Wednesday 2-18-09

It was one of those mornings where you know you woke up at the exact time such that even if you burn through your morning routine, you will, at best, show up to your 8am class 5 minutes late. And thats what happened.


Sick, stressed, tired. When I got out of my last class at 8pm, a large part of me wanted to go home but the more influential part of me, specifically the part containing the balls, said different:

Warmup - good.
Thruster technique looks better, at lest with 65lb
Front squat 115lb abunch to get better at Thrusters. Ugh
Clean and Jerk technique - getting better

Pullup ladder - sucky.

5 Rounds:
10 reps 80lb Virtual Shoveling
10 54inch box jumps
10 pushups
Time: 9.25

rest

35 Clean and Jerks 115lb
Time: 16.04

rest

3 Rounds:
15 115lb deadlifts
15 GHD situps
Time: 8.32

Stationary bike for a while

I certainly noticed the lag from my shitty physical state and I certainly noticed a drog off of my ability to work as hard in the last 2 workouts. Even though one is supposed to rip through these "metcon" workouts, it feels good just to set a goal and finish it without great times or super high power outputs.

Time for me to fall asleep.

ugh.

A Posts a Brewin'

It certainly has been a while since I last posted. School, work, team, observer clinic at Trouble in Vegas, sailing, getting accepted into grad school, running PresDay, being sick ... Ive been busy.

There has been lots going on in my life and in the Ultimate word. I can't wait to get it on the blog but idk when Im gonna have time: Ive been concentrating hard on a few things and that means a bunch of other stuff has fallen by the wayside (at least fallen away from the minimal attention I normal devote in order to keep endevors afloat). Blogging should probably be lower on the totem pole than staying enrolled in school.


So instead of a real post, I just want to direct you to what I find to be one of the truest things ever said about peak profomance (directed at Ultimate, applicable to many things):

"Stop Thinking" by Matt Mackey

If you read one thing about how to perform well in ultimate, let it be this. I am particularly enammored with this essay because I read it directly after PresDay which was the first tournament in which I actually felt I played very well. Reading it, I could not stop saying "YES, YES, YES! He is so Right!". I had just felt EXACTLY what he describes and it makes so much sense. On Sunday I would see my cutter and the disc would magically leave my hand and enter his without concious thought. It was amazing, it was "in the zone", it was flow, and Matt captures that state perfectly. Stop reading this and read his post.



PS- Watch this TED talk that Mackey links to. If you have any intillectual curiosity at all, the 19 minutes spent watching the video will probably be your best time investment all day (especially if you are a procrastinating college student)

PPS- More Mackey


PPPS - If you are SD this weekend, come to the Squid's Beer Pong Tournament at my house, 2pm Saturday.


PPPPS- Our new jerseys look pretty fly, no?

Team Mental State at Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara Invite was good. Came in 11th, took 1st in our Pool over Arizona, Clairmont and Santa Clara, and left with 6th. Yeah, we could have done better: losses to LPC and Tide were very frustrating. But overall, Im happy with our result.

The thing I am most happy about is the mental state we had as a team during the Clairmont game. We warmed up intense and focused. We played the first half intense and focused. He huddled intense and focused. We ended the game intense and focused. Honestly, I have a really hard time remembering Squid games with mental focus as good as this one.

We are a better team than them, yes*. Our athletes are bigger and better(finally now that Stout and Jughead have left) as is our training and coaching, but those advantages have failed us before when we didn't have it together mentally. In this game we played to our abilities, the entire game, and the score showed this. 13-4. I have always noticed that the Squids would not blow out teams, even when they were better than them. This happened because with a 2 point lead came jokes and relaxed focus. We'll, now we know what its like to play the entire game with the same focus.

Truthfully, it was hard to stay focused. I did have to constantly remind people to keep the focus on this game that, even if we are ahead, is not over till its over. I did have to remind myself to not watch other games going on around us or get lazy with my throws. But we did, and it should be obvious to us all what that was like and what mental strength that took.


Our last opponent on Saturday was Santa Clara and this game reinforces lessons about focus. They were not as skilled as Clairmont and in fact lost to Clairmont 13-6. Instead of repeating our mental dominance from the first 2 games, we kinda just played the game. 13-7. We didnt really earn many turns, they mostly just gave up the disc. Yeah we won, and by a decent margin, but I hope everyone felt the difference in the team's mental state. It is real and it IS a choice that we make.

Sunday we had LPC. There is a lot to say about the game and they are very skilled so I dont want to take anything away from them, but our mental state played a big roll in the loss. No energy, no sense of urgency, no sustained fire, little focus during the first half. We did better in the second half but its the same old story: If we had played the first like the second we would have won. If we came out Sunday morning like we did Saturday, I am convinced our Sunday result would have been different. No reason we couldn't bring the fire on Sunday. In fact, Sunday should be its own motivation to bring it. But we just didn't.

The Tide game for 5th place? Same story as LPC.




Hopefully we take from the tourney the recognition that there is such a thing as team mental state. We create it and we have power over it IF we acknowledge it and its importance.



* - I actually really like the Braineaters and have for a while. They have a good program with lots of potential. That being said, please, someone slap Markum in the face and tell him to play hard. Remind him of how much fun it is to run one's self ragged instead of walking and yelling IN SUPPORT of your teammates instead of at them.

ps- you can check out a fuller tourney summary on the Air Squid Blog.

