Some days just flat suck and others are even worse. Today was the worst. EVERYTHING felt really hard today plus I couldn't start until later in the day because of meetings. I knew it had to be coming but it hit all at one time. We will see how tomorrow feels.
Three weeks from tonight and I'm jumping in Reno. I'm hearing that we are jumping at 5:30 like last year. The elites go at 7:30 so that will be cool to be finishing up on the floor when they are warming up. Can't wait. KRIS -we need to schedule pole shipping Dude!!
I'm guessing/hoping/expecting to feel good. Right now I feel like I could vault next weekend at Joshua but I won't as a precaution. I want to go into Reno completely healthy and in great condition. I know how to vault so those things are more important.
Have a great weekend and thanks for being here! Bubba
Friday, January 7, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Rolling Along
Another lift/cardio/bar day. Everything going as planned. Some things feel harder and some feel about the same. I expect it will get considerably worse over the next week to 10 days when I back off. But after day 5 I'm hanging in there pretty good.
Found out that we are getting a new pit today. We have two, one on each end of 120' runway, but one is pretty beat up but better than some others. Just goes to show why our high school was rated the #1 high school program last year by ESPN. GREAT support of all programs and nearly every one makes it to the state championships and then does well there. I'm very fortunate they let me hang out there.
Have a great evening. Having trouble typing on my little netbook. Bubba
Found out that we are getting a new pit today. We have two, one on each end of 120' runway, but one is pretty beat up but better than some others. Just goes to show why our high school was rated the #1 high school program last year by ESPN. GREAT support of all programs and nearly every one makes it to the state championships and then does well there. I'm very fortunate they let me hang out there.
Have a great evening. Having trouble typing on my little netbook. Bubba
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Another Travel Day
Nice clear day with 73 degrees but supposedly it will be in the teens next week. Since I'm only running and not jumping I'm not so concerned about the weather. That said, I still hate the cold.
I'll just grind away until I'm 9-10 days out and then do a quick taper down in order to feel good for Reno. So what seemed like a four week grind really comes out to be 2.5 weeks of every day training. Kinda looks like this;
If this works how I think it will I will do it for 3.5 weeks after Reno before indoor nationals. About the time my body completely rebels the ramp down comes in. The rest allows me to start back at a higher level for the next ramp up. That's the theory anyway. Have a great evening and thanks for being here! Bubba
I'll just grind away until I'm 9-10 days out and then do a quick taper down in order to feel good for Reno. So what seemed like a four week grind really comes out to be 2.5 weeks of every day training. Kinda looks like this;
- M - AM - Lift garage/bars - PM 10 X 50m hill/sled
- T - Cardio at gym then garage lift #2
- W - 10 X 50m hill/sled
- Th - Cardio at gym + gym lift and bars
- F - Lift garage/bars
- Sa - 10 X 50m hill/sled then garage lift #2
- Su - Cardio at gym + gym lift and bars
If this works how I think it will I will do it for 3.5 weeks after Reno before indoor nationals. About the time my body completely rebels the ramp down comes in. The rest allows me to start back at a higher level for the next ramp up. That's the theory anyway. Have a great evening and thanks for being here! Bubba
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
So Far So Good
I ran my first 10 X 50m sled/hills yesterday and was able to get up to about 60% with absolutely no groin discomfort. That's a really good sign I think. I was pretty sore after my first hard cardio sessions on Sunday so I expected to have to be really careful. Today, after my 2nd cardio session, everything feels even better.
A couple of revelations - 1) I'm in pretty good shape. Having done zero cardio for a few years I never even broke a sweat on the stairs or the bike even though I got near the edge of being winded. That surprised me. 2) I have gotten pretty strong. I normally lift 8,6,4 one day and 6,4,2 the other day for my main exercises, and 18 and 12 for my secondary exercises. This combination of strength and endurance has kept my weights up pretty high as I have switched to sets of 8,8,6,6.
When I was a lead instructor for the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles for 11 years(Legacy of the 1984 Olympics), I was given lots of study projects, the results became classes that I taught to high school coaches through a program offered by the AAF. One of them was that you can lift sets of 10 forever and not do much to improve your 1 RM (1 Rep Max). BUT, you can greatly increase your 10 reps by how much you can lift for 1 rep. As an experiment I put 165 on the bench for my 8 set and was able to do 22 reps. I remember a couple of years ago I was excited I could do 8 X 155. I got there by the 8,6,4 and 6,4,2. I kept the conditioning from the 18 one day, and 12 on the next.
