Just discovered Skwigg Blog and loved two bits from her Monster Names and Medicine Balls post:

Great workout today, very ab intensive, lots of crazy core exercises and unilateral exercises. I did dumbbell bent over rows one arm at a time while balancing on a wobble board, squat/overhead presses one arm at a time, incline hammer curls with chest press one arm at a time, medicine ball oblique twists which are kind of hard to explain - your butt is the only thing touching the floor, your knees are tucked up by your chest, the medicine ball is in your hands, you touch the ball to the floor next to you and twist your knees toward the opposite side for balance, then you touch the ball to the floor on the other side and take your knees in the opposite direction, nothing but your butt and the ball touch the floor, killer oblique contractions.

Sounds like a great exercise. And this was a hoot:

I also did the lie-on-the-floor-and-get-pummeled-with-a-medicine-ball exercise. That's the one where ET repeatedly throws the 10 or 15 pound ball into my stomach HARD, occasionally slamming me in the solar plexus or ribs just to make sure I don't nod off. It's a nice reminder that strong abs aren't just for show. They also protect your guts from blunt force trauma. And, of course, I find the lie-on-the-floor-and-get-pummeled-with-a-medicine-ball exercise extremely funny. Taking the shot is all about breathing and timing and muscle contraction. There's just something irresistibly hilarious in knowing that if you relax and laugh, your spleen will fly out your nose.

Kinda like when my almost-four-year-old daughter takes a running knees-first leap onto my stomach, but without the element of surprise. Thankfully, she's a bit small for her age.

Skwigg also has good stuff in What I Eat (mmm, Peanut Butter Banana Sundae...) and Workouts (I do pretty extensive core work, but I bet "Six Pack Attack" would destroy me). And probably elsewhere too; I've only been exploring for a few minutes.

Must everything be so complicated? Even milk? I don't really care so much for myself; at 35 my lifetime diet has probably so loaded with plastics, teflon, hormones, antibiotics, and pesticides that I'm doomed. Or maybe I'm waterproof, bulletproof, disease-proof, and feared by mosquitoes everywhere (or at least boll weevils). Regardless, I try to protect my daughters from that stuff, as I have a crackpot theory that girls are hitting puberty earlier because of all the hormones in the food.

So I was going to write this thing on balance training, but then I watched this video of these guys playing on a slackline and it made me feel inadequate. I gotta get a slackline kit for me and the girls; it looks like a blast.

Anyway, on to what I was originally going to write... I had a very good Ultimate season this year, and one of the things I noticed was that I converted many more "accidental plays" than in recent years. For example, after bobbling the disc I'd make the catch anyway. Or someone would throw me an unexpected pass (or in an unexpected manner) and I'd have to catch it reflexively. Stuff like that. There are lots of things I improved this year that could contribute to making more of those plays: increased focus, better fitness, etc. But, for no empirical reason whatsoever, I like to attribute it to balance training. My warm-up for my daily stretching routine included about five minutes of balance work. Each day I'd mess around with some combination of the following:

• Balance on one foot...
  • ...while slowly moving your head from side-to-side.
  • ...while slowly moving your head in random circles.
  • ...shake your head vigorously, and then recover your balance.
  • ...with your eyes closed.
  • ...standing on your toes rather than flat-footed
  • ...standing on a 2x4.
• Walk a 2x4...
  • ...frontwards and backwards.
  • ...turning 180 degrees each time you get to the end.
  • ...and crouch to pick up implements stacked at the end, bring them back to the other end, and crouch to replace them.
  • ...with various combinations of eyes closed and head movements.
• Stand on a biofoam roller for time (a pool noodle is a much cheaper option, but it crushes, breaks, and generally doesn't behave in a very log-like manner - it's still harder to walk than a 2x4 though).

You get the idea. I have no idea how much this helped my game, but as you're doing these exercises you can feel all these little proprioceptive firings that you just don't work otherwise. I believe it made a difference, which is enough for me (heck, maybe it was the believing itself that made the difference).

There are all kinds of workplace recommendations for five-minute breaks every hour or so. Might as well use that time for something fun, and imagine the looks you'll get when you drag a 2x4 to the office.

