The 'Stache is Back!
Tuesday, May 13, 2008, 02:32 PM
;)
Yeah, the 'stache is back Baby! I know some of you have been wondering and disappointed that I haven't put up many pics in my recent posts, but the true reason is that I didn't want word getting out. It is full and fluffy, and now ready for public consumption. So...here you are. Enjoy.As for the wrestling...My hip is steadily improving and I'd say is at 80-90%. I still feel it sometimes, but am able to squat, power clean and wrestle...all very cautiously. My weights are WAY down on my cleans, so I have remind myself that right now it is almost another form of rehab as I get stronger in those positions and develop the muscles back to where they were pre-injury. As for wrestling, my hip has been feeling strong enough to wrestle; so yesterday, that is exactly what I did. Until I crunched my elbow about 3 minutes in. It hurts and is swollen, but seems to be one of those "bumps and bruises" kinda injuries rather than real injury. I should be out just a few days before get back to it.
My schedule for training for the OTTs involves utilizing my Cornell guys until they are gone (mostly they are leaving by this weekend), then working with Damion next until the 28th when we go to Overtime for a 10 day training camp which should have us prepared for battle.
In academic news, I can now in good faith type MS after my name, even though I have been doing so since I finished my coursework.
;)
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( 3.7 / 11 )Getting Back
Monday, May 5, 2008, 02:52 PM
Last week I rested. At least I rested my hip flexor. It is tough to remain inactive for too long, which is undoubtedly a good thing. Sunday was a travel/ Mario Kart day, Monday was Birthday celebrating, and then Tuesday was some light cardio along with light stretching. Wednesday I picked up some weights. I did some light high-pulls, mostly working ROM rather than any sort of weight. I did the same with VERY light squats, as that particular muscle is still quite limited in its strength and flexibility. Thursday I agilitized pretty hard, which for me really blows out my lungs. Damion joined me and we got a pretty decent cardio out of it. Friday Dam and I drilled; actually we more just went over some techniques from the tournament. It was a good focus, and I felt fairly sturdy, although still unstable in just a couple posich's. The essential part is that I hit the showers just as healthy as when I hit the mats (and I even was able to work some stuff out!) Saturday I felt good enough to play some competitive indoor soccer with the boyz (Bridge, Deej, Mack, Haammie, Trav, Cam and Corey Man son) without limiting myself toooo much. Once again I went home healthy but was able to stress my cardio, my leg endurance and most importantly work on my skillz. This week I plan to be on the mats much more. Today I lifted in the AM; squatting more than 135lbs for the 1st time in quite a while. I only surpassed that total by 90lbs, but squatting 2-plates for 4 sets of 10 gave me the Jell-O legs that makes your legs shock every step you take for the next hour. I can't wait for the pain to peak in 2-3 days. I also walking lunged, high-pulled heavy, bench pressed, incline bench pressed and did some weird push-up things. Overall, a pretty damn good lift. My hip felt pretty good squatting, but vulnerable lunging, but that's why I am doing it; I need to be strong in that specific ROM. I'll tell you what though; it's good to be back.
In about 10 minutes I am going to drill with one Mack Lewnes. He is a very competent driller, and I expect to have a pleasant afternoon drill with him. I plan to work some specific area of concern from the tourney (and before), and hopefully spare some areas too, health allowing. Either way, it should be lovely.
The rest of the week should be more of the same, as I am hopefully able to ramp it up a bit toward the end of the week. My feeling has been that my hip will be just about ready to go by the end of the week, and I will probably hold off going live until next week. My #1 priority though is "no setbacks".
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( 3.3 / 6 )Good Vegas results and a good weekend
Monday, April 28, 2008, 03:05 PM
I know some of you are concerned; I did not significantly injure myself this weekend. I defaulted for 3rd due to some strain and as precaution rather than a re-injury. Thanks for your concern.That being said, I had a pretty good weekend. I tried to be stoic going in, but I really did have a good deal of concern about qualifying for the OTT's, especially with the hip being what it was, so just making it in the top 7 was a relief. On top of that, I felt that I wrestled pretty well, losing a tight match to eventual champ Mo Lawal which gives me further confidence going into the final domestic tournament.
Right off the bat I drew Matt Pell, who cruised through the qualification tournament. I lost a 2nd period coin flip and subsequent clinch, but won the other two periods to make it through. Pell actually wrestled back tough and placed 6th.
In the quarterfinals, I drew Mo Lawal again, and lost another pretty close one. I was in on the period tying shot with 10 ticks left in the 2nd, when my hip gave out (because of imperfect positioning and his solid defense) and I fell to the mat while he spun around to move the score to 5-3. I think I can tighten that match up and really be in a position to win it if I can find a way into the finals of the OTT's.
