Nicely produced and impressive parkour video, with one guy doing it all on rollerblades. Very cool.

MobilityWOD is the best fitness video weblog I’ve seen in a long time, maybe ever. Kelly Starrett is filming/discussing a mobility workout every day. Engaging speaker, walks the walk, and clearly knows his stuff inside and out.

Sitting for long periods of time is looking pretty harmful. I’ve read other reports that suggests the 8 hours in the chair pretty much negates the hour in the gym, perhaps not for sports, but for long-term health (and for sports I’m sure the glute deactivation, hip flexor tightening, and back rounding don’t help). I have toyed off and on with the idea of a treadmill desk, but in the end I just don’t want to sink the money or space into a treadmill.

So a standing workstation has looked like a nice compromise, and today I put one together. I wanted cheap and easy, so I built something to sit on top of my workbench rather than my office desk, because the workbench is already higher, and I know I can build something that looks nice enough for the workshop, but not really nice enough for the office. Here it is:

Cost about $90, almost all of that in 3/4” pipe nipples (8) and floor flanges (12). The MDF shelves are 16” x 36” by 3/4”. The legs have a flange on one end and rubber feet on the other end, and the flanges screw into the bottom of the unit. The uprights between the first shelf and the second shelf have flanges on both ends. In all cases, you thread the flanges onto the pipes really tight and then you screw all the flanges to the shelves. The top shelf is set slightly to the back relative to the bottom shelf.

I don’t think I’ll want to stand all day, so I’ll probably move from my office to the workshop periodically.

Rock solid, very happy with it. Posting this from it right now.

P.S. I also bought this wireless keyboard/mouse combo ($45) to keep in the workshop, and this router ($70) to get better wireless coverage in my house. Pleased with both so far.

Ross Enamait, whose training products are my favorites, has a new double DVD set out on training the hands, neck, and core: The Missing Links. If you’re new to Ross, he walks the walk, total monster:

Tony Gentilcore turns in this great piece on improving your squat: Squat Like You Mean It. A bunch of useful mobility exercises that should help you (and hopefully me) get deeper.

Interesting piece on how detrimental all that sitting is to your health. Even if you exercise:

In 2009 Dr Peter Katzmarzyk and colleagues at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center published an influential longitudinal paper examining the links between time spent sitting and mortality in a sample of more than 17,000 Canadians (available here). Not surprisingly, they report that time spent sitting was associated with increased risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality (there was no association between sitting and deaths due to cancer). But what is fascinating is that the relationship between sitting time and mortality was independent of physical activity levels. In fact, individuals who sat the most were roughly 50% more likely to die during the follow-up period than individuals who sat the least, even after controlling for age, smoking, and physical activity levels. Further analyses suggested that the relationship between sitting time and mortality was also independent of body weight. This suggests that all things being equal (body weight, physical activity levels, smoking, alcohol intake, age, and sex) the person who sits more is at a higher risk of death than the person who sits less.

Time in the gym does not reverse time in the chair. Sounds like lots of breaks from sitting is the way to go, if not a treadmill desk.

Always a happy day when Ross Enamait posts a new training video, RossTraining.com Compilation II. Badass, as usual. He also has an accompanying post describing the equipment he uses.

The incomparable Jerry Rice on training and his awesome hill workout. He was such a joy to watch.

I’ve only been following the World Cup on my periphery, but after reading The Genius of Messi...

Messi simply does things — little things and big things — that other players here cannot do. He gets a ball in traffic, is surrounded by two or three defenders, and he somehow keeps the ball close even as they jostle him and kick at the ball. He takes long and hard passes up around his eyes and somehow makes the ball drop softly to his feet, like Keanu Reeves making the bullets fall in “The Matrix.” He cuts in and out of traffic — Barry Sanders only with a soccer ball moving with him — sprints through openings that seem only theoretical, races around and between defenders who really are running even if it only looks like they are standing still. He really does seem to make the ball disappear and reappear, like it’s a Vegas act.

… I had to find some video. There’s some real magic in there. The ankle-breaking direction changes look effortless, and all while controlling the ball so precisely. Really, great, even in small screen contextless clips. (via kottke)

Impressive parkour video from Damien Walters. (via conditioning research)

Great Nike commercial not made by Nike. Seeing Tiger in there is a little distracting, looks like this was made a bit before the meltdown:

(via ross)

Ross Enamait has a good post and video up demonstrating a variety of exercises you can do with a $5 pair of furniture sliders/gliders.

The Big Picture’s 2010 Winter Paralympics photos are great.

I hate burpees. Even at my fastest clip I do them pretty slowly (10 in about 25 seconds), and in no time at all I feel like quitting from exhaustion and misery. About two-and-a-half years ago I managed 100 in just under 10 minutes, and the experience so scarred me that I’ve only worked them half-heartedly and sporadically since.

So, in the spirit of working on your weaknesses, I resolved to make them a staple of my regime, and just managed to get my time back under 10:00. My approach was pretty simple: do 100 burpees every Tuesday and Thursday. For the first workout, set the Gymboss (cool, new 2009 version of an already-great timer!) to 2 minute intervals and do 10 burpees at the top of each interval, resting during the leftover time (yes, that’s a lot of rest!). Every workout, subtract 5 seconds from the intervals. So 1:55 intervals the next workout, then 1:50, etc. Once you get down to 1:00 intervals, and you do 10 at the top of each, you will get your 100 in under 10 minutes.

Here’s how it went for me (date, interval time, total time):

1/14   2:00   18:40
1/19   1:55   17:11
1/21   1:50   16:21
1/26   1:45   15:12
1/28   1:40   14:44
2/02   1:35   14:10
2/04   1:30   13:55
2/09   1:25   13:06
2/11   1:20   12:25
2/16   1:15   QUIT (pulled shoulder at 17, bailed at 50)
2/23   1:15   12:06
2/25   1:10   11:02
3/04   1:05   QUIT (chickened out at 67)
3/05   1:05   10:15 (needed revenge)
3/09   1:00   09:51

This feels pretty close to my wall. The final 30 burpees of that set were ugly, ugly, ugly. Practically staggering to my feet to manage a 1-inch jump. Ugh. But I’ll take it. Not sure what I’ll do at my next workout. Shaving off another 5 seconds each round doesn’t sound like much, but it’d actually represent improving my time by more than 8 percent!

P.S. I know 10:00 isn’t an earth-shaking time. Remember this guy, who cranks out 100 in 5:00 and change? Unreal.

My wife read an article recently that suggested, probably semi-tongue-in-cheek, that figure skating is not a sport because it is subjectively judged, and the participants wear costumes and perform to music. While I’m not a big fan of subjective judging, I think this unfairly short-changes these athletes. So, out of a great breakfast conversation with some friends, this chart was born (made with gliffy):

Notes:

• While it seems to me that there are some fat professional baseball players, none of those guys can spend all their time on the couch, and most are in great shape, so baseball is a sport.
• Perhaps golf was a game before Tiger came along and raised the bar, and now it’s a sport?
• Not sure about NASCAR or bowling. I know there are physical demands, but can you compete on the elite level without athletic training? If so, game. If not, sport. I’m not making any judgments, I just have no idea personally.

Updated, Alternate: My breakfastmates had proposed a risk clause, which I had taken out for simplicity’s sake, so if you prefer, this version puts it back in. Also, thanks to Alec for the Hemingway clause that also made it in:

Updated, Personal Version: Personally, I like the Hemingway clause but not the risk clause, so this is the version I use:

Information is Beautiful just put out a great tool, Snake Oil? The Scientific Evidence for Health Supplements. Here’s a little more about it.

This Conditioning Research handstand tutorial link brought the Bar-barians blog to my attention, which “keeps track of all of the developments in the Bodyweight Scene, with a special focus on all of the pull-up crews in NYC.” A month or two ago they posted two 2009 highlight videos, Top 10 Moves of 2009 and The Top 10 Strongest Moves of 2009, both filled with impressive feats. If you don’t feel like watching all 20 minutes (although I think it’s worth it), here are my favorite parts:

• Cleive: behind the legs clap pushups at 4:48 (1st video).
• Cruz: muscle-up hurdles at 5:33.
• Rick: slow muscle-up with obstacle at 9:16.
• HFK: 1-arm coffin at 5:35 (2nd video).

Pretty sure HFK stands for Hannibal For King, featured in this unbelievable video.

Coincidentally, if you are inspired to improve your pullups, the Jason Ferruggia post, Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Pull Ups also came across my newsreader today. Sound advice.

I was looking at the Big Picture’s Dance Around the World photos, and was struck by the photo of Antoine Carabinier in the big wheel. I’ve seen German Wheel acts before, but never this, with all its finger-crushing potential. Googling quickly revealed that the apparatus is called the Cyr Wheel, named for inventor Daniel Cyr. Searching YouTube for “Cyr Wheel” turns up a mix of professional performances (here’s Antoine Carabinier in action, starting around 0:50, and here’s a performance by Balazs Foldvary, both impressive) and plenty of amateurs (the guy on the tennis court is a fast learner). Amateurs! Where do you even get a big metal wheel? There are quite a few leads in this thread, along with a surprisingly low reported quote of $200 to have one made and shipped (2006, from Vancouver). This post on WikiAnswers lists some manufacturers. Looks like fun! I’d get one if I had just a few more illusions about my coordination.

Olivier Lemieux training for what must be a fantastic act. Cirque du Soleil seems determined to demonstrate that it’s their Matrix, and the rest of us are just living in it.

The two most interesting training articles I’ve read in recent weeks are this one on glute training and this one on on fascia. Both well worth your time. (via mackey)

This is easily the best Ultimate Frisbee highlight reel I’ve seen, all clips collected from 2007 Nationals. (via catch)

I weaned myself off Ibuprofin as a pre-game ritual. Good thing, it turns out, as it looks like it does more harm than good.

Here’s a nice summary of the research on barefoot vs. shod running. Here’s the introduction

Well-known international athletes have successfully competed barefoot, most notably Zola Budd-Pieterse from South Africa and the late Abebe Bikila from Ethiopia. Running in bare feet in long distance events is evidently not a barrier to performance at the highest levels. Indeed, in this review I will show that wearing running shoes probably reduces performance and increases the risk of injury.

I became interested in research on barefoot running when I noticed that a reasonably high proportion of runners compete in bare feet during cross-country races in Queensland, Australia. I have based the review on articles I found containing the words barefoot and running in Medline, SportDiscus, and in Web publications. I found several original research reports on the occurrence and mechanisms of acute and chronic injuries in unshod and shod populations, and a few reports on the energy cost of running with and without shoes (including an unpublished thesis). Two authors provided recommendations for adapting to barefoot running. I also found informal websites devoted to barefoot running and barefoot living. There are apparently no published controlled trials of the effects of running in bare feet on simulated or real competitive performance, nor any surveys on the reasons why people do not compete barefoot.

(via tmn)

Inhuman. Usain Bolt breaks the unbreakable record again, by a ton. 19.19 in the 200m. The gap he opens up in this race, oh my.

Here’s an HD video of Usain Bolt crushing his own world record in the 100 meters. 9.58! Tyson Gay turns in the third-fastest time in history at 9.71.

I’ve sung the praises of Tabata intervals many times, so it’s only fair that I include this interesting reality check from Lyle McDonald.

I have no idea if this works, but awhile ago Jason Ferruggia was touting Jon Hind’s Power Jumper. Hind is the former strength coach for the LA Clippers. It wasn’t enough to get me to buy the product, but I am playing with a homegrown version that uses a couple Iron Woody bands I already had on hand tied together, plus a couple NRS straps for attaching them to my feet. Works great. Hinds’ jump training program (PDF) is available online.

The other interesting thing I came across was Andrew Darqui’s Iso Extension Stims. I tried these yesterday for the first time, using a Glute Ham Raise machine instead of one of those 45-degree things, making sure to point my toes, while pulling on a band to pile on the resistance. I followed the protocol described in section 5, “Example Usage & Session”, but for vertical leap, and I did gain two or three inches between my first set and my last. Since my vertical is pretty meager, this is a big percentage gain (but also means I have more room for improvement). LOTS of disclaimers though: I used a different machine, I’m not a very good jumper so it’s not hard for me to get better, I’m not sure I did it right, maybe I got better just by being more warmed up, etc. But I’ll keep working ‘em in and see how it goes.

Could this guy be more fun to watch? Usain Bolt turns in a 19.59 in Lausanne, in the rain, into a headwind. The Science of Sport has some good commentary.

Very interesting article from Kelly Baggett, 7 Modern Day Myths About Plyometrics. Here’s more about the Iso Extension Stim he mentions.

Usain Bolt lays waste to another world record, this time the 150 meters. Watching the race brings back Olympic déjà vu; total destruction of the field. Here’s the Science of Sport’s take. I wonder if he can score a WR in the 400 too? He’d need to take like 2.5 seconds off his personal best, I think. Michael Johnson thinks he can do it.

P.S. Here’s the super slow-motion replay of his 100m Olympic final again. Even slowed way down his feet spend such a remarkably short amount of time on the ground, and I love watching the clock tick down as he runs past it.

Jason Kottke has a good post up on free running, including an impressive demo reel of practitioner Levi Meeuwenberg. Getting up that wall at 1:51?! Unreal.

Inspired Bicycles just vaulted onto my top five Parkour videos list. Having “bicycles” and “Parkour” together doesn’t seem right, but there’s really no better way to explain it. I wouldn’t have imagined some of that stuff was possible. Really great. (via waxy)

Video of Andy Bolton’s new deadlift world record. 457.5kg (1008.6 lbs). Over one THOUSAND pounds, and he looks like he could have lifted even more.

Lyle McDonald on the 5×5 program.

The Orbitwheel skates look like a ton of fun. Kinda like a cross between a skateboard and rollerblades. Best of both worlds, almost. Your feet are independent like rollerblades, but you can just step into them without lacing or buckling, like a skateboard. And could they be more portable? Just chuck ‘em in your backpack.

Siggi’s skyr rocks. You couldn’t ask for better ingredients (PDF). It’s not at all like the oversweetened crap every big commercial manufacturer churns out. Sure, I like oversweetened crap, but this is a much better choice.

The evolutionary fitness crowd has always made pretty good sense to me, but Martin Berkhan has an interesting and provocative post up at his Leangains blog, Low Carb Talibans. The comments are also good reading, if not always civil.

The Big Picture has shots of the Tough Guy Challenge 2009:

Billed as “the safest most dangerous taste of physical and mental endurance pain in the world”, the Tough Guy Challenge took place yesterday, February 1st, on South Perton Farm, near Wolverhampton, England. Thousands of challengers (men and women) started the endurance race, with hundreds dropping out along the way due to exhaustion or injury – broken bones, dislocations, and over 600 cases of hypothermia. Even the overall winner, James Appleton, was treated briefly for hypothermia.

Did the guy in the Borat suit finish, you think?

T-Nation has an excellent article up, Joint-Friendly Training. It provides a bunch of exercises that work around joint injuries, so you can keep training and getting stronger. Definitely useful for me!

Art De Vany has temporarily opened access to his private blog as he migrates to a new platform. Lots of good stuff in there.

The folks over at RingTraining.com have unveiled a nice looking tool to help ease into advance ring strength moves, the Elite Strength Trainer. There’s good info there, and this was in the e-mail announcement:

I just wanted to let everyone know that the Elite Strength Trainer is now available. It’s selling at a $40 discount till January 1st. It’s a new tool that helps train for the cross, maltese and other advanced ring strength exercises. It works by adjusting the leverage placed on your arms in 10 increments. As you get stronger, you simply move up to the next level. It brings the direct, linear progressions available to weightlifters into the world of bodyweight exercise.

A few months ago, I took a prototype to the national team training center. I met with Kevin Mazeika, head coach of the US Olympic Team, and Jordan Jovtchev, 5-time Olympian, and they both offered me some feedback on the design. Within 15 minutes of setting them up in the gym, I had almost a dozen national and Olympic caliber gymnasts from the American and Japanese teams try it out. They had all used equipment in the past that worked on the same principle, but unanimously preferred the design of the Elite Strength Trainer. They liked that it had a lot of adjustment points, it was quick to adjust and easy to set up and comfortable to use. This is actually a tool that is quite important in the training of a lot of top-level gymnasts. For some of them, it is just for conditioning. But they already have short arms, so it’s almost like they’re already using it! For others, it’s the safest way to get back strength after an injury or to develop new strength skills. For the rest of us, it is a great way to safely and effectively incorporate advanced ring strength moves into our training.

Sorry not to let you know about the sale earlier (which will probably be over by the time you read this), but I didn’t get the announcement until 12/30.

Alobravo has a fun collection of videos up, The 6 Sickest Playground Workouts You Can’t Do (no arguments here). I’d seen the Bartendaz one before, but the rest where new to me. The Hannibal video is unreal. The guy does some exercises I’ve never even imagined before. (via SttB)

And here I thought the one-arm chin was a difficult skill… How about one finger? Also, Jim at Beast Skills turns in some great work on the pegboard, including a muscle-up. That guy is a machine. (both via SttB)

Who knew you could structure an entire blog around breathing? More helpful for sports (or at least more concise) is Breathe Right and Win. Very useful for me, as I do way too much breath-holding when working out. Related, and unfortunately incurable by Googling alone, I’m also too stupid to count my reps and breathe at the same time, if the reps and the breaths aren’t synchronized one-to-one. (via jeters)

Very cool indoor caving setup, cobbled together with eye-bolts and hinges. Great pulling workout, and that knee-over-the-arm move is clever (makes it look easy, until you consider the grip strength involved). ‹via cr›

Coach Sommer, who you may remember from articles like Building an Olympic Body through Bodyweight Conditioning or Developing the Hanging Leg Lift, has a post up on a very interesting "prehab" exercise, Wall Extensions:

Wall Extensions are a relatively simple movement that can be quite effective in treating what I have occasionally referred to as "Bench Press Syndrome"; or a greatly reduced range of motion throughout the shoulder girdle due to an incorrectly designed exercise program.

Just tried these, there is only one way to describe my performance: I sucked. Which is totally unfair, since I don't bench, and work harder on pullups than pushups. Sigh, stupid computer job. Definitely something to add to my regular stretch breaks.

Also, very exciting, his long-awaited book on gymnastic strength training for the layperson, Building the Gymnastic Body is available for preorder! As you can see from the link, you can also buy it with DVDs and/or rings if you want.

I remember, quite a few years ago now, watching DoG play at Regionals. I still remember Billy Rodriguez exhorting a defender from the sidelines, "where do you want to make him go?"

As one who was (and still is, if I let my mind wander) inclined to play defense by merely chasing my guy around, this was revelatory. "Where do I want to make him go"?! What a concept!

Now, years later, Josh Mullen has put up a post laying out how that works in practical terms: Good Defense Happens BEFORE the Disc Moves. Perhaps not as pithy as "where do you want to make him go", but much more helpful.

Sorry about the dearth of posts, I'm in a bit of a transition period...

First, a link: Mackey has a great post on squatting up. Go. Read. Watch THE CLIP.

Second, to the Nationals-bound Ultimate players out there, good luck in Sarasota! Wish I could be there, but now I get to join in the trick-or-treat fun. As my daughter told me going into Regionals, "it's a win-win!" And right she was.

Finally, do me a favor? Drop me a line if you find this site useful. You can post here or e-mail me. I'm handing over my oldest, dearest site to a fellow ready to give it a long overdue update, and this site piggybacks on it's framework, so will have to change one way or another. Anyway, I've always been curious about who my readers actually are, so if you're willing (no pressure, of course), just a quick ping: your sport, your team (if applicable), and what you've picked up from here. Thanks!

Nice little piece in The NY Times on the importance of relaxation to performance. They site the Michael Phelps example, of course, but I'd point to the Usain Bolt/Asafa Powell example as the more glaring one. As Anthony Lane put it in his opening paragraph to his excellent piece on the Olympics:

The morning of Friday, August 15th, was one of unaccustomed freshness in Beijing, and it brought forth two objects, both wreathed in legend but hitherto hard to spot. The first was a boiling ball of gases some ninety-three million miles away, known as the sun. The second was the sprinter Usain Bolt, whose homeland lies more than eight thousand miles away, in Jamaica, but who was now a hundred and thirty metres from where I sat. I was close to the finish line of the hundred-metre track, and he was at the start, awaiting his first heat of the Games, and going through his pre-race routine: glancing to the heavens and beating a brief tattoo, with his index fingers, on an invisible drum. He shimmied on the spot, revving his muscles, as all athletes like to do--the most febrile being Rafael Nadal, the young minotaur of the tennis circuit, who hops up and down, before every match, like a small boy in need of a pee. Bolt's nerves were less twitchy than that. Indeed, from this first heat up to the final, the following night, he seemed to be participating less in an Olympic sport than in a gargantuan party, which happened to have a sporting theme. My deepest fear was that he would break the world record and then test positive for rum and Coke.

Lane's first article is even better. Read 'em both (although it's a bit after-the-fact now).

Outrageous. Maybe the trans fat companies will be next.

Crossfit has launched the latest version of their journal: CrossFit Journal 3.0. For me, the most compelling piece of this offering is that a $25 subscription gets you full access to all their back issues (which were formerly $5 each to buy). Definitely going to look into that after the season.

Everything Jim at Beast Skills posts warrants a link, and his one arm push-up tutorial is no exception. Great stuff, as always.

• A little pick-me-up to watch before your next workout: Nike Courage. I can't link to the high-quality version directly, so don't forget to click the "watch in high quality" link by the lower-right corner of the video.
• Interesting summary of the health benefits of eating coconut. Caught my eye because it was only a couple days ago I saw this post lauding coconut water as "nature's perfect sports drink".

Thanks to reader llimllib for pointing out the Women's 100m Final. Like the men's race, totally worth watching for Shelly-Ann Fraser's dominant performance, but even better is the joy she expresses in her post-race celebration and interview. Makes me happy just watching her.

• First, I have to express my awe at the 100 meter dash. If you didn't see it live, you must watch Usain Bolt's world record run. Sweet Mother of God. His semifinal heat looked like that too; so relaxed, coasting to victory. Imagine how much he would have beaten the record by if he hadn't started celebrating 15 meters (!) out. Also, definitely watch the super-slow-mo version. I love watching the timer count off the tenths in the background as he runs by, celebrating. Related, here's Tyson Gay's hamstring injury footage. It's like a NASCAR crash. I knew those guys generated tremendous power, but I didn't truly appreciate how much until watching it go very wrong. Looks nothing like one of my hamstring pulls. You'll be prompted to install Microsoft's Silverlight plugin to watch these. It's basically Microsoft Flash (like we needed another rich media format).
• Admit it, Phelps has you thinking about getting into the pool. Tim Ferriss has a good post up on the Total Immersion program: How I Learned to Swim Effortlessly in 10 Days and You Can Too. My big obstacle is the inability to keep the water from going up my nose.
• Discover magazine: 20 Things You Didn't Know About Sports Technology.
• Science stuff. Modern Forager on what happens when you fast: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
• More science stuff. Lyle McDonald on leptin: Part 1 and Part 2. Much more complicated than some of the recent popular press stories imply.

• I first read about the Thai sport of takraw years ago, and then forgot all about it. Crazy athleticism, volleyball without hands, bicycle kick spikes, etc. YouTube has some takraw action (via Frostillicus).
• The guys at The Science of Sport have put together a wonderful montage to kick off the XXIX Olympiad. Really well done.

NSCA reports on an interesting study suggesting you can greatly reduce ankle sprain risk with stability pad training (PDF), especially if you're in the high risk groups (overweight, and/or previous sprains).

I just noticed this really cool workout that I WON'T be doing anytime soon from the T-Nation Third World Workouts article:

Underwater rock runs

Our boats would be anchored about 100 yards off the beach, in around 18 feet of water. We generally used these as the markers, but the workout can be performed just as easily if you run parallel to a beach. You can also use the deep end of a pool. (Just check with the lifeguards first so you don't cause an incident.)

Each two-man team picks a large rock and races to the boat with it. The first man carries the rock while the second man swims above him on the surface. Then they switch. Once they reach the boat, a mooring line is dropped in the water and the rock must be carried up the line onto the deck of the boat. From here, knock out 50 pushups, throw the rock back into the water (check for swimmers first), and return it to the beach.

18 feet deep!? I think by the time I got down there I'd have to come right back up. I also get water up my nose no matter what I do, so I can't imagine this is the workout for me, but man it sounds like fun if you can swim. How the heck one climbs a mooring line while carrying a heavy rock though, I have no idea.

Another great issue of The Huddle is up, this one on footwork. Here's a basic thing from Chris Talarico's entry that struck me:

As for individual footwork "moves," one that can help make cuts sharper is planting off your inside foot instead of your outside foot (or a cross-over step). For example, say you're setting up a cut to the left by heading to your right. When you're ready to change direction, the typical move is to jab your right foot out to plant and push off to the left. Try this instead: place your last step with your left foot under your center of gravity, or more to the right of where it would land if you were running straight ahead. Rotate your hips hard to the left, and swing your right leg around to make your next step roughly 90 degrees from your original path. It will also help to get low and dip your left shoulder as you make the move. You should see that this will allow you to change direction quicker than with a jab step.

I can't believe this has never occurred to me. I've always been a "plant-and-push off the outside foot" guy. You'd think all those years of cleats blown on the outside seam would have been a tip-off.

Anyway, I had to take this idea for a test drive. I laced up my cleats, warmed up, and ran a three-cone drill my old way. Scored my usual pathetic time. Then I ran it the new way and took off a half-second. On my first try. While actually having to *think* about where to put my feet. Cool.

So I went back and read my old turning post, and rewatched the Jackie Battle combine YouTube video, replaying his three-cone bit over and over. Sure enough, his turns drive entirely off the inner foot. It really looks like his outer foot just taps down. I should have noticed that earlier.

This is something I've touched on in a few other posts, but I thought it was worth calling out on it's own.

It feels like I've often heard sentiments like "do it for 3 weeks and it will get easier" or "six weeks is the magic number, and after that it's a habit."

Hogwash.

I have an exercise habit now, but looking back I think it took me roughly TWO YEARS to cultivate. Two years of forcing myself to do it. Sure, it got gradually easier over time, but there were many days, weeks, even months where it took just as much effort to force myself into the gym as it did in the first few weeks. As for diet, I'm over three months into this "no sugar" thing, and I'm certain the bulk of the journey is still ahead of me. Again, the Leptin stuff is interesting). Plus, if you plotted me on The Big Bell Curve of American Fitness when I started all this a few years ago, I was already in pretty good shape! I was an athlete turned weekend warrior striving to reclaim my dormant (but not lost) athleticism. And it was still damn hard to form the habits. Imagine if I spent my first 30 years on the couch instead?

Anyway, I'm sure the intentions behind the whole "it'll get easier in a few weeks" claims are good; you want to encourage people by giving them a light at the end of the tunnel. But what happens in a few weeks, when it's still bloody hard? Discouragement, backsliding, plan abandonment. I say, tell 'em it's going to take years of hard work, and then maybe, if you're lucky, it'll be a habit. If nothing else, it's the truth.

FitnessFixation has a good, forthright post up, Why You May Never Have a Six-Pack. But as much as I enjoyed the post, and as much as I think genetics play a role, I do feel genetics can, in many cases, be overcome. There's the Larry Bird argument, of course (he never seemed to me overburdened with tremendously athletic genes, although he was tall). And it's true that no matter how much I train my arms, and how hard I flap, I'll never be able to fly like a bird. But I don't think having the body that you want quite falls into the same category as the true immutables. It reminds me of something I read recently and blogged about on my other site, DNA is Not Destiny. If you click through and read my excerpt, be sure to click through again and read the whole article. Fascinating stuff.

Or, to quote the greatest animated movie ever, The Iron Giant, "you are who you choose to be. Choose."

(That said, I wouldn't obsess over the six-pack quest, and if thinking it's impossible helps you not obsess, go right ahead and think that. And FF might be right, I certainly haven't studied this stuff.)

My wife found this browsing The Onion's back catalog (from last year, posted about a month after the tour concluded): Non-Doping Cyclists Finish Tour de France. Hysterical. I won't ruin it by posting any of the funny bits here, but wait until you get to quote that comes right AFTER this bit:

"It became most difficult for us on the 7th stage, which was almost 200 kilometers and the first stage through the mountains," Kvistik said while accepting the non-doping victor's 100-franc check from his stretcher.

On the serious side, today Mark Sisson reposted on his site his piece, Should We Allow Drugs in Sports? I linked to it before when it was hosted on Art De Vany's site, but it's worth the re-link. Whether you agree with the conclusions or not, it's a must-read. Very thought-provoking.

In regard to six weeks of doing everything right, a friend asked me how it was going in the comments, and I thought I'd reply here rather than there. Anyway, here's how it's going:

It's going okay-ish. I just finished my second six weeks, and am now in the midst of a four day break before signing on for a third six-weeker (happily, the break coincided with a long vacation weekend visiting friends and playing in a tournament). Friday was quite a few Ella-safe blondies (my daughter has allergies, so these had no dairy, but sugar galore). Saturday was pretty good, just chocolate mousse for dessert. Sunday was a bunch of Oreos on the ride home and a Blizzard from DQ. Not sure what poison I'll pick today, and then it's back on the wagon tomorrow.

I can definitely feel a change though. The desire for sugar, while still there quite powerfully, feels like it's more in my head than in my gut. It's the memory of how great it tastes rather than the deep-down craving (most of the time, sometimes the tough one is still there). And I have found myself slightly ambivalent about my current little sin siesta, with more feelings of "do I really want to do this?" than I had last time. I even find myself toying with the idea of jumping back on the wagon today rather than tomorrow, but man, I haven't made Ella-unsafe brownies yet, and there's that "Endangered Species" brand dark chocolate with toffee chips with my name on it lurking out there.

So, three months in and I can feel changes, although the beast is far from licked. I really feel like any health or fitness plan that tells people "stick with it for 3 weeks and you'll stop wanting it", or "exercise for 6 weeks and it will becoming a habit" are doing their adherents a disservice. For me, the exercise habit took probably TWO YEARS of fighting for it before it became a habit. And my sugar battle is in its infancy at three months. To tell anyone they just have to make it a few weeks before it gets easier is setting them up for failure when that inevitably turns out to be untrue. Of course, the truth might be too discouraging, so I don't really have an answer.

Coincidentally, the friends we were visiting called this very interesting article on leptin to my attention: Can't Keep the Weight Off? Maybe Leptin is the Culprit. (and here's a brief postscript). In a nutshell, there may be a powerful hormonal response to weight loss that suggests to you (in much the same way Tony Soprano might suggest something to you) that maybe you should think about putting that weight back on. And this hormonal response can last for YEARS. Sucks. But you gotta love that last paragraph:

How do some people manage to overcome the leptin effect and keep weight off? Generally by watching their food intake very carefully and continuing to increase their physical activity. "Anybody who has lost weight and kept it off will tell you that they have to keep battling," says Dr. Rosenbaum. "They have essentially reinvented themselves, and they are worthy of the utmost admiration and respect."

Yeah baby.

Pretty interesting read over at Powering Muscles: 10 Ways to Train Your Brain for Better Performance:

The best evidence that muscle fatigue starts in the brain comes from studies involving sensors that measure electrical activity in the muscles. The amount of electrical activity in the muscles is a direct indicator of how hard the brain is driving them to perform work. In a recent French study, researchers found that an involuntary drop in performance during repeated bicycling sprints was accompanied by a comparable decline in electrical activity in the muscles. These results clearly showed that fatigue was not caused by acid buildup or any other factor within the muscles themselves. Instead, it was caused by reduced drive from the brain.

There is no spoon.

Bonus link: over at Salon a writer decided to give Charles Atlas' 1922 "Dynamic Tension" course a go. You know, the one you saw advertised in comic books as a kid? Pretty funny stuff. Not all crazy (but some very crazy).

I guess I'm running a real fitness blog now, promising to reveal "secrets". The shame. Anyway, another Ultimate post. The conditioning stuff should be of interest to everybody, at least, so I'll mention that first:

Awesome new Ultimate resource The Huddle just posted a feature: Training For Ultimate. Lots of good stuff there, including a little bit of nostalgia seeing Tully Beatty contributing. Used to lose to his team routinely way back in college. Class act, that guy (and his post is excellent).

As for forehands, I've thought a lot about Idris Nolan's flick advice off and on for awhile. Not so much for myself; as a 20-year split-finger thrower, it's too late for me unless I take a season off to rebuild my grip, and I might not have that many seasons left! More for my daughter, who's 10, and just starting to show an interest. I'd like to teach her right.

So I e-mailed Idris, and he kindly shared more thoughts with me on the subject. In the end, it's pretty much as he described, as counter-intuitive as that may be for we split-finger throwers. For the throwing action, picture delivering a karate chop to pretty low on somebody's midsection (your palm would be up, your forearm/wrist/hand all in a line).

But if a picture is worth a 1,000 words a video's worth a million, and Matt Mackey provides it. The revelation, for me, comes at 1:40, "these two fingers almost become superfluous". Superfluous?! Stunning, as my flick depends on those very fingers. This explains, finally, why my flick suffers so mightily in the rain, while others are barely affected. Give it a try. Very interesting. Those fingers still play a role, but it's definitely a supporting role rather than the lead.

P.S. Okay, so you don't want to rebuild your grip, and the wet (either sweat or rain) still messes with you. Here are the best (by far) solutions I've found in my 20 years:

• For sweat: wristbands and Tite-Grip.
• For rain: forget football gloves, Ansell Hyflex Machinist's Gloves (for handling small oily parts!) are the closest thing you'll find to a bare hands feel even in driving rain. And at three bucks (!) a pair, you have nothing to lose but your pride.

UltiVillage has a great Clip of the Day up: Chase in 04 Finals. A colossal effort to get over a guy making a merely great effort.

I meant to give at least a couple of these more individualized attention, but I moved this week, and that is always a nightmare (I think it's the top of my "Suckiest Non-Tragic Things" list). Anyway...

• The Great Fitness Experiment: Sugar Busted. I met (online) Charlotte recently when Mark's Daily Apple linked us both up in the same post. She runs a great (and funny!) blog, and her sugar post hits home given my current abstinence experiment. Sounds like we have pretty much the same sugar bug, and she even links me up! Very cool.
• I've written a bunch on Tabata Intervals, but Matt Fitzgerald really sums them up nicely (can't remember who pointed me to this one). Like Charlotte's, Matt's blog just found a prominent home in my aggregator.
• The World's Healthiest 75-Year-Old Man. Three THOUSAND reps?!

Healthbolt on pumpkin seeds (and what your body does with all the tryptophan they pack):

...tryptophan works by morphing into seratonin, (which is known for fighting depression, reducing anxiety, and minimizing anger), making tryptophan pretty much the Wonder Amino Acid. In fact, in a recent study, folks who were asked to give a speech after eating a pumpkin seed bar had much lower heart rates and anxiety an hour later than those who didn't have the seeds.

Quick Googling turned up Dagoba's Seeds chocolate bar (68% cocoa, plus hemp, pumpkin and sunflower seeds). Mmm, something to indulge in come mid-July, after my second sentence is up.

Even though I'm subscribed to a substantial number of programming blogs, you wouldn't think that would ever produce fodder for me here. Well, whadda ya know, Coding Horror on effortful practice:

It's an important distinction. I may drive to work every day, but I'm far from a professional driver. Similarly, programming every day may not be enough to make you a professional programmer. So what can turn someone into a professional driver or programmer? What do you do to practice?

The answer lies in the Scientific American article The Expert Mind:

Ericsson argues that what matters is not experience per se but "effortful study," which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one's competence. That is why it is possible for enthusiasts to spend tens of thousands of hours playing chess or golf or a musical instrument without ever advancing beyond the amateur level and why a properly trained student can overtake them in a relatively short time. It is interesting to note that time spent playing chess, even in tournaments, appears to contribute less than such study to a player's progress; the main training value of such games is to point up weaknesses for future study.

