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

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.)

• 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.

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.

Scott Sonnen's floating lever progression is great, with videos of some exercises I'd love to start incorporating, the elbow-lever push-ups, if nothing else. Looks like great core work.

I have found the approach I'm going to take in working up to my goal of 100 pushups (in a row): Double Density Training. Before we get to the doubled version though, some info on straight Density Training:

The strength and conditioning coach at Wake Forrest University, Coach Ethan Reeve, developed Density Training. He has had great success with many athletes using this program. Basically, you squeeze more and more volume into less and less time in your workout routines. Here is how it works:

Pick an exercise that you would like to improve. Exercises that require little or no set-up time work best, pull-ups, pushups or kettlebell snatches are all excellent choices. Simply double the volume of your goal repetitions. For example, if you want to be able to perform 20 straight pull-ups, double that number to 40. Perform 20 sets of 2 reps in 20 minutes. You must start each set at the top of each minute. When this set and rep scheme becomes easy, move onto the next level, which would be 3 reps every minute for 13 minutes, and so on and so on...

Double Density training is similar (increased volume in decreasing time), but instead of doubling the target number, you do two sessions to your target number 12 hours apart:

The DDT cycle had no termination date, since it was based upon achieving two 100 rep sets in one day through a density training protocol. Density Training basically means that as you increase the volume slowly while compressing the rest periods, you trick your nervous system into mega-high volume, resulting in tremendous gains in strength-endurance.

Coach Sonnen then goes on to describe how doing two sessions 12 hours apart allows your second session of the day to be in a "recovered but not reset" mode:

DDT involves two short-duration work sessions in one work day separated by approx. 12 hours, with one full day of rest in between each work day. This method strikes a balance between neuro-muscular rest and neurological recovery; which basically means that if you go over approx. 24 hours you're fully rested. However, at around 12 hours, you can be actively recovered though not fully *rested*.

When recovered by not reset your central nervous system still hums with excitement but you have recovered sufficiently from the prior session to work again. This allows you to supercharge a download into your muscle software. It's like temporarily having extra RAM to operate your computer. Basically, the sum total training effect (neurological stimulation) peaks between 8-12 hours decreasing to reset at 20-24. But if you're under approximately a half day when you train again, you impinge upon recovery. This time corridor may vary based upon the individual: some people recover faster, others slower; some reset more easily, some less easily.

Sonnen then describes his progression with a particular exercise. To start, for 20 minutes, at the top of each minute, he did just five repetitions. After three weeks of adjusting the sets/reps/time, he hit 100 straight.

Three weeks! I have to imagine his base fitness helped a ton. Still, it's worth a try. Just to see what it was like I tried 20-minutes of 5-pushups per minute, and it was really easy. Should be interesting. I'll tackle it in a couple weeks after the season ends.