June 03, 2008
Feisty Exchange on Doping, China, and Rowing
Check out friend Mary's blog, 50 Eggs. She posts about the recent New York Times article on the Chinese rowing program (China is going full-tilt after sports that offer multiple medals). Featured prominently is Igor Grinko, a former Soviet, then former U.S. sculling coach now a head coach in China. Many of my former rowing teammates rowed under him when he was coaching U.S. national team sculling prospects in Occoquan, Virginia, starting a couple of years before the 1992 Olympiad. It was a somewhat uncomfortable fit all round, but he was a coach with proven success, and there were high hopes here.
Mary has some personal experience with Igor. And she respectfully pulls no punches. He replies! Fascinating!
What do you think? Is China doping its athletes? Did the Easties do it back in the day?
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June 27, 2006
Research on Fitness and Training
I’ve found tons of really interesting research and reports at Peak Performance, a U.K. publication you can subscribe to, or get online info through its blog. It’s got everything from “How to Train for a Triathlon,” to “Sports Drinks and Teeth.” Did you know the acidity in sports drinks is high and therefore if you drink them regularly your teeth enamel may erode 30 percent faster than if you just drink water? Yikes.
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February 21, 2006
Month of Pain
A friend and I had decided to make February the “month of pain.” Because it is the shortest month, of course. Why pick a 31-day month to be one of hard work, when there’s a 28-day one at hand? But here in the northern climes, it’s psychologically the longest month—the last stretch of true winter with high heating bills, wet shoes, iced up car windows and bulky jackets. Usually those miseries are offset by the beauty and fun of snow, but as I’ve probably complained before, we’ve had too little of that to make much use of it. Global warming and all.
The other thing about February is that it precedes by about a month our separate travels to warmer weather places where one might potentially wear a bathing suit. Vanity admitted. So the month of pain entails weight lifting without cease. Or doing it at least three out of every four days. We’ve gone back to the basketball weight workout I mentioned earlier. It’s easy to remember and breaks the days up into major muscle groups. Started off well, though I had to double up on one day and go five days in a row when scheduled days-off got bolloxed up. I’ve kind of fizzled toward the end of the month, though.
And here’s a weird thing. When doing some reps at home with dumbbells, my dog goes nuts. I have to sneak around so he can’t see me doing sets of curls, or lunges or—god forbid—situps. He whines, half cries-half barks, comes over to me and stamps his feet, and will not stop until I do. It’s quite intolerable. So there, I blame the GSP. (To say nothing of a road-closing snowstorm, global warming notwithstanding, and an AWOL lifting partner. So I'm all set for excuses....) But tonight a rigorous workout is planned, at a gym, with no dogs.
Meanwhile, I’ve been having fun and falling asleep on the couch every night being a spectator of televised winter Olympic fun. I’ll watch pretty much anything, though there’s generally more hockey and figure skating than I strictly require. More on that anon.
Here’s my next challenge. Post again before another month elapses. (I am ashamed before the 159 visitors blogspirit reports stopped by. Seems very rude and uncivilized to offer such stale stuff to visitors.)
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September 13, 2005
Seasonal Adjustments
Usually early September is a time of renewed rigor and organization, freshly sharpened pencils and the clashing scents of dry leaves and cut grass under your cleats in the afternoon.
Besides those whisps of nostalgia (haven’t worn cleats in decades), I’m suffering temporarily from the lack of a program, of direction. My usual Never Too Late Basketball (about which more in another post) fix is between sessions, the floor of the gym where I play pickup hoops is still sticky with new varnish, I haven’t made any headway finding tennis partners (despite trying to find strangers on GoTennis.com—anyody know of a successful player-matching site?), I haven’t rowed a stroke all summer, I’m not very inspired to run… And real-life intrudes in its ill-mannered way. Layoffs at my company last Wednesday made for a sour-stomached week, even though I remain employed. All I did was lift.
Yesterday, however, I was visiting my friend Anne in New Haven, an old rowing compatriot. In fact, a sharer of one of the most sublime rowing experiences I had in the course of 15 years. We ran three and a half miles or so from her house along the river by the original Eli Whitney gun factory, chatting the whole way. We were talking about the people in her office, and she said, “I’m the only one who’s an endurance athlete, not a jock.” That succinct way of putting it struck me.
There is a funny dichotomy that I unwittingly crossed over, though I’ve always been aware of the cultural divide. A stupid bumper sticker I remember seeing at regattas said, “Real athletes row, the rest just play games.” Or something like that. There is a superiority complex among “performance athletes.” I guess it’s deserved. But of course it’s all situational. You got your lazy-ass rowers and your rip-snorting bocce players. From my current perspective, I think those kind of sports (racing sports) are harder simply because they’re more mentally taxing, being so internally focused and driven. I can chase a ball around all day, five hours probably. I don’t want to run a marathon. (Five hours, probably.)
