Session 7 of ASA MVP
Whoa. Session 7 is already done! Only one more left of ASA of Baseball's MVP class (for April). Wow. I'm more than a little surprised that it's been a month. I've already gained a few pounds (presumably in muscle).
I arrived at noon to discover what felt like hundreds of little kids running around the facility. It was weird. There were at least two birthday parties happening, lots of hitting, a whiffle ball home run debry and many, many parents. I looked at the parents and couldn't help but compare the differences in choices they had made from mine. Of course, I'm projecting, crossing the net, but I've had those thoughts a lot lately. We all make different choices.
G arrived late. I handed him two videos and one DVD (A+B2, 1999 Open Championships and the CSTV 2003 College finals), and told him to watch them in the CSTV-then-other-videos order. He'll miss a lot of the nuiances of the defense, but the offense should be obvious.
Ryan didn't show.
We started with ladders: LR-RL-LR-RL (with the second foot outside, first foot inside), zig-zag (both feet together, outside L, middle, outside R, middle, repeat), R-L-together (alternating with outside), crossover rips (L foot perpendicular to the forward direction, R foot perpendicular, repeat), L (L foot in, straddle outside), R (R foot in, straddle outside), scissors,
and a new one, which was LR-LRL outside-RL-RLR outside repeat (which was really hard for me to learn, for some reason)
Next we did a bounding drill where I did 5 hops with two feet landing, followed by 2 hops landing on one foot, pause, then explode forward. We did two or three running straight forward, 3 running at 45° to the right, another 3 running 45° to the left, followed by just hopping to the end, land on one foot, sink down, then explode out.
Next, we did the circle shuttle drill, where there are 8 (though there were 9 today) cones in a circle, one in the middle. I shuffled middle cone to outside cone to middle cone to the next outside cone, two times going counterclockwise, two times going clockwise. My times started initially in the 14s, went up to the 15s as I started standing up in my shuffles, and back to 13.9 when I stayed nice and low.
The next exercise worked on explosive starts. Starting at a 30° stance (one foot forward), G, standing about 3 meters away, dropped a tennis ball. My goal was to catch the ball before it bounced twice. My problem was mostly that I was running with my arm outstretched instead of running hard and then reaching. G was surprised that I caught the ball right handed a lot, and asked if I threw left handed. I said no, that I was trying to catch left handed, but that I catch mostly right handed. Probably needless to say, I didn't catch the ball on the first bounce but maybe once.
Next came horrific jump ropes. The first two were just jump for 30 seconds (might have been a minute, but it seemed short). The next was jump side to side. The next was front and back. The last was five jumps normal, then one with a double spin, where, if I jump high enough, I could get the rope under my feet twice. That's the theory anyway. I tried probably ten times and succeeded only once. And the time I did succeed, I was so shocked, I stopped jumping. Whoops.
Abs came next. Lots and lots of abs. We started by throwing a 4# medicine ball, using the rotating hips. Right side then left side. Then we passed the medicine ball low to high, right to left, then low to high, left to right. The next set was just a straight pass across.
At this point, Ryan walked it (as it was 1:00 or so) with a surprised look on his face. "I'm not late, am I?" he asked. Turns out, he had made the mistake I made last week, and thought the class started at 1pm instead of noon.
Next came V ups, bicycles, one legged V ups, sit ups with the ball tossed down that I had to throw back up, then lower back lifts from a medicine ball.
At several points during the session, I was tired, but at the end I was okay. I felt good. I wasn't sure if was the Cytomax or a lighter workout, but I felt good. I made it through about 2 hours of ultimate before I was exhausted. I should sleep well tonight!
I'm supposed to do abs tomorrow and an upperbody workout. Wednesday will be another upper body workout. Friday's workout will be 30 minutes of jump rope. 30 minutes! I'm doomed!