ASA MVP workout, last for September

ASA MVP workout Sept 29th

Kris and I started out warming up with ladders by ourselves. Originally, we were told that G wasn't going to be in today, but were later told he'd be in, but late. Turned out, a player of his at Cabrillo had broken his collar bone diving awkwardly for a ball at practice. He hadn't punctured the skin, but the bone was obviously broken, as it was protruding outward.

Tragically, the kid hadn't finished the paperwork for enrolling in the class, so Cabrillo's insurance wouldn't cover his injury (the trainer couldn't even look at him inside Cabrillo's facilities). G mentioned the kid was one of his better players, making the injury more tragic. He broken the collar bone of his throwing arm. G said his first question was, "Will I be able to play this year?"

The ladders were strung together, so we didn't have the usual 9 squares - break - 9 squares. Instead, we had 19 straight squares. We did the usual ladders to warm up. G arrived during our warmup, near the end, so we were good and warm. Today would be an upper body workout.

We started off with pushups. Kris did them from two aerobic steps. Because of the time I took off, I started back at clapping pushups (made funnier by the fact I had to do some from my knees). 3 sets of 10, I managed 2 or 3 from my feet, the rest from my knees.

Next came traversing hand walks. In a plank/pushup position, I walked just under 90° to the right, then back 90° to the left. Doing each hand 5 times, for a total of 10 walks. Tragically, my butt was in the air as I did my first three sets, so I had to do them over again, but with my butt down the second time.

Kris, in the meantime, was doing really cool explosive, balancing, single arm presses. Essentially, he lay on a bench so that one side is barely on the bench, with his leg tucked under the leg brace at the end of the bench for balance. His other side was hanging off the bench. With that side, he did 30 pound presses explosively. It'll take me a while to build up to that one.

Next, Kris did tricep pull downs while I learned a newly-invented exercise. G stood on a 12" box, I stood facing away from him on the ground, about a yard in front of him. Balancing on my left foot, I turned around and held my right hand up high behind me. G placed a 2# weighted ball in my hand. Continuing to balance, I touched the ground to the left of my left foot, then explosively tossed the ball up, behind me, over G and myself.

When I was done, I played around with the 0.5#, 1# and 2# balls, trying to throw them against the walk. It was very, very obvious when I threw that my timing was way off. I definitely have little transfer of momentum from my lower body to my upper body when I throw. We worked on it a little bit. We'll definitely do more after the season ends.

Next I did some bench presses. The weight wasn't so heavy, but I did need to use my feet on the last set. I did three sets of 12 at 50#, 60# and 50#. When I was done, I went to do the tricep pull downs.

I forgot the order of the rest of the exercises. I recall being unable to do a ball traversal, where in plank position, I "walk" over a ball, balancing briefly on the ball. I was unable to the exercise at all. I managed maybe, MAYBE two.

To complete the upper body, we did chin ups, with palms facing forward, to exhaustion. I couldn't do one chinup without help. I could get about 1/2 way up, but not all the way up. G had me "complete" 4 "chinups" for each of three sets, but he was pretty much lifting me for all of them.

G gave us the option of abs, or forearms and abs. I, of course, selected both. We did the plate grip, bus driving (holding the plate vertically, twist it 180° clockwise, then reverse).

We did abs last. The usual abs. I find it very difficult to push Kris down during partner push-downs. Ugh.

The last abs exercise was 6-12" leg holds. G said it was on me - 45 seconds, if I dropped, we'd do it all again (actually, I think Kris would do them all again, not me. Heh.). I said, "No problem." About 10 seconds into the exercise (actually, a count of 10 into the exercise, as my count to 30 took 45 seconds), G leans down and starts harrassing me, telling me it would be easier to just drop my legs, take a break, wouldn't it be so easy to just drop them, I didn't need to keep them up, just drop them, we'd get to rest, wouldn't that be nice. Inside, I was laughing so hard! I kept with my count. At 45 seconds, he said, okay, you're done, but did so in such a way that it sounded like a ploy to get me to drop my legs. I had to ask for confirmation, keeping them up longer. Felt good to be able to do that.