A New Year’s To-Do List For You:
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Loading ...- Renew your UPA membership. With electonic waivers, you can do it all now and forget about last-minute scrambles come series time, plus you’re a member in time to get all the copies of USA Ultimate. Apologies to international readers who aren’t beholden to the UPA.
- Get your fitness in gear. The Huddle has a nice piece by Xi Xia talking about Crossfit; longtime readers will know that I’m a huge proponent of Crossfit, and I highly recommend that you look to get into it if you want a comprhensive general physical preparedness routine for your off-season training.If you’re in season (ie college), you can definitely benefit from incorporating some strength work to your practice and other training routine. A while back I posted the routine we used at Dartmouth several years ago; it’s a solid place to start from if you’ve never lifted before, or are otherwise looking to ease into in-season training.
- Play ultimate. Hopefully this is the easy one! I’ve got coaching at Vegas and dominating in Hawaii to help me get my fix this winter (and a bit of training motivation for #2). Hope you’re finding satisfying pursuits, too!
It always bears repeating that good goal-setting practices, keeping the process in mind as well as the end result, will help you achieve the ends you desire, ultimate or otherwise. Best of luck with keeping your resolutions!
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Good stuff Mackey.
I already did #1 (the day the UPA sent out the email saying it was doable online), I’ve been on top of #2 like 4 days a week, and #3 is all lined up as well.
It began with First Night of Flight in Pittsburgh, which is an annual indoor tournament. There, I met a certain Andrew Applegate, who knows you. He and I were on the same team.
And now the game plan is to go to Trouble in Vegas in a couple weeks. You say you’re *coaching* there? Why aren’t you playing?
I won’t be playing at club Vegas, but will be coaching at college Vegas. The former has bad timing with tests; the latter has bad timing, too, but in will hopefully be easier to manage.
Andrew Applegate? I know several Andrews, but none with that last name, I think. Did he say where he knows me from?
speaking of international readers… I’m an ulti player in Spain (google reader suggested your blog to me) and we play a lot of beach ultimate here. (Beach ultimate kicks ass, despite what some grass-grinches think about it being “slower.”) So the question is, why does beach ultimate hardly exist in the U.S.? I mean, I know that *most* of the country doesn’t have beaches, but there’s still a lot of coast…
I’m on 2 and 3, need to do 1, thankfully it’s the easiest
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Question for you as a proponent of Crossfit: where and how are you working out? Are you using a Crossfit Box near you, or just using the WOD from Crossfit.com? Also, are you doing any adaptations of the workout for Ultimate?
I just started working out a Crossfit Gym that’s just starting (http://crossfitnyack.wordpress.com/) and I can see some serious value to ultimate, but there are some elements that are probably missed, or not trained as regularly. For example, grip strength, and rotational strength. how are you overcoming deficiencies in regards to ultimate in a generalized crossfit workout?
Andrew says he knows you because you played in the same section in college, and this past year in club. Sorry, you may not know him, but he knows you.
Good luck in Vegas!
Chargeorge,
I’ve been doing it all on my own, as always–neither Hanover NH, where Dartmouth is, nor Albany NY, my hometown, have local xfit affiliates that I know of (or at least, there weren’t any a couple years back when I was looking for them). I spent a good month learning a lot of the basic motions, squatting and deadlifting etc, and as I’ve been doing Crossfit or at least components of it for the past several years, I feel pretty comfortable with what I have going.
As for getting more ultimate relevance, that comes with adjusting my workout routine (planning in other components).
…I could go on, but I think I’ll actually spell it out a bit more in a proper post.
CJ,
Got it. I’m sadly pretty terrible with names, but I’m hoping I’d recognize him if I saw him. Thanks!
Thanks Mackey, I look forward to it.
Hey, you ever play in the Albany summer league or out on Colin’s Circle? I went to Union College so I would play there sometimes, from about 2003-2005.
Yep, I played in ASL regularly on the red team in ’04 before I started at Dartmouth (and showed up thinking I was the shit because I knew what a stack was and could throw a forehand)…turned up in summer ’07 for a grand total of two games as well, I think. Haven’t been around Albany for terribly long on my summers lately.
Okay, that’s weird, 2004 was the only year I played in ASL also. I was on Orange, we looked like giant road cones in those sleeveless shirts.
ASL was were I learned how much old masters players like to make and challenge calls. It’s a valuable lesson to this day.
Looks like a nice program to start with =)
@Mackey good luck at Vegas!
@Chargeorge re: “grip strength, and rotational strength”, those are interesting concerns… I’m not an expert on grip work but there’s definitely a gripper community out there.
As for rotational strength, a good place to start is just being able to avoid rotation in the first place, at least in the lumbar spine, before you can generate rotational strength. I wrote (or rather rambled) a bit about that on the UltiTraining blog re: core training:
http://ultitraining.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/on-core-training/
which has gotten lots of comments… =)
I do think cable chop&lift is underrated as a core training drill, and Gray Cook has a chapter on Rotation and Swinging in ABiB. But it basically seems to come down to the chop&lift progression with cables and med balls for power in the PNF diagonal pattern. Today I actually coached a few female players in the gym today to do this PNF diagonal cable chop & lift and they seemed to do well with it as an anti-rotational drill.
Adam Glass blogged about grip strength and kbells recently:
http://adamtglass.blogspot.com/2010/01/grip-strength-and-kettlebells.html
Some food for thought… just see where he writes, re:
“If you want a stronger grip, you must train for the quality you want to possess. Specifics rules everything in the realm of human performance.” so, why do we want a stronger grip in Ultimate? I think there might be a surprising amount of specificity in the disc form and release, but who knows (and perhaps it’s not just grip strength, but the ability to go from grip strength/tension to relaxation as fast as possible).