Wildland and CC June 28, 2010

Monday, my first workout of the day turned out to be a wildland fire. This primarily consisted of hiking up and down the foothills of san jose and around the perimeter of the fire looking for hot spots. I got in a good quad and hammie burn as well as got my heart rate up a bit.

Once we got back I performed the following reps for CC

Incline Pushups 3x40

Knee Tucks 3x40

I met the progression standard, but it felt significantly more difficult than previous times. For a while I was a little bewildered as to why my strength was backsliding, but then remembered that spending a few hours out in the sun on a fire might have a little affect on the strength.

Overall I'm still gaining strength on this program, which is surprising because this is the least frequently I've worked my strength training in years. The joints are still feeling very good, which is also very important. Still, I can't wait to reach level 6 in all four of the exercises and progress to four days a week of training.

Rugby Sevens, Warrior Diet and Hydration

Since I'm brand spanking new to rugby, I wanted every edge I could get for the tournament this past Saturday. One thing I noticed while on the Warrior Diet was that I tended to have more energy during the day. Friday I hydrated with 4 quarts of water, cycled back onto the Warrior diet, eating only fresh fruits and veggies during the day, and carbo/protein loading at night with Amy's bean, cheese and rice burritos and a foot long provolone, avocado, cucumber veggie sandwich from Subway.

I went out to a great party that night, one of the best I've been in a long time. As a sign of some serious rugby love, I left the party early to get a bit of rest before the tournament. Still, considering that we were supposed to be down in palo alto by 8 am, this meant that I would be getting around 5 hours of solid sleep. I doubled up on Vitamin D, Magnesium and Rhodiola the night before to improve the quality of my sleep and help my body handle stresses better.

I woke up that morning before my alarm clock, feeling pretty good considering the limited sleep. As planned I was still feeling pretty full from the night before, so I had a cup of green tea and an orange for breakfast, met up with the team and headed down to Palo Alto.

The best laid plans. The route to Palo Alto is along the same route that I drive to work. During some point in the drive I went on auto pilot and missed my turn off for the Dunbarton Bridge. I circled back around and arrived at the pitch (playing field) just in time to find out that we were, of course, playing first, and my team was already on the getting ready to go in about 5 minutes. I scurried over to drop off my stuff and get ready to play as fast as possible, because they had me as part of the starting line up at prop for the first half.

A bunch of thoughts ran through my head about not being properly warmed up, and how that contributed to my back strain in the last game. As I took to the field, my body felt really fluid and limber, and I chose to focus on the areas that felt good vs the areas that felt stiff. The longer the half wore on, the better I felt, and managed to make two tackles. The seven minutes was over much quicker than I expected. They subbed in another player for me for the second half. We ended up winning the game 12-10.

The next game they moved me out to wing. The seven minute halves seemed a lot longer. As wing I spent a great deal more time running back and forth across the field. Thanks in part to a great pass from a teammate and the footwork drills they gave me at the Grizzlies tryouts, I was able to sidestep past a defender, find an open hole and sprint over half way down the field for my first try, We won this game as well, but I don't remember the final score.

We had a long break in between games 2 and 3 so the team walked down to McDonald's for for lunch. Surprisingly, McDonald's proved to be fairly compatible with my Warrior Diet. I got a fruit salad and a yogurt parfait. I didn't realize until after I got it that the fruit salad came with a little vanilla yogurt cup. If I had known this before hand I would have just gotten a few more of these instead of the parfait, which most likely had high fructose corn syrup in it (see the "Sugar the Bitter Truth Video"). I only ate the apple slices and not the grapes, due to the high sugar content of the grapes.