On the way back, I beat Yonishonis, Varner and Padden. I felt great handfighting and moving, but didn’t have a great shot due to the hip strain, and once I placed, decided that with the re-injury of my hip before when it actually felt as if it was getting better, and the necessity of total victory at the OTT's (meaning a seed wouldn't effect whether I am victorious or not), so the safe path was the one I took. I felt weird doing it, since I don't really condone defaulting out of tournament, but I felt very strongly that this was the right move.
So I was pretty pleased placing fourth, hopefully putting me in a good place to do some damage at the OTT's. This combined with the eagerly awaited release of Mario Kart yesterday on wii and my birthday being today makes this weekend a pretty decent 3-day weekend.
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( 3.6 / 14 )Preparing for Saturday's Battle
Monday, April 21, 2008, 08:00 PM
While limiting my exposure to high-risk situations such as live wrestling, I am trying to fine-tune my skill and conditioning (individually) for this Saturday's US Open. I flew home Friday, and took off aside from an hour or so of Heat and Stim, stretching and Ice & Stim. Saturday was pretty much the same. Sunday I got a good 12 minutes of hard conditioning in on the Bormet Box Challenge and the UBE before I oversaw the execution of the FLWC's third Pee Wee Jamboree and then the regular FLWC practice. Today I got a good drill in with Damion in the AM, then a focused session with Mack in the PM. It was good, as he allowed me to just focus on high-need positions. I worked my short-offense scoring and my clinch defense mostly. I was able to escape *relatively* unscathed although I got a click of my hip-flexor at the end with Mack that was pretty unpleasant. Altogether though, I do think it's healing up, and GOD willing, will be good to go on Saturday.The rest of the week I will split between drilling through certain skill and saunaing. Unbelievably, there is no sauna on the entire Cornell University campus, but a local badass sports club (Island Fitness) was kind enough to throw a couple day passes my way. It's not so much a dire need to sauna now to get my weight down, but more in order to stay loose and get my body more accustomed to exposure to the heat of the sauna/ steam that I will encounter on Thursday and Friday as I do get down to weight.
I don't fly out until Thursday morning, and get there around 1pm, then hang out and work my weight down until Friday PM when I will spend the rest of the time eating, relaxing and finalizing some tactics for Saturday. Then comes Saturday, and where we all have to put it on the line.
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( 3.3 / 19 )All is Not well, but getting better.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008, 12:38 PM
After a morning of medium lifting, and protecting my hip (which felt tight but healing) and nearly a full practice of drills and hard goes on Monday, my hip flexor went down hard. As I was wrestling Terry Madden my hip gave way and I went down. It was similar to last time, but seemingly more severe. At the recommendation of my trusted "personal" Athletic Trainer, I have been icing the hell out of it, and resting it. Yesterday I biked, lifted and Aerodyne, and today I Sauna'd and stretched and am going to try my hand at light drilling this afternoon. As of right now, it feels at about the same state as when I originally injured it last week, so if that is the case, I will be good by next week and near full strength next weekend when it really matters.
I was contemplating not posting about this injury, but since there are six 84kg wrestlers here at this camp and so many others wrestlers here I'm sure that the word would get out anyways, so don't see a need to hide it from everyone. Maybe a bad move, but I wanted to keep my friends and family updated (without having to call my entire phonebook). So don't tell anyone.
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( 3.1 / 21 )2 days down, 1 day of soreness OFF
Sunday, April 13, 2008, 11:29 AM
Today is the only day of the camp that is completely off. And I am sore as hell. The good kind of sore though, where every muscle feels like it has been worked to fatigue in the last day of two. The body is as injury free as it has been in quite some time (the hip-flexor is coming around) so I cannot complain.A recap of what caused this:
Friday AM- We drilled many specific areas, and then went a bunch of situational live. I wrestled with Hrovat, and did real well on the situations on our feet, but pretty poorly on situations on the mat (if got turned a bunch, although I did a good bit of turning too).
Friday PM- More specific drilling followed by more situational live followed by 1 match. This practice took close to 2 hours, so it was a doozy. I went with Hrovat and Yonishonis, and wrestled pretty well, although not perfect.
Saturday AM- A forty minute free-drill which was actually a controlled specific drill. It's funny how that works out. The we did Functional Training. It was raining outside, so we had to modify it from Tire jumps to bleacher jumps, sledgehammers to sandbag clean & jerks, and medicine ball slams to medicine ball slams inside. Either way, it was pretty damn hard, and those jumps are a killer. If it doesn't sound that bad, let me know sometime, and I can help put you through it. It would be my pleasure (those of you at Cornell reading this, don't worry, you will get to do it next season for sure).
