Motivation from Cap'n America

The two comments from the last post were from my camp friends JoshO and Jimmie Banta. If you haven't read them I suggest you do-they were both pretty funny. Banta chose to post anonymously because he has horrible grammar and can't spell Bela Karolyi. Of course, if I couldn't spell the name of the greatest gymnastics coach ever to grace this earth, I would post anonymously too.

Reading those comments from my camp friends reminded me of another camp friend, someone you might call a "beast" at working out, Seth Brownold. Seth works out more than any non-professional athlete I know, and at the tender age of 21 has taken up triathlons as a hobby. We affectionately call him Cap'n America. His facebook profile has the quote "We forge our bodies in the fire of our will." from Mr. Han in Enter the Dragon. I often think about this when I'm lacking strong motivation to work out and it always gives me that extra push. Thanks Seth, and thanks Mr. Han.

I have to say, though, Banta's motto of ABWO, or Always Be Working Out, has motivated me too. It's on my mind constantly and I have found myself doing extra sit-ups and some extra running in my down time. Nothing gets me going like the blog ramblings of a Jersey insurance salesman.

This week, training has gone fine. I only say fine because I'm not allowed to sprint still and I don't like the idea that I'm not allowed to do some aspect of training. Monday found Hang and I doing cone drills and more quick-feet movements. The cone drills Eric set up had us bobbing and weaving between poles and cones in these odd, twisted movements. Shuffling between six foot high poles while your trainer cheers you on made me feel like I was in the Westminster Dog Show. Unfortunately, the "treats" Eric had for us before, during, and after the cone drills were not food treats but sets of stairs. While Hang is supposedly a highly sought after baseball recruit, his staircase running skills were not what got him there. I frequently found myself waiting for him to go so I wouldn't run into him. That being said, bring us into the weight room and his leg power makes me look like a ten year old Swedish girl. Power is the name of his game, speed is the name of mine.

I missed Wednesday's training because I had a rare opportunity to accompany my dad and his friend to a Counter-Terrorism Conference held at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. It was really interesting and thought-provoking and I don't regret my decision to go whatsoever. I was able to go to the gym earlier that day and work out my chest and hamstrings so the day was not a total loss.

Today's training consisted of ladder drills, stairs, side squats, and medicine ball tosses. I was quite tired from not getting much sleep Tuesday night so my running was not up to par. We did end on a high note, though, when Eric had me do twenty yards of Death Planks and then 2:30 worth of different ab drills. He told me that those were some of the best Death Planks that he had ever seen. Ben-1, Death Planks-9,000. I'm on the board!

On my way home from training I was finally able to get on the phone with Eric Bernotas-the current US Champion. We talked for a half-hour about a number of different topics within skeleton. It was really informative and he was so friendly and helpful. He basically told me that the 30m sprint is definitely the most important test and that a good time on that will keep the coaches looking at you. He said there are three categories you can fall in to; Slow, Average, or Fast. I'm obviously trying to put myself in the Fast category but he also said overall sprinting speed is not the same as sled-pushing speed. He told me that it's a learned skill and that even after five years, he's still getting the hang of it. A good example of this is when he compared himself to another teammate of his. Eric can run a 3.79 30m time, while his friend can run a 3.95. However, if you put them on a push-start, the friend can outrun Eric by 1/10 of a second. So, obviously, the two different sprints correlate but are not exact. I can conservatively run a 3.59, so I think I'll be in good shape to get the coach's to notice me. I can definitely run faster, but there's a real question of how healthy my hamstring will be when I run. Eric told me that the surface you run on is a basketball court, which is bad news, since the floor gives and it is by no means an ideal condition. Even still, I plan on easily running faster than their times.

And finally, some pics from the training session my dad came to:

This is me during the side-lunges drill with the band attached to my ankles.

Me running the stairs. My dad took about 160 shots of me running the stairs.

These two above are from the medicine ball toss and spike drill.

These three below are a good series of the medicine ball side-toss drill.

And these last two are of me doing bicycle kicks and oblique crunches.

In other news, this site sucks for trying to upload photos. I have no idea why the picture comments are squeezed into the side like that. Sorry folks.

Let's Get Down To Business, To Defeat...The Hang

That's one of my favorite Disney songs and it works well since I'm competing against Hang (pronounced Hung) during my training. While it's good motivation for my training, the training itself has not been going as well as I had planned.