There’s some easily accessible joy in games. There’s joy in rowing, to be sure, and in skiing and so forth, but it is reached at some cost. It’s more meditative than ebullient. More singular than shared.
Those things maybe do have more valor. But not much sense of play. As I get older and life is more serious and complicated, I want fun. Rowing, as I have often said, is not fun. We use that word, but it’s very inaccurate. Rowing is highly satisfying, and an event may be fun, it’s fun to win of course, but day in and day out…. no.
Back in the day, Korzeniowski, then national rowing team technical director (i.e., he developed all the training workouts), scheduled one workout a week of cross-training. He might have even called it “fun.” Specifically it suggested soccer, volleyball… but what did we all do for our cross training? We ran. Or we cross-country skied. Or swam. Same old battering ourselves in search of speed instead of frolicking and incidentally getting a perfect interval workout. Endurance training can make you dumb.
I say all that from my slovenly week or two of being an armchair athlete…. I don’t get too anxious, knowing soon a fresh chapter will open with new goals to pursue. Be they speed or skill. In fact, my dream of playing tons of tennis this summer having fizzled, maybe I need to change direction completely. It just occurs to me I should do the Birkie…. (Did I just say endurance makes ya dumb, or what?)
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August 22, 2005
Weight Training
I’m curious what any of you out there (hello, out there?) do for weight training. I was trying to find some stuff (free) online for sports specific routines, but only came up with links sending me to sites for books and videos. Not that books and videos don’t have their place, but I was, I admit, looking for instant gratification without benefit of credit card.
For a few years now, I’ve been doing a basketball-specific weight training routine that I got from Coach B, former Harvard University coach and scout back in the day for the Minnesota Timberwolves, and now head of Never Too Late Basketball. When I started doing it, it very quickly made a difference in my ability to pass further and to not fall down so much. But the body settles into routine, which is both good and bad. I can do the routine eyes closed basically, which has its advantages. You don’t always want to have to be mentally engaged with your workout.... And just doing the routine helps keep me in shape, definitely. But I’m looking for variations. I’m also looking for tennis-specific weight training routines, or really anything that people have found effective. Do chime in if you’ve got something.
If you care to know, here’s the hoops focused routine I’ve been doing. No charge.
Ideally, three days on, one day off. (In reality, I just cycle through whenever I get the chance to lift, anywhere from 0-4 times a week.) The routine is 3 x 12 reps not to failure but to difficulty of two different exercises per muscle group. (My typical choices below, but I do sometimes throw in alternatives.) If lifting with someone else, alternate turns. If alone, supersets:
Day 1: Chest and triceps
Bench press
Chest squeezy things on a machine (elbows to the side shoulder high, then squeeze to center)
Tricep curls (overhead with dumbbells or machine version)
Dips (on bench with feet on the ground if no assist machine available)
Sit-ups, crunches, twists, and variations
Day 2: Back and biceps (easy to remember: two Bs, second letter of the alphabet, for the second day)
Lat pulls or pull ups
Bench pull** (is that what you call it? one foot on the ground, opposite knee and hand leaning on a bench, pull dumbbell from hanging straight to armpit height) or butterflies
Classic curls with bar or dumbbell
Curl machine (I usually only do one curl thing; not much difference in range of motion gained by variations)
Sit-ups, crunches, twists and variations
Day 3: Shoulders and legs
Military press (usually with two dumbbells)
Shoulder circles
Leg extension machine
Hamstring curls
Heel raises (a calf exercise: toes on a stair, drop heels down then go on tiptoes—great stretch, too)
Sit-ups, always sit ups. About which more in another posting.
**Of note, when I was rowing seriously, we did a lot of weight training, particularly in wintertime. We did a LOT of bench pulls, and had rigged up benches that you’d lie on face down, adjusted so that when your arms hung down on either side you could grab a bar with 25 lb. and up on either side. This was great for really isolating your lats, especially if you didn’t flail and arch your back too much. These could be brutally hard (especially when doing 7-minute sets (yes, that does sound insane)) but immensely satisfying and useful for rowing. (I therefore really dislike the kind you do with one knee on the bench and try to think of anything to do instead.) When rowing we generally did much more leg compression/explosion (like squats and cleans) than I do now.
I really feel like weight training—even a go-through-the-motions 20-minute routine—is hugely helpful in keeping your metabolism firing, blood flowing and core strength growing (keep doing those situps), apart from the bone-health benefits that research says weight-training offers women, particularly as they get older. For more in that vein, About.com has a chirpy Ten Reasons Women Should Lift Weights.
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