Effortful study means constantly tackling problems at the very edge of your ability. Stuff you may have a high probability of failing at. Unless you're failing some of the time, you're probably not growing professionally. You have to seek out those challenges and push yourself beyond your comfort limit.

The SciAm article Atwood links to above is fascinating, I encourage you to click through if you have a moment.

I try to keep this more of a fitness blog than an Ultimate blog, even if it is my sport of choice. While the post, Ultimate, Refs, and the Fallacy of Objectivity is ostensibly about refs in Ultimate, I thought it was an excellent meditation on sportsmanship in general, and would have some appeal outside my little niche sport. An excerpt:

Like all sports, even team sports, Ultimate fundamentally comes down to a competition with the self. Opposing teams provide a foil against which to test oneself, and maybe the memory of being beaten by other players contributes to your motivation while training, but really, sports are about struggling to facilitate the emergence of your best, at the right time. The level of one's play comes from within; while the presence of the other team challenges a player in new ways, the idea of beating the other team and the externality of that goal is secondary to the ascendancy of your own strength. When teams win championships, they're celebrating their own victories, not the other teams' defeats. It's an important distinction.

The first two seem almost too obvious to post, but it's always nice when science backs up common sense. The third one was interesting to me because I didn't really think you could "bank" sleep.

• Extra Sleep Improves Athletic Performance (study of swimmers).
• Extra Sleep Improves Athletes' Performance (study of basketball players).
• Sleep Extension Improves Alertness And Performance During And Following Subsequent Sleep Restriction.

You've got to be kidding me. Nike Mercurial Vapor SL cleats, $400:

Defying science and expectations, Nike's newest creation is crafted almost entirely of carbon fiber. Carbon fiber, that revolutionary material used in jets, offers unbelievable strength with incredible lightness. It took Nike three years to design and produce this incredible version of the Vapor. The outsole plate is seven layers of carbon composite material interwoven with TPU and polyurethane. This eliminates the lasting board and puts the foot closer to the ground for a smooth feel. A reinforcing rib offers support. The cleats and stud tips are injected molded to the plate for a strong, single outsole piece, which creates incredible durability. An internal heel cradle keeps your foot securely in place. The upper is the first boot to have a molded carbon fiber upper for an incredible performance and feel. UPPER: Carbon fiber. Internal carbon fiber chassis creates instant acceleration. OUTSOLE: Carbon fiber outsole with injected bladed studs for durability and stability on firm, natural surfaces. WEIGHT: (6.7 oz.) Made in Italy.

What part of the cleats is the "lasting board", and why is it good it was eliminated? I'm looking at the cleats I own now, and I don't see much in the way of extraneous parts. I've never once said, "Man, the lasting board is really weighing me down. When is some ingenious designer going to come up with a way of eliminating it?"

I will concede, though, that 6.7 oz. is a VERY light cleat.

I wasn't going to write anything up about this, as I didn't really think it was significant, but I read this series of blog entries from Ross Enamait:

• Bad Habits and Weight Loss
• Learning How To Eat
• Learning How To Eat - Part II
• Inspirational Display

... and taken together, along with this bit from the last one:

...transitioning to a healthy lifestyle may not be easy at first. If you've lived the last 20 years with poor nutritional habits and limited (or no) physical activity, you can't expect to suddenly transform yourself into the next Jack Lalanne. Self discipline will be needed to kick start the transition. Any change in habit requires a conscious (active) effort on your behalf.

Once you see the light, you'll realize that it's easy to keep, and certainly worth your time and effort. You won't see the light on your first day however. The transition from inactive and unhealthy to active and healthy is one that will take time and patience.

... got me thinking it might be worth posting a little something on my dietary struggles after all.

So, I eat too much sugar and white flour, both poisons. While I've made great strides over the past four years in both exercise and nutrition, I've never managed to kick the habit. HIGHLY addictive, those things. I've read all about alcoholism, and the behaviors I exhibit are the same (without the drunkenness and the social stigma). I've read all kinds of posts from evolutionary fitness folks that once you get yourself off the stuff, you'll stop wanting it, so I thought I'd put that theory to the test.

First, I tried a Thin Red Line approach. On a calendar, I'd draw a line through days I was good (no sugar, no deep fried stuff, no starch/minimal grains, and only whole grains at that), an X through days I was bad, and I'd try to make the line as long as I could. I thought just by tracking it that would be enough reinforcement. No way. The red Xs just piled up. I think I made it 11 days once, and when I'd fall of the wagon I'd stay off for days before climbing back on.

So I figured drastic measures were needed. Time to really give the whole "you'll stop wanting it" idea the best chance for success. I needed an interval where I'd be nothing but good. I thought six weeks would be enough. Short enough I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, long enough that my body would have time to adjust, and the cravings would lessen. I hoped.

So I did it, and it sucked, and through the whole thing I never stopped craving brownies, donuts, french fries, chips, ice cream etc. I thought I wanted it just as bad on on day 42 as I did on day 1 (it didn't help that I pulled my hamstring pretty good 12 days in and really wanted to say "screw it" and eat my way out of the resulting funk).

So I thought my experiment was a failure. I took three days, ate whatever I wanted, and then had a decision to make. Would I basically throw away six weeks of work by reverting to my old habits, or would I go once more into the breach? Well, I'm now two days into another six weeks. Sigh. I must confess I'm not dreading it quite as much as the first round. Here's what I've taken away so far:

1. Holy crap, kicking sugar is HARD. Even at my worst, I was fit, and ate pretty well otherwise. Even after six weeks of abstinence, I still crave it.
2. Jury is still out on whether it's possible to stop wanting it. Since my second six weeks fills me with a bit less dread than the first six, I'm going to take that as a sign.
3. Another sign: after the six weeks were up and I ate whatever I wanted for three days, I did not binge nearly as badly as I have in the past. It wasn't three days to be proud of, but it also wasn't embarrassing.
4. Man, I hope it's possible to stop wanting it altogether, because as Ross points out in one of his articles, any diet based on a feeling of deprivation is doomed to fail over the long term.
5. I suspect that your body chemistry has to change in a pretty deep and significant way before your desires change, and I don't know how long that takes. I wish I did! Pretty long time, it seems, so hang in there and give your body a chance if you embark on a similar effort. However long you think it will take, that's not long enough.

P.S. Some people have it easy, some have it extra hard. I'm betting I'm in the middle. The difficulty of the battle varies with the individual. UPDATE: I posted a bit of follow-up in the comments below.

P.P.S. A reader comment below. EIGHTEEN MONTHS?! Yikes.

I just found, via the Crossfit forums, an Outside article from 2003 on Juliet Draper, a monster competitor at the Firefighter's Combat Challenge. Here's the deal with the course:

Today's racers--some 100 men and two women, all wearing 75 pounds of firefighting gear--will have to lug a 45-pound hose pack up five flights of stairs; hoist another 45-pound hose pack, by a rope, to the top of a stair platform; drive a 165-pound steel I-beam with a sledgehammer; run through orange traffic cones to reach a water-charged hose, which they'll drag 75 feet; and walk 100 feet backward, pulling a 175-pound dummy named Rescue Randy. All this while wearing masks and breathing from the bulky scuba-type air tanks firefighters carry on their backs.

Since then, she absolutely crushed the previous women's world record for the course, at the same time becoming the first woman to break 2:00 (by a significant margin, I might add).

• If you only read one, read this one: Mark Sisson on The Primal Blueprint.
• Ross Enamait on The Power of Patience.
• Art De Vany notes the potential benefits of High Intensity Exercise Before Sports.
• Straight to the Bar collects some interesting medicine ball workouts and videos.
• Frostillicus again assembles quality links and videos.
• Wohba finds a great contact juggling video (fans of Michael Moschen will dig this).

Two excellent, semi-related posts on building a training program of your very own:

• Get the Most out of Strength Training by Anders Eriksson. « via SttB »
• Ross Enamait on kettlebells.

Whatever you do, you have to really feel like you own it and want to do it if you are going to have a chance of success.

I've been enjoying Frostillicus' blog lately. His current post is a good example, on Troy Palamalu's work with Marv Marinovich. Check the crazy (as a fox?) videos. Lots of the sites I read hate stability balls and their ilk so this is certainly a departure. Here's all the SportsLab videos.

I really enjoyed this Jason Ferruggia post: Questions and (no) Answers. So many unknowns. There is no best way to train, just thousands of good ways, some better than others, for certain applications. Hard work is the only constant (and that's for competitive sport, I'm not so sure it needs to be hard for healthy living).

Ross Enamait, "Conventional Wisdom". Great post.

I've seen this in a few place now, so may as well add to the link deluge. Excellent video from Mark Twight, One Piece. Love the kettlebell presses on the GHD. A couple months ago I started doing something similar, where you get parallel to the floor on the GHD with a 20-lb medicine ball, and toss it from hand to hand, grab it and move it around, back overhead (that weight multiplies in a hurry, believe me, so be careful), etc.

I was talking training with my friend Alec recently, and thought the conversation was worth sharing. He asked about tweaking the Tabata interval (20 seconds work, 10 seconds rest, 8 times in a row) for sprints because, if you TRULY run them all out, you'll be totally spent after two or three. Anyway, here's the ensuing conversation:

Jim writes:

It's hard to say. The Tabata study is actually pretty narrow, even if the results are compelling. Give this a read:

Tabata Intervals by Ross Enamait

That said, Ross doesn't treat the 20/10 ratio as sacrosanct. In reply to one of his forum threads:

My response is not specific to you, but your general statement has become a common trend in terms of the recent "Tabata" madness that hit the web a few years ago.

First, everyone came out with Tabata workouts. As time passed, it then became the in thing to criticize these Tabata variants, making statements such as "it isn't Tabata if it isn't ____."

Here is a news flash however there was ONE study performed with ONE piece of equipment. If you are not using the exact piece of equipment per the specifics of the initial experiment, it isn't Tabata.

But guess what, who cares? The initial Tabata study showed that short, intense workouts were effective. Take this simple lesson and apply it however you want. You don't need to follow a precise experiment.

The original Tabata protocol popularized a convenient timing system (20 seconds on, 10 seconds off). It is much more convenient to use 20/10, as opposed to 17.2 seconds on, followed by 8.4 seconds of rest. I'm sure the initial results would have been similar with a 17.2/8.4 second study, but you wouldn't have seen anyone using it.

20 seconds of work followed by 10 seconds of rest is a convenient way to track time when training. You can quickly glance over to a clock to keep track of time. When someone uses Tabata to describe these workouts, we will immediately know the work to rest ratios being used. Whether it is an exact copy of the initial study is irrelevant. Once again, who cares?

I personally use many "Tabata Hybrids" with 20/10 work to rest ratios. It may not be "true Tabata" but everyone quickly knows the work to rest ratios so I honestly don't care.

I've also seen Ross talk about 30/10 and 30/20, as long as it's intense. I remember reading that the original Tabata subjects were Olympic athletes (speedskaters, maybe), and they went at it hard enough (on exercise bikes) that they only made it through 6 or 7 and had to lie down afterwards. Safe to say, while I have on occasion gone at my Tabatas that hard, oftentimes I leave more in the tank than I should. It's hard to make myself that miserable.

So, sprints, and the general trickiness of Tabata "pacing." I think you really aren't supposed to pace yourself. It's all out, every time. But an all-out 20-second effort is INSANE. For example, I think I told you this, a couple years ago I paced off a 200 meter straightaway. Michael Johnson went that far in barely under 20 seconds, so I knew I had plenty of room. My timer went off, and I hauled like I was in a race. Humbling, how far away the 200m finish line was after 20 seconds. But I stopped, gasped, 10 seconds went by in an instant, and I sprinted back the other way. Came nowhere close to getting back to the start. After three I was all but dead, four was barely a jog, and I called it quits.

I've also done them where I go like 80-90% and make it through all 8, and feel like dying at the end. And I've tweaked the rest as you suggest so I can go all out and make it through a few more rounds. No idea what's best, but I bet it's all good. As long as it hurts. If you're only going to exercise for four minutes, it's gotta be painful.

Alec writes:

I had the same experience, back at Union, when you first broke the word on tabatas. Ran 20/10 on the track. 200s are a famously brutal distance, for normal people - even one. Like you, I can max it out pretty good in a 100, even 110. And you ride that for a bit. But then you still have 60 yards to go!

Trying to run two or, particularly, 3 more or less in a row, forget 4, without even fully catching your breath, is really impossible. I think in hindsight it probably turned me off on tabatas. I was pushing and feeling bad and feeling good, etc., on the 3rd one, but what I was doing had nothing to do with "sprinting," more of desperate lurching jog, and I just couldn't believe it was making me any better at the 20-yard sprints for goals.

Jim writes:

I've lately been thinking I'd like to incorporate running that better models what you do in a game. Maybe set up four cones in a square, 20 yards each side. Figure the running portion of a point lasts for what, three minutes? So set the timer for three minutes, and alternate running and jogging the sides randomly. So sprint a side, jog a side, sprint two sides taking the corner hard, reverse, jog two sides, sprint a side, etc. Keep moving for the whole three minutes, rest, repeat as much as you see fit. You can vary your rest, 60-90 seconds to simulate staying in the game and playing another point, 2-5 minutes to simulate taking a point off. You could also put a cone in the middle to do "inner corner" cuts rather than the "outer corner" cuts you get when you stay on the perimeter.

Alec writes:

I like this idea. I actually think its best contribution is that it would strengthen the groin muscles, which straight-ahead sprints don't do.

One change, though. If you watch our final at Nationals, you'll see that at least at the Masters level, even great players in big games routinely WALK for some portion of most points. So if you're going for verisimilitude, might want to incorporate a walked-length?

Jim writes:

Good point. I think it might depend on your goals for the session. If you want to emphasize speed and intensity, you might walk a bit more so you can go harder when you go. If you want to emphasize endurance, you'd eliminate the walking. Perhaps you could even vary between rounds. Like if you did five 3-minute rounds, you could jog/sprint in 1/3/5, and walk/sprint in 2/4.

I also think verisimilitude should only be taken so far. Ideally, the workout should be harder than a real point, so a real point feels like cake.

The other thing I want to get back to on days when I feel like working speed is that NFL combine 3-cone drill. I think I sent you this last year, but it's probably worth revisiting:

More on Turning, NFL Combine, The 40, 3-Cone Drill

For us, I'm thinking the bread-and-butter attributes are, in order:

1. Acceleration, deceleration, change of direction
2. 20-30 yard dash (heavily depends on acceleration)

The box I describe above and the 3-cone drill cover these nicely. Not to mention playing. Not to the exclusion of distances like the 200, of course. Lots of physiological benefits of that distance. Somewhat related, I liked this post:

Connections by Vern Gambetta

In particular:

It is IMPOSSIBLE to isolate one energy system or for that matter one system of the body whether it is neural, cardio vascular, muscular, or endocrine hormonal. Recognize that there is always a spillover effect, for example 3 x 150 meter sprints at 95% with full recovery will maximally tax all systems of the body. You will be working at greater than VO2 max during a portion of that sprint. Understanding this has great implications, as a coach it took me too long to figure this out.

Sorry these piled up, I was away for a bit:

• The CrossFit 5/2/08 workout links to a great video, "Deadlift Set-up with Mark Rippetoe". He makes it seem so simple!
• Conditioning Research on Dr. Craig Duncan's "20 meter rule" concept. Good stuff at his blog, the idea of an acceleration/deceleration threshold as athletic predictor is an interesting one.
• Metabolic conditioning with "the 3x3 workout".
• ESPN: The Ball That Just Won't Die.
• New York Magazine: How We're Wrecking Our Feet With Every Step We Take.
• Finally, wow, 17 minutes and 4 seconds?!

Andy Shirley on the Crossfit boards pointed to these fantastic rowing workouts for rugby players with great crossover to all field sports. The Rugby Training Guide (PDF) is the big one. See if these two passages grab you, no matter what your sport:

A rugby player needs to produce a top performance almost every Saturday of the season. They cannot afford to relax their fitness preparation; if they do the game could be lost and the season with it. So how is it possible for players to produce this top performance week in, week out? In truth, it is not. However, by training smart a player will include the correct balance of training, recovery and relaxation, which will enable him to arrive for games in optimal condition.

[snip]

Physiologically, rugby players have to perform intermittent high intensity and low intensity work during phases of play and throughout the game. This demands high levels of anaerobic and aerobic endurance. Phases of play can vary from 10 seconds to over three minutes so conditioning will be geared to cope with the maximum demands. The high-speed modern game demands that players of all positions are capable of producing high power high strength movements in extreme physical situations. Whilst all players will require a highly efficient aerobic component of their fitness to encourage speedy recovery from maximal efforts...

Then there's these bits on "Why Rowing?":

In England's preparation for the World Cup Martin Johnson's injury history meant he only did one session a day on his feet. Most of his aerobic work was done on a Concept 2 rowing machine.

Games players need whole body aerobic fitness, not just individual muscle fitness, to perform. To raise the aerobic fitness level the entire body should be exercised and exercise on the Indoor Rower uses both upper and lower body muscles, therefore recruiting a very large muscle mass.

If the statement that "aerobic fitness underpins the whole performance" is true then it would make sense to follow the training programme of a rower. Rowers are generally recognised as athletes with amongst the greatest aerobic capacity. This is achieved with no risk of injury through impact, as training is weight supported and non-contact. A slightly modified programme currently used by rowers in preparation for their competitions would meet all the physical requirements of ball players.

There are very few training activities than can produce a high intensity upper body workout, involve the strongest muscles in the body, the legs, and raise the heart rate to cause almost immediate fatigue. These are the requirements and demands of a rugby player. They can be achieved by using a Concept 2 rowing machine.

That's all just preamble though. Where the guide shines is in it's programs, and I love that they include benchmarks. Always good to have a target! « via CrossFit Forums »

Lyle McDonald has a thought-provoking piece up titled Pole Vault your way to a Hot Body. Good for me to read this, as I'm always singing the praises of intervals. I'm not giving up my intervals anytime soon, but it's nice to have a little perspective.

Boy, it doesn't get any simpler than Stew Smith's push-up workout:

On ODD days: Do 200 pushups in as few sets as possible in addition to your regularly scheduled workout of cardio exercises. You can still do upper body workouts on these days if you are already on a program. This is a supplemental 200 pushups using maximum repetition sets (4 x 50, 8 x 25 ... it's your choice how you get to 200).

On EVEN days: Do 200 pushups throughout the day. This can be little sets of ten done every half hour or fifty pushups done four times throughout the day.

RULE: If your maximum is under 50 pushups, do 200 a day. If your maximum is above 75, do 300 pushups a day.

Repeat the ODD/EVEN routine for a total of 10 days. Then take three days off and do NO upper body pushing exercises that work the chest, triceps, and shoulders. Then on day 14, give yourself the pushup test.

He says folks who start at 50 pushups end up at 80 (generally, I'm sure). Pretty nice return on two weeks work.

P.S. I know it sounds like overtraining, but he discusses that in the article.

Same drum I've been beating here from the get-go, but it's always good to reinforce it. Vern Gambetta on the myth of the "aerobic base". Plus, even better, his follow-up post on the subject:

I asked Jack Blatherwick to address his viewpoint on establishing an aerobic base. Jack is with the Washington Capitols and was conditioning coach for six American Olympic Ice Hockey teams including the 1980 "Miracle Team"). The following is his response:

Definitely click through and read the rest.

1. 135 lbs. on the overhead/military/shoulder press (whatever you call the thing that's harder than a push press or a push jerk). I'm particularly happy about this because I can now just leave a set of 45s on the bar all the time. Hooray for laziness. :-)
2. Broke 1:30 on the C2 500m row. Specifically, 1:29.6. Owwwww. I never want to do that again; the 1.4 seconds I needed came really hard. I think deadlifting, even though I'm fairly new to it, helped with this one. More power in each stroke. Also, this workout of mine may have helped, as it really gets you pulling hard.

The 500m reminded me of a really weird symptom I get when I really push myself to the brink: my teeth feel weird. Like a numb ache. Very unpleasant. Lasted for like 20 minutes after this effort. It's probably a heart attack warning sign, or something.

Okay, that's more than enough about me.

Sorry, another link backlog:

• The NY Times has a nice piece on the humble push-up.
• I somehow missed this CrossFit video of cool towel pull-up variations (Quicktime video).
• Coach Sommer's hamstring stretch.
• StrongLifts on glute activation. Lots of good exercises there.

Chris at Conditioning Research embeds a smooth Turkish Get-up variation by Scott Sonnon.

• John Berardi posted a comprehensive, balanced piece on soy at his forums.
• Coach Sommer describes a brutal abdominal exercise, "The Crank".
• I'm getting started with barbell training, so bought a copy of Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore. Looks fantastic. And I just learned you can ask questions of the man himself at the Mark Rippetoe Q&A Strength Mill Forum. I would definitely read the book, the stickies, and take advantage of the search feature before posting (here's why).

Here's a workout I've tried a couple times now that I like. I apologize, but it does call for a C2 rower, although you could simulate the fatigue with a 20-second all out exercise bike sprint (on a Schwinn Airdyne would be even better). Still, your gym may have a C2. Check the dusty, unused corner of the gym reserved for pieces of equipment that cause real misery.

Anyway, the workout probably doesn't seem like much (and maybe it's just that my off-season conditioning slide is worse than I thought):

• 100 meter sprint on the C2 (I do it in 18 seconds)
• 10 max. speed/jump burpees
• Rest as long as you want
• Repeat 10 times (I only did 5 today)

By round three I could feel the burn in my legs, and round five was pretty darn uncomfortable. Surprising, given how much rest I was allowing myself. I think what made it so hard was giving a true maximum effort. I can't pull 100 meters any harder, and on the burpees I made a concerted effort to (a) do them as fast as possible and, this is key, (b) jump as high as possible with each jump.

I don't know if you're like me, but when I do burpees I tend to short-change the jump in favor of getting the reps done faster (after all, more time in the air hurts your reps/minute). Burpees with a max. effort jump torch the legs in a hurry (and they are already fatigued from the C2 sprint).

Anyway, give it a shot, report back!

Three goodies today:

• Crossfit Seattle's athletic skill levels. In particular, this PDF.
• Coach Sommer, author of the popular articles Building an Olympic Body through Bodyweight Conditioning and Developing the Hanging Leg Lift has been working on a book for a very long time. It looks like it might finally be on the verge of coming out. He has a new website, Gymnastic Bodies, which claims the book is ready to order (although that doesn't seem to be the case quite yet)
• Ross Enamait links up a slick Excel Deck of Cards workout generator. Just hit F9 to get a fresh workout generated from a variety of exercises. Customizable.

I've started deadlifting for the first time. Bought a 300 lb. Olympic weight set from Dick's, and dove right in. After a couple weeks I'd worked myself up to 330 lbs. (strapped another 30 lbs. onto the bar) and was feeling all proud of myself. I mean, at a bodyweight of 200 lbs. I know I'm not even approaching respectability until I get to 2xBW (400 lbs. for me) but I was still pleased since I'd never done anything but dumbbell work before, working at much smaller loads.

Then I did what I should have done in the first place. I re-read these three fantastic articles on the deadlift by Eric Cressey:

• Mastering the Deadlift: Part I
• Part II
• Part III

... and I shot some video of myself.

Holy crap, MY BACK! Slightly rounded at the bottom, very rounded at the top, and my shoulders were practically hanging from their sockets. Humiliating. I'm going back to 135 lbs., going to video every session, and only move up as good form allows. I consider myself lucky I didn't hurt myself over the past couple weeks.

I know I've read somewhere that you really can't coach yourself when it comes to lifting, and after this experience I can see why. If you're lifting without feedback it's really hard to know what your body is really doing. However, I do think the combination of excellent freely available information on the Internet and home video get your pretty darn close. I can look at a good deadlift and compare it to my deadlift and see quite clearly where I'm lacking, and what adjustments I have to make. The video was such a stark contrast to the picture in my mind. Really essential, I think, if you aren't being coached.

So, a couple quick equipment recommendations:

• Flip Video Camcorder. That's the basic 30-minute version for under $100, or you can spring for one of the newer versions. This has got to be one of my favorite gadgets of all time, purely for its simplicity. There's just a couple buttons, the USB connection is integrated into the unit, and the software for managing your videos is stored on the camcorder itself, so there's nothing to install. You literally buy it, put in batteries, and throw away everything else in the box. Beautiful.
• Joby Gorillapod. Set your camera up anywhere. For my video I set it up on the wheel of my rower, and it was totally secure. Great tool. There's also the Monsterpod, which looks very cool, but I've never tried it myself.

I enjoyed this post by Mehdi over at StrongLifts: How to Get a Body Like Brad Pitt in Fight Club. Not what you think. Give it a read.

Another good post from Mark Sisson: Chronic Cardio.

Three very good reads:

• Barry Ross: The Holy Grail in Speed Training.
• Mark Sisson: The Role of Lean Muscle Mass and Organ Reserve in Aging.
• Sister Corita Kent: Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules (really).

Just a quick post, but don't let the brevity fool you, this is a good one... Mark Sisson links up a study that suggests it's the workouts that result in lactate production that stimulate a human growth hormone response (cool study, bummer for the folks with McArdle's disease). Art De Vany follows up with more (upon reading you'll probably want to Google his site for "hierarchical sets").

• YouTube: excellent rings and pistols work.
• Straight to the Bar embeds a great air flair video.
• Crossfit Oakland really loves coconut oil (I have not checked the research behind those claims).
• Mark Sisson weighs in on soy.

UltiVillage recently posted a trailer for the 2007 Emerald City Classic. It features tons of great clips, and it really wants to be available in a higher resolution, but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

Speaking of UltiVillage, I don't know what they pay for bandwidth now, but it occurs to me that at least for the Clip of the Day and trailers they could get a SmugMug account and store hi-res video clips there (check the quality of that demo video, would only cost them $60/year to host 2.5 minute clips, $150/year to host 5 minute clips). I've also wondered about them moving to some kind of pay-per-view model for UltiTV. I assume the UltiTV clips are the same low resolution, but a pay-per-view model would allow users to choose to only watch the clips they want to see, and to pay more to watch them in higher resolution. Bandwidth costs would be a concern, obviously, along with managing the payments, but Amazon has some tantalizing web services available that are really perfect for this kind of application. I'm pretty far afield from a fitness post now, so you can stop reading if you want, but here are the services that UltiVillage could use:

First, for storing the videos online there's Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3):

Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers (write, read, and delete objects containing from 1 byte to 5 gigabytes of data each. The number of objects you can store is unlimited).

The thing that really makes this shine is the pricing, which is practically tailor-made for pay-per-view:

Storage
$0.15 per GB-Month of storage used

Data Transfer
$0.10 per GB - all data transfer in
$0.18 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.16 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.13 per GB - data transfer out / month over 50 TB

Requests
$0.01 per 1,000 PUT or LIST requests
$0.01 per 10,000 GET and all other requests*
* No charge for delete requests

So lets say UltiVillage wanted to store a full DVD's worth of video online (a bit less than 5GB for a single-sided, single-layer disc, but we'll round up to 5GB for these back-of-the-envelope calculations). Nice, high-res stuff. It would cost $0.50 to copy the data into S3, and $0.75/month to store it. It would cost $0.90 for a user to download it (assuming they watched the whole thing, at high resolution). So suppose it's up for a year, 100 people watch it, and you charge $2.00 per view. UltiVillage costs are a one-time upload of $0.50, $9.00 to host it for a year, and $90 for it to be downloaded 100 times, for a total of $99.50. They collect $200 for a profit of $100.50. Of course, the numbers would change if they offered several resoutions to choose from; users could choose to pay more/less depending on what resolution they wanted to download.

Now, I'm not a businessman, and I have no idea if $2 would be a good price point for them. There's salaries, cameras, film, and all the other costs that come with running the business. I have no idea how many customers they have, whether those customers would prefer a pay-per-view model, and how much people would pay. Finally, I have no idea how this might affect their DVD sales. But speaking for myself, I'm not an UltiTV subscriber currently because I don't like the low-res QuickTime files, and I'm only interested in a few of the videos they offer. But I'd definitely do pay-per-view for higher resolution versions. How much would I pay? Not sure. I'd probably put $20 into an account and then pick and choose a few high-res games to watch, hopefully at somewhere between $2 and $5 a pop. Totally off the cuff, but that's the ballpark.

The other piece of this would be managing the pay-per-view accounts/payments. For that there's Amazon Flexible Payment Service (FPS). It's in limited beta now, but it looks promising (and you could always see about getting in on the beta). Pricing (which obviously affects the estimates above):

For Transactions >= $10:
1.5% + $0.01 for Amazon Payments balance transfers
2.0% + $0.05 for bank account debits
2.9% + $0.30 for credit card

For Transactions < $10:
1.5% + $0.01 for Amazon Payments balance transfers
2.0% + $0.05 for bank account debits
5.0% + $0.05 for credit card

For Amazon Payments balance transfers < $0.05:
20% of the transaction amount, with a minimum fee of $0.0025

It could be done! The question of whether it should be done is one for the bean counters. I'd sure like it, though.

(Oh, it would be nice, while we're at it, if the UltiVillage site had some social networking components built in. Perhaps allow paying customers to rate the videos so others know how to best spend their pay-per-view money, maybe a forum so videos can be discussed, allow users to upload commentary tracks that synchronize with the video, etc. I mean, as long as I'm musing about somebody else's business model...)

(The piracy issue is a whole 'nother can of worms. I don't know how much sharing/stealing of UltiTV videos happens now: one guy on the team gets an account, downloads the videos, passes them around. I'm sure it happens. Heck, DVDs can be ripped and the high-res files shared, for that matter. Not sure how high-res pay-per-view changes this behavior, or again, how that would affect DVD sales. If it makes it worse, hopefully it is offset by new customers like me, who don't subscribe to UltiTV because of the low-res, and don't buy the DVDs because I only want to watch them once, not over and over.)

I've been meaning to write a review Ross Enamait's Full Throttle Conditioning DVD and manual for quite awhile. I really liked it, and I'm long overdue in writing it up. This time though, laziness has it's rewards, as Scott Helsley went ahead and wrote the review I would have written. I could try and rehash those sentiments in my own words, but why?

I also liked this note from one of the comments:

I also agree with you on Full Throttle Conditioning. It's a great product, and at $25 for both a DVD and a manual, a steal. I will say that it would probably be best to have either Infinite Intensity or Never Gymless (or both) along with FTC to get a fuller scope of what can be done. Hell, you can get all 3 for $85, which feels like grand larceny considering the amount of info Ross provides.

I think this is a good point. If you don't have any of Ross's products, getting either Infinite Intensity (dumbbell oriented) or Never Gymless (bodyweight oriented) plus Full Throttle Conditioning would make for a very nice package.

Another Furman link: I really like the looks of this pull-up variation. Definitely going to have to give that a try.

Tom Furman at Physical Strategies has a great post up, The Thin Red Line, which describes an elegant method for staying on track using a wall calendar and magic marker. Inspired by Jerry Seinfeld, believe it or not.

Just two quick links:

• CrossFit Journal: A New, Rather Long Analysis of the Deadlift by Mark Rippetoe.
• CrossFit Oakland on Jack LaLanne.

Ross Enamait just posted an article and video, "The Homemade Wheel." Definitely an inexpensive piece of equipment worth making, as it's good for a variety of truly killer exercises. And as always, Ross's video is very impressive. Check it out.

If you have access to a rower, here's a workout I run through when I'm strapped for time. With 30 seconds rest between each interval, row:

100m
200m
300m
400m
500m
400m
300m
200m
100m

Last time I set an average 500m pace of 1:43. I think I can do better, but that was a pretty good workout.

It's a bonus if you can set up this workout on a C2 rower, as you can program the distances and the rest intervals into the monitor, and it forces you to be honest on the rest time. Once the rest is over, the clock starts ticking on your interval time, and any time spent dead in the "water" REALLY hurts your average.

Ross Enamait just posted a Nike commercial that vaulted into my top five. Don't ask me what the other four are, because then I'd have to start YouTubing them and my workday would be shot.

This T-Nation article, The Third-World Squat, is the second time I've seen this particular stretch touted. First time was at the end of Mark Sisson's beach sprints video (more sensitively referred to as the Indigenous People Stretch). The Crossfit boards also picked up on these articles. Anyway, it's definitely one of the perfect stretches. Hits a lot of different muscle groups, proficiency will help with form/flexibility issues you might run into squatting or deadlifting, and you don't need a lot of room. I like to get out of my office chair every once in awhile, squat for a bit, then hit the camel pose (watch your back on this one, esp. doing it cold). To me this combination seems like the quickest and most efficient way to stretch out a lot of the stuff that shortens up when you spend too much time sitting.

Oh, one tip I don't think anybody has mentioned regarding the squat: if you can't get low while keeping your heels down you can roll up a towel and put it under your heels. That'll make it easier to get lower. After a few days, as you get comfortable, unroll the towel a bit. Repeat until you don't need the towel any more.

I read this—could a morbidly obese goalie shut out an NHL team?—and immediately ordered the book it came from, Andy Roddick Beat Me with a Frying Pan.

Sorry, been sitting on some of these links for a while...

• Ringtraining's come out with new, improved rings: Elite Rings II. Lovely. I still have my metal version 1.0 ones. These new ones look great, , especially in black (not shown, on that page, but available on ordering). Related, this Crossfit London muscle-up tutorial. Some great exercises demonstrated within. Not sure why the page repeats itself over and over.
• This article makes squash sound like a blast. A good read, but when I check out some squash highlights on YouTube, my enthusiasm dampened a bit. Not a good spectator sport, apparently.
• Conditioning Research embeds a video of a huge jump. My goodness.
• First time poster maverick10 shared a link to the Eccentric Exercise Protocol weblog:

  I developed tendinitis in mid-2004 after doing a lot of bicycling over a period of two weeks. The inflammation went away after some time, but I continued to have pain that lasted for several years. After trying everything from accupuncture, physical therapy, massage, chiropractors, pain drugs, lidoderm patches, ointments, etc... the only thing that significantly reduced my pain was "eccentric exercises." I learned about such exercises through reading medical journal articles. However, I had to develop a protocol that worked for me through trial-and-error.

  Ties in perfectly with what I know about fixing achilles tendonitis.

Art De Vany, Proof of Concept:

I want to show that the conventional wisdom that aging causes a decline in muscle mass, increased obesity, a fall in testosterone, and an unfavorable alteration of blood lipids is not true. So, what are the relevant facts?

Great to read following on the heels of the Sisson post on aging I mentioned recently.

I was reading this great rant by Ross Enamait, Examining The Google-Bot Trainer, and noticed in it he mentioned St. Wilhelm's Nondenominational Church of S&P and their Ten Commandments. Excellent, had to check out the rest of their site:

Though we call ourselves a church, we have no religious affiliations. Strength and Power is our religion. We do not have a physical building. There are no meetings or agendas. Membership is merely an honor bestowed upon you through good faith. Our hope is that the church will grow large enough that each member, at some point in their life, will pass a complete stranger on the street wearing a Saint Wilhelm's t-shirt and they will instantly know that this person has done something great, whether it be in competition or by simply achieving a hard-earned personal goal.

If you think yourself worthy to join, you must promise that once you receive your member's t-shirt, you will make a video of yourself doing something great while wearing the shirt. You may record yourself doing a gym lift, beating someone up (in organized competition, of course), crushing objects, or performing any number of strength feats.

