Thoughts.

I already reviewed the fall ultimate season, but I thought it might be fitting to do a broader recap of how my fall was.

This fall got off to an unusual start. Fresh off my time abroad in Japan (I had less than a week at home), I arrived at Dartmouth in late August to participate in the DOC Trips as a Hanover Crew member. It was definitely a rather huge swing; going from being in a foreign country where I’d just gotten to know people, to home with nobody around, to being at Dartmouth with a group of mostly strangers with whom I immediately spent several days working 16+ hours a day to create, rehearse, and refine the Safety Show To End All Safety Shows and then spending the next two weeks taking care of and performing for over 900 Dartmouth Freshmen, who we then sent off into the wilderness with their upperclassmen trip leaders. Definitely one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had–little can top the exhilaration and satisfaction that comes from successfully pulling off an undertaking of that magnitude, and pulling it off well.

Definitely a different way to start off the term. I’d essentially been transplanting myself from culture to culture, from the comfort of Dartmouth, to the uncomfortability but eventual acclimation to Japan, to the exhilaration and zanyness that is H-Croo, to…being “normal” again. I mean, really, I guess I had some exceptional responsibilities right off the bat, having to rush to coordinate club sectionals at Dartmouth as soon as my commitment to Trips ended, but all in all I’d essentially been placed back into familiar territory on unfamiliar terms in many ways.

I guess it’s just part of growing up. I’d become familiar and comfortable with Dartmouth now, and I was no longer a wide-eyed freshman, just looking to get by–I was a sophomore, empowered to do more and to be more. But while the school really hadn’t changed, I had. Or, at least, I was afraid that I had.

Without getting into too much detail, there was a solid chunk of time at the beginning of the term proper (that is, post-Trips) where I was really concerned about Me. There isn’t enough time between me then and me now to be able to do a completely accurate assessment, but I don’t think it’s unrealistic to say that the me that came back from Japan was going through a bit of reverse culture shock. Not so much in the “alas, my world is changed!” sense, more of a personal level of vulnerability, or perhaps permeability to that which was around me.
While I do love my fellow croolings, and have become very good friends with the people I worked with over the course of Trips, the croos as a whole are a very debaucherous crowd. Suffice to say that I acted in some ways that are decidedly Not How I Roll, both in the context of with the croos and independently as well, and that both my actions and their consequences weighed me down for a good while. I was afraid that the recent series of events was defining a trend and that I was decisively moving away from who I thought I was.

I’ve since come out of the term with a much clearer perspective on Who I Am. I might have fallen below the standards I set for myself (which are hard to keep, as they’re relatively high), but in the end, I choose who I am–I can’t let a few lapses in judgment define me. I can make myself into who I want to be. At the risk of sounding Christian (as a rule I try to shy away from overtly evangelistic conduct; I don’t like the thought of forcing my beliefs on others), being good and Christlike is never easy. As they say, nothing worth doing is.

Aside from my identity crisis and what that entailed, there wasn’t much else eventful that happened. I fulfilled several duties as a team VP, which entailed lots of work and some good experience; worked in a neuroscience laboratory for the term in lieu of taking classes, which was a great experience and a great-paying job; lived off-campus, which was a good experience (and one I’m continuing this winter); made some new friends, mostly through ultimate; got to lead my fuel cell for the term, a good experience and one I’m going to enjoy continuing; and generally had a good time spending time with friends and getting to know people better. May have also laid the groundwork for Matt’s latest Attempt at a Meaningful Relationship over the last few weeks, but who knows about that. In any case, this is not Mackey’s Guide to Making Love. Maybe some general revelations I’ve had on the matter at a later date…

But yeah. All in all, a good term. I’ve come to better terms with who I am and am much happier for it. We’ll see if the winter will be as good; readjusting to having classes again will be fun, at least.

Officially home for the winter.

I’m sitting here in my room in Albany, with little to do (the curse of the Dartmouth quarter system: nobody’s home): I’ve already read up on the latest developments in the hot stove on ESPN.com (The Sox have all sorts of stuff in the works; we may have a more or less completely revamped infield and outfield by the time this is all over. At least ‘Tek’s untouchable); I’ve spent as much time harassing my 10-year-old brother as I could before he went to sleep; I’ve yet to fully explore blitzversation options, as I’d rather save it for when I’m truly bored; I’ve explored playing several of the many video games in my extensive PS2 library, to no avail. The boredom remains.

