Frustration and...promise?

Udderburn practice.  It feels like a bunch of college kids who have never known anything outside of the college sphere run a team.  It is almost the exact opposite of how I want to run it.  I don't think the offense suits the roster, I don't think the team has a strong identity (though in part I will admit fault there, they had a pretty good one until the cohort of people who really wanted to win showed up), I don't think the people running things know what they're doing.  I mean, sure, nobody _knows_ what they're doing in this sport, but it seems like they've never gone out looking for something else to see what's there.  The mix of people is frustrating as well- talented players and people who can't throw dumps. 

Many of the problems are epitomized in our choice in drills- we run rhino (which I consider a vestigial drill) and we run the five-man dump drill.  In half an hour, Udderburn covered what ISide covered in literally 5 minutes, as did Ubuntu- if the main dump fails and you're the backup, you're go do what you have to do to get open.  But when you run the drill, you emphasize the wrong things and the wrong people practice the wrong positions.  90% of the team never needs to be dump cutters.  We have perhaps 8 handlers on the team, maybe 10 and there is so much more value to just working them on the dumps and having everybody else learn their tendencies.  If the point of the drill is to work the swing, all the more reason- what purpose to teaching our cutters how to throw a swing?  That isn't their job.  It wastes their time and the handlers time.

There were so many good ideas from Boston tryouts last year and to come here and see this is so frustrating.  Ball ran good scenario walkthroughs (though in too large a group, I felt), and 7th tried them also.  Iside and Ubuntu both had very good understandings of not just the basics but the nuances of their offenses, as did Slow.  This was borne out through the work that they did (ISide at least)   I really don't feel like udderburn know what their strengths are, nor the subtleties of the spread.  And there's a very strong tendency to do things "our way"both at the team level- they refuse to call it a spread, insisting on the much more confusing "split ho", and the personal level- this is a much more common, but extremely bad habit, one which I'm guilty of all too often as well.


As for the practice itself- in low wind conditions it was still a turn-stravaganza.  Personally, I had a mediocre/bad practice after a promising start in the three-man mark drill with Rob and Bill.  Two pretty decent handlers, rob's got length on me and Bill has good quickness with the disc.  I got somewhere around three blocks and got blocked i think twice, so I was up on that drill.  Again, though, that drill isn't really a drill for cutters.  Why teach them how to break the mark like that?  That's a handler's job.

Anyway, a guy from Mad Club showed up and balled all day, which was fun to watch.  He had the ups and he had the intangibles.  It was good covering him because he was a lot like ryan- he just ran away and then in and then away and then in all day every day.  Tiring and very good at getting you out of position- really made me work hard.  I had one shot at the layout d I wanted and he took it away with a great move to put himself in the lane.  Partly his good, partly my bad; I could have still pulled that trigger.  I had my head wrong, but still.  A great player and a lot of fun to mark up on.  Quick as hell, too.  Our team definitely won the suicides at the end, despite lots of confusion.

I reaped what I sowed after practice though, as my leg seized out and eventually I couldn't walk without shooting pain.  Oh well.  Advil and I will be buddies for a few, I guess.  Ginie and I have a tour, so there'll be plenty of walking...we'll see how it goes.

Doin' my work,
~#28

Day two in the gym and every day my leg is getting better.  Very good news.  Today, upper body-

Chin ups- 3,3,2 increasingly wide grips.  Felt okay, slight shoulder tweak in the right
Bench- 8x95,6x105,4x115,4x115.  Felt good, especially with the lower weight.  Really feel like the work over the winter is paying its dividends.
3x[
10 Inverse rows
15 pushups quickly
]
tricep pulldowns.  Not sure the weight or the numbers, but they certainly made me do work.
Tabata leg raises- felt this mostly in my quads, oddly enough...

Doin' work,
#28

Joined a gym.  A nice one.

