 at 155lb
8 overhead BB squats at 65lb
12 hanging knees-to-elbows
DB push press: 6 at 30, 6 at 35, 6 at 40, 6 at 45lb
16 vertical leg raises
8 each side throwing pivots
8 dips
16 vertical leg raises
8 each side throwing pivots
10 dips
16 vertical leg raises
8 each side throwing pivots
12 dips

30 minutes throwing, focusing on pivot-to-throw.