The training paid off! My team, "Salt", qualified in the Masters division. We have a couple studs, but mostly we are a team full of role players from small towns, and it was a true team effort to make the grade at Regionals (especially after an abysmal Saturday showing in equally abysmal weather). I couldn't be more proud of my teammates, so many of whom (myself included) have never qualified before. Heck, many of our players have only ever played small-town Ultimate, and have little or no college or club experience outside that afforded by the gradual evolution of their local game.

So one of our guys calls his wife (who, like all frisbee spouses, is a champ) and tells her we made it. Her response: "That's great. The basement is flooded."

Ah yes, such is the life of the non-professional athlete. :-) Did I mention three inches of rain fell on us during Saturday play?

After you get 100 mundane pushups, get yourself some rings and try this variation on the workout. Better yet, don't wait. One workout can feed the other. I know I'm looking forward to the off-season when I can start trying some new things, including rings. I may try building my own (scroll down a few posts to the second set of homemade rings, then click "Next Page" for more details), but really when you consider labor (and the fact that I'll screw up at least once and likely unleash toxic PVC fumes on my family) the Power Rings price looks like it hits the sweet spot.

Today's Crossfit Workout of the Day—100 pull-ups! (with video!)— led me to a great thread over there on the virtues of the kipping pull-up. The whole thread is informative, especially Coach Sommer's posts.

While we're on the subject, Jim over at Beast Skills is on the rebound from a wrist injury. Gotta love a guy whose recovery is miles better than my best day. But anyway, further down in his post he describes a monster pull-up I haven't seen mentioned before: "the rafter chin". I don't think his training log is broken up into separate pages, so look towards the end of the 10/4/2005 entry.

Running Research News has a free sample issue (PDF) available, and it’s well worth your time. I found the hamstring strengthening article particularly informative.

On the one hand, I hate discovering my weaknesses because I really don't want to have any. On the other hand, when I find them I can work to eliminate them. I have the shins under control, and am working actively on my back so I can hopefully keep it from going out every other year. Up next? My rotator cuff. I haven't torn it or anything, but I have nagging soreness that is starting to get in the way of my pushups, pullups, and will certainly be an obstacle in some of the more advanced skills I'd like to tackle. So here's what I've learned:

From the March 2002 issue of Men's Fitness, Big-League Shoulder Protection by Roy M. Wallack:

The most common injuries in sports are to the shoulder. The overhead (military) press and deep dips both put huge amounts of stress on the shoulder (see tip No. 2). So does throwing a baseball, swimming, rowing, or swinging a racquet--anything that repeatedly puts your arm over your head, or raises it out to the side or pulls it in, exerting lots of extra force on the shoulder joint.

The problem is that the shoulder isn't as strong as it looks. The humerus (upper-arm bone) has a large range of motion only because it dangles precariously off the edge of the body. The humeral head is pulled sideways against the socket of the scapula (the shoulder blade) by a series of four small upper-back muscles collectively called the rotator cuff. These muscles are the foundation, the unsung heroes, the glue that holds the shoulder joint together. When they ate weak or overpowered, the humerus gets out of line and undue stress is placed on tendons and ligaments. And you feel pain.

It's easy to strengthen the rotator cuff muscles—if you can remember to work them, that is. Since these so-called "precision" muscles (which precisely center the humeral head) are invisible from the outside, they're easy to overlook. Big mistake.

We love to build up the glamorous "outside" muscles, the triceps, biceps, delts, lats. "Ironically," says Jobe, "the stronger these get relative to the rotator cuff, the more at risk you are of pulling the humerus out of its tenuous socket, injuring the AC joint (the juncture of the clavicle and the acromion, the front of the shoulder blade) and even tearing some tendons." The latter is the dreaded "torn" rotator cuff. Bottom line: Ignore the rotator cuff at your own peril.

That article also includes a laundry list of dangerous exercises, which includes pushups! Basically, it includes anything that puts your elbow behind your body. Sigh. I am unwilling, however, to give up dips and so thoroughly compromise the range-of-motion on my pushups. So hopefully strengthening my poor neglected rotator cuff muscles will do the trick. The article above has the exercise illustrations stripped, so here are some from The American Academy of Family Physicians and some more from Body Results.

Encouragingly, this happens not only to people like me, who are climbing the fitness ladder, but also to guys like Matt Furey, who stand on a pretty high rung:

What I have to tell you is something you can etch in stone right now. And that is ... There are muscles all over your body that cannot be adequately trained with weights or with body weight calisthenics.

