Thoughts.

Sure. Maybe. It’s also important to kick your own ass sometimes, too. You know what I’m talking about–those workouts that leave you feeling sore for days in spots you didn’t even know could BE sore.

It’s the same thing. When you do progressions, you can activate muscles you don’t normally use by really focusing on form. But when you overload, you can do the same thing out of sheer necessity.

I’m not saying you should kill yourself by squatting heavy (bad form will kill you)–but if you do some strength endurance work, repeated sets of 5 or 10 reps on short rest at a respectable weight, you are gonna make some wonderful progress. It’s exactly this sort of trend of thought that makes Crossfit so effective. Just browse their Workout of the Day (WoD) archive.

Effective: Do your fakes leave you exposed? Think about turnaround time. If that super-convincing forehand fake requires you to flick the frisbee around your fingers, it may only prove marginally useful compared to a fake that allows you to instantly throw if the option appears. Think about “throwing without throwing”–using everything but your wrist snap and grip release as you normally would.

Think about pivoting. If your fakes take a slightly upward trajectory (that is, if your body does–remember, the throw at least has to start out looking the same as your/a regular throw), you’re already starting your body to move to the other side, while your mark is hopefully off-balance trying for a throw that isn’t there. Think about throwing without pivoting–can you go from forehand to throwing backhand without stepping? Vice-versa? Sometimes it’s not the spatial advantage of a pivot, but the temporal advantage of a faster release you need. At the very least, learn to fake to either side until you find an opening you can exploit/attack.

Think about how far you pivot. If you overextend, you’re slower to change than your mark. When you commit, and you know you can beat your mark, you can really get out there–but otherwise, pick your spots to extend. You can step sufficiently to make most marks respond (6’6″ behemoths marking 5’8″ miniatures notwithstanding) without using your full range, and you’ll leave yourself room to exploit for the real throw if all else fails.

It’s really really important, when working out (particularly when it comes to lifting), not to overdo it. I was going through a fairly routine warm-up routine for me (including barbell complexes–45lbs, doing some shrugs, cleans, presses, and front and overhead squats), then proceeded into a workout intending to get my legs back under me doing some lunges. About 8 reps in with a manageable weight, my legs were screaming at me. Not in the “something’s wrong” sense, but in the “what the hell is this?” way that your body uses to let you know that you’re doing too much too soon and you’re going to be sore the next day.

That’s usually ok if you stop there. I left my legs be and went to work on the abs. How much I have lost! Muscles I used to know and love regarded me as strangers. And therein came to me the importance of progression.

I was trying to do some simple hanging leg raises, engaging my deep abdominal muscles…and I couldn’t. Not without bending my legs and doing hanging knee raises instead of straight-legged ones.

When you’re just starting a training program, or attempting to master a new movement or skill, unless you’re in top form in terms of general physical prep (and even then, be careful), you’ll almost ALWAYS benefit from starting with the basics and working your way up. The best trainers won’t sit you down and squat you straight away, they’ll evaluate your basics and get you VERY comfortable with the basics before putting you through your paces.

If you’re working hard this summer, and feeling a lack of progress/developing injuries, consider taking a step back instead of a step forward. Focus on the basics. Go a little lighter and really develop an awareness of how your body is moving instead of pushing through those dicey points where it hurts or it doesn’t feel quite right. Your body will thank you and respond accordingly, letting you bust through that plateau in front of you. You’d be surprised at all the different muscles and their uses you’ve yet to discover. Seriously, muscles you didn’t even know existed can quickly become prime components of your athletic posture and execution (going from unknown to very well known back to anonymity when you reach an automatic, natural level of use).

Oh, and stretch too.

Exercises like:

-Single Leg Squats: not just wussy quarter squats, but going all the way down so your butt meets your calf/heel. You can do this with your leg out in front of you, but it’s hard to balance (holding 5-10 lbs in front of you will help), so you can also try doing it with the leg behind you, though you can’t get down as far. Go down as far as you can. Check out Jim’s Beast Skills for tutorials on all kinds of bodyweight feats, including the pistol and most of the exercises below.

-One-arm pushups: spread your legs a bit wider than usual, keep your core really tight, and lean towards the arm that’s doing the work.

-Handstand pushups: you can put your feet against a wall to help balance. Go down as low as you can.

-Pull-ups, if you can find a bar/rafter/tree branch to use: make sure you get your chest up to the bar/rafter/branch, not settling to just get your chin over.

-Glute-Ham Raises: you need a special setup to do these. see here. As long as your heels/calves are supported–somebody holding them, or putting them under something suitably heavy, you can try these–it’s easier to start at the top and go down, these are really hard on the hamstrings

Doing these exercises for a few sets, stopping short of failure (inability to finish the movement) each time, will give you a great workout without having to go to a gym and load up on heavy weights. The single leg squat (aka pistols when you do them with leg in front) is one of my favorite exercises. Add in some core work and you have a full-body workout.

Blitz me if you have any questions.

Defense is fundamentally about taking away space. You can do this simply by reacting to your opponent’s movements, or you can anticipate and see what they’ll be doing before they can catch you off guard.

One tool to avoid being caught (as) off guard–observing the relation between your hips and your opponent’s hips. Generally speaking, you want your hips facing towards your quarry (or perhaps more accurately–this may be a situational preference–you want your hips facing in the direction you want/anticipate your (wo)man running in). Any good cutter knows that once a defender turns his/her hips, going in the other direction is a cinch (moreso than continuing to go in the direction they’re moving in). To the extent that you don’t commit your hips, or can force your man to go in the direction you will commit to without letting them beat you the other way, you’ll be prepared to spring into action when your cutter finally chooses a direction to “sell out” in with a hard cut–and even then, you still use your body and read your opponent’s hips to anticipate when they slow and change direction.

3 rounds of:

30 seconds each of, in order:
-Burpees
-Jumping Jacks
-Split Jumps*
-Burpees
-Jumping Jacks
-Mountain Climbers^
-Rest

Go straight from one exercise to the next, and one round to the next. Set a watch to go off every 30 seconds and go at it, striving to move as briskly as possible with each exercise.

Stay Strong,
Mackey

Notes:
*unlike lunge jumps, where you go down into a full lunge, with split jumps you only bend your knees slightly. There should be no up-down component of the motion, just switching the legs.
^get on the ground in pushup position. bring one knee up to your chest. switch, so that the other knee is at your chest. That’s one rep. stay on your toes.
-I got this workout from Ross Enamait’s book “Infinite Intensity” (check out http://www.rosstraining.com). Before you laugh, check out his videos. This guy is superbly conditioned. His original workout had 5 rounds, but I was pretty well floored at 3.