Lift

Pullups: 11, 4 at +10lb
DB hang snatch: 5 at 35, 2 at 40, 1 at 45lb
Incline bench press: 8 at 45, 2x5 at 95, 8 at 95lb
3x5 single DB high pull, 25lb
Shoulder raises: 8 at 15, 8 at 10lb
2 farmers walks at 45lb

I also did some static holds with the 45lb bar above my head, various dumbbells held above my head (I even tried overhead squatting with dumbbells, which was crazy difficult). I did more DB snatches, as well--at various weights, some incorporating static holds in the finish position, trying to feel out proper form. My left arm is significantly weaker, and some snatches turn out to be more like clean+presses. Today was mostly about putting some weird stresses on my shoulder muscles, so I did various kinds of raises, sometimes turning the dumbbells as I brought them above my head. Nothing too strenuous, although I found out that if I ever want a stupidly hard workout I can do dumbbell overhead squats. Humbling, to say the least.

(Team) Lift

20 reps of each exercise, no rest. Do it for time, twice with full rest between each attempt:

Squat thrust jumps, jumping jacks, pushups, crunches, side lunges, lunges, pullups, back extensions, squats, crunches, dips, alternating crunches, alternating crunches, supermans.

I did it first in 8:45 with a different order of exercises, which threw most of the leg stuff at the end and killed my squat-thrust-jumps. I completed my second run in 6:45, but I had less-than-perfect form on my dips and I was more trying to go through as quickly as possible than do each rep of each exercise with great form. Not sure if that was the point, but it was a good workout either way.

Jog

1.5mi in 11:45

Plus a couple flights of stair running, a few pistol squats and 20mins of stretching. My left quad still hurts, and even feels like it isn't working properly--it hurts when I try to jog at a faster pace, but doesn't seem to be in much pain when I do things like squat, even pistol squat. In fact, my left quad hurt more when I did right-leg pistols than left-leg pistols. I am confused.

Lift

6 wide grip pullups
Bench press: 6 at 45, 8 at (85, 85, 95, 95), 4 at 115lb
High pulls: 8 at (55, 75, 75lb)
Overhead squats: 4 at 55, 4 at 65lb
Internal and external shoulder rotations (2x15 each at 7.5lb)

I also did some crunches and incline crunches, both with a medicine ball, and side plank holds.

Huck of the Irish

On the drive down, I heard that rounds had been pushed back to noon on Saturday due to rain. When we woke up, we found out that our first round opponent has dropped out. After breakfast, we played a game of mafia and then headed out to cheer on the girls' team at their first game. When we got there, the heavens opened up in a downpour--all games got cancelled. Our coach told us he wanted us to practice anyway, so we warmed up and found a field where several other teams were playing out their games, despite the standing water that had turned the entire field site into a swamp. Even without the rain, the fields would have sucked, but the water was in big splashy puddles that made cutting a slow and arduous process. We did a few drills--deep cutting and defending, encouraging layouts, even after finding a knife on the field--and then scrimmaged against U. Texas-Arlington. It was windy, the fields were a problem, and we were our own problem with numerous drops, poor execution, bad spacing, not running at full speed, etc. We nonetheless went up early, slacked off in the lead, and eventually won 11-8 or something. Then we went back to the hotel, showered, ate, watched "Bring it On" and "Bring it On, Again" and hung out with the girls before going to bed.

Spoiled from sleeping in the day before, plus losing the hour from the clocks changing, we woke up early on Sunday for continental breakfast and a full day of Ultimate (finally). It was much colder on Sunday and even more windy, though less wet. My cleats were still somewhat sodden from Saturday, however, which froze my toes during the warmup. So, our first real game of the tournament was against Pittsburgh-Johnstown, a team with one of the nicest and most spirited players I have had the pleasure of marking up. He also had no problem jacking it deep at every opportunity, right around our marks as we played tight in the first half, keeping it close but going down 6-8. Our spacing was still a problem, and though we cleaned up our handler motion a bit we got blown out in the second half and lost 7-15.

Next up was Air Force, and as a team we stepped it up for this game. We went up fast and early by forcing goal-line turnovers with both man and zone D, scoring easily with endzone offense. I had a bunch of assists this game, because both our man D (when they were against wind) and our zone (when they were with it) were successful--I even caught a callahan goal after pushing them back in the wall and one of their throws bladed up and flew 20ft into the air. We let up a little bit in the second half, but won handily without them scoring more than 4ish. Next up was Drexel, a team that had a lot of trouble against our man D going into the wind and didn't even both trying to work it past our zone--they simply jacked it deep and threw a zone against us every time they got the disc with wind behind them. We would work it up patiently, breaking the cup and hitting open guys all the way up the field before turning it over near the endzone, and they wouldn't even look to move the disc much before punting. Okay, I get that they were trying to play a field-position game, but sometimes they wouldn't even walk it up to the goal line before punting. We had a lot of hell-points because of their strategy, but we kept working it patiently upwind. I moved the disc very well behind the zone--it was not a particularly difficult zone to break, but we broke it often and only turned it over with botched catches (and the occasional throw that got caught in the roaring wind). With wind at our backs, we were much more free to take deep shots--I had a nice hammer assist, Ariel had one of his own, and we often hucked it to guys deep. When it didn't work, we played straight up D. Maybe the wind was a huge help, but we fronted pretty well and rarely got caught with our pants down. I think they may have scored one upwind goal all game, and we won without them scoring more than 4ish.