The down side of this is that when I went from the cardio to the legs the weights felt much heavier because I was fatigued. I'm guessing that if I leave my weights at their regular levels and lift this way, than when I am fresh, I will get much stronger. BTW - because I do bars each day, I have ankle weights on when I'm doing the stairs so this is extra work for the hamstrings, hip flexors and groin. I like it.
That's it for today. I'm sure it will feel like a grind soon but right now it's a breath of fresh air to have new challenges. Thanks for tuning in. Less than four weeks to Reno! Speaking of Reno I've asked to be put on "Masters Pit 2" to avoid having to start at such a high level that I could jar what I hope will be a completely healed groin. Have a great day!! Bubba
A couple of revelations - 1) I'm in pretty good shape. Having done zero cardio for a few years I never even broke a sweat on the stairs or the bike even though I got near the edge of being winded. That surprised me. 2) I have gotten pretty strong. I normally lift 8,6,4 one day and 6,4,2 the other day for my main exercises, and 18 and 12 for my secondary exercises. This combination of strength and endurance has kept my weights up pretty high as I have switched to sets of 8,8,6,6.
When I was a lead instructor for the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles for 11 years(Legacy of the 1984 Olympics), I was given lots of study projects, the results became classes that I taught to high school coaches through a program offered by the AAF. One of them was that you can lift sets of 10 forever and not do much to improve your 1 RM (1 Rep Max). BUT, you can greatly increase your 10 reps by how much you can lift for 1 rep. As an experiment I put 165 on the bench for my 8 set and was able to do 22 reps. I remember a couple of years ago I was excited I could do 8 X 155. I got there by the 8,6,4 and 6,4,2. I kept the conditioning from the 18 one day, and 12 on the next.
The down side of this is that when I went from the cardio to the legs the weights felt much heavier because I was fatigued. I'm guessing that if I leave my weights at their regular levels and lift this way, than when I am fresh, I will get much stronger. BTW - because I do bars each day, I have ankle weights on when I'm doing the stairs so this is extra work for the hamstrings, hip flexors and groin. I like it.
That's it for today. I'm sure it will feel like a grind soon but right now it's a breath of fresh air to have new challenges. Thanks for tuning in. Less than four weeks to Reno! Speaking of Reno I've asked to be put on "Masters Pit 2" to avoid having to start at such a high level that I could jar what I hope will be a completely healed groin. Have a great day!! Bubba
Monday, January 3, 2011
Transitions
After I warmed up at Belton on Saturday, I was pleased that I had cleared 12' 6" (3.81m) twice easily on my smallest pole but I was bothered by the tightness behind my left knee. I haven't had that this year. The problem with missing your training rotations is you go too long between one segment and too short before the next. Not that it really matters, UNLESS you have a meet. The short rest cycle fell on the meet day and I just didn't feel right. This will sound strange but after warm up I didn't even want to jump. I really felt that I would be at risk of SOME little ding and things had been going too well to knowingly put myself in that position. Even as the bar started getting up near my starting height I really just wasn't that interested in jumping. I have never felt that way before at a meet and I can only attribute it to the mental side telling me it wasn't worth the risk.
I share this because it's really ironic that I train my ass off to jump in big meets, and this is one of my favorites, yet I didn't even feel like jumping. That's not true really as I felt pretty good and was very excited until I started getting these warning signals from my body during warm up.
Here's the biggest reason I'm revamping everything and cranking up all of my running, lifting, bars, cardio, etc. - http://masterspv.blogspot.com/2010/12/goals-mixed-signals.html In this post I talked about a guy who was done for the year because he had already reached his physical and technical potential. Though I haven't reached my technical potential on the longer poles, I have been in a holding pattern on advancing my physical skills so that I would be fresh enough to use the new poles. Well now I can jump on them from 8 steps (44') I need to get my butt back to work and what better time than a four week period before Reno, followed by a five week period before indoor nationals? The goal is to jump high in June and July, NOT January or March so NOW is the time. Besides, it's too cold to jump so I might as well get in better shape.
