Runnin' and Throwin' in NB

I went out to Bucchleuch Park today for some excercise and possibly some disc. Unfortunately, numbers were low today so pick-up didn't happen. The RU contigent was down in the Carolinas for some tourney or other, but I still expected more folks to be out on such a nice day. Oh well, I still got in some solid work, and honestly, I probably got more out of it from a training perspective than I would have had pick-up actually happened.

I started things off with a run around the outer loop of the park. I stopped a little ways in to bang out three consecutive muscle-ups on the pull-up bars along the path and then continued on. I then ran 5 hill sprints, walking backwards downhill to the bottom for each rep, and finished up with a short run back to the cars. From there, I went into my active stretching routine, cleated up, and spent an hour and a half throwing with Dusty and Walt.

A lot of touches in the moderate wind was exactly what I needed after several weeks of indoor ultimate and should serve me well at next week's savage tournament in the Canary Islands.

Tabata Cardio Circuit and some Core

Warm-up:

5:00 Elliptical
Active Stretching

Tabata Circuit:

Elliptical Machine @ Level 10
1:00 slow strides

Exercise Bike @ Level 8
1:00 slow pedaling

Treadmill @ 10mph, 7% incline
1:30 @ 3 mph

Rowing Machine @ Level 10
3:00 @ 3 mph (on treadmill)

Core:
7 Steps Abs:

7 x 30 Crunches, various positions

30 x Back Extensions

Winter League

Holy cow! We won!!

We pulled off the big upset in the 1v4 semi tonight to steal 1st place going into finals. How about that!? I think this is largely due to the fact that they actually matched our gender ratio for much of the game and we limited our unforced errors. Actually, I had a pretty mediocre night, but my teammates played lights out - esp. the women, who dominated throughout.

This is my last winter league game of the season as Mel and I head to Europe and Dr. Sand Mr. Grass on Monday. It was a lot of fun and a good way to spend Thursday evenings. Go Team #3!!

Sammy I-V Circuit

I was a bit pressed for time today so I skipped the warm-up cardio and picked a quick, yet solid workout from the archives.

Warm-up:

Active Stretching

Sammy I-V:

3x
50 Richochet Jumps
10 Push-ups
30 sec rest

2x
10 Box Jump w/ 180 degree turn
5 Divebombers
30 sec rest

2x
10 Depth-Drop Box Jump
5 Pike Push-ups, feet on chair
30 sec rest

3x
5 per leg Low Squat Jump into Jump Lunge
10 one-hand push-ups (x5 each arm)
30 sec rest

3x
5 one-legged jumps with one step walk-up (per leg) - focus on footwork and arm swings
30 sec rest

1x
1/2 Tabata Set of Split Jumps (:20 on, :10 rest), focus on pumping arms
30, 32, 32, 35
1:00 rest

3x
8 Consecutive Kangaroo Jumps
10 clap push-ups
30 sec rest

3x
15 Knees-to-Elbows
30 sec rest

Witch's Brew

Warm-up:

10:00 Elliptical Machine
Active Stretching

Witch's Brew (from RunJumpLift):

4 rounds of:
4 x Deadlifts
4 x Hanging Cleans
4 x Front Squats
4 x Push Press
4 x Clean & Press/Jerks
Rd 1: 60lbs, Rd 2: 80lbs, Rd 3: 100lbs, Rd 4: 120lbs

Tabata Lateral Bounding:

11, 11, 11, 11, 11, 11, 12, 13

7 Steps Abs:

7 x 30 Crunches, various positions

Movement and Cutting Drills

For a change of pace, I did today's workout in Regis' 3/4 size basketball court.

Warm-up:

4:00 run, side-shuffle right, back-pedal, side-shuffle left
1:30 run, cross-over right, back-pedal, cross-over left
Active stretching

Movement and Footwork:
15:00 Downfield Cutting Practice:

Starting slow and working up to full speed, I practiced various cutting progressions focusing on balance and perfect footwork and striving for the fastest direction changes possible.