Ochem Lab

I am going to need a lot of help with my O-Chem lab. This quarter is gonna suck. I honestly would not be opposed to less standard methods of getting a passing grade in it. Trying to do chemistry after a weekend of disc and a sleepless night writing a paper is not fun or safe.

The Southwest Men

3 Bids, 11 Teams in the running, Regionals in Colorado

Alphabetized so no one gets mad:

• Arizona - Break out year last year
• Clairmont - Best run in their history last year, sweet throws from young players
• Colorado - Duh, its Mamabird
• Colorado State Always top 7 at regional
• Irvine -SB Invite Qualifier Champs
• Long Beach - SoCal Warm Up Champs
• San Diego State - SoCal Warmup Runners Up
• San Luis Obispo - Tied for 3rd at Sean Ryan this year
• Santa Barbra - Duh, its Tide
• UCLA - Wins over good teams at Sean Ryan this year
• UCSD - Duh, its the Squids

There are the old standbys, there are the up-in-comers. I honestly feel that all these teams have a shot. This region is gonna be a dogfight.

College Champs, short

Great news concerning College National came yesterday.

20 teams, 2 bids per region, 4 strength bids awarded based on the previous year's performance.

Basically, everyone who has thought about the bid system has come to the conclusion that it needs to be fixed in some way. Expanding nationals is certainly a good move: when the 16 bid nationals was instituted there were less than 200 open teams - now there are more than 500. Not everyone will agree about the method of bid distribution and there will always be teams that don't make it to the show that "should" have and teams there that aren't as good as those that aren't. Still, it seems that when a "great" team gets left out, its the second team in a region with only one bid that year. See Tide's 14-16 loss to 'Bird in 07 when Colorado took the only Southwest bid to the Finals. Tide will (and should) always contend that they could have been a major player at Nationals, perhaps a semi finalist. That doesnt seem to happen with the 3rd place team missing a bid.

I am very happy: The UPA actual seems to be actively changing in response to players want. While I still have mixed emotions about C1 and Cultimate, let no one say their brash actions provided stimulus for the UPA to work on some problems quickly.

This news makes SB Invite all the more exciting. Its gonna be a show in Goleta this weekend.
Peace

Santa Barbra Invite

SB Invitational is this weekend and I am not sure how I am feeling. Last year, the Squids won this tournament; it is my only competitive tourney win. This year we are seeded low, are a different team, and have high aspirations. I am thinking about receiving the first pull on Saturday and seeing 70 yards, 7 defenders, and 15 other teams standing between me and my goal. To be honest, I feel a great deal of gravity surrounding the situation - more than you'd think would be surrounding a Ultimate Frisbee tournament.

The truth is, I have never been a vital part of a team before. Last year (and in previous years) I played my role, but because of the other throwers we had on the team, my role was minor. In soccer, I never was good enough to be on the starting line up. My whole life, I was a secondary player on the team - I was able to watch my teammates wrap up the games we won and be responsible for the games we lost. But not this year. This year I am the veteran, I am the quarterback, I am the thrower. I take full ownership in my team's performance.

So I actually have some jitters. Butterflies. Yeah, im actually a little nervous. But its a good nervous. Its got to be that same nervous that comes before any performance - a test, a show, a date. The key thing is to let body do what I know I have trained it to do.

So I focus in. Yeah, winning the tournament is the outcome goal (and it is attainable), but thinking about that goal isn't going to help me do that - that thinking is the opposite of focusing on the moment, the task at hand.

How can I find this focus?

I think about the physical game.

• What are the particular physical actions I will be taking this weekend?
• What state is my body in? Where are my injuries and how can I work around them?
  
• What will I be doing on offense to get the disc?
• What cuts will I be looking for? When? How will I communicate to my cutters?
  
• What throws will I need to make?
• How will I play downfield defense on particular matchups?
• What will my mark look like? How will this change with field position? With team strategy?
• How will I fuel my body with food and liquid? How will I rest it? Help it recover?
  

I think about the mental game.

• How will I eliminate distractions durring warmup?
• How will I avoid frustration on offense and instead of throwing up prayers, keep doing the hard work till we score?
• How will I react to teammates screwing up?
• How will I react to lucky or unlucky breaks?
• How will I participate from the sidelines?
• How will I act when we are up by a lot? Down by a lot?
• How will I coach/teach younger players?
• How will react to a win or a loss?
• How will I feel about playing teams I am rivals with? Playing teams I have friends on?
  
• How will I know when to talk to my team and when to shut my mouth?
• How will I prepare to feel the unexpected?

By asking myself these questions I put my mind exactly where it should be before this tournament. With each answer, I put myself on the fields in Goleta - I am ready for what is going to happen there. Instead of some far off thing to think about ( like defending our title), I have concrete, individual thoughts that I actually can grasp and wrap my head around. I said earlier that I felt a lot of gravity surrounding the tourney and that may not be particularly helpful; I don't know. I do know, however, that there isn't any gravity surrounding my thoughts of what its like to throw that IO break up the lane after a swing where my mark has to blast past me to stop the around. There aren't any butterflies surrounding thoughts of how I am going to be warming up. I know how I am going to react to a teammate turfing a throw at 10-10 and I know how I am going to react to bad calls and I know how I am going to react to game point.

I am ready