As far as Wednesday’s workout is concerned, it went pretty well in my opinion. Check out the video below of my “cleanest” run through and a short approach jump of the session. For some reason my timing and posture were a bit off as far as my jump phase is concerned so my landing wasn’t as crisp as usual and I kept robbing myself of a couple feet. Don’t laugh at how I ended up sprawled out in the pit. 2 out of 3 phases isn’t bad though especially considering that this is only our second “true jumping” workout of the year and my hop-step is what I have been really working to get down so far. Of course. as always, there’s still room to improve in the hop-step transition and I’m still getting used to this technique change from a month or so ago.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Finally, last week we did some weight room and jump testing. I was slacking a bit and didn’t get any video but here are the results.

• Weight Room
  • Bench Press (arms to 90 degrees) – 315 lbs/143 kgs
  • Power Clean – 320 lbs/145 kgs
  • Power Snatch – 221 lbs/100 kgs
  • Hang Snatch – 208 lbs/94 kgs
  • Deadlift – 408 lbs/185 kgs
• Jump Tests
  • 4 Hops (Right) – 75’9″/23.08m *personal best*
  • 4 Hops (Left) – 73’0″/22.25m
  • 2 Hops-2 Steps (LLRL) – 74’7″/22.73m *personal best*
  • 4 Steps (RLRL) – 75’7″/23.04m *personal best*

In all fairness though, this time around I took a tiny “half-step” (rather than my usual 4 stride walk up) into my short 6 step approach so maybe that resulted in the improvements. I’d like to think that’s pretty unlikely though! I just want to get a consistent feel for things and since I now walk into my full approach, why not add a tiny step to this one? I also had a weight room session immediately before the tests this time around, but the weights were relatively light since this is something of a recovery week for me. In any case, the results were very encouraging but watching the video allowed me to see just how much work I have to get to where I need to be. Let’s just say that it’s a lot. I’ll let the videos do the talking though and if you’re interested in a side by side comparison of this year’s results and last year’s results check just below the final clip. Also, check the video title for a description of the drill.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

November ’09 Results → December ’10 Results

Workouts have been on point since these tests. Here’s a quick video of some box drills and bounds (with the weight vest) from lastweek. This was our 2nd day on the boxes this season:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

]]> http://www.samyrlaine.com/blog/just-for-fun/feed 8 http://www.samyrlaine.com/blog/leisure-reading?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=leisure-reading http://www.samyrlaine.com/blog/leisure-reading#comments Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:06:53 +0000 Samyr Laine http://www.samyrlaine.com/?p=858 Now that I’m no longer in school and since I won’t be knee deep in bar exam preparations for about another month, I have more free time than I’ve had at any other point in my life. It’s true though, that training takes up a bit more time now than it did in previous years since I can afford to pay more attention to detail and other “little things;” so no more skipping out on ab sessions or sets of hurdle walkovers. Still, with the hours that I don’t spend at the track I’ve got a few activities that tend to help me pass the time on a daily basis so I figured I’d share some of them with y’all.

I can’t speak for other full-time track athletes but when I’m not at the track, getting treatment or sleeping (or hanging out with Ayanna of course) I’m either: reading, playing video games, watching one of many TV series, keeping up with new music, or working on a couple “legacy projects” (other than triple jumping) that I’ve got up my sleeve. Just like this is the most free time I’ve ever had, this is also the first time since my early high school days that I’ve been able to do some leisure reading and it’s been amazing. I’ve found that with putting some thought into the titles that I spend time reading allows me to learn just as much as I did when I was in school (ok, probably more); and it’s actually stuff that I think is more easily and immediately applicable. We’ve all asked “when the heck am I going to use this nonsense?!” when sitting through one lecture or another.

I tend to get through about 3 (sometimes 4 depending on the length and genre) books in a week and here’s what I’ve gotten through most recently. I’ve got a long list of books to read but let me know if you have any recommendations or if you’ve got any thoughts on the books I’ve already read.

• Now Reading: Made to Stick/Chip Heath & Dan Heath
• The 4-Hour Workweek/Tim Ferriss
• The 48 Laws of Power/Robert Greene
• The Art of War/Sun Tzu
• ReWork/Jason Fried & David Heinemeier
• Crush It!/Gary Vaynerchuk
• The Winner’s Brain/Jeff Brown
• Making Ideas Happen/Scott Belsky
• The Magic of Thinking Big/David Schwartz
• The Art of Non-Conformity/Chris Guillebeau
• The Girl Who Played With Fire/Steig Larsson
• Tribes/Seth Godin
• Purple Cow/Seth Godin

On the track this week, I may be doing some jump testing, similar to what I did last year around this time so I’ll report back on that as soon as I get a chance. Also, just for fun I jumped in with the George Mason team last week as they did some performance testing so I’ll share those results as well; even though I didn’t do all of the tests that the kids did.

