Ulty practice, ulty pulls

Last week, Mon Wed official practice, Thu mini-practice, Sat/Sun tourney in Pleasanton!

Total burn: 7kCal (similar to Stanford Invite qualifier week burn), maxHR=225 (record for 2009)

Overall PrettyFly did awesome :) we won 4/6 games, 2 against other B teams, 2 against A teams. Great flow on day two, awesome spirit and intensity, brilliant sideline and strategy by our MIT / Princeton / Superfly-trained coaches (thanks Coach Dumbledore! We just need to believe in ourselves ^_^). What talent! Hard working girls, amazing spirit, & likely the tallest women's squad in college Ultimate--just imagine me, Frogger, Luna, Lolo, Laurel, Gina, andthen Tank or Skiddo on the line :D.

I was a little off on day one, but day two corrected for some of day one's tactical missteps. In general, conditioning was my weakest link on day two (but not on day one, that was missing connections to my handler/cutter teamies, girl D positioning on the trap side, slow handler disc motion and/or insufficient swinging, etc.).. which makes sense since my strengths are in the skill of strength and the art of technique, not in cardio conditioning or strategy/field sense. Which is to say I have been primarily a strength athlete (sprinter / martial artist / lifter) and a martial artist (technique, form, and skill-based mastery) rather than an endurance athlete (marathoner) or field sports star (field sense, connecting with / trusting your team, group timing & dynamics).

That said, I've been getting better slowly in my conditioning (7kCal burn/wk is my current oxy limit it seems) and my team timing & dynamics, bit by bit.

[My theory is that as a strength athlete, by bloodline or predisposition, muscle fiber or genetics, I can put on or drop weight at will within days. I've been everywhere from supermodel height at supermodel weight to Gina Carano MMA weight, and I can trivially drop pounds week over week, and after almost a week of Wii I thought I needed a lil more muscle mass so I ate lots of dry roasted edamame and put on 2.6+2.4=5 pounds in 48 hours measured at same time of day with minimal&consistent water/food intake... in other words my body adapt soo quickly that strength gains or losses come fast, and combined with well-developed proprioception & mirror neurons & study with devout Warrior diet practice & extensive knowledge of food and physical cultures throughout the centuries is iono a recipe for something :) But I've been thinking lately about how strength gains come slow relative to cardio conditioning, at least when you reach a certain level of fitness (if you're deconditioned / weak, anything is possible), which means that if you think about the 2-factor fitness model of fitness vs fatigue, wherein fitness rises at one rate and fatigue clears up 3x as slow, then you get something where you're strong but not equivalently conditioned given that cardio-type conditioning gets fit or goes away wayy faster than general strength... but anyway that's another story!]

My upper body and lower body were the best balanced they've been at this last tourney, due to extensive 4-5 week rehab/prehab by Stanford PTs, building on lessons learned at the San Jose RKC, self-study and practice of CK-FMS & Z-health methods... oh and Wii Fit training :). This last weekend I almost got a perfect score on the Wii Fit "soccer heading" balance game, advanced level (missed one ball of 60+), where I imagine myself marking discs not heading balls (the Wii balance board doesn't care :).

Wii Fit rehab/prehab has helped my single leg balance tremendously even in just two weeks of morning practice, gave me insight into hip mobility and ankle stability, and even reminded me of the importance of hip snap in throwing long bh pulls.

Besides Wii Fit, I also started practicing Parkour sprint intervals not quite 15s on 15s off but maybe 20s on 40s off just to start out easy on campus, inspired by both KJ's Viking Conditioning (didn't meet KJ at the SJ RKC tho) and Bruce Lee's love of running.

Anyway, I sort of wanted to list those 50 things to keep in mind when throwing (pulling specifically) that JimP mentioned but I'll just brain dump instead. I had my first bh O/I 80yd in-bounds pull on Sunday after someone reminded me to pull in a straight line not a circle (oh yeh), and here's how I did it.

Pre-reqs to safely pulling 80yds: you should be able to

(1) pass the (CK-)FMS deep squat screen, empty bar in an overhead squat toes forward (to make it harder), knees tracking toes but not breaking the plane of your toes, tall and neutral spine (minimal lumbar flexion!), empty bar not breaking the vertical plane of your toes either, butt to prettymuch the ground!

(2) do a symmetric 8kg K'bell (or sandbag / backpack -- anything with an offset center-of-mass) get-up with beautiful (kalos thenos) form, healthy shoulders with good mobility and a mobile t-spine too (thoracic) / stable l-spine (lumbar)

(3) not be in extreme pain when using a foam roller on your lats / core / legs

(4) have properly balanced core muscles (not quad+anterior dominant nor rectus vs oblique/glute dominant)--side bridges, bird-dogs, and Cook hip lifts should not be a problem re: mobility & stability

(5) have thrown a 175g disc at least 10,000 times

...of course you could pull 80yds without passing all of the above, but then again you might be a college-aged boy that gets away with poor movement patterns / imbalances / technique just by muscling it through with your T and prime movers. The above five are more for college-aged (and more seasoned) women or perhaps teens, many of whom can't just "muscle it through with T & prime movers".