The team felt like it was starting to come together more than it has yet, which is exciting. We still have a lot of work to do, though, so I'm really looking forward to spring break and the opportunity to practice where it's warm. Also, I'd rather not have Taco Bell after a tournament ever again...my meal kept coming back up into my mouth during the drive home. Not pleasant.

Ultimax

lots of wind
hard to throw
warm and sun
nice to run
spirited teams (a few individual exceptions)
trouble with offense
I skied a 6'8" guy
I got kickblocked
I completed some long throws
teammates layed out, but not me
two freshmen injured Dan Johnson's back in a 2vs1 wrestling match
Greg and Pete layed out on D, and Greg gave Pete a concussion
we lost every game

Lift

Tabata Intervals:

Deadlifts, 2x15lb DB: 14, 15, 17, 18
Squats, 25lb: 15, 15, 15, 16
Lunges, 2x15lb DB: 14, 14, 13*, 13*
Pushups: 19, 14, 8, 10*
Crunches: 23, 22, 22, 23
Calf lifts, 30lb: 23, 22, 21, 22

Asterisks for lunges mean backwards lunges. For pushups, it denotes girl pushups.

A little lifting

I had to do something today, so I went to the gym and just threw the weights around in different ways, trying out different movements to put some moderate stress on the muscles.

9 pullups, 1 at +25lb, 7 pullups
General warmup: a few front squats, presses, overhead squats, and static holds with both 45lb and 65lb (I also did one 10 second, one-handed static hold of the 45lb BB held overhead with the arm locked out, just for fun). I also threw in a mix of deadlifts, straight-leg deadlifts, and romanian deadlifts with 95lb. I did some lat shrugs in the pullup position, too, to try to work on that first step of the dead-hang pullup.

Clean and jerk: 1 at 65, 1 at 95, 1 at 115, 1 at 135lb
--I maxed out. I couldn't even clean 135lb after that last attempt. I was tired.

I finished out the workout with some shoulder stuff...lateral raises and DB presses with 12lb, upright DB rows with 30lb. Finally, 3 farmer's walks with 45lb. Again, the goal tonight was to stimulate, not tax. I'll do some of that tomorrow, and hopefully I won't kill my calves before a tournament, like I did last week. I'll recap Ultimax if I get around to it, and can remember what happened.

Recovery Jog

Got back from Ultimax today, wanted to work out some of the soreness.

2.55mi in 24:55

Team Run

8x(30 seconds sprint, 1:30 rest)
8x70yd accelerators (slow acceleration to 35yds, full sprint to end)

I feel a quickening...

Team Lift

Tabata Intervals:

Pullups: 14*, 6**, 2**, 0
Pushups: 19, 13, 8, 9*
Dips: 9, 5, 4*, 6*
45degree extensions: 10, 11, 11, 12
Deadlifts, 45lb: 15, 15, 15, 16
Lunges, 2x12lb DB: 14, 14, 14, 14
Squats, 25lb: 15, 16, 16, 17
Crunches, 12lb medicine ball: 16, 14, 15, 20*
Calf raises, 50lb: 29, 21, 21, 22

Alright, the asterisks. For pullups, I started out descending only to parallel. For my 2nd and 3rd set, I did kipping pullups. For my 4th, I just hanged down and tried to shrug up as many times as I could with my lats. For pushups, that fourth set was girl pushups. For my 3rd set of "dips," I did a 5-second static hold in the 90degree position, then did 4 shoulder presses with the 45lb bar. For my 4th set, I did 4 presses and 2 push presses. Everything else was the perscribed exercise, except I substituted abdominal twists with the medicine ball for the last set of "crunches," where twist-left-twist-right was one rep.

Basically, I tried to go body-weight where I could, then dropped down to something easier when I was physically unable to perform another rep. In the future I might try pullups and dips on the assistance machine, but there's no point in trying to nancy out at this point in the season. Unfortunately, I had only two workout partners, so I don't know how many of my teammates share that philosophy. We'll find out this weekend who is ready to work hard out on the field. I suppose we'll also find out how prepared other teams are. Right now, physical conditioning is our only hand to play--I think that was one of our main obstacles in Vegas, playing against teams that have been practicing on fields while we have been limited to indoor workouts. I think it is very possible, though, that we will be stronger for it by Sectionals.