We headed back to the pitch to wait for our final game. Now, the weather report for Saturday says the high in Palo Alto for that day was 70 degrees. It felt like it was at least in the 80s, especially on the astro turf field that was baking under the sun. There are two main things that I would change about that day, with hydration being the first on the list. I ran out of water between games 2 and 3, only consuming around 3 quarts for the day. I should have had twice that as a minimum. I played the second half of the third game. I was able to sprint all out and chase down a breakaway, but got pretty winded doing so. After the game was over, my heart rate was still bounding along at sprint pace even though I was standing still. Normally my heart rate recovers very quickly, so this was pretty out of the ordinary for me. After about 5 minutes of waiting for my heart rate to recover, I finally decided to sit down. I knew my heart rate wasn't recovering due to dehydration. My heart was beating faster in an effort to compensate for decreased fluids in my system. If my heart couldn't pump a lot of oxygenated blood to my body with each beat, it would have to make up for it by pumping faster. Sitting decreased the workload on my heart by decreasing the distance my heart had to pump the blood, and how much it had to work against gravity. If that didn't work, my next course of action would have been to lie flat on my back with my feet elevated, further decreasing the workload on the heart. My heart rate did recover almost instantly just upon sitting down.

The second thing I'd change would be to do a better job of planning out my evening meal. Having a well balanced evening meal is a very important part of the Warrior Diet. I didn't feel hungry at all during play, but later that night it seemed like I became super hungry, all at once. Since I didn't plan it like I should have, I ended up scavenging whatever was around. The result was I ended up eating much later than I should have and had a very carb heavy meal. That combined with the dehydration caused me to feel pretty tired and run down both Saturday and Sunday. So for next time I'll bring more water and pack a sandwich to eat immediately after play is over.

All in all this was a great day, and a great experience watching my team play well and execute what we had done in practice. We won all of our games and were the highest scoring women's team at the tournament.

CC Day 15 and Z-Health

Last Friday I completed the following reps

Vertical Pulls 3x15 performed on my dining room table

Full Squats 2x30


I seem to have plateaued on the vertical pulls. I'm almost 4 months into this program and not progressing week to week on the vertical pulls like I am on the other exercises. Even though the program states GTG (Grease the Groove from Pavel's Naked Warrior) is good only for initially working the first 1 or 2 reps of an exercise, I've had a lot of success getting into the higher reps. When I was going through the paramedic program, we had 8 hours of classroom time 5 days a week. As firefighters who are used to getting up and moving around all day, sitting in the same spot for that long is quite a shock to the system. We'd get a 5 or 10 minute break roughly every hour or so. I began doing 25 push ups every break. Each week I'd add on another 5 pushups to each set. By the end of our schooling, I was cranking out 55 push ups every hour with ease. I never did test my max at that time, but when I started the program it was 50 push ups. Different methods work for different people.


Friday was a lighter workout day than I had originally planned, but still accomplished quite a bit. I went through the Z-Health neural warm-up, balance drills and vision drills. I worked the vision drills particularly intensively to get ready for Sevens tournament the next day. All the drills were tested for 1 minute at a time. First up was the saccadic eye movement drill to test how well my eyes were able to track from side to side. I was able to track back and forth 71 times the first time and 78 the second. Ideally I'd like to get this over 150.

Near/Far focusing with first the right side and the left resulted in scores of 52/48 and 52/51. This is the toughest one for me, but at the same time, it's the one that seems to yield the biggest results as far as visual acuity and an overall sense of relaxation.

Hand/eye and Hand foot coordination are the easiest for me, because they feel like sports. For the hand/eye coordination I practiced passing motions to either side. The results were 88 the first time and 102 the second time. The second time I had a better grasp of the movement language used for this drill. For the hand/foot coordination I held the ball in both hands in front of me and practiced my footwork and sidestepping. The results were 87 and 87.

Looking back, I think these drills had a pretty big impact on my mental state and readiness for the games, as well as my agility and gameplay.

Healthy Firehouse meals

Wednesday was my turn in to cook yet again. This time I tried a brand new recipe from the ChefMd site, the Chicken Cacciatore.

http://chefmd.com/recipe_display.php?id=126


I tripled the recipe to have enough to feed 10 firefighters, and used two packs of boneless skinless chicken thighs. For myself, I made a separate sauce and poured it over a toasted Morning Star Farms Chik Pattie. The mushrooms added a heartiness to the sauce, and the sesame seeds gave it a nice unexpected flavor.

I paired this meal with a spinach, feta, mandarin orange, walnut salad, cous cous, and sliced whole wheat french bread. All in all it took an hour and a half to prepare this entire meal from beginning to end.