You may wonder, how do I know this? Good question. I'll answer by telling you about the shoulder injury I sustained from a combination of:

a. wrestling
b. the gymnastic rings
c. throwing whip-like backhands

The injury sort of crept up on me. Thinking it was just a nagging annoyance, I kept on. Then, in December of 1999, a day after giving a seminar in Philadelphia, I could barely lift my right arm. In fact, the only way I COULD move it was by grabbing beneath the elbow with my left hand and pushing it where I wanted it to go.

I gave it a rest for a week and it felt a bit better, and so, even though I couldn't use the arm too well, I kept on wrestling, thinking I would eventually get over it. A month later, I stopped wrestling for two months to let it heal. Sure, it got better during that time - but it was still weak.

Whenever I thought I was much better, I would try some Hindu pushups. It would feel okay for awhile, but then, after a couple days, I was back to agony again. Through a combination of deep tissue massage and herbs, the shoulder would feel much better - but because the pain came back when I trained, I feared that my Hindu pushup days were over.

He then goes on to sing the praises of the Lifeline Chest Expander. I think I'm going to stick with the aforementioned exercises and stretches for now, but he does a quite a job of making it sound like the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Crossfit posts a video laying it all out. A must-watch, and contains yet another reference to the importance of hip action in elite athleticism. It is striking how often that theme is repeated in my reading and surfing.

My only complaint about the video is that it ends too soon.

I was going to write something about pull-ups, but there's so much good information out there I'll just link you up:

If you can't do any pull-ups, or if you struggle just to do one (that's where I started out at the beginning of this year) give Pullup Training for Women and/or The Road to Your First Pull-Up a good read. The former article talks about using Jump-Stretch bands to assist, which seems like a much more economical solution than the Active Cords I used (I swear they were cheaper way back when I bought them).

Regardless of how many pull-ups you can do to start, you should definitely read The Application and Creation of Pullup Power first for invaluable advice about engaging the big muscles of the upper back rather than just pulling with your arms.

That's really all you need to know to get on the road to respectable pullup power. Beyond that, there's The MonkeyMaker, and a great discussion on Crossfit concerning how high to pull yourself (click the "Archive through..." link at the top of the page to get back to the beginning of the discussion). From that discussion, take special note of this post by Greg Everett and watch the "Big Fat Pullups" video he links to. The guy just flys over the bar.

These rings would be a fine, fine addition to the local playground! The bottom left and bottom center videos are particularly good. « via Crossfit »

In addition to the two free fantastic PDFs from the Crossfit mothership, Crossfit NorCal has a couple as well. First up is a sample of their newsletter, Performance Menu, which includes an interview with Art De Vany and an introduction to one of the basic (doesn't look basic though!) Capoeira strength moves. They also list among various resources a link to the March 2003 Crossfit journal, which includes a wonderful article on "the lowly pushup." If it doesn't inspire you to start working on that exercise, nothing will. If for no other reason you really should download it for their definition of an "honest pushup", along with the "cheater's guide to lousy pushups."

Ross Enamait just posted a new article on jump rope training, and like everything else he writes it's well worth reading, and will make you want to run to the gym (or outside) and try whatever it is he's currently preaching. As a bonus, there's a great video included that'll show you what the skill looks like after you put in 20 or so years of work.

If you have any shin issues take careful note of his advice to wear crosstrainers and work on a forgiving surface. So far I haven't found anything harder on my shins than jumping rope.

There's a quick bit on the decline of some traditional ball sports in the October issue of Outside Magazine (issue not yet online at the time of this writing):

At a time when participation in some traditional ball sports is in decline nationwide, sports like surfing and climbing—long neglected at the youth level—are enjoying unprecedented support. The Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association (SGMA), a trade group that tracks U.S. sports, reports up to 21 percent reductions in the number of school-age kids taking part in activities like basketball, baseball, and soccer from 1998 to 2004. At the same time, kayak academies, high school surf crews, and youth climbing teams have blossomed.

From this one paragraph it's impossible to know if one group is directly cannibalizing another, but it's still an interesting trend, one I wasn't aware of, and one I wouldn't have guessed from casual observation of local youth sports. I bet the SGMA reports are interesting. Too bad they range from $100 to $600 a pop (of the ones I looked at).

There's a very interesting table embedded in this Paul Chek article. It's from the late Mel Siff's Supertraining, an out-of-print book I really should track down. The table lists...

...contribution of short, intermediate and long-term energy systems to common sports. This information is useful in determining acute exercise variables for program design. Please note that most sports are anaerobic, yet many athletes and coaches make the mistake of using aerobic training to prepare for anaerobic sports, which actually decreases performance.

So is Ultimate more like basketball, or soccer? And if soccer, which position? Keep in mind there's more subbing in Ultimate (which is not to say I've already formed my opinion).