The church recognizes Ross as a saint. :-)

Excellent post my Mark Sisson on anti-aging drugs. The specific bit I liked:

While I support antioxidant therapy, I'm also in disagreement about the article's assertion - and the common belief - that diseases such as diabetes and cancer are due to aging and not simple lifestyle factors. These aren't diseases of aging, they're diseases of bullsh*t. We have this deeply ingrained belief, it seems, that aging inherently comes with disease and we're all just, well, screwed. Watch drug commercials and it would seem that once we hit 55, all that's left to do is retire, bicker about leftovers with the old ball and chain, and apparently settle in for a few decades of drugs, walkers, pee bags and pain prescriptions. But aging doesn't have to mean - and shouldn't mean - wrinkles, broken hips, weakness, and disease. Far from it. There's no reason you can't be as lean, strong, and energetic at 50, 60, 70, and even 80 as you were at 25. The key is not a drug, but a healthy, preventive lifestyle.

Make sure you click through on his link. I want to age that well. Just gotta get off the crack sugar.

UPDATE: Very related, see this post by Art De Vany, Proof of Concept.

Holy cow, finger handstand video. Hurts just watching. More at kottke.org.

Let me get the reflection out of the way. Four years ago after letting my game languish and decay, I decided I was going to get it back. My goal each season was to play better than the year before. I did that three years in a row, but this year broke the streak. Ah well, it makes it that much easier to meet my goal next year.

Anyway, it was a weird year for a lot of reasons, but the only one relevant to this weblog is that I didn't really adjust my training to more difficult time constraints and stresses as well as I could have. Started the season injured, and never really made up the ground physically or, more importantly, psychologically.

So, after some noodling around, I do believe I have the next couple months of my off-season mapped out (PDF) (update: see below for revised version). Sorry if the notation is kinda terse, it started out as a cheatsheet for myself, but then as I realized I was going to post it I tried to flesh it out while still keeping it to a single page. Feel free to post questions.

A few ideas/influences I kept in mind when designing this:

• All workouts should be doable in 30 minutes or less.
• Thought I'd try the "3 days on, 1 day off" cycle favored by Crossfit.
• This Waterbury article for strength.
• Lots of Ross Enamait influence.
• More and better leg work, deducing much from the Kelly Baggett articles here. In particular, this one.

I did the "Deck #6" workout yesterday morning as a bit of prepaid gluttony penance, and it was great. I mean, I sucked at it, leaving cards in the hole after I hit the 30 minute wall, but still, I'm going to like this plan. I think I'll run through it twice and then change it up a bit.

UPDATE: After a pass through, I've tweaked the program a bit with some of my own ideas and some of Noel's. See below for his great comments. Noel, I wanted to change the exercise order to line up more with your suggestions, but found I ended up ordering largely due to time efficiency (mini-circuits timed largely based on whether you're working both sides simultaneously or not for a given exercise). Anyway, here's version 1.2 in PDF and Word formats (the latter for those who want to do their own tweaking).

I have once again fallen behind. Here's what I've been meaning to post:

• Dick Hartzell Jump Stretch bands tutorials. Great stuff, knew there was a DVD, had no idea these were online.
• Also, good article on bands.
• Great jump rope routine. « via RT forums »
• Mark's Daily Apple: Simple, But Not Easy.
• The Science of Sport: Muscle Cramps Part I. Very interesting, I'll definitely be back for the rest of the series. « via SttB »
• These Crossfit WOD posts have links to Rob Miller's muscle-up tutorial videos: part 1, part 2, and part 3. Very helpful. I'd like to acquire the muscle-up and the pistol this winter.

I've endorsed Ross Enamait's books many times on this weblog. Top-notch material, so of course I'm very excited his first DVD (with booklet) is now out: Full Throttle Conditioning. The training videos he has posted online are always impressive, so I'm looking forward to seeing what he's done here. I'm ordering mine today.

I've been wondering this for awhile: why do the websites of so many eBook and DVD programs look so similar? Most...

• ... are really LONG pages, with lots of scrolling to reach the bottom.
• ... are one centered column, with wide margins.
• ... use the Arial font, with big headers.
• ... highlight key phrases in yellow.
• ... are signed by the program's creator, often including a scan of his signature.
• ... are peppered with testimonials.

Here are the examples:

• Complete Speed Training, Latif Thomas and Patrick Beith
• Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle, Tom Venuto
• The Vertical Jump Development Bible, Kelly Baggett
• Muscle Gaining Secrets, Jason Ferruggia
• Precision Nutrition, John M. Berardi
• Ultimate Insider Speed Training Secrets, Tim Kauppinen
• Matt Furey

It's odd. I wonder if they all use the same storefront software, and whatever templates it provides, or if they all read the same book on selling stuff on the Internet. Or perhaps they read the very interesting article, The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites. Not that all these sites are ugly, but all have at least one or two elements that fly in the face of traditional web design, and a few have a bunch.

I'm not making any value judgments about the programs themselves, as I haven't bought any of them, but I will say I've heard great things about several of them. I've read several articles online by Thomas, Beith, and Baggett, and they all make good sense based on what I know (Google those guys - good stuff). Venuto is well-respected, Berardi is revered (I've heard nothing but great things about his program), and I really enjoy Ferruggia's weblog. I have no point, I'm just curious how they all came to use the same marketing style.

P.S. I don't know anything about Kauppinen. I've read and enjoyed a few articles by Furey, but his product list and prices give me significant pause.

Two from YouTube:

• I know nothing about gymnastics aside from what I've seen on TV during various Olympicses, but even to my untrained eye it's obvious that this guy is a total pommel horse stud « via CF ».
• Nice cheap version of an expensive (for what it is) piece of equipment: Homemade Tornado Ball.

Mmmm.. donuts:

In the experiment, 43 rats were placed in cages with two levers, one of which delivered an intravenous dose of cocaine and the other a sip of highly sweetened water. At the end of the 15-day trial, 40 of the rats consistently chose saccharin instead of cocaine.

Sure, it's rats. Hard to know how much this correlates with human experience. But for me at least (and I know I'm not unique) sugar is a powerful addiction. I haven't had any first-hand experience with other addictions, but I know I've been unable (so far) to kick this one. I've gone for stretches, but never more than a few weeks, and usually never more than a couple days. Binges are rare, but also happen. I'm very well-informed as to how harmful it is, and yet I rationalize, cave, etc. It's an addiction, just like any other. Alcohol, tobacco, sugar, coke, what have you. They all hook you hard, they're all bad for you, and, insidiously, they all (generally) kill you very, very slowly, so you can build a (shortened) lifetime out of saying "just this once...", "I've been good", "I'm depressed", "it's not that bad", etc.

Just clearing a bit of a link backlog:

• Ross Enamait on genetics VS hard work.
• Michael Pollan op-ed: Weed It and Reap.
• Art De Vany: impressive results from a 54-year-old convert.
• The Performance Menu has a bunch of articles online. Check the month links down the left sidebar.

Wow, good day on the weblogs for great training ideas on the rings:

• Ringtraining.com: The Ice Cream Maker.
• Straight to the Bar: Scott Sonnon's Lawnmower Extension.
• Ice Chamber: Foot-Ring Push-up.

P.S. I'll try to post something about Nationals soon. Tourneys give me "hangovers" (not the alcohol kind) where I can't really focus or get motivated, and it's worse for Nationals. And I'm swamped at work. But hey, while we have this quiet moment, maybe this'll be my Nationals post...

Best fields I've ever played on, all the games matter and are hard fought (which is what makes the tourney so special, IMO), and incidentally they get great food vendors, particularly the étouffée and the crepes (mmmm... Nutella and banana filling...).

We underperformed, going 3-4 on the weekend and losing the 9-10 game to Boneyard. Gotta give those guys their due, they took it to us, and their D was both the cleanest AND the most intense we saw all tourney. Losing sucks, but getting beat by clean, hard-nosed D is a pleasure compared with losing to a team whose D is supplemented by grabbing, hacking, the ol' stop-the-continuation-throw bump/tackle, etc. Anyway, nice game, Boneyard!

Interesting situation on Friday, playing our last two pool play games. We were tied with Miami and played them in what we assumed would be the game to advance to quarters, as they had perennial contender Old and In the Way in their final game. Tough game, but we pulled it out. Surprisingly though, Miami rolled Old, and we lost to Big Sky. Can't blame Old for conserving for quarters, and our fate was in our own hands, so no complaints, but it stung nonetheless.

Personally, I had pretty good tourney. Thursday was great. Handful of blocks, no errors. Friday was marred by a couple drops behind the disc in our loss to Big Sky. Saturday was somewhere between the two.

By the way, I was THRILLED to see a few of my old Salt teammates take home the title with DoG! Loved watching that game. Not as much as I would have loved playing in it, but still great vicarious Ultimate, and I couldn't be happier for those guys. If you're reading, congrats DoG!

Update: Speaking of DoG, Jim Parinella's writeup is a fun read, and covers their pool in much more depth than I covered ours.

(The extent of my pool play coverage being an oblique reference to how chippy some of our games were. I should add that while those games were no fun to play, I don't think it made the difference in any outcomes, and it takes two to tango.)

Like seven pages into a deadlift thread, this guy Dr. Boots loses his mind and doubts Ross Enamait (trainer whose books I have praised many times on this site) can perform some physical task. In this case the task is a 400 lb. deadlift, and he says he'd pay $100 for video proof. Ross responds, "you just lost $100." It's fun reading the thread from that point, but if you want to cut to the chase, here's the proof and then some. Incidentally, Ross declines the money after pulling it off ("You can keep your money however. I don't want it. Donate it to charity or buy some equipment for a gym that could use it.").

Ketogenic diets and physical performance. Let's cut right to the chase (conclusion) on this one (emphasis added):

Both observational and prospectively designed studies support the conclusion that submaximal endurance performance can be sustained despite the virtual exclusion of carbohydrate from the human diet. Clearly this result does not automatically follow the casual implementation of dietary carbohydrate restriction, however, as careful attention to time for keto-adaptation, mineral nutriture, and constraint of the daily protein dose is required. Contradictory results in the scientific literature can be explained by the lack of attention to these lessons learned (and for the most part now forgotten) by the cultures that traditionally lived by hunting. Therapeutic use of ketogenic diets should not require constraint of most forms of physical labor or recreational activity, with the one caveat that anaerobic (ie, weight lifting or sprint) performance is limited by the low muscle glycogen levels induced by a ketogenic diet, and this would strongly discourage its use under most conditions of competitive athletics.

I found this link via Art De Vany, who says:

The Innuit diet it discusses is not for me, but the controlled studies do show that the modern high carb diet for endurance athletes is over rated (and other evidence shows that it is harmful) and the low carb diet works just fine for real world endurance.

"Real world endurance." Several authors I like (e.g. De Vany, Sisson) keep hitting the point, either directly or tangentially, that elite athletic performance practices run counter to good long-term health practices (in general, not to say the Inuit diet is a particularly healthful one).

I've wondered before (although perhaps not on this weblog, can't remember) how much of all medicine rests on the placebo effect. How many treatments would simply stop working if the placebo effect were suddenly erased from our minds? Consider this, from the article 13 Things That Do Not Make Sense:

Don't try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.

This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing can be very powerful. Except it's not quite nothing. When Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. The shocking result? The pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared.

Stop reading now if you don't want me to ruin certain treatments for you, because faith is everything...

Still here? Okay... I was discussing this with my neuromuscular therapist friend yesterday, and she mentioned a few interesting studies, one which showed that of the "alternative" pain management techniques, acupuncture appeared to be the most effective. However, another study showed that fake acupuncture (sticking in needles randomly?) is pretty much just as effective as real acupuncture. Did some Googling, found a bunch of references, but I particularly liked this one: Sham Acupuncture More Effective Than Sugar Pill in Easing Arm Pain.

First question that leaps to mind: what do you use as a control group if you're studying the placebo effect? :-)

Usually the way pickup goes is this: first four players ready play box. The next two ready join in. Whoever shows up after that sets up Goaltimate and we play that. If we get up to 12, the late arrivals set up Ultimate. Used to be we'd just wait to have numbers for Ultimate before we'd do anything, and that would drive me nuts. Now getting there early just means you get to have more fun, and the latecomers do the work for you.

Anyway, we had a situation recently where we only had three ready to play so I started thinking about the three-person basketball game "cutthroat" and how you could do that with box. Here's what I cooked up:

• Somebody starts with the disc. They throw it to somebody. The thrower and the receiver are now on O, the other player is on D, and the disc is now clear (the O can score on their next pass). If they score, the O players each get a point. If they don't, the D player gets 2 points. Make it take it, play on immediately.
• On a turn, the D picks it up and throws it to somebody. Thrower and receiver are on O, disc is now clear, etc., same as above.
• If the very first pass of a possession (where the thrower is picking somebody to play O with) is incomplete then anybody can pick it up. If nobody wants to pick it up, it goes back to the thrower. No score, no penalty, try again.
• Stall is to three.
• Keep your own score, and call it out every time you get points. If you don't call it out, it doesn't count.
• First player to 11 wins.

The test drive of this game was a roaring success. Very fast-paced, couldn't stop laughing. Looking forward to the next time we only have three to start.

Oh, I didn't include it above because it's an unnecessary complication, but it grew kinda naturally out of our regular house rules, which I love. In our regular game, there is a fast break rule: if the defense catches it, there's no need to clear the disc, you can score on your very next pass. You can even throw such a pass from inside the box to another player in the box for the score (no Callahans). The way this manifests in cutthroat is that if the defense catches the disc, the very next pass can score. In effect, the thrower can choose who they want to give a point to. The game is already pretty funny during the transition, as the potential receivers try to make themselves desirable targets, while at the same time trying not to be woefully out of position in case the thrower goes to the other player instead. Making the transition throw a scoring opportunity in these cases turns the subtle jockeying into shameless pandering while still trying to protect against the back-stab.

Try it, you'll like it!

Apologies in advance for the brevity of this update. NE Masters Regionals, five teams, two bids. DoG (Boston), Tombstone (Toronto), and Above and Beyond (us, NY) look pretty well matched on paper. We have a rocky Saturday. Very hot. We beat Mt. Crushmore handily (15-4), but Not Dead Yet gives us a game (15-10), and we lose the big games to DoG (15-11) and Tombstone (14-10). Our D looked good, our O not so much. Lots of chances, few conversions. So that sets up the DoG/Tombstone final, with us playing Not Dead Yet in the backdoor bracket.

Sunday, cool and drizzly. DoG handles Tombstone. As expected, decent first half, but then Tombstone (I hear) starts looking towards seeing us in the backdoor game-to-go, and conserves. DoG rolls, 15-7. They look good. I'm always amazed at how they create space, both as individuals and as a team. We do a much better job with Not Dead Yet, winning 15-3. The offense starts to click, and we're running a pretty deep rotation with hard running D. We carry that energy and improved offensive efficiency into the back door game-to-go and take it! 15-11. Tough game, pretty contentious, but we're heading to FL, woo-hoo!

(There is an interesting discussion happening on RSD right now concerning the fairness of the five-team, two-advance format. Pretty common format in masters this year, and quite a few of the 2-3 matchups went one way in pool play, and then the other way in elimination play.)

Big bonus: after we qualified, we got to watch Jenn (one of our Berkshire locals) qualify with Bashing Pinatas! This got me all mushy over all the Nationals qualifiers who have played at least a season with our long-standing little hole-in-the-wall pickup game. Here's the list:

• Alec E.
• Blake H.
• Chris M. ²
• Christine L. ¹
• Derk P. ^1,2
• Jenn F. ²
• Jim B. ¹
• Jon B.
• Josh B. ^1,2
• Josh M. ^1,2
• Lester B. ^1,2
• Sam R. ²
• Steve H. ^1,2
• Xavier L. ^1,2

¹ First contact with the game was with Berkshire.
² Bulk of/most significant experience was with Berkshire.

Also, Rachel D. is knocking on the door with Nemesis (women's midwest team). They had two games-to-go this year, and lost a close one in the finals, and then the backdoor game in crappy weather to a team they'd beaten the day before. Damn! Next year, she promises.

Not bad, especially considering there are only something like 130,000 people in the entire county!

Dan John says carrying The Slosh Pipe, which weighs in at a mere 38 pounds, is like wrestling a python, will totally kick your ass, etc. It'd be hard to believe, if it weren't coming from such a good source. Gotta build me one of those. Sounds like fun.

And as long as we're on the subject of fringe (but likely killer) core exercises, check out the picture on the cover of the October CrossFit Journal, and consider this description:

Gymnastics coach Phil Savage explains how to use a simple bucket-and-rope contraption to allow the Rest of Us to train like gymnasts. Working the ability to perform circles on the floor (as male gymnasts do in competition on the pommel horse) with the feet supported and rotating around the body provides excellent strength and coordination work that carries over to all sorts of endeavors.

I bet a few circuits of Slosh Pipe carries and Bucket Circles would be just the right kind of torture.

Fight Age With Muscle:

...sarcopenia ["the loss of muscle mass that occurs naturally -- and inevitably -- with age"] creeps by in imperceptible increments, stealing a fifth of a pound of muscle a year, from ages 25 [!] to 50, and then it picks up a dreadful, yet still mostly silent, velocity.

Barring disease, you die by wasting away. Hit those weights! « via Supertraining »

It's been awhile since I posted a workout of the day. From this afternoon:

• Tabata jump rope (20 seconds sprint, 10 seconds rest, repeat 8 times).
• Rest one minute.
• 500m sprint on the C2 rower. Finished in 1:34. My record is 1:31, so didn't feel too upset, given I don't usually do Tabatas first. Three seconds is an eternity though. Every second is precious in the 500. You'd think I'd be able to shave off 0:02 and get under 1:30. Not yet.
• Waited for the blood roaring in my ears to subside, and for my legs to stop quivering. Five minutes, maybe?
• Tabata NordicTrack: See above. Only managed six rounds. Hated myself. Pride is fleeting, shame endures.
• Rest. Three minutes?
• 100 sledgehammer swings for time (10 lb. sledge, striking tire). 3:15. Wanted to break 3 minutes. Alas. Weakling.

Could have been worse, but could have been much better. Still, it was hard, so it was good. I'll do some hard running tomorrow, pickup Sunday, then just hone a bit next week and get fresh for Regionals next weekend.

Can't. Wait.

Michael Conley warming up doing two-ball dribbling drills. Better with sound. « via kottke »

If you've been on the fence about getting a set of rings, perhaps these rings pushup variations (click the video demo link once you get there) will push you over the top. « via MarkFu's Barbarian Blog »

Interesting, but ultimately irritating article, on how there's little evidence exercise results in fat loss. Sure, exercise ALONE won't do the trick, and yes, obviously exercise will make you hungrier, so if you keep blindly obeying your body's every dietary impulse, you're hosed (although you'll have more muscle underneath all your fat). But it is certainly possible to change your body composition through a multi-pronged attack:

• Exercise hard. Intervals and strength training. If it's not hard, it's not working.
• Stop eating crap. You can eat a lot, but it has to be good food, no simple carbs.
• Keep at it until it becomes a habit. In my experience, this can take many months, and the impulse to backslide never fully goes away (I've been into this four years now, and donuts don't look any less appealing to me now than ever).

In short, you gotta work for it. And not only is the work hard, but it's grossly unfair. It is not a level playing field. The work is harder for some (many) than others. For a lucky few, exercise produces a high. It hurts and requires willpower to see it through, but it also feels GOOD. It's even ADDICTIVE! For the rest of us, it's just torture, no corresponding rush or high, and this NEVER changes (although it does get easier). This is why it's important to find a sport you enjoy, as the fun of participating distracts you from the torture of exercising, and training for your sport gives you a purpose beyond fitness in the abstract.

Then there's the metabolic lottery. Insulin responses vary, how and where bodies store fat varies, the amount we crave crap varies. If you're one of the many who crave simple carbs and are prone to fat storage, then you're in for a lifetime of constant vigilance if you don't want to be fat. Believe me, I wish it were otherwise! I've read with some hope anecdotal reports that if you follow an evolutionary fitness-style diet your body will stop craving garbage, but in my experience that is not the case.

You have to want to be athletic more than you want to watch TV. You have to want to be athletic more than you want donuts. And for many, that's a very tough sell. In short, the good news is that it's possible. The bad news is that it's hard, and while it gets less hard over time, it never gets easy.

Here's a NY Times piece that grabbed me, as I imagine it will for anybody else out there playing a fringe sport (and one without scholarship opportunties, at that): Odd Jobs Help College Teams Stay Afloat.

Great use of chains and spring clips as fractional "plates" for microloading.

(via the recently-upgraded Crossfit boards - looks nice!)

Just a small thing... I recently discovered that the handles on the Yukon GHD are at just the right height to assist with pistols (one-legged squats where your off-leg stays extended in front of you). I've tried various other methods of support without much luck, and had pretty much given up on this exercise, but this feels like such a good fit I'm going to start pursuing them again. Anyway, yet another exercise to add to this very versatile piece of equipment!

It's happened to me more than once that I've read a training article, said to myself, "hey, that makes a lot of sense", only to check the author after the fact and find out it was Kelly Baggett. So too with this Vertical Jump FAQ. No shortcuts, no fancy platform shoes, no ridiculous amounts of high-volume work, sounds... about right.

(Not that I've ever done any vertical leap training, which I'm sure is obvious to anyone who's watched me try to get up in the air.)

Okay, I probably shouldn't file this under "Equipment", but boy, this hill behind my daughters' school sure is good for some quality workouts:

Mixing in forwards and backwards (each direction), pacing, reps, emphasizing power or endurance, there are lots of workouts you can build on one of these things. It's only about 35 yards long, but at that angle, that's enough. In the me vs. hill matchups, the hill is undefeated. Wrecks me every time.

Awhile back I tried kludging together a glute-ham developer. The experiment was a failure, but I didn't realize how much of a failure until buying a real GHD. Night and day, even buying the cheapest one I could find, this Yukon GHD. It's quite nice for the price. The only problem I had was with the footplates, which are too small and too far away to fully engage. Here is my fix:

The pieces are made of 3/4" plywood scraps, and the carriage bolts go on either side of the footplate (so you don't have to drill through it). There are washers in all the obvious places, but also between the front and back plywood pieces that butt up against the edges of the footplate, preventing side-to-side motion. These are perhaps unnecessary, as you can really clamp these on pretty tight.

This modification makes a HUGE difference in the feel of the machine. The increased surface area accommodates my size 12.5 feet nicely, and the added thickness is great too, locking my feet in much better. I can use the GHD much more effectively now than before. I can't imagining owning one of these machines and NOT making this fix.

UltiVillage has a clip of Andrew Lugsdin making an impressive second effort after tipping the disc. Two things struck me:

1. He never slows, recognizing instantly (and crucially) that he still has a play.
2. I used to match up with that guy at Ow My Knee and No Borders back in the early nineties (he was better than me by some margin then, even before our career arcs diverged). All these years later, and he's still a total stud. Inspiring.

I previous posted a bit on our local box variant, and I've further refined it to incorporate the 1-pass-to-clear rule the Boston guys like:

...there still isn't a better warmup for an ultimate game than playing a good game of 3-3 or 4-4 hot box. And just to clarify for everyone, a goal requires TWO feet in the box, not one. We now play that to clear the disc only requires one pass away from the goal, so you can have two people literally play catch in and out of the goal to score multiple points in a row. It makes the game VERY fast-paced and exciting, requiring a lot more effort on the turnover to get back and cover the box because of the quick strike offense.

The wrinkle, and I really like this, is that if the defense catches it they can forgo the clear and score immediately. It's a great opportunity, as you generally catch the opposition all on the wrong sides of their men.

We still play one foot in to score, though.

Interesting piece on breathing at MarkFu's Barbarian Blog.

I love Mark Sisson's blog, and really enjoyed this thought-provoking piece of his: Training is No Guarantee of Health. It's anecdote and opinion, but Mr. Sisson is a very smart guy, and a lot of it simply rings true for me. Not surprisingly, some members of the Triathlon Forum were quick to object.

I found this excellent series of videos on squat mechanics and tips a week or two ago, then lazily sat on it without posting it. Straight to the Bar is on the ball, though. :-) I'll be quicker next time. Really, excellent videos. At least check out the first one. Every winter I try to get around my dodgy knees to learn a proper squat, but they don't cooperate. Maybe this'll be the year. I hate to skip such a key exercise.

I just realized Seigs brought his weblog back, so I spent a bit of time catching up on my reading. Good stuff. His recent posts on training, particularly as it relates to Ultimate tournaments, match up nicely with a lot of my own beliefs on the subject:

• Track Workouts
• How Do You Train for 8 Games in One Weekend?
• Training for Tournaments Part 2

Read the comments too. In particular, Dusty Rhodes' thoughts on the subject are always interesting.

I've posted before about the awesome Traveling Rings (be sure to check out the video). Here's my low budget garage version:

I have six rings (only three shown). I used these playground rings, 12' NRS straps, and 5/16" stainless steel anchor shackles from Home Depot (for attaching each ring to its strap). A few additional notes:

• As you can see, when the rings are set up for me I have lots of extra strap. But the straps allow me to easily lower the rings for my kids.
• Unless your garage is ridiculously tall (in which case you'd want longer straps), the length of each strap doesn't give you much swinging action, but it's still a good workout, and a nice change from pull-ups. My kingdom for an empty barn with big, high rafters (or any other long, strong, high span these could hang from).
• Note that I don't hang the rings directly from the rafters, but rather from a 2x4 running perpendicular to the rafters. This distributes the weight (my wife noticed some worrisome bowing when I hung them each to its own rafter).
• Ideas: regular hand-over-hand, obviously. Pulling yourself up and staying up while going hand-over-hand is a nice challenge. Or do a pull-up, swing to the next, do another pullup, repeat, etc. is a good workout. Skipping rings, setting them further apart, and setting them at different heights opens up all kinds of options.
• You can't spin like mad like you can with true swiveling components, but the straps can twist. Haven't really done much with that (don't yet have the strength yet to hang from one hand for very long).

Anyway, it's no substitute for the real thing, but still a very fun piece of workout equipment.

Awhile ago I sung the praises of ice baths. Turns out it might just be all in my head. Or maybe it's even counterproductive. Hard to say. As noted, pain is hard to measure, and even if it is a placebo effect, if it's a placebo effect that works, that's what really matters.

Wow, check out the Sean Sherk "Caveman Training" video. Five rounds of five minutes each. Looks great. Looks like hell. « via CF forums »

[Heads up: Ferruggia's always blunt and occasionally crude, so don't click through if that bothers you.]

I've never made "bulking" my focus in my training, but I though this three-part piece by Jason Ferruggia on "Cardio While Bulking" (part one, two, and three) had quite a bit of useful advice and insight into integrating cardio and intervals into your workouts without injury or overtraining.

Here's one thing that really grabbed me:

If you choose sprinting as your form of interval training you could get hurt; it's an ugly truth that has to be faced. The thing that will lead to even more injuries is following faulty interval protocol advice. Normally it is recommended to do 30-60 second intervals when they are being performed on a stationary bike. A lot of people take these recommendations and apply them to sprinting. This is a huge mistake! Nobody can sprint for 30-60 seconds. Ok, not nobody; but most average people can't do it. World class athletes can sprint for that long, but not everyone else.

He then elaborates, so click through for more (that bit in particular is in part three). Anyway, the reason it grabbed me is because I've always just blindly applied the Tabata protocol to sprinting, without considering that the original studies were done on bikes. Of course, the "as hard as you can" part of my interpretation allows me to "sprint" for 20 seconds at a slower pace then I'd run the 40, for example, but it still kills me.

It's all in the hips, which makes these two pieces by Keith Scott particularly important reads: Healthy Hips Part I - Self Assessment and Healthy Hips Part II (remediation).

Personally, it looks like my lazy-ass glutes (ha ha) are perfectly happy to let my hamstrings carry the load. Dang. Can the fixes really be as simple as they sound?

It's the simplest workout: 100 burpees, as fast as you can. I try this once in awhile, when I'm pressed for time, or when I just feel like testing myself. Getting all 100 inside of 10 minutes has been a goal of mine for some time. My typical strategy is to set the timer for one-minute increments, and try to knock off 10 every minute. This usually results in me quitting somewhere between 60 and 80. Or, if I don't pace myself and just do them as I'm able, I finish well over 10:00. For example, a little over a year ago I tried it for the first time and sucked mightily.

So today I tried it again with my "10 every minute" strategy. I'm pretty slow at these, so even at top speed I can only manage 10 in 30 seconds. And that's what I did for the first five minutes. 10 in 30 seconds, then 30 seconds to rest before the next minute starts. Then it gets hard. My pace erodes at the expense of my recovery time. I got to 70 with about 15 seconds to rest before the eighth minute was due to start. At this point I pretty much abandoned the clock and started counting down the 30 reps I still needed. This, by the way, is usually when I quit. I was at 89 with a minute to go, and hit 100 at 9:56!

It was physically painful, but I have to admit the bigger obstacle until today has been mental. I simply haven't wanted to work hard enough to turn in a time like this.

Anyway, 100 in less than 10 minutes, very happy. It might not seem like much when you watch this guy crank out 100 in 5:00 and change, but for me it was a good day.

Anybody out there play Goaltimate with Callahan goals in effect? We've adopted that rule here, and it feels like an improvement. If nothing else, it cuts down on the stupidity Goaltimate seems to bring out in even the most conservative Ultimate players. :-)

I continue to mull over Turning It, which I linked to a couple days ago. If you blew it off then, go read it now. I particularly like the "Strength Before Speed" section, but there's all kinds of gems in there:

One of the fastest ways to increase a football player's speed and running efficiency is to get him to run with his eyes. The head acts as an anchor if the eyes aren't first looking at the target. This forces a runner to get out of position when he changes direction, causing the shoulders to line up improperly and affecting body orientation. So we stress that when players set a foot to turn, their eyes should immediately find the target. This simple cue can fix some of the most complex problems in running mechanics.

That leapt out at me, having just been advised the day before that I should work on "finding the back cone." I used to know how to do that, before 15 years of handling took over my game. Should be a fun skill to rediscover. Anyway, this is what really got me thinking over the past couple days:

There are far too many good drills out there to cover them all. They can be as simple as the pro-shuttle that the NFL Combine uses, where athletes sprint back and forth over a specified distance (typically 20 yards), or as complex as a cone drill with five or more turns. The key is to remember that football speed is the ability to change direction and accelerate quickly, not how quickly someone can run a 40-yard sprint. We focus on the drills that will develop fast-twitch lateral movement over straight-line speed.

So what are these drills? I e-mailed the guy for a list, but haven't gotten a response. Oh well. I did find a couple interesting things in Googling around, though.

First up is this YouTube video of Jackie Battle's performance in the NFL Combine. The three-cone drill (which Battle demonstrates at 2:02 of that video, and which is described here) is one I'm definitely going to add to the mix.

Second is this Michael Boyle article on NFL Combine training (PDF), specifically focusing on the 40. Great article, too much good stuff to excerpt any one paragraph, but the key observation here is that the 40 is a test of acceleration, not speed. You should take that into consideration, along with the size of your playing field and how you move on it, before deciding how you want to strike the balance between acceleration, speed, and endurance in your training.

Two very good reads came across my desktop this week. First up is Purposeful Walking by Jim Parinella. It's Ultimate-specific, but I think has cross-sport value, as we all need to manipulate our opponents one way or another. Next up is Turning It, a very interesting read on the importance of training turning, acceleration, and lateral power rather than straight-line speed. Again, sport-specific (football), but with broad applicability (Ultimate players, depending on role, have more opportunities to get up to top speed, so don't neglect that part of your training, though).

I played Easterns with Above & Beyond last weekend, had a great time, and signed on for the season, along with a few other ex-KooB/Salt guys. Lost in the finals, but the future looks bright. Briefly, a tourney recap.

First, pool play Saturday. Very hot and humid.

Round 1, Mount Crushmore: Always in control of this one. 15-5.

Round 2, DC Funk: Took half 8-3 and then they clawed back. We gutted it out for the 15-13 win. Guys cramping while Big Ego watched, as they had dispatched Mt. Crushmore in short order.

Round 3, Big Ego: Good game, went up 3-1, then went down 2. Tied. Went down two and then tied three more times over the course of the game. Lost 15-14 at the cap.

Saturday night. Dehydrated, fighting off waves of nausea until like 10PM. Forcing dinner down was a chore.

Sunday, cool and with a hint of mist in the air. Refreshing.

Semis, DC Funk: We turned up the defensive intensity and that helped a lot, I thought. Up 8-2 at half. They again turned in a better second half, but didn't threaten like they did on Saturday. 14-8 final score, maybe?

Finals, Big Ego: Again, went up initially and then they came back. We were down 11-7 at one point. Came back to 13-12, lost 15-13.

Personally, again briefly, it might just be the Advil talking, but my various injuries didn't affect me quite as much as they did at WMO, I'm not as sore as I thought I'd be, and got some revenge on The Black Rings Workout yesterday (finished it this time, with times of 0:50, 0:47, 0:45, 0:47, and 0:44), so I'm just going to ignore them from now on. And while I'm not out of my slump yet (mostly did no harm, had a good semis but a poor finals, including a horrific drop), I can finally see the path to a strong season before me, so I'm no longer worried about it.

Oh, a first: I had ex-teammates on every team in the division. Awesome.

Masters Easterns is this weekend, and KooB is not bringing a team. Instead, small groups of us are playing for different teams (some with Big Ego, some with Above and Beyond, some with Mt. Crushmore). Thought I'd share with you the training advice I gave two of my friends (and now opponents) playing for Big Ego:

As you know, I read quite a bit on fitness and training, and over the past week or so I've had several revelations which have completely overturned many of my beliefs. Here's the very latest on what you should be doing:

1. High-intensity interval work is out. As tournaments are all-day, all-weekend affairs, you really want to train like a marathon runner. Lots of very long, moderately paced runs. 20 miles or more. On pavement is best, as grass will then feel like heaven. Pavement is to grass as Krypton is to Earth.
2. Sugar, sugar, sugar. Remember, it's all about the tournaments, and what do you eat on game day? Right, glucose and simple carbs, so you want your body tuned to that kind of diet. Ice cream is good, but donuts are better. If you eat them until you are slightly nauseated you will get a nice overcompensation effect when you eat more reasonable portions on tourney days. Oh, donuts on tourney days? Absolutely. Boston Cream for you two, obviously.
3. Burpees are out. It is a movement you never perform in Ultimate, so has no carry-over value. The time would be better spent tacking a few more miles onto your long runs, which you should be doing 5 to 7 days per week (double that if you run on grass).
4. If you're lifting weights, for goodness sake, STOP! Without years of coaching your form will be terrible, and you'll be doing more harm than good. It's a miracle you haven't had a season-ending injury already.
5. Television is a great way to clear your head, focus on the upcoming tourney and, as a bonus, it'll make the eating of the donuts just fly right by. Watch as much of it as possible. If it helps, you can treat television as a reward: "okay, one more hour of TV, but ONLY if I can keep three more donuts down."
6. Tying it all together, consider investing in a treadmill, as it would allow you to perform the Holy Trinity of Fitness: long, slow-paced exercise, TV, and donut consumption ALL AT THE SAME TIME! Don't let the expense scare you away from this phenomenal training device; since you won't be sprinting on it (indeed, sprinting of any kind is anathema), you can buy the cheapest treadmill on the market.
7. Finally, time spent sleeping is time not spent running slowly (walking is good too), eating sugar, and watching television. Try not to sleep more than four hours per night. Handy tip: keep the treadmill, television, and donuts in the bedroom. Over time you will associate the bedroom with these activities rather than sleeping.

Good luck with your training!

:-)

Should be a fun weekend, and a possible first for me: if the DC team brings players from my era, I'll likely have former teammates on every team in the division.

