Thoughts.

Xi Xua’s Huddle entries on Crossfit (a follow-up to his earlier article on play intervals in elite open ultimate) provide an informative look into what Crossfit is; however, he does not go in to much depth at all on how to go about how to incorporate it into ultimate training.

This is by design, I think; done verbatim, Crossfit is an extremely taxing regimen to adhere to.  3 on, 1 off, learning how to do technical lifts like the squat and deadlift and the Olympic lifts too can make things overwhelming (to say nothing of the renowned intensity of the workouts).

For me, there have always been two keys to keep in mind with incorporating Crossfit: Progression and Flexibility.
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Vertical jump testing is a lot of fun.

The Dartmouth men have an arrangement with the River Valley Club near Hanover; last Wednesday was our first session there.

After a good, dynamic warm-up (which your team should be doing, if it’s still static stretching), we met the trainer we’d be working with.

First thing he did with us? Took vertical and long jumps (best out of 3), and tested pull-ups (max reps) and push-ups (max reps in 60 seconds).

We also learned how to do a few exercises that we’ll be performing for the next 10 weeks or so.

What we didn’t do, in this first session of the season, was dive right in and get to work. Hard work IS important–the team has been busting their butts over winter break to come into our long winter training with a good base–but just as important as working hard is being able to track progress. What good is weeks and weeks of training, (even if you improve your lifts or what-have-you), if it doesn’t translate to increased explosiveness on the field?

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1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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!

After a couple days of uploading, tweaking, and tinkering, I think the site–that’s www.ultimatethoughts.com for those of you following along at home–is ready to go.

The RSS feed should have been moved over successfully; additionally, all of the blogspot posts should be forwarding automatically to their corresponding posts here, so hopefully there aren’t any major broken links from the move.

A few of the changes I’ve been able to make with the shift in platform:
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Hope the holiday season is treating everyone well.

I’ve been working on moving the site over to its own domain (and off of the blogger platform); once I’m able to finalize a new design template and set aside a chunk of time to work out the kinds, I’ll make the official migration (and post).

The move should serve a couple purposes:
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’tis a great season for reading, as students are about to go/are already on break…here’s what’s been on my tap of late.  Would love to hear your good stuff in the comments.

The Definitive Book of Body Language. Really easy to get in to, broken up into perusable chunks makes it a great bathroom/bedroom read. From the perspective of a neuroscience major, I find it fascinating, and from the perspective of a future physician, I find it a useful tool for reading my patients and evaluating their needs (and how they’re responding to my suggestions).  You never know, it could help make you a more persuasive call-arguer.
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I tried to dig up a couple pictures of what I was talking about last week with the “IO Foot”; Keeghan Uhl’s gallery of Nationals provided a few useful pictures.

Without further ado:

This picture provides one angle on the IO foot. The throw isn’t explicitly IO–which is to say, this could just be a flat throw to the open side–but you’ll note that the foot position forces the knee to follow and wind up in a position which allows a fairly clean follow-through of the arm in front of the leg.
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I was asked last week about foot placement on forehand hucks. I’ve been meaning to write about foot placement for a while now, and for something so seemingly simple there’s actually a decent amount of nuance to it, so this likely won’t be the only post on the topic.

Some general points on stepping and throwing a forehand:
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