Fix your fundamentals first, it's what separates the elite from everybody else--mastery of fundamentals :)

So, you have the hip mobility and stability for a toes-forward deep squat heels never leaving the ground and the shoulder stability to do a Turkish get-up with a heavy disc bag / RKC arm bar / wall slide, you have core strength-endurance enough to plank and side bridge, bird-dog and lunge, loose enough muscles and (hip) flexors, no egregious L/R anterior/posterior strength/flexibility/mobility/endurance asymmetries? Well that's a good start, and I was as close to that this past Sunday as I've ever been (aside conditioning--that's been on the back burner as I rested my L wrist in case of TFC wrist ligament tear, and L/R hip crest tightness), and I give props to having those fundamentals down to being able to pull those 80yards endzone to endzone, inbounds to inbounds, backhand outside-in (for the land-at-45 deg roll) pull with not even a breeze, on the 6th and final game.

But anyway, a brain dump of throwing mechanics. Relax--Soviet researchers have determined that Olympic athletes can relax 800% faster than your average jane joe. Are you relaxed? What's your HR at? Where do you want to pull from/to? If you can pull 70+yds, you may want to consider pulling corner to corner rather than straight up, or if it's windy you may want to adjust as well. What's the force / D? Do you want to pull to the trap side or the break (other)side? [I actually never thought about that until this weekend]

How's the wind? I turn my face to measure this but I know lots of kids use grass to get the same effect. I'd rather sense it with my face&hair as you don't get the luxury of grass during the game... playing lots of freestyle has helped me understand the wind and how it blows... or rocks :)

Visualize the throw you want. Backhand/forehand? Hammer/roller? Reverse flick? Do you want I/O or O/I, risky-in-the-wind float or flat, a pure roll or a skippy type?

Where are you going to run to & how are you going to set up after the pull? How far back do you want to pull, and what run-up? I actually don't know much about run up so I'll defer to more experienced pullers and disc golfers here.

Now grip the disc. Hard. You may even want to grip an imaginary disc with your left hand, if it helps your neuromuscular activation (for some it does). Are you crushing it, left hand and right? But keeping your wrist / arm / shoulder / core relaxed for the moment. Now relax your whole body and slow down your heart. Your muscles oxygenate in-between heart beats, so the slower you beat, the more oxygenated they are.

I'm not actually sure how helpful it is to pre-tense but I do it anyway. I don't actually practice pull most of the time unless there are minutes to spare (just pull it already :), but golfers do this. Then again I don't really golf :p

Okay, so 30 seconds have passed, or preferably less so far. Now run-up, load your hips (counterclock first for a clock hip snap if throwing backhand--this is actually something new to me in pulling but I think it gave me another 5-10yd, haven't tried the double hip snap though, clock-counter-clock but that may or may not be useful... pro boxers punch hard by loading/snapping hips in concert with momentum/weight transfer, yeh check it), grip the disc, reach back with a straight arm (my coach's bf told me to do this, a good reminder as dgolfers do this all the time), transfer your momentum down from the ground through your legs up through the hips--clock hip snap as the force transfers from ground up towards your core and then to wrist, pull the disc in a straight line towards target, you should be maximizing your IAP (intra-abdominal pressure) at this point, pull pull towards release, power exhale a fraction of your breath (pffft / ssst / whateva) and then apply the impulse to the disc for the briefest of milliseconds, then relax your wrist musculature to get the TFC "tendon bounce" that dgolfers talk about (or at least used to, last time I checked), bounce of your TFC trampoline / tendons / ligaments, then finish with your wrist musculature again to actually impart the tendon bounce to the disc as you release it and finish hard.

Now sprint to your girl and set the D!

Okee enough rambling for now, had a fun morning strength practice (not training, practice; practice was yesterday in the heat, had a pretty good empty bar toes fwd deep squat screen too w00t) of checking in with hip/ankle/shoulder mobility Z-health style, some dynamics to loosen up, self-soft tissue work, will ice/heat 20min each later, lacrosse ball / foam roller SMR will wait for tmrw, goblet squat / 8kg TGU practice, ASLR practice (butt to the ground, need to avoid excess lumbar flexion?), checkin with t-spine mobility, 1/2 get-up ab practice, begin plank / side bridge / bird dog 8-10s (5,4,3-type) pyramid set progression, forgot to do ITB stretch & Hip cook lift for glutes but I'll do dat now before I head off for a day's work at lab. Ja :)