So there is my frustration that hit me after Saturday. Sure I can jump 13' (3.97m) every day in practice and can probably jump 13' 6" (4.12m) but that's just not going to be good enough. To step up I will have to be a better athlete and challenge my bigger poles from closer runs and use that success to progress to longer runs and still bigger poles. That has always worked for me but I can't realistically do that until the weather gets better. That will happen about the time I finish this nine week blast of training. So that's the plan and I'm sticking with it. Thanks for being here!! Bubba
I share this because it's really ironic that I train my ass off to jump in big meets, and this is one of my favorites, yet I didn't even feel like jumping. That's not true really as I felt pretty good and was very excited until I started getting these warning signals from my body during warm up.
Here's the biggest reason I'm revamping everything and cranking up all of my running, lifting, bars, cardio, etc. - http://masterspv.blogspot.com/2010/12/goals-mixed-signals.html In this post I talked about a guy who was done for the year because he had already reached his physical and technical potential. Though I haven't reached my technical potential on the longer poles, I have been in a holding pattern on advancing my physical skills so that I would be fresh enough to use the new poles. Well now I can jump on them from 8 steps (44') I need to get my butt back to work and what better time than a four week period before Reno, followed by a five week period before indoor nationals? The goal is to jump high in June and July, NOT January or March so NOW is the time. Besides, it's too cold to jump so I might as well get in better shape.
So there is my frustration that hit me after Saturday. Sure I can jump 13' (3.97m) every day in practice and can probably jump 13' 6" (4.12m) but that's just not going to be good enough. To step up I will have to be a better athlete and challenge my bigger poles from closer runs and use that success to progress to longer runs and still bigger poles. That has always worked for me but I can't realistically do that until the weather gets better. That will happen about the time I finish this nine week blast of training. So that's the plan and I'm sticking with it. Thanks for being here!! Bubba
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Good Decision Yesterday
This morning my groin is only about 20% as sore as it has been any time that I have jumped in the last month so it must be about well. That said, it probably would not have pulled yesterday but I sure feel better this morning having not pushed It. As much as I hated pulling the plug yesterday I feel reasonably intelligent about it today. As I told a friend, "yes I'm disappointed, but if I would have gotten hurt I would have been pissed". The good news is that this is not a true groin strain but a kind of stretch weakness that follows my hip stretch. Whenever I have dropped that out this goes away in a week.
I've decided to skip Joshua on the 15th and get back to full training. I've been thinking a lot about things that I have done before that have worked and it dawned on me that some of my biggest breakthroughs have come after a hamstring rehab where I hadn't jumped in 4-5 weeks. What did I do then? Bumped up the weights to reps of 8,8,6,6 with five breaths as a rest, did 12 minutes on the Gauntlet (StairMaster with actual stairs), 18 minutes on the bike, 100m grass running, tons of pole drills with a huge pole gripping 16' 5" (5m), massive bars, etc.. I'm on it and started today with all but the grass strides.
The reasoning is that my body is not used to so much quick twitch in the groin and hamstring areas and this fixes and conditions that plus gives me the speed endurance to hold my legs together at higher speeds from longer runs. I was watching some high school kids yesterday gripping higher than me, running twice as far with average to below average technique and soaring. I can do that but just have to have my body hold together.
The good news - NOW, yesterday my smallest pole was too little for the first time. In fact I easily could have jumped on it from 8 steps rather than 10 and I haven't been close to that. But my legs can't handle the quick twitch explosive stuff without better conditioning. I won't jump until Reno and my belief is that I will go there and my first two poles won't even be usable because they will be too small. That is my mission.
The reality is that my marks don't show how high I'm jumping because I clear 12' 6" easy with room to spare and then don't dial in the next pole. Now the next pole, and maybe the next one will be too small. How do I know this? Before I won Nationals in 1997 I was out for five weeks with a hamstring strain and Boston was my first meet to jump. I was up three poles from where I left and hadn't touched a pole in over a month. Just 23 days from Worlds in South Africa in 1997 I cam off of a hamstring strain and got the bronze in a big headwind. What I did is exactly what I started today. BTW - I have yet to be injured this year - knock on wood.
MY goal is to jump high this summer. So if this plan delivers the dividends I expect by Reno, then I will maintain it for the following five weeks until National Indoors. Nine weeks of a new kind of grind should get me through to all of my bigger poles and put me at the next level instead of just on the outside of it. What have I got to lose. The bottom line is to STEP UP the training in the weak areas. If I am unable to handle the increased mental and physical discipline then I don't deserve to be there anyway.
