velocitysports

Rough Velocity this morning

Blog

This morning's Velocity was three rounds of:

2x 20m walking kettleball swings
10 turkish sit ups
20 inverse rows
30 ball slams
6 x 50m runs

Velocity times three

Blog

Breanne commented to Kris this morning that, hey, you've been to all three workouts this week. That hasn't happened in... And then she turned to look at me, eyes BIG. "YOU, TOO!" she called out, after realizing that I hadn't been to all three in months, like many months, like maybe five or six of them.

Yeah. Well, injuries. Other than the wart and a slight tweak in my right quad, I'm injury free. And intend to stay that way with lots of warmups and stretching. And more warmups.

I was careful with my warmups this morning, mostly because of the quad. I ran the 50% and 75% runs at the speed of the other two women in my warmup group of three. I ran the 100% at the pace of one of the other two women in my group, who had a nice stride. She has fabulous arms and good running form. I suspect she was an athlete in high school or college, before Life Happened, and athletics were no longer so important in her life.

That last 100% I ran at my 100%. I may be the slowest on my ultimate team now, but I don't intend on staying there. If I can warm up well, and stay injury-free, next March should be a good tryout season. Even Kris mentioned that he'd consider coming out of retirement to play club ultimate (frisbee) again. I think that pick-up ultimate is killing him with it's lack of structure. And defense. Lack of defense.

After the brutal Monday workout, and the easier, but still, Wednesday workout, this morning's workout was a breeze.

Four rounds of body weight sets of:

20 pull ups
30 push ups
40 sit ups
50 squats

I remember when Kris and I used to do three sets of 140 squats twice a week. I remembered those, and managed to do the 50 squats in one set. The situps I also managed to do without stopping, though with considerable effort.

The pushups and pullups? No chance. No chance at all.

Those were done in sets of 10. Well, maybe 5 on a couple.

This time, Joe at Velocity

Blog

Joe, a coworker of Kris', joined us this morning at Velocity. Breanne decided to let us off easy this morning, provided you weren't Joe and knew what to expect. After Monday's workout, I needed something easy (where "easy" is relative).

This morning's workout was 3 rounds of:

30 box jumps
30 kettleball swings
8 lengths of running

I did my first two sets of box jumps on the 3rd highest box, which is also the third lowest box. It's about 18" high, so not the maximum height I've trained at before, but a height I was comfortable jumping three sets of 30 after running. I did the last set at the 12" box, but only because I was in a hurry to catch up with eveyrone else.

The kettleball swings were normal.

I managed to run the first two sets of 8 lengths (which are really 8 x 50m shuttles) at a good clip: good form, knees high, crank out the meters no problem. The last set? I needed to run behind someone to pace me, just to keep moving.

Joe did pretty well, smiling and laughing through most of the workout, jokingly complaining about how hard it was. He told me after class that he works out 4-5 times a week in the gym and doesn't feel as tired as he did at the end of class. He ended up signing up for a few classes. I don't know if he signed up for the monthly membership or just a 10x deal. Kris wasn't sure either, but was surprised that he signed up, as "the gym at work is free." Kris' motivation is to workout with me, I think.

Me? I find group workouts far more compelling than working out alone in the gym. I'm glad Kris and I are still going to the classes.

Breanne made me cry

Blog

This morning, once again, I was reminded of the stark contrast between "adult fitness" and "ultimate fitness." More importantly, the difference between the small world of sports played passionately and larger world of people just wanting to stay in shape, or lose a few pounds, or something else like that.

I am the slowest, possibly the second slowest, person on my ultimate team. Much of this has to do with (my lack of) fitness and my growing number of annoying injuries, but I can't ignore the lack of dedication (read: obsession) this season after becoming a practice player. Well, that and just plain genetics, even though my college times imply I can run an okay fast time.

In contrast, I am the fastest, possibly the second faster, woman at Velocity for the times I go, which are the morning adult fitness classes. Not that it ever really matters during the warmups, since people should be running as fast as they want, not as fast as they can go. I do prefer, however, to try to keep up with the boys, and I manage for those first five steps, the ones which are so important in ultimate. The last 30 meters? Yeah, their backsides.

The latter inspires significantly more than the former. Though that could be Breanne's infectious attitude towards pushing oneself to see really how well you can do.

This morning's workout was two rounds of:

20m x 2 Overhead walking lunges
30 squats
10 dips

20m x 2 Overhead walking lunges
30 jumping squats
10 dips

20m x 2 Overhead walking lunges
30 split squat jumps
10 dips

Overhead walking lunges are done with a wide grip on a barbell, held over one's head with arms locked. The lunges are supposed to be low, but not so that the front leg goes past 90°. I didn't use the girlie bar for the walking lunges, opting instead for the trainer bar (17kg or about 35 pounds). My upper body wasn't as tired as my lower body as a result.

The squats were normal squats, but done explosively! as fast as possible while keeping form. The hamstrings were to go parallel with the floor.

Jumping squats involved the same as the squats for quickness, but also included a jump at the end.

The split squat jumps were essentially jumping from a lunge position and switching feet, attempting to go as high as possible.