Still taking that right road...

Lift

Mixing it up a little today...

Pullups: 2, 1 at +25, 1 at +30, 1 at +35, 2 at +20lb
2 pullups at +20lb, then 6 pullups
5 clean and press 95lb
5 pullups
5 clean and press 95lb
5 pullups
4 clean and jerk 115lb, 1 clean and jerk 125lb, 1 clean 135lb

I couldn't finish that last clean-and jerk--135lb was a lot, and it took multiple tries just to get the clean. I kept trying for about half an hour, but eventually admitted to myself that I was pretty drained and would not be able to do it today. I also threw in some static holds--frog stand, mostly--but not much. I was trying it out because I think I want to add a lot more static lifting during the off-season and the endurance phases of my training. As for my current phase, I feel more like I'm throwing different things at my body and not really moving in as clear a progression as I did in the fall. We'll see how it changes things. Ultimaxx is this weekend, so the plan is to lift tomorrow morning, run on Thursday, and hopefully get a little swimming in on Friday before we head down. Isn't it fun to be your own personal trainer, without the experience or monetary compensation that a trainer has?

Team Workout

Plyos: 2 rounds of 2x10 for ricochet hops, rapid jumps, step-up jumps, squat jumps, and burpees.

3 rounds of lunges with the resistance band, stair-runs holding a medicine ball, marking shuffles, skaters, and a suicide.

Stations: 60 seconds on, 10 seconds rest for resistance band twists, mountain climbers, crunches with the medicine ball, plank, side plank (x2), pike pushups, supermans, wall-running, wall sit, skipping in place, pushups, single leg pumps (x2), "athletic position" (think up-downs, without the ups or downs), bridge thrusts, and jumping jacks.

A good workout tonight, but not as mentally taxing or physically draining as some of the past workouts. Partially, we're stronger, but it also has to do with how the workout is changing. We're incorporating new things and doing different kinds of movements, which take longer than beasting out a bunch of station exercises. Overall, I think this is a good direction for us, and I can't wait until we can get out onto the field, where we will be able to do more movement drills and SAQ work, in addition to all of the fun sprint and acceleration work.

Troubled in Vegas, Part 2

After that first "power pool" game on Friday evening we had another bright and early on Sunday morning. We stopped at the Jack in the Box again for sustenance, watched Ariel's van give a ride to a hitching girl's team (whom Dan Johnson immediately asked, "so how good are you?"), stocked up on Powerade and Monster, and made it to the fields without much time for idling. I wore my athletic pants and jacket liner for the warmup, wanting to make sure I got good and loose before the game, which was against Georgetown. They had a lot of goons--tall dudes who were not particularly athletic or skilled, but got the job done if you gave them opportunities. Which we did. Another frustrating day for the offense, which seemed to think mental errors won games. The wall defense looked better in this game, though, so it wasn't all bad. We did lose, but the team is starting to (inconsistently) gel. I remember having some good handler motion in this game.

After a bye we had Virginia Tech, a team we lost to at Southerns last year. I remember our wall defense improving more but our offense still giving up the disc in silly ways. Same story for our next game, vs Chico State (again), although our man defense got a little better here too, whereas before it was pretty flimsy. I remember baiting an in-cut in the Chico game, getting the D on my dude, sprinting deep and catching a huck for the goal. I spiked the disc, full of energy and fired up, but now regret it. There really wasn't any reason to do that--we were down by a pretty bad margin and the point was to improve our game, not be jerks. Anyway, we lost both of these games. Afterwards, we stretched in a circle and then sat down to talk about, as a team, our impressions from the tournament so far and how we wanted to move forward. I heard some really good feedback from the freshmen, some things that really give me hope and pride for the future of our team, so long as they can back it up. A lot of the guys went back to the hotel at this point, but a few of us, myself included, stayed to watch Wisconsin vs CUT and Florida vs Arizona. Sick games, especially to watch the intensity and speed of play in the Wisco-CUT game. Something to aspire to.