If I could find five other like-minded lunatics and an 8-foot-high net I'd give Hooverball a try:

The sport originated in 1928, when shortly after his election Hoover took a goodwill trip to South America. While aboard the battleship Utah on his return, he watched a game of "bull-in-the-ring," a medicine ball game that was popular on naval ships. A soft nine-pound medicine ball was thrown from one to another of the players standing in a circle as the "bull" in the center tried to intercept it. During the trip, the president-elect played and enjoyed the game, which was the inspiration for Hoover-ball.

There's a national championships and everything. And I thought I played an obscure sport...

A teammate of mine recently had knee surgery, and was given a DonJoy Iceman to aid his recovery. He loaned it to me for my sprained ankle, and it's great! Just fill it with ice water, wrap the pad around the body part you want to chill, and relax. You can just leave the thing on for hours (although you can set the dial cold enough to be dangerous at such durations, I think). The unit appears to cost around $200 new, but happily seems to be well-represented on eBay. With some luck you could score one in the $50-70 range. This is very expensive when compared to the normal cost ($0) of icing an injury, but would definitely be worth it for major rehab projects, trainers, or teams. And my ankle is very, very happy to have a loaner unit.

Man, Nationals is a blast. It would have to be for me to remember it fondly despite losing all our games and badly spraining my ankle on the first point of Saturday play, prematurely ending my season (at least it didn't happen on the first point Thursday!). The fields, each one perfectly level and filled with fabulous Ultimate players, stretch a half-mile into the distance. The weather was heavenly, the on-site vendor makes a mean étouffée, and the beaches on Siesta Key are wonderful.

As for the games, of our seven losses I would say two teams were out of our league, two we should have beaten, and the rest we could have beaten. In all but the two blowouts, we were tied at nines or tens before our Nationals rookiedom took over, and we let the games get away from us (or had them taken away, depending on your point of view). Ah well, ya gotta start somewhere. Not bad for a bunch of small town players. Here was Salt's team bio:

Great Barrington, MA: population ~7,500
Brattleboro, VT: population: ~12,000

Spring, 2005. In a move that has all the makings of a bad bar bet, two guys—one from each "city"—get together and gamble that a Nationals-caliber team can be assembled from these two remote Ultimate scenes. Add a couple transients and precious few ringers to this briny mix of small town, home-grown players, and you end up with Salt!

I'm still impressed we could pull off such a season by combining these two small-town scenes. Everybody on our roster has played pickup in one of these two towns except for four players. Of those four, one missed pretty much all of the season (including Regionals) due to injuries, another was a Nationals rookie, the third had only made one late-career appearance on a mixed team, and the fourth was... well, he was a Masters National champ teammate of a brother-in-law of a Berkshire player, so I think I have to put him solidly in the "ringer" camp. The brother-in-law was on that same team, but he played pickup with us, so is not one of the four.

Anyway, never has the line between 0-7 and 5-2 felt so slim. Already looking forward to next year!

Three Art De Vany posts for today: Sports and Spines, followed by an answer to a readers question, "Is Everything Bad?". The two posts seem tangentially related to an earlier post of his I recall, Sharp Angles.

A buddy of mine has been struggling with Achilles tendonitis, and I noticed at Regionals that he had this single strip of tape running down his calf and into his cleat. Reportedly, this was helpful. I just learned tonight that this wasn't any ordinary old athletic tape, but was instead Kinesio Tex tape. Sounds pretty nifty:

KINESIO TEX® TAPE is a very thin (about the same thickness as skin), porous cotton fabric with a medical grade acrylic adhesive. A special method of adhesive application and porous nature of the fabric allows the skin to breathe and showering cleans part of the skin under the TAPE. The TAPE is designed for a 30 to 40% longitudinal only stretch and when applied lifts the skin and provides support for surrounding soft tissue.

This TAPE is LATEX FREE and NON-MEDICATED.

KINESIO TEX(r) TAPE was designed to be worn for multiple days ( 3 to 4 ); and an hour after application it will withstand athletic activity and showering without coming off. [snip]

Theoretically, KINESIO TEX® TAPE will lift the skin to increase the space between the skin and muscle. This reduced localized pressure help promote circulation, lymphatic drainage and lessens the irritation on the subcutaneous neural pain receptors. As an end result, the Kinesio Taping Technique reduces pain, swelling and muscle spasm; and subsequently promotes the body's natural healing processes. Additionally, the built-in stretch of the TAPE supports fatigued, weakened and/or strained muscles.

There are books and videos for learning techniques for using this magical tape. Who knew?

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.

