Sleep, Motor Learning and Consolidation
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!)
Loading ...I’m a big stickler for sleep, for various reasons – general health and well-being being a big one.
However, there are more tangible, concrete reasons to value your sleep, too – and the Harvard Business Review does a great job of touching on some of those needs.
As an ultimate player, you should know that throwing is a dynamic motor skill – in much the same way that professional violinists need their sleep to continue to progress, we as athletes likewise need to give ourselves appropriate time to consolidate the motor learning we do by taking the time necessary to sleep. (PS – It can help with controlling your weight, too).
Make 8 hours the minimum, not the ideal. Consider napping. Reap the benefits!
Guest Post on Melissa’s Blog
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...For those of you who don’t already read her blog, Melissa recently dropped a post I wrote on in-season peaking from both an endurance (tapering) and strength (deloading) perspective.
It’s the fullest bit of writing I’ve done in a while outside of the Huddle articles I’m working on (my first there should come with issue #32), and I’m pretty happy with the article, so check it out.
Strength Training for Ultimate – Program Structure Considerations
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...- Emphasize the big-money lifts; put them first in your training day. You’re asking for trouble if you fatigue yourself before you lift heavy. (Yes, you can end with squats and the like – but if you’re going heavy, best to lead with it)
- Work the bigger muscles first, end with smaller (squats before calf raises – though I’m not keen on calf raises at the moment).
- Try to limit workouts to a max of 6 exercises or so – much more and you’re working too long, or not devoting enough time (sets/rep wise) to each one.
- Time-wise, aim for less than one hour working out (longer with warm-up and cool-down is fine). Extended stress pushes up cortisol release, which has deleterious effects on muscle growth/recovery and immune function, among other things – get in, do work, and get out. If it’s not enough to do it within an hour, you might want to split the workout into two or pare down to the essentials.
- Leave adequate time for recovery! At least one full “off” day a week, ideally 48 hours between working muscle groups, work in low-intensity/change of pace recovery days, take deload weeks every 4th week or so (less often for novices).
- Sleep, incidentally, is a form of recovery too – don’t underestimate the value of a good night’s sleep for both your energy level and muscle growth. Sleep is when growth hormone levels spike; do yourself a favor and get more rest – your brain and body will both be grateful.
- Nutrition goes right along with this – try to eat your best on your pre-training days and before workout on the day of. If you’re going to indulge the sugars or leave your body short-handed on refueling calories, best to do so immediately post workout for the former and before an off day for the latter (not that I really recommend either for serious athletes).
- 3-4 days lifting a week is both necessary and sufficient for an off-season program; this may be worth scaling back (either in days or workout length/intensity) when in-season/playing a lot depending on how well you recover between days. For ultimate anything more than 3-4 days lifting is excessive, will hinder your recovery, and generally be an inefficient use of time (spend it throwing or reading blogs instead
). - Generally speaking, our sport is lower-body explosive dominant – emphasize lower body strength first (squats, deadlifts, and when you’re ready, consider learning how to do cleans properly).
- Upper body strength of course has its use too – look at Olympic sprinters. Throwing the disc has more to do with lower body and core strength than big biceps, but arm stability (especially at the shoulder) and grip strength are both key players too – don’t leave it out.
- Other relatively ultimate-specific training considerations:
- Rotational power and stability. Cables and bands are good ways to progressively load rotation (and stabilizing against it – try Pallof Presses); medicine ball throws are an excellent option for developing power. You don’t have to do exact frisbee throws here – in fact, it’s better to leave that specific work for just the disc lest you train to throw slow. Develop power independent of the specific motion and then learn to incorporate it into your game.
- Lunging – doubly a consideration in that it’s useful for throwing and that we heavily favor one leg for this; the off-season is a key chance to assess your range of motion and strength disparities between legs. Gray Cook advocates working the “deficient” side an extra 2 sets or 2-3x as much for improving mobility (ie, during your warm-up – you ARE doing mobility work to warm up, aren’t you?); strength-wise, make sure that the weak side determines maximum loading on exercises like lunges (don’t reinforce the difference by doing extra reps or weight on your strong side) – you may want to add an extra set to the weak side if you’re really deficient.
- Generally speaking, athletes see more functional carryover to sport from unilateral loading – ie, single arm, single leg…use the bilateral big loads (squats, deads etc) to stimulate growth, but, especially as you get closer to pre-season and in-season, recognize that the unilateral work is what’s going to keep you healthy. More on this in the next post.
Not Feeling It Today? At Least Warm Up First.
(1 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5) Loading ...Been working hard lately, with the wonderful weather 1 and the prospect of playing some good ultimate when I return to the states as motivation.