Hope you have a great day and thanks for being here. Bubba
I've decided to skip Joshua on the 15th and get back to full training. I've been thinking a lot about things that I have done before that have worked and it dawned on me that some of my biggest breakthroughs have come after a hamstring rehab where I hadn't jumped in 4-5 weeks. What did I do then? Bumped up the weights to reps of 8,8,6,6 with five breaths as a rest, did 12 minutes on the Gauntlet (StairMaster with actual stairs), 18 minutes on the bike, 100m grass running, tons of pole drills with a huge pole gripping 16' 5" (5m), massive bars, etc.. I'm on it and started today with all but the grass strides.
The reasoning is that my body is not used to so much quick twitch in the groin and hamstring areas and this fixes and conditions that plus gives me the speed endurance to hold my legs together at higher speeds from longer runs. I was watching some high school kids yesterday gripping higher than me, running twice as far with average to below average technique and soaring. I can do that but just have to have my body hold together.
The good news - NOW, yesterday my smallest pole was too little for the first time. In fact I easily could have jumped on it from 8 steps rather than 10 and I haven't been close to that. But my legs can't handle the quick twitch explosive stuff without better conditioning. I won't jump until Reno and my belief is that I will go there and my first two poles won't even be usable because they will be too small. That is my mission.
The reality is that my marks don't show how high I'm jumping because I clear 12' 6" easy with room to spare and then don't dial in the next pole. Now the next pole, and maybe the next one will be too small. How do I know this? Before I won Nationals in 1997 I was out for five weeks with a hamstring strain and Boston was my first meet to jump. I was up three poles from where I left and hadn't touched a pole in over a month. Just 23 days from Worlds in South Africa in 1997 I cam off of a hamstring strain and got the bronze in a big headwind. What I did is exactly what I started today. BTW - I have yet to be injured this year - knock on wood.
MY goal is to jump high this summer. So if this plan delivers the dividends I expect by Reno, then I will maintain it for the following five weeks until National Indoors. Nine weeks of a new kind of grind should get me through to all of my bigger poles and put me at the next level instead of just on the outside of it. What have I got to lose. The bottom line is to STEP UP the training in the weak areas. If I am unable to handle the increased mental and physical discipline then I don't deserve to be there anyway.
Hope you have a great day and thanks for being here. Bubba
Saturday, January 1, 2011
DNC
In meet results terms that means I did not compete (DNC). I felt tight behind the left knee during my warm up but made 12' 6" (3.81m) twice easy on my smallest pole so thought it would be a great day. When it was time to get on the runway I started feeling a little twinge in the right groin. Ran down and did not take off on run through #1, and then did the same for #2 and called it a day with no meet attempts.
I had this same feeling in Wisconsin in 2009 and took three more jumps and got a little ding. That ding strung out and cost me the chance to jump at the National Senior Games at Stanford, and threatened my trip to Australia. So YES, I could have probably jumped but it wasn't worth the risk. I never felt it during my warm up so I'm not hurt. TOUGH call but it had to be done.
WHY? I ran Thursday and not Wednesday and my body needs that one day longer. When I stretch my hip/glute with traction it tugs on the groin so I will stop doing that. Lesson learned without injury.
The plan now is to crank my butt off on sled, lifting and bars and show up to Reno ready to rock. I will skip Joshua in two weeks to assure total health. I'm really pumped about this plan because I need to get back to some serious training. Glad I was cautious but VERY excited that it resulted in this plan. If that works as well as I think it will I will do the same and not jump during the five weeks between Reno and Indoor Nationals in Albuquerque. Have a great New Year! Bubba
I had this same feeling in Wisconsin in 2009 and took three more jumps and got a little ding. That ding strung out and cost me the chance to jump at the National Senior Games at Stanford, and threatened my trip to Australia. So YES, I could have probably jumped but it wasn't worth the risk. I never felt it during my warm up so I'm not hurt. TOUGH call but it had to be done.
WHY? I ran Thursday and not Wednesday and my body needs that one day longer. When I stretch my hip/glute with traction it tugs on the groin so I will stop doing that. Lesson learned without injury.
The plan now is to crank my butt off on sled, lifting and bars and show up to Reno ready to rock. I will skip Joshua in two weeks to assure total health. I'm really pumped about this plan because I need to get back to some serious training. Glad I was cautious but VERY excited that it resulted in this plan. If that works as well as I think it will I will do the same and not jump during the five weeks between Reno and Indoor Nationals in Albuquerque. Have a great New Year! Bubba
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