June 24, 2010 Viking, Climbing, Rugby Day

Thursday morning at the Fire Station as I was getting off shift I performed the Viking Warrior 36:36 snatch protocol for 10 work sets. I had originally planned to go for 15 work sets, but by 10 I was starting to have trouble getting all 20 reps completed within the 36 seconds.

From work I drove straight to the climbing gym, started on the slab side of the bouldering wall (the more vertical section of the climbing wall) and climbed 3 V0s and 3 V1s. My core strength is definitely improving. I had a much easier time staying close to the wall and had very little barn dooring (one hand and foot on the same side becoming detached from the wall causing the person to swing open sideways like a barn door).

That evening I had my very first rugby sevens practice. It wasn't nearly as grueling as I expected it to be. Course, it was a 2 hour practice vs the 6 hour Grizzlies tryouts. We spent a lot of time passing patterns, avoiding contact on offense, and moving the ball around. Little by little this game is starting to make more sense and is starting to feel more fluid. I can't wait for the day when rugby movements and body mechanics become instinctive for me, leaving me to think about what needs to be done, instead of how to do it.

Ripple Effect

It's always amazing to me the effect the simple act of living one's life can have on others. Every time I travel down to San Diego for the Starlings volleyball national tournament, at some point I usually stand back in awe of my club. For the past 12 years we usually have 60-80 girls that are a part of this club because I played volleyball, and from that my dad saw a need for an affordable volleyball club for inner city girls. This time, I got to stand back in awe of my kids, and the ripple effect they had on another club.

Last year at the 18s Gold division finals, Oakland was the only club that stayed around for the match. Since most of the other clubs travel from all over the country, they had to leave early to get back home. My club adopted the San Gabriel team and cheered their hearts out for them. San Gabriel ended up losing the hard fought match, but you'd never know it by the way my kids rallied around them, and the impromptu dance party they threw for the San Gabriel kids.

This year San Gabriel requested us as their sister team. My kids gave them tie-dye t-shirts with "Starlings" written on the front and "Oakland" on the back. The San Gabriel club proudly wore them throughout the tournament during their warm-ups, even when they were playing this year again for the Gold division championship. All San Gabriel's coaches came up to me to express their gratitude for last year and how much it meant to them and their kids. One of the parents came up to me to tell me that he knew last year his daughter was taking the loss pretty hard and he wasn't quite sure how to comfort her. Then on the car ride home his daughter told him that even if she never played another day of volleyball she could be happy simply because of how special the Oakland kids made her feel after that game.

My kids as teenagers probably have no clue how deeply they affected this team, or how much this truly meant to San Gabriel. Whether they realize it or not, they have made friends for life through simply being themselves.

Control Freak Lets Go

When it comes to coaching, I am very particular on what I want done, and how I want it to get done. This past weekend I left all of this in the hands of my kids.

I coach the 18s team, and a large part of that coaching is getting them ready to be on their own when they go away to college in a year or two. This involves coaching, responsibility and accountability, decision making and communication skills, and leadership among other things.

The first day of play on Friday they played pretty roughly, with quite a few communication breakdowns and frustrations, and ended up losing all three matches. After this I was for the large part encouraging towards them. We had a skeleton crew of only 6 players, with 3 players playing out of position. I had them do a human knot drill, to work on their teamwork and communication skills. For this drill they stood in a circle, extended their right hands, and grabbed the hand of the player directly across from them. Then, with their other hand, they grabbed the hand of another player in the group. Then, they had to work together to untangle themselves to form one big circle. Once the accomplished this, the next challenge was to do this without speaking. This helped them to develop, read and interpret body language and alternate forms of communication.

The next day we lost one player and gained 2 players who arrived late due to graduation. Everyone was back to pretty close to their normal position. We won both our games, but had an extremely lackluster performance. Balls were dropping with players standing their looking at them, they were again playing as individuals, not communicating, had a high rate of unforced errors, and were not playing anywhere near their capabilities. Near the end of the day, when they'd look to me to answer questions about positioning or areas of responsibility, or other things that they already know the answer to I, partly out of my own frustration stopped giving them would tell them to figure it out on their own. This was only partly out of frustration because it's a technique that I've used in the past, usually when I'm at my wit's end, to get them to come together as a team.