Given my own results from last spring and this past fall (November ’09 results), I already had a distance that I wanted to hit on each test in mind. All in all, Wednesday ended up being a pretty good day in the office and I set personal bests in 3 out of 4 tests, with a couple of them being pretty significant. All of my previous personal bests were set last year around this time. With that said, I wasn’t able to reach the benchmark that I had set for myself: 75 feet. On a couple of attempts I should have been out over 76 feet but collapsed on a hop or wasn’t patient enough in the jump phase. Throughout the workout though, not only did I learn how to jump 75 feet the next time around, but I also learned that on the 4 hop test in particular, my coach had only seen two other people approach or surpass the 75 foot barrier (of course he could have been saying that just to help my confidence – mission accomplished): Viktor Saneyev and himself. I’ve gotten to see videos of Saneyev jump but haven’t had the pleasure of seeing my coach, Emmanuel “Skeeter” Jackson do his thing. From all of the stories I’ve heard from others though; I always imagine how much of a beast he was.

In any case, like my coach said, any of Saneyev’s achievements is something worth aspiring to. So I plan on first checking the 75 foot jump test mark off of my list (on all 4 tests)…perhaps I’ll just skip 75′ and go straight to 76′ though. I definitely feel like it’s possible. For now, here’s where I at the moment:

__________________________________________________

April ’10 Jump Test Results

After a pretty good warmup and lots of jumping drills to make sure the legs were ready to bounce, including long jumps off of my left leg which felt awkward because I’m a right legged long jumper, we were ready to rock. The workout was pretty simple, and light as I mentioned, beginning with short approach triple jumps from 6 strides, then a few from 8, and a couple from 10. I’ll admit, my first jump from 6 strides was far from spectacular, in fact, I don’t even think I completed the attempt. Not the best way to “start” the season but that one attempt definitely didn’t define the training session. I was trying too hard and had to slow things down and calm down a bit so that I could get the most out of the workout; eventually I feel I was able to do that.

The goal was really just to ease back into things and work on rhythm. Once we got back to 8 strides I figured that if I just focused on maintaining a solid rhythm through all three phases of each jump, the strength that I’ve been working on up to this point would carry me out past 50 feet (15.24m) without much effort. As I’m sure you can guess, that’s where the phrase “Easy 50″ came from. Nevermind the fact that just hitting 50 feet was the goal for about half of my collegiate career, reminding myself that I am now just looking for easy 50s helps me slow down, relax and focus on jumping efficiently and with proper technique rather than worrying about jumping “far.” I consider Monday’s workout to be a success simply because I can’t recall jumping 50+ feet from 8 or even 10 steps, let alone in November or with such ease. It was perhaps even more of a success because I now have in mind some things that I’ll have to perfect before I can take on the rest of the world in March and beyond. Things like keeping my posture throughout the jump, my timing, my speed and being careful not to land prematurely. The first few factors will come with time, reps and as our training is geared to work on those specific things but I still like knowing what’s holding me back. All the better to correct the shortcomings.

Happy Thanksgiving y’all!

So with all that said, we did some testing yesterday (just in my trainers) and my goal was to meet or exceed my personal bests, the majority of which were set last April with spikes on. Needless to say, I didn’t hit those marks so as you can imagine I was pretty disappointed. On top of that, some of my marks were even less than the testing we did last November. I eventually got to thinking though and with the help of my training partners, was able to see how much of a success the results really represent. We happen to be in the 3rd week of a new, more intense training phase including workouts that I probably wouldn’t even imagine doing last November, let alone in April when we were tapering off a bit.  Additionally, after a heavy lift Monday and intense sled/hill workout Tuesday I can honestly say that my test results from yesterday no longer disappoint me as they initially did.

I realize that the goal at this point in my training is to be stronger than I’ve ever been, both in and outside of the weight room and I certainly feel as if I’m approaching, if not at that level. So as my coach said, this testing is simply to set a baseline for future testing this season and should be compared to last year. Since this is a new year, with new training that has my body feeling almost entirely new…I can dig that. I posted the results below so you can keep track of my progression with me. Let’s just say that next time I will most certainly be comparing the test results to last April’s, in addition to yesterday’s of course. Now, about the number 27…

I’ll admit a couple of things right off the bat. I am NOT a baseball fan and I am NOT from New  York City.  With that out of the way, I AM from New York STATE, which, as most people forget, the City is a part of. On top of that, I root for NY sports teams through thick and thin which includes the Knicks who are 1 and 4 this season and the Giants who have lost 3 in a row (I have faith that both of those teams will get it together, the latter more likely than the former). So for all my Yankee fans, go ahead and play that “Empire State of Mind,” “New York New York,” or “New York State of Mind,” which ever suits your fancy because as I count…last night marked our TWENTY-SEVENTH championship.

November ’09 Jump Test Results