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.

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.

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.

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.