On 9/10 and 9/11 ABC will air a docudrama called The Path to 9/11. In it you will "learn" that the CIA had bin Laden in a house, literally surrounded, called the White House for authorization to take him out, and the Clinton administration refused to grant the authorization. Complete fabrication, "Straight Out of Disney and Fantasyland." I wouldn't expect anything factual from something labelled a "docudrama", but c'mon...
Wow, this is a shockingly bad logo:
As a friend noted, do I really want the new direction for my health care to be backwards? And doesn't it look more like CJIIP rather than CDHP?
On the other hand, maybe the backwards bit is appropriate.
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.
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.
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:
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!
Steve "The Crocodile Hunter" Irwin was killed in a freak stingray attack. I don't know why this makes me sadder than other celebrity deaths, aside from him being young and healthy and the freakishness of it. Probably because my kids watched him, and he seemed to be having so much fun doing what he loved (much like John Ritter). And he's got kids roughly my kids' age. Sigh.
Fans of the apparently-no-longer-maintained (and hasn't been for quite some time) SuperDragAndGo extension should check out Drag de Go. This dialog box should provide all the impetus you need for upgrading:
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.
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".