health

Rotator Cuff 2

Blog Instead of being asleep at 21:13 on 15 December 2004, kitt created this:

G provided me with new rotator-cuff exercises. These are the ones the baseball kids do each time they're in the gym. Now, I too, will start doing these every day.

The first three exercises are with the bands hooked low.

Lower back, face away
Face away from the wall where the bands are hooked, one band in each hand, hands together on forehead (bands go over the head). Stand in a power stance with one foot forward, moving forward so that when standing leaning back slightly, the bands give resistance. Lean forward past 90°, keep back straight. Stand back up so that the bands pull slightly back, the front leg and torso should be straight. Repeat for 10 reps.
Lower back, face forward
Face the wall where the bands are hooked, one band in each hand, hands together on forehand. Stand in a power stance with one foot forward, moving backward so that when bending forward below 90° the bands give resistance. Stand up, leaning slightly back, keep the back straight. Repeat for 10 reps.
Straight arms, tip
Stand facing away from the wall where the bands are hooked. Stand in a power stance with feet apart, arms straight out to the side, one band in each hand, forward enough so that the bands provide resistance. Tip to the left, stand back up, tip to the right stand back up. Repeat for 10 reps.

The last two exercises are with the bands hooked high.

Rotator cuff, forward
Stand facing away from the wall, band in one hand, arm at a 90° angle, hand up, with upper arm parallel to the floor. As quickly as possible, push down so that the arm is parallel to the floor, then back up. Repeat for 10 reps. Repeat with other arm.
Rotator cuff, away
Repeat as above, but face the wall. Start the arm parallel to the ground, and at a 90° angle, with slight resistance. Quickly pull the arm up so that the hand points up, then rotate the arm back down. Repeat for 10 reps. Repeat with the other arm.

That's one set. Do 3 sets.

Kris gets all the fun

Blog kitt decided around 22:00 on 13 December 2004 to publish this:

I wasn't able to make class because I needed to be at MPUL tonight, so Kris went by himself. He said he had a great time doing sprinting drills. Here's what he gave me as his workout tonight.

Accelerations in the parking lot

A twist on the catch the ball before it bounces twice, a cone was placed away from G (not sure how far). Kris ran from the starting point to the cone, planted and cut towards G. At the foot plant, G dropped a tennis ball. Kris was to catch it before the second bounce. 6-8 of these

Sprinting with bands

With bands around his waist and G pulling backward on them, Kris did three sets of resistance sprinting. The first one was with small steps: feet moving just over ankles for quick feet work. The second was with high knees. The third was just sprinting as fast as he could.

Circuit

This circuit was a doozie. Probably would have worked better if I had been there to give Kris a bit of a rest.

Jump rope
Ice skaters with bands on legs, done in a semi circle. The first set with R foot in center, clockwise, then again counter-clockwise. The next set with L foot in center, CW and CCW.
4 boxes: hop over with both feet, then L, then R
Side-to-sides over the weightbench (nominally the same as over the wood box, but higher by 50%)
Frog hopping along 4 cones with both feet, land on R foot, hold, then sprint. Repeat for L foot. For the last 3, G calls out which foot to land on

And that would be two times through that circuit. Ooof. I'm telling you, Kris gets all the good ones.

Wall sit

Sit along the wall (i.e. back on the wall, legs at 90°), 25# weight on lap.

Abs (lower)

6-12" leg holds
swimmers
crossovers
partner leg throw downs
6-12" leg holds with partner pushdown (ugh!)

When you have muscles

Blog Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 09:29 on 9 December 2004

Here's something I bet you never realized about muscles: when you have them, you can pull them.

For the first time in my life, I pulled a muscle in my chest. I kid you not. Who pulls a chest muscle? I was in a triangle pose, stretching my hamstring, and decided to move into reverse triangle pose. When I shifted to drop my hand to the floor to loosen my hips, a muscle in my chest pulled.

It affects me only when I try to move into that pose again and when I try to do pullups. I can still throw fine. But still. Who pulls a chest muscle? And since when do I have chest muscles?

