Go Goalie, Go

Three and a half months ago, after a bitter bitter loss in the league playoffs, I found UGT 3.0 VIP and signed up, vowing to do everything within my power not to feel like that ever again. My track record with workout programs for the year prior to that wasn't the best- I'd start out with great intentions and a week later I'd find all kinds of excuses and reasons not to get my butt out of bed and into the gym. But this program seemed different. There were interactive elements to it that I thought would help with not only my motivation, but my accountability. The way I felt about this program was similar to the way I felt when I first started playing goal: I was absolutely, positively determined not to sabotage myself. And it's been very difficult at times, but it's paying off. I can feel a big difference on the ice, and quite honestly off it as well. I'm about 3-4 weeks behind the rest of the group that started at the same time as me, but I've had a tournament each month since starting that I've had to work around. I just completed Phase 3 and am about to start Phase 4, when I get back from vacation and the upcoming tournament this weekend.

This program is designed for professionals. It's progressive, the workouts are long (60-90 minutes), basically, it's hard. There have been times when I've wondered if I'm being ridiculous, a late 30's beer leaguer with a full time job trying to keep up with (very much younger) guys who have nothing to do but train all day and be in great shape for training camp. At one point I even emailed Maria, asking how I'd know if the program was just too hard for me. She said it's only too hard if you don't make the time for it and keep your commitment to it. Well, ok then. That little flame of self-doubt squelched, I banked on my competitiveness and pushed on. When I did the final workout in Phase 3 I felt triumphant. As I tweeted, I really thought that phase would be the death of me. I was really dragging, and in desperate need of some recovery days. Fortunately, that's when my vacation started. It's been several days of complete sluggy bliss, lounging about on the beach, reading, just being flat out lazy. Imagine my surprise when, in the midst of my best impression of a slug, I got an email from Maria informing me that she had chosen me as this month's "All Star".  I was flabbergasted. Of the hundreds of athletes she trains, and of those God knows how many are pros, she chose me??? I read the email out loud to my husband and brother-in-law (who happened to be sitting right there). I told my sister and my cousin. I may have squealed a little.

This morning was the end of my recovery period. I had a body-weight workout all ready to go, my clothes laid out to jump right into and get going. When I rolled over to shut off the alarm on my clock I saw it - the email going out to everyone, with the article about... me! Tough to beat that for motivation. I was out there on the porch, facing the water, kicking my own ass. I'll be at it again Friday morning, too. I have a tournament to play in this weekend, and I'm playing in the highest division. Behind 8 skaters. I'm going to need all the help I can get. Go goalie, go.

Kids, brain freeze, and "Goals"

It's a good thing I don't have anything important to do today, because I've just wasted a fair amount of time reading through my own blog, looking for a post that I know is there somewhere, but I'll  be damned if I can find it. It's one in which I mention talking to a young girl in the "women's locker room", a kid who was maybe about 12, and was getting dressed in ref's gear. I admired her gumption and then realized her dad was one of our (at the time) drinking buddies, who is also a ref. I've searched on "daughter", I've searched on "dad", "kid", "open hockey", "referee", all to no avail. I've been looking for it because I ran into her again today when I came off the ice after open hockey. I barely recognized her- it's been quite a few years since that day, and I think she's about 17 now. In fact, I only had a vague "I think I know this girl" feeling until she started talking and said her name in a story about how she can't hide in her room away from the relatives for very long before someone calls for her. Hopefully she didn't notice that until that point I wasn't exactly sure who she was, but she is quite a talker so maybe she didn't pick up on it. She did say that she always liked asking "older adults" what made them start playing hockey. "So, what made you start playing?", she asked. Damn. Thanks, kid.

Feeling old was apparently the theme of the day though. I'd completely forgotten this morning when I was scraping my windshield in the dark, getting ready to head to the rink, that duh... it's Thanksgiving. Which means all the college kids are home from school. It's probably a good thing, too, or I would have psyched myself out. I played a mediocre game. I had some pretty good saves, but I had some craptastic goals as well. I think the problem was mostly timing. A couple of those guys had the puck on their stick for about a nanosecond before letting a shot loose. I was the only goalie though, so I guess it was better than no goalie at all. And as such, I switched ends every ten minutes.