We headed back without Dan Johnson (who apparently got a ride from Hector Valdivia, who was freestyle rapping for his car-ride companions?), showered up and headed to the Freemont Street Experience. Browsing the various gift shops, we saw all kinds of shot glasses, trick brandy glasses, playing cards with naked ladies on 'em, plastic slot machines, dice, and cheap t-shirts galore. There was a life balancing-act duo, and also one of those steel cages with up to 3 dudes on motorcycles whirling around inside. Ladies bedecked in weird glittery costumes welcomed you into the casinos lining the street, some guy was spray-painting these awesome pictures, and there was some kind of Chippendales gazebo with half-naked dudes posturing for cameras. There were tons of daquiris in the hands of the pedestrians, cheap disgusting foods hawked from a couple of corner stores, and bums all around asking you to buy them alcohol. I stopped in the Playboy store, which was nothing but women's t-shirts and bunny ears (no porn, no novelties, quite tame in fact), and took a peek into the Harley Davidson shop (which was more impressive, with biker gear everywhere). We even got to see a 3-woman dancing show going on inside one of the casinos, though we all had to stand outside of the store-front-wide "door" because we were underage. We wandered around for an hour or two, ogling like everybody else. The giant screen on the roof of the whole walkway was pretty neat, showing clips and short movies from time to time and claiming to be the largest TV in the world. In short, it was a terrific, gaudy smorgasborg--definitely a good way to pass some time if you've never had the pleasure of immersing yourself in the seedy fakeness of Sin City.

But eventually, we made it back to the hotel for some pre-gaming before heading over to the party. I grabbed a sub from Subway, sipped a Monster-bomb (which really peeved Thales, who thought it was a travesty to not gulp it down like you're supposed to), and we walked to the bus-stop on the other end of Freemont. There was supposed to be this bus that would take us to the general location of the tournament party, but when we got there we found out it would cost us like $3 per person and we'd need exact change. That, and the fact that a thousand people were trying to cram onto these busses, made us rethink our plan. We called Pete to pick us up in the minivan, I told four girls that there wouldn't be room in the car for them, I got yelled at ("There's always room for girls!") and then we packed 15 people into a 7-passenger van. Driver, shotgun, four in the middle, five in the back, four in the trunk. That automobile was riding so low, we could only make it up to around 60 on the highway and I was worried that some cop would pull us over for ridin' dirty, and we'd catch some serious shit. Either that, or somebody would cut us off, Pete would have to swerve, and we'd all die in the crash. Thankfully, we made it to the supposed location of the party unscathed, searched for a parking space well away from the lot guards, and proceeded to amble around looking for a large group of very drunk individuals. At first, all we saw was some random girl with her back against a dumpster, pants around her ankles, peeing in the parking lot. Eventually, though, we found the "party." It must have been at least 400 people walking through the (full) parking lots behind casinos, yelling like fools and drinking jungle juice from gasoline canisters. Most of us were not impressed, but a few joined the crowd right away while the rest of us shook our heads. The predictable few elected to stay at this "party" but the rest of us rode back to the hotel. A couple freshmen pledged to find some girls and have their own party, others probably played a few drinking games to close out the night, but I ended up going to sleep--after all, we had another 8am game the next morning.

Well, an 8:30am game, as it turned out. Another trip to Jack in the Box, a long warmup in the chilly air, and a few stories about what went down at the "party" the night before--I'll say no more than to mention that one particular person exposed himself to a group of girls in exchange for some fake money. Yup, didn't I wish I was there to see that. In any case, Syracuse showed up to play us, and we only sort of showed up to play them. Our offense would look great one moment, disorganized and shitty the next, and we had some problems transitioning from wall to man. It was a close game, and I feel like we definitely should have closed it out, but again we killed ourselves with execution errors and mental lapses and gave it up. On the plus side, we played in our darks for the first time all tournament. Next, we walked over to where our final game was supposed to be, but found out that our opponents had bagged. I think that's really some bullshit, that a team ditches and we, who came all the way from the east coast, missed out on our "guaranteed" 9th game. Instead, I played "how fast is your flick?" (45 mph for both backhand and forehand), scored some sweet shorts from the 5Ultimate tent, and then got back to the team for a hammer-cut drill. We then split into three groups--mine went back to the hotel, showered, ate at the buffet, then made it to the fields in time to watch the second half of the semis and all of the finals. Sick games, all, and it was really nice to just chill with teammates in the sun and watch some good Ultimate.

The trip back was quicker but no more enjoyable. It was excessively windy coming into Newark International, 30mph gusts that rocked the plane on approach--I was not a happy passenger. I did drink at least 64oz of fluids during the flight back, though, which probably helped get me through the day. We got back to Rutgers at 7:30am, ate a huge breakfast at Brower, and everybody headed back to their respective homes for some rest. Except I didn't go to sleep--I checked my email, showered, and went to class. I have four classes on Monday, and went to all of them (physically, at least...I was mentally absent for perhaps 30% of the time). The only way I lasted through my final two was with a healthy dose of Monster and an iron will.

It was a terrific experience, and I'd do it again in a second. My only hope is that next year, we are more prepared and more in tune as a team, so that the tournament brings us a little more success and a little more productivity--the closer your games are, the more you get to work on your game. For what it was, though, it was good--three days of the most perfect weather for Ultimate that I've ever had, a ton of teams, and a good time in a ridiculous city. Next up, Ultimaxx.