I cannot eat enough

Blog kitt decided around 01:03 on 27 November 2004 to publish this:

I'm pretty much not able to eat enough food, and it's starting to frustrate me. As part of my training program I'm eating as much as I can. Literally. If I can eat, I do. I have pooped more in one day (I'm averaging 3-4 times a day for the last week) than I ever pooped in a single day before (the goldfish story excluded).

Kris says give it time: eventually, my body will adjust to the additional nutrition requirements and extra food, and process it accordingly. Until then, 4 poops a day.

The worst part is that I don't know if I'm getting the correct requirements for food. Am I getting enough protein? Vitamins? Iron? I have no idea. I wish I knew.

From http://www.physsportsmed.com/issues/1996/04_96/protein.htm

How much protein do athletes need?

There isn't an exact number for athletes because protein needs vary, depending on whether an athlete is growing, rapidly building new muscle, doing endurance exercise, or dieting, in which case protein is used as a source of energy (table 1). Protein requirements for athletes are higher than the current recommended dietary allowance (RDA) of 0.4 g of protein per pound of body weight, which is based on the needs of nonexercisers. Protein recommendations for athletes are commonly expressed in a range to include a safety margin (2). If you do the math (1g of protein has 4 calories), you'll see that you don't need to have 30% of your calories come from protein.

Table 1. Recommended Grams of Protein Per Pound of Body Weight Per Day*
RDA for sedentary adult	0.4
Adult recreational exerciser	0.5-0.75
Adult competitive athlete	0.6-0.9
Adult building muscle mass	0.7-0.9
Dieting athlete	0.7-1.0
Growing teenage athlete	0.9-1.0
*To find your daily protein requirement, multiply the appropriate numbers in this table by your weight in pounds.

3 Hours Working Out

Blog kitt decided around 00:00 on 27 November 2004 to publish this:

I did a plyo workout very similar to Wednesday's workout. I also did my upper and lower body workouts, since I skipped yesterday.

full ladders
Shuffles: 10 yards down and back = 1
2 - 3 - 4 - 5, 30 second break between sets
with 6# ball, 5 - 4 - 3 - 2
I concentrated on keeping my butt low, working on strengthening my quads and glutes
I of pain: 21+, 21+, 20+ and 19+ seconds
Quick feet drills: 3 sets
Jump rope: 3 sets:
1. 100 jumps in 51 sec. 3 goofs
2. 120 jumps in 53 sec. 0 goofs
3. 130 jumps in 58 sec. stopped on first goof
Lunge jumps: 3 sets of 15

Next was my upper body workout. I started with the 3# rotator exercises. 3 sets of the 6 exercises.

Upper body exercises were:

Chest press on machine, 50# 12.10.10
One arm row: 13#/12 18#/12 18#/12
Lat pull downs: 50#/12 60#/10 50#/12 (bump up)
Sitting rows: 60#/14 65#/12 65#/12 (bump up)
Lower back extension 50#/12 70#/12 90#/12
20# bow draw 3 sets x 12 rep
Rope tricep pushdown: 30#/12 35#/12 30#/12 (bump up)
Bench dips 3x12
Bicep curls: 2 x 5# + bar / 12 reps, 10# + 5# + bar / 12 reps, 2 x 5# + bar / 12 reps

Gino wandered over and we talked about working out, motivation (in particular, how well the Mental Game of Baseball is working), listening to music when working out, sleeping well, odd hours (he says baseball players go to bed at 2:00 am, and wake up at noon) and tryouts. I like talking to him. He understands more about this process than I do, that's for sure.

Next was lower body weights:

3 sets of 12 squats at 120# on squat machine
Around the world 3 sets with 5#
Hamstring curls: 40#/12 45#/10 40#/12
Calf raises to exhaustion, which was 50 lifts for each toes pointing straight ahead, outside and inside

I struggled walking after those.

I intended to do forearms, abs and cardio at home, but Ben & Lisa came over for dinner. I'll play pickup tomorrow morning at Gunn and do abs then, too.

Ugh. I am not keeping up with this workout. 3 hours today and I finished only 2/3 of the workout. Man.

ASA MVP pre-Thanksgiving workout

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 23:21 on 24 November 2004

G has decided to help me go all-out on my workouts preparing me on my road to Team USA. Instead of working on building muscle with weight-lifting, we did a full plyo class. The class was made "worse" by the presence of another trainer, who was learning the game plan. Having a new guy watching means, of course, we have to show off. Well, at least I did. G did say a couple times that the workout was harder than most because I'm training for team USA, which made me feel good.

