Agility Drill of the Week: Figure 8 Up Downs

Are we having fun with burpees yet? I know I’m … not. This week’s ADOTW involves a burpee-like move and adds agility to all the already awesome goodness. Think of it as an ode to my hometown footwork fame plus a crossfit addict’s need to add plyos to EVERYTHING.

Figure 8 Up-Downs

Set 2 cones a few feet apart, just wider than shoulder width apart. Starting in the middle of the cones, shuffle around them in a figure 8 motion. When you return to the start, pause, place your hands on the ground in front of your feet while bending your knees. Next, jump back into a plank position with your neck and spine in a neutral position and immediately jump your feet back to your hands. Stand up, adding a vertical jump at the end, then repeat the figure 8 motion in the opposite direction. Do 10 to 12 reps or see how many you can do in 1 minute.

Pro Tips

- Use your whole body to perform the drill: swing your arms and drive the actions with both your hips and legs.

- When jumping back into a plank, you shouldn’t look like you are trying to do the worm on the way back. Concentrate on keeping your body as flat as a board as you push back up. Since this is a full body move that means your arms and core are doing work too.

- Look up! Train as if you were training for your sport, so don’t be caught looking at your feet when you could be focusing your eyes on what is happening around you.

- Form over speed: do a run through once or twice at a slower pace to get the rhythm and form right. Speed in these drills won’t benefit you if you are running through them like a wacky waving inflatable tube man. Once you’ve gotten a handle on technique, go for speed.

Form Fix of the Week: Burpee

Did you just throw up in your mouth a little bit? Yeah. I did too. The burpee. The motherload of exercises. No one likes to even acknowledge that this exercise has essential benefits, just that it sucks the life out of your very soul no matter how fit you are. If you happen to know a person named Megan (aka Sara Problem), then you have agreed to do her birthday burpee challenge for her upcoming 44th birthday. That means starting with just 1 on day 1, adding a burpee to the previous day’s count and ending with all 44 on the last day. Someone very smart and pretty did the math and that means 990 burpees in 44 days. I think I just threw up in my mouth again.

I am not one to try fitness challenges on my own. But doing something in solidarity is definitely better than going at it alone, especially for someone awesome. So in honor of this birthday burpee challenge, today’s FFOTW is, you guessed it, the burpee! For the challenge, it was requested that everyone do a traditional old-fashioned burpee (which excludes the push up) so I will go over form for this particular burpee.

1. Stand straight up, feet shoulder width apart.

2. Bend down and place hands on the ground just in front of your feet and jump your feet straight back behind you, ending in a plank position.

3. Jump your feet back to your hands in one swift motion and keep your knees bent.

4. Immediately follow up with a vertical jump, driving with your hips and your hands extended above your head and land softly with knees bent.

Pro Tips

- A burpee involves power. If you are concentrating on form, it is important to remember where the power comes from—your hips! That means in-between steps 3 and 4, you are loading for the jump, not standing up in between and losing that power. Think of thrusting your hips from the squatting position to execute the jump.

- This traditional burpee does not require a push up or lowering down to the floor. BUT if you choose to add these steps, remember:

- Your push up requires good form too—neutral neck and spine with your core engaged

- If you are lowering to the ground, you shouldn’t look like you are trying to do the worm on the way up. Concentrate on keeping your body as flat as a board as you push back up. Since this is a full body move that means your arms and core are doing work too.

- Power comes from form first, speed second. Start slow until the technique is there, then go for speed.

Want to learn more about burpees? Check out:

Where Do Burpees Come From? (Spoiler Alert: Not Hell) | via Greatist

How to properly do a burpee demo (video) | via Hockey Training Pro

Five Reasons Why Burpees Should Be Your Favorite Exercise | via 12 Minute Athlete

Follow my progress on Instagram, or join the challenge on Facebook.

Form Fix of the Week: Side Plank

What is the difference between a balance exercise and a stability exercise? A balance exercise is training your muscles to achieve equilibrium, challenging different planes of motion. A stability exercise is exactly that, teaching your body to stabilize. Once your body stabilizes, it then learns to use stabilization to move your body as a whole properