Thoughts.

1-arm Dumbbell Snatch: This is a good, pretty easy, explosive lift. The slideshow explains it far better than I ever could; just focus on exploding through your hips and you should be on the right track. You can do it for low reps and work on strength speed, or do it for higher reps and work on conditioning/explosiveness. Definitely a quality movement (see also the dumbbell clean and swing for similar variations; the barbell versions are tougher to learn and do, but are very worthwhile to learn)

Pull-ups: Yep, pull-ups (I’d hope I don’t need to explain how to do these). Vary your grip however you like, just work on pulling strength. Lots of people struggle just to do a couple pull-ups; doing 10-20 every time you’re in the gym, whether that be 5 sets of 4, or 2 sets of 10 on the assisted machine, whatever–you’ll eventually get stronger and better able to do the real thing (I can manage 10-15 at the moment, up from maybe 4-5 in June). So much of what’s typically done in the gym is pushing–pushups, various presses–pull-ups are a good way to work on the pulling motions for balance’s sake. Your rotator cuff will thank you someday (rows are good too, whether bent-over, on a rowing machine, whatever). Chin-ups (grab the bar with your palm facing you) in particular are good for the lats, which are involved in just about every upper-body motion you could think of. I haven’t tested my max in a while, but I’m definitely over a dozen dead-hang pull-ups at this point (I can do them with an extra 45 lbs for one rep, as well).

Deadlift: See here for the wikipedia entry if you’re unfamiliar with the lift and its benefits; a cursory search of anywhere will give you information how to deadlift, it’s one of the most fundamental lifts there are. Things that are important to emphasize: keep your chest out–think trying to puff up your chest to impress that cute gal walking by; the bar should be touching your shins when you first address it on the ground and before you lift; make an effort to keep the bar as close to your body as possible on the way up–this is the safest way to lift it, and you’ll get immediate feedback on your form because you’ll hit your knees if you don’t use your legs to get it up before your back comes into the equation; and stabilize your spine by pressurizing your stomach. Think of your spine like a mast of a ship, with your abdominal muscles the tow lines stabilizing it, pulling from every angle. Contrary to popular belief, sucking in is actually worse for your spine. Definitely don’t go too heavy too fast, and don’t deadlift heavy too often in a short timeframe (I deadlift maybe once-twice a week right now). A worthwhile variation is the Sumo Deadlift + High Pull; the first Crossfit workout I did involved SDHPs for something like 30 reps per round; I was using just the bar (45lbs), I think, and was just absolutely destroyed after three rounds. That was when I knew I was on the right track with Crossfit.
The deadlift is probably the lift most responsible for my increases in athleticism earlier this year. I went from having a fairly tough time with something like 75lbs in late spring to pulling 215 in early October. And there’s still plenty of room for improvement, too. The main thing with the deadlift is that it works your posterior chain–glutes, hamstrings, back–all of which play a big role in athleticism, particularly running, and which tend to be overlooked and under trained because they’re “out of sight” so to speak. If you haven’t been working this area, even a rudimentary bit of strength work will probably make a big difference. It’s very much worth learning.

Front Squats: My other favorite “big” lift. As opposed to the more commonly known and practiced back squat, where the weight rests on your shoulders, with the front squat you support the weight on your shoulders in front of you with your arms (very) loosely keeping the bar in place. I prefer the front to the back squat because it’s a lot harder to mess up your back with due to improper form, and because of the extra flexibility required to do a full-depth one. A good front squat requires pretty good arm/wrist flexibility, and I also think that because of where the weight is held one has to be on their heels. Too many people squat one their toes–aside from being hard to balance, it’s symptomatic of poor ankle flexibility and isn’t how you’ll be able to lift the most. Another thing that’s helped me a lot is the improved flexibility from doing things like full range-of-motion squats. Start light with this until you develop good flexibility to do it with heavier weight; focus on pushing through your heels, and extending at your hip. Hip extension is the name of the game, and it’s what’ll carry over with good effect to your day-to-day athletic pursuits. I’ve worked up from 135 to 175 in these in the span of a couple months; they’re pretty tough, but rewarding. If you really want to find out how inflexible you really are then try overhead squatting, with just the bar. There’s a fun exercise.

That about covers it. These are the first exercises that come to my mind if I go to the gym without a specific plan, because I like doing these exercises a lot.

So I think a lot of the best gains I got from summer training came from strength training…simple lifts like the deadlift and squat with a couple different rep schemes–5 sets of 5 reps, 3-2-2-2-1-1-1-1-1 for maxes. I’d only do 1-2 days of strength work in a given week, though. Those are the simpler movements to do, they don’t need as much coaching to do well (just make sure your brace your core so you don’t hurt your back), I’ve dabbled a bit in olympic lifting too–the barbell stuff is difficult; doing snatches or cleans or swings with a dumbbell (1 arm at a time) is pretty manageable though, and works very well. Let me know if you want clarification on any of those movements.

A lot of my other workouts followed crossfit’s sort of setup, usually 3 exercises in rounds, 21-15-9 rep scheme. The general idea for these ones is basically to bust ass, moving as fast as you can doing and between exercises. It makes for a good condiitoning effect, but depending on the exercieses it’s just great for general fitness. You could probably work out a few on your own. I’ll just write a few of the ones I’ve done and liked as examples:

3 rounds, for time:
1000m row
20 pull-ups (in as many sets as necessary)
30 box jumps

As many rounds in 20 minutes as you can:
5 Handstand pushup (I’d do them up against a wall, you could maybe substitute a pushup derivative)
10 1-leg squats, alternating legs (so 5/leg)
15 pullups (i moved onto the assisted machine fairly quickly to keep moving instead of taking a long break)

As many rounds in 10 minutes as you can (I made this one up, it’s pretty killer on the legs so I halved it from my original 20 minute goal)
5 pushups
10 split jump (you know, where you’re in a lunge, jump, switch in midair, land in lunge)
15 squats (just with your bodyweight–butt bounces are a pretty equivalent burn)

That sort of thing. Doesn’t take very long, you get your blood pumping. I usually do a warm-up including some hip stretching, jumproping, situps, back extensions, and maybe pullups and dips or some other pushing/pulling movements with the arms, depending on what the workout is for the day, as well as some extra stuff for my knees/ankles, and usually follow my workouts with some grip work or some extra core work. For a while in the summer I would also do some light plyos, maybe like 15-30ish box jumps, in my warmup, too, and I felt like it had pretty good benefit on the field. Obviously in your offseason that’s less of a concern for you.

