Case in point for my whole headspace right now:

All day, I've been feeling pretty annoyed at life: I dreamt about work, I woke up with a fucked up back, there's work drama and girl drama and I'm pretty hungry to boot.  I'm scheduled to hit the gym after work, but there's no training so my commitment is only to myself and it's starting to lag.  I hit up a random new ultimate blog (The SHubbard, hailing from UCSD), and in about twenty minutes, I already want to hit the gym.  I'm gonna hit the squat rack again, bad back be damned.

I love squats!  Squatty squats squats.  Here I go down, down with my weight.

...well, after that I go back up and the repeat a couple times, but anyway...

Squats have the most direct effect on how I feel while playing ultimate of any lift I do.  My weights dropped since before training (155 from 185) but the depth of my squats has increased markedly.  I'll make that trade.

Now my back hurts and I don't know what to do.

I threw 363 throws today, within the span of 2 hours.

100 standing forehands to "under" cuts
100 standing forehand deep shots, alternating up and down wind with 9 discs
100 standing backhand deep shots, alternating up and down wind with 9 discs
63 deep shots on the run, alternating backhand/forehand, and upwind/downwind

After this, my right arm was entirely seized up and the last 20+ backhands I threw were utter shit.  My arm and other muscles were completely wasted by the end of the day.  My bicep, tricep and forearm still ache, six hours later.

I spent much of my free time today reading all of Kenny Dobyns' blog and learning a lot about those who came before.  Earlier this summer, I read most of Parinella's current blog, as well as his old website and absorbed a lot of history from it.  To my high school self and even my college self, real competitive ultimate started with DoG.  To look back and see NYNY and before, reaching back into the 80s, the time when I was born- the styles were awful, the ultimate was...not.  It was real, balls-out ultimate.  As far as I can tell, it predates the Ho, the clam, the you-name-it scheme that is commonplace today, but it wasn't easy or lazy or any of those things we think of old players as being now. Unsophisticated, perhaps, but unsophisticated like a hobo fight- if you're not on your toes, you'll be on your ass.  The real thing I pulled from it was a recognition.

Just got back from the gym.  Went in in a terrible mood, left in a fantastic one.  Good hard workout.  Got in some one-leg work.  Did a simple captain's chair routine (knee/leg lifts) that was easy.  I logged it as such in my notebook.  Actually, what I wrote was "easy/lazy" since it was so easy I assumed I must have cheated.  Later, while waiting for mom to finish up, Ken came by and asked what I did.  I handed over my notebook.  I didn't really think about it, until he kicked my ass with a plank progression.  I laughed my ass off because it was ridiculous, but it's hard fucking work.

Got myself some steak, gonna cook it up tasty after my shower.

Gym alone (technically with mom, but let's be honest...) so I worked my lower body and just took it pretty easy for shits.  It's my second week of four-a-week (my goal for the month, as stated here) after last weeks workouts + sectionals.

I'm unsure what I want to do for my next four-a-week.  Ken has three sets of workouts- back and bicep, chest and tricep, legs and shoulders.  Trying to hit the gym four times a week leaves that fourth slot unfilled.  I'd considered doing a hard cardio day, had settled on doing a quarter or half deck of cards, then left my cards at home because i'm stupid.  My workout:

Roll my hammy
bike for 15 minutes at very low resistance, got about 3.5 mi with ~80-85 RPM avg.
Hack Squat: 3x10x120
Inverted Squat: 3x10x150
Quad extend: 10x70,50,50
Hammy Curl 3x10x55
Standing Calf Raise: 3x10x155
It's odd.  I feel stronger than I used to be, but these numbers are, in many cases, lower than they were before.  I'm not sure if this is indicative of overtraining or underfeeding myself, but it's something to pay attention to.  The numbers are, at least, increasing from when I started with Ken.

The thing I'm really posting about is that I'm at the gym, or more realistically, at home, while all my friends are at sectionals.  J, Toad, Schach, Ginie are all with their teams.  I'm here alone.  It's not a good feeling.  I've found myself struggling with it all summer- it's a mixture of jealousy, despair and defiant hope.  I have, at least so far, channeled it into determination to get better physically.  I toyed with visualizations heavily near the beginning of August, but my focus wasn't in it.  Perhaps the next time I shower, I can return to the Bartlett House technique.  It's very difficult visualizing what I want to work on, especially downfield d- I can't seem to see the cuts developing the way I need to.  Alternative options include working my timing or feeling my fakes or deep shots better when I visualize.  And, there's always the layout d.

I should eat.  Protein o'clock.

Workouts

Ken had a tight schedule.  Naturally, he took this out on me.  This took the form of a brief machine workout followed by some crazy plyos.  It was awesome.  He's got some crazy shit that just shattered my upper body and abs.  He keeps teasing me that there'll be a day of full plyos or deadlift and squatting days.  I can NOT wait.  Every time I think about next tryout season, I get so excited...


Another session tomorrow, on my own.  Gonna be rough but probably not as hard as yesterdays...

The Beginning Of It All

It seems to be the thing to do.  After spending most of July and all of August reading ultimate blogs, it seems right to start my own.  I kept a livejournal going for a while back in High School, so let's see how this thing turns out.  Maybe I'll be able to sustain it, maybe it'll crumble but hopefully it'll keep the fire under my ass to keep working and, if I'm lucky/good at it, light a fire or two under yours.  The point is to get things down on paper (as it were) and make it where I want to go.  It seems smart to say, upfront, where I want to go.  Luckily, that's easy- Nationals.