Monday night Coach, AB sent out an email to the team regarding our workouts. He noticed that teammates haven’t exactly been putting in 100% effort in them. People are either coming late and only arriving just in time to get on the water or are doing only half the workout. I was a bit surprised as I had originally thought this coach might have been “too soft” since he was always giving us positive reinforcements during the practices. While it was a nice change from last year’s coach, I questioned whether that was such a good thing. I know that if my team has a chance to “relax” they will wholeheartedly do it.
The scolding we got from Coach AB in the email made me reconsider if he really was a “softie” after all. He informed us that the 2 on water practices a week we have is not enough if we want to improve our overall performance. The workouts are a key component in improving our overall performance. Not to mention our own efforts at maintaining fitness like working out regularly in the gym or in some other form. Personally, I try to do the entire workout. The only time I am not able to complete it is when health issue, like my asthma or an old injury crops up. Unfortunately, I know that has happened a few times this year. Not a good sign for me. I know that I’ve definitely had a bad off season and it has affected my overall health as I am definitely not in the same shape I was in last year. I know it’s going to affect my performance this year and I’m quite mad at myself about it. That fall down the stairs affected me more than I realized. But, I am determined to get back to where I was before. With that little rant aside, I was quite surprised to find out that Coach AB didn’t show up for practice today. Especially his mention of people showing up late I thought he would be here. Later in the boat, I discovered that he wasn’t going to come to practice because his day job needed him to work late. Hmmm…. Needless to say, I wasn’t suprised to detect a bit of displeasure or disappointment from the Team Manager/Assistant Coach. In any case I still think we did a decent work out and practice. This time the work out was more manageable for me as I found I was able to do the runs. It always surprises me how much your body hurts when it has not done cardio in a while.
WORKOUT
Run 400 meters
Pushups until failure
Repeat for 20 minutes
Record number of sets
I can’t remember how many sets I did. But, I do remember that I was not able to do as many push-ups as I did last year. I was disappointed but not surprised. The push-ups wasn’t what killed me, it was the run. Even running 400 meters repeatedly my asthma started to act up. Although, I noticed it was acting up even before I got to practice. Sigh….Smog season is upon us.
The on water practice was interesting and I could tell that the “active rest” that we all hate is here to stay for good. We started off at a good pace once we got on the water. I think we still did a bit of a warm up for about 5 or 10 minutes of just straight paddling at 70 or 80%. Then we got right into our practice.
ON WATER PRACTICE
30 seconds at 90%
1 minute of active rest
Repeat 5 times
Rest 2 minutes
Repeat until end of practice
I can’t remember how many sets we did but it felt like it was taking forever. My body was really not into this practice. I would say that the majority of the time, I was paddling at 70-80%. I definitely was not pulling my full weight. Perhaps it was the fact that I had not eaten much during the day and it was a factor in my general fatigue. However, near the end of the practice, call it my second wind or what not, I think I got some of my energy and I was able to pull my full weight at the requested effort. It was a good practice in general. But not exactly something that should be done 2 practices before a competition. This Saturday we have our first competition, thePickering Regatta. I honestly have no idea as to how we will do as this is one of the more competitive regattas. There will be many strong teams, including the top team in Canada. In fact, I think we actually race against them in our first race. I don’t expect us to do well or medal. I just hope we do decently! Although it is still early in the season, I think we will still have to put in a lot more hard work if we want to improve from last year.