Jason Kottke has a fun post up listing a variety of ways in which people with poor self-awareness (among other traits) are better off: Better Living Through Self Deception. Many of the notions he touches on relate to the mental aspect of sport either tangentially or directly. If nothing else, I have learned that he really sucked at WMO. Hey, I feel better already!

The subject says it all: Jump Rope Training - Part II by Ross Enamait. I don't know if I could turn the rope that fast even if I didn't have to worry about also jumping over it.

I got a copy of my Ringtraining.com newsletter yesterday, in which the availability of black rings was announced (nice). Also included was this workout:

10 Ring Pushups
Row 250 meters
Repeat 5 times, as fast as possible.

I figured I'd give it a shot, but of course I forgot to set the clock. Didn't matter, as I didn't finish. My times for the first four 250m:

• 0:49
• 0:47
• 0:46
• 0:45

After that last one my back started to tighten up, and as it's been giving me some trouble I decided not to push it. Or maybe it was the nausea talking.

Ugh. This one, unfortunately, is easy to write up:

• Lost 'em all. Pool play losses: half-of-Boston, Big Ego, Bro White, and Chuck Wagon. Play-in loss: New Noise. That bounced us down to the open div. bracket, but our opponents didn't show (Dartmouth Alums) so we called it a day. A few of us stuck around and ended up picking up with Big Ego for their consolation game (they were down to 9 players and had just lost a close one in the quarters). Lost that one too, to GLUM.
• Personally, worst tournament ever (no hyperbole). I've had bad games, I've even had bad days, but never before have I had an entire bad tournament. Every game on Saturday was disastrous. I was relatively pleased with my Sunday play against New Noise, and I was point-blocked twice in that game! That should give you some idea of how poorly things went for me.

On the team front, attrition hurt. Thought we were going to have 14 players, but two of our best athletes had to cancel at the last minute. Apparently it doesn't pay to be among our best athletes, as we lost two more of them over the course of Saturday (one early, one late). Then one of our top handlers by halftime of the play-in game on Sunday, leaving us with nine.

As for my abysmal performance, lots of factors. I've been struggling with a groin pull, and haven't been playing in an attempt to get it healthy. I've probably played five times since the fall, and I'm simply not one of those players who can get away with that. Time to ignore the groin and get on the field more often. Also, my mental game was atrocious. I don't think I made a single play (even routine catches or throws) where some part of my brain (sometimes a large part) wasn't thinking "okay, don't screw this up." You know what that leads to.

Actually, what it leads to is this: for the Chuck Wagon game one of our more sadistic players hit on the idea of having to play in your spandex underlayer with your shirt tucked in for a point if you screwed up. I ended up doing the honors pretty damn early. Kinda helped, in a "rose goes in the front, big guy" kind of way.

Finally, this is probably old news, but this weekend I heard that Jeff Graham tore his ACL. Such news is always bad, but in his case it made me particularly, inexplicably sad. "Inexplicably" because I've never met the guy, I've only seen him play. But he's obviously in tremendous shape, is so much fun to watch, and clearly takes great joy in the game. Also, by all accounts, he's one of the nicest guys around. ACL tears are just so random. One minute you're on top of the world, then you land a bit funny, and your season's over. It doesn't matter how hard you work, or what kind of shape you're in. Intelligent Design my ass. Sigh. Anyway, here's to Jeff's speedy recovery.

If you've been thinking about cobbling together some rings, you might want to give PlaysetParts.com a look. In particular, their round trapeze rings, either in uncoated aluminum or Plastisol -coated. A few lengths of chain and a few quick-links and you're good to go.

That said, if you want to buy a set ready to go out of the box, I can't say enough good things about Ringtraining.com. Great products, great service. Their rings have a larger inner diameter (7" instead of 5") and have a thicker grip, I think.

UPDATE: Got a few, ostensibly for the kids, and they are pretty small. Keep that in mind if you have big hands.

Two more excellent Angela Hart videos linked to from Crossfit WODs: Common Rowing Flaws and Rowing Technique Refinements. Putting your weight into it is a particularly valuable tip, I think.

For your viewing pleasure: 20 Nike commercials, plus one.

Podium Sports Journal looks good, and I liked the piece titled, "The Nine Mental Skills of a Successful Athlete." The thing I particularly liked was his definition of a successful athlete:

What these athletes have in common is that their sport is important to them and they're committed to being the best that they can be within the scope of their limitations - other life commitments, finances, time, and their natural ability. They set high, realistic goals for themselves and train and play hard. They are successful because they are pursuing their goals and enjoying their sport. Their sport participation enriches their lives and they believe that what they get back is worth what they put into their sport.

Jim at Beast Skills has done it again: fantastic muscle-up tutorial. Make sure you not only watch his embedded video of Andreas Aguilar at the 1991 World Professional Gymnastics Championships on the rings, make sure you watch all the way to the dismount.

• Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots? Michael Pollan delves into the answer and implications (sorry, this one's a couple weeks old).
• I'm a computer guy, and let's face it, most of us spend too much time at our desks. Hence, this T-Nation article: (De)-Constructing Computer Guy.
• Dusty Rhodes linked to this Mark Sisson piece, Is There Any Safe Meat?, and that started me exploring Mark's site. Lots of interesting stuff on there. For example, I had previously posted some soy links, so was interested to read Sisson's take: 10 Things to Know about Tofu. I also really appreciated this nugget from his recent wine & chocolate post: Like chocolate and coffee, wine is one of those "marginally nutritious" issues that is endlessly debatable and ultimately not a huge factor in health, in the sense that there is probably some benefit to be gained from reasonable consumption thanks to the antioxidants, but don't expect any miracles. It's important to put these sensational stories in perspective...

The folks at UltiVillage have put together a 2006 World Ultimate Club Championship trailer, which features a ton of excellent highlights (it took place in Australia, if you're wondering about that intro).

Wow, this looks like a gold mine: the Bigger Faster Stronger complete magazine archives are now available free online.

Last time I linked up some unicycling videos I had no idea who Kris Holm was. Now I do. Gave me vertigo in spots. Quite a combination of fabulous control and complete insanity.

Straight to the Bar linked up a good David Lang Parkour training video. That led me to check out Mr. Lang's YouTube favorites page, which is a gold mine of good videos. I could waste far too much time poking around those. I did catch this best of David Belle compilation, which includes some great stuff I hadn't seen before. The monkeybar work around 2:30 is terrific. I also checked out zesyo's training videos, which are also very good (particularly the first one).

Jason Ferruggia has been on fire lately. These three are must-reads (some profanity):

• Things That Suck
• Don't Believe Everything You Read
• The Supplement Scam

Those brought to mind another rant of his that I vaguely recalled, so hunted it down for you (and for me): Stretching The Truth.

Crossfit hosts two interesting rowing videos featuring Angela Hart: Tabata Wattage Rowing and Row Stroke Rating. The wattage video seemed like more of a warmup than a workout, but the stroke rating video was very illuminating. It perfectly illustrates how the problems with my times (and maybe yours) might be aided by reducing my stroke rate.

• John Hackleman puts Chuck Liddel through some great workouts.
• Two running links: Art De Vany on sprinting, and an interesting piece on Clyde Hart (Michael Johnson and Jeremy Wariner's coach).
• Yet another good video attached to the CrossFit WOD. This one is Greg Amundson's warm-up. As a bonus, at the end they show you the Samson Stretch, which is a fantastic stretch. If you put your front foot far enough forward you get a great hamstring stretch on one leg, and a great hip flexor stretch on the other leg. And you feel it in a bunch of other places as well.
• A ballboy's story. Don Mattingly: "Great to meet you, Matt. I have a very big job to ask of you. I just unpacked all my bats from spring training and I don't know if it was the altitude of the flight from Florida or the humidity down there, or what, but all my bats came up short. The game starts in about two hours and I need you to find me a bat stretcher."

The New Yorker is running a piece on Parkour titled No Obstacles. I only skimmed the first page, as I'll read it full when my print edition arrives, but this paragraph leapt out at me:

The video of Belle that traceurs seem to find most compelling, judging from how often they mention it, is one in which he crashes into a cement wall. I have found it on YouTube, using "David Belle fall" as the search term. Belle is attempting to leap over a double-wide ramp that leads to an underground parking garage. The ramp is enclosed by cinder-block walls, about three feet high. Belle arrives at a run from the left. He lowers his hands but they appear to miss the first wall entirely; he seems to be looking at where he means to land. Incredibly, while aloft, he turns, so that his shoulder, not his head, strikes the opposite wall. Ten feet beneath him, at the bottom of the ramp, a cameraman is lying on his back in order to shoot from below. Belle manages not to land on him. His first gesture is to see if the cameraman is all right. Then he begins walking briskly up the ramp. Toward the top, he turns and can be seen to be grinning.

I hadn't seen that video, so did a quick search and found it easily. Then I went back and watched this popular video of Belle. It's much harder to watch without cringing now, as you really appreciate how death-defying the building-to-building leaps are. A similar slip—a slip I now know he has in him—at those heights... Shudder.

Anyway, happier thoughts: I really like this commerical and this one.

Google just launched My Maps, which provides a nice interface for creating your own custom maps with shapes, placemarks, etc. Idris posted the idea of using this as a tool for creating field maps.

Cool idea, I'm going to do this for our various pickup locations. I just played with this for five minutes, and it's really nice. You can draw fields. You can stick in placemarks, which users can click on to get the "directions to here" command. One thing: when you share the link, make sure you use the "Link to this Page" link. If you use your "My Maps" link then stuff like the Zoom and View (map, satellite, or hybrid) are not shared with the user, and the tool just zooms in as close as possible while still displaying all your custom objects (which is no good around here, since we live in the sticks and Google doesn't have imagery at that resolution).

Anyway, here's the result of my five minutes of fiddling.

Just a little diversion for you: talk about awkward moments in sports!

Generally I find exercise research fairly straightforward, and nutrition research a quagmire. My recent readings on soy are no exception. First, I read this T-Nation article, The Soy Conspiracy, which certainly sounds damning. It's an interview with Kaayla Daniel, author of The Whole Soy Story. But then Syd Baumel's critique of the book gave me pause. Especially since he's not one-sided, as evidenced by his piece, Should We be Scared of Soy?. I don't eat too much of it anyway, so you're on your own deciding this one. :-)

T-Nation is running a great article, Strength Exercises That Work Your Core. Forgive their customary T&A shot (if that sort of thing bothers you); the exercises are excellent, and the embedded video demos are very helpful.

This is devolving into a link blog. That's okay though, as I feel like I've covered most of what I want to cover (check the guide and the archives). As I try new stuff I'll post it, but until then...

• Gregg's favorite exercise is one of my favorites too. The difference between us is that he uses kettlebells instead of DBs, and he includes pictures.
• There are some great ideas (and workout names) in this Crossfit thread, Hardest Metcon Workouts ("metabolic conditioning").
• With the outdoor season right around the corner here in the NE, it might be worth having a look at this article on preventing quad soreness.
• Patrick Beith: Summer Training for Speed (and Part II).
• Finally, Dispelling The Top 10 Nutrition Myths (update: this guy slams this piece; update 2: see discussion below).

Two interesting posts that might seem unrelated, but they both say the same thing: you are not stuck with the hand you're dealt. Read on:

• The Genius in All of Us has a nice post up on "the nature and nurture of muscles."
• Jason Ferruggia interviews Patrick Beith: Speed Training Secrets.

A few of the links that caught my eye recently:

• All Around Strength posts a nice collection of back exercises.
• Static stretching still has its place: Jason Ferruggia on stretching.
• It doesn't get much simpler, and I bet it works: simplefit.org.

About a week ago I whined about being in a rut, and I received some nice supportive messages in response. The first one was from Dusty Rhodes, and suggested (among other things) doing a few workouts with a training partner. I figured I'd take his advice today, without letting my complete and utter lack of a training partner stop me. So I piggy-backed on today's Pike Workout (click through for exercise descriptions in the comments):

This was a challenge. The idea is to do it as quickly as you can:

Get a Deck of Cards.

Shuffle them.

Spades: Burpees
Clubs: Mahlers
Hearts: Pushups
Diamonds: Squats

2-9 = Face Value
10-K = 10
A = 15

Go through as quickly as you can and keep time. My time was 28:09.

So that gave me something to shoot for, but I fell short, finishing in 30:09, and I took advantage of the optional Mahler substitution (two-count Mountain Climbers), which has gotta be miles easier (or at least tons faster). Dang. Overshooting 30:00 by a mere nine seconds particularly rankles. Surely I could have gutted out another ten seconds somewhere in there?! Still, the training partner who had no idea he was my training partner certainly helped me push myself. With about a quarter of the deck to go I really wanted to quit, but since I swore to myself I'd post the results I couldn't bear the thought of reporting "failed to finish."

Suddenly juggling is popping up the fitness weblogs I frequent. First I noticed Ross Enamait posted a piece, Juggle Your Way To Improved Performance, and then Straight to the Bar posted a link to the YouTube of juggling sites, JuggleTube. They have a terrific old video of Francis Brunn on the Jack Benny show. I then searched for a Kris Kremo performance I'd seen before, but they didn't have it. Good ol' YouTube to the rescue!

Very interesting interview with Eric Cressey all about deadlifting. The whole thing is good, but in particular read his response to the question, "what are the unique benefits of deadlifting?" Here is the first of the 10 points he makes in response:

First, I'd say that (along with box squats) it's the single-most effective movement for training the posterior chain (glutes, hamstrings, adductor magnus, and lumbar erectors). The posterior chain is of paramount importance to high-level performance; watch the best sprinters run, and you'll see that they seem to just "float"—and it's because they're running with their hamstrings and glutes. In contrast, watch a guy who runs with his quads, and you'll see that his hips are bouncing up and down; there's a lot of wasted movement. The glutes and hamstrings are all fast-twitch fibers with a lot of strength, speed, and size potential—potential you'll never realize without deadlift variations.

What can you do against a guy who makes shots like this? Not much, I guess. Roger Federer is the athlete I'd most like to see live, and I have no particular love for tennis over any other sport. (via kk)

Update: I just got an e-mail with a link to a Federer between-the-legs winner.

I really need to do more with this weblog than repost the Crossfit WOD when it looks like a particularly good one, but until then, today's looks great:

Five rounds for time of:

• 45 pound barbell Overhead walking lunges, 50 feet
• 21 Burpees

The guy leading in the video knocks it out in 9:10 (which, incidentally, beats my time for just the burpee portion). Monstrous.

A few days ago a fellow named Dusty Rhodes posted some advice on my Jumping Out of a Rut post. Today I happened to notice another comment by him on a different Ultimate weblog, and I followed that back to his weblog, which is excellent. My only excuse for missing it to date is that it's not on Ultimate Talk, as far as I know. It's enjoyable to read, and he seems to track many of the same sources I do (and, as a bonus, he's posting more regularly than I've been lately). He's even a fellow Never Gymless fan. And here I thought (self-centeredly) that I was pretty much the only Ultimate player to have discovered Ross Enamait and his books!

This is perhaps an odd collection of links, but they all relate (to varying degrees) to the pursuit of excellence, and how it develops in the brain. Basically, it takes lots of work and lots of time. There are no shortcuts.

• The Genius in All of Us: The Myelin in All of Us.
• The Genius in All of Us: Savants and Us
• New York Times: How to Grow a Super-Athlete.

I can't really tie this John Berardi post on chocolate into the overall theme of this post, but what the heck. I like chocolate, and that Domori brand sounds awesome.

I seem to be stuck in a pretty deep rut at the moment. Training, parenting, pet projects, work, you name it. But for our purposes we'll stick to training. I think my big three obstacles are:

1. Winter sucks. My basement, pretty dismal under the best of circumstances, truly starts looking like a prison by February.
2. Big (but largely good) changes in my schedule from last winter have left me without a regular workout time, and the times left to me are often abbreviated or during times where my body really doesn't want to do it. So I might have a choice of doing a 15-minute blitz midday (we don't need no stinkin' warmup) or a longer workout late at night when I really should be sleeping. The lack of routine is proving to be very difficult to deal with.
3. Motivation. I'm sure the schedule feeds into this, but ouch, even when I'm feeling gung-ho it takes a strong amount of will power to force myself to hit the intensities I'm aiming for, and when my heads not in it, it puts a big crimp in the quality of my workout.

Anyway, enough whining. Open question: How do you folks deal with your training ruts?

Here's a workout I tried tonight, trying to address my detrained state, and trying to build a warmup right into the workout to get my thick, syrupy, late-night blood flowing:

• Minute 1: 1 burpee.
• Minute 2: 2 burpees.
• Minute 3: 3 burpees.
• etc.
• Minute 10: 10 burpees.
• Minute 11: 10 burpees.
• Minute 12: 10 burpees.
• Minute 13: 10 burpees.
• Minute 14: 10 burpees.
• Minute 15: 10 burpees.

I bumped minutes 11-15 up to 75 seconds (told you I was detrained), and did lots of "just 3 more rounds and you can quit without hating yourself, you #$%@&$" self-flagellation to get through it. I hope this marks the beginning of a turnaround. After a couple months of just going through the motions, I'm due.

"Janda situps" are supposed to be an excellent exercise, and super-hard. Lots of folks say you shouldn't be surprised if you can't even do one. They work by taking your hip flexors out of the equation via reciprocal inhibition (i.e. you tense the glutes and hamstrings and your hip flexors automatically relax). There are lots of Janda situp descriptions out there, and the evil Russian even sells a $150 machine so you can do them unassisted.

Of coursre, I figured, "who needs a machine?" So I anchored one of my Iron Woody bands, put my legs through it, and slid back until the thing was pulling mightily on my calves. I had my legs at 90 degrees, feet flat on the floor, and the band pulling hard enough that I had to resist pretty strongly to keep my legs in place. I did the situps, and didn't have too much trouble doing 4 sets of 10. I mean, 10 isn't a lot of situps, but based on descriptions I figure I'm either [A] Superman, or [B] doing them wrong. Given I still haven't mastered the flag, the standing rollout, or the front lever, I think we can rule out [A] (I'd like to cut myself some slack because I'm 6'4", but really I'm only in the ballpark of the flag, and I'm nowhere close to the rollout or the front lever).

Anyway, anybody have pointers for me? Perhaps I need to anchor the band higher such that it's also trying to pull my calves off the ground in addition to pulling them away from my butt?

Two videos:

• Badminton is fantastic, especially when you play like this. This spring I'll have to share my badminton setup with you.
• Check out the prodigious effort in the wallball video attached to this Crossfit WOD. I do believe I'd throw up a lung.

T-Nation is running an excellent article by Christian Thibaudeau titled, The Training Strategy Handbook. It lays out the major set/rep schemes with pros, cons, and applications of each depending on your situation.

I'm behind on this, but it's a long article and I wanted to read it first before posting. If you haven't checked it out already, Michael Pollan's article, Unhappy Meals, is a must-read. Fascinating and engaging. I may have to check out The Omnivore's Dilemma.

• An interview with Oscar Pistorius. An inspiring athlete, unfortunately mired in controversy (some say his prosthetic legs give him an unfair advantage).
• Check out the "Knees to Elbows" video linked to from this CrossFit WOD.
• Interesting training article on preparing for The Secret Service Snatch Test.
• Chad Waterbury's article on his Full Throttle Program ("Simple Methods to Develop Fighting Endurance") was a good read. I bet that's an excellent conditioning regimen.

Skwigg's "Tidbits" post is excellent (best wishes to her in recovering from her knee injury), and Jim at Beast Skills recently posted this enjoyable interview with Jack Arnow.

Even if you don't do the WOD, it's worth keeping an eye on the Crossfit home page. Lately they've been posting tons of good videos. Here's a few of the more recent ones (after you click through you can pick WMV or MOV formats): Deadlifts, Towel Pull-ups, and Thrusters.

NSCA's Performance Training Journal quickly summarizes yet another study demonstrating that you get more bang for your buck doing intense intervals rather than traditional endurance training:

The sprint training group performed four to six all out maximal (~700 w) 30 second sprints separated by four minutes of recovery. The traditional endurance training group performed continuous exercise for 90 - 120 minutes at an intensity of 65% of maximal aerobic capacity or a power output of 175 W.

You can click through for the results, but I've already told you which one comes out on top. As a bonus, you don't compromise your speed and power training by eschewing the long slow stuff. And you save time:

When comparing the time commitment of the two protocols the sprint training required 2.5 hours while the traditional endurance training program required 10.5 hours.

A quick Google Scholar search turns up a bunch of similar-looking studies (which I have not read).

• I enjoyed Keith Scott's simple explanation of the hows and whys of foam rolling. Then I noticed his blog is good across the board. « via Joachim Bartoll »
• From "The Genius in All of Us": How Beckham Bends It. Be sure to check out the highlight reel he links to.
• Two videos: an impressive jump, and the Crossfit women display impressive Tabata squat prowess (you'll have to click through to the video).

Always looking for new things to try with my rings. I think I'll add scarecrows into the mix. « via Straight to the Bar »

I went to the Ultimate Coaches and Players Conference with my Dad yesterday, and it was fun and informative. I just wanted to share a few notes from the presentations I attended:

Keynote: Ultimate Mental Toughness by Dr. Alan Goldberg

Dr. Goldberg is a nationally known sport psychologist, and well worth catching if you ever have the opportunity. Very entertaining and informative talk, with lots of nice examples that physically underscored his points for the whole audience (one of his central ideas—no doubt correct—is that what goes on in your mind creates actual physiological changes in your body that directly affect performance). I was particularly struck by the Mark Spitz quote he invoked early on, which I'll paraphrase:

Going fast in practice is 90% physical and 10% mental. You have to put in the work to be great. But in competition the ratio inverts. Competition is 90% mental and 10% physical.

Unfortunately I can say from experience that Dr. Goldberg did a really nice job putting into words what it feels like—and what goes through your head—when you choke. It's all about focusing on the right things. Along those lines, he stressed that everybody loses focus. The trick, and the thing to train, is immediately recognizing when the loss of focus occurs and bringing yourself back. He then illustrated how hard this can be by making us do something seemingly easy. Close your eyes, breath regularly, focusing on your diaphram on the inhale, and the word "one" on the exhale. Every time you lose focus, increment the number. So the first time you are distracted you bump up to "two". We got started, no problem at the start, but then he started talking, drumming, etc. and I got up to like 25 before I was too distracted to bring my focus back at all. He then suggested a simple drill. Do the same thing with a disc in front of you, concentrate on your diaphram on the inhale, and some word on the exhale ("now", perhaps). Get the hang of that. Then put the disc on top of your TV and turn the TV on. Learn the feeling of losing focus, and retrieving it.

Anyway, I have improved two things over the past few years: my conditioning and my focus. But I've put much more effort into the conditioning. Can it really be something as simple as this could help me continue to improve?

Perhaps. It all reminded me of Sectionals last year: I was tapped to help call subs, something I find mentally and emotionally draining. My play went completely to pieces. Multiple multi-turnover points. Fortunately our captain recognized this, and relieved me after one game. But that game was agonizing. The mind feeds the body, for sure.

Marking Techniques & Strategies by Ben Wiggins

Good stuff. Lots of individual and team tactics and strategies. From my notes:

• Get in shape. You can't mark if you're not in shape.
• Instead of marking in the typical feet-parallel crouch, he suggested marking with your feet a bit staggered so you can more quickly change the distance from the thrower. Helps against throwers skilled at drawing the foul. I imagine this will be even more important when the 11th edition goes live.
• Keep your head up instead of leaning in looking down at the disc. Better vision, harder for the thrower to draw the foul.
• Discussed the concept of "blocking back". When you go for the hand block, instead of up (since your hands should always be under the disc) and in towards the throwers hand, block up and away to minimize the chance of fouling. Ben emphasized not fouling, both for pragmatic and ethical reasons.
• Oftentime emphasize "winning the first second", even on the live side. So mark to stop the continuation before settling into the force.
• His diagrams belied (thankfully) something you hear commonly: namely that the mark takes away a third (or a half!) of the field. Against good throwers it's really a pretty narrow band.
• I liked his description of a team defense you might employ against a team that relies on the huck. He called it "rising pressure" and the basic idea is that the marker sets up with his butt pointed towards the back cone on the closed side. When the O is far away from the endzone (or the disc is close to the closed side), this will make the mark flatter. As the disc gets closer to the endzone (and the huck thus disappears), the mark angles more sharply (but still flattens when the disc is on the closed site). So simple. Can't believe this is the first I'd heard of it.
• In terms of substitutions, Ben noted as tourneys progress D teams tend to put more of their guys who are getting blocks on the field, until eventually they are fielding D lines with all blockers, and no markers. A mistake, he says.

Fitness and Training for Ultimate by Bryan Doo & Dan Cogan-Drew

Also good stuff. Bryan Doo did most of the talking, with Dan Cogan-Drew jumping in from time to time. Even though readers of this weblog are likely to be most interested in this presentation, I don't have too much to say, largely 'cause I agree with it all. Nice emphasis on the hamstrings, glutes, and hips, and rotational power/stability. From Bryan's examples and build, he's clearly a very fit guy with fantastic body control. A couple small but important things I took away though:

• I really liked the look of the "spiderman stretch", where you get into a pushup position, then bring your left foot to the outside of your left hand (you can drop your right knee down if it helps you get into this position, then try to straighten it out to activate the stretch). It seems to hit just about everything.
• Bryan also discussed the importance of glute activation in exercises where you don't necessarily think it's going to matter. As an example, he had a volunteer come to the stage and perform a bodyweight squat. Then he had the volunteer put one of these mini-bands around his knees which tended to pull them together. He had the volunteer resume a shoulder-width stance (thus stretching the band) and squat, and his form improved! The effect persisted after the band was removed. Funny, just a few days ago I was reading this interview with Pavel Tsatsouline where he had the interviewer do a hand-squeeze test normally, and then again with glutes activated. I recently discovered that it makes a difference when you're trying dragon flags as well (oh, as long as we're on the subject, two more T-Nation articles: Get Your Butt In Gear! (and Part II)

I wish this presentation had been a day rather than an hour. There are simply too many fitness attributes, exercises, and routines applicable to Ultimate to cover in an hour. I could've asked a million questions. Oh well, next time.

Real-Time Decision Making in Ultimate by Jim Parinella

Yet again, good stuff. Sadly my coverage is getting spottier the further I go. In this case it was because Jim's talk was the most "had to be there" of the bunch. I would probably also argue that of the presentations I saw, his was the most ambitious topic. Really what it boiled down to was an attempt to put into words all the decisions that good Ultimate players make unconsciously. As such, I think he wanted to give folks in the room an idea of the types of situations and experiences they need to accumulate and internalize. It actually tied in quite nicely with the keynote. Where the keynote talked about how your play needs to happen in the hind brain rather than the forebrain, Jim's talk focused on what, exactly, your hind brain needs to know. It can only come with experience, but it was interesting to have the types of experience needed articulated. Jim's own weblog post includes links to his PowerPoint slides and handout.

Kudos

My Dad and I left early, so unfortunately I didn't catch the last round of presentations or the panel discussion, but I had a great time nonetheless. Thanks and congratulations to Tiina Booth, George Cooke, and everyone involved for making this happen! This was a very impressive event, and I never would have guessed it was the first one of its kind!

Roger Harrell has a good page of exercises to keep you busy on the rings for awhile.

A good post from Crossfit Oakland: The 5 Gymnastics Skills Every Crossfitter Should Have. Be sure to check out the video of the rope climbing competition.

Check out the amazing performance this guy turns in on what has to be a ridiculously challenging obstacle course. It looks like the video is spliced to get under the YouTube 10 minute limit, so I don't know what his total elapsed time was, but damn, the challenges keep getting harder. The video's nine minutes long, but it's worth sticking it out to the end. What a display of pulling strength and endurance.

Does it get any better than Japanese game shows? « via RT forums »

UPDATE: Wikipedia says the guy is Makoto Nagano and the show is "Ninja Warrior", and that only he and another guy (Kazuhiko Akiyama) have ever successfully completed all four stages.

• Jon Gilson of Again Faster attended a USA Track and Field Coaching Certification and came away with some great notes on general athletic performance and sprinting tips and techniques.
• CrossFit Oakland has a very helpful post on muscle-ups. The photos are good, but the video of progression exercises (link therein) for kids is terrific.
• I took for granted that multiple sets were a necessity for strength training, but apparently that's debatable. Clarence Bass has two posts on the subject. The first seems geared towards bodybuilding, but the second references all kinds of generally applicable evidence. Listen to your body. (thanks Jim O.)

... well, they call them "facts", but I take what I read in the so-called "men's magazines" with a grain of salt. Still, 7 Things You Didn't Know About Fat is an interesting piece.

Eric Cressey set out to make the case for fish oil supplementation (here's part II) by citing reams of studies pointing to its many benefits. You can click through for the details, but here's the list of things it might help with:

Cardiovascular Health / Atherosclerosis / Hyperlipidemia / Hypertension; Hypertension; Cardiac Arrhythmias; Inflammatory Diseases of Joints and Connective Tissues; Osteoporosis; Kidney Disease/Renal Failure; Prostate Cancer; Colon Cancer; Breast Cancer; Skin Cancer; Crohn's Disease; Ulcerative Colitis; Asthma; Cystic Fibrosis; Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD); Sickle Cell Anemia; Menstrual Symptoms; Vision/Eye problems (glaucoma); Multiple Sclerosis; Prenatal and postpartum support; Psoriasis; Photosensitivity; Diabetes/Insulin Resistance; Resting Metabolic Rate; Body Composition Regulation and Leptin; Psychological Disorders; The Response to Stress; Migraine Headaches; Epilepsy; Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS); Fibromyaglia; Cirrhosis;

A couple notes from his closing thoughts:

If you aren't taking fish oil, you're an idiot. Seriously. Okay, I'll leave you with a bit more practical wisdom instead. The typical fish oil capsule you'll encounter is 1000 mg fish oil; we, however, are more concerned with the EPA and DHA content of that 1000 mg. In most cases, you'll find 180 mg EPA and 120 mg DHA per capsule. A good rule of thumb (especially based on the results of the clinical trials) is to consume 3-6 g combined EPA and DHA per day; at this capsule size, you'd need 10-20 capsules per day. For this reason, liquid fish oil is a great alternative.

If you're set on capsules these might be good, but I can't vouch for them myself. Seems like they pack more of a EPA/DHA wallop than the smaller capsules Eric mentions though. He also says:

Finally, be patient! Read the finer details of all of the studies that I've outlined and you'll realize that the majority of them were at least 6-8 weeks in duration (usually longer). Your body needs time to make good use of these healthy raw materials, so count on a few months before you see noticeable results if you have one of the aforementioned conditions. For the rest of you, you probably won't notice much, but I guarantee that you'll be healthier in the long run.

Interesting.

Talk about putting your body to the test... As chronicled in his two part piece One Mile to Ripped (here's Part II), Warren Scott Smith tests his theory that intense intervals are great for fat loss by running sprints wearing TWO weighted vests (to simulate the near-death agony that workouts induced back when he weighted 297 pounds). Funny and interesting, but this paragraph in particular struck me:

...I've discovered the biggest difference between those of us in the weight training game and those who are in endurance sports: endurance athletes equate getting better based on how much easier it is to do more work. We associate getting stronger with a willingness to make work even more difficult. I believe this is the root cause of the average Joe's failed attempts at fat loss.

I hope this joints forgive him for the pounding.

I believe I've linked to one of acrobat Dominic Lacasse's videos in the past, but his home page has a whole slew of them (scroll down to "MES VIDEOS SUR METACAFE.COM"). Awesome. « via Crossfit »

First, a few links on chocolate:

• Chocolate Milk as a Post-Exercise Recovery Aid (study, PDF, paid for in part by the dairy industry)
• Dark Chocolate Is Healthy Chocolate (and other Google Scholar references)

That leads me to Tom Furman's chocolate concoction for those evening hunger pangs. I tried it this evening, and it's pretty good. Not delicious like something full of sugar and fat in addition to the cocoa, but it does indeed seem to satiate my sweet tooth. If you're wondering about the Splenda, I've posted a bit on it before.

Wow, good link day. Drop what you're doing and read these three:

• The Year I Did Everything Right
• Physical Strategies: Don't Be A Sissy
• Why Pull-ups? by Ed Thompson

Three interesting recent pieces at T-Nation over the past couple weeks or so...

• Periodization Nuts and Bolts. A taste:

  Western periodization yielded what any new training approach, particularly one with weights on non-weight trained subjects, will yield: big initial progress. This progress in the weightroom led to some wise observations (such as high volume builds connective tissue as well as muscle), but also to some very wrong conclusions amongst coaches. For example, very quickly, "hypertrophy" became three sets of 8-12. "Strength" became 5 sets of 5, and "power" became 3 sets of 3. Finally, "peaking" became 3 sets of 1-2 reps. Again, while any kind of training is better than nothing, Western or linear periodization isn't optimal for the needs of high level athletes, targets one area of strength at a time and then ignores it for the rest of the season or cycle, has no back-offs built in, and doesn't address the individual weaknesses of individual athletes.

• Interesting Art DeVany Interview transcript. Be sure to check the comments for John Berardi's input as well.
• Finally, Beta Alanine sounds like a promising supplement (although the extent of my supplement dabbling begins and ends with a creatine experiment, so I'm hardly an expert).

I came up with a workout, heavily inspired by Ross Enamait's Work Capacity 101 (but easier), that takes advantage of all the equipment new equipment I've mentioned recently (my hanging pullup bar, my new jump rope and tire (the latter for sledgehammer training), and my horse stall mat as a nice burpee surface):

• 5 pullups
• 10 burpees
• 20 sledgehammer swings (10/arm)
• 40 high-knees, sprinting rope skips (if you miss, do them over until you get 40 in a row)
• Rest 1 minute
• Repeat 10 times

Well, my plan was 10 circuits, but the kids came home after the fifth. I say that like I blame them for cutting my workout short, but in reality I was grateful for the excuse. My forearms in particular were on fire, and I thought I was going to fling myself from the bar as I kipped at the bottom of the pullups, and my grip on the sledgehammer was so tenuous by the end that I feared for our car's safety (I workout in the garage). I would hate to have to explain a sledgehammer-sized dent in the door.

If that's too easy for you, you could switch up the sledge and the burpees like so:

• 5 pullups
• 10 sledgehammer swings per arm
• 20 burpees
• 40 high-knees, sprinting rope skips (if you miss, do them over until you get 40 in a row)
• Rest 1 minute
• Repeat 10 times

Better you than me. :-)

Found on the Crossfit forums (which was reposted from the RossTraining forums): interesting program for developing a "model" one-arm pushup. Very tough. To get an idea of what you're up against, assume a pushup position with good form: body straight as a board, feet together. Now take away one arm, but keep your body straight and don't let your hips or shoulders rotate from their original position. Now do a pushup, keeping this body position. That's what they mean by a model one-arm pushup.

UPDATE: I've since read those instructions another couple times since posting, and I'd encourage you to do the same if you just skimmed the first time (like I did). A few of the exercises are completely different (and harder) from my first impressions.

At Pinnacle Fitness, The effect of NSAIDs such as aspirin, ibuprofen, and acetaminophen on muscle growth:

A group in 2001, however, using eccentric contractions in human subjects to induce muscle damage, showed that post-exercise NSAID use drastically reduced the increase in protein synthesis normally seen in response to muscle damage. This study is relevant to real workouts because the researchers used a model for muscle damage that is very similar to what what happens during a normal weight training workout and the doses of NSAIDs used in the study were normal therapeutic doses, not unlike those that most people would take for a headache or after a tough workout for soreness

Also read the piece at Again Faster, via which I found the link above.

I've heard great things about Dr. John Berardi's Precision Nutrition. He recently put up a Gourmet Nutrition Desserts booklet, available free through the holidays!

