Hard to Stay on Top

  In all sports, good teams/athletes have a limited lifespan of success. The day of dynasties has likely passed as teams and athletes can turn around their careers in short order or fall off the competitive summit just as quickly.
   Just look at so-called recent dynasties like the Florida Gators in college football, New England Patriots in the NFL or the Yankees in baseball. It is extremely hard to stay on the very top.
  And this is even more the case in Masters sports where age can creep up on you very quickly and injury can raise it's ugly head even more than in the college and professional level.
   An illustration is one of the baseball teams I play on in a 48+ league. We were in the league championship finals the previous two seasons and at one point last season had a 17 game/2 month long winning streak. But this season we have struggled to even play .500 ball.
   There are a number of factors that have played into this situation: injuries to key players, defection of players to other teams, and being one of the older teams in the league have all contributed to our slide. And I don't care what anyone says but winning is a lot more fun than losing esp. when you are losing ugly. And we have had a lot of ugly this season!
   The point is that as a Masters athlete it is even more important what you do in the off-season than when you were younger as there is no margin for error. You have to make yourself a better athlete and more resilient or you will be rudely awakened when the season comes around. I'm not saying that is entirely what happened to our team but I believe it played more than a minor role in our decline.

Train hard and train smart!
http://fitnesstogether.com/media for our website and all of our links

Today's Training: Total Body Strength

  I am in a sort of "deload" window here because my vacations are spaced such that I can't do any sustained "hard" training without a vacation interruption until mid-August. So this doesn't mean no strength training it just means no concerted planned really heavy lifting until vacations are over.
   Here is what I did today.
Warmup: Foam rolling, ankle mobs, rolling patterns, quad rocks, 1/2 kneeling adductor, open hip t-spine rotations, march series, Indian clubs

Workout:

• Barbell Romanian Deadlift: 1 x 6 @ 135, 3 x 6 @ 185. Overhand grip.
• Cable Chest press: 4 x 12 @ 35 
• Hanging leg raises: 3 x 8 (These 3 were done in a tri-set fashion).
• RFESS: 4 x 10,12,15,15 @ 25 lbs. ea.
• Inverted rows on Smith machine: 4 x 15
• Landmine 1/2 moons: 3 x 12 @ 15+ (These 3 were also done as a tri-set)

Comments: Worked all of the major movements: quad dominant lower body, hip dominant lower body, upper body push & pull and 2 core exercises. 

Train hard and train smart!

http://fitnesstogether.com/media for our website and all of our links.

Baseball Development: What's with All the Power Arms? | Eric Cressey | High Performance Training, Personal Training

Baseball Development: What's with All the Power Arms? | Eric Cressey | High Performance Training, Personal Training Interesting details on the why's and how's of increased throwing velocity.