Last Wednesday I re-tweaked my hamstring. Hang and I had gone through a tough workout doing lots of quick-feet type work on the step ladder. My hamstring has felt great ever since I got back from Europe two weeks ago and it has not given me any soreness whatsoever. At the very end of the workout Eric had us doing 70% sprints and on the first one I pulled up lame. I was really frustrated because it didn't hurt whatsoever, I wasn't pushing it, and then all of a sudden it just seized up on me. We originally thought it was a spasm, which did happen, but I strained it as well. I was supposed to get tested on my 30m time the next day, but with the injury it was a no-go.

That Thursday I scheduled a massage for that morning. Eric told me that I had really tight "ilial-tibial bands" and that a massage would not only help my hamstrings but those as well. I asked to repeat what was tight and he again said, "ilial-tibial bands." I told him "Bless you! Now what is tight again?" Making sure he wasn't pulling my leg...get it? get it?...I asked the masseuse if those things actually existed. They do, and mine are tight. Go figure. The masseuse gave my legs a good working over and then offered to stretch me to make me more flexible...this was quite awkward. If getting your legs thrown left, right, up, down and at painful angles all over while you've effectively got a tiny towel covering your bits and pieces isn't awkward, then I don't know what is. It did help though and my legs felt better after she was done.

Later on in the day I went to training over at Parisi and had my dad come to watch and take pictures. I'm still working on uploading the photos but they will be posted shortly. Having my father come to watch me train was a lot of fun. My mom posted earlier about how I certainly don't get my enthusiasm for hard training from her, and while some things are unique about me, my training ethic is most definitely culled from my dad. After he returned from Vietnam, my dad was in charge of a reserve Marine platoon and would have to lead them in physical fitness training because they were tested throughout the year. My dad prided himself on being better than anyone else in his platoon in every aspect. He would do more pull-ups, sit-ups and he would run faster and farther than anyone else. At the end of a distance run he would run back and encourage those that had yet to finish. He then waited for everyone else to leave before he would have my mom come bring the car as close to his building as possible and she would help him essentially crawl to the car. He now can't play sports and can't run at all...ahh what a life.

Though the posts that people write are encouraging, nothing beats having a family member present while you're training. It gives me that little extra "oomph" to do that much more. Eric took it "easy" on me that day and had me do about 5 sets of stairs, medicine ball throws-horizontal, medicine ball tosses-vertical, and side lunges-killer. Each set of stairs involved me doing 10 flights of 21 steps, the medicine ball throws had me in a planted position throwing the ball sideways, the medicine ball tosses had me squatting and heaving it up then squatting and throwing it down, and the side lunges had me going about 45 yards back and forth with a thick band around my ankles. Then, of course, came the abs. Eric wanted to show off to my dad so he had me do 320 different crunches and then 15 yards of Death Planks. Eric got a kick out of it. I, on the other hand, just wanted to kick him.

Pics and another post coming tomorrow!

28 Days Later...

28 days from now...and I can't wait!

Unfortunately, the enigmatic Philly weather decided to toy with my training and last Wednesday it went from 67 degrees and relatively sunny as I walked in to my training, to 43 degrees and raining when I walked out. That night an ice storm came through and it prevented me from training on Friday.

Since I had some extra rest time, including a little St. Patrick's Day celebration with some of my good friends, Eric felt it prudent that today be a little bit of a punishment to whip me back into shape. We had an intense day of power work with tire flips, sledgehammer swings, hitting a heavy bag with a bat, and medicine ball throws both up and down. Not to mention sled-pulling, which naturally turned my legs into jello. The good part about this is that Eric has noticed marked improvement in my strength and, while the sled pulls and everything may hurt, it will only make me that much more explosive on my starts. We finished the session with 300 different types of crunches with Eric showing me even more punishing variations on the ones I know. I love it. We are training Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday this week and on Thursday we will be timing my 30 meter and 40 yard dashes. I'm really eager to see what I get because my hamstring is feeling great and I've lost a decent amount of weight the past week (even with the wing-eating from this weekend). I'm also going to ask my Dad to take some pictures of the training facility and of some of the workouts I do so I can post them up on the blog. He's been bugging me to let him watch my training so I figure he can help out while he's there.

