A week in my (athletic) life: Thursday

I was up pretty late last night due to poker night, but even though I went to bed at around 1, I got a pretty good night sleep and felt pretty good in the morning. Thursday started with hitting the weights at Golds during lunch. A fairly standard workout. A full body weight workout trying to alternate push and pull exercises, and keeping it moving not taking too much time between exercises. I got a good workout in, and I felt ok though I certainly wasn't a powerhouse. Weighed in today at about 168. Heavier then on Tuesday but my weight always varies a little and it's under 170 so I'm good with it.

Thursday night I played volleyball. There's a community center in Arlington real close to my house where we have a gym available from about 7:30-9:30 on Thursday nights. My men's team has been using that as an informal practice. It's kind of like pick up because you're not sure who's going to show, and pretty much anybody that shows up can play. Usually we get enough for 6 on 6, though I've been there when there was 20 people and also when there was 6. Tonight we only have 8. There's 3 guys from my team going to nationals, Ron, our setter, Jason, a 6'8 converted basketball player who plays middle and yours truly. There's 4 guys from another team going to nationals (but playing BB a level below us) and another guy, Jean, who comes every now and then. We start with typical vball warm ups, we pepper and then we do hitting lines. I've never been a really good warm up hitter. I don't know what it is. Part of it of course is that I'm cold and the first couple of hits I'm happy if I get it over the net. Part of it is also the missing intensity of a real game. Tonight though I'm actually hitting pretty well. Hitting is about rhythm, technique, and athleticism, and tonight it feels pretty good. I can feel my left achilles though. It's painful and tender and I'm a bit concerned about it. After hitting lines we do some drills. With 4 people we have enough to work on our offense and defense. We alternate with one team of 4 blocking and tossing free balls (a free ball is like when a ball gets tossed over the net) and the other team passing the free ball and getting a hit out of it with 3 hitters (left side, me, a middle and a right side). The blocking team has to try to read the setter and put up a good block on whichever hitter gets set. After that we play 4s, but the other team isn't very good, and they're playing so flat that it's hard for us to get a good game out of it. At least we're getting some touches in. Before we take the net down I decide to do a little drill to push myself a bit. We have 4 balls, and I stand at the net, do a block jump, transition back to hitting position as someone tosses a ball to the setter who sets me and I hit outside and then repeat immediately until we run out of balls. This simulates a long rally during a game and you're ability to transition from offense to defense and still have some legs. It's a tough drill and by the last ball I'm putting up a pathetically weak block and a weak hit. And that's only with 4 balls! I really should do this more often. Overall, not a great practice, but certainly better then nothing.