The last day of competition, I chose to continue the hands off coaching from the end of the day before. They would be in charge of everything from warm ups, calling timeouts, what to say in the timeouts, service areas, and subs. The only thing that I would contribute would be to decide and turn in the lineup. Even though they were playing as individuals on the court, they were spending all of their off time together, hanging out as a team. They seemed to have great chemistry off the court as a team, it was just a matter of figuring out how to get this to translate to on the court. This is why I figured this tactic would work. I know that they have heard everything that I and the other coach have said to them all season, they just don't always internalize it right away. If I keep telling them over and over, then they don't have to internalize it. They'll just keep looking to me for the answer when they're more than capable of figuring it out for themselves. This was their chance to step up and feel empowered by what they were capable of both as individuals and as a team.

This was a trial by fire, sink or swim moment for them. They rose to the challenge and performed admirably. They arrived to the gym a half hour before play was scheduled to start. They initially asked me what they should do to warm up. I told them to do whatever it was that they need to get warm. They chose to do a rock, scissors, paper war. This is a drill that involves splitting up into two teams, sprinting around the 3 point line of the basketball court to meet another player, and then having a rock, paper scissors contest to determine who would advance until they'd meet up with another player. They then did a more traditional approach, block transition warm-up, and then played a game of hand soccer, where they could only roll the ball across the floor by hitting it with a hand. Then, finally went into partner passing, setting and pepper.

While I was itching for them to get into more ball control drills right off the bat, I eventually was able to sit back and see the benefit of the drills they chose. These were all drills I had used with them in practice. The rock, paper, scissors war gets them sprinting, develops and reinforces, communication skills, reaction speed, rapid decision making and competitiveness. The hand soccer drill emphasizes a good low ready position, footwork, communication and teamwork. In addition to all this, they were having fun, which is something I was emphasizing for them to do since day 1 of the tournament. When they have fun they play well and when they play well they have fun.

As play began they started off strong. They set the pace of the game, communicated well, and played as a team throughout the whole match, beating the other team pretty decisively. This put them in the Bronze division semi finals. They played a tougher team in this match, but still fought hard and found a way to win in 2 games. In the finals they faced a much tougher team that had a few hard hitters. They played hard the first game but lost. They kept their spirits up and rallied back the second game to win it, and force a third game. I actually got goosebumps while watching a few of the rallies. The third game didn't end up going their way, but overall they earned the silver medal in the Bronze Division and walked away with so much more. Two of my players emerged as strong leaders. Everyone stayed positive, worked together as a team, fought hard throughout the whole day. As a coach, I can't really ask for anything more than that.

Boulder Comp Training Day 1

Thursday, before I left for San Diego I got in a quick bouldering session. With only a month to go, and not being in the gym in a while I didn't want to over do it. I climbed 6 V0s. All of them felt very fluid and easy. The CC workouts have definitely kept up my forearm strength. The holds on the V0s weren't crimpy enough to really test out my grip, so we'll have to wait and see how the hands do as the climbs progress in difficulty.

I did feel a little twinge at one point in my elbows, but after a few elbow circles and an ART (Active Release Therapy) stretching technique shown to my by one of the assistants at the RKC II, my elbows felt great again.

CC Day 13 & 14

Thursday I travelled to San Diego for my volleyball team's national tournament. I was very tempted to take my TRX with me to ensure I would be able to do the pull up portion of the CC workout. In the end, I figured that part of the workout was creativity, improvisation and being able to utilize the available environment to get in a good workout. The community center at the dorms had a metal handrail that worked out perfectly for the horizontal pulls. My reps were as follows

Horizontal pulls 18, 15, 15

Full Squats 2x30

The first set is the highest number of reps I've achieved so far for a single set, so there is steady, albeit slow improvement there. The full squats felt much easier and did not elicit the same muscle burn or soreness that they did last week. I'll stay at this step for at least one more week.


Yesterday I performed the following reps

Incline pushups 3x40

Knee tucks 3x40

I performed the incline pushups on my kitchen countertop and the tucks on my top step. These are getting easier, but still not quite at the level I'm looking for to progress to the next step. I'll probably spend at least two more weeks on these steps.

