Tuesday, March 25, 2008

spring break 08

woo hoo.
let's see.
this week we had 30 on monday,and 14 today, which is not bad. we got chased off our fields (well, not chased, our fields were in use by a softball tournament) b/c we're on borrowed ground what with our entire multi-acre facillity falling into a sinkhole and being part of a 6 million dollar recovery effort. i'm not exaggerating.

i prefer very little structure over spring break. i do keep things moving, move the kids through games (dutch, mini, full field), and today, i regulated the scrimmage with drills (brief) and discussion to try and get crisper play.

we started with 50, i suspect, i'll take only one boys and one girls team to state, but possibly a jv boys team.

we'll have for shure an A and B co-ed team, but maybe an A and two JV teams (i'll probably weight them evenly, or on academic years to give the froshies some developmental play).

i'm going to play vertical stack, b/c i think it improves overall field sense more than H-stack, and the valley teams ALL play H-stack, so why, in our shortened season, develop a weaker version of the game the teams we'll play will play.

personally, my race season is basically over: ski'd a terrible 25km this weekend (Actually, an awesome course, etc). I finally got a battery for my heart rate monitor, and found that I was training too hard on my easy days, which is really bad. But fair is fair, last year, I never had a bad race, always felt sharp. This year, I always felt flat, and never had a good race (hampered by injury, i thought, but now, I know, I blew my training).

spring break, today, i skied (truly easy) for 2 hours, 20 or 25km, ran for 20 minutes during practice, lifted. yesterday, ski'd for 1.5 hours, lifted legs. sunday rest, saturday race, friday, ran and played ultimate (too hard) (duh, dumb), thursday, frisbee, and skiing, wednesday, ran 5 miles hard, drills, ski'd (toured) hard, set a new PR on a climb up the slope on skis (dumb on race week)... etc.

if it snows more than 4 inches tonight i'm skiing early, otherwise, sleep in and swim.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

thursday practice, etc.

30 mph winds, transitioning to sleet and snow at the end. 50 kids.
the plan involved 'looper' drills, short drills, dutch, and scrimmage in 'stations' with kids cycling through.

the winds made me shift to short pass drills and dutch, with some mini thrown in. i want the kids to feel success right now, and the high winds force me to revise things. it's actually going well. the large numbers of of kids are creating a 'positive feedback loop' and there is a lot of success in throwing.

the scrimmages (usually shortfield 6v6) are showing some good defense, in a relatively unstructured setting. i stress to the athletes that their focus should be on

throwing
catching
defense

we'll keep it pretty light for another week, then spring break will be the 'mini-camp' we'll increase field size, and focus on flow drills and full scrimmage.

track coaching (the other days) is going well, but mostly i'm just running 30 minutes with the kids. the sprint interval days are on my off days (the ones i coach frisbee) so i'm still doing my intervals on snow. 5x3min last week on some day i'd run sprints with the kids. so i'm not getting morbidly obese.

friday was a day off from school, so friday and saturday i would tour (hike up and ski down) for a few hours. total climb time, 1:45 each day, with ski time too. sunday (today) i did a total of 1:00 of climb time, then a 1:15 total time of skating. friday night i lifted core, pt stuff for foot (balance and foot excercises) (legs (squats, let extension, curls, calves)), today i did the same core/pt stuff, with upper body stuff (chest (push up and machine), pull (machine), pulldown and chinup, dip, millitary press, vertical row)... pretty wiped. up at 6 each day,

if i yearn for anything, it's the first saturday where i can't ski, so i can sleep until i wake up before excercising. of course, that can wait until june.

t

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

frisbee begins.

lessee, 3rd practice, something like...18 'varsity' and 30 'jv'... there was some overlap among the teams.

throw
run 800
jv throw, v marking drill
run 600
jv do handler cut, then continuation cut, varsity do 3 man flow drill (2 versions)
varsity scrimmage
jv scrimmage, with one group doing a conditioning (dutch) drill

i pretty much just let the jv play with little correction. trying to observe players, and see abillity.

varsity, i played a couple points, stopped after a bit to work on some things, ran an endzone drill, and talked about power positions.

thursday will be stations: scrimmage, drill, dutch, drill, mini. should be fun, and hard.

personally, skiing, still, went up after practice for an hour, then weights.
i don't know how much i've ski'd this year, i'm not logging it all.. 90 plus, i think... doesn't count 2 a days.

weight routine, right now, 3x per week, 3x light weights (ie., 3x15 130 squats, machines for upper body, or stand on one leg and do row and press). Next week, I'll move to 3x10, more like 150, then to 3x8, then 3x4... then back to 3x 15, hopefully more like 3x140 or so... ski wednesday, not thursday. conferences in the evening. maybe night ski.