Introducing the Gourmet Nutrition Desserts, a 44 page dessert cookbook complete with delicious "Precision Nutrition approved" dessert recipes, beautiful photography, and hints on how to eat the foods you love without the gaining the fat you hate.

I'm going to have to try a couple of those this Christmas.

I was reading this old Straight to the Bar post on Bruce Lee's back injury, and followed one of the links to this terrific piece on the legendary Lee physique (all functional, not for show). Lots of great anecdotes. Definitely worth a read, fan or not.

But back to the back injury... To me, it's very scary to consider that one small misstep with the weights can screw you up forever. And if it can happen to someone as superbly conditioned and focused as Lee, it can happen to anyone. It certainly gives me pause in my self-taught (albeit with good books), uncoached approach. Not that I'm going to stop, mind you. :-)

Ross Enamait's latest article and video, Budget Training, is up. Every time I turn around that guy gets stronger. The weights I use for strength, he uses for conditioning. How depressing. And inspiring.

Got a new jump rope this week. I've tried a variety of jump ropes (leather, beaded, and "speed", but this new one is easily my favorite. It's a Cable Freestyle Rope from buyjumpropes.net. The handles are long, lightweight plastic (with foam sleeves, not pictured on the site) and the rope is basically a flexible coated wire. It's the fastest rope I've tried (although not the fastest they sell) and the long handles are nice for crossovers. Since it's been cold I've only used it wearing like exercise pants, which is good because I bet it hurts like hell when you whip yourself with it. Adjustment is very easy, just a little two-part sleeve inside each handle that you slide apart to adjust. Adjusted out to the max. they are just long enough for my 6'4" self.

The other new piece of equipment I got this week was a used tire, kinda on the largish side (maybe off an SUV?), picked up for free at a local garage (they generally have to pay to dispose of them, so I imagine any garage would be happy to be rid of them). What's it for? Why, beating the tar out of it with a sledgehammer, of course!

So, in honor of my new finds (and workout time being pretty tight lately), today's workout:

• Tabata jump rope, immediately followed by...
• Tabata sledghammer, immediately followed by...
• 50 double-unders on the rope.

Ross Enamait recently ran an article on sledgehammer training, which includes a video demo of sledgehammer Tabatas. From there, he also links to his own article specifically on Tabatas.

Anyway, since I mostly feel the jump rope in my shoulders and the sledgehammer in my forearms, it's amazing I can type this at all.

Now that my new pullup bar gives me plenty of room to hang and swing, I've been able to work on my kipping pullups (Crossfit has all the best resources on what these are and how to do them: this thread is essential reading (or the first page, at the very least), and here's a movie teaching them). What a great exercise!

The debate over which is "better", kipping or strict, is extensive. I'm sure I have nothing new to contribute to that discussion. I like them both, but personally find kipping pullups to be more fun, and somehow more satisfying. And it's not because I can do more of them, because I can't! As I'm just starting with them, they have exposed a set of weak links I wasn't aware I possessed. When I bottom out on a kipping pullup, the speed of the descent and the swinging motion requires more power and flexibility in my shoulders than during a strict pullup, and at the same time that force really taxes my grip and forearm strength.

Anyway, they feel great, give 'em a try. I'm sure I'll keep mixing up pullup varieties in my training, but kipping pullups have definitely joined my list of staple exercises.

P.S. Having learned and only done these on a swinging pullup bar, I wonder how they'll feel if I get to try them on a fixed bar?

To satisfy my sweet tooth, I've come to increasingly rely on Splenda (sucralose) sweetener. Usually just a packet in my oatmeal in the morning, or a packet in some plain yogurt. Not a big deal, but as sucralose is increasingly finding its way into a variety of products, I wondered as to its safety. After googling "splenda", you don't have to scroll down very far to get to pages from one of its more vociferous critics, Dr. Joseph Mercola. Not really sure how to take his stuff though, given how many hits a search for "mercola" and "quack" returns. So you've got Mercola on one side and Michael Fumento on the other side. Who to believe? Ultimately I found The Truth About Sucralose by Cy Willson at T-Nation to be the most persuasive. The best course of action is certainly to avoid all sugar and artificial sweeteners, but I'm not ready to pull my sweet tooth just yet. So for me, Splenda it is. For now.

• Physical Strategies links up a bunch of Jumpstretch Band Training PDFs. You have to do a bit of work to separate the wheat from the chaff, but I took away several new ideas. Use Firefox and DownThemAll! to grab them all at once.
• Physical Strategies again, making an interesting case for eating buffalo instead of beef.
• dirttime.org posts an excellent interview with Jim "Beast Skills" Bathurst.

T-Nation is running a good article titled 50 Tips for Serious Athletes. The last tip suggests, "for team training, play games with your athletes." Included in the list is "speedball", which I'd never heard of. Sounds like fun though.

I can't remember how, but I stumbled across a reprint of a Stuart McGill (the back fitness and rehab guy, coincidentally recently mentioned by De Vany) article dealing with Low Back Exercise and "Superstiffness". It reminded me that I really want to get his Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance book. Looks like it's in it's third edition now. Maybe Santa will bring it to me.

I've seen it suggested in various places that horse stall mats make great, cheap exercise mats. Looks like the rumors are true! Tractor Supply Co. carries a 4' x 6' stall mat for $40. It's 3/4" dense rubber, and really heavy. If you want one, it's entirely possible there's a Tractor Supply Co. store near you. Transporting it's not too big a deal; it rolled up (although not real compactly) and fit in the back of my Subaru Outback easily (with the seats down).

Crossfit linked up Vurtego pogo sticks this evening, and as I remembered thinking the Flybar looked cool a few months ago that sent me off on a bit of Googling. Flybar wins the video competition with this backflip series, but at least according to one site the Vurtego holds the height record. There are even pogo stick exercise classes built around these things!

Sorry, bit of a link backlog:

• I'm kinda late with this one, but another big holiday is right around the corner. De Vany on holiday binging:

  And, in case you say "I will binge just this one day," note that the high insulin spike from a meal full of stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and other starches and simple carbs will amount to a massive assault on your insulin sensitivity. The footprint of that meal will be there for a long time. You will be curiously vulnerable to carb temptations for some time after because your sensitivity is diminished and your circulating insulin will remain elevated.

• Two via Straight to the Bar (who I'm poaching from with regularity these days): Joachim Bartoll's weblog (I read the fish oil post first, and immediately decided it was worth adding to my aggregator) and this BBC story on desk jockey posture. Maybe my programming slouch isn't such a bad thing!

This is pretty cool (if you play Ultimate and read the same weblogs I do): Crossfit gave women's division champs Fury a nod.

Two more quick videos before I hit the sack: among all the impressive campusing videos on MoonClimbing (a few pages in), I was probably most taken with Doubles. Also, I have a sneaking suspicion I've posted this already, but even if so this acrobat training video is worth a rewatch.

I've mentioned this before, but Jim at Beast Skills really does incredible work both in the gym and on his weblog. Top-notch tutorials. Happy day, he has a new One-Legged Squat (Pistol) tutorial up!

Straight to the Bar always runs good stuff, tip o' the hat to them for these two videos. First, insane balancing and body control demonstrated by Rodney Mullin's skateboarding. Second, the Secret Service Snatch Test (SSST) involves snatching a 53 lb. kettlebell as many times as you can in 10 minutes (does the Secret Service really do that?). Anyway, Dustin Silveri scores 195 repetitions. The guy moved over 10,000 pounds from his knees to over his head in 10 minutes. I'll have to give that one a try (with a DB) one of these days. I bet it's a helluva workout.

Crossfit Jersey Shore has an interesting approach to sandbag construction: they use old (and free!) truck tire tubes. Cool!

Happy Thanksgiving, gang!

I mentioned previously the Again Faster Bar, and really liked the look of it. The market inefficiency of spending 20% of the total cost on shipping bugged me though, so I never ended up taking the plunge. So I percolated for awhile over how I'd build one myself. The trick is attaching the pipe to the strap such that it doesn't spin (although a spinning bar would offer a different challenge). Here's what I came up with:

...and here's a detail of the end assembly:

Here is the equipment list and costs:

• 1" diameter 48" long black pipe ($8.96)
• 1/2" x 6" (I think) eye bolts ($3.72)
• 2 1" galvanized Ts ($4.62)
• 2 1/2" lock washers ($0.30)
• 8 1/2" fender washers ($2.00) 4 1/2" fender washers ($1.00)
• 2 1/2" nuts (mine were included with the eye bolts)
• 2 carabiners ($12.50)
• 2 NRS 1" HD Tie Down Straps ($16.55)

Grand total: $49.58. More than I was expecting, but isn't that always the way? You could economize by leaving out the carabiners and just threading the straps right through the eye bolts, and by buying shorter straps. I wanted the straps longer so I could throw them over high things (like swingsets, rafters, and tree branches), and the carabiners make life a little easier.

Anyway, assembly was easy: screw the Ts onto the pipe. I used a pipe wrench and a huge screwdriver through the T for lots of leverage, getting them nice and tight. You'll want them to both be oriented the same way when they are snugged down. Put an eye bolt through one of the Ts. Then, on the other side thread on the two four fender washers (two four because you want the metal to be thick here, as it supports everything three or four per side might be better). Then the lock washer, then the nut. Hold everything centered as you tighten the nut. I got mine tight enough that the washers went slightly concave on me (again, three or four fender washers per side might be better than my meager two). Repeat on the other side, and you're good to go!

I'm no engineer though, so don't be surprised if the whole thing falls apart, the straps break, or the washers just pull right through and dump you. The eye bolts even say explicitly say not to use them to support people. So don't build one of these. If you do, and you get hurt, it's not my fault. I'm just telling you what I did.

UPDATE: be sure to read the comments for design suggestions/concerns.

UPDATE 2: became convinced two fender washers on each side weren't enough, so upped it to four, and updated the instructions above accordingly.

On vacation I came up with this GPP workout that I liked. It won't transform you into a superstar or anything, but it hits a little bit of everything, gets the heart rate up, and works the core at the same time rather than having to do a separate mini-workout:

• 10 pushups
• 20 squats
• 10 super planks (demo in this Minute of Strength video)
• Repeat 10 times

It's a bit along the lines of the Pulling, Climbing, Twisting workout I posted awhile back.

As long as we're on the subject of rowing, I just found this terrific PDF (1.7MB) on correcting common technique mistakes: Common Mistakes in Rowers' Techniques and Remedies Therefore. The diagrams assume you're in a boat rather than on an erg, but all the info still applies (except perhaps some of the oar technique stuff). At least, I think it still applies, but keep in mind I know nothing about rowing.

A little over a month ago I tried a 500m sprint on the C2 rower. Since then the Crossfit thread that prompted me to try this in the first place has grown to mammoth proportions. Folks seem to agree that setting the damper to 10 is the way to go for benchmark purposes, so I finally gave it a go. Again, I love that you can set the monitor to show you your 500m pace for each stroke (i.e. how long it would take if all your strokes were like the current stroke). I wanted to break 1:30, and was rowing a 1:24 pace for the first 50 seconds before hitting a wall. It was all I could do to finish. Still, I just barely missed it, 1:30.5. Half a second! Damn!

I stood up afterward and could immediately tell I didn't have a drop of glycogen left in any muscles, anywhere. Almost fell over. My throat was even sore from the breathing (gasping) and grunting (groaning) involved. The best 90-second workout (give or take half-a-second) you're likely to find. Try it sometime.

During the season the strength workouts (not one of my strong suits, if I even have a strong suit) are the first thing to fall off the table as I make room for pickup and tournaments and such. I manage to do a pretty good job maintaining, but I certainly don't make any gains. I'm starting to get a good picture of what my off-season is going to look like this year, which is nice. Still messing around with different things though, as I'm going away next week and don't want to try to establish a good rhythm until I get back. Had a nice strength workout tonight though, which I thought I'd share:

• One-arm DB snatch, 4 sets of 5 reps per arm.
• Sandbag shouldering, 4 sets of 8 (alternate shoulder with each rep).
• Grasso Lunge, 4 sets of 5 reps (new exercise, really like it). Interwove these sets with sets of...
• ... Romanian Deadlifts (scroll down until you find it, I've also seen it called a one-legged deadlift). Another favorite. 4 sets of 5 reps.
• Weighted pull-ups, 4 sets of 4 reps, Interwove these sets with sets of...
• ... Weighted ring dips, 4 sets of 4 reps.

Felt good. I'm thinking I'll be just the right amount of sore tomorrow.

I really enjoyed browsing through Bil Elsinger's Nationals Open Division Finals photos. Lots of great shots, but I particularly liked teasing a story out of a couple sequences. Two examples:

• First, second, third, and fourth.
• First (holy cow!) and second.

Via the RT forum comes an impressive resource, Performance Workouts:

Enjoy what promises to be one of the most extensive and thorough exercise databases available. These guides assure that you get the most from each and every workout. Choose from still images with detailed descriptions, or see the exercise in action with video clips available in two different formats (Windows Media Player or QuickTime).

Nice!

I revised and significantly expanded one of my old posts on creatine references and my personal experience.

They banned playing Tag? They banned TAG?!!. And not just Tag:

Officials at an elementary school south of Boston have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they'll get hurt and hold the school liable.

Liable? I'd be tempted to sue the school for preventing my kids from running around. You want to ban something from the school? Ban soda. Ban trans fat. But running? Outrageous.

UPDATE: The LA Times is running a good opinion piece on this.

Just a couple videos for you: first up, a teammate sent me this pole vault compilation. What a great event. I love the slow motion footage of the moment when you push and arc over the bar and release the pole. Balletic. Second, via the RT forum, comes this "USOEC Intense Greco Roman Training Highlight Video". Explosive power on display.

On Crossfit today was a link to a "Cliff Kipping" video by Jon Gilson. I liked his portable pull-up bar setup, and didn't have to look very far to discover he sells them under the name The Again Faster Bar (after his site). If you live in the Boston Metro area you can pick up the complete set, which comes with lashing straps and chains for $150, or you can have just the bar and straps delivered anywhere in the US for $60 + $15 FedEx shipping. Here's a related thread. Tempting as an option for my garage, so I don't have to move the rings around, and could just leave it slung over the rafters, but I can probably jury-rig something if portability is not a priority. Still seems like a nice piece of equipment though.

A muscle-up tutorial on YouTube. I'd like to notch that skill, but it gives me elbow pain. I expect to get it eventually, though. « via RT »

I promise not to flood the weblog with these, but ultivillage recently posted another fun clip, this one featuring a huge game-winning catch by Jeff Graham to lock down the #2 NE spot to Nationals. That boy can climb the ladder.

Scott over at Straight to the Bar has been posting excellent stuff. The latest thing to catch my eye was his linkage to a great kettlebell certification video. The impressive stuff starts around 2:45 and keeps getting more impressive as it goes. The heavy double-arm Turkish Get-up is quite a feat. The explosive pistols at 4:00 are ridiculous. And the kettlebell bear walk at the end looks like fun. Painful fun, but fun.

The subhead of this site used to read "'Lanky and Peckish' is probably closer to the truth." Then I had this from a teammate, which made me laugh:

My two cents, by the way, is that neither of those words is really all that good, but I respect the thesaurus work and the self-effacement behind them. The idea that *you* are "lanky," is, really, a serious insult to people like XXX and me, who are pretty much left with only "scrawny" if you have staked out that territory. Peckish implies, to me anyway, a shortness of temper and brittleness that just aren't even remotely there.

How I got the British usage of "peckish" ("slightly hungry") in my head rather than the American ("ill-tempered") is a bit of a mystery. My theory was too much Tolkien as a youth, but now I'm guessing it's too much Wallace and Gromit as an adult.

So I changed it.

I decided to spend my way out of my post-Regionals depression, and as the stuff has arrived in the mail it has contributed to my growing excitement over my off-season training plans.

First up was a 12-foot length of 1.5" manila rope from McMaster-Carr. $22.17 including shipping. I'd link right to the page, but their site uses frames. I hate frames. Anyway, I tied it to a garage rafter with a bowline knot for rope climbs. It's not very high, but workable, especially if I do them in an L-seat position. In fact, I'll have to work on it before I can manage that distance in that position.

Next, the big ticket item: the "advanced" set of Iron Woody Fitness Bands for $118.45, including shipping. I've played with these a bit, and they're going to be great (I had no idea they'd be so thick). I can loop a band over the door attachment of my Homemade GHD, rig a board with footholds, and work the Grasso Lunge. Will also be perfect for improvising a kneeling cable crunch, and all kinds of rotational/core movements, explosive and otherwise. I can also use them in devious ways to add weird loads to pullups, pushups, and other bodyweight exercises. And free weights, for that matter.

Also, inspired by Ross Enamait's The Home Gym video, I built myself a couple doubly evil wheels:

Equipment from Home Depot (total $32.70):

• 2 3/4" x 5" black pipe nipples (handles)
• 4 lawnmower tires
• 2 1/2" x 10" carriage bolts
• 4 1/2" hex nuts (two per bolt - screw one on, then screw the other one on to lock it down)
• 8 1/2" washers (one for each side of each tire)

I've been working on the standing rollout some more after letting it slide a bit. Progress is very slow. Doing one-arm rollouts from the knees is a nice exercise too, for those of us who can't do 'em standing. The wheels are also great for pushup variations. For example, pushup with one arm while the other arm rolls out. Or up. Or, for a big challenge, down (towards your waist).

Good clip on ultivillage.com today of an impressive play. The receiver (Fortunat Mueller) simultaneously makes the catch and gets creamed, and then recovers almost instantly to throw a deep scoring pass. Incredible field sense.

If you are considering creatine supplementation, I'm thinking these three articles, taken together, cover just about everything you need to know to make an informed decision:

• Sportscience Creatine Review
• Creatine and Endurance Athletes
• Creatine: is it really safe for long-term use?

I adopted the low-dose approach described in the second article and ran with it for around a month:

However, bear in mind that the water-retention-related gain in weight is primarily a function of the high creatine-loading doses (20 to 30 grams per day) used both in many research studies and by many athletes. In a very recent study, a lower loading dose (6g of creatine per day) produced only a one-pound gain in weight ('Why Your Creatine Consumption Is Costing You Too Much,' Running Research News, vol. 14(7), pp. 1-4, 1998).

And in fact researchers are finding that lower loading doses can be as effective as the big, 20-gram per day intakes at building up muscle creatine-phosphate concentrations, provided that the lower doses are taken over a little bit more time. Basically, the new research is revealing that six one-half gram doses of creatine per day (for a total of three grams daily) over the course of about 30 days will build muscle-creatine concentrations to a level comparable to that achieved with the whopping 20-gram ingestions. Very importantly, these three-gram per day intakes appear to be associated with very little water retention and weight gain.

Thus, it appears that creatine monohydrate can be a performance-boosting (and legal) supplement for endurance runners. The best way to take it is to simply sprinkle about a half-gram of the stuff on some food (and then of course eat the creatine and comestible) six times per day. Little creatine will be lost in the urine and faeces, creating a very economical intake pattern, little weight will be gained, and the resulting heightened intramuscular creatine-phosphate concentration should have a direct, positive impact on the quality of your high-intensity training sessions. Since intensity is the most potent producer of running fitness, your creatine-boosted sessions should eventually lead to some very nice PBs.

As advertised, no weight gain, which was nice. Everything else about that approach is so gradual it's impossible to say how much benefit I reaped, if any. Could I train harder? Maybe. Some of the burpee challenges seemed a bit easier on some days, but such things are highly variable under any circumstances. I'll probably run a couple more 2-month long cycles (using the same dosage strategy) over the coming year and see how it feels. I doubt I'd take it long-term, as I'd hate to run the risk of hampering my body's ability to produce creatine naturally, as suggested in the "long term risks" article.

Ross Enamait just posted a good article and video on sledgehammer training. I'd do that in my garage this winter, but it would just be a matter of time before I knocked the garage door opener off the ceiling.

Congrats to Jim at Beast Skills for nailing the planche! Wow, that's some strong work, and I know he's been at it for awhile... the rewards of hard work and perseverance. No permalink yet, so just check out the home page.

Crossfit announced they'll be releasing "hundreds of pages of previously published subscription articles to the CrossFit site over the next few months in order to expand the amount of content available free of charge." Awesome! They've already released 13 articles via the Crossfit Journal weblog. A great resource just got better; a big tip o' the hat to the Crossfit gang.

Sad to report that our (Koob's) season ended at Regionals this year. On Saturday we lost a close one to GLUM (12-10 in a capped game) and a less-close one to Above & Beyond (15-10). We won our other games, so that put us third after reseeding. We beat Bos in the first round of the backdoor bracket 15-9 or so. Meanwhile GLUM upset A&B in the championship game (not sure of the score, but by all accounts they were on fire winning maybe 15-10 after jumping out to a big lead). So we played A&B in the game to go, and oh oh oh I thought we had 'em. We took half 8-7, but lost 15-12. I would normally include details and color commentary, but I just can't bring myself to. Very proud of my team, everybody played their guts out. Hats off to GLUM and A&B. As much as it sucks to lose (and boy, does it suck), these hard-fought, high-stakes, tough-but-sporting games are why we play.

Nice to come home to a hero's welcome even with our premature exit from the series. Vicky made a great dinner and Amelia (8) and Ella (4) were all over me with sympathy, and were especially good last night. Funny exchange with Ella:

Ella: I'm sorry you lost your frisbee Daddy.
Jim: Thank you, baby.
Ella: But next year, TRY.
Jim & Vicky: [laugh]
Ella: (Wonders for a moment why we're laughing, then...) Try HARDER, I mean.

I will.

Somehow a bunch of links piled up on me:

• The Beast Skills tutorials don't come around very often these days, but they are always worth the wait. The latest covers standing rollouts with the evil wheel.
• Crossfit has a vertical leap thread going. Two Joe DeFranco pieces are referenced therein: Fabulous 15 (which I believe I've linked up before) and Dirty Tricks For Higher Jumps.
• I don't have any medical chops for evaluating this critically, but every time Art De Vany posts something by Mark Sisson it makes a lot of sense. This time: Fat Cells as Disposal Sites for Toxins.
• Speaking of fat, you (and I) really should completely eliminate trans fat from our diets:

  Furthermore, two independent methods of estimation indicate that the adverse effect of trans fat is stronger than that of saturated fat. By our most conservative estimate, replacement of partially hydrogenated fat in the U.S. diet with natural unhydrogenated vegetable oils would prevent approximately 30,000 premature coronary deaths per year, and epidemiologic evidence suggests this number is closer to 100,0000 premature deaths annually. These reductions are higher than what could be achieved with realistic reductions in saturated fat intake.

• Hopefully the offseason is still a month away, but I'm thinking I'd like to work the Grasso Lunge into my winter routine.
• Finally, a bit of fun: "Unbelievably Long Rollerblade Grind" @ Google Video.

I was reading Ross Enamait's post on the recent report that walking won't get you fit, and followed his link to Sports Conditioning by Mark J. Smith, Ph.D., a four-page PDF (seven if you count the citations) nicely summarizing the current thinking on high-intensity training. How's this grab you:

The acknowledgment that the activity did not need to be continuous was a major shift from the initial recommendations of the ACSM. It was even stated, "accumulation of physical activity in intermittent, short bouts is considered an appropriate approach to achieving the activity goal". This concept was validated in another study that demonstrated that three 1-minute bouts of maximal intensity exercise, separated by 1-hour recoveries, constituted 74% of the oxygen uptake of 20 minutes of low- to moderate-intensity exercise.

In what other venue can 15% of the time buy you 74% of the benefit? And would a fourth minute get you to almost 100%?

I hate to steal Dr. Smith's thunder, and I strongly encourage you to read the whole thing, but he concludes:

...the research is extensive in its support for the notion that high-intensity intermittent training should be the predominant method employed by the field and court sport athlete. It has been established that this type of exercise can have an equal or even greater training effect on the cardiovascular system than continuous endurance training, while also increasing the anaerobic capacity. This form of training also produces a more favorable body composition, and better improves the ability of the athlete to tolerate lactate. Research also supports the fact that there are a number of additional benefits resulting from participation in high-intensity training that are not evident with long continuous exercise.

Leave the endurance training for the endurance athletes.

Inspired by this 500 Meter Rowing Time Crossfit thread, I had to give it a go. I was pretty pleased with my 1:37 time (barely keeping my lungs in my chest towards the end) until I started reading up on the C2 drag factor. Sounds like for this distance setting the damper at 10 is as close as we have to a standard. Mine was set on 3. Dang. Not sure how much harder 10's going to be, but I'll try it next week.

One of the nice things about this particular distance is the C2 display shows you the 500 split pace you are currently rowing. You get feedback on each stroke what your time is going to look like if you keep pulling the way you are. As fatigue set in I'm sure I would have slacked if the meter didn't make it painfully apparent I couldn't afford to slack if I wanted to beat 1:40.

The days are getting shorter and Thursday pickup is dwindling. As our Goaltimate kit was late in arriving last night, we played a few rounds of box, which reminds me of a rule variation y'all might like. Everybody has their own rules for how the disc is cleared after a turnover, either past a certain point/perimeter, or after X number of throws. The variation is "the fast break rule" and it works like this: you are allowed to score on the very first throw of your possession after a turnover. If that first throw is not a score (or if you opt to not even try) you then must clear as usual before you are allowed to score. One additional wrinkle: if the turnover occurs in the box, the fast break rule allows the score to be thrown from inside the box (so a player can pick up the disc lying in the box and immediately chip it to a receiver who's also in the box). No Callahan goals, but again, if a defender catches the disc in the box they can immediately throw it to a teammate also in the box for the fast break score.

Of course, if your house rules don't require a clear at all ("scrum rules", I like to call such games), this variation is meaningless.

Three things to start off your Monday:

• Insane. Dan Osman Extreme Climbing. The man goes 400+ feet straight up in under 4.5 minutes. Ridiculously fit and strong, not to mention crazy.« via kottke »
• Although I'm not a kettlebell guy I really like the Clean & Press ladder circuit presented in The Minute of Strength, Issue #16. And I really like the look of the "Figure 8 to a Hold" movement, and the Super Plank (both in the latter half of the video).
• Finally, here's the skinny on vibration platforms. Still seems like an expensive gimmick of dubious benefit to me. There is no substitute for hard work.

Update: Oh. Damn. Turns out Dan Osman died doing something different (but similarly risky) in 1999.

Just a quick workout of the day for you: do a set of Tabata sprints, followed by Tabata "backwards overhead medicine ball throws" (hold the ball with both hands, squat a bit while bending over then hurl the ball backwards over your head as far as you can). I used an 8 lb. ball and a 10 lb. ball, so I'd throw one then the other then sprint to them and do it again as fast and as forcefully as I could. My daughter thought this was a particularly fun one to watch.

First off, I was never actually diagnosed with achilles tendinitis. They hurt like hell though, and now, after a lot of work, they're better. I think my self-diagnosis was correct, but what do I know? Anyway, here's what happened and what I did:

I played Easterns in early June with no problems, but afterwards had some achilles pain in one ankle. Pickup over the subsequent weeks made it quite a bit worse, and it ended up in both ankles. Some days were worse than others. On a good day I was aware of my achilles but could play fine, and on a bad day my first step was very painful and I probably could only manage 75% of my top speed, if that. I stayed in denial for two to four weeks (can't remember), then decided I had to take steps. So I did what I always do, which is read a lot about the problem. If you don't feel like doing all the same reading, here's what I took away from it:

In most cases it's not an inflammation problem. Instead, the tendon fibers are being damaged, and the tendon is becoming less tendon-like. There were scary MRIs somewhere of healthy tendon vs. deteriorating, and they certainly helped spur me to action. Anyway, there was a study where one group did your typical anti-inflammatory treatments (ice, ibuprofen, cortizone) while another group did strengthening exercises. At the end of the 12 weeks, the whole (I think) anti-inflammatory group was still miserable, while the whole (I think) strengthening group was much improved or cured. Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, the strengthening protocol is a bit of a pain in the ass. You do the following twice per day (!), seven days a week (!) for twelve (!!) weeks:

• 3 sets of 15 straight-leg, weighted, eccentric calf drops per leg (45/leg, 90 total).
• 3 sets of 15 bent-leg, weighted, eccentric calf drops per leg (45/leg, 90 total).
• (so that's 180 in the morning, then another 180 in the evening.)

An eccentric calf drop works like this: Stand with the balls of your feet on the edge of a step, and your heels hanging off the edge. With both feet, raise yourself up on your toes. Now stand on one foot and lower your heel as far as it will go. Put your other foot back down to raise yourself up again. The point is you are trying to NOT work the raise (concentric contraction of the calf), and are trying to super-work the lower (eccentric contraction).

The study said you should work your way up to decent extra weight. I started off with bodyweight just to try it, jumped up to 20 pounds almost immediately, and finished the 12 weeks at 60 pounds (attached to a dip belt). The study also said the participants generally pushed through pain, but what does that mean, really? Personally, I found my achilles might start off sore in a given session, but would usually improve over the course of the session. The study didn't say anything about whether you should lay off other activity, so I chose not too. Kept playing pickup twice a week (at times quite painful), doing other workouts, etc. Not sure if this was the right thing to do or not.

The other thing I did was borrow a night splint (I've never ordered from them before, so can't vouch for them) and wear it overnight on whichever achilles felt worse (wish I had two!). I feel like this helped, but it's hard to be sure. There is no doubt the splinted achilles was less stiff and sore first thing in the morning. Anyway, if I were buying new I'd probably try a couple of the sock-like variety (another vendor I've never tried) as the bulky ones are, well, bulky, and more expensive.

Finally, the last thing I did was work the calf stretch I described in my My Key Stretches as often as possible. I can now get my hips to the wall, which is a pretty big improvement from where I started 12 weeks ago.

Anyway, the bottom line is that in the first four weeks I wasn't sure if it was helping. I suspected it might be, but still had painful days. In the second four weeks I was sure it was helping, but I wasn't all better yet. By the third four weeks I was basically pain-free. At this point I'm all done with the program and the achilles don't affect my play at all. I'm doing maintenance sets every other day or so, and we'll see how that goes. I still get stiffness in the achilles from time to time, but so far no more pain. We'll see if maintenance workouts keep the problem in check.

• Malcolm Gladwell asks: Abolish the NCAA? (then follows up with NCAA Redux).
• Man, the Supertraining table of contents looks fabulous. « via RossTraining forums»
• Also via RT, 660 one-arm push-ups?!?! And he's getting all the way down there. Reminds me of this one-arm rope climb video.

Reader llimllib asks:

With the series coming up in a month or so, how are you going to work out to try and peak at the right time?

A teammate has borrowed my Ross Enamait books, so I can't really give as detailed an answer as I'd like (at least not terminology-wise), but it boils down to this: there are several models of periodization (how you time and vary workouts to improve over time), and the one I follow doesn't really emphasize peaking.

What I don't do is follow the periodization model where you spend a certain number of weeks emphasizing strength, then more weeks emphasizing speed, then more where you start putting it together, etc. in the hopes that it will all be in optimal for your event of choice. Don't get me wrong, this can can be a successful model, it just doesn't have much appeal for me. I like to be able to feel like I can play tourneys throughout the season without shortchanging them because I haven't peaked yet.

In his books, Ross favors a model geared towards fighters. There's no well-defined season, fights may occur year round, and schedule changes/opportunties mean you may have to fight on relatively short notice. I'm no fighter, but I like this model for myself as well. I like doing lots of varied routines, working on many different fitness qualities throughout the week. In a given week I try to fit in the following:

• 1-2 sessions Tabatas, with at least one being sprints (emphasis on max. fatigue).
• 1 session hill sprints and/or acceleration work (emphasis on max. effort/power, not fatigue).
• 1 session GPP (fairly grueling bodyweight circuits).
• 2 sessions pick-up Ultimate.
• 1 session max. strength.
• 1 session explosive strength.
• 2-3 core workouts interspersed with the other stuff throughout the week.
• 1-2 rest days/week.

It's pretty easy to fit all that in during the off-season, but adding in the 2 days of pickup makes it hard. At this point in the season, if anything falls off my plate it's the strength work, but I try not to let it.

Anyway, by mixing up the stuff I work on throughout the week, I don't overtrain any one given quality, so I can keep progressing (the rest day(s) are essential, however).

I'll do this pretty hard for three or four weeks, then take a back-off week, where I might just do bodyweight exercise, jump rope for the Tabatas, etc. I stay active, but I don't kill myself like I do in the hard weeks. The back-off week allows supercompentation to kick in, where your body adjusts to the strains of the preceding weeks, and allows you to start again the next week from an incrementally higher level. I think I've got the gist of the theory here, but again, no books to refer to at the moment.

And that's pretty much it. I repeat that cycle year round, varying what I Tabata, what strength exercises I do, etc. to keep it fresh. This has allowed me (I hope/think) to improve my strength and conditioning evenly and steadily. Again, this worked better in the off-season, as pickup kinda messes things up, but I still think I've gotten stronger as the season has progressed.

As for the implications as the fall series approaches, I'm basically going to keep doing what I'm doing, but will time it such that my back-off week is the week before Regionals. I'll probably skip pickup that Thursday, but will otherwise break a sweat a few times that week to stay active and fresh.

I gotta say though, I pretty much adopted this model as one I wanted for life, not for Ultimate. It seems to fit well and work for me, but a more traditional periodization model (build over months and peak for Nationals) might be superior.

Anyway, hope that answers your question!

Until yesterday, I had no luck playing catch with my daughter, either with balls or discs. She's afraid of getting hit with anything hard, and doesn't judge trajectories very well (probably because we haven't played catch enough because of the first problem!). Smaller discs are still too hard for her to use without fear, and the really light cheap-o promotional discs are just too erratic. Same with must weighted fabric discs (and you can't throw a flick).

But I finally think I found the ideal disc for us, as we had a very satisfying round yesterday! It's called the Fun Gripper Flyer, and it comes in 6" and 9" models. I got the 9", which is working out well. It's perfect for my eight-year-old, and I think it would work for my four-year-old too, if she didn't insist on throwing in her own unique style (picture a forehand arm motion, but with a backhand grip). Anyway, it's of the "weighted fabric" variety, but the rim is pretty thick, feels like it had a bunch of little beads in it, and is covered with a rubbery weave. The body is a padded nylon, I think. It holds it's shape pretty well, and you can even throw a serviceable flick with it! It's certainly not a distance disc, but it works great in the 15-25 yard range (we aren't throwing further than that yet). Anyway, I'm going to pick up another and introduce my daughter and her friends to Schtick.

• Art De Vany: Work Outs for Chicago Nick and Las Vegas Nick.
• Ross Enamait: Strength Training For Fighters - 15 Random Thoughts (definitely not just for fighters, IMO).

Like the Roger Federer piece (which you really should read, as it cast tennis—which I've always enjoyed watching—in a whole new light for me), this ought to be good for fans of sports in general, not just tennis aficionados...

First up, this is a terrific tribute to the many comebacks of Andre Agassi's career:

The most important thing I've learned from watching him is how to defeat winning and losing.

That piece links up this interview with Agassi following his loss to Federer at the US Open final last year. Fantastic, and more weight behind the "Federer is possibly the best ever" camp.

Finally, check out this composite photo of an Agassi vs. Pavel point. I'm guessing Agassi controlled that one.

• Revisited my Pulling, Climbing, Twisting workout for the first time since March. I like it.
• Remember those two days of Scott Sonnon videos I linked to? Well, he has days 3 through 6 up now (scroll down "Video Performance Clips"). Good stuff! His creative use of the rings continue to provide the highlights.
• Two on YouTube: Beyond Burpees « via RT » and a 720-degree (!) Dunk.

