Mackey’s Summer Workout Plan: General Physical Preparedness (GPP)
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Loading ...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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Monday’s lift, 7/10
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...Hit the weights again for some strength work. Tried out a couple new exercises–I got Ross Enamait’s Infinite Intensity over summer interim, and it has in part influenced my workout design. I’ve also incorporated several of his movements into my repitoire.
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.
I’ll do a separate post about my supplemental workouts sometime. I’ve got a few, targeting the wrists, ankle/knees, or core, along with some other stuff I do for kicks.
Mackey’s Summer Workout Plan: Plyos
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...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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Mackey’s Summer Workout Plan: Ankle Strengthening
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...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.
7/5: CW practice
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...A decent practice. We worked on a new offensive set that sorta combined horizontal and straight stack with interesting effects. A good exercise in smart cutting, since the space was vastly different, though the ease of poaching the D allows made things more than a little frustrating eventually.
I played a bit. No idea what my exact point diffy would be, but definitely negative (our team started getting hosed by poaches after halftime). 2 D’s, one in the air that had me coming down on my ass from jumping and torque-ing to smack the disc away, and one a layout to D a breakside hammer. That said, I should’ve had probably 2 more on borderline biddable discs. Still have to work on getting the anticipation/instinct up in that regard.
Wanted practice to be a conditioning workout, but we didn’t do any extra work outside of drills and scrimmaging so it was a bit unfulfilling, especially because the O set made it harder for me to do what I want to do most (run my ass off). I’ll probably do a proper conditioning workout hitting the hills on the golf course this weekend. Tomorrow, plyos, orgo studying, and genealogy composing for classical mythology.
Mackey’s Summer Workout Plan, part 1
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...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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Mars
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...I’ll keep this short.
Went to Mars in Pittsburgh this weekend with the Dartmouth 08s, henceforth known as the “Booyaks.” Played five games in all–it was a 3-day tourney, but we left to get back in time for Monday classes and had to skip the final day’s games, as well as the final game of our third day (we didn’t want to wait after a thunder/rain delay).
I played pretty well. We were completely free subbing, I didn’t play as much as I would’ve liked to perhaps but it wasn’t bad at all. We played well overall, still developing some synergy, but we’ve got a lot of talent and lots of little bits of chemistry going so that’s a plus.
I didn’t keep track of too much–I considered keeping a point diffy for when I did play, but didn’t think of it until the second day and I couldn’t keep track. I could, however, keep track of my huck success %, which was a solid 7 for 9 going into the last game of the tourney before I flubbed a forehand huck (which I never do anymore) and had a huck to Sadie poached by some tall guy on the other side of the field, and only barely. I was 4 for 5 on Saturday, 3 for 6 on Sunday. Sunday had more wind, Saturday was pretty calm, but overall I’m pretty happy with that kind of success percentage. None of them were bad looks, I think, the only turns I did have were execution errors, save the poached D.
For the record, improving my deep looks is probably priority #1 when playing with the 08s this summer. Working on deep cutting and defense should come with Chuck Wagon, I’m hoping.
Defense was not a primary consideration for me this weekend (hi Dusty), though it certainly wasn’t horrible. Had more than a couple lapses either due to a lack of focus on playing from coming up with a good heckle (hi Dusty) or looking to poach and getting burnt for it.
I’ll leave it at that for now. Coming in ten minutes or so, some words on my workout plan for the summer.
Easterns & Chuck Wagon
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!) Loading ...Not gonna do a full post, I’ll just put here what I was going to send out to my fuel cell before I trimmed it for posterity.
I went to chuck wagon practice on Wednesday and had a good showing (I’m still technically in “tryout” status, since I could only make one of the tryouts before school ended in the spring); the posterior training I’ve done over the past several weeks really paid off, I was running faster than I ever have. No joke. Still need to get the endurance up at the new speed, but it’s exciting.
However, I re-rolled the ankle I rolled at classwars early into our scrimmage chasing down a miscued huck after I planted to come in (clipped somebody else’s foot trying to run around them–my ankles and others’ feet don’t go well together) and I had to sit the rest of the time. I wanted to run a bunch more, so it was a bit frustrating.
Went with Wagon to Easterns as well, ran into former Dartmouth stalwarts such as Seigs (we watched him pull OB twice against Clapham from England), Agan (who was also recouping from a rolled ankle, and in the midst of Potomac tryouts), Shmi (playing for Brute squad), Liz (playing for NBT, “New Boston Team”), Orsi (playing for Rogue), Hoffman (playing for New Noise), Ryan Abraham (playing with HOV, a mid-tier DC team), the Fist (playing for the Colt .45s), and some older folk I didn’t know, one of whom played for Pike wearing an old Dartmouth Ultimate light (Mizuko, apparently?).
I tryed playing with a brace on for the first couple games and played ok. My first touch was in the endzone (self-call), that I bobbled and dropped (self-hangup) because I was wide open and had too much time to think about it (self-call?). I only got sporadic pt because of my tryout status (Chuck Wagon gives preference to its “core” players and ringers before letting developmental players and tryouts play), but that worked out ok since I could go on, run my ass off for a point, and recoup since I didn’t really have the gas to keep going for more than one point at a time. Played some decent D, though I definitely need to learn to anticipate the riskier throws, since lots of teams either have veterans who will make and complete said throws or are low-level enough such that they take their shots regardless of whether they’re there or not. Wagon’s got some solid veterans who will put the disc most places, which is a nice change of pace on O. My cutting was solid when I was playing, nobody can guard me. The O’s still a bit disjointed, continuation cuts and stack position are less than ideal but it should all start coming together over the coming months.
Took another step towards working out a program for the summer, I’ll be sure to post about it when I finally finish it. Probably Wedsnesday or Thursday after I’m over the Orgo Lab hump in my week.