So, here I sit, laptop on lap, blogging. Ah, the blog. Depository for many a late-night rant.


I definitely feel like the blog’s been a positive tool for me. Helps me get thoughts down when I can, and puts them in a place where I won’t lose track of them. As an added bonus, it’s available for anybody to read, saving me the trouble of trying to say things, often repeatedly which I’m much better at expressing in writing–I actually find this to be something of a theme for me; as much as I enjoy conversation, I feel so much more empowered using a keyboard, playing with grammar, and setting a cadence that can only be had through writing. At the very least, my conversation is much better when I’ve had a chance to organize my thoughts. Part of why I spend a lot more time listening than talking is because I’m often better prepared to speak after a second’s pause instead of interrupting somebody. And I hate to stop somebody’s train of thought and have them lose it.

I’ve been told more than once that I have a very good writer’s voice; I’m not sure whether my enjoyment of writing came before or after the development of said voice, but it’s a productive combination, I think. At least, I enjoy writing. That’s all that really matters, isn’t it?

I’m thinking that my ultimate-related thoughts are going to diminish in frequency in the coming months, and as such I think I may branch out into some broader introspection and reflection so I can keep writing (a return to class will likely help some, too). Maybe some less serious stuff, too, but I’ve never been great at generating humor–I’m much more of a situational humorist, playing off of whatever’s happening around me. But yeah, we’ll see how well this goes.

Wound up responding to a blitz about some ultivilliage clips of good skies and figured my response might as well go on the blog, too:

— HumbleTrout wrote:
especially in the shank gets up one, you see he picks out the disc as he’s continuing his cut, then slows down, then accelerates and rises to the disc as opposed to camping under it. seigs can tell you this guy catches a lot of deep looks and this has to be a reason why.
— end of quote —

Speaking as a jumper, this is definitely a large factor in a good sky. While you can occasionally win the position battle by camping, ideally you can get a posiiton that’s actually several feet away from where you intend to catch the disc, then accelerate hard for a couple steps into a plant and jump. Generally speaking, you’ll note the penultimate step is usually shorter and faster than a regular running stride, and usually involves a lowering of the center of gravity; this is followed by a hard push-off from the other leg and a drive up with the knee as the body explodes upward, converting some of the horizontal, running momentum into upward drive. If you think about high jumpers they always take a running approach, as you can get significantly higher from a run with good form than you can from standing.

Of course, simply jumping higher than your man isn’t always a guarantee of a sky if he’s in front of you and the disc is low enough for him to get up to it before you. So it’s a very situational sort of thing, you really have to respond to the situation.

Just a listing, for myself, again…

Better Nutrition. Really want to work more veggies into my diet, lots of good nutrients to be had there. And generally working on getting more natural foods, less simple sugars and more good fats and protein along with complex carbs, as that’s what my body is designed to use.

Hydrate. Really important, generally speaking. Did you know that being well-hydrated on a constant basis increases the water content of ligaments and tendons, making you 3-5% more flexible? That might not sound like a ton, but a little bit can make a big difference. And of course there are all sorts of negative effects associated with dehydration, as well.

Further eliminate nagging injury concerns. Ironic that I set this goal as I just rolled my ankle a bit earlier (nothing too serious). But yeah, my right knee, lower back, and hamstrings have all been potential sources of trouble. I’ve got a pretty good handle on the knee and hamstrings, and I’ve done a bit of reading and found some new things to try for the back as well. If the ankle winds up being an issue I know all sorts of things I can do for it (I’ve done a lot of strengthening for the ankles already, generally speaking).

Further improve core strength. I’ve always had fairly solid core strength, but it can always be better. A rededication to pushup/situp sets in the morning will help here, particularly over winter break. Just doing a total of 50-60 of each with variations on the usual pushups and situps to work more parts of the abdominals and the arms/chest I feel really helped a lot when I was doing my best to not fall out of shape in Japan.

Get better at short-term recovery. This will come with conditioning, to an extent. I want to be able to go all-out in short bursts, and without taking too much time, have recovered for another burst of energy, all without having a too detrimental effect on how I feel. Conversely, doing lots of workouts where I am put beyond that lactate threshold will help me retain a focus on putting all my energy into the next cut or response to my man when I’m in a game. I used to be really solid at this–swimming training is, to an extent, geared towards making the most of the limited recovery time you have between strokes–but I’ve definitely fallen off my fitness in that area a bit. Plan to re-evaluate how I lift and try and shift towards less rest between exercises in an effort to force some improvement.