On another note- I'd like to extend a huge thank-you to my lovely cousin Jamie Lieb Arslanian. Jamie has been either interning or working for SEI Investments the past couple of years and realized that Denise Bernotas-the sister of the current US Skeleton Champion Eric Bernotas- worked at SEI with her. Jamie e-mailed Denise and the two of them put Eric and I together. I'm now corresponding with him regularly through e-mail asking him around a million questions about the sport. Mainly-is it noticeable if you pee your pants during a run? Also, can the spectators see your tears and hear your screams of horror during the race? He's been very helpful and I'm very grateful to him for his advice. However-it couldn't have been done without the help of Jamie and Denise. Thank you both so much!

In related news-the US Bobsled and Skeleton Team just captured the World Cup Season title with 45 medals over the course of the season. The USA team is now considered the top team in the world and if their success continues they will be the team to beat in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Check out their website at www.usbsf.com and click on the video-it's exciting. Zach Lund captured the World Cup Skeleton title while Eric B. came in 2nd. U-S-A! U-S-A!

More later this week-don't be afraid to post!

Push it to the Limit

Happy March Madness everyone! Quite possibly my favorite time of year-temperatures rising, spring around the corner, and upsets left and right from Thursday-Sunday 12 hours a day.

Contrary to popular belief, the real world still exists during the NCAA basketball tournament so I have still been training. This Tuesday I had an off day from Eric at Parisi and was able to do my own thing. The weather was fantastic, about 70 degrees and sunny, so I took advantage of that and went running around the mountain in the morning. Nothing crazy, just some light conditioning. I then went to the gym and did some upper body work. Since I'm trying not to gain weight I've lowered the amount of weight that I lift and increased the number of times I lift them. This should maintain my strength and give me more definition but not give me any more muscle. In the afternoon I ran over to the park on my mountain and did some plyometrics and worked on my sprinting starts. Plyometrics, according to Wikipedia, "is a type of exercise that uses explosive movements to develop muscular power, the ability to generate a large amount of force quickly. Plyos involve a lot of reps and can tire out your legs pretty fast. I've got five exercises I cycle through and since I haven't done them in awhile my calves were pretty sore after. I've been hesitant to work out my legs with weights in the gym because I feel that that was a catalyst in my hamstring originally being sore and hurt. I've therefore decided that for my legs I'm only going to do plyos since they involve only my body weight.

Yesterday, Wednesday, I had another speed training session with Eric at Parisi. My baseball counterpart, Hang, came in earlier so I had a one-on-one session. I really prefer these a lot more since Eric can really pay attention to my mechanics and the rest time in between exercises is less since Hang isn't around. No knock against him, he's a great guy, but who wouldn't prefer more attention in a training session? This training session was about jumping power and explosiveness, which I should have known since that was the one thing I worked on the day before. Despite being a little bit sore, we warmed up and tested my vertical jump. I've increased it to 27" but that is still the 30" that I need to get for the tryout. Eric and I still feel I can easily attain that since I'll be cranking up my workouts in the month to come. One good thing that came out of this was that my muscle endurance was good since I was basically able to jump the same height at the end of the training session than from the beginning.

Spurred by my less-than-stellar vertical jump along with the realization that the tryout was 33 days away, I really pushed myself in the workout. Something inside my head just clicked and I decided whatever Eric gave me wasn't enough. When he had me run 10 flights of stairs for conditioning, I thought that it wasn't enough so I did another 5 flights taking them two stairs at a time. 21 stairs, 15 times? 315 stairs no problem. He then had me finish my workout with an ab routine consisting of Russian Twists and sit-up throws. Each of these exercises involved a medicine ball and after 150 reps I decided that another 50 crunches couldn't hurt. Eric was happy with how hard I was pushing myself and said I should come in on my own more often.

Since I've missed a few training sessions I decided I would make one of them up today. I went in and met up with Eric around 12:30 to do a full sprinting workout. Today's workout was all about starts so it was just a barrage of different types of sprints. My favorite involved me taking a medicine ball, squatting down and then exploding up and tossing it as high as I can and then taking off and sprinting before it hit the ground. It was really exhausting but it was fun to try and hit the ceiling (I never did). At the end Eric had me run through eight different sit-up variations with 30 reps each with the promise of a special exercise at the end. Little did I know.