3:00 rest

Suicides:

5 x Suicides, 1:00 rest between each.
Same focus: balance, footwork, change of direction.

At this point I was planning on some further cardio on the elliptical, but I managed to wear the skin off of the ball of my left foot (again!) so I called it quits. That, and my 4 hours of sleep is starting to weigh me down. Where's my scratching post!

Winter League

Lots of PT tonight as we had only 2 subs. Despite low numbers and going 3-2 all night with our opponents not once matching gender (and rarely even going 4-1 though I think they only had one woman), we managed to keep the game close only to fall by one point at the end. That in itself is a bit dubious. I think the time/score keeper was having some trouble or felt sorry for us because I'm pretty sure we lost by 4 or 5 points at least. Little do they know, we purposely threw the game so that we would come in 4th and secure a 9:30pm start next week. FOOLS!!

As for me, I was pleased that I was able to keep focused and run my ass off given that the game started 15.5 hours after I woke up this morning. My biggest disappointment was that my aerial game was pretty weak tonight. I did a good job of positioning my self aggressively and I made the first play on nearly every disc. Only problem is that about 50% of the time, I came up a half-inch short and had the disc skim off the tips of my fingers. Curse these short arms! It was very confusing for me since each time I went up for the disc I was perfectly confident that I was going to catch it.

PS - Big shout-out to the stud who took my pregnant wife deep on the last point of the game and taunted her before catching the goal. You must be so proud! Still, it doesn't make up for the countless times she broke your mark and worked you over on handler cuts.

Tabata Workout

Warm-up:

1 mile @ 8.5mph
Active Stretching

Tabata Sets:
Burpees:

11, 10, 10, 8, 7, 7, 7, 7

Jump Pull-ups:

29, 27, 27, 26, 28, 25, 24, 30

Chuck Kellers:

12.5, 12, 10, 9.5, 9, 8, 8, 10

Lunges:

8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8

Crunches:

29, 31, 33, 33, 31, 32, 33, 34

More work was done on the bathroom last night, but it's not worth of it's own post so I'll just throw it in as a footnote here. Mostly, it involved some cutting and hanging of cement board and another trip to Lowes. I envision more of the same for tonight as well.

From the window to the wall...

Now we're definitely rebuilding!

The bulk of today's work involved installing a glass block window, re-framing one of the walls, and installing 3/4" plywood on the floor. Oh yeah, and dropping another $650 at Home Depot on lumber, sheet-rock, cement board, and a toilet, tub, and vanity.

At this point, I'm ready to go back to work to get some rest!

Bathroom De/Reconstruction

Alright! Today was the first day we actually re-built stuff in the bathroom!!

But first, my brother and I had to pull out the old bathroom window and frame. After that, we planned out the new glass window and set about re-framing the window and sizing everything up for the new installation.

There was a lot more cleaning, hauling, and assorted other manual labor which amount to about 10 hours of work all told. I'm too tired to really remember it all.

Bathroom Deconstruction

For V-day, I bought my wife a very romantic $650 worth of bathroom supplies at Home Depot (lots of tile and glass blocks) then came home and, with my brother's help, removed the old, several hundred pound cast-iron tub from the room and ripped/pulled/broke up the concrete subfloor.

Winter League

I didn't play particularly well tonight, especially in the start of the game, but it was fun nonetheless. We had low numbers which meant lots of playing time (YAY!) so I get the best workout yet at Winter League. There might have even been one point tonight where I subbed because I actually wanted a breather!

Offense is fun and easy indoors. The turf is fast and all throws are possible. On the flip side, the small field and sharp throws make defense extremely challenging. Several times a night I find my man catching a disc when I would have sworn I had all the angles covered perfectly. That's good for me though since it allows me to really focus on tight, honest defense.