Get adequate rest. This may or may not prove difficult; it’ll depend on my courseload. Being the sober rager that I am, the party/pong/get wasted factor isn’t as big; it’ll really just be a matter of managing my time well enough during the day that I don’t wind up at 11:00 with little work done and an assignment due the next day so I can get to bed.

Don’t overdo it. Classes should provide ample distraction, but it’s definitely important to keep the working out in check. If our current schedule holds, I’ll already be doing more than enough with conditioning/plyos and lifting (though bio lab might necessitate an extra day’s work if it conflicts), and it’ll be tempting, especially for some of the young, upstart freshmen to do a lot more than is necessary. All it takes is pushing yourself beyond your limits for a little while and ample rest to trigger positive muscle development. Too much work can be detrimental to development.

That’s about it for major goals. Improving upper body strength is a more minor goal, as it’s not as crucial, though it’ll see some work for sure.

I’ve done a fair bit of training in my short lifetime. You know, I really have a hard time remembering the last time I was really out of shape–not the “oh, I’m not up to my standards” out of shape, the “my god, I can’t finish this run/exercise/etc” out of shape. I’ve been a lightweight and a fast one for a good while, and I’ve more or less run with that (pun intended) all my life.

Point is, I’ve learned a fair bit about being athletic. Training for cross-country, swimming, and track–particularly swimming, as our coach was also a biology/anatomy teacher and would often fill us in on exactly how doing sets of 50s at fixed intervals so rest was at most five seconds and at worst nonexistant helped get the most work out of our muscles without building up lactic acid (oh, anaerobic threshold workouts…)–provided me with a lot of experience working and getting stronger as a result of it, with some solid results to show for it.

I’ve also done a lot of reading into the topic of fitness–a few years ago I started studying Bruce Lee’s life and what he did to maintain his high level of fitness, and man, was that man ever in shape. He remains my fitness role model; we’ve similar builds (Lee was 5’7″, 135-140 lbs at his fittest; I’m 5’8″-ish, 135 lbs) and he was the sort of man who started with no particular genetic predisposition towards athleticsm and essentially molded himself into something great though years of rigorous training–and not just the same old sets. He was ahead of his time in terms of his regimen, always researching newer and more effective ways to challenge his body while simultaneously streamlining his workouts, eliminating anything that wasn’t contributing fully towards his goals; the philosophy of Jeet Kune Do, which incorporates a lot of ideas from zen, it seems (reading into that further is on my to-do list), guided his training. Really, he embodies everything I want to be from an athletic standpoint.

But I digress. I just wanted to go over some of my opinions about fitness and working out and getting stronger, really so I can get them down somewhere–I’ve not really taken the time to define what fitness really is to me.

Firstly, I’m a huge proponent of ample rest. I learned the hard way that sometimes it’s better not to always do the extra sets, straining my achilles’ tendon my sophomore track season as a result of overdoing it with the jumping workouts (Triple Jump is ridiculously high-impact). It came shortly after a 3-foot PR, as I jumped 41′ flat at a meet, and then the following practice took a few jumps and found that it got progressively harder to keep the same momentum. Had to get taped for the rest of the season, and I think I only came close to breaking 40′ once thereafter (though I did enjoy increases in my long jump and sprinting ability the following season).
With any sport, there’s always a tendency to want to always do more, to get stronger and faster sooner, and it’s this sort of mentality that leads to inefficiency, ineffectiveness, and injury. Simply working at your full capacity for a limited amount of time will lead to ample development when given enough recovery, particularly when it comes to high-impact stuff like plyometrics and weightlifting.

Which leads to the next tenet I have; working all-out is really the only way to go beyond your limits. I don’t adhere to this anywhere as much as I’d like; I more often fall into the trap of doing a fair amount of stuff that’s “safe,” stuff to “stay in shape” and the like, as opposed to training for improvement, to reach a tangible goal (another one of my problems–I’m horrible at setting goals). But just thinking back to so many of the workouts I did in high school where I’d finish one set, and be perfectly content to be finished, only to have another hard run/swim set ahead, and just buckle down and do it all-out, not half-assing to conserve energy for whatever might be next–after workouts like those I really got a great sense of accomplishment, not just in the physical sense but mentally as well. I distinctly remember powering through a particular cross-country race, telling myself “it’s not as bad as swimming workouts” as motivation to keep pushing it.