Eric showed me this exercise called "The Caterpillar" which will heretofore be referred to as "The Death Plank." The Death Plank involves me starting with my toes on a line and my hands on the ground in front of my toes. From there, I walk my hands out one at a time until I'm in a push-up position. Then, I shimmy my hands simultaneously as far out as they can go until my face is about two to three inches off the ground. Then, you somehow walk your feet up inch by inch until they're about a foot behind your hands and you go again. I had to do The Death Plank for 15 yards and it was by far the hardest exercise I have ever done. Your entire body is literally shaking violently trying to maintain your balance and not fall down. Just imagine-you're supporting yourself only on your toes and hands with your arms almost fully-extended above your head. I'm pretty sure the Geneva Convention outlawed this type of torture at some point-we need to research this so I don't have to do it again.

Ending on a positive note I've lost 6 pounds in 3 days on my diet. I'm probably going to gain that back tonight while I eat wings watching March Madness, but who cares. After The Death Plank, I deserve a reward befit for a king.

I'm an idiot...

Hey everyone...I'm an idiot. I know I haven't written in two weeks so I profusely apologize. I've been traveling a lot and just generally not writing, obviously. I promise that from here on out I am fully committed to this website.

Unfortunately, exactly two weeks ago today I tweaked my hamstring running at Parisi. It had felt sore for the previous 4 days and I hurt it when we were testing my 30m time. We've known from the very start from everyone (Parisi, Kristen, myself) that I'm not an exceptionally flexible person. However, I really need to improve that so that I can push my body to the limit without injuring myself. Eric put it best when he said that athletes "are constantly on the line between injuring themselves and doing something great." It feels fine now, but I've decided to add on some yoga a couple of times a week to help my general flexibility. This should be quite interesting because I've seen the yoga classes at my gym and I will definitely be the only one in the class with testoterone in their blood. I hear great things about it though and am excited to start.

This morning I met with my dietician to go over the supplements she put me on and to review my diet. She has me on three supplements; an ActiveMan's general vitamin, a glucosamine vitamin, and flax seed oil. The general vitamin is pretty self-explanatory, but the glucosamine and flax are really the intriguing ones. Glucosamine helps lubricate joints and helps prevent injury to the joints, all great things. Flax seed oil is completely filled with Omega-3 fatty acids, which, although they sound bad, are really very good for you. It makes sure your body is getting the necessary fat to burn so that it doesn't burn muscle when you work out and it also helps glycogen replenishment which is a key to muscle recovery. Ariel gave me a 12 page article on it which I will probably read later tonight.

Last night I was perusing the official bobsled and skeleton website, www.bobsleigh.com, and found out that there actually is a limit to the sled/sledder weight. The US site really gives no information on the actual sport itself so I was quite happy with the information overdose that bobsleigh.com provides. I discovered that the sled and pusher can only weigh at most 115kg (about 253 lbs) in international competition. I came to Ariel with this information and we decided to change my diet around a little bit so that I can lost some weight in these next five weeks. I am currently at 207 pounds and our goal is to lose about 1-2 pounds per week so that I can drop below 200. We changed my diet and decided to add some extra running (about 4 hours per week) to accomplish my weight-loss goal. For fun I weighed myself about an hour after my Parisi session today and saw that I was down to 203. I don't think this weight-loss thing will be a problem.

After the meeting with the dietician I finally came back to Parisi after a two-week hiatus. I was originally only supposed to miss four training sessions but last Friday Eric had to cancel so I couldn't come back until today. Eric was very conscious of my hamstring (which feels fine) and he had Hong and I warm up extra long today. After our warm-up we had an intense session of sprinting and stadium stairs. We were working on conditioning today and since it was so nice out Eric ran us through a series of sprints out on the soccer field combined with stadiums steps up and down the bleachers. While at times I hated the workout, it really felt fantastic to get back out there. We then got to do some work balancing on a physio-ball and then we did lots and lots of crunches, as always. The physio-ball, for those that might not know, is basically a giant rubbery-type ball that people use to work on their balance. We did maybe 5-10 minutes of just trying to balance on our knees with our hands raised and I had a lot of fun with it falling down and getting back up. Eric said he filmed the training session and will sell the physio-ball footage if we ever cross him.

I plan on doing a plyometric workout later tonight with some light cardio and tomorrow more of the same. I will also be heading out to my high school's track to work on my starts and to get in some extra running. Later that night is potentially my first yoga session so it should be an interesting day. I'll keep you posted!