We started out with ladders. We had a few more than we normally do. Nominally, we had

  LR-RL-LR-RL
  Ali shuffle
  facing sideways, L over R in, L below R in, repeat
  facing sideways, with left foot in, R top bottom, as above
  facing sideways, RL in, RL below, RL in, RL below
  facing sideways, LR in, LR below, etc.
  L hop in/out, R hop in/out
  "hopscotch" with only L foot, again with only R foot
  hopscotch L-R-both
  quick feet: LR in, LRL out, RL in, RLR out 
  cross over: L cross over (foot lands perpendicular to the
    direction of travel), RL out, R cross over, LR
  hip switch (L outside on L, R outside on R, twist, landing
    with feet perpendicular to direction of travel), twist
    back, landing with feet on outside, repeat advancing one
    square.  repeat with other foot first
  two taps: heading L: LR in, LR out; heading R: RL in, RL out
    I caught up to Kris on these.  Zoom!

I was tired already after the ladders. I zipped along hard, both trying to keep up with Kris and showing off for the new guy.

We started the workout outside, with shuttles. With an 8# ball, we shuffled down and back throwing the ball back and forth between each other. We did a progression of 2 lengths (down and back), 4 6 8, then back down 8 6 4 2.

At the first 6, it became apparent that I wasn't doing them correctly. Instead of lowering my butt and staying on my toes, I was shuffling on my heels and leaning forward ("hunching over"). So, at 6, we rolled the ball instead of throwing it. The point was to practice lowering the rear and staying on the toes. We rolled for the 6 & 8 lengths, returning to throwing for the remaining 8 6 4 2.

Next came the "I of pain" shuffles (perhaps spelled "eye of pain", not sure). 5 cones, each spaced 3 steps (~3 yards) apart. Starting at cone 1, run to cone 2, run backward to cone 1, run to cone 3, run backward to cone 1, etc. Kris did 4. My times were 18.3, 17.9, 18.2, 18.0, 17.9. I did 5 because my time didn't decrease each time. The first 17.9 I cheated on, and didn't go all the way back to cone 1 on one of the backward runs.

Next were some quick feet drills. Ugh-a-rooni. Using a Reebok Step, with one riser, we did 1 set of 3 exercises, and 2 sets of 4 exercises, each for 30 seconds:

feet together, jump on the Step, jump off to the side, jump on the Step, jump off to the other side, repeat
bound over: two feet together, jump over the Step, landing on the other side, spring immediately to jump back over the other way, continue
single step: RL step up, RL step down, LR step up, LR step down
single step with crossover: same as the single step, but step up with the outside foot, using arms to explosively bound onto the step

3 sets of jump ropes were next. My goal was 120 jumps in a minute. If I didn't make it, I had to continue with 110 jumps in the second minute. If I didn't make that, it was 100 jumps in the next minute. This trend would continue until I managed the required number of jumps in a minute.

I didn't make it.

I went all the way down to 90 before I was so tired I couldn't manage more than 4 jumps without missing a jump. So, I threw down the jump rope and just jumped for a minute. Even then I had less than 90 jumps, so I had to do them again. Argh.

Kris had the great idea of jumping on the cement, since the cushy floor was causing problems for him. My second jump rope set was no problem, hitting 100 jumps in 52 seconds. Whoo! The third set was back on the squishy surface, and I managed 100 in a minute. Barely.

Next were 3 sets of lunge jumps using the Step. Using the Step meant our lunges were deeper, and the jumps harder. The first set was 15. We had sets of 15 because I stopped 15 times when trying to jump rope. D'oh. When G realized I hadn't swum today, he added another 5 on sets 2 and 3.

Last were abs.

bicycles
single leg V ups
partner throw downs
side to sides with 25# (!!!)
lying down, 25# straight up, lift straight up
lift feet up, hold weight up, lift weight to touch feet
lying down, weight (8# at this point) over head, do V up bringing weight over to touch knees
6-12" leg holds
lower back: supermans, twist lifts, lift straight up.

My upper butt and butt sides hurt.