Thoughts.

For yesterday’s workout, I did:
5 Pull-ups (had to go to jumping with rest around the 4th time through)
10 Sit-ups (on a back extension machine, so my torso was suspended parallel to the ground)
15 Push-ups (eventually had to take a break after the first 10 to avoid failure)

in order, as many times as I could in the span of 20 minutes. I was going off of memory of a Crossfit workout, which had the same 5/10/15 in 20 minute structure, but had 10 push-ups and 15 squats as its standards to go with the 5 pull-ups.
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Plyos were on Thursday. I’ve been busy enjoying my sophomore summer and have taken the past few days off, relatively speaking.

Anyways, plyos. Thursday I did week 3 from Air Alert (starting at week three may have been a wee bit overambitious, but I wasn’t unable to finish any of the sets). I also did some plyo pushups for the upper body.

Right now, the plan is to give air alert a try, see how much I like it/it works for me, and potentially include it wholesale at a later date. So far, so good. The exercises are all really good (I haven’t done squat hops yet), I was particularly fond of the “leapups” where you jump from a quarter squat, as it really targets the knees and should be really good for strengthening and for preparing them for the shock absorption necessary to jump (and land).

I feel like Air Alert has a pretty solid emphasis on strengthening the calves/ankles as well as the knees, and less of an emphasis on strengthening the “traditional” jumping muscles, the quads. I like it a lot, and it makes great sense–balance is key; one’s quads are already plenty strong, but improving/augmenting the link between them and the ground will result in a corresponding increase in jumping power. Just the day after doing the plyos I felt like I had finally gotten back my jumping ability of old in practice. Might’ve just been the extra confidence from knowing that I’m working to improve my ups, but it felt great.

I suppose it would behoove me to write a bit about the why and what of plyos.
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Devlin just blitzed me asking what I do for my ankle strengthening, so I figured it was worth posting here, too.

— Devlin wrote: wrote:
what work are you doing for ankle strengthening?
— end of quote —

I’ve done some work with theraband, working up/down and left/right motions, and some rotational work going CW and CCW with theraband as well.

I haven’t been doing it lately, but walking around barefoot on the sides of your feet or the heels/toes is prettty good stuff to do.

I’ve been doing some flexibility stuff too, it’s primarily for the knees but it works on flexibility in the ankles…I can find the link for you if you want, it’s the “18 tips for bulletproof knees” that the Lean & Hungry Fitness blog linked to a week or two ago.

When I’m in the gym I also like to do one-legged quarter squats on stability balls/discs. you’ve got instability under the ankle, so motion in general helps work on proprioception (the ankle’s ability to “know” its position–good proprioception means the ankle adjusts faster and on its own to avoid rolling) and balance, and doing quarter squats helps work the knee as well as putting the ankle in a different position. I like to do these one-legged, with the other leg held out either forward, to the left or right, or behind the foot that’s squatting, to work the knee and ankle in different planes.

I also do a lot of general ankle rotating/massage-type stuff on a daily basis to help my range of motion and try and get the swelling down, since they both still have some residual swelling. icing would be smart on my part, but I haven’t been doing it at all lately. I have been taking ibuprofen on a pretty regular basis though, which has helped.

Most of my knee/ankle work consists of the above stability single-leg squats and flexibility work. I also figure I get some benefit out of squatting and the like as well, from a functional standpoint.

This’ll just be some introductory words, since I haven’t solidified everything just yet. I might leave it the way I have it now–I’ve got some workouts planned out, and a general idea of which order to do them, and I might just leave it in this more flexible plug-in-each-day format, or I might set my workouts a month in advance and try to stick to it.
Anyways, the summer training goals are thus:
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