It's a bit vague in spots, but More Research on the Aerobic Benefit of Sprinting nicely sums up why I've completely eliminated anything remotely resembling long distance work from my training. Why sacrifice speed and power with no upside? Personally, I need every bit of speed and power I can eek out. I do wish I knew how much rest the sprinting group took between sprints, and whether the numbers are reversed in that table, but you get the gist of it.

So as you probably know by now, this is why Tabata Intervals are the backbone of my training regimen. For anecdotal evidence of the protocol's broad applicability, scroll down the third success story on this Clarance Bass page, titled "Tabata Protocol Produces PR Rowing from 500- to 10,000-Meters". « via CrossFit »

If you wear Adidas Copa Mundial cleats you know two things:

• They're great.
• They're expensive.

Rock-bottom price I've ever paid is $80. Prices gust up to $100. But at the moment you can get 'em for $63 through Amazon.

Regular price is $83 (and that's the price that shows up on the page above). Hopefully you'll see a "Special Offers Available" link on that page. If so, when you add the item to your cart and check out, the $20 discount should be applied (it will show up prior to final confirmation, so you can cancel if it doesn't happen). Shipping is free.

Not sure how long this promotion will last.

The catch is there's a 3-to-5 week wait. I'm going to have to make due with my old ones and some duct tape until then. As long as the new ones are here for Regionals...

Roger Federer as Religious Experience by David Foster Wallace. He uses the first paragraph to lovingly describe an amazing "Federer Moment". He then concludes:

Anyway, that's one example of a Federer Moment, and that was merely on TV—and the truth is that TV tennis is to live tennis pretty much as video porn is to the felt reality of human love.

I don't know where that puts YouTube on the video porn/actual sex spectrum, but they've got a clip of that exalted Federer Moment, starting at 8:10 in. I think YouTube might be off the bottom end of the metaphor, actually, and the moment strikes me as one of subtle greatness, only really appreciable by fans. Love the article, though.« via kottke »

Couple things:

• Poking around in this Crossfit thread, I clicked through on one of Greg Everett's links and noticed how nice the Evolution Athletics and Performance Menu sites are. At Evolution Athletics, check out the resources, particularly the videos (oops, quick sample suggests quite a few have "video coming soon" notes, but there are some good ones there). Also, don't miss this, The Performance Menu has a free issue offer, and you get to choose which one you want. Tough choice!
• One of the nutrition sections of Ross Enamait's Never Gymless is all about milk. In particular, pasturized and homogenized vs. raw. His latest blog post, Milk, addresses the topic again, and includes lots of good resources for making your own decisions.

Alrighty, yesterday's workout. Give it a shot, do better than I did:

• Warm-up: 50 one-arm, light-weight (20 lbs.) DB swings per arm, done in sets of 25. This has become my new favorite warm-up. Hits lots of muscles, doesn't take long to break a sweat. I do the first 25 for a given arm swinging up to vertical, then the second set swinging to 90 degrees to up the tempo.
• The Dreaded Leg Matrix as described by Skwigg (see paragraph 3). Took me 120 seconds (sigh), crappy form (sigh), probably managed 1-inch vertical on most of the squat jumps (sigh). The lactic ache in sets 3 and 4 was incredible. I would like to see a video of someone doing this in the prescribed 90 seconds, with good form. I mean, if you're a complete rock star and able to do good jumps for the lunge jumps and the squat jumps, won't the time in the air alone pretty much consume whatever time you socked away from the first two sets? Volunteers?
• 4x4 on The Evil Wheel. I do it from my feet, but rollout to a wall that stops me way short of going to the floor. Gonna start working on these more regularly.
• Tabata pushups. Pretty good for the first couple sets, then lucky to get 5-6 in the each remaining set. Weak.
• Core circuit. I set my Gymboss for 30 seconds work, 15 seconds rest, and did this circuit: [1] Chinnies, [2] Plank, [3] Plank, right side, [4] Plank, left side, [5] Superman, [6] Knee Hugs, [7] Medicine Ball Slams (10 lbs.), [8] Medicine Ball Twist Throws, [9] Flutter Kicks, [10] Plank. Actually did a pretty good job on really cranking during each 30-second work period.

Let me know how it goes!

Just subscribed to the What's New @ Peak Performance blog. They carry all kinda of interesting stuff. Two leapt out at me from my quick scan of their first page:

• Sports drinks or water: what is the best choice for sports performers?

Contrary to what you might expect, fluid absorption tends to take place in the small intestine rather than the stomach. Studies have shown that the larger the volume of fluid in the stomach, the more rapid the emptying into the small intestine, which means that maintaining a large fluid volume in the stomach by repeated drinking will maximise the rate of fluid (and nutrient) delivery to the small intestine.

Alas. I can't carry a large fluid volume in my stomach without feeling like it's sloshing around and making me feel generally bloated. Interesting, nonetheless.

• Warm Up Activity : The dynamic alternative to static stretching

Is there a better way? [than a jog followed by static stretching] I believe there is. In my view, an active or 'dynamic' warm-up is an infinitely superior way to prepare for physical activity.

Although this type of warm-up has been used by track and field athletes for years, it is not widely practised within other sports - eg football, basketball and baseball - at junior, senior or professional levels.

I keep reading everywhere that pre-competition static stretching is a bad idea (except, perhaps, the hip flexors). I switched from my only stretching occurring pre-play to a model where I stretch for flexibility regularly throughout the day, and do dynamic warm-up pre-play, and I prefer it.

I recently realized I never followed up on my ankle brace delibrations. It came to my attention when reader N. Trout sent me this e-mail:

Hi, Jim. I stumbled upon your site while doing some research. I have a remarkably similar experience with ankle braces. I'm 38 years old and fairly active. I had chronic ankle sprains up through college, at which time (about 1989) the school's training department gave me the McDavid brace. I've been wearing that ever since and have never fully sprained my ankle ("tweaked" it a few times but never rolled it over completely)...until two nights ago. Coincidently, I had just bought a new McDavid ankle brace for my right ankle and the night I sprained it was the first night I wore the new brace. Maybe it wasn't sufficiently tight and/or broken in, or maybe it was just that I came down just right (or wrong) on someone else's foot and nothing could have prevented the roll and subsequent sprain. I do believe, however, that the brace probably limited the extent of the sprain. Anyways, it has incredibly been 17 years for me as well without a sprain. Some of the other guys I play basketball with swear by the Active Ankle brace but I didn't want to make a change (until two nights ago) because the McDavid had seemed to suit me so well all these years. I did end up going to the doctor yesterday. I figured that maybe there had been some new technological advancements in ankle protection technology over the past 17 years. Sadly, he said not much has changed, but he did recommend Active Ankle.

So, I'm wondering what you ultimately did. Did you make the switch or did you stick with McDavid? What's happened since your last post on this topic (or did I miss an update somewhere on your site?)?

Here's my reply, which will do double-duty as follow-up for this site:

Hi Noel,

Sorry to hear about the ankle! Also sorry about the lack of follow-up, it just didn't end up being all that interesting. The bottom line is that I tried the Active Ankle braces, but didn't like the way they felt, so went back to McDavids. I'm fairly comfortable with this for a few reasons:

[1] I figured one sprain in seventeen years wasn't too bad a record.

[2] I read in one of the studies that no ankle brace solution provides enough support to resist the torque of a bad roll.

[3] Another study suggested increased proprioception and/or assisting in returning the foot to a neutral position is how ankle braces and taping conferred their benefits.

From this I inferred that the Active Ankles would be better at resisting torque but not as good in providing proprioceptive benefits, while the McDavids would provide the converse. No idea if that's true, but it seemed to make sense to me, at least.

Then again, I know guys that swear by the AAs, and say stuff like, "I can't imagine spraining my ankle while wearing this."

Sorry I don't have a more conclusive answer. If you stick with the McDavids, make sure you tighten them up after the first 10 minutes or so. I never realized how slack they get (one of those studies mentioned that tape jobs and lace-ups basically provide no support after the first 10 minutes because of loosening). Of course, I had to stop doing this because the added pressure exacerbated my achilles pain. If it's not one damn thing it's another... :-)

Good luck!

Jim

• I had no idea watermelon was so good for you! I just assumed it was mostly sugar and water. Hip-hip-hooray for good sources of Vitamin A.
• A RossTraining thread: when the going gets tough... "I just cut off my mind." He makes it sound so easy!
• A 2001 Malcolm Gladwell piece: Drugstore Athlete.

I found Day 1 and Day 2 of the "Day in the Life of Sonnon" videos via this RossTraining thread. They won't have you (nor me) rushing out to buy clubbells, but I really like the exercise progressions he demonstrates on the rings (one in each video). Very creative. I'd like to see Day 3.

A couple Friday diversions: past and present YouTube highlight reels: Larry Bird and Dwyane Wade.

Never one to mince words, a bit from De Vany's Eating the Evolutionary Fitness Way post:

Seventh, you are compromising your long-run health and accelerating the rate at which you age. You are also turning your body into a sugar burner and in the long-run this will lead to a decline in your lean muscle mass. Your career will suffer. You will not have the energy to sustain a long and productive career. You will be sick more often. You will be tired and bored with life. And you will eventually become obese, ill and earn less income.

His follow-up, It's Not Paleo is also interesting.

These NRS straps look like the perfect thing for improvising some excellent fitness equipment. Buy a couple swing hangers and screw them into your basement joists. Then get a pair of 20-foot straps and something like vinyl tubing, PVC, or pipe nipples to use as handles (take care about sharp edges rubbing the straps). Thread a handle onto each strap and then make each strap into a loop. Hang loop from the swing hangers. Instant cheap-o gymnastic rings (here's the real deal). Since you can easily adjust the length of the loops with the cam buckles, you have an excellent unstable platform for dips, pushups, flys, "roll-outs", etc. You can also monkey with the handle configuration. I imagine you could make nice handles for these extreme renegade rows with a couple pipe T fittings and three pipe nipples. Something like this:

The looped straps would also be perfect for a variety of isometric exercises, I bet. Cheap, too. Might want to get a few so you don't have to thread different handles for different exercises. Not sure about shipping cost, and I have no experience with this vendor.

In light of the Floyd Landis test result, this Sisson/De Vany post is worth linking up again for your consideration. After you read that for background, then go ahead to the latest Sisson/De Vany bit on Landis specifically.

I've taken a couple ice baths now, both between tourney days, and I think the only way to describe them is "excruciatingly good." Immersion sucks, but it does wonders for next-day soreness. While still painful, my last approach for getting in worked well enough that I think I'll stick with it from now on:

• Put a little ice in the empty tub and sit in it. Position the rest of the ice within reach of the tub.
• Start filling the tub with cold water and let it cover you gradually. I know this sounds awful, but it beats the hell out of filling the tub with ice water and jumping in. I'm not sure why, but I think it's because with my approach it's more like something that's happening to you rather than something you're doing to yourself.
• After you've filled the tub, grab the rest of the ice and pour it in. The temperature will drop significantly, and it's no fun, but by this point the worst is already over.
• Soak. I go for about 10 minutes but I have no idea what the optimal time is.

After the first three minutes of agony the last seven are relatively okay, I guess. A teammate brings reading material, but I don't really feel like I ever get to a level of comfort where I'd be able to concentrate or enjoy whatever I'm reading. Maybe after a few more and I'm better acclimated to the practice.

Anyway, definitely worth it. It's like having a new set of legs.

UPDATE: Or maybe it's just a placebo effect.

Teammate Jon came through with a Log Jam writeup from the FSM perspective. Probably only of interest to participants...

Game 1: vs. Middlebury

Most of us showed up kind of late, and we didn't do a lot of warmup. Most of Middlebury was way faster than most of us, but luckily the young whippersnappers made lots of unforced errors. We played terribly for much of this game. During the stretch when we were playing lousy, we typically got possession of the disc three or four times per point, but could not execute our throws. Lots of turfed throws, inaccurate throws, miscommunications on dumps, etc. A few bad decisions, but mostly just bad throws or crossed signals on pretty good decisions. They took a 10-5 lead. We were very disgruntled. I think I saw some people making cell phone calls during halftime, to see if they could get a spot on another team or something. Then all of a sudden, things changed. We played slightly more conservatively on offense, but it was mainly just that a much higher percentage of our throws were now accurate. We went on what seemed like a very quick and easy 8-1 run to win the game 13-11. There were a few spectacular plays during the run, particularly a huge layout D block by Alec.

Game 2: vs. Chuck Wagon

Chuck Wagon = home team, mostly from Burlington. They beat us pretty convincingly at sectionals last year, won the section, and finished 6th at Northeast open regionals. We played reasonably well early on, taking a 6-5 lead. Seemed like our offense was pretty efficient and our defense adequate. Then they very quickly took advantage of some dumb turnovers to go on a 3-0 run and take half 8-6. Disappointingly, the game was capped at 10 at halftime (!) due to Chuck Wagon's first round game having run way over time. We traded points in the second half to lose 10-8. Still, an improvement for us over our previous meeting with CW, it seems like we legitimately threatened to win this game, sort of.

Bye:

Apparently, much Koob was played. Ancient Viking lawn bowling game, sounds like fun. Also, the inevitable rains begin, and the rain continued intermittently and with increasing intensity through the evening. Cassin, Lester and I went to a coffee shop for lunch and to stay dry, so I have little to report with respect to Koob.

Game 3: vs. East River Yacht Club

This is something like the #3 club team from New York City. They have some pretty good players but make a lot of unforced turnovers. We took care of business pretty efficiently in this one, and won 15-2, similar to the outcome when we played them at WMO. The game was notable for perhaps the worst shanked pull in team history, by yours truly. But we scored that point anyway, so cut me some slack. I think this was also the game where Jim B had a titanic layout D. Thank you very much, Burpees. I can only imagine what would happen if we all worked out as hard as Jim (of course, in my case, I learned this weekend that the answer is "debilitating achilles tendon disorder," but for the rest of you...)

Game 4: vs. PoNY

PoNY is the #1 club team out of NYC, and finished 5th at NE Regionals last year. It was a close game until early in the second half. Then we completely fell apart. The extended display of haplessness included a couple of devastating turnovers on what would otherwise have been short throws for scores for us, that were quickly returned all the way up the field for PoNY scores. They go on something like a 7-1 run to win 15-7.

So we played to seed on Saturday, finished the day 2-2, 3rd in our pool, and were scheduled to play the #2 seed from the other pool in the quarterfinals Sunday morning. By now it was pouring rain, so the outdoor tourney party was pretty much cancelled. No Koob for you. I did a 10-minute ice bath, which was absolutely excruciating, but my legs felt like new afterwards. Rich later did the same, but with even more ice, I feared for his life.

Quarterfinals: vs. Zebra Muscles

Zebra Muscles is the Rochester club team, a middle-of-the-pack performer at NE regionals every year. They were young and quick and played great man defense. We had a small early lead, but then fell behind 7-5 during an ugly stretch. I think I had at least 3 stall-nine turnovers during this run, where it looked to me like all the cuts and dumps were completely covered and often clogging each other to boot. Sorry. Better dump cuts and especially better chiliness from me should fix that in the future. I'm always yelling at people that they should never look off the dump, but I definitely looked the dump off at least once out of frustration when my glares failed to impel action. Someone suggested an L-stack set up where we always have two dump cuts going in opposite directions, I like that idea. Anyway, mistakes were made, and we were sniping at each other. Jim O wisely called a TO and told everybody to stop criticizing each other and to work on doing the ho-stack right. We then got our acts together, with the O team players doing a very nice job with the ho-stack, and before we knew it we took half 8-7. In there somewhere, a tightly covered Alec made a beautiful catch of my huck, which helped me feel not totally useless. Thanks Alec!

We began the second half trading points. Swilly hucks to Jed were unstoppable, he boxes out tres bien. After our only successful zone-to-man transition of the weekend got a turn, the D team calmly punched it in to get us another break and an 11-9 lead. The O team then lost its mojo, turning it over repeatedly and getting scored on three points in a row, so we're down 12-11. I belive Zebra Muscles had a huge layout D on our endzone line leading to one point, and a mac-ed D for a Callahan on another. Ugh. In the meantime, the cap goes on, game to 13. O team stays on, same personnel as the previous three points, but this time they convert to tie at 11. Next point D team fails as the Zebras make good use of their fastest cutters. Then the O team converts again, 12-12. We pull on universe point, play pretty good D, but are lucky that Rochester drops a short pass at midfield. To our credit, we were then very patient with the disc, working it until Alec was able to hit Matt Mann for the 13-12 victory. Overall, a good hard-fought competitive game, nice to pull one of these out once in a while.

Semis: vs. PoNY

The sun came out, it was hot, and our brains and legs were fried. But we played pretty well nonetheless, at least early. We built a 6-5 lead. When we broke the mark and swung the disc across the field, things worked really well. Then we had some dumb turnovers and they took half 8-6. In the second half, we seemed a bit tired and had some inexplicable turnovers. Just a few less missed dumps and swings and we'd be right in it. As it was, there were some moments of brilliance. The best was on a PoNY full-field huck to a guy defended by Jim B. The guy had about 10 steps on Jim and it was a perfect huck, but Jim closed the ground sprinting full out and then jumped / laid out very high to bap the disc away. Beautiful. To reiterate, work out like Jim. Also, some very nice grabs by Jed on more swilly hucks. There was nothing his defenders could do. Lowlights included Rich nearly getting killed on a widowmaker cut. He cuts up line for the scoring pass in the front corner of the endzone, Matt Mann's poaching defender and then Matt converge to the same place, I throw it without seeing Matt's streaking defender, and Rich gets crushed. Sorry again. Bad weekend for me. In the end, we lose 10-15. Without two late game turnovers at the opposing goal line, it's a 12-13 barnburner, so we're not that far off. PoNY went on to destroy New Noise in the finals 15-6.

Jon continues his tradition of writing only good things about his teammates and bad things about himself, so I have to chime in with a few points:

• First off, I'm grateful to Jon for only mentioning my highlights and none of my lowlights, like my five (FIVE!) turnovers in the first half (FIRST HALF!) of the Middlebury game, or those ridiculous slipped flicks, or the dorky gloves (which worked really well, though), or the knifing out-of-bounds backhand to a covered Matt M. at a critical juncture of the Zebra game, or... oh jeez, the list goes on and on.
• It takes two to tango on the throw and the catch, and one of the tricky things about the widowmaker play is that it goes from "easy score" to "geez, I hope nobody dies" in the blink of an eye. I hope Jon isn't feeling too bad about this; shit happens (speaking for my own experience with the widowmaker last year, but I bet Rich feels the same way).
• Finally, Jon ran hard and hucked well. I know now how much the achilles thing sucks, and I can't believe he's been playing through it for so long.

Ross Enamait has a new article and video up titled Hardcore Training: An Experiment In Mass-building and Athletic Performance. Interesting and impressive, as always, even if I'm not personally looking for mass gain at this time. I gotta say though, for all the amazing feats of strength on display, the thing that impressed me the most was the rope skipping. I wouldn't have imagined it possible to do those arm-crosses that fast.

Oh, if you're looking for workout gear, the image at the end of the video is from a new T-shirt he's selling . Any money sent to Ross is money well-spent.

I don't really read much on conditioning for endurance sports, as the methods are generally counterproductive for field and power sports. Since Ultimate tourneys are grueling two day (or more) affairs, though, nutrition and hydration strategies can come into play. The NY Times ran an interesting piece around a week ago where they talked about a few things, but the marathon hydration bit caught my eye (well, my teammate's eye, who pointed it out to me, thanks Matt!):

[Dr. David Martin] said that while it seemed logical to drink as much water as possible before the race—and runners try it—"it doesn't work." The reason, he explained, is that drinking a lot of water increases blood volume and the body responds by getting rid of it, in urine.

"What you need to do is to increase your total body fluids another way," Dr. Martin said.

He added that the legal, safe way to do it is through glycerin loading. The technique exploits the unusual properties of glycerin, a thick, gooey sugar alcohol that is sold in drugstores as a lubricant. Each molecule of glycerin absorbs three molecules of water. During a race, the body uses the glycerin for energy. And every time the body metabolizes a molecule of glycerin, "it unleashes three molecules of water," Dr. Martin said.

The result, he said, is that "you have a water bank account."

Glycerin loading, he added, should be reserved for races of a half marathon or longer, when runners are competing in intense heat for at least an hour and a half.

That last sentence there worried me a bit. If the technique is so good, why reserve it? Why not just use it all the time? Happily, the Times ran a follow-up piece a couple days later:

Glycerin should be used with great caution, Dr. Martin says. It you use too much you can end up with excess fluid in your cells. The excess fluid in your brain can give you a headache, and excess fluid elsewhere can make you bloated. Glycerin should only be used for long runs, two hours or more, under conditions of high heat. It is useless in cooler weather. And anyone who tries it should start gradually with lower dilutions and be sure they can tolerate it before using it in a long race. That said, the formula is one tablespoon of glycerin in 36 ounces of water. You should sip it over one to two hours before you run. Dr. Martin discusses the technique in his book, "Better Training for Distance Runners," 2nd edition, published by Human Kinetics in 1997. The glycerin section is on pages 370 to 372.

I'm also curious about the rate of release of the "water bank". Marathoners never go anaerobic, right? So would a field sport athlete just burn up all the glycerin, releasing all the stored water, in short order?

A teammate of mine is theoretically doing a thorough writeup, which I hope to blatantly steal and post here. Real quick though, we got rained on yet again. 4 out of 5 wet tournies since '05 Regionals. We lost in the semis to PoNY. If they went on to beat New Noise (and it was looking that way early on) that makes us 3-for-3 in semis exits against the eventual champs this year. Kinda a dubious honor, but not too shabby for a masters team running against youngsters, and it feels like we keep getting better with age. Anyway, hopefully more to follow.

On a more leisurely note, one of my teammates broke out Köob during our bye. I was only spectating, unfortunately, but it looked like a blast. Think Bocce, but much more interesting (IMO), and suitable to a much broader range of surfaces (you can play Köob on rough terrain, sand, etc. while Bocce is really only any good on a nice court). I'm predisposed to like the Italian goods, but the I gotta give this one to the Swedes hands-down. The quality of the components is excellent (I'm pretty sure that link goes to the same set my teammate has, but I'm not 100% positive). Definitely need to pick up a set before our next vacation.

Okay, I'm not quite gone yet...

Art De Vany addresses (via a Mark Sisson essay) a question I ask myself frequently when I read his blog. Namely, is the pursuit of elite fitness for sport unhealthy, big picture-wise?

The essay mostly references endurance athletes, and I ask a question about that in the comments.

There, now I'm outta here. Looking forward to reading replies either here or there when I get back next week.

Ross's workout, The Magic 50, has become my de facto benchmark workout. I feel like I've been going a bit light on the running lately (partly because of the damn achilles, which are still bad from Easterns), so tried a variation yesterday. I substituted a 50m sprint for the DB swings, so it looks like this:

• 5 DB snatches per arm
• 50m sprint
• 10 burpees
• Rest 1 minute max.
• Repeat 5 times (for a total of 50 snatches, 5 50m sprints, and 50 burpeees)

Challenged myself with the DB weight (60 lbs.), sprinted all-out, and did the burpess as fast as I could (no hitches or breaks in the movement, one flows into the next).

Thought I was going. To. Die.

Enjoy!

...allegedly (he pleads not guilty).

Some quickies:

• Skwigg describes an exercise I'll dub the "Plank Knee Drop":

  Get into a plank position with only your forearms and toes touching the floor, like this. From that position, WITHOUT dropping your hips, touch your knees to the floor and return to the starting position. You accomplish the knee drop by recruiting an army of core-stabilizing muscles to keep your hips still, and then you roll forward on your toes and tap your knees to the ground. This exercise will destroy every muscle in your entire body. Try it for a minute or two and get back to me.

  Nice. Needed a quick core workout so did 100 of those to the tune of one per second ("one-one thousand, two one thousand..."). Definitely felt it. Would have been even better to do few more such sets, but I was pressed for time.
• Straight to the Bar links up Dr. Cobb's interesting Dynamic Joint Mobility stuff.
• On the RossTraining forums: the Burpee, Mountain Climber, Push-up Challenge.
• Via Crossfit forums, a fun Parkour-ish video. Love the tree work.

Holy crap. Imagine if Larry Bird's last act on the court was to knee Magic Johnson in the balls.

(The analogy almost certainly breaks down in drawing the Materazzi/Magic comparison, but still...)

A buddy of mine e-mailed succinctly: "Did you watch Zidane today? Amazing thing, competitiveness."

How sad.

Via the RossTraining boards, an impressive video. Alrighty, off to bed for me...

We desk jockeys are prone towards tightness pretty much across the whole front. Chest, quads, hip flexors and the various ancillary muscles. Tight calves in athletes are not uncommon (and can contribute to various ailments). I failed the modified Thomas test (you should definitely try this on yourself), and yet the typical "stand and pull your heel to your butt" stretch does nothing for me. I know my calves are tight, and that my chest/shoulder flexibility needs work. So here are the stretches I've found that really work for those muscle groups:

This one is fantastic: lie on your side, bend the leg you are not stretching and brace it against a wall. Stretch the other leg. You can feel this one from the hip flexors to just above the knee and everywhere in between. You can experiment with where to put your upper body, but I tend to think I get a better stretch with my torso closer to my off-leg. Directly applicable to Thomas test-type flexibility. Not that you're doing this solely to ace the test; the test is just an indicator. Criminy, note how I can't even make a straight line, tracing along my stretched upper leg up through my torso.

For the calves, this one is great. None of the other "pushing against a wall" stretches have done much for me, as with them I feel compression in my ankle joint before I can get a good calf stretch going. Not here though! Here it's all calves. Note the critical hard-to-see 2x4 under my toes. You just want to lean in, trying to get your hips to the wall, keeping your legs straight (or thereabouts - position such that you feel it in your calves, not the backs of your knees).

This one's easy to describe. Find a corner, assume this position, and try to walk your body all the way into the corner. You can also do this with a doorway. You can alter the height of your elbows to vary the stretch.

I also like this one as a quick break stretch, as it hits the hips and opens up the chest all at once (and I can't do a real bridge). Watch your back though! When I do this without warming up, my wife cringes, so I go easy with it. I tend to feel compression in the lower back first, which limits the stretch for me. Fine for a quicky, but not as effective as either of the dedicated (non-calf) stretches above.

18 Tips for Bulletproof Knees. Gotta get past a mildly grisly knee surgery photo to read the whole thing. The timing of #3 and #14 were quite amazing to me, as I just this weekend attended an open house at my NMT friend's practice. She works with a PT who did an injury Q&A, and it was very interesting, especially since I had the guy to myself for part of it, so got some one-on-one attention. We didn't go into great depth (I was only had him to myself for about 20 minutes), but it was very informative nonetheless. We talked about my weak ankles, creaky knees, shin splints, achilles, etc. (basically every lower-leg aliment in the book, it feels like). He was pretty keen on blaming my flexibility. I was kinda skeptical, as I stretch pretty regularly, and have made good strides in my flexibility, but he put me through a few basic tests, and sure enough, I failed. Not miserably, but pretty typically.

Anyway, the first test he had me do was that "modified Thomas Test" in #14! One thing they don't tell you in the article is that you really want to hug both knees as tightly to your chest as you can, and then drop the one knee, keeping the other knee pulled tight. Otherwise it's easier to fudge. Failing this test (as I did) makes some sense with the behind-the-kneecap pain (as I have), as the muscle basically keeps your kneecap "strapped down" too tight (that's my understanding, anyway). Anyway, might be worth trying the test on yourself if you're having similar issues.

(A fun aside: this PT also told a story about a trainer he knew for an NFL team. They'd have open calls, where they'd bring in hundreds of athletes and give them a look. This guy would just go down the line and look at the way guys were put together, and pick a handful out of hundreds to take a closer look at. This was without watching any of them do anything! Like checking the confirmation of a horse. The thing that stuck with me was this line: "Pronators? Forget about it, go home." Dang.)

I promise I'll get back to real posts after just these few more quick links that caught my sportsman's (such as I am) eye:

• Agassi to retire after Wimbledon, U.S. Open. A great champion, and being the oldest guy to hold the #1 ranking is very inspiring in a sport that tends to retire 'em young.
• Chessboxing!
• Fascinating steroids perspective over at De Vany's blog, from a guy with some noteworthy qualifications:

  I should tell you that I was the Anti-doping Commissioner of the International Triathlon Union (ITU) - a relatively new sport within the Olympic Family - for nearly 13 years. I had to act as "prosecutor" on many doping cases (doping = drugs in sport). Prior to that, I helped write the first set of "anti-doping" rules for triathlon in 1988. Before that, I was an elite marathoner (2:18) and triathlete (4th Place Ironman Hawaii) in the '70s and '80s, so I have accumulated a fair amount of "inside information" regarding drugs in sport at the Olympic level. I also own a supplement company and have done extensive research on performance enhancement in pursuit of natural, legal alternatives.

I've collected a few links I've been meaning to post separately, but ran out of time. So here's the lot:

• The photo here is of Parallette Back Push-ups: "The U.S. Navy record for this exercise in 1943 was 89 reps."
• Dynamax medicine ball workout (WMV 5MB). Looks intense. Wish I knew how heavy the ball was. « via CrossFit »
• Art De Vany: Vitamin A, Protein, and Testosterone. Who knew?
• Wow, check out the Seven-minute Michael Owen highlight reel. English striker whose World Cup ended on an ACL tear. What a shame.

I always seem to find ways to not do Work Capacity 101. Frankly, it scares me. I mean, who isn't scared by this:

• 5 pull-ups.
• 10 med. ball slams (non-bouncing ball, hard and fast, like a zombie is trying to get up from the ground and eat you, and you are trying to pummel it back into the earth).
• 15 burpees (not squat thrusts - incorporate a push-up and leap).
• 20 jumping jacks.
• Repeat 10 (10!) times at the top of every two minutes (that means, if you go as fast as Ross does in his video, the most rest you can hope for is about 45 seconds, and personally, I'm not nearly as fast as Ross).

I think the first time I tried it was around six months ago, I cut almost everything in half, and I still only managed five or six circuits. I might have tried it one other time since then, and wussed out similarly. I've made progress at The Magic 50 because I keep trying it, but little on WC-101 because I avoid it.

So today was the day, and I was determined not to shirk. Here are the rules I laid down for myself:

• Perform all the reps as prescribed, as fast as possible.
• One minute rest between rounds.
• As many circuits as possible before exhaustion.

So how many circuits did I last?

Four.

I suppose that number is meaningless without also including a total elapsed time, but I forgot to set the clock. Next time.

The big problem for me is the burpees. The way the workout is structured, you arrive at those slightly winded and with your triceps pre-fatigued. I'm also not used to doing 15 at a stretch. I usually do 10 at a time, and even when I'm doing as many as I can in a 30-second block, it's never much more than 10. Those extra five make a big difference.

I definitely have to plug away at this workout some more. It induces levels of discomfort I never experience on the field (and then only if we're committing way too many turnovers).

Anyway, read Ross's article, watch the associated video, and give it a try! I'd be curious to hear if it's as painful for you as it is for me.

I'm not a fan of these injury posts. On the one side, I do like sharing the information. On the other side, lots of what I post is first-hand information, and all that implies...

Anyway, ever since the ankle sprain last year, my achilles on that foot has been threatening to go all tendinitisy on me. I was going to do piles of research and share it with you, but my teammate Jon has had chronic problems with his achilles for years, and is a wealth of information. So I have the luxury of not writing this post myself, but instead can cobble it together from our e-mail dialog (edited lightly, emphasis added):

Jim said:

I am now on the IR (hopefully just for a week) with tendinitis in my Achilles. I have been flirting with it ever since the ankle sprain, and Easterns finally brought it on for real. Played pickup yesterday, but it was unpleasant. I'm hoping a good ice, rest, and ibu regimen will get me back on track pronto.

Jon replied:

Bummer. Take it from me, achilles problems can last forever, but hopefully this isn't the case with you. Rest is key, I think. Hopefully that will take care of it. In any event, I've attached an article and also included a link below that I thought were pretty informative with regards to the achilles tendons. Turns out there's no such thing as achilles tendonitis -- it's really a tendonosis (tendinitis implies inflamation, but there's no evidence that inflamation is part of the problem in achilles injury -- hence ice and ibuprofen aren't really helpful in this case). [from my super-quick research I think both conditions exist, but certainly where chronic injury is concerned it sounds like tendonosis is the correct term.] According to the medical literature, the only treatments with good clinical evidence of effectiveness are rest and "heavy-load eccentric calf-muscle training":

Sports Injury Bulletin - Achilles Tendinitis

I've been doing something similar to the Walt Reynolds exercise for a long time (recommended by my physical therapist), and am 4 weeks into the program from the Swedish study. It makes things worse before it makes them better, but it does seem that it's starting to having positive effects now. My physical therapist also gave me a a variety of strength and balance exercises, particularly ones to work on leg muscles that are important to stabilization, but I think these are actually pretty similar to some of the stuff you are already doing.

Jim replied:

Wow, thanks Jon! Great article. I'll have to post that on my fitness blog (which is more and more looking suspiciously like an injury blog).

So you do the Walt and Swedish exercises, and you also play? I guess what I'm asking is, you've just been playing through the pain for years, don't take rest, and have added these exercises into the mix, right?

I ask because I'm trying to figure out if I should just stop stressing the achilles (i.e. no playing) until I'm pain-free, or if I should do rehab and play simultaneously. The pickle is not wanting to fall behind on conditioning.

Jon replied:

Since it sounds like you're going to do some of these rehab exercises, and wonder whether you need to take off time from ultimate, I'll give you some more detail on how I manage the achilles problems, since it's kind of complicated.

First, back about the time when I broke my collarbone in 2001, I was struggling with a lot of pain in the achilles, and I got an appointment with a physical therapist. He made me rest completely for a few weeks, until all pain from the achilles was gone, and in the mean time made me an orthotic to control my overpronation. I think there would not be any problem with doing exercise that doesn't stress the achilles during this time (e.g. burpees, weights, maybe biking), but since I had a broken collarbone there wasn't much else I could do anyway. After the rest, he started me on an exercise that's roughly similar to the Walt exercise. The way I do the exercise is the following. I stand on, say, my right leg on the bottom step of the stairs, facing the floor (as opposed to the higher steps), and I keep my left leg straight and suspended in the air, and then I lower my left leg down slowly, keeping it straight, until the heel of my left leg touches the ground, and then lift it back up again. I repeat this for 30 reps, and then do the other leg. This works the calf muscle eccentrically, and also gets the rest of the leg involved and improves balance. Once I got good at this, I switched to a stable stool that is a bit higher than my first step, so I can get a deeper knee bend going.

After doing this for a few weeks, my PT gave me bunch of other exercises to do in addition, mostly with dumbells, for strengthening the legs and for overall body fitness. Most of these are very similar to the dumbell exercises described in Ross Enamait's book. A lot of lunges and shoulder presses and so forth. Sounds similar to what you are doing already. These exercises especially worked the hamstrings, glutes, hips, and groin.

Another exercise he gave me that is more achilles-specific is the following: Get on a treadmill and set it to maximum incline at a very low (walking) speed. Then run / hop sideways (not crossing over legs) for four minutes on each side. Kind of like how you would run sideways while positioning yourself to play defense in ultimate. This really works the calf muscles, and also works the feet and ankles in a different plane than most typical exercises. I find this one to be quite helpful, but you'd need a treadmill. You could also just do it out on the street or on a grassy field, although I think it works a lot better if you can do it uphill. I find this exercise makes a noticeable difference when I do it regularly.