Smith squat: 5x5x135
Pistol 3x5/leg
DL: 5x95,105,125
Calf raise: 3x10x90,110,110
Chin Up: 3,3,3,1

Back to doin' my work,
~#28

fuckin'.....back to square one with my leg.  Made it all the way through throwing warmups before my leg died at practice yesterday.  Goddamit.

Previously, tabata'd:
Mountain climbers (22.5,22,22,22)
Pushups from the knees (9,11,10,9)
Leg raises (11,12,12,11)
Plank

Today track workout was the one from tufts I posted about a while ago.
2x100, 60s rest.  These were on a slight hill in a parking lot.  Felt good.
3 min rest
8 set of tabata runs.  These were terrible and killed me immediately.  I split it into two fours with a two minute break and was still dying.
3 min break
2 x 100, 60 s.

Finished out and was really dying.  First track workout of the season.  I felt it.  It hurt.  Tweaked my hip flexor again.  Will be joining a gym soon and then I expect the deadlifts to help out.

I am covered in sun burns, I can barely speak and I have bruises on essentially every major muscle group on my body.  I won a tournament today.  Mad Udderburn goes to St Louis Classic and rolls to 6-1 (with the final win being 15-12 over our only loss of the tournament, an embarrassing 13-6 in the first round of saturday).  Point differential at the end of Saturday: +14.

Personal stats not kept but I was almost right where I want to be.  Played a lot of d-line handler, came out SUPER flat on Saturday, immediately costing us two points on dumb turns.  Pushed out to cutting shortly and then it was back in the handler set.  Rob's hucks have gotten _really_ solid and my defense was almost back up to par.  Getting beaten too often in the flats but holding position well while they try to fake me off.  I personally threw a couple of goals and caught at least one, which I spiked away accidentally.  Those guys turned out to be douchebags anyway, though, so I'm not too upset.

Big wins over sectional and regionals rivals.  A lot to be proud of.  A _lot_.  It's just up from here.

Doin' More Work
~#28

Tournament time this weekend.  Goals:

1) Stay healthy!
      ~I've had too many nagging little problems to be content with my body right now.  My number one goal is not push too hard, or even close.  Injuring myself in May is dumb.
2) Get my defense back
      ~Long term goal is #1 d-line cutter for MU, so the first step on that road is getting my downfield d back to where it was at Winter league.  Process goal: Stop the under without fronting.
3) Improve my mark
     ~Got broken a LOT at Udderburn scrimmage.  Not acceptable.

Do Work indeed,
~#28

Good work throwing with guys from udderburn (Madison Mixed).  Downwind, my shots sailed nicely and upwind I was throwing relatively straight.  What I wasn't happy about was:

-throws tended to go too high.  Toby is six foot plus and I was still making him jump
-I was not stepping out appropriately.  It's easy to hit distance from a stand, gotta make sure I discipline my throwing workouts
-if i caught on the run, planted and turned, my shots were very inaccurate, both laterally and vertically.  some would sail left, some would sail high, some would be too low but mostly they just didn't go where i wanted.  boo.

Got a tournament this weekend.  Excited.

About six months and a hundred posts in.  How bout that.

Today I appropriate a core circuit from Melissa Witmer and made some changes to fit my own situation (no gym, bad hip).  Here's how it went:

3x[
10x dead bug/leg,  Felt good.  Very tricky keeping your back flat to the ground but you can really feel the work.
12xOblique bridge dip/side: Difficult to keep balance.  Have to travel really slowly.
Aggressive roll on my left leg: Felt the pain of clearing up scar and tight muscle.  Found the spot that's tweaking my hip flexor and gave it lots of attention.  Definitely felt some improvement for it too.  If i can remember to hit that a few more times this week, St. Louis should go okay....right?....right...?
6xglute activator/leg (with extended leg): I always feel like I'm underachieving on these.  I don't feel like I'm getting good glute activation and am instead working my hamstrings.  Not terrible, but not the point...
]