Tabata Workout

Warm-up:

1 mile @ 8.5 mph
Active Stretching

Tabata Sets:
Pull-ups:

15, 11, 6, 5, 5 w/ 60lbs assistance, 6 w/ 90lbs, 8 w/120lbs, 4 w/ 120lbs

Step-ups (reps/leg):

6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6

Push-ups:

39, 37, 25, 21, 20, 15, 15, 12

Squats:

29, 30, 30, 31, 32, 33, 32, 32

Russian Twists:

28, 29, 27, 23, 21, 21, 19, 18

Men's Health Circuits

Warm-up:

1 mile @ 8.5 mph
Active Stretching

I based the following circuits off a Men's Health article.

Circuit I:

5 rounds of:
0:40 treadmill @ 10mph, 10% incline
10 x Over-head squats w/ 2olb dumbbells
Round 1: 0:40 plank
Rd 2: 0:40 left side bridge
Rd 3: 0:40 right side bridge on right arm 40 sec
Rd 4: 0:40 plank
Rd 5: 0:40 hold bottom of a push-up

2:00 rest

Circuit II:

3 rounds of:
0:40 Mountain climbers
0:20 rest
40 x push-ups
10 x bent-over row w/ 2olb dumbbells

2:00 rest

Circuit III:

4 rounds of:
1:00 treadmill @ 10mph
5/leg x single-leg rotation squat
Round 1: 85 x crunches
Rd 2: 60 x right side oblique crunches
Rd 3: 60 x left side oblique crunches
Rd 4: 50/side x bicycles

Bathroom Deconstruction and Philly "Pick-up"

I spent the morning removing the toilet and the floor tile in the bathroom, then went to pick-up in Philly, then came home with enough energy/frustration to take down the bathroom ceiling.

Nothing too exciting to report, especially since Philly pick-up was a complete bust. What the hell? I drive 3 hours round-trip and end up bringing 1/4 of the players. We can only field 6's. We only play for an hour. And it's 65 degrees out? In February??!! At least I got in a good half-hour of throwing post "pickup" with Ross, Walt & Joel "the white Randy Moss" Wooten.

It was especially embarrassing to spend the ride down talking up Pike's dedication and show up and find exactly one Pike player in attendance. Hell, not counting me, we had 2 guys from Pike 2005 and only 1 from 2008. I definitely lost some credibility today.

Brumfis Pickup

It was warm and sunny, but unfortunately, 3 hours of warm weather weren't enough to melt the snow nor thaw the frozen ground. Even so, we had 10 brave souls come out for some durango boot. Sadly, my team went 0-for on the day, mostly because of my inability to focus and my lack of desire to run on such uneven frozen ground.

It wasn't the best workout for me, but I did go for a short but fast-paced run and got some decent throwing in. We were out there for 3 hours all told.

Snatch, Dips, SLS

Warm-up:

10:00 Rowing Machine (145 Calories)
Active Stretching

12-15-9 for time:

Right arm dumbbell snatch
Left arm dumbbell snatch
Dips
Total time: 5:59

Single Leg Squat Routine:

3 rounds of:
10/leg x Single leg squats
10/leg x Bulgarian split squats
10/leg x Step-ups

Bathroom Deconstruction and Winter League

I was back at tearing apart the bathroom tonight and, with a pipe wrench and crowbar on my hip, I carried out to the curb four more full garbage cans, a sink, a vanity, and a countertop. The walls are down, just the floor and ceiling to go. For those of you keeping track at home: Bathroom Remodeling 2009

Oh yeah, and I played winter league tonight too. I'd say more about that, but then I'd have to admit that Walt point-blocked me, which I'm definitely not going to do.

Snow and DDR

Just a light workout consisting of shoveling show and 562 Calories of DDR.

Old Fashioned Ass Whooping

Warm-up:

1 mile @ 8.5 mph
Active Stretching

Old Fashioned Ass Whooping:

Complete as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of:
1 x 140 yard suicide (cones at 8 yds, 14 yds, 20 yds, 28 yds)
10 x push-ups
20 x body-weight squats

Total rounds completed: 16, with :20 to spare.

If you're wondering about the odd distances, I ran my suicides on a small basketball court and made my turns at the touch lines, the foul lines, and half court.

Compare to 12-22-2008