CC Day 11 and 12

I skipped my CC workout on Friday, doing it instead Saturday at work.

Horizontal Pulls 15, 16, 17 performed on a Smith Machine Set at waist height

Full Squats 2x30


I was pretty surprised to see that even though the grip was much easier, I still managed the same amount of reps as with the dining room table. The reps were smoother, and I didn't have to readjust my grip. Oddly enough, my pulling power seems to be now progressing the slowest out of the four exercises. I'm itching to improve this one quickly considering that I now have less than a month for the Firefighter Olympics climbing comp. The other exercises should have some carryover, but it's time to add in some climbs. If I limit my climbs to 6 per session, and climb no more than two days in a row, that should still provide adequate recovery time.

I was also very surprised by the full squats. After only 2 sets of 30 squats, my legs were burning and I was indeed a bit sore the next day. If followed through to the end, this program should do wonders for my muscular endurance.


I pushed the next session from Monday to Tuesday morning to allow one more recovery day in between sessions.

Incline Pushups 3x40 performed on a work bench countertop

Knee Tucks 3x40 performed on a weight bench


The incline pushups are getting easier, but still not quite as easy as I would like. I'll stay at this stage a bit longer.

This was the first time I met the progression standard for the tucks. I'll probably stay here for at least 2-3 more sessions before progressing on to the next step.


Lately I've been feeling that my integrated strength has improved. By this I mean my body is feeling much more linked together, fluid and strong. This is precisely what I'm looking to improve. In another post I'll delve into this further.

6-11-10 Workout VW, partner passing and 1st day with Indian Clubs

As I was getting off work Friday morning, I started out the day with 11 rounds 36:36 Viking Warrior snatch protocol. I focused on loosening my grip and spearing my hand through at the top, in order to ease the strain on my forearms. My forearms didn't burn nearly as much as last time, but adjusting to the change in form added an extra second or two onto my reps.

Later that day I met up with a few friends and gave them an intro to kb partner passing. We covered the basic two handed pass and pass with a flip. They picked it up very quickly, which is pretty exciting for me. I'm looking to build up a group of people to pass with in the bay area. After the first few sessions with Mike Castrogiovanni, I'm very eager to explore this practices application to sports.

Afterwards I finally broke out the Indian clubs DVD and gave the exercises their first trial run. One of these days I'll listen to the Dragon Door site and actually go with the weight they recommend. 1 lb. just seemed way too light. My shoulders are getting quite a burn from the exercises. I've spent two days with it so far am still not all the way through the DVD. First impressions, this feels like play. When performed properly, the motions are very fluid, mentally engaging, and I feel the rest of my body loosening up and relaxing as I'm getting in a workout.

Workout June 10, 2010

Thursday's workout consisted of various rugby drills. I focused on footwork and individual skills. Up and back the width of th parking lot at work counted as one set.

10x carrying the ball with two hands, jogging with alternating side steps

5x lateral speed skater jumps

10x chip ground kick and recover, alternating legs

100 chip kicks, catching the ball in the air, alternating legs

My footwork improved and lateral steps became quicker as the sets progressed. The main change during the reps was starting the lateral motion from my core, staying light on my feet, and planting the side step foot closer to my body, instead of reaching out with it to initiate the side step.

Rugby Sevens

Recently I tried out for the Pacific Coast Grizzlies Rugby Sevens Team. The Grizzlies are a select side team meaning that they are made up of the best players from the pacific northwest region, and are one step below the U.S. national team. In fact, quite a few national team members play for the Grizzlies. Since I've only been playing rugby for a few months my main goal in attending the tryouts was to learn as much as I could from top notch coaches and players. I learned a ton. The three main lessons I learned were improve my speed, improve my muscular endurance, and lastly, it's actually really good to be older.

The first thing I learned was an inkling of the kind of crazy conditioning needed to play sevens. After a bit of dynamic warm up exercises we tested our 40 yard dash times running on grass. Mine came in at 5.4 seconds. I'd like to knock at least a good half to a full second off of this time. This seems reasonable to me given my limited to almost non-existent sprint training over the past few years, and just off of a gut feeling that I was running anywhere near as fast as I'm capable of running.