You know I hate that. I hate to admit it, but I get all mixed up when I have to do that. If I have a shift on the bench in between it's not too bad. But going right from one end to the other gets all my wires crossed and sometimes I have to remind myself that the other guys are the bad guys now. In fact when we were warming up, I saw a guy in a burgundy Spartak jersey, and thought about this incident from several years ago. Wouldn't you know it, I did almost the same damn thing, and even worse, it was the same damn guy! (Has to be. I've only ever seen one guy in a Spartak jersey, but he seemed a little young so maybe he was borrowing it). I'd started out in net for dark, and then switched to the light side after 10 minutes. I saw Mr. Spartak coming down the boards towards me, and forgot he was my enemy. Fortunately, it probably looked to everyone else like I just didn't get to my post fast enough- he fired and it hit my calf as my brain went "OH! Shit!" and I moved, too slowly, over to the post. Hopefully no one heard me yelling "got time" to him just seconds before that.

Seriously. What the hell is wrong with me. I don't get it. It's really embarrassing to be confused that easily. At least this time it was nowhere near as blatant. But I think it might have also had something to do with the fact that it was the same guy. My brain was already in that "hey remember the time you gave the puck up to the wrong guy?" mode so maybe that made it more likely to happen. Who knows. I also haven't played open hockey in an eon, so was kind of out of that rhythm. There's another session tomorrow morning, and as of now I stupidly plan on going to that one as well. I'm only on one team this year, so am on the ice once, maybe twice a week, as opposed to 3 or 4 times. I need to keep up the momentum or I'll get really out of shape. As it was, I was pretty gassed today after only an hour.

Part of that is my own fault. I've gotten extremely inconsistent lately with my workouts. In fact I feel like I'm letting Maria down. I don't know why, I just don't have the motivation or follow-through that I used to have. So I've taken her advice and made a list of my goals. I'm going to do it each week, and I'm admittedly starting pretty small this week. (The theory is, if I start small I won't scare myself off). The only problem is, I wrote "GOALS" at the top of the page... and then thought hey wait a minute. "Goals" are kind of the opposite of what I'm trying to achieve here. So I crossed it out and wrote "TARGETS". This week my goals are to stretch every day, and either work out or play hockey every day from now until Sunday. So here it is. If I'm not on the ice tomorrow morning, my ass better be in the gym. Sunday  night I'll make a list for next week. This better work, because I'm pretty fed up with myself and my lack of motivation.

Welcome Back, Old Friend

I have a confession to make: I'm a slacker. I haven't been working out like I should, and I think that is part of my problem on the ice lately. (GH made the observation that I'm not as quick as I was before). Between an absolutely brutal tournament schedule (one had me on the ice for 6 games in the space of about 50 hours) and quite a bit of a mental funk, I've completely dropped the workouts. It took me literally 4 days to recover from one of the tournaments; I wasn't about to pile more abuse on my body in the form of workouts. That's not dedicated, that's just stupid. But of course I could have stretched every day. That wouldn't have worn me out. Did I? Nope. Or I'd recover from a tournament and then have a game the next day. My schedule got completely out of whack. And as I mentioned, I've been in a bit of a mental downward spiral. Time to change that. I worked out yesterday morning and again today, and I forgot how good it feels later in the day. I forgot the energy you get from keeping your body moving. I do have more tournaments on the horizon, but that doesn't mean I have to drop everything completely.

I'm determined to get back on track but I need some help. One thing that was great about when I had lessons with a coach, besides the lessons themselves, was the accountability factor. I had to be up at 4:30 in the morning to be on the ice with him in time to make it to work on time, and you can bet your ass that sucked. But I did it, because I knew he'd be there at the rink waiting for me, and you can't just not show up because you "don't feel like it". I need to apply the same discipline to getting out of bed and going downstairs to work out. (Thankfully, I don't have to get up at 4:30 to do that!). One idea I had was to keep a log, where I write each day what I did, or if I didn't, why not. For example:

Monday - Sp/Core/Mob (from UGT)
Tuesday - St/Mob (from UGT)
Wednesday - nothing - didn't get up on time <--- slacker!
Thursday - nothing - late night practice last night <---- this is ok
Friday - 90 min on the ice (open hockey)

etc, etc.

