Hitting the gym
After a groin injury at SUG that I, in retrospect, was stupid enough to play through kept me out of action for a month, I've been smashing out some gym sessions in the last week and a bit to try and get my body working properly. Now while KFC may work for Matt Dowle, it has become rather apparent it hasn't worked for me in the past and isn't likely to in the future. The biggest barrier between me and gym work has been motivation, but after slugging out the first week I noticed some improvements this morning. I can push out 80kg on the leg weights, bowl over 10km on the bike in 20min without killing myself and did a sub-4min 1km on the rowing machine - something I haven't done since I was in school. I'm feeling good in that I'm rarely out of breath and can recover quickly, but the muscles themselves are rather fatigued at the end of the day.
Motivation
Going back to the motivation, I've found that training and preparation for this year's AUG is more "fun" than "chore" as it has been in previous years. This definitely is a product of the buzz around our team. While our "Out For Justice" motto gets mocked a bit, it really has generated the most excitement BUUF has seen in ever. It's not just at training and in games - things like emails, texts, Facebook chats, IMs at work, chats at uni - everything generates more excitement. And this generates motivation to train harder and get everything right for Gold Coast.
Playing with 6 players
No team in the recent history of ultimate ever trains for situations where they only have 6 players. We were unfortunate enough on the weekend at the Victorian Mixed Championships to be stuck with 6 on the field for Saturday (4:2) because we were pretty lazy in organising the team. This forced us to experiment a lot. And because you never prepare for this, your abilty to adapt and your familiarity with your teammates is incredibly important. Early on, our offence had little structure outside string plays, and our defence was the same, varying between man, zone and poaching from pass to pass. It worked a lot, because by the same token a lot of teams don't prepare to play AGAINST 6 players. MUCUS were the only team that really used their advantage effectively, with their spare girl poaching the lane on D, and one girl going long and one cutting under on O, leaving the third girl on her own in the middle of the field. We came out of Saturday with a 2-2 record.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I have had the opportunity of playing with and against 6 players on a number of occassions. I don't mind it but it does mean that noone can slack off and tends to mean everyone remains more active to make up for the extra missing person. Playing against 6 can take some skill for the same reason as above. suddenly a pass that would have gotten past a slacking defender is intercepted by a desperate defender.
Post a Comment