Saturday PM- More structured drilling, along with some zone and clinch work preceded the hard wrestling. Live consisted of 2 matches then even more conditioning. Coach Kerry Boumans somehow made the argument (not that he even needed to really, cause he is the coach) that Functional training isn't really conditioning, so we needed to condition after this practice. Anyway, the matches went ok, I went scoreless with Hrovat as the tides have turned somewhat and he has become the aggressor, and I am defending mostly. I have been making him come to me, and relying on my handfighting and defense. It resulted in a 0-0-0 score, although I think I may have come out on top with the clinches, but it was close. The second match was with Terry Madden, and I wrestled ok, although I got a little over aggressive in the 1st when it was 0-0 with just ticks left, and got scored upon, and didn't capitalize on a short-offense score in the 3rd when I was tired, which is when I really need to convert that position. Other than that, a good day of wrestling.
Conditioning was tough, although not impossible as we ran through a 6-minute reel-runner and Aerodyne circuit. It was tough and blew out the legs and lungs even further, and may have even added to some of the soreness I have right now.
What did not add to this soreness was the amazing Monopoly game that I played last night. My star must have been aligned (although I emphatically don't believe in anything supernatural like that, so take it as simply a figure of speech) because I wrapped up a 4-person game in just under 3 hours. This even includes the time to go get a broom and dustpan to clean up a broken jar of PB that fell off the top of my fridge. Pretty impressive. We have a rematch scheduled for after the sauna this afternoon, so I need to represent.
Then back at it Tomorrow, and Sean said it's gonna get tough.
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( 3.3 / 20 )Maintaining for the next camp
Wednesday, April 9, 2008, 11:34 AM
Things are good back here in Ithaca. I have been organizing some good workouts here, for myself and the club guys that are training for the upcoming spring tournaments. Some of the CU guys have been coming in to help which makes for a pretty good practice. When they don't, we get the usual Corey Manson (5'5", 150lbs) vs. Cam Simaz (6'1", 195lbs) which as you could imagine gets frustrating for both of them. I was able to work out with Kerber during one of these practices, and Damion in the morning yesterday, then will go with M. Moore this afternoon. I am trying to focus on the fundamentals and strategies that I worked back at O.T. and at the OTC way back when. My lifting has moved to a maintenance phase, against my will. I would like to be pushing it right now, especially since I am backed off a bit from hard wrestling (until I go back to Chicago tomorrow), but my hip flexor really limits that. I am able to High-pull pretty heavy, but can only squat conservatively. I have tried to pick up the conditioning component of S&C, and instead of lifting on Monday, I crushed myself with about 50 minutes of conditioning; included were agilities (ladder and box), tire jump/ burpie progression, ube and versa-climber. After this I was spent for about a day and a half.
Like I said, I head back to Overtime tomorrow to finalize everything for the US Open which is only 17 days away.
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( 3 / 20 )Back to Ithaca (after a pretty good camp and with an ok groin).
Friday, April 4, 2008, 09:06 PM
I got home this afternoon from a quick/long week and a half in Naperville. My groin is still a bit tender, but it held up through the remainder of camp. Here's how the camp finished up:Wednesday was another lift in the AM, then a good sauna in the PM. I was able to continue to get the ice on the groin area, and rest it for another day.
Thursday morning I drilled with Donny, We had a hard warm-up, then 30 minute free drill, which with Donny sometimes may as well be live with the way he club you when he's drilling. It is good though, and I enjoy drilling with him as much as anyone. After the drill, Sean turned what seemed to be a pretty ordinary practice into a sort of tough one by running us through about 25 minutes of situation drills. I was able to do about 2/3's of them, but when it came to the "down by 1 pt." kind of situation, I had trouble keeping my feet on the sweaty mats let alone take or defend a shot. So I aerodyne the remaining 7ish minutes of practice.
The PM was a structured drill, then a bunch more situations then a match. I was one of 3 odd-men-out during the drill, and 3-man drills suck. It happens nearly half the time in any practice (according to the odds of there being an odd # of guys), but it really blows having to rotate in doing technique and drills with 3 instead of the appropriate 2 man PAIRS that are standard in the sport of wrestling. You get cold and stiff, especially when you're already milking an injury as I was. Not to mention the 2 partners (to remain nameless to save me from another fiasco) were both awkward drillers. Live was good though, and I went with Canadian Olympian Travis Cross for most of it, then Matt Lackey for some of the situations at the end and clinches to finish practice. I didn't get off a ton of attacks, but I was much more aggressive and offensive with my handfighting which led to stronger positioning and better scoring opportunities. My groin held up through the entirety of this practice, which was a great sign.
------------
So I flew home today, and did not exercise, unless you count winning a thrilling 12-11 game of The Bigz on the wii against roommate Matt Bogumil. Tomorrow I will lift and get in some conditioning before I head to the spring opening of the Ithaca Farmer's Market. Club on Sunday, Lift and wrestle with Kerber on Monday, Wrestle with someone (probably Damion, if his body is recovered) on Tuesday, then back to Chi-town for O.T T.C. #2 to finalize my techniques, positions and tactics.
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