I Hate Stairs

Dragged myself to Josh's place for a stair workout+leg circuit.

When I arrived at ~7:10, I was moving very slowly with eyes half-opened. The week had not been kind to me. Not quite enough sleep. Too many late nights. Not eating quite as well as I liked. No matter, I'm sure Josh will provide a bit of enthusiasm.

His first words as I arrived were "WHAT? I just woke up."

I can feel the energy.

Apparently, I had just woken him from a nap. I had just slept on the crowded subway ride up to his place, but that was not useful. Falling asleep on the subway is never good. You're in public, constantly being brushed up against, constantly worried that you just missed your stop and you have the vague feeling that someone is always staring at you. This is because they are all staring at the idiot who fell asleep as they wait for something bad, though entertaining, to happen to you so that they'll have another good "New York Story" to share with the boys back home.

We started our workout with 3 rounds of 6 flights of stairs for a warmup. WE may have done something else to round it out and get the blood pumping a little harder, but I can't recall. Then we launched into the leg circuit (20 squats, 30 sec rest, 20 lunges, 30 sec rest, 20 step ups, 30 sec rest, 10 jump squats, 60 sec rest, repeat) five times through and then did assorted other groupings of stairs. Ended with "Go up 6 or 7 flights skipping as many stairs as possible." That shit was hard. I don't think I ever want to do that again. This means that this stair exercise, along with the "up three stairs and down one" are probably the perfect things for me to do. Shoot. I ended up doing some combination of 2 stairs with my left leg and 3 with my right that left me very unhappy and rather uneven. Actually, I'm just lucky I didn't fall on my face and die.

Hung out for a little while talking about PoNY and Pike, the under-appreciated art of playing the bass, tried to remember how the guitar part for "Twist" went (as well as how the original version compared to the later version), as well as listened to the Mets beat the Yanks on the radio. None of it was substantial, but neither of us really wanted to walk at the moment. Legs were doing that whole quivering thing. Yow. That'll be good tomorrow morning at practice and heading through Bell Crack.

Saw a bit of the Spurs eliminating the Suns. Boo to that. I appreciate the Spurs and all, but I really like watching Nash dominate the game in such strange ways. Ah well. Jazz-Spurs will be a good series, though it pretty much looks to be a lock that the Spurs will meet Day-twah in the Finals. Though if LeBron realizes that every ref in the league is paid to protect him and starts driving to the hoop on every play, all of Day-twah could foul out by halftime.
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Workout Total:
25 Minutes Stairs
20 Minutes Leg Circuit
20 Minutes Stretching

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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

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Stair Workout Plus

Went to the Upper West Side Tower of Pain this evening.

I worked out with Kaimana teammate Josh in the city today. It's always good to get some variation in the plan from outside sources. After seeing 300 the night before, we were ready for some ass-kicking and there was a 64% chance of gratuitous bloodshed:

twice through:
5 flights of stairs for speed hitting every step

twice through:
5 flights to the top running up 2 flights and down 1 flight x2
(hitting every stair working on speed)
1:30 rest

25 squats

thrice through:
1 flight left foot
1 flight right foot
2 flights two foot hop, every other step
25 squats

longish rest

thrice through:
A: Running in place with a resistance band x 45 sec
B: 25 yard duck walk, 25 yards of 2 foot broad jump

short rest

(thrice through)
10 burpees
15 grasshoppers
20 squats

The last time through the burpee/grasshopper/squat set we switched to 5, 10, 15. Otherwise, we both might have passed out.

Pretty tiring. Josh tends to mix in more rest with his workouts than I do. I know he's generally faster than me over a short point/sprint, which is likely reflective of this workout concept. I'm more likely to do 15-25 minutes of hell compared to Josh's 45-60 minutes of slightly less than hell.

The atmosphere of his stairwell and "gym" was, dare I say, Spartan. It almost makes you train harder. As he said "I'm on some Rocky 4 shit."

The season's looming on the horizon. I will be prepared.
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Workout Total:
50 minutes of mixed Interval/Circuit

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