After doing these routines religiously 2-3 times per week for a couple of months, I started playing ultimate again in the spring of 2002, and my achilles were completely pain free for months. But at some point in the summer, when the ground got hard and I played in a tough 2-day tournament, my achilles eventually started bothering me again. I then took a little time off from ultimate, maybe a week or two, but in the mean time continued to stick with all the rehab exercises along with interval workouts on a bike and, after a little while, light jogging. Then I came back and things were manageable. This pattern essentially repeats itself every year, and is not so bad. But it would be better if I could be pain free throughout the season.

This year, after feeling a bit of achilles soreness after WMO, I decided to get more aggressive with the rehab exercises. I've been doing the Walt-like exercise almost every day, and started doing the Swedish exercises almost twice-daily as well, and I've made sure that I do the sideways-running about 3 times a week (I often stop doing that when I switch from treadmill to outdoor running with the nice weather). I had never done the Swedish exercises before. They feel easy while you're doing them, but then I found that my calves were incredibly sore for about two weeks. I started this about 4 weeks ago, and continued to play ultimate once a week throughout. This is part of the reason I sucked at pickup a couple of weeks ago, as my calves were so sore I felt like they were going to collapse the whole time. After about a couple of weeks, the calf soreness has been gradually subsiding. My achilles were pretty sore after Saturday at Easterns, but have been rock solid and pain-free otherwise (I played Sunday with no pain). So in short, I have been playing through it while doing the rehab exercises, and I think it's working OK. We'll see what happens when the ground gets hard.

The link below from the Carleton University sports medicine department provides the details of a Swedish-style program for the achilles. In their program, you're supposed to avoid sports for two weeks while you start the calf exercises, but then you resume sports after two weeks.

Rehab for Chronic Achilles Tendinitis

It's also worth noting that in the Swedish study, they did not wait for the achilles pain to go away before starting people on the eccentric calf exercises.

Jon then followed up with this:

Ah, one crucial thing I forgot to mention in my description of the "Walt-like" exercise that I do on the bottom step. When you are standing on your right leg, and lowering your left heel to the ground, you lower the left heel by bending your right leg at the knee. And vice-versa when you stand on your left leg.

Jim asked for clarification:

You keep the foot on the step flat on the ground, right? As in, your heel stays down and your Achilles stretches as your knee flexes?

Jon replied:

That's right, you've got it exactly right. The foot on the step stays flat, and you bend the knee on that leg. You keep your other leg straight. The heel of the straight leg eventually touches the ground below the step as you bend the knee of the leg that's on the step.

There, that does it! About the only thing I found independently of Jon was a note (with no medical backup) that wearing a night split (commonly prescribed for plantar fasciitis) can also be helpful. The splint holds your foot angle at 90-degrees (or even a touch higher) keeping your achilles stretched throughout the night. Without the splint, in a relaxed state your foot hangs away from the shin, keeping the achilles in a shortened position all night. I borrowed my dad's splint (which was the thing that finally allowed him to gain ground on his plantar fasciitis after months of frustration), and I seemed to improve, but have no idea how much the splint contributed, if at all. Could have just been the rest.

Here a good article on why the Kettlebell Swing belongs in your fitness arsenal. I've never used kettlebells, but I do know one-arm DB-swings are fantastic. The swing forces you to maintain tension throughout the core (unless you want to throw your back out), works the whole posterior chain, and makes you generate the power and snap from the hips (your arm really just serves as a pendulum, and your grip keeps the DB from flying away, rather than having to actively lift it). At least, that's the way they feel to me.

Update: As usual, the Crossfit folks come through with a video ("Kettlebell Swing" on the list).

Ross Enamait (my fitness author/trainer of choice) has a new site up: RossTraining.com. Check it out! The site sports a nice design and cleaner organization. All his excellent, free articles, videos, and workouts are now collected in one place, a few of which even I had missed (thought I'd found all his stuff previously). I'm particularly interested to see how he makes use of his new weblog, as he already pumps out lots of information via his newsletter and forums. With the new site up, he says new content will be forthcoming. Can't wait!

My fourth pass at my de facto benchmark workout, The Magic 50 (background: first, second and third runs). I used a 50# DB for the swings and snatches last time, but today I cut it to 40#, as it has been a long time, and I was feeling fragile after yesterday. I resolved to go quicker this time to make up for the lighter weight. Man, every move was a chore. But I'm not too disappointed with my time: 14:31. Heaps better than my second attempt from around the beginning of the year, which clocked in at over 26 minutes!

Alrighty, I'm through floundering around toying with exercises and workouts and now have a five-week plan hybridized from Never Gymless and Infinite Intensity and some friendly advice from Ross himself on how to build the weekly cycle around two days of pickup. The next five weeks plus a light week will take me right up to Log Jam, our next tourney. Anyway, yesterday was an "explosive strength" and core day that left me pretty sore in the hamstrings, entire back, and shoulders, so that's good and bad. Good in that I worked, bad in that I think I've lost a bit by just doing a la carte workouts for quite awhile rather than having an actual program. It allowed me to slack rather than push myself to do what I'd planned. The soreness is also bad because I'll be hitting my defacto benchmark workout, The Magic 50 today, which I haven't done since April. I'm thinking I'll have to cut the weight a bit. Anyway, yesteday's workout, which I had to tailor a bit around some achilles tendinitis (yes, another injury post is forthcoming) I've been flirting with since the bad ankle sprain last year, and which Easterns threw into full effect:

• Flag, 4 reps, 4 sets: Probably should go at the end with the core work, but it's really a strength move so I stuck it at the beginning. It's that thing you've probably seen Bruce Lee do where basically you cantilever your body out horizontally, with only your shoulders on a bench, and your hands gripping the bench behind your head. I do it on the floor, gripping the underside of a closed door (and wearing thick gloves). I haven't trained this movement in awhile, and it really shows. Starting with body vertical, probably only got down to like 45 degrees, so I've lost at least 15 degrees.
• Mini-circuit, 4 sets: 1-DB High Pull, 8 reps, Knee Tucks, 10 reps: See the Crossfit Exercises for the High Pull demo ("Sumo Dead Lift High Pull"). I do it one arm at a time with a dumbell, and my legs are bit closer together, but you get the idea. Knee Tucks are basically jumps where you try to get as high as you can, bring your knees to your chest, and explode again upon landing, minimizing ground contact (like you're doing them on a hot plate). Only did two sets of these because I could feel it starting to bother the achilles, which I've done an admirable job of resting (i.e. not playing). I'd hate to torpedo that. I really like the High Pulls.
• Mini-circuit, 4 sets: Clap Pushups, 8 reps, Lunge Jumps, 10 reps (5/leg): Start the Clap Pushups with a 5-second static hold in a halfway-down pushup position, get a little static-dynamic protocol action going. Let one pushup flow into the other, stop early if you start breaking form. Quality over quantity. For the lunge jumps, go into a lunge, spring out of it, scissor your legs in the air, land in another lunge, spring out of it. Again, one lunge should flow into the next. My back leg doesn't go back very far, as it bothers my back knee when I do. Instead, as I flex down into the lunge, my back knee ends up pretty close to my front foot, if you can picture that. One of the few high-impact exercises my knees will tolerate, if I get the position right. Experiment with what's comfortable to you. This will shred your hamstrings, be careful. First time I tried these I came very close to pulling one in a big way. Could be I'm just weak, but I can do these pretty comfortably and still be sore as hell the next day. Also, these don't bother the achilles at all, happily.
• Mini-circuit, 4 sets: 1-DB Push Press, 5 reps, Ankle Hops, 20 reps: See the Crossfit exercises page again for the Push Press (again, I'm doing a single dumbell variation). Ankle hops are just jumps with ankles only (just enough knees to absorb the shock). Skipped these because of the achilles.

Okay, on to the core. A meager three circuits of the following:

• 15 Knee Hugs:: Lie on your back, arms stretched overhead. Heels just off the floor. Pull your knees to your chest as you crunch and loop your arms over your knees (without touching your knees - no cheating). Extend out, returning arms to overhead and heels just off the floor (basically no part of your legs except your butt should ever touch the ground). That's one. I believe it's a good sign if your low back stays pressed to the floor. Arching means a weak something, somewhere, I vaguely recall reading. Don't hold me to that, though.
• 16 Lying Hip Swings (8/side): Lie on your back, raise your legs to upright (12:00). Arms out to your sides. Keeping your legs straight, rotate your hips/waist to bring your legs to 3:00 (more like 2:30 for me). Then back to the other side (9:00), like a metronome.
• 15 Supermans: Lie on your stomach, arms stretched overhead. Simultaneously raise your arms and your legs such that you're arched and as little of your torso is on the ground as possible (ideally just your hips). Careful about your back on this one.
• 10 Unstable Rows (5/side): Special equipment for this one. Set up a single gymnastic ring as close to the floor as you can (or some kind of strap/handle kludge. Put a dumbell next to it. Now assume a pushup position with one hand on the ring and the other hand on the DB. Pull (row) the DB to your chest. The closer together your feet, the harder this is. My feet are pretty damn far apart, even with just a 20# DB.

I do not think this should have laid waste to me as badly as it did. I felt okay throughout, but basically my entire backside from just above my knees to the tops of my shoulders are sore today. And to think I have to hit The Magic 50 next, which is all 1-DB swings and snatches, and burpees. Yowch. More on that in a moment...

I really just wanted to write about contacts, but coincidentally this "If steroids are cheating, why isn't LASIK?" piece came across my desk today, so I'm tweaking the headling to reflect its presence here. Very interesting. Now, on to contacts...

This post will be useless to many of you, as I assume most glasses-wearers out there made the shift to contacts years ago. But in case you are like I was—in short, an ocular Luddite—here's my experience.

Growing up, I had terribly sensitive and allergic eyes, and the thought of purposefully sticking anything in them was repellent. So for years and years I just wore glasses. For something ridiculous like 14 years of Ultimate the prospect of tournament rain would put me in a funk, because there's nothing worse than trying to play through rain-spattered and fogged glasses. Finally, a few years ago when I decided to try to get my game back, get back in shape, etc., I decided to bite the bullet. No way I was going to train hard only to have key tourneys ruined for me by capricious northeastern weather (leave the ruination to my capricious ankles).

Y'know what? Contacts are easy now. Back when I was a kid watching my mom deal with version 1.0 of contacts contributed to scaring me off. I took note of all the fussing and cleaning, and I remember how long it took her to adjust to these hard plastic discs floating on her corneas. Now the one-day models are so flimsy and wet they almost feel like they are made out of eyeball material (my eye doc says they're actually mostly water). Once they're in, there's no irritation at all, even on your very first wearing. At something like $0.60 per lens they are relatively expensive, but still dirt cheap if you just want to wear them for tourneys, as I do.

So these days tourney rain just makes me grumpy because I'd rather be dry, not because I can't see. Improved peripheral vision is a nice bonus as well. Anyway, if you've been holding out, you should definitely make the switch.

Oh, there's a catch. Isn't there always? You'll have to get an eye exam, so that might be a bit pricey, depending on your insurance. I think I paid like $150-$200 with no insurance. Also, your contacts prescription is only good for a year or two (might vary from state to state) so you'll have to keep getting exams every couple years to replenish your supply (you can get refills for as long as your prescription is good though). More information here on why this is necessary.

(Except for some fitness stuff at the end, you can safely skip this post if you [a] don't care about Ultimate, or [b] don't care how my team did at Masters Easterns.)

Whenever it rains at my first tournament of the season I wonder, "hmm, will this be the year where it rains at all of them?" Easterns this past weekend makes it two for two, and if you count The Biblical Regionals Deluge of '05, I've gotten pretty thoroughly soaked at three of my last four tournaments. It's not nearly as troublesome since I started wearing one-day disposable contacts for tourneys (a move I highly recommend for any glasses-wearers still holding out), but still annoying as my wet flick is relatively sucky. But enough about me and the relentless rain...

Masters Easterns, five teams, by seed: Above & Beyond (NY), Big Ego (Boston), ICU (PA), Chop Shop (largely VT, Western MA), Grotesque (other Boston). Format: Four rounds on Saturday, final pool play round at 8:30 (!) Sunday, then a 4-5 play-in game, then semis and finals. The Chop Shop perspective...

Saturday

Round 1, ICU (three seed): If everything else goes to seed, this is the must-win game for both teams to stay out of the 4-5 play-in round on Sunday. They have a much more organized warm-up than us, which I have to admit is always a little worrisome. Happily, we catch them sleeping and go up something like 11-4 before they wake up. Game ends with momentum in their favor, but we take it 15-10. The big shift comes when they start playing underneath to an almost absurd degree, and our deep game never develops in response.

Round 2, Grotesque (five seed): It feels like we're asleep, but I think actually they play pretty well. They put up a lot of big throws and come down with a good number of them. We were never threatened, but they hang around (and hung around with at least ICU as well - not sure about their other games). I think we won 15-8 or so.

Funny aside: I got into this very minor argument with this guy (no stoppage of play, so we're just sniping at each other as we run), he catches it near the goal line, he pivots to break at the same time as I'm stepping to stop the break and I bump his shoulder with my chest as he's throwing. I shout "foul" as the throw is released, and it's caught for an easy score. My guy turns on me outraged until I clarify I was calling it on myself. That is not the first time that has happened to me. I really gotta remember to immediately say "on me".

Round 3, Big Ego (two seed): Ex-DoG. Probably the closest any team I've ever been on has played these guys. Y'know the old saying that if you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water he'll jump right out, but if you throw him in cold water and gradually apply heat he'll swim around unaware until he dies? Well, that's kinda how I feel about their defense in this game. They start off very loose and poachy and wait for us to make mistakes. We immediately go down a couple breaks (sigh), but otherwise hang, losing half 8-6. Imperceptibly, the water has gotten hotter, but we (or at least I) keep thinking the D is just as loose and poachy as it was to start. It's still poachy, but not as loose. Before we know it we're down 11-6. We then show nice resolve to claw back to 13s, but they finish us off 15-13. Nonetheless, a strong showing for us, I thought.

Oh, another funny aside: I'm covering Alex d. and I hand-check him 1.5 times. The first time there's a light touch, but I really gain nothing. The second time it's also a light hand-check, but I definitely get a little bit of help. He says "watch the hand" and I apologize. A few points later he pushes me off with what felt like the exact same amount of force and gets open by an extra yard or two. I think I said (good-naturedly, as it appealed to my sense of justice), "hey, that time it was you - we'll call it even." I like to think it was intentional, and illustrative of the big difference the tiniest push can make. You probably had to be there.

(In my defense, I really try to NOT hand-check. I keep my hands pretty close by my sides, but when the first step comes so close to me that we're shoulder-to-shoulder and my hand is just there my instinct is to provide resistance, not to jerk my hand out of the way (and if we're shoulder-to-shoulder I'd literally have to swing my arm behind my back to get it out of the way). That's the way I rationalize these occurrances anyway. Of course, it's possible I'm subconsciously cheating. How would I know? It happens very rarely though, so it seems more likely it's my hand being run into rather than my hand actively seeking out a hip to push off against.)

Round 4, Bye: Thank goodness, as the hardest rain of the day happens during this round.

Sunday

Round 5, Above & Beyond (1 seed): We hang for a half, but they take it 8-6. We feel pretty good going into the second half, quickly trading points to 9-7, but then the wheels come off. I can't decide if we melted down or if they made us melt down. Probably a little of both. I'm not sure if we scored again. I personally collapsed as well, which pisses me off...

(TO on a long-ish curving flick to an in cut on one point, then like three TOs in the next point (thankfully I didn't spread them out), then on another point a ridiculous inside-out backhand huck on the flick side that didn't go inside out at all, so you can imagine where it landed (I think I made that exact same throw against these guys at Regionals last year - what goes through my head?!))

...Can't tell if my meltdowns drive the team meltdowns or if the team meltdowns drive my meltdowns - I don't even like to contemplate it, really, as the former ascribes more importance to my role than is realistic, while the latter smacks of blaming my teammates for my sucky play. It's probably just a smidgen of both that plays into a massive feedback loop. The more we play together the less frequently these meltdowns occur, but we haven't flushed them all from the system yet. Anyway, good first half. Also fun to play EO and Keebler again, as the last time was all those Albany summer league games many years ago when we had just graduated from our respective schools (Arnold and Adam too, but I've played them a bunch in the intervening years).

Meanwhile, in the other round 5 game, ICU beats Big Ego in a nail biter! Pretty big surprise there. I did note the lack of Barrett, Bickford, de Frondeville, and Mooney in that game (and Seeger, who didn't show until semis), but nonetheless, those guys aren't easy to beat under any circumstances so kudos to the ICU guys for a nice win. This makes us, Big Ego, and ICU all 2-2, so the seeding comes to points. I believe it worked out us, Big Ego, then ICU, so ICU had to play the 4-5 play-in game. We get dry in a Dunkin' Donuts during that game, as we wait for the semis.

Semis, Big Ego: I wonder if those guys draw straws to see who gets to sleep in until semis? Some changes from Saturday: No Bickford, Cooper, or Mooney, but Barrett and de Frondeville are back, and as noted they've added Seeger (I've never played him before - man, he's good, but aren't they all?). No surprise, but they are a different team on Sunday. Their D is similar, but of course they throw us by coming out in a straight man rather than junk, and like yesterday get a break right off the bat. Their offense is much crisper, however, and they don't give us nearly as many opportunities as they did on Saturday. Like yesterday, they take half 8-6. Like yesterday, they grab the first few points of the second half. We then trade it out and end up losing 15-11.

Finals, Above & Beyond vs. Big Ego: Sorry I can't report on this; I had to run some friends to the airport. Anybody know how this turned out? Thank you to "samth" from the comments for pointing out that George Cooke reports Big Ego beating A&B in the finals. Quick check shows Jim's write-up is in as is Alex's.

Wrap-up

Alas. Still, a very good tournament for us, and I continue to feel like we play better in each and every outing. Our victory gaps are widening, our loss gaps are narrowing. Also, the tournament was very cleanly played. The calls were rare, and even during those few that drew heckles it all felt fairly good-natured. Had a blast, despite the weather.

This is a fitness blog though, so I'm contractually obligated to talk conditioning at least a little... All in all, I was pretty pleased with the way I felt. I'm no longer exclusively an O player, which feels good, and I played a lot of points in the A&B and both Big Ego games. Ran just as hard in the semis as in game 1, so that's good, and even played downfield a fair amount in the semis, probably the first time I've done so in like 13 years. I think the training strategies I've adopted continue to pay dividends. Except for height, I consider myself to have pretty sub-par genetics, athletically. In high school I was woefully uncoordinated and was only allowed to play basketball because I was the tallest kid in the school and I could block shots. I was hopeless at everything else. Without lots of training I'm pretty damn slow, and even with lots of training I'm not particularly explosive. Chronic ankle, shin, and knee problems. But with all this stuff, I think I've managed to work my way into the middle of the pack, athletically. I usually work out around four days a week, but the only running I do is during pickup, along with a set of Tabata sprints once or twice a week (sometimes I'll sub in Tabata jump rope or burpees, depending on how my legs feel). It's probably obvious by now, but I'm finding my training strategy boils down to this:

• Tabatas are huge. You still want a well-rounded regime, but if you aren't doing these already, work in a set or two a week and tell me it doesn't make a difference. Remember, each 20-second work period is all out. As Ross Enamait says, "run each one like my pit bull is chasing you." What this means, of course, is that your last 20 seconds will be much slower than your first 20. But that's okay, as long as you're going as hard as you can for each and every interval. Totally, totally sucks. Since your last few sets will be so slow, might be worth doing some speed work on a different day once in awhile (especially if you're like me and you aren't naturally speedy).
• Speaking of Enamait and a well-rounded routine... Absolutely essential reading for any athlete (except marathoners and the like). I don't know how to convince you of this if I haven't already through my other posts.

Results come pretty quickly at the prescribed intensity. Six weeks 'til Log Jam, three months 'till Sectionals. That's enough time to get into pretty killer shape. Get started! Unless you are a potential opponent. In that case I encourage you to watch as much TV as possible, ideally while eating something. Potato chips are an excellent choice.

Here's a quick workout I made up and really like:

First, Tabata something. I skipped rope last time, but sprints or burpees would also be good. Then do 3-5 runs through this core circuit:

• 12 V-Ups: See the link. Nice demo and explanation.
• 20 Grasshoppers: That's what Ross Enamait calls 'em, anyway. Assume a pushup position. Tuck your right knee in towards your chest and sweep your leg up, attempting to touch your laces to your left hand (your hands stay on the ground throughout the movement). Now the other side. Keep alternating.
• 20 Crickets: I made up the name, as they are kinda a backwards Grasshopper. Watch the trailer (WMV, 1.6MB) for The Art of Strength: Newport DVD. The exercise is at 1:10 of the trailer. Note the knee flexion. Try to get your foot up near your opposite hand (a guy on my team can touch his foot to his hand doing this movement).
• 30-second Waiter's Walk, each arm: Hoist a dumbell locked out overhead and start walking. Keep walking the whole time. Make it heavy enough to challenge yourself, but note that if you change direction it'll be harder to keep the weight balanced up there than you think. Don't let it come crashing down on your head. That would be bad. I feel compelled to include the "I'm not responsible if you try this and injure or kill yourself" disclaimer. There.

Remember, that's 3-5 runs through the core circuit (you only do the Tabatas once, but you're welcome to do them at the top of every circuit if you feel up to it). Try to keep rest between exercises to 30-45 seconds, and rest between circuits to a minute. Feel free to up the reps if it's too easy.

Report back, let me know how it feels. Be nice to know who's reading, and if you are trying any of this stuff. Thanks!

I've been enjoying Vern Gambetta's Functional Path Training weblog recently. Just a few of his recent posts:

• Carson Palmer Rehab. Interesting knee rehab observations.
• A sampling of youth sports and training posts:
  • Last Boy or Girl Standing - Training or Abuse?
  • Childhood Obesity or The Epidemic of Overuse and Orthopaedic Injuries
  • Youth Sports - The Profit Motive
• The Garage - Driveway. Gambetta just started posting pictures of his home setup. The stone-stepping game looks like fun.

Lately a handful of us have been doing a mini-workout after pick-up. This one is fast becoming a "favorite":

Start a clock. At the top of every minute, do 10 burpees. Said another way, however long it takes you to do 10, you have the remainder of the minute to rest. Repeat until you can't do your 10 in during a given minute. Go until only one player's left standing.

Here's a burpee refresher. We tend to do 180-degree jumps to enforce a minimum performance on the leap.

So far we have yet to do the true "last player standing" challenge. After two solid hours of good pickup in the heat this past Sunday, we all quit by mutual agreement after six minutes (sixty burpees). I don't know how much better we would have done had we all been fresh, but I know that I personally don't have 100 in me at that clip (yet).

The Economist on sleep, new drugs:

...a new, contrarian school of thought is emerging. The eight-hours mantra has no more scientific basis than the tooth fairy, says Neil Stanley, head of sleep research at the Human Psychopharmacology Research Unit at the University of Surrey in Britain. He believes that everyone has their own individual "sleep need" which can be anywhere between three and 11 hours. "If you're a three-hour-a-night person, you need three; if you're 11, you need 11." To find out, he says, simply sleep until you wake naturally, without the aid of an alarm clock. Feel rested? That's your sleep need.

I can't imagine the new drugs are healthy, but boy, I would love it if they could someday "cure" me of sleeping. When fantasizing about which superpower I'd like to have, the ability to make sleep optional is always a dark horse candidate (but not one you'd ever base a comic book around).

Lots of fitness experts tout the benefits of copious sleep for workout recovery and fat loss, but I don't really have any information on that, nor do I know how it would relate to the idea of individualized sleep needs as described above.

Too rich for my blood, but I think the Walkstool might be the ultimate Ultimate chair, mostly because it folds down to nothing (here's one clipped to a photographer's belt). A buddy of mine had a knock-off I envied. Not that I'll be trading in my $6 K-Mart special anytime soon, but I would if I had money to burn.

Damn, the "injuries" section of this site is getting long! I should call it "Limping & Whining Fitness". Anyway, in the interest of sharing every little thing, I am quite prone to pain behind the kneecaps, a condition that worsens the more often and vigorously I exercise. I've generally been able to control it with diligent icing, but lately it's been getting worse. Doing that thing I do, some quick Googling turned up a likely candidate "Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome". I realize this is a fancy way of saying "it hurts behind the kneecap" so wasn't too optimistic about finding a cut-and-dried cure. This review by Mark S. Juhn for the American Academy of Family Physicians was very interesting nonetheless. I'm going to choose to believe it's this rather than chondromalacia ("actual fraying and damage to the underlying patellar cartilage"). Still a bummer though, as it's impossible to get a good lower-body workout without lots of knee flexion.

Ah yes, the vaguely defined condition and treatment. Just like my other bugaboo, shin splints. It's probably the same biomechanical problem (whatever it is) hitting me two different ways.

WMO was my first tournament since a bad ankle sprain suffered at the end of the 2005 season. With my current set of braces splitting at the seams, I need to take stock...

I sprained each ankle pretty badly numerous times playing high school basketball. High tops provide ZERO support, in my experience. I've probably done each ankle six times unbraced. However, when wearing McDavid lace-up braces I made it through 17 years of Ultimate without a sprain (until my first Nationals - wouldn't you know it?). So now I have to decide if I should buy another pair of McDavids, or if I should switch to Active Ankle braces. I hesitate to give up my McDavid's as they served me so well for 17 years, but I don't want rare ankle sprains, I want zero ankle sprains. Theoretically the Active Ankle braces provide more support, or so says "a major university." But which major university? What study? And what of all the anecdotal stories you hear about ankle sprains and bracing? Some examples:

• Braces don't prevent sprains (false, if my experience has anything to say about it. Give me a few months braceless and I'll give you a sprain the size of a goose egg. With braces, one sprain in 17 years).
• Braces will make your ankles weak and dependant, so you can never go braceless again (seems like hogwash to me, provided your brace allows a normal range of motion while preventing an abnormal range of motion).
• Braces will slow you down (not sure).
• Braces transfer the stress further up your leg, making you more prone to knee injury (this one just seems silly, unless the brace is seriously compromising your normal range of motion).
• Braces are not the answer, proper rehab is (maybe, but again, not in my experience. Sprain 'em enough, and no amount of rehab is going to tighten them all the way up again. Interestingly, a NMT friend of mine recently told me that there are lots of proprioceptors in the ligaments themselves, so when you sprain an ankle and damage the ligaments, it is not only the ligament looseness that makes you more prone to sprains, but the decreased proprioception down there as well).

Anyway, I went a huntin' for some studies. My initial Google search (university study "active ankle" inversion tape) turned up a few things, but clicking through on the Scholarly articles for university study "active ankle" inversion tape gets you the good stuff. Without further ado, various sources with interesting excerpts (note that I'm not qualified to judge the validity of these studies):

The Prevention of Ankle Sprains in Sports - A Systematic Review of the Literature by Stephen B. Thacker, MD, MSc, Donna F. Stroup, PhD, MSc, Christine M. Branche, PhD, Julie Gilchrist, MD, Richard A. Goodman, MD, MPH, and Elyse A. Weitman

To assess the published evidence on the effectiveness of various approaches to the prevention of ankle sprains in athletes, we used textbooks, journals, and experts in the field of sports medicine to identify citations. We identified 113 studies reporting the risk of ankle sprains in sports, methods to provide support, the effect of these interventions on performance, and comparison of prevention efforts. The most common risk factor for ankle sprain in sports is history of a previous sprain. [emphasis added]

How incredibly awesome. If someone could arrange for a team of experts to summarize available literature whenever I set out to research something, that'd be grand.

Using a variety of tools, these investigators have demonstrated that inversion of the ankle is substantially restricted with these interventions. Slowing the speed of inversion, however, does not provide the peroneal muscles time to contract to prevent injury, and the torque generated by braces will not counteract the inversion movement that typically leads to injury. Moreover, such restriction is reduced after exercise, especially in persons using tape or cloth wrapping. Although the effectiveness of orthoses is reduced by exercise, these devices can be tightened easily to provide effective deterrents to extreme inversion, and may also protect the ankle by preventing inversion movement by preloading and maintaining the ankle in proper anatomic position at impact. [Tighten those braces after you've been exercising a bit!]

Although the majority of studies indicate that appropriately braced or taped ankles do not adversely affect performance, several studies report a small, but statistically significant, decrease in performance.

a randomized controlled trial of 2562 U.S. intramural basketball players observed for 2 years demonstrated a protective effect of high-top shoes. This study also demonstrated the protective effect of taping, reporting a reduction from 32.8 sprains per 1000 participant-games to 14.7 sprains per 1000 participant-games. Indeed, the protective effect of shoes was due primarily to taping, although the use of high-top shoes enhanced that protective effect. [emphasis added]

In a randomized controlled trial of 1601 U.S., male, college-aged intramural basketball players with no history of recent ankle sprain, a semirigid orthosis had a significant protective effect compared with the unprotected ankle (1.6 ankle sprains per 1000 athlete-exposures versus 5.2 sprains per 1000 athlete-exposures).

The trial of soccer players in Sweden suggests that training that focuses both on agility and flexibility decreases the risk for ankle injury. Similar results are seen in a study of knee injuries among soccer players in Italy.

For decades, taping the ankle has been the preventive method of choice for coaches and trainers in many sports. Data from one randomized controlled trial indicate that taping can prevent ankle sprains, despite the fact that tape loosens in approximately 10 minutes and provides little or no measurable support to the inverting ankle within 30 minutes. [interesting paradox - click through for more]

Despite these research needs and unanswered questions, on the basis of this review, we can make one clear recommendation to coaches, trainers, and athletes: athletes with a sprained ankle should complete supervised rehabilitation before returning to practice or competition, and those athletes suffering a moderate or severe sprain should wear an appropriate orthosis for at least 6 months. Research suggests that the benefit of the orthosis persists up to 1 year after injury.

The influence of foot positioning on ankle sprains by I.C. Wright, R.R. Neptune, A.J. van den Bogert, and B.M. Nigg

First of all, the entire introduction is fascinating. Go read it. On to the excerpts:

This meant that the more plantarflexed the foot was at touchdown, the greater the incidence of excessive supination. This result was further supported by the findings presented in the literature. Inversion sprains often occur when the foot is plantarflexed (Leonard, 1949; Renstrom and Kontradsen, 1997), and the ATF ligament, which is loaded when the foot is plantarflexed and supinated, is the most frequently sprained ligament of the ankle (Leonard, 1949; Saunders, 1980). Therefore, it appears that susceptibility to sprains is increased by initial plantar flexion.

Ankle taping and bracing may influence the position of the unloaded foot, decreasing the tendency of the foot to be plantarflexed. Taping and bracing stiffen the ankle in dorsi/plantar flexion as well as supination/pronation (Bruns et al., 1996; Siegler et al., 1997). Siegler et al. suggested that `the largest effects of the ankle braces on the passive flexibility of the ankle complex occurred near the neutral position of the ankle. Therefore the braces not only limit the range of motion, but may return the unloaded ankle to a neutral position. Since the foot was initially plantarflexed an average of 10° at touchdown during the simulated side-shuffle movements (Neptune et al., 1999), returning the foot to a neutral (zero dorsiflexion position) would tend to decrease the sprain frequency. Both ankle taping and bracing have been shown to improve foot position awareness in the unloaded foot (Heit et al., 1996). Therefore, in addition to passive ankle repositioning, taping and bracing may improve active ankle repositioning (by the muscles) in response to proprioceptive signals, thereby reducing the occurrence of excessive plantar flexion at touchdown. The findings of the current study would therefore suggest that repositioning of the foot prior to touchdown may be the means by which taping and bracing reduce ankle sprain frequency.

Very interesting. I wonder if that's how my McDavid's served me so well for 17 years? Clearly, since I sprained my ankle while wearing them, they don't provide enough support to prevent sprains Although, who knows how much worse the sprain would have been without them (it was bad enough). Also, I wasn't in the habit of tightening the braces after 10 minutes or so.

The Effects of Kinesio™ Taping on Proprioception at the Ankle by Travis Halseth, John W. McChesney, Mark DeBeliso, Ross Vaughn and Jeff Lien

I've written about Kinesio tape before. I imagine the Kinesio folks weren't too happy with the findings:

The application of Kinesio™ tape does not appear to enhance proprioception (in terms of reproduction of joint position sense (RJPS)) in healthy individuals as determined by our measures of RJPS at the ankle in the motions of plantar flexion and 20° of plantar flexion with inversion.

Although...

It is important to note, however, since the present study did not specifically measure changes in cutaneous sense, that kinesio™ tape cannot be ruled out as a contributor to increasing cutaneous sense. We can only speculate on the role cutaneous sense may or may not play in RJPS. It may be that kinesio™ tape does contribute to increasing cutaneous feedback, however it appears that it plays only a minimal role in RJPS.

Peroneus Longus Stretch Reflex Amplitude Increases After Ankle Brace Application by ML Cordova and CD Ingersoll

Wow! Here's a study that speaks directly to the two products I'm considering:

A 3 X 3 X 2 factorial design guided this study. The first independent variable (within-subjects factor) was the test condition with three levels: control (no brace), semi-rigid (Active Ankle training brace; Active Ankle Systems, Inc, Louisville, Kentucky, USA), and lace up (McDavid 199; McDavid Knee Guard, Chicago, Illinois, USA).

Figures this study would be the hardest to understand. Is it desireable that the peroneus longus amplitude increase? It sounds like it is. Thank goodness for the one-line "take home message":

External ankle support may enhance the sensorimotor response of the peroneus longus muscle.

More...

We attempted to investigate the effects of long term use of ankle braces on the amplitude of the peroneus longus stretch reflex. The neuromuscular function of this muscle is critical to the dynamic support of the ankle/foot complex and the prevention of inversion injuries. As a result, peroneus longus reaction time (latency) during a simulated ankle sprain has been predominantly studied comparing normal and chronically unstable ankles,7 9-13 whereas the effect of ankle support on peroneus longus function has not been as thoroughly investigated.

There is no question that the semi-rigid style is more restrictive than the lace up style because of its inherent construction. The restrictive properties of the ankle braces play a role as the physiological limit of joint motion is reached. However, the peroneus longus muscle is firing well before the physiological limit is reached. This may provide more evidence that the external ankle support offered may enhance cutaneous feedback in addition to the mechanical properties of the devices.

Another important finding of this study is that, after acute application, the lace up brace resulted in greater stretch reflex amplitude of the peroneus longus than the semi-rigid and control conditions. We hypothesise that this is due to increased afferent information provided to the central nervous system primarily by cutaneous mechanoreceptors, and perhaps other joint mechanoreceptors, although no other data exist on the influence of ankle bracing on peroneus longus reflex amplitude. Because the lace up brace covers more area than the semi-rigid brace, more receptors may be being stimulated.

So the lace up (McDavid) provides for improved proprioception as soon as you put it on, but the semi-rigid (Active Ankle) doesn't improve proprioception until eight weeks go by? Not sure I'm interpreting that right, but that's what it sounds like. Here's the conclusion:

This study was designed to determine if long term ankle bracing affects peroneus longus neuromuscular response. The data provide evidence that peroneus longus amplitude in response to sudden inversion perturbation immediately after the application of a lace up style ankle brace is facilitated. It was also observed that peroneus longus amplitude was increased after an eight week application of a semi-rigid style ankle brace. The increased reflex response with an immediate application and extended use of external ankle support is a positive finding, as the neuromotor response from the primary musculature dynamically stabilising against lateral ankle sprain is enhanced. Although these results are encouraging, more studies are needed to understand the mechanisms by which these neurophysiological characteristics of the peroneus longus stretch reflex are effected. These results provide support for clinicians who advocate the use of prophylactic ankle support for extended periods of time, perhaps over the course of a sport season, in healthy subjects and in subjects who suffer from chronic ankle instability.

All very interesting stuff, but it doesn't bring me any closer to a decision! Damn.

