American Jumping Bean

Today's butt-kicking is all about plyometrics. I'd never even heard this word until I started skating seriously, but in the opinion of many skaters (speed skaters especially), plyometrics is what can make the difference between a good skater and a great skater - a good skater practices only on skates, and a great skater trains off-skates with plyometrics to improve muscle strength, explosiveness, and agility.

Given that those are three things that I really feel I need as a skater, I can't ignore plyometrics. Besides, if speed skaters do it, there's no reason it wouldn't be good for roller derby skaters; in spite of the different natures of our sports, there's a good deal of crossover, at least as far as what we want out of our bodies. Both sports call for good cardio and muscle endurance and strength, good explosive power for sprinting past other skaters, good agility for slipping through the holes other skaters leave as they move around the track, and a strong stride that uses as few strokes as possible to go as far as possible.

That having been said, my plan for this week, as it has evolved, involves me working on some cardio endurance, muscle strength, and explosiveness training today.

Here's today's regimen:
WARMUP: 1 lap walk, 2 laps jog, 1 run, 1 cooldown.
Stretch.
Run Coliseum stairs - goal time, 20 minutes or less for a whole lap.
PLYOMETRICS:
-tuck jumps, 3x 10
-lunge jumps, 3x 16 (8 per leg)
-box jumps, 3x 12
-forward lunges, 3x 10
-backward lunges, 3x 10
-squats, 3x10
-wall sit, 2 min.
COOLDOWN: brisk walk, 2 laps.
Stretch.

In practice, it didn't go badly at all. I was decidedly not in an exercising mood today; it was gray, rainy, and on those types of days, I really prefer to just hang out around the house and relax. Oh, and it was also chilly outside. One of those typical Alabama November days that had me much more likely to enjoy curling up under a blanket and reading a book than working my butt off at the Coliseum.

To the Coliseum we went, a little bit later than originally planned. We started off with a three-lap warmup instead of five. It had been a few days since I'd exercised and, I admit, I crapped out because my shins and ankles were feeling grumpy pounding on that concrete floor. We stretched, then got ready for the real kicker- running all 40 sections of the Coliseum seating, up and down the stairs until we'd completed a whole lap.

We tried this for the first time about a week ago, and I was not impressed with my own results. I was easily winded, my legs felt like jello, and I had to stop a few times because I didn't feel like my legs could maintain the strength to go safely down the stairs. Tonight, I set the two of us a goal: Make the whole lap with no stops, in under 20:00.

That was a resounding success. Our ending time was 11:42. This kind of blew my mind, to be honest. Like I said, the first time I'd done it, my legs had felt positively awful. This time, I even paced myself carefully, starting out more moderately than I could have so I could have a burst of speed to finish at the end. I was out of breath at points, but that was the point, of course. I was frankly shocked that our time could be that much different (it took at least 20 minutes the first time we tried it). I guess I'd chalk it up to a bad day, or maybe just knowing that I had the pressure of a time limit; that tends to make a big difference for me when I'm trying to beat a clock.

After the out and out cardio, we switched to out and out plyometrics. It's a bit of a meaningless distinction to make, however, considering how out of breath I got doing the jumps. The lunge jumps I found easy, and could probably increase the reps to 20 or more. I didn't start feeling any tiredness until the third set. The other two, I could definitely sense some muscle jello going on- the farther up I tried to tuck my legs after more reps, the harder it was for me to do that. Sometimes I felt like I was barely getting off the ground. The only thing that I had an issue with was the landing; again, doing these tuck jumps on concrete was hurting the hell out of my ankles, and I think at points I was landing way too hard. That's something for me to work on, and perhaps research a bit. There were points where I was definitely getting more than muscle pain out of those exercises. Another alteration I want to make for our next set of plyo is the rest period in between exercises. We took brief rests in between each set (maybe about 30 seconds or so), but the rests between the different jumps were three minutes, and I think that was too much; for the next plyo set we do, I'm bumping the time down to two minutes.

We moved on to the lunges next, and I set the time between those down to one minute, because they were much less high impact. I also bumped up the reps - for the forward and backward lunges and squats, we did three sets of 20 rather than three sets of 10. The lunges were a bit challenging by the end, but I think, again, it's a case where we may want to increase the reps; maybe 30 per leg instead of 20. The squats I definitely felt, especially the lower I got. By the end of the sets of squats, my knees were shaking badly, but my quads were burning in that good kind of way. From there, we moved on to a 2 minute wall sit, which, by this point, was VERY challenging. I had to readjust my position a number of times and couldn't keep holding a 90 degree angle with my legs. My legs felt outright weak and wobbly after I finished it.

That, of course, was a perfect time to run a one-lap time trial around the top of the coliseum. We don't know exactly what the distance is, but we think each lap is about 1/4 of a mile. Both of us took off at a dead sprint. We both got about the same time, with a three second difference between. I actually finished the faster of the two of us at 1:14, which pleased me since my husband is usually the faster of the two when it comes to running.

One thing that was very strange about running that lap: I controlled my breathing pretty well for most of the lap, because I had noticed that I have a bad tendency to hold my breath when I'm doing cardio. For about halfway around the lap, I wasn't particularly winded. When I was on my third leg of four, I started to lose my breath a little bit, but that felt normal. Oddly enough, the last five sections of seats, my body started giving. It was like a switch snapped off- all of a sudden, my legs were rubbery, and I could hardly push without feeling like all my muscles were going to snap somehow. I finished slower than I wanted to (perhaps a pacing error on my part, after maintaining a relatively consistent pace for most of the lap). It was a very strange physical experience; mentally, I was still pushing myself, but my body gave up on me before I was ready for it to. I'm not sure what I could have done to push through those feelings at the end of that lap, and I was also dizzy when I sat down afterward.

Overall, though there were negatives and positives, it was an overall positive experience. I can tell that, despite what you might call rather low reps for the plyo, the exercises are working. Sitting down to get in the car, my legs almost buckled- the sign of a good workout, no doubt.

I followed up some advice about doing cardio and loaded up on antioxidants for dinner: spinach, garlic, beans, potatoes. Since then, I've taken a nice long shower, and I believe I'm going to put some heat on my ankle before I go to sleep tonight, just to see if I can relieve some of the soreness.

I've been taking melatonin to sleep most nights lately- don't think I'll need it tonight. I'm exhausted before 11:00, and I'm totally okay with that.

Tomorrow night, team off-skates practice back at the Coliseum. Expect a report from that no-doubt surprising ass-busting, with the bonus entertainment that I have no idea what I'm getting into!