Of course, to maintain fitness it’s imperative that one does the right workouts and has balance in the workouts. Doing the right workout means making sure that I’m working the muscles I need for whatever I’m training for–generally speaking, my legs (particularly the quads, as a jumper for track and for pushoffs in swimming, and now for sky-ing in ultimate) and core (always important, crucial to good running/swimming form), with some upper-body work being secondary. Having balance means not neglecting the lesser groups–for example, I added a ton of quadriceps strength over a relatively short time my junior year, from a combination of lots of lunges/squats and the like as swimming training and many a plyometric/jump squat set, but more or less completely neglected my hamstrings. As a result, I had great acceleration and good power during track, though deceleration was never a sudden thing, but then doing cross-country I developed knee issues because of my overpowered quads pounding with little counterforce from my hamstrings. I’ve since done a lot to develop the hamstrings and I’ve become much more well-balanced (though knee issues still crop up when I slack off of strengthening the area).

In the vein of the right workouts I’ve all sorts of opinions on what makes for a good workout; in terms of lifting, it generally means lots of compound, free-weight type exercises, with progressive weight increase so you get elements of conditioning and strengthening, very similar to the ultimate routines we have. In terms of running workouts and the like, any workout that incorporates peak effort over short-mid distances and some (though not full) recovery are the way to be. I’m really not a huge fan of the long, slow run anymore, partly because I’m lazy, partly because I’ve read in many a source that the benefit is minimal compared to shorter, more intese work, and partly because I feel like there are simply better routes to improvement. I do enjoy the occasional run of a few miles for the theraputic effect it can have, and I suppose it does help to build aerobic fitness, but quite honestly, my chosen sport (and generally speaking, being athletic in general) is less about aerobic fitness–being able to work effectively over long periods at sub-maximal effort–than it is about being able to exert oneself fully over short periods and recover from it quickly/still be able to maintain a high level of athleticism despite the lactic acid buildup. Again, this agrees pretty well with the type of workouts we’ve been doing as a team–generally speaking, I’ve really no complaints with our fitness program.

Variety is also important. With anything, repeating the same old thing can get boring. Mixing it up helps to keep fitness engaging, and at least in terms of lifting it ensures you work out as much of your body as possible in as many ways as possible–different exercises, though they might target the same muscle groups, nonetheless exert different forces, working out the same muscles in different ways and making them still stronger.

Finally, mentality is important. Being able to focus on the workout at hand, wanting to go workout, commiting to doing the workout despite the difficulty–it’s not always easy to do these things. Distractions are many. Finding the motivation, having the desire to improve, to become better, to reach one’s potential, is perhaps most important of all. Lee was never content with his fitness–he was always working to improve it, never was satisfied with what was working and what he had, and that is why he was able to become so great. Not getting trapped in the idea of a finish, of an end to improvement, is essential to becoming the best you can be. I’m eventually going to make a post about some of the general philosophies I have–this sort of stuff.

On the lines of improvement, I took home the bacon with the “Most Improved Player” award at the fall banquet. Definitely unexpected, though I guess it’s not surprising. I was expecting something more along the lines of “most capable of procrastinating via the blogosphere,” but when one of your captains is trying to be the next Jim Parinella of blogging, it becomes more of a positive than a novelty when it comes time to make up awards. Who knew?

Let’s do an unordered list (so many neat toys in the WYSIWYG editor) of my main thoughts for later’s sake:

• Make sure to get ample recovery
• When you do work out, work all-out
• Do the right workouts, and keep it balanced.
• Make sure to mix it up every now and then
• Keep a progressive, upbeat, restless mentality. Never be content.

Been thinking a bit about Ateam/Bteam split, qualities that make a good team, etc, and I got wondering: what makes for an ideal player? I’m not talking just skill set–obviously a player with a flick will be a bit more useful than one without–but the more intangible things.