(You can safely skip this post if you [a] don't care about Ultimate, or [b] don't care how my team did at White Mountain Open.)

Not a bad first tourney of the season for Chop Shop (a.k.a. ~10 old men shaking off the winter, plus Young Matt on both days and Even Younger Evan on Sunday). Some random thoughts:

The weather sucked. Saturday was pretty chilly and varying degrees of very rainy all day. The fields held up okay for the first round or two, but then really turned mucky in significant parts. Almost had my cleats sucked off my feet on more than one occasion. It rained all night Sunday, but happily only drizzled on Sunday. Fields were still in sad shape though. Hard to imagine the field owners knew what they were getting into when they gave us the green light no matter the weather.

Interesting format this year, with the big guns (DoG, Twisted, NY) opting for the NJ Invite instead (sounds like they had great weather - damn A-listers have all the luck). 15 teams, 3 pools of five teams, with one elite pool (Red Tide, Bro White, New Noise, Firebird, and Q), and two pools for the rest of us. We are seeded third in our pool. Some results:

Saturday

• Round 1, East River Yacht Club, NY (2 seed): Rainy, cold. Not too mucky yet. Perhaps our age, seed, and generally bedraggled appearance puts them off guard. We win pretty handily. 13-5, or thereabouts.
• Round 2, bye: Man, when I looked at the weather I really thought the second round bye was going to suck, but we found The Nicest Laundromat on the Planet in Woodstock, where we could change, dry our clothes, hang out and watch TV, etc. Possibly the best bye I've ever had.
• Round 3, Magma (1 seed): Rainy, cold, starting to get quite mucky. I recall these guys being a Q-caliber team, but nicer. At least that's the way it was a couple years ago. We must harbor resentment over being taken out of our nice warm laundromat, as we jump them and never look back, winning 13-8 or so, I think.
• Round 4, Les Autres (sp?), (4 seed): More Canadians. Weather still sucks. We play our worst game of the day (or they make us play our worst game of the day) and win something like 13-7.
• Round 5, MUFF, (5 seed): WWI levels of muck on the field now. A Manchester team, many looking high school age or so, but really just seem like friends that got together to try this frisbee thing they've heard about, and are clearly having a ball despite the weather. Many of them throw that "thumb on the rim, disc resting on forearm throw" with reckless enthusiasm, catching Xav in the throat with one (I actually ducked-and-covered as I came in to mark one guy). Fun game. They get 1 on us. "Ruthless efficiency" was the watchword (watchphrase?) not to be mean, but because there's only so much cold and wet one can take in a day.

Sunday

Merely drizzling feels relatively nice, but the fields are still a mess from the all-day/all-night rain. A few open-div teams have gone home, all the elite teams stayed, and we've played up to the six-team championship bracket (we moved up with Dartmouth Alums, Q moved down). New Noise and Bro White get byes. Dartmouth Alums play Red Tide, we play Firebird (more Canadians! Jim O. said they looked like Wax), Much to both teams' surprise, we crush them, 13-4 or 5 (well, I was surprised, anyway; I expected a close game). They seemed a bit too slavishly devoted to their called plays, running them robotically rather than taking what was given. Mostly nice game, nice guys. First time I've ever played in a game where an altercation caused players to be removed from the field though. Nice work by the captains nipping that in the bud.

Anyway, the win got us a match against Bro White (the Slow White males) in the semis. Other semi was Red Tide/New Noise. We hang with Bro to 8-8, then completely fold losing 15-9 (damn damn damn). Not sure how it happened. Fatigue, perhaps. Our decision-making went to pot (since when do I throw hammers?) along with a few gaffes and we were done. Bro goes on to beat Red Tide in the finals 15-11, I believe.

Nice improvement from last year, when we were crushed by Q in the comparable Sunday match-up (they even played the same spread O with slavish comeback cuts, I believe). Lots to work on, but it feels like we're much closer to picking up where we left off last season rather than starting from scratch, and with a skeleton crew at that.

Clarence Bass has another great article up on the benefits of sprint training. Subjects in a relatively recent study reaped significant benefits doing "four to seven "all-out" 30-second sprints on a bicycle ergometer with four-minute rest periods, six times over two weeks". They did not get the peak oxygen uptake or anaerobic work capacity benefits of Tabatas, however:

"Most strikingly," the researchers wrote, "cycle endurance capacity increased by 100% after [sprint interval training]." The time to fatigue cycling at about 80% of VO2max increased on average from 26 minutes to 51 minutes!

If you hate grinding out long cardio sessions, this is a must-read. For example:

"To our knowledge, this is the first study to show that sprint training dramatically improves endurance capacity during a fixed workload test in which the majority of cellular energy is derived from aerobic metabolism," the researchers reported. Impressively, the short period of very intense exercise produced improvements "comparable to or higher than previously reported aerobic-based training studies of similar duration." In other words, about two minutes of very intense exercise (15 minutes over 2 weeks) produced the same or better results than previously shown after two hours a day at about 65% of VO2max, or 20 hours over two weeks.

15 minutes vs. 20 hours. Yow.

The "Tabata Compared" section was of particular interest to me (obviously). Fantastic piece. By all means, click through...

I just watched the trailer (WMV, 1.6MB) for The Art of Strength: Newport DVD, and it's pretty nice. What grabbed me though, was the stretch he demonstrates starting at 1:10. Definitely going to have to start including that in my stretch breaks.

The Freakonomics guys on talent vs. hard work:

[Anders Ericsson and colleagues'] work, compiled in the "Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance," a 900-page academic book that will be published next month, makes a rather startling assertion: the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers—whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming—are nearly always made, not born. And yes, practice does make perfect. These may be the sort of clichés that parents are fond of whispering to their children. But these particular clichés just happen to be true.

I'm going to get lots of mileage out of the last few Rival Training posts...

First up, they link to a National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) Performance Training Journal PDF, which prompted me to find their archives. What a gold mine! That ought to keep me in reading material for awhile.

Next, a reference to this Outside Magazine bit on the "glycogen window". It reminded me of this contrarian view from Art De Vany I meant to blog awhile ago:

• Gene Expression and Muscle Glycogen
• Those Glucose Guzzling Cyclists
• Mountain Climbing
• Gene Expression and Muscle Glycogen, Part 3

Note there is some distinction to be drawn between quickly replenishing glycogen for performance reasons vs. not quickly replenishing glycogen to elicit a greater training response. Read the comments too, as they are also quite interesting.

Finally, Eileen's Abs Workout, which looks pretty good. Some notes on the exercises:

Lie on your back, knees bent. Raise your head off the floor until your trunk is at about a 45-degree angle. Twist from side to side rapidly 100 times. (KQ Note- arms crossed over chest is the way I've been doing these and seen them done).

These are Russian Twists (or at least that's one name for them). You can make them harder by clasping your hands together and extending your arms out perpendicular to your body. Even harder by holding a medicine ball in your extended arms. Even harder by doing them on an incline bench and holding your body horizontal.

Do 50 "Rocky Balboas", or twist crunches. One knee bent, other straight, hands behind your head. Reach one elbow towards the opposite knee. Alternate sides. (KQ Note- I prefer hands to ears so you don't pull on your neck. And really try to keep your shoulders down, away from your ears)

"Chinnies" or "bicycle crunches" (although I kinda like "Rocky Balboas"). Important to note that the straight leg does not rest on the ground.

Next, do 50 high-speed bicycles. (KQ Note- on back, arms at side. Lift legs up at 90 degree angle, then lift pelvis up off the ground. Arms can help balance. Move legs in a bicycle-y way!)

I'd be tempted to sub in flutter kicks here, as described by Scrapper:

Lie flat on your back and place your hands underneath your butt. Press the small of your back into the ground and raise your feet 6 inches. The first motion is one leg swinging up until your foot is almost over your crotch then, as it descends, the other leg is on the way up.

Good stuff, a tip o' the hat to the Rival Training gang.

Here's the short version: if you are any kind of athlete (except pure endurance athlete, like a marathoner), you need (need!) to buy one of Ross Enamait's books. Go with Infinite Intensity if you want to work weights into the mix, or his new one, Never Gymless if you want to go (mostly) equipment-free. Absorb what he teaches, put in the work (and boy, do I mean work), and you'll reap tremendous benefits in strength, power, speed, and endurance. Now, the long version...

Never Gymless is the third book I've bought from Ross. I previously reviewed The Underground Guide to Warrior Fitness and Infinite Intensity. It's going to be difficult to bring anything new to the discussion, as Never Gymless is essentially a combination of those two books, bringing the emphasis on bodyweight exercises from TUGTWF (which has been discontinued, as Never Gymless supercedes it) and program creation from Infinite Intensity.

The book is fantastic. You can't go wrong with either it, or Infinite Intensity. The primary difference is in the training methods presented: Infinite Intensity includes bodyweight exercises, but also lots of dumbell exercises. There are no dumbells in Never Gymless. It's all bodyweight exercises, but there's no doubt from reading the book (and watching Ross's videos) that you can get very strong with bodyweight exercise alone (Ross does include additional material on intensifying certain exercises with resistance bands). The book goes way beyond being a mere catalog of exercises though. Perhaps I can give you a good sense of it by going through the table of contents with some thoughts and a few short excerpts (page numbers in parens):

• Introduction (3)

  "I am constantly trying new things in a never-ending quest to improve my abilities and the abilities of those individuals I train. Rather than revising The Underground Guide for a fourth time, I wanted to start from scratch. I felt the need to create a true one-stop resource for training methods that require little or no equipment."

• The Duel (bodyweight training vs. weight lifting) (5)

  "Whether you use bodyweight exercise, weights, or sandbags, each modality is simply a means to an end. The end is the development of a complete athlete. There have been world champion fighters who swore by bodyweight exercise, while others thrived in the weight room. What does this tell us? The obvious answer is that several roads can lead towards the developmentt of an elite athlete. With a regular dose of hard work and a properly designed program, you can use almost any modality to enhance your physical perparation. This book will outline a bodyweight driven path."

• Training Principles (15)

  No quote here: just the section headings: Variety; Long Term Development; Purpose Driven Training; and Training for Specific Qualities. Great chapter, loved learning about intensity and recovery, training multiple strength qualities like maximal strength vs. explosive strength vs. strength endurance, etc. All the pieces, with conditioning, that need to be assembled into a plan.

• Pulling Strength & Power (32)

  26 pages on pulling exercises: pull-ups, muscle-ups, one-arm varieties, progressions for beginners to advanced athletes. You wouldn't think there'd be that much to say on this subject, but it's all good, no filler.

• Pushing Strength & Power (58)

  See above, but for pushing exercises. So many interesting varieties, and again, the progressions are great. Probably one of the best things about the book. Lots of creative uses of cinderblocks and tow straps as well.

• Lower Body Strength & Power (90)

  See above again, but for the lower body.

• Isometrics (110)

  These really seem worth including in any fitness plan, especially when you consider the short time commitment to produce what sound like excellent returns: "Another study examined the effect of weight training and explosive isometrics (together) on martial arts kicks and palm strikes. The experimental group working with weights and explosive isometrics realized significant increases in both peak force and speed. This study confirmed that speed can be enhanced by supplementing your martial arts training with strength work and explosive isometrics (Olsen, P.D & Hopkins, W.G, 1999). Fortunately, after reading this text, you can use bodyweight exercise in place of weight training. Therefore, you can produce noticable improvements in kicking and punching speed without equipment."

• A Powerful Core (127)

  One of the things I loved about Infinite Intensity was what it did for my core strength. More good stuff here in Never Gymless. "Exercises such as the crunch and sit-up do in fact offer some benefits, but clearly not enough. These exercises fail to address many of the movement patterns assoiated with the core. Primary movements of the core include extension, flexion, lateral flexion, rotation, and stabilization." Creative equipment hacks here, including powerful-looking resistance band movements, and some killer homemade double-wheel exercises.

• Conditioning is King (157)

  As usual, thankfully, Ross's conditioning workouts are again from hell (in a good way), emphasizing high speed, high intensity, and high fatigue. Love the "enhanced interval training" and "integrated circuit training" descriptions.

• Nutrition (173)

  The nutrition chapter is fascinating, and marks the biggest departure from The Underground Guide. That book talked a great deal about supplementation, while this book focuses on eating natural and healthy. Quite a few well-deserved slams against the food industry to go with tons of common-sense advice. One gets the impression this chapter could have been expanded into it's own book. I'm definitely going to have to check out some of Ross's sources for further reading.

• Program Design (194)

  Ah, like in Infinite Intensity, program design is the heart of this book. The individual pieces are great, but it's how to put them together into a program that will take you to higher levels of athleticism that Ross really wants to teach.

  "My training philosophy is one that integrates several methods, all with the goal of creating an athlete who is always ready for whatever life or competition may throw at him. Unfortunately, many training plans fail to comply with this simple concept. Rather than training for multifaceted development, individual attributes are developed separately. For example, an athlete may develop maximal strength for several weeks. He then shifts his emphasis towards explosive strength. After serveral weeks of explosive strength training, he shifts gears yet again, this time towards strength endurance. While working on this attribute, the improvements in maximal strength, which were developed several weeks earlier, are all but lost. Explosive strength also fades as the athlete dedicates all of his time towards strength endurance. As one attribute improves, previously developed attributes gradually decline."

  I've never liked the "peaking for one event" model of periodization I'd come to associate with the term, and love Ross's "always ready" approach to periodization. For me, this alone made Infinite Intensity worth the price of admission, and I'm happy to see the ideas reiterated here. Like Infinite Intensity, this book includes a sample 50-day plan, but Ross emphasizes again and again that you must tailor the plan to your needs. I think the sample plan in Never Gymless forces you to put a bit more thought into this as an individual, and that's a good thing.

• Frequently Asked Questions (224)

  Rather than discuss this, check out Ross's online FAQ (which includes how to pronounce his name :-). It's not the same FAQ as in the book.

• Works Cited (230)

  An excellent reading list.

• Exercise List (232)

  I count 136 different exercises listed here.

Well, another Enamait product, another rave. Sorry for being a broken record, but I simply feel the man puts out the best fitness books on the market.

P.S. I realized I've been presenting buying Infinite Intensity or Never Gymless as an either/or proposition. Personally, I'm happy to have both, as I plan on liberally borrowing from each when I design my next 50-day plan.

When I saw the headline I thought it was a joke, but Jim at Beast Skills does indeed have a tutorial up on the no-handed one-arm chin.

Via Crossfit comes a bombshell, lactic acid is your friend:

[George Brooks] and his UC Berkeley colleagues found that muscle cells use carbohydrates anaerobically for energy, producing lactate as a byproduct, but then burn the lactate with oxygen to create far more energy. The first process, called the glycolytic pathway, dominates during normal exertion, and the lactate seeps out of the muscle cells into the blood to be used elsewhere. During intense exercise, however, the second ramps up to oxidatively remove the rapidly accumulating lactate and create more energy.

Training helps people get rid of the lactic acid before it can build to the point where it causes muscle fatigue, and at the cellular level, Brooks said, training means growing the mitochondria in muscle cells. The mitochondria - often called the powerhouse of the cell - is where lactate is burned for energy.

"The world's best athletes stay competitive by interval training," Brooks said, referring to repeated short, but intense, bouts of exercise. "The intense exercise generates big lactate loads, and the body adapts by building up mitochondria to clear lactic acid quickly. If you use it up, it doesn't accumulate."

puddleduck asks:

I'd be curious to read your thoughts on skills development and ultimate specific training. Currently I play 2-3 times a week and hope to become an impact player at this level (RIPUL Summer League ... roughly equivilent to Buda's Hatleagues) over the next two seasons.

Other than playing as often as possible, and testing my wife's patients for throwing with me, do you have suggestions for learning the game? I missed out on the opportunity to get coached in college and I don't see myself making a club team anytime soon.

Alrighty! Instruction for new players with perhaps an emphasis on throwing seems to be the target, so here goes:

1. Buy a copy of Ultimate Techniques and Tactics by Jim Parinella and Eric Zazlow. It's fantastic. You will learn much more from it than you will from me.
2. Throw as often as you can. I sometimes feel that players that come to the sport after college are at a big disadvantage. When you are on a team in college, you throw every day, sometimes in multiple sessions, and that doesn't even count practices. You'll see teammates between classes and you'll kill time by tossing. You almost can't help but become a good thrower. I play with a fair number of guys who came to the sport after college, and their throws have taken much longer to develop. Repetition, repetition, repetition.

3. Fix your grips sooner rather than later. When I first started playing I threw my backhand with my index finger laying along the rim. It took six months before a more experienced player noticed and said to me, "you know, nobody who's any good holds their backhand like that." Argh (thank you, Will Heyman). Fortunately, with only six months under my belt the rebuild wasn't too painful. You should squeeze your backhand in your fist, all fingers curled under the rim. Much more power than the finger-out grip.

   As for the flick, they tell me you should have two fingers on the rim but I can't help you there, as I've been using the split-finger grip (index finger on the rim, middle finger pointing towards the middle of the disc) for 17 years and it's too late for me to change now (I've tried). But if you're still finding your style, you should probably get a two-finger flick thrower to teach you. Watching the teams warm up for the finals at Open Nationals last year, seemed like the split-finger grip was the rare exception.

   (A story about my inferior grip: a teammate was trying to convince another split-finger thrower to change grips. He was going around demonstrating that all the good throwers threw two-finger. Until he got to me, and was shocked to discover I was in the split-finger camp. Kinda undermined his case. So I've made do. But still, if I had it to do over again...)

4. When you practice throwing, throw like you will in a game. Fake, pivot, throw. Don't just stand upright and casually toss. Especially if you aren't throwing every day. Make your rare throwing sessions count. Most importantly...

5. Get your body low when you throw! Practice pivoting wide and throwing from a lunged position. Bend from the knees, not the waist. You want to be able to pivot from the forehand lunge to the backhand lunge and back while maintaining balance about your center of gravity. There are throwers that can break the mark at will while standing more upright, but in my experience many of the good mark-breakers do it with the legs and low throws.

   (Another story: the player that gave me the biggest nightmares was Jeff Capella. I often ended up covering him, and was always woefully outmatched. I remember once trying to mark him, and he had pivoted way out for the forehand. Then way back for the backhand. The thing was, he never came out of the crouch when transitioning. It was like he was on rails, and his shoulders never got higher than three feet off the ground. The worse part was when he'd get to the middle of transitioning from forehand to backhand, and would rapidly juke back-and-forth in this crouched position before extending out for an easy throw around my hapless mark. Nightmares, I tell you.)

6. Don't learn a high-release backhand. You will fall in love with it, and you will always use it to break the mark to the forehand side. You will use it at the expense of your low-release backhand and break-mark flick. It will become a crutch, but one that you can't use at all in the wind. You will use it for years anyway, before finally admitting to yourself that it sucks, and going back to learn the throws you should have been using all along. Trust me on this.
7. Get in shape, stay in shape. It feels worse to get beat by bad players who outrun you than good players who outplay you.
8. There are two ways to mark effectively: cheat, or move your feet. Cheating is easy, moving your feet is hard. You have to decide which kind of marker you want to be: [a] ineffective, [b] dishonorable, or [c] really, really tired from working so hard. Most guys that stop me from breaking the mark do it by blatant fouling on the pivot, so I really admire the guys that do it with footwork.
9. When covering a cutter, adopt a proactive mindset. Reactive defense generally sucks (when you wait to see what your man is going to do and then you chase him). Get where your man wants to go first. Even better, make him go where you want him to. This is a pretty subtle skill, requires a good team defense, and is not one I'm particularly good at. But every now that then I've felt it, and it feels great.

That's all off the top of my head. You'd think 17 years of play would amount to more advice. Any tips from readers?

Awhile ago I quietly updated my Turkish Get-up post by adding a link to an Art of Strength video clip. I finally tried their approach to the TGU myself, and it's well worth a special post to call your attention to it.

Often TGU instructions are along the lines of "get up any way you can", which is how I did it. My own way of getting my feet under me felt particularly awkward though, and put a lot of shear stress on my knees, as my legs were almost completely folded at one point with my weight well behind my center of gravity (I'll leave it to your imagination). The Art of Strength approach solves that for me, although I did have to cut the amount of weight I use in half initially to get the mechanics down. That kick-through move seemed odd, but now that I've got it down I really like it. I like the way it gets my legs under my cleanly, provides a nice balance movement, and makes you flex through the lower back and shoulders.

Anyway, give it a shot. Even if you use light weight it's a nice full-body coordination movement.

Too busy/lazy to comment, so I'll just tease you with the first three paragraphs of the lead-in to Clarence Bass's interview with Dr. Pat O'Shea:

For two months now we've been challenging the common belief that low intensity, long duration exercise is best for fitness and fat loss. We've shown that very brief and very hard interval training is amazingly effective in developing both aerobic and anaerobic capacity - and far superior for fat loss. (See articles #10 and 11)

Now, it's time to step back and ask where intense intervals fit in the total spectrum of fitness training. What's best for endurance athletes? Bodybuilders? Older athletes? For total conditioning?

Who better to go to for a broader perspective on interval training than Patrick J. O'Shea, Ed.D, Professor Emeritus of exercise and sports science at Oregon State University? Not only has Pat been a student of sports physiology for four decades, he has excelled as an Olympic and power lifter, a cyclist, a mountain climber, a skier and a coach.

After my sunflower seed butter post, I really should get you the rest of the way to a healthier PB&J (SSB&J, in my version). Alvaredo St. Bakery makes my breads of choice, and you can get 'em in Price Chopper and Stop & Shop (at least in MA). Check out the ingredient list on their multi-grain bread:

Sprouted Organic Whole Wheat Berries, Filtered Water, Wheat Gluten, Honey, Molasses, Organic Millet, Organic Cracked Wheat, Organic Corn Meal, Fresh Yeast, Sea Salt, Organic Oats, Organic Rye, Organic Sunflower Seeds, Organic Flax Seeds, Soy Based Lecithin, Cultured Wheat.

Definitely the tastiest mass-produced healthy bread I've encountered (I know a fair number of you will likely think the phrase "healthy bread" is an oxymoron). Here's the nutritional info:

Their sprouted wheat bread has another gram each of both fiber (good) and sugar (bad).

Last piece of a healthier SSB&J is the jelly. Smuckers makes a nice low-sugar strawberry jelly that doesn't use artificial sweeteners. It is interesting to compare Smucker's regular strawberry jelly (12g sugar), low-sugar strawberry jelly (5g sugar), and their "100% Fruit" strawberry jelly (8g sugar). Only "low sugar" lists "strawberries" as the first ingredient. Still, when I look at the ingredient list you gotta figure homemade low-sugar preserves are the way to go (like I'm made of time, though).

One of my favorite healthy snacks is a swab of nut butter, usually almond butter or, if I'm feeling particularly decadent, cashew butter. While they are tasty and great for you (esp. the almond butter; cashews are fattier), they are expensive (esp. the almond butter, which you would think had a fine gold powder mixed into it at today's prices). Enter sunflower seed butter! Definitely the closest match in taste and consistency to peanut butter, just about as cheap, and check the nutritional profile:

The above comes courtesy of Sunbutter. And here's a bonus for you folks with peanut allergies (like my four-year-old). Unlike all other nut butters (in my experience), it's actually possible to find sunflower seed butter that's peanut free (the nut butters always have the "processed in the same facility as..." warning)! And the taste really is close to peanut butter. If you eat it right off the spoon you can tell, but with bread and jelly it's almost indistinguishable. To a grown-up, anyway. Believe me, I know all about how infinitesimally picky kids can be when it comes to food.

Remember that unbelievable "big strength" video I posted awhile ago? Well, today I found Junior's home page, and you really must check out the video in the "Videos" section. It's all amazing stuff, but he's got this move that starts at 2:31 of the video that can only be described as a rapid-fire repeated planche-to-L-sit. For me that was the jaw-dropper in a reel full of stunners.

It's been awhile since the last big update from Jim at Beast Skills, but he's started making up for lost time:

• New tutorials for the One-Arm Elbow Lever and the One-Arm Elbow Lever to Handstand.
• An article on callus removal (how timely!)
• Finally, a new training log entry (no permalink, this refers to the 4/15 entry).

Ross Enamait's new book, Never Gymless is now available to order! Just put my order in. Review to follow...

Finally got to play some disc outside yesterday! Very windy Goaltimate. The gang has had some lovely weather and sevens for Ultimate previous to yesterday, but conflicts have heartbreakingly kept me away. Anyway, aside from one gymnasium session mid-winter, this was my first play since the ankle sprain closed out my 2005 season. I was curious how I'd feel, as I've been training pretty hard all winter, but with a conspicuous lack of running. Would all those burpees translate? I was worried, as in my experience you can be in great shape and still suck at running if you haven't been doing it, but I was pretty happy with the day. Legs and lungs felt great, although I'm sure the wind and lack of full-field Ultimate helped with that. And I had to quit early with a "deep blister", the second of my life. Let me tell you, when the FixingYourFeet guy says:

Am I a stickler about calluses? You bet. I've seen the grimaces on the faces of athletes who have deep blisters that cannot be repaired without a lot of pain. I've seen them hobble off, knowing it won't get any better.

... he knows what he's talking about. Much worse than a surface blister. I didn't even think my calluses were too thick, but I'll definitely be doing some maintenance. There, that's more than enough about my feet.

Man, White Mountain Open is only like four weeks away! Psyched.

Just updated my bits on Ross Enamait's triple-clap pushups (he has expanded his post into a full article) and the Turkish Get-up (via the Crossfit forums comes this excellent demonstration from the Art of Strength folks (WMV, 7MB)). Definitely going to start doing my TGUs like that.

I took last week off, and pretty much spent the previous two weeks experimenting with different workouts and exercises. I realized I'm kinda idling while I wait for Ross Enamait's Never Gymless to come out next week (next week! I can't wait!). So today I thought I'd give The Magic 50 another shot. It is the very first workout of Enamait's sample program in Infinite Intensity. I didn't finish my first attempt at it, even using the relatively paltry weight of 30-pound DBs. By week five I had increased the weight, and managed to finish, even if I was quite unhappy with my time of 26:25.

But I'm happier with my latest attempt, completed a few minutes ago: 50# DBs for both the snatches and the swings, and a total elapsed time of 19:45 (might have managed 60# for the snatches, but am still nursing a shoulder injury). At this rate I should be able to get under 15:00 in another 5-7 weeks. I could almost convince myself of that if I wasn't on the brink of hurling all over my keyboard.

I've read a few Brad Johnson articles, and linked to a couple in the past, but recently sought out all I could find. Very cool, creative stuff. Here's the rundown:

• Brad John's Extreme Bodyweight Training. Currently this link is for "See-Saw Pullups", but I assume that will change eventually as this is the start page of the series. Here's the rest:
  • Upper Body Crush Pushups
  • Sledgehammer Pull-ups
  • Ball Pull-ups
  • Anvil Horn Pull-ups
  • Suspended Renegade Rows: I tried these by tying some dumbbells to my rings. Killer core workout.
  • Gripper Pull-ups
• DragonDoor.com Bodyweight Strength Training Articles:
  • Abdominal Exercises for Total Body Mastery: It's a little hard to tell with the lighting and lack of shadows, but I believe that's a benchless Dragon Flag in the two pictures at the bottom. Quite a feat!
  • Get a Grip When You Hit the Road
  • Gymnastics Tension Exercises
  • Progressions to the Standing Evil Wheel
  • Tired of the Same Old Pull-ups? Try These!
  • The Rafter Pull-up

Ross Enamait discusses and demonstrates triple-clap push-ups. Always informative, always inspirational.

(Video links in the article.)

If you're like me, once fatigue sets in the first thing you start short-changing on your burpees is the leap. Here's a solution: mark off 100 yards or so and start at one end. Do a burpee, but instead of leaping for height, leap for distance. You aren't done until you get your feet past the 100-yard marker. Shorter jumps equals more burpees.

Shee-it (emphasis added):

Last year, patient care director Colleen Becker decided to check the numbers. She looked at a daily hospital census—about one-third of the 900 patients weighed 350 pounds or more.

Startled, Becker checked another date, then another.

The numbers were consistent. On some days, half the patients were obese. Some weighed 500 pounds or more.

"We ran the data again to make sure we weren't hallucinating," Becker said. "We weren't. So we had to somehow figure out the appropriate supplies, equipment, training and care for the patients we're dealing with."

So here's an idea: tax credits for fitness. To qualify, if you're fit, your doctor gives you a form you can attach to your return at your annual checkup. I'm betting any economic loss in tax revenue would be offset by the reduced obesity-related burdens on our health care system (the economic damage goes far beyond hospitals buying reinforced beds and such).

Since I post my humiliations so freely, I hope you'll forgive me posting the occasional triumph. Along with Tabatas, Scrapper's Workout #1 put me on the road to wellness. As you'll read in that last link, I first started doing it a little over a year ago, and it killed me, even halving (or two-thirdsing) most of the repetitions. The last time I did it was months ago, and I'd probably gone up to 70-80% on most of the repetitions. The legs still really wiped me out though, and it remained a workout to dread.

But tonight I was casting about for a workout, and thought I'd give it a shot. I blazed through it, only short-changing the pushups (pyramid to 10 instead of 12) and felt like I could keep going at the end. A far cry from the nauseating experiences of months past! It's so gratifying to have such a clear indicator of progress; I had to crow a bit. So indecorous. My apologies.

Outside Magazine answers the question, "Will listening to music improve my training?" (scroll down to the second question)

Among the many things I would like to learn but haven't yet is unicycling. A buddy of mine shared these great videos with me awhile ago, and I was reminded of them when I learned one of my daughter's friends learned how to ride, so thought I'd post them here:

• Universe II trailer (MOV, 6.6 MB)
• Unizabatrailer (MPG, 4.3 MB)
• Into the Thunder Dragon trailer (MOV, 14 MB)

Always on the lookout for new ways to hurt myself.

Quick background: I tried twice to make a slammable medicine ball but neither held up. Then I found this approach by Pierre Auge on the Crossfit forums. I resolved to give it a try, but didn't get around to it until recently. In the meantime, a new four-page thread based on enhanced instructions from Pierre appeared, and I finally gave it a go. And it worked! I now have a twenty pound basketball that I can inflate so it bounces slightly, and I can slam the heck out of it with no (so far) big sandy mess to clean up. Here's my version of Pierre's instructions (the instructions are his, the particular experience is mine):

1. Get a cheap rubber basketball, the tougher the better. I think I paid $6.
2. VERY IMPORTANT! If you're going to want to inflate the ball, then the very first thing you should do is inflate it and let it sit around for a day or two to make sure the damn thing doesn't leak. I am speaking from bitter experience: it is quite a letdown to spend hours (really, hours!) filling the ball with sand only to discover a leak near the valve (that you couldn't possibly have caused) days later. *&$#! cheap-ass Walmart ball...
3. Once you're sure you have a good ball, grab the spike from a radial tire plug kit (it should include a spike/rasp, a plug-insertion tool, some cement, and some plugs which are basically long gooey strips of rubber or something) and puncture the ball with it. I actually drilled a hole in my ball, but I read later that stabbing might be better, as no material is actually removed from the ball with a stab. So far no problems with the drilled hole though. No matter what, you want this hole to be as small as possible while still admitting the rasp.
4. Insert an inflation pin into the ball valve. This will allow airflow out of the ball when you pour the sand in. Surprisingly important. Oh, so I guess this means you'll want your hole somewhat near the valve so it stays clear of sand as you're filling. I put mine on the next black line over from the value (in the picture above, you can see the inflation pin in the valve, and my hole is very close to the right edge of the picture).
5. Get a funnel. It will have to be fine enough that you can jam it into the hole, but not so fine that the sand won't flow through it. I used one of those diner ketchup bottles (pictured above) with the tip cut off at an angle (I tried cutting the tip square on one, but then I couldn't jam it into the hole).
6. Pour your sand through the funnel into the ball. A surprising amount can be said about the choice of sand. I used play sand and it was a pain to get into the ball. I would fill my ketchup bottle (which also had a hole in the bottom for airflow purposes) jam it into the ball, and a trickle of sand would flow in before it would jam. So I'd jiggle it around, and it would flow a bit before jamming again. So I held my random orbit sander against the bottle, and the vibrations kept the sand flowing. I don't know how long it took me in total, but I do know that I watched all of The Memory of a Killer (good movie!) on my tiny 7" portable player under flimsy headphones against the whir of my orbital sander, standing on the cement floor of my cold workshop and probably only did three-quarters of the job in that time. It would be much better to rig up some self-filling solution, kinda like my ketchup bottle but much bigger so you can fill it and walk away while the ball fills. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. Anyway, back to the sand: some Crossfitters recommended silica sand, as it is finer (I think it's used for sandblasting, among other things). I already had the play sand though, and I could only get the silica sand in 100 pound bags. Besides, silicosis is such an ugly word. Very recently somebody suggested using sugar, which I bet would flow nicely. You could probably get 20 lbs. for $10 or less. Anyway...
7. After the ball is as full as you want it, rasp around in the hole to clean it, then follow the instructions on your tire plug kit to patch the hole. Then slather the plug and surrounding area with Shoe Goo for a good seal. Leave it alone for 24 hours.
8. Inflate as desired, and get slamming!

A couple other notes:

• Clearly getting the sand in is the big chore. I read on one of the Crossfit threads folks that recommend an approach where you slit the ball or cut a flap into it instead. When I did this the ball did not hold up to slams, but it's entirely possible they are better patchers than I am.
• Suddenly $50 or whatever it is for a twenty pound slammable ball doesn't look so bad. :-)
• Thank you, Pierre, for the great instructions!

Art De Vany reposts a letter in defense of Barry Bonds. I think I'm going to have to read his paper.

Jane Brody's perspective on recent studies that might otherwise lead you to load up on the fat and drop the supplements. Love the dog anecdote:

Since the dog had no idea what the capsules were for, or even that he was getting them (they were hidden in a meatball he swallowed whole), I knew there was no placebo effect.

« via Health & Fitness Blog »

I wouldn't want anybody here to actually think I'm good at the stuff I write about. So, details on my embarrassing workout of the day, 100 burpees, as fast as possible. While burpees figure prominently in my routines, I've never actually tried this before.

My time? 15:58.

Shhh... Hear that? If you listen real close you can hear hear folks clicking the "unsubscribe" button in their newsreader of choice.

15:58!? Fer cryin' out loud. That's barely over six per minute! Anyway, enough lamentation. Here's how it broke down for me. I figured I'd tackle it in 10 as-fast-as-I-can blocks of 10, with the minimum rest between blocks. My first block of 10, which is when I should be able to record my best time, took 40 seconds. That is not very good. I'm not sure why I'm so slow at burpees, but I keep working at it. Anyway, if I did them straight through at that pace I'd be looking at around 7 minutes. Of course, fatigue sets in, so subsequent sets take longer, and rest between sets takes longer, and before I knew it I'd nickle-and-dimed my time to death.

My pipe dream was 10:00. At 13:00 and two sets to go I was gunning for 15:00. Pretty much killed me to get under the 16:00 wire.

Consider this a public service. On many a gung-ho site (you know who you are :-) you are encouraged to post times, and one notices a preponderance of superhuman times. One might develop an inferiority complex ("everybody can do these workouts better!"). My theory is that folks with non-superhuman scores are less inclined to post, skewing the sample. That, my friends, is where I come in.

P.S. Score above recorded with a bad shoulder and pulled abdominal muscle.

P.P.S. Immaterial. Even healthy I doubt I would have cracked 15:00.

P.P.P.S. Yet.

A late morning diversion for you: a variety of impressive Capoeira moves. Proof that you can never tell what a guy can do just by looking at him.

I've been a bit at sea since finishing the 10-week sample program in