Zen and the Art of Speedskating

Eva Rodansky and I were talking in Salt Lake last week; I was peppering her with questions about Boris’ training program, about intensities, weight training methods, length of taper, all of the details of training.

Ultimately, we both looked at each other and just agreed that one simply has to trust in a coach, and that as athletes, our job is to be “putty in their hands” and allow the coach to physically and technically shape us. As athletes, we are inseparable from the internal fires and stubborn drives that make us mentally tough, and because we are inseparable from those drives, we are frequently unable to have clear perspective to guide our own training. Also, because of our youth, we don’t have the wisdom that comes from 20+ years of competition.

Of course, I am not just putty, I am silly putty!! Picking up physical & emotional impressions wherever I can! And this is true of many skaters. Skating is such a technical sport, and since there are so many ways to explain & teach the “feel & practice” of skating, skaters who work with the same coach will start to resemble each other in their technical habits. In fact when I first worked with my current coaches, Rex Abertson and Boris Leikin, upon observing my style, Rex said to me “I bet that your first coach was Canadian!” he was right, Patrick Kelly, 2 time Canadian Olympic team member, was the first coach to ever spend time working with me.

I have a lot more to say about this, but I lifted weights this morning and now I have to go out and ride my bike easy for an hour or two, and time is short today… but I will say this, Boris believes I can make great gains in my performance from better flexibility, I was skeptical at first, but last week he showed me exactly how to do certain skate position specific stretches, and gosh! Like the hard trying ball of silly putty that I am, I have been doing them every day, and in the last 2 days, whoooosh!!! Its like my hamstrings are suddenly an inch longer, and I can extend my leg completely in the skate position!!

Go figure…. Coaches! Hah!!!!

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Bicyclian bards who sung
Wheely ideas below,
Which always find us young
Or Always make us so.

Verse, like a choir of poets in its sound,
All on his seat the rotal poemster sings
And while he turns the vivid wheel around,
Revolves no sad incertitude of things.

-J.G. Dalton 1885

I really like that quote, even in the late 1800’s, when bikes were high wheel monsters that had an unpredictable tendency to throw riders headfirst into the ground, they inspired people the same way they do now. “wheely ideas -which always find us young, or always make us so” nice…

The bike has been VERY good to me recently, I rode to the gym yesterday morning, and for workout #2 did a long ride in the evening, and just felt silly strong; I had one of those rides where there was nothing in my mind but the torque and power I was applying through the chain into the road, no sound but the hum of gears & windsong, the rhythms of extended climbing, the swoop of maximum lean on twisty, steep Ithaca descents. If I could bottle that feeling and sell it, I would be a wealthy man. Hmmmm, I am wealthy for just feeling it! (why are the people who have this life philosophy usually somewhat poor in the pure financial sense?)

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Feeling phenomenal in the gym today, like the plates & bar were made of Styrofoam, I was tossing around weight with ease and snap, my body has absorbed all my recent hard work, and then doing a front squat with 185lbs on the bar (and I do this all the time, this weight is not even close to my max) at rep 8 of a 10 rep set, I felt a bad twinge behind the right knee, I put the bar back immediately, walked around, stretched, shook the leg cautiously, it felt fine, no problem at all… I took the bar off the rack in back squat position (easier for me, I am far stronger in that range of motion) and the same bad twinge announced itself on the second rep, like an electric shock of pain right behind the right kneecap…

My “oh fuck” echoed loudly through the weight room, just to see if it was a range of motion thing, I tried the leg press, even with two plates on each side (for me a nothing weight) zing!!!!!! pain again, right behind the right kneecap.. I had warmed up properly, stretched well, nothing unusual in my routine…… I am 34, and very aware that I need to listen to my body, and it was sending me a very loud and clear message….

I ended the workout right there…. It does not hurt at all to walk or ride a bike or stand on one leg or even hop around on the one “hurt” leg… But that lifting stress was electric pain, very bad….. I hope it goes away!!! Looking back at my training journals from last year, on april 27th, a muscle in the top of the right thigh suddenly pulled in the gym. I also ended that workout immediately, and was fine in the following days..

I think I will be ok for my coming very demanding workouts…. As an athlete, its important to know yourself, know the line between and “owie” and a true chromic “injury” this is an owie at this point, since I stopped so early, not an injury…. but crap!! its scary to have this stuff happen… This could become an injury, I hope not…

Is there a lesson? Health is wealth maybe? Treasure what you have, it might be gone in 1 rep on the squat rack?

Its also scary cause my right ankle has been bothering me, it seems as if the right leg chain of joints & motion is somehow out of whack… I need my right leg…

Stay tuned….

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Every inch of me is fried, shredded, cooked, mashed & crushed, as I write this… I wanna cry with exhaustion and frustration. My hands and arms and abs feels as if they have been gnawed on by large rough beasts, to say nothing of my legs! My Russian jump dryland workout at courtside today was haaaaard!! Hard equally on my body and the weak brain of mine that rides atop it.

Today, an hour and 45 minutes through my 3 hour pylometric session my soul began to crack from the endless jumps, sprints, pushups, and one legged hops in the skate position…

I began thinking, “I can’t do this!!! this is too hard!!! I am worthless!!! I can’t live up to all the people who believe in me!!! My wife will move across the country for my dreams, and I am not mentally strong enough to even finish this workout!!!” A lot of athletes are driven by internal mechanisms that are sometimes not pretty, healthy, logical, or sustainable. I am no different.

