Same workout as Tuesday, but done at a faster pace.
The city interval run was faster on the way there. Oh, city interval run=sprint from stoplight to stoplight and wait at the light. I don't know when the light will change, but the challenge is to get through each light. The problem arises when you sprint through the light and then realize that you've got at on more sprinting to do. Like almost getting a D on someone and having them turn around and go deep. Or almost getting open on a really tough cut and then cutting deep. Stupid ultimate. Generally, on city interval runs, the running portion lasts from 30sec to 4min and the rest lasts from 10sec to 1min. It is actually kinda fun because I run on the sidewalk and dodge people constantly which forces me to read and react to the crowd of people as well instead of just running in a straight line. All good things!
The workout itself was quick and tiring. I pushed through with a strange intensity, considering I had been drinking free margaritas at work about for a couple of hours beforehand. The fact that I felt great during the workout may or may not be related to this intake-- too soon to tell. Perhaps I should experiment more? Perhaps not since during at least one stretch of the workout I felt the taste of margarita rise up in the back of my throat...
The great thing about working out on a Friday is that I always have Pike the next morning. As everyone else is getting ready in the morning, I'm not only getting ready, but stretching out the soreness and/or fatigue from the evening before. I think it is a good challenge for me mentally as well as physically. I can test out the best sort of diet and rest patterns to prepare myself for the second day of a tournament. For examples: Sleep 12 hours? Bad. Sleep 7-8 hours? Good. Eat a bunch of pasta? Bad. Eat a bunch of fruits/veggies and meat with a little bit trail mix? Good. Have a cup of coffee at 6 or 7am when I get up? Bad. Have coffee 30-60min before warmups? Good.
The not-so-great thing about working out on Friday is that I'm a little sluggish at practice compared to my teammates. Sometimes that is really frustrating, but if I frame it as a challenge instead of something to get tripped up by, I relish it instead of bemoan it. I suppose the lesson is that there is usually (always?) some way to reframe the experience that you're having such that you overcome it instead of being overcome by it.
--
Workout Total:
40 min lower body plyos
15 min Interval Run
30 min stretching
Friday, July 13
Plyoagain
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I'm not much of a caffeine person, myself...the occasional soda or tea. I have always wondered, though, what kind of effect coffee and energy drinks have on an athlete. The obvious answer is a brief high followed by a crash, but what's your experience with it? Do you finish practice before the crash, or are you unaffected in general? What do you do for tournaments?
Gapoole,
I don't have a lot of personal experience to speak from, as I'm not a caffeine/energy drinker, but I know at the UCPC Tiina Booth advocated against stimulants and for protein intake, as protein will have the longest-lasting effect on your energy. Too much caffeine, in addition to affecting you physically, can set you up mentally too--you go from a caffeine rush to being a bit more down, focus lags, and play follows suit.
Dusty,
Do you find that a really hard workout on Friday is a pretty adequate simulation of second-day soreness for Saturday play? I've been having a bit of a chat with Seigs on his blog (http://seigsblog2.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-do-you-train-for-8-games-in-one.html)
about ways to prep for tournament play short of playing in tournaments, and I'm wondering what your thoughts are.
Caffeine:
I advise against it as well, believe it or not.
My issue is that i just love coffee. Good coffee is a drink to be savored. I drink it as more of a morning ritual kinda thing because I drink coffee pretty regularly (VERY regularly during the winter and *far* less from about june-november) and it gives me a sense of routine, y'know? Coffee just goes with breakfast in my world. I rarely consume caffeine while playing, although it has been known to happen from time to time. When it does, it is always at the end of some long tournament day (4-5 games in a day) and usually a little after the last game has begun. In the past, I used to have one sugarfree redbull before the last game of the day, but honestly it was more of a placebo boost than anything else.
So, essentially, I don't drink it for any advantage, I just drink coffee in the morning. Timing of said coffee is important to my frame of mind going into the first game of the day though.
For tournaments and the like I generally try to get a cup in the morning, but if I don't, I'll deal. If you drink coffee regularly, the crash isn't that extreme anyway. It is normalized by your prior experience.
If you're interested in reading more about the ways that caffeine affects athletes, do some solid google-work and you'll come up with many studies that say many things. Even the experts don't agree on the benefits/costs.
As for food before you play, well, Tiin'as hit the nail on the head regarding that. You gotta get your protein (and your fats in). you've got to get it in your body early enough that you don't feel weighed down during/after your warmups. I also do whatever I can to have fresh fruit for the day ahead of me. If no, dried fruit. And some nuts/jerky. I don't do energy bars unless I'm stranded in dire straits with nothing else. Even then, I might just not eat and deal with it.
The other thought on that is that the positive effects of straight sugar (sports drinks, refined snack, breads, etc) are overrated. It is pretty unnecessary, actually. Get some fruit/veggies and enjoy the water, vitamins and minerals instead of something refined and useless... That's a whole other rabbit-hole though...
Workouts the Day before practice:
Well, I don't find that much soreness on the second days of tournaments in the first place unless I'm actually injured. I care for my body rather well and (in one of the rare recommendations of a processed food that I'll make) am sure to drink my Endurox right after the first day of a tourney.
That being said, the difference isn't soreness on the second day, it is fatigue. After 4-5 games of fighting for absolutely everything, you're just drained, mentally and physically. fortunately for me, the mental thing has never really been a challenge. The physical part is, from time to time and I find that while a really intense workout (plyos followed by intervals, for example) the night before practice will give me a better than average sense of it, I'm not doing workouts that destroy my body in the same way as a day of ultimate. (That would be a pretty dumb workout to do with any regularity.)
Workouts are designed to break your body down in specific ways. Tournaments are exercises in will power, mental and physical conditioning and you ability to ignore your body telling you to stop. When you hit that limit in a workout, you should stop. When you hit the limit in a tournament, you're failing your team if you stop.
That's the difference. I train really hard, but if I feel like I might actually hurt myself, I stop. I strive to eliminate that consideration when I play. NOTE: Not in the sense of contact injury, but in the sense of overexertion.
That rambled. I think my point is there, but it might be obscured by clouds.
Post a Comment