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.

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'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!

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...

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!

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.