Friday, October 12, 2012

Tennis and Gymnastics

Workout of the Day

WOD 1 - in the morning...

Tennis is the park

WOD 2 - in the afternoon...

Adult gymnastics class

Continuing with the theme of less Crossfitty training this week, I played tennis today with my roommate.  It'd been a little while so the rust was obvious early on, but before long we were neck deep in a competitive set full of serve and volleys, passing shots, and long rallies.  Honestly, tennis is one of my favorite sports to play--right up there with beach volleyball.  The reactive nature of it, the combination of power and finesse, and the need for creativity are hard to find in such wonderful combination in ordinary training.  Again, this is the beauty of sports that involve an opponent.  You don't know what action you're going to be required to perform until you need to perform it.  It becomes a true test of your readiness to act; or, if we stretch the definition a tad, your general physical preparedness.  I am happy to report that my conditioning and power were more than up for the challenge.  My coordination and agility could stand a little tuning up, however.  Sport specific skill like swinging a racquet will obviously only improve with practice, just like hitting the pocket on a snatch will only get better through repetitive lifting, so I can't be too disappointed that I was hitting the ball like Federer.  I was happy to see how quickly I was improving, though.  Such skills come back faster once they've been acquired, provide we tune them up every now and then with a little practice.

Later on in the day, I rejoined the adult gymnastics class at International Gymnastics Centre in West Sacramento from which I'd taken a month hiatus.  As usual we dove right into the tumbling mat, working on front flips and standing back tucks.  By far my best performance on these skills, almost to the point where I'm planning on practicing them on my own back at the box (we have our own spring floor now!).  Afterwards we got on the high bar and learned a few pieces of a standard routine including a glide kip, reverse rollover, and basic castaways.  Super fun and satisfying to be able to pick up the new stuff and feel good doing it.  This week off has been really productive in terms of applying the fitness and capacity I train so hard to acquire.  It's made me all the more motivated to keep training hard and stay injury free to keep progressing.

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