I’m starting to go off the deep end here writing stuff, but I wanted to add that I think a lot of my benefit from training came from identifying what I needed to improve (my hamstrings and glutes are a lot stronger now) and tailoring my workout plan around fixing my weaknesses. Having at least some plan will help add structure, and try and keep balance in your training (ie, don’t go doing a ton of squats and neglecting your hamstrings like I did in high school). Those are pretty standard caveats, but I figure they always bear mentioning.

Short version on the “Getting Stiff” series (realize when I say short, it is a relative term):
-Static stretching before training really has no benefit whatsoever, and may be detrimental
-Warming up means raising your body temperature. No, really. Increases bloodflow, improves your nervous system. Start with lower-impact stuff–don’t just go into a full-speed run right off, start slow to save your joints.
-Dynamic stretching is good to ensure you have proper range of motion before training/activity, though it should follow a good warm-up
-Sport-specific work (ie, throwing, drills) is good to do after you’ve warmed up and done range-of-motion work and before you play (obviously)
-Static stretching has value for flexibility improvement after training/playing, though you can do more or less depending on how flexible you already are–you don’t want to be overstretching if you’re already flexible enough somewhere.
-Gentle range-of-motion work is useful for improving day-to-day flexibility–ie, doing some of the dynamic stretches we do in the morning (or after sitting at a desk for a few hours, etc) at an easy pace, not pushing anything particularly hard, isn’t a bad way to keep from being stiff as the day goes on.
-It’s important to differentiate between your hips and your lower back–a lot of people tend to use their lower back for a lot of movements that should start from the hips–also, a lot of people need to improve hip flexibility a bunch, because the back compensates for this inflexibility by becoming hyperflexible (too flexible), leading to more injury there and elsewhere. It also leads to hamstring tightness (or as Seigs would say, being a pussy)–working on your hips and hamstring flexibility is a good idea. This inflexibility comes into play when squatting, where if you can’t go all the way down you’re stopping short and probably putting a lot of stress on your knee (another source of injury). Developing flexibility in the hamstrings and psoas (runs from your pelvis to your lower back–I’m not really familiar with this or how it’s stretched, I guess it comes with hamstring work?) helps relieve a “tight lower back,” as it’s actually caused by tight muscles in your legs and their subsequent influence on your back.
-When you stretch your hamstrings, make sure you stretch your hamstrings, not your back–don’t lean forward at the back, keep it arched somewhat (proper posture has a natural curve in the lower back). Make your hips and hamstrings do the stretch (this applies to basically all hamstring stretches).
-If you’re interested in the various types of stretches and examples, look at the 2nd .pdf–there’s too much to recap it all. I can show you some good hamstring stretches at the very least if you’re lazy/unsure how to do some stuff, but I haven’t tried a lot of this yet. There’s some pictures in the 2nd .pdf too of the stretches, too, if you care to look.
-Static stretching is best done gently–don’t rush into the stretch, and don’t put stress on your joints or connective tissue (these are the areas that hurt when you try to stretch them–they’re not meant to stretch much at all)

Need to rediscover my pacing–despite relatively consistent times at the longer distances, my splits would always have me starting too fast and positive splitting by a bit.

Anyhow, here’re my times;
200s: 29,29,30,31
300s: 54,54
400s: 75,75
300s: 55,54 (I think)
200s: 33hi,34lo,33hi,32mid

Good starting point. It’s good to do a track workout again, looking forward to improving. I already feel better off than I was last season.

This week’s been a back-off week after pushing it the past couple weeks and having my knee bug me a bit at LoG Jam this weekend. Did some bodyweight strength work (handstand pushups, one-legged squats, one-legged pushups, pullups, glute-ham raises) on Tuesday, Monday was an off day thanks to my Orgo midterm. Today’ll be a lighter plyo day with some supplemental work–wrists, knee/ankles, core.

He’s a big single-arm/leg, dumbbell enthusiast, so in that vein today was a dumbbell-oriented workout, with 1-armed clean and presses and 1-armed snatches, as well as Bulgarian Squats, a 1-legged squat variation where the non-lifting leg is behind you on a bench while you squat. I figure it’ll help flexibility in the quads and thus help my knees.

Speaking of, doing my warmup today I got to the overhead squat warmup, and for the first time I can remember my right knee didn’t crack on the way down or up (and I was going all the way down, butt to knees). Progress is being made.

Anyways, the workout I had planned was:
3xdb C&P
4xdb Snatch
5xdb Bulgarian squat
x4 rounds

Since I hadn’t done the db C&P or snatch before, I started relatively light and worked my way up with each set; I wound up doing an extra rep or two for each. Additionally, I only wound up doing 3 rounds total, feeling like 4 would’ve been a bit too much.

I followed the lifting with some grip/wrist work–fingertip pushups, knuckle pushups, and the new grip machine (it’s a pretty simple setup you can add 10-pound weights to). I’m a big believer in strengthening the wrist and grip as making throwing and catching more reliable.