He's Like a Sex Tornado On Ice!

Last night I saw the movie "Blades of Glory" with my friend Brint Markle. I have to say, it's a really funny movie and I'd recommend it to anyone. One of the quotes in the movie is when the figure skating announcers are describing Will Ferrell's figure skating character, Chazz Michael Michaels, and they say, "He's like a sex tornado on ice!" While I was laughing pretty hard at the time, I only hope that one day someone will describe me like that. One day...one day.

This past Wednesday Hang and I got a new training partner. His name is Brendan and he graduated last year from a high school out in Lancaster, PA and is looking to get drafted by an NHL team in their upcoming draft. He's a nice kid who's a little bit small but has good heart. He really needs to work on his arm motions though, he basically keeps them at his sides whenever he runs. I don't know if that's from hockey but I do know that it kills your speed if you run like that. We had a hard training day with Brendan and Hang doing different exercises the whole time and me switching back and forth between the ones they were doing. Eric had me showing Brendan how to do some stuff which was fun because I always like seeing what the other side is like in a trainer-trainee relationship. One of the cool drills that Hang and I did with Eric was sprinting with Eric attached to us by a bungee cord-type harness. Though Hang is a good 40 pounds of muscle heavier than me, Eric said that I had much greater power and pulled him a lot harder than Hang did. I figure this is from my days playing rugby in the pack because when you have to scrum, technique is everything. The technique in a scrum is basically getting as low as you can and driving as hard as possible. It's awkward at first but once you get the hang of it your power amplifies exponentially. It was good to know I haven't lost my low-running power because when I have to push a sled I'll be bent over the entire time.

I was scheduled to have a training session yesterday (Thursday) but Eric got sick and couldn't make it in. Instead of getting a good gym workout in, like I should have, I slept through my nap alarm and missed my time. I did some bodyweight stuff and light cardio at night but nothing too serious. I'm going down to Duke this weekend and thought my flight was at 1 so I had to schedule my Friday training session at 7:30 AM. At 11 PM on Thursday, I realized I had booked a later flight (3:40 PM) and that the early morning session wasn't needed. I hemmed and hawwed about it for awhile, but decided, "Screw it, I'll only get this shot once." I didn't call Eric to reschedule and I just sucked it up at woke up at 6:45 AM this morning. We started off well but when we were running through the sprint progressions I felt my hamstring act up slightly. Luckily, this time it wasn't as bad as the other times and I realized it right away. Eric just had me ride the bike for awhile and then the only other thing we did was plate-pushing. Plate-pushing involves me pushing a 45 pound plate across a sport court floor for about 25-30 yards. This is to simulate me pushing the sled since I'm hunched over and moving a weight. After that we did some core (120 Russian twists, 50 toe-touch crunches, 100 regular crunches, 25 medicine ball sit-ups, 50 legs-raised crunches) and then he helped me stretch for 10 minutes.

I can't begin to tell you how frustrating this hamstring issue has been. It's not a debilitating injury, which is good, but it's nagging and doesn't let me train my hardest. Just going through the motions isn't good enough for me, I want to feel a burn, get my heartrate up and really see improvement. Just maintaining my current level isn't enough, I always want to get better. I've had the same issue with my diet and weightlifting. I dropped 6 pounds pretty easily in the first week, but I've been stagnant ever since. I eat really healthy and run and workout as much as I can. The problem is that my body grows muscle at an incredible weight so whenever I workout I seem to gain muscle. This is a good problem to have in the grand scheme of things, but it's still a problem for me right now. My old weightlifting sessions went about an hour and a half long, now they're down to 25 minutes, maybe 30 if I do extra core work. My body just doesn't get smaller unless I stop working out, which I refuse to do because I would lose a lot of power and speed.

This is the first time in my training that I've really felt frustrated by the limitations I've encountered. I want to work my ass off in these speed training sessions, but I can't because the hamstring thing won't go away. I want to lose weight but I can't because I would do so by losing muscle which is completely counter-productive. All I can hope for is that my body cooperates with me for the week of my tryout so that I can rest up the following week or two and get 100% healthy. I'm in the best shape of my life and I know I'm not even close to fulfilling my potential. It's aggravating and frustrating and I just want it to go away so that I can become the best athlete I can be.