STS 8-27-07, the Beach & Labor Day

Bruce Lee on competition:

"Do not be tense, just be ready, not thinking but not dreaming, not being set but being flexible. It is being "wholly" and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw_v67Izt50

Probably still the most amazing thing I've ever seen. The ability to generate usable force from a standstill (or deceleration) can't be understated in sports. It's what seperates great athletes from the rest. If that is not an area of primary focus in your training then don't be surprised if you find yourself left behind...literally and figuratively.

Did a beach workout on Sunday out in beautiful Santa Monica with a buddy and realized (again) how much I miss living out by the beach. SM is the perfect exercise beach. Tons o' deep sand, the usual running path stretching for miles, and a big-kids jungle gym full of rings, 40-foot rope climbs, and a different assortment of parallel bars, ring-swings, etc. Interesting note: SM is actually home to the 1st Muscle Beach. Venice Beach is the epicenter of the body-building craze and where the sport really took off, but the first beach to offer any kind of exercise equipment was SM.

Did a variety of sprint & agility work on the sand and found out that all my lateral movement exercises can be done effectively on sand, which was awesome because I was concerned that I'd get too bogged down and not be able to move explosively, making the exercise essentially useless. But much like swimming, the faster I moved the more I stayed on top of the sand. Was even able to do lateral bounds for about 35 yards across the sand. I'm okay with that. I forgot how much sand running exercises the foot muscles as they were aching at the end. Finished with some rope climbs and some parallel-bar work. Also forgot how much climbing rope makes your hands ache and how scary being 40 feet in the air is, especially when the only thing holding you up is fatiguing really quickly.

Sunday in the sand left my legs feelin' great for my workout yesterday. All springy n' stuff, exactly how I like them for the jump-intensive workout I did yesterday.

Movement Prep set #1 (no rest in between):

Jump-rope TF
Lunges w/weight overhead (25lb plate)
Hand-stand pushups
Side-lunges
Jump-rope TF

Set 2 I replaced lunges with bulgarian split-squats (essentially a lunge with back leg on a bench or plyo box) and side-lunges with overhead squats with the bar. If you have any trouble with your squat form (which is 98% of the population) these are the best way to correct it. Set 3 was clock lunges and hang-cleans with just the bar.

Lift #1:

Hang cleans 5 sets @ 6,6,4,4,4 reps with increasing weight

http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/OlympicLifts/HangClean.html

Lift # 2:

Front squats 4 sets @ 8 reps with increasing weight

Lift # 3:

1 leg step-ups 3 sets @ 8 reps
(Haven't done these in a while and they crushed. Such a great exercise).

Next I did an Interval Circuit that consisted of 4 sets at 30 seconds, with 30 seconds rest, and 1 minute rest between exercises.

The exercises :

1. Jump-shrugs- LOVED these. Hadn't done them in a long time, and kicking myself for it. As functional as functional gets.

http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/OlympicLifts/JumpShrug.html

2. Box Jumps on a 30 inch platform

3. Romanian deadlifts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eZA_QDy9cY

4. Row Machine- emphasizing generating as much force on the pull-back rather than using the momentum from the forward motion. Again, working on that generating usable force thing.

Finished with an ab circuit and lateral stepper walks. Lateral steppers= still ROCK.

http://www.power-systems.com/nav/closeup.aspx?c=4&sc=27&g=1419&Lateral/Stepper™

Labor Day is this weekend. Besides having quite possibly the lamest Saturday schedule I've ever heard of (game 1 at 8am, then 3 games in a row starting at 1:15...WTF!?!?) we've got a solid weekend ahead of us. At least we can play game 1 then grab some breakfast and have it fully settled before facing JAM & Sockeye back to back. Can't wait. We've definitely improved some from Colorado and cleaned up some much-needed areas. Hopefully we show up ready to blow up both days instead of coming out flat like we did on Sunday in CO. Time will tell.

Funny note: my Summer League team won the LA Men's League despite me being there. Coolest part about the team was that it included my old Fraternity brother and college roomate Ulises, the guy I started playing Ultimate with and who I won back-to-back Fraternity Champs with. Also on the team was 3 guys from our rival Fraternity, the guys who used to win it before we came along. These dudes were actually the spark that ignited my ultimate career. In college ultimate was the first sport of the semester-long competition and since it was directly around rush there was always BIG bragging rights on the table. Well, the 3 dudes (along with some others) would play in the LA Summer League every year and clean house till we joined the league and then cleaned house on them. From my Summer League team I was invited to play with DAMN, a Winter League that included Butta & Corey, who took me under their wing and really taught me the game and later on invited me to try out for the Condors. The rest, as they say, is history...

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