The dips could be regular dips on the dip bar, a jump up to the dip bar with a lower, or a dip from the jump boxes. I opted for the latter, after realizing that I couldn't do one regular dip, and not really wanting to fight over the dip bars for the jumping ones.

I finished the workout, maintaining as much form as I could, just behind Kris. The last sets of squats weren't one set of 30 each, but rather three sets of 10, strung together quickly, because my legs just couldn't handle 30 explosive anythings by that point.

At the end of the last set of dips, I curled into a ball and started crying. I sat that way for a moment, before standing up, and walking over to Kris and burying my face in his shoulder to continue crying. He was standing next to the big fan, where I needed to be, as I couldn't manage to get my body temperature down this morning, despite the 65° room or the removal of various pieces of clothing during the workout. "You're not injured?" was Kris' first reaction, a perfectly reasonable reaction, I'd say.

No, not injured. Just very, very, very happy to be done with that workout.

Chookie joins us!

Blog

Last night, I managed to use three of the four standard modes of transportation to travel home. Doyle drove me from work to Stanford, where I sauntered to the train station until I realized that the noise I just heard was the southbound train arriving, not the north bound train departing. One heft of the backpark and two red-light dodges, and I was running for the train, 10-ride ticket validation be damned.

Little did I realize as I was launching myself into the nearest car door, was that the train was going to wait for another two minutes for the not-express train in front of it to accumulate a little more space. Of course, the puzzled, yet humoured looks of the seated passengers around me let me known that the crazy lady who launched herself into the their quiet car had better be quiet, too.

I didn't care, I had to pee.

Eventually I did find the Caltrain conductor and asked him to validate my ticket. He looked at me, then looked down at my ticket. Not only had he NOT asked for the ticket (meaning I could have ridden for free), but I was handing him a ticket from zone 2 to zone 3, when we were already in zone 3. I held my breath, wondering how long before he realized the ticket had expired four months before.

He said nothing, validated it, handed it back to me, then walked back out of the car.

15 seconds later, the train stopped in Mountain View. Sigh.

I then walked again, hoofing my way over to Chookie's place, which is about half was home from the train station. We talked for a while, before Kris called to see where I was. He was done with his lesson and on his way back home, too. Since Kris didn't know where Chookie lived exactly, I gave him directions to "close enough," as Chookie readied himself to leave also.

He was going out to run the track workout, not especially motivated to run by himself. I was concerned about his running in the dark, worried about ankle sprain potential. I offered to pick him up tomorrow morning and loan him my car after class, if he wanted to try out Velocity.

He said yes, and joined us this morning. Turns out, he knew someone at Planet Granite that Breanne knew, too, so they bonded instantly. Well, that and Chookie was "with them" where the "with them" from Sandy included a nod towards Kris and me.

Today's workout was four rounds of

20 swiss ball passes
20 back extensions
2 lengths of sled pushing
1 length of med ball walking

The swiss ball passes were similar to previous ones, but done solo. Lying on my back, I started with the swiss ball in my hands. Sitting up into a V position, lifting my legs up, I passed the ball to my feet, then dropped back down from the V up to lying back down, the ball between my feet. Next, back into a V position, passing the back back to my hands, then lowering it over my head as I dropped back from the V up position back down to a lying position.

I managed one of those before I couldn't actually do a V-up properly. I ended up lifting my shoulders and upper body off the ground, but not my full back, when passing the ball. Not fully correct, but sufficient.

The back extensions were as normal.

I ran the first sled push with just a 50 pound plate on the sled. The run was harder than I was expecting it to be, especially at the end. However, "harder than I was expecting" is not the same as "too hard," and I bumped up the weight to the 50 pound plate and a 25 pound plate on the sled for the last two runs. Breanne was amused by the weight increase and declared to Kris, "She's showing you up!" Kris, who had also been pushing the 75 pounds on the sled, looked and me and smiled. "She's tough!"

The med ball walking was the same as the plank walks of before.

After four rounds, we had time left over, so we did more abs (plank position on swiss balls, with Breanne kicking the ball).

At the end of it all, I asked Chookie what he thought. Was it tough enough for him?

A smile, a nod, and a "Yeah." in response.

And again with the velocity

Blog

This morning's workout was three rounds of:

20 kettleball swings
40 one-armed kettleball swings, 20 each side
40 lateral box jumps, 20 each side
20 box jumps

Given that I've been feeling sick for the last day, I wasn't too excited about anything other than the warmup at the workout, and even that was difficult. I'm trying to recover from the quad pull from practice a week ago, and I forgot my properly cut-up running shoes that don't jam my achilles, and this whole workout was a recipe for disaster.

I started with the lateral jumps, jumping up sideways to the second lowest box. On the regular box jumps, I moved up to the next box height, but didn't start looking up (instead of watching my feet) until the second round.

The first 20 kettleball swings, no problem. The one-armed kettleball swings? Problem. I had to drop down to a 10# weight from the 17# kettleball for that one.

At round 2 or so I was moving so slowly that by round 3 my lateral box jumps became stepups. Slowly. Yeah, understatement. Everyone cleaned up the weights before I could finish my workout. No, THAT's not discouraging, why do you ask?

Pages