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.

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.

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.

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 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 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'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.

[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.

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 »