Tuesday, April 17

Stairs

Made a return visit to the Upper West Side Tower of Pain today...

...and, for reasons unknown to me, submitted myself to the whims of a workout with one Josh Weisstuch. I vaguely recall things like following him up and down stairs. Something about a yellow shirt and "Every stair, then every other stair, then squats..."

There was a vague threat of going up three stairs and then back down one for a while. ofrtunately that never materialized. Instead, by a post work-out math problem, we did somewhere near 112 flights of stairs in a mix of running up one step at a time, jumping up two steps at a time, hopping on one leg, hopping up two at a time on both legs and all that jazz. Yowch.

One of the thingsI noticed was that the faster we were moving our feet, the slower I was in comparison to Josh. When we were moving up multiple steps at a time (after the first set at least) I tended to gain ground on the bastard. I think this, just like the last time let me know a little about the strengths and weaknesses of our relative physical capacities. I'm a bit stronger, while he's a bit lighter on his feet (and lighter in weight, for that matter). We're not very far apart in either, we're just a bit different.

We also got to discussing the upcoming tournaments and some of the rumors surrounding NY, Boston and NJ ultimate. All of the normal nerdy ultimate things that ocme up when you're around other fools like yourself.

We also discussedt he point at which you move from seeing the throw and then making the throw to seeing the space and just putting hte disc there. The first is a moment of consciousness as a thrower, while the second is existing in the moment. It goes back, again, to the notion of having the toolkit necessary to respond appropriately to the situation in front of you. If you're an above-average club thrower, you're don't consciously think through what your marker does that lets you know which throw he's giving you, instead you throw the throw before you even realize that he's giving you the throw.

The thin line you tread a thrower here is that if you completely shut of your brain, you'll make some utterly awful decisions. You need to apply just enough of a filter to remove the worst X% of your turnovers in order to maximize your efficiency. That X represents a different number depending on a wide ranging variety of factors including, but not limited to, team strategy, role on the team, ability as a thrower and game conditions.

Anyway, It was a strong workout that left me pretty tired. It was, as always, good to get into a different training environment and completey change up the routine. I'm sure that the basketball game tonight will suffer a bit due to tired legs, but whatever. Basketball's just a hobby at this point in my life. ultimate is what I train for.
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Workout Total:
25 minutes Interval Training

2 comments:

Bill Mill said...

I was at the track running intervals while you were climbing those stairs.

New cleats, it's finally gonna warm up for the weekend, hotel room, bagels, coffee, dew on the ground. Pike and Truck on tap.

Let's get this motherf*$&er started.

dusty.rhodes said...

Hell yes, coffee.