This is one of the great dangers of working out alone, especially when pushing beyond your physical limits and frying your muscle fibers like lo mein noodles in a hot oil anaerobic wok.

Once the levels of self-disgust started becoming dangerously toxic, I took a 20 minute break, ate a banana, drank some Gatorade, and sat alone in the mirror lined room at courtside that I usually do my dryland in.

I took stock of myself, drenched in sweat. Lots of little bits of me were hurting, but really, what was hurting the most was my confidence, the legs still had something to give, but the expression in the mirror was pretty beaten. I almost walked out of the gym right there, thinking maybe I really needed a “mental day”.

But I can’t do that. I believe in a life philosophy of “train how you want to race”. So I approach each moment in these peak effort workouts as if the intensity matters like my season was on the line right here, right now. Mind games can be a valuable tool, especially for sprinter types like me, who need to go 100% frequently.

But it’s dangerous fire to play with, sometimes it burns you the wrong way. So I convinced myself, however illogically, that training hard & finishing this workout strongly, proving to myself that I am not a quitter, that will earn me my racing goals (or at least the satisfaction of knowing I tried as hard as I could) this upcoming race year. Its no joke that in the gym, right now, I might as well have been stepping to the start line at Olympic trials, I got that butterflies in the stomach feeling that I get before important races.

I took myself & my butterflies downstairs to the free weight room, & away from mirrors that were not showing me what I needed to see. There are many good people at courtside (they are one of my sponsors too! thanks tom!), I know most of the trainers, great folks, and today there also happened to be lots of “eye candy” pretty people working out. People with puma sleek bodies, glowing with tans & bleached hair, tasteful tattoos, & clothing that dramatically calls attention to their, uhhh, total perfections (let me just leave it at that). I kinda like gyms with this element, I always have, not sure why… But the “pretty scenery” straightened my slump, set my jaw, and screwed my sodden brain back into its proper socket.

Going from the overdose of the internal, to the external of the free weight room, was the right move, and among the powerlifters tossing around 100lb dumbbells, and trophy wives in makeup bopping along on their elliptical trainers, I found focus again, and the butterflies became cruise missiles.

People probably looked at me funny as I finished the last hour of my 3 hour workout. If you have never seen a speedskater doing dryland, it can resemble a weird martial art, where you just swing one arm and do lots of strange balancing sideways kicks. But I did not care, I got stronger as I worked harder and harder.

After my final effort, I gathered up my stuff from the locker room, and waddling upon now truly shredded lo-mein legs, went outside into the early evening & light rain. Walking to my car, my skin felt hot, and I would not have been surprised if I heard the rain hiss away in a puff of steam as it hit me.

I felt no sense of victory, no sense of proving myself. But what was there in my heart was more the grim satisfaction of a bricklayer, in the concentration of building something heavy, piece by careful piece. It was good enough for today.

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I feel as if I am the tin man from the wizard of oz, after being caught in a rainstorm. Today I am staggering around my house, rusted, squeaky and sore, muttering “oilcan, oilcan!!” (ibuprofen! ibuprofen!!)

And it is my own fault, this season I have taken a new direction with my training, I have been self-coached since I started, and had taken it as far as it could go, but now I have a pair of coaches. Rex and Boris. Boris is as Russian as his name would suggest, and he has done amazing things for my friend eva rodansky.

Boris has given me my training schedule for the next month. Suffice it to say, its not a lot of hard work, except for 2 days a week, and those are this insanely hard jump program. I did it for the first time last night, and wow… my muscles are FRIED.

If you are a functional athlete like me who needs to move with agility, power, and acceleration, you have to train, to a great extent, as one piece. This is why things like squats (a one piece exercise) or pylometrics are so effective on real world athletes. Boris’ workout, on paper, looked medium hard, long, but with no mega poundage lifting, how hard could it be?

It took me 2 1/2 hours at the gym to finish it!! and halfway through, I realized its method/madness. After endless arm circles & hip rotations, dips, pushups, leg swings, bounding, and skate position work with no more resistance than my bodyweight, I was cooked, fried, fini. There was only one “ab” specific exercise in it, halfway through, but by the time I got to it, my core was so shot I could barely do it!

Bodybuilding is a good thing in and of itself, I have an amazing friend who pursues it with passion. But the bad influence of bodybuilding on other sports (and bodybuilding-bodies dominate our media culture, the supplement industry, and magazine newsstands) is that bodybuilding approaches the body as a set of disconnected pieces. Do this to improve your abs, do that to highlight your biceps definition, grip your weights just so to hit the muscles just so, etc, etc.

I am sure the other courtside denizens, all linked to elliptical trainers & machines, used to training with bodybuilding principles in mind, looked at me with wonderment, as I stood in a corner, trying to master things like spinning my arms at top speed in the opposite direction from each other (jess can do that one with ease), or moving my head in the largest circle I possible while keeping my hips rock solid.

Like the tin man in the picture above, I came home and squeakily crawled into bed, instantly rusting into immobility. My wife was so sweet, gave me a massage out of sympathy… healing the body and mind…

Certainly lifting makes you tired, but it makes the pieces you work tired, after last nights workout my whole body is now one sheath of rust. I will recover from this though, repair, and become one sheet of steel (tin?) and it will only help my athletic development. Even so, I am so surprised at the level of my exhaustion and soreness… my abs hurt just sitting here typing!!

Are there any readers out there with their with their own stories of mega-soreness, of waking up the next day and discovering they have become the rusty tin man? if so, speak up! I am getting an average of 41 (!!!!) readers a day now, so there has to be at least one or two good stories out there!

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