Wednesday, September 23, 2009

No Sunrise in the Overcast AM




Just about the whole team is finished but a few are still working their way up Brazers way. That hill is the steepest sustained .9 miles I have ever run up. It is the last leg of our weekly three mile sunrise loop and (sunrise or not) today is the fourth time around for this fall. Just another morningsport session for SMS Snowboarding...Just a reminder of the work being put in at this moment.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

These Days



These days are our anatomical adaptation phase of dryland training. This phase is five weeks beginning after testing. At the end of the period we will raise levels of difficulty. As always the focus is on function first. This means that isolated muscle exercises are rare while dynamic movements are featured daily. That refers to both the warm up and body of each training session. When we do plyometric training we keep the number of reps low. Our "strength" program is aimed at the whole body and the weights are never above 80% of max. Our aerobic training is primarily to train for training. This means that the muscle cells and lungs of a runner do not help a snowboarder stick tricks but a base in that aspect of fitness means I can keep functioning at a high level when hiking a pipe or a long day of laps adds up. Stretching this line of thinking I can say too that "anatomical adaptation" is a phase of training for the harder training to come. So when you ask your daughter how much she benched today and she says it's not the weight or number of reps but the form that is important now you know where she's coming from.
The casual way of describing whats going on out there is that we are running and jumping, doing yoga, walking tight ropes and lifting weights. We are keeping it mixed well and the kids are doing well. Yesterday we played on the new obstacle course in the woods out back.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Fall Dryland Update




The kids are back, happy and hungry to resume their mission. Fitness Testing is wrapped up except for for today's makeup session and the results show they are ready to go. Six of seven returning girls put up their fastest time for September 1.5 mile tests. The same ratio put up their best bench press numbers for September and that pattern holds with little variation across nine separate testing categories.Very strong show put on by Makayla Tierney.
Likewise the young men's group came in ready with four guys under ten minutes. They were led by Joe mensch's 9.10 and Connor Hudson's 9.27. The sub ten crew wrapped up with Eric B and James Haffner at 9.56. That number is particulairly good news considering that EB is in love and JH is back strong from his ACL surgery.
I like to say that there are no bad september tests because the results at this time of year are just for moving forward. That advice is even more relevent for new testers of which we have Nine. These guys and gals are learning the tests and the process. It's a part of thier competitive development and therein is a value of testing that begins before measuring fitness. Out of the new athletes Serena and Spencer Shaw are already putting up some of the teams stronger results.
The Regular Dryland training is now in effect and a big Thanks goes out to Jo Stephenson for coming into morningsport at 6:30 am twice a week for PowerYoga. I think it is a great addition to our program. The flexibility and core work in yesterdays session was priceless.