Things like coachability. I think this is probably the most important trait in a player if you’re looking to have a strong team. Everybody needs to be able to listen, to internalize, and then apply the team’s system in order for it to be successful, but, particularly at the college level, you need to be very open-minded about your abilities and about trying new things. Because transmission of knowledge really is so poor from veterans to rookies (subject for a later post), the better you can learn from the higher-ups the faster you’ll improve; this means being able to learn through observation more often than not, but it also means knowing how to ask the right questions to pick somebody’s brain. You often won’t get great advice with a blunt question like “how do you handle?” but if you were to ask a more targeted question–”when do you usually look dump?”(poor example, I know)–you can piece things together.

What else makes a good player? Motivation is a big one, motivation to train and work hard and generally to play and get better. Along with this comes training smart, not blindly running yourself into the ground.

The ability to self-evaluate is huge too, again because of a general lack of coaching. You can’t have somebody always watching you to see how you’re progressing, so you really need to take it upon yourself to evaluate what kind of player you are, what kind of player you want to be, and to work at reaching that ideal. This is nothing unique to ultimate–it applies to all of life, really–and it’s just as important as a player as it is as a person.

Along those lines, the ability to make adjustments; some days you’re just not going to have your throws where you want, or your timing will be off on cuts, whatever. It’s imperative that these changes are addressed and accounted for to ensure continued success.

This ties in to makeup, which is of great importance. Like in any sport, you’re going to get beat. Particularly on D-line, you’ll never be able to take everything away, and it’s certainly tempting to get caught up in the mistakes–even if it’s not entirely your fault, the tendancy for most people (I think) is to focus on the negatives, think “man, I shouldn’t've gotten beat on that cut” or “I should’ve gotten that sky” or “I should’ve caught that,” and its a vicious cycle of sorts in that shifting your focus from the present game to the past plays makes you more likely to play worse, leading to more turns/missed D’s and an inability to reach full potential. It’s really hard, but being able to put mistakes behind you and continue to play the way you always do is crucial to keeping one’s standard of play up and long-term success in general.

It’s the sort of mentality baseball players develop, where it’s always necessary to keep the 0-for-4s from getting you down and the 5-for-5s from getting you too big-headed, because success and failure come and go. It’s being able to maintain a zen-like indifference to your past while focusing on the present that leads to long-term success as the stats accumulate over the course of the season, and that sort of mentality translates really well to a point-by-point sport like ultimate. Each point is its own, separate entity; draw upon the past to better deal with the present, but forget about what’s happened and focus on the moment at hand while it’s happening.

Yeah, a bit. Nothing like intense practice with no impending tournaments to get a guy feeling like he’s working a bit too hard.

Last week was pretty crappy. Got really sick/exhausted right after frozen, messed up my thumb so that was bugging me, and I’ve really just gotten over it (1 week, your usual immune suppression time–I’m like a metronome, baby). Then back to practice on Friday, still half-sick, only half warmed-up, and in pretty cold weather, where I was pretty fatigued but still played more or less savage, and then classwars on Saturday, which I pretty earnestly didn’t care that much about. Played a bit, nowhere near as much as I could have or should have were we really being competitive, but I’m pretty ready to take ultimate easy for a bit. In any case, we did beat the 09s, who were the only legitimate class aside from ourselves (the 07s and 06s had pickups from graduated classes), so I claim victory for the 08s from a technical, if not practical, standpoint.

Incidentally, I wound up playing O-line in OvD at practice for the first time, which was kind of a nice gesture but given that I was in poor form I didn’t do it anywhere close to justice. I would be making cuts and feeling my legs run out of gas as I struggled to change direction, I dropped the disc more than once (which pretty honestly never happens–I take a lot of pride in my hands), and on defense the conditions and my lack of juice led to me getting beat several times. I was also playing conservative since I was still waiting to hear on a mono test (didn’t want my spleen destroyed) so I basically caved at the threat of physical contact and was expressly forbidden from laying out, taking another dimension away from my game.

Anyhow, it was more or less a wash. I don’t feel like I got anything out of practice, save frustration at myself and at the ‘sick’ and ‘injured’ people on the sidelines who came out to do little more than yell at people when their cuts weren’t right or they otherwise screwed up on the field, you know, actually playing. One of my main gripes about the ‘serious’ practice we often did this fall is that even compared to tournaments, where people are generally giving help from the sidelines, there’s just far too much criticism from some of the same sources in practice for my liking. Were it more constructive criticism–rather than “that’s too late! You’re too late!,” “start that cut a bit sooner”–I wouldn’t mind it, but for me at least, while the negatives might get me thinking about it after practice, which can be helpful, during practice it makes me focus on the last play rather than the next, and on doubt rather than confidence, which is not something I like or try to foster. Subject for a later post.