That said, there are still days where I’m not feeling it. I get home from work and my body says, “meh!” and my mind says, “ehhhh. Just take it easy today.”
In those situations, there are two things that keep me working:
At the very least, you’re boosting recovery by getting the blood flowing. Ideally the physical act of getting up and out will be enough to get you over your motivation hump and get you working, even if you opt to scale things back a bit–you’re better off doing something than nothing. 1As I type this, of course, it’s pouring–rainy season here. Soon to be unbearably hot season.
Structuring Your Own Training Program, Part 2
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...You want to be smart about your training. Again, you can look through my previous summer workout materials for some further guidance to this end–check out my initial summer workout post for an idea of what my training schedule was once like. You can work consistently without overtraining if you’re smart about structure and know when too much is too much. A few guidelines to that end:
-Lifting: If you do body part splits (whether you choose to do this or not should depend on your goals–I always opted for more of a full-body routine), you can work on back-to-back days; otherwise give yourself a day away from lifting between heavy lifts (anything taxing on you in terms of focus–conditioning work with light weight, while taxing, does not burn you out for lifting the next day).
-Conditioning: Depending on the extent and intensity with which you condition, you can do this almost every day. I’ve often found a good conditioning workout to be the perfect panacea to DOMS the day after a taxing lift. As a matter of fact, I would heavily recommend throwing some GPP in following your lifts–it’ll get your body working in new ways as different muscle groups are still recovering from the efforts of the previous day, and in my opinion this allows you to work through some deficiencies you might not have been compensating for when at 100% strength. Ironing out the kinks will make you that much better when you do get back to full strength. Note that DOMS has not been shown to have any actual adverse effects other than being uncomfortable–work out and work through it, and force your body to improve.
-Plyos: In contrast to conditioning, Plyos should be done on a more conservative schedule. While you can always power through a conditioning session, “powering through” plyos usually means piss-poor form and an increased injury risk (the same is true for lifting heavy–don’t wait playing “how much is too much” with yourself; be proactive and protect your body instead). Do plyos when you’re fresh. This includes speed work, and really heavy lifting (we’re talking 1 rep max and stuff in the <3 range). DOMS is not a complete nonstarter here, but make sure you can focus enough to work though it--sometimes it can sap your focus, and other times the DOMS is a sign of some fatigue and it really is a nonstarter.
Do plyos/speed work either immediately before your lifting, or immediately after (if you’re not killing yourself lifting–this allows you to take advantage of the complex effect whereby the shortening of your muscles from lifting allows for generation of more explosiveness. Again, make sure you’re fresh enough to really focus on what you’re doing–the nervous system is the primary beneficiary of this sort of training, and it won’t learn if it’s too fatigued.
-Overall Structure: You can power through 4 or 5 (or potentially more) days of hard training a week for a good while, but without proper focus on recovery you’ll find yourself plateauing before too long. A couple good ways to ensure your body is getting enough recovery to deal with cumulative fatigue buildup include doing proper flexibility and recovery work (massage, yoga and the like–activities that are lower-impact and generate bloodflow) on your off days or following workouts, and every so often (once every 4 to 6 weeks–this will vary depending on how much training experience you have, and generally gets shorter as you get more experienced and can therefore work with more intensity per workout) inserting an “off” or “recovery” week, where in lieu of the usual intense workouts, you give your body a bit of a rest. I don’t mean taking the week off entirely, I mean instead of lifting super-heavy, lifting a little lighter for significantly reduced reps/sets–don’t tax your body to the limit, merely rev it up and then ease back down to normal mode. Condition, but condition for half as long or with less intense exercises. Plyos, use your discretion–if you notice your vertical falling, for instance, you might leave them be entirely and give your body a true break there. The idea, as with recovery activities, is to get the blood flowing more than to push your limits. In so doing you give your body room to adjust to the stress that’s been placed upon it, and you’re likely to find that you come back much stronger/faster/more explosive the next week.
Additionally, to avoid mental burnout taking an actual off week every couple months is not a terrible idea. Remember that it’s recovery, not work itself, that makes you stronger–so while you can and should work your ass off, if you do so consistently you should know that a bit of down time will do more good than harm.
-Finally: TRACK YOUR PROGRESS. As with goal setting, this is absolutely essential. Think of program design, in its entirety, as a big blueprint, the workouts themselves as the construction, and tracking of progress as quality control (or as a foreman). If you’re not checking to make sure the blueprint is being adhered to during construction, how can you be sure you’re going to get the intended result? Goal setting and program design give you an initial heading…keeping a workout log gives you a map of where you’ve been and where you’re going. Getting a little metaphor-heavy here, but you get my gist.
Next Saturday, look for a third and final post touching a bit on supplemental work, overtraining, and ways to apply your training more specifically to ultimate.