The second lesson learned also dealt with conditioning. As an endurance test, were to run several hundred yard sprints. In college we ran three sets of ten 120 yard sprints, performed on the minute, with the remainder of the minute to recover until the next sprint, with a 3 minute break in between each set of ten. This amounted to over 2 miles of all out sprinting. That was one of the toughest workouts that I have ever done. This one was tougher.

For this workout, we had 18 seconds to sprint 100 yards, and then 42 seconds to jog back to the start. That counted as one. The goal was to complete 10 of those in 10 minutes. I completed 4 1/2 before I missed my time. I recover very quickly when I have a full rest, but the active recovery during the jog back proved to be the toughest part. Ultimately I'd like to be able to do 3x10 of these with a one minute break in between each set. That should cover a sevens championship match with two over time periods.

The third lesson was that it's actually good to be older. At 34, I was the oldest person trying out by at least 6 years, with most of the other players in their early twenties. Since my main goal of the tryout was to learn, I spent a lot of time asking the coaches questions and for tips on specific techniques, or ways to practice these techniques at home on my own. While standing in line I'd visualize the technique or drill and practice the body mechanics. Afterwards, one of the coaches commented how much he appreciated the questions and positive, proactive attitude, and that no one else had been coming up to them. Not until then did I realize that anything I was doing was out of the ordinary.

It made me think of my experiences as a coach and how much I like it when players take the initiative to do more than what's asked of them, and how seldom that actually happens. So this then of course brought up the question, "why is that?" Thinking back, this was also true for my parents who were, and friends that are teachers. They all love it when kids would stay behind and ask them for help, but would rarely have kids that would do this.

The answer that came to mind was differences in life experience. When I was younger, I had a lot of practice teaching myself and learning different skills, such as skateboarding, juggling, and unicycling. The best way I found to learn theses skills was through focussed repetitions, gradually progressing in difficulty or complexity. I know what works best for me. Younger kids are still most likely figuring out the best ways for them to learn, if they are even aware that there are different ways to learn.

Secondly, my life experiences competing at a high level, working as a firefighter, coaching, and being involved with RKC program have further cultivated my outlook as a student of sport, and given me some perspective. If I had been the same age as most the other players, or the same age as the kids I coach, in retrospect, I might have felt a little intimidated or uncomfortable going up to one of the coaches and asking for help or clarification, especially in a tryout situation. Here, having all of these previous experiences allowed me to subconsciously identify someone who was eager to teach (as pretty much all us coaches are) and then take full advantage of that. So, for younger players that are looking to advance in your sport, job, schooling or anything else in life, when you come across someone that can help you learn, remember the more effort they see you putting into something, and the more proactive you are, the more they'll want to help you.

CC Days 9 & 10

Friday my reps were

Vertical Pulls 18, 15, 15 performed on dining room table

Jackknife Squats 3x50 performed on coffee table


The limiting factor on the vertical pulls seems to be my grip strength on the smooth dining room table. If I were to perform these on a Smith Machine or a TRX, my reps would no doubt increase, but this way should have a good carry over to climbing.

I reverted back to the step 1 jack knife squats to help to remobilize my talus.


Monday my reps were

Incline Pushups 40, 40, 50 performed on kitchen counter top

Knee Tucks 40, 30, 30 performed on top step of front porch


The last set of the incline push ups I simply forgot that it was only supposed to be a set of 40. One or two more weeks here and I should be ready to progress to the kneeling pushup. I'll do the exercise as planned, but have a few questions about this step of the progression. I'm curious why Coach Wade chose to use this as the third step instead of lowering the incline. Lowering the incline would keep the body position the same as well as the relationship between the hands and the feet, and the angle of movement. This exercise also seems like it could potentially put a lot of stress on the knees. I suppose I'm just a bit disgruntled after all of these years not allowing my volleyball kids to do them, and especially not allowing them to call them "girl pushups." Who knows though, if I progress through this step and it proves to be beneficial, "knee push ups" might find their way back into volleyball practices.