But I survived, in any case. I didn’t do too hot, but I take satisfaction in knowing that I came out to play despite having a ready-made excuse not to play in a potential mono diagnosis and helped make play possible, and hopefully somebody got some good practice out of the matter.

In any case, Thanksgiving break is well-timed. I’ll get to go home and relax for a bit, with a little bit of fitness upkeep thrown in, as always, and I can shift gears. Rather than using ultimate as motivation, which for me needs fairly regular tournament play as a sort of justification and reaffirment, I’m thinking a return to simply having ‘getting into great shape’ as a goal will do me a lot of good, at least for now.

On that note, I’ve been enjoying reading this blog. Lot of interesting thoughts on diet/fitness from an evolutionary perspective, and it makes a ton of sense. Not sure how much I’m comfortable applying, but I definitely think I might try some of it out. Certainly seems to work for the author, apparently in great shape despite being well on in years.

Also, the blog spellcheck doesn’t think “blog” is a word. Weird…

So, given that I’m sick, with what may be the flu, potentially mono, and that the weather’s starting to become more and more prohibitive of practice, I think it’s nigh time I look back on the fall season and see if I can’t glean some insight from it.

What to say. The term started off magnificently, as I got to work H-Croo shortly after returning to the states from Japan, which was magnificent–there are few things I’m as proud of as being able to bring a boatload of enthusiasm for the school and the freshmen to bear as essentially the first collegians the freshman class gets to see. Some of the best 2 weeks of my life.

Shortly after croo stuff was over, I got to take care of club open sectionals business up here in Hanover, which went fairly well with only a couple minor hiccups. Great experience, really satisfying to provide for 200+ players.

Once that was finished, I really got into ultimate proper this season. Practices, good, competitive scrimmaging, and a couple tournaments all made for a great learning experience. It’s definitely an adjustment going from B-level stud to A-level standard; playing D-line is good, but given the large roster size I definitely saw a big cut in playtime. I handled the adjustment fairly well; I like being involved on the sidelines, and the extra rest means I can go all-out when I am in, which certainly kicks up my level of play a notch. I do feel like I can be playing a larger role when I am in, though–at our last tourney I didn’t touch the disc much, but I was pretty effective when I did–and it’ll certainly be up to me to step up my game and make more plays.

In terms of specific skills, again I don’t know if I ever really had sufficient opportunity to display my abilities–Seigs mentioned a couple things the D-line needs, having good, strong marks, and having people with decent 40+ yard puts, and I definitely have those. I take pride in my strong mark, though it can always be improved, and I spent most of the summer developing good, relatively consistent, 40-yardsish throws with touch–it just seems that, outside of the occasional power-position in practice, I haven’t really used them a ton. It’s something to work on–specifically, using them in more varied game situations–and certainly will be something I want to develop as a strength.
Seigs also mentioned good break throws–while all of my throws are fairly good/consistent, this is one area I don’t excel in. I’ve worked towards improving them a bit, visualizing certain situations and stepping out to make the IO/around break when tossing, but outside of the occasional break-mark drill (I definitely missed out on this sort of stuff as a result of work cutting into practice) I haven’t had a ton of practice using anything other than your high release backhand on the dump. So there’s something else to work on.

With regard to team skills, I definitely need more practice playing in our 2-man cup Z, at any of the positions, and also playing wing/deep in most zone sets. I’m starting to develop some confidence in my ability as a deep/last back, but I’m still pretty raw in terms of experience getting the sky (as most of the team is). My non-continuation cutting needs shoring up; I’m thinking the best way to improve this is through my mental game, not letting the defender dictate where I’m cutting when I know where I’m a bigger threat with/to get the disc. On a similar note, I need to be more firm as a defender in terms of holding my position, as it’s key to shutdown man D.

So let’s list things to work on (in order of personal importance):
-cutting with a plan
-breaks, in general (along the same lines, improving my pivoting/faking)
-being more effective deep
-new defensive schemes
-stepping up my activity on O
-using my ‘huck’ more effectively
-making the mark better, as always

Not a bad list. We’ll see to what extent we can work on this sort of stuff come winter…