A reader writes:

I plan on trying Tabata Intervals with the college team that I coach this year. I am curious about something though. Have you read anything suggesting that short rest between high intensity reps will cause a conversion of fast twitch muscle fibers to slow twitch muscle fibers? I didn't see anything in the material you cite that discusses what kind of muscle fibers the Tabata Intervals favor. I have read that adequate rest is required between reps to devellop fast twitch muscle fibers. Check out:

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/sclark26.htm

I'd be interested in your thoughts on the subject.

My lame, non-response:

I couldn't find anything that specifically addressed Tabata intervals and muscle fiber recruitment. I'd be curious to know if you found anything. Based on the article you site, it sounds like throwing in a "speed day" where you train strictly for speed (short bursts, long rests) might mix in well with the Tabatas. But I have no idea.

Another consideration would be the type of training you want to do for Ultimate. While it is true that blazing speed is a huge advantage, you don't want to train for that at the expense of endurance. Along those lines, I did find this article comparing the Tabata interval with another that does 30 seconds work followed by 4 minutes rest:

http://www.cbass.com/Sprintendurance.htm

I just tried a minor Tabata interval tweak:

First I set up the pull-up bar and then warmed up on my NordicTrack. For the first set, I cranked as hard as humanly possible on the NT for 20 seconds. I know you're supposed to go that hard whenever you do these, but this set really needs to be super-hard, like it's the only 20 seconds you're going to do, and you're going for the world record. Take note of how many calories you burn in that 20 seconds (so yeah, you'll need a machine with some kind of monitor for this flavor of Tabata interval). Now, during your 10 seconds of "rest" go immediately to the pull-up bar and do as many as you can, keeping count. You now have two numbers. Calories burned and pull-ups pulled. For your remaining Tabata sets, continue to go as hard as you can, but instead of doing them for time, do them for work. So in the second set, you stay on the machine until you've burned the same number of calories as in your first set, then you hop on the pull-up bar until you've done the same number of pull-ups as in your first set. Repeat for a total of eight to ten sets (four to five minutes of total work). Race against the clock, trying to stay within the time constraints defined by straight Tabata intervals. Do not dawdle as you transition from machine to bar and back.

The NT is slightly limiting in terms of how hard you can crank, so doing pull-ups during the "rest" really ups the intensity to a level I hadn't experienced doing unadulterated Tabatas on that machine.

The latest issue of Tyler Hass' Power Rings newsletter asks, "What is Exertainment?":

Okay, I made the word up, but someone had to do it. The term infotainment, which describes the conversion of news and entertainment, is now an accepted term. Even my spell checker did not complain. The combination of exercise and entertainment is the future of the fitness industry. Right now, the first baby steps are being made in this direction by mainstream companies. They are adding TV screens to treadmills, CD players to stationary bikes and mandatory lattes to aerobics classes! I think they are headed down the wrong path. First of all, how effective of a workout is a guy getting when he is sitting on a bike and reading the newspaper? My guess is that his life and well-being are not dependent on his fitness level. Secondly, they are trying to disengage your mind from the workout. Unfortunately, becoming fit is a process that requires full physical, mental and emotional engagement. I don't mean emotional engagement in a hippy, new-age way. I'm talking about toughness, perseverance and commitment. If you can't decide whether you want to train or watch Will and Grace , and the only solution is that you must do both... then fitness might not be for you.

I agree, but with some qualifications... When I started off trying to get my game back, exertainment was a great ice breaker. It wasn't until I had established a good base, and discovered for myself that exertainment (and moderate aerobic exercise) wasn't going to take me nearly far enough that I abandoned it for more committed workouts.

So this raises the question: does exertainment serve as a good stepping stone to more productive workouts, or does it keep people from fully embracing their commitment to fitness? Personally, in my exertainment phase I liked the TV and resented the exercise for distracting me from enjoying it as much. The TV was the carrot, the exercise was the stick. Once I turned off the TV, the exercise became the carrot. But I have no idea if this was because the exercise habit had finally taken hold naturally, or because the harder workouts were more rewarding and producing more obvious results (and were too demanding to do in front of the tube), or because the TV itself was keeping me from embracing the exercise for its own sake.

But the bottom line is this: if you are able to focus and enjoy whatever is on the TV while you exercise, then you're just doing aerobics, and really should mix in some intervals. If you're already doing intervals and still enjoy TV at the same time, you aren't doing your intervals hard enough.