Clearly, this didn't keep me honest enough to not completely fall off the training wagon. So, I could use some suggestions. Should I tweet each day what I did or didn't do? Not sure about that one- who the hell cares, right? Keep up with my written log and add smiley faces and sad faces because I don't like seeing sad faces? You'd think the motivation of being better on the ice would be enough. I feel like a jackass that it isn't. Maybe I should put a sticky with the scores from my worst games next to my alarm clock, that way if I don't feel like getting out of bed, I have the motivation staring me right in my face.

And in Stanley Cup news, while I was writing this, Mr. Inappropriate came and asked me who I want to win, and then gave me crap for rooting for Boston. Sorry buddy... I know as a NY team supporter I'm supposed to hate all Boston teams, but Timmy is a BEAST* and half my family is from Massachusetts, so too bad. Mr. Inappropriate has a region-appropriate hatred of Boston teams, so he is rooting for the Canucks. He challenged me to a $5 bet, and we pinkie-swore on it. So that makes two bets I have going on the B's. The other is with twitter buddy DWKeoughan: the loser changes their avatar to a picture of them in the winning team's jersey. (I believe that's what we settled on... correct me if I'm wrong?) So you Bruins better bring it, because I don't feel like losing TWO bets!!!

*No, I have not forgotten Tuukka. I feel so awful for him, not playing any games, having the crappy season he had, but with Thomas playing as well as he has, how could you possibly not play him?

Um, yeah. Ow.

No I didn't overdo it. I actually cut the workout down due to the fact that I overslept by a half hour. But I was determined to at least do something, figuring something is better than nothing, and I actually did quite a bit. I only cut out one set of two exercises each. And I only got shot in the head once. (My friend said to approach it like someone has a gun pointed at your head, and when you think you're too tired to go on, imagine that AK pointed at your melon. Well, I quit a few seconds early on one of the exercises so I guess my brain got splattered.) At any rate, I am happy with the results- just enough to make me feel it but not so much that I overdid it. And I told my friend what I did and how much of it, and apologized for it being pathetic, but he said it was actually a really great start. So go me. I have two days in a row of morning hockey and then I'll get back to the workout. If I'm not too hung over on Saturday that is...

stronger legs = better push = faster goalie

During my last open hockey outing I did really well, but I noticed something that I seem to have trouble with. I won't bore you with the details, but I was discussing it with the friend I mentioned a while ago who was a pro prospect up until this summer, and once again he hit the nail on the head. He said I need to be quicker. I surmised that meant I need stronger leg muscles and he agreed, saying plyometric training is the way to go. I didn't say much, thinking what I've read about plyometrics is confusing, but the next thing I knew, my inbox was blinking at me; he'd sent me his personal off-ice training program from when he was actively training for pro hockey. I thought that was really cool of him, and of course being the sponge that I am when it comes to soaking up goalie knowledge, found it fascinating. Of course, it's obviously designed for someone who's job it is to train all day, so this is not something I could fit into my schedule. Nor is it something that would be physically possible for my body to do, as it would require about 3,000 calories a day PLUS protein drinks. However, we discussed how I could break it down and pick it apart for my needs, and turn a 6 day a week training regimen into 2 to 3 workouts per week that will greatly benefit my reaction, endurance and strength on the ice.

I cannot wait to get started. As much as I loathed getting up early on a Monday morning so I could be at the rink getting my butt kicked by 6:30, I really miss it. I miss the instruction and I miss the workout. Once the post-practice food hit my system I perked up and felt great all day. So my plan, and he agreed this was probably the best way to do it, is to get up early and do the workouts in the morning before work. All I need now is the motivation to actually get my butt out of bed and do this. It's easier when you know someone's waiting for you at the rink (and you have to pay them to torture you), than when the only person you have to answer to is yourself. But discipline is also an important part of athletics so I guess that's all part of the package.

Incidentally, looking at this training program, I think to myself... wow, I would absolutely love for that to be my job. But as he pointed out "that's my work week", and he got paid hardly anything for it, and there's always someone behind you waiting to take your place... I can see that there is a lot more to being a pro athlete than the glamour everyone thinks of. Still, it looks like heaven to me. I think I'll be ready to start tomorrow morning; I just need to work on some details of what I'm going to do and when, and just bite the bullet and do it. When the instructions on the exercise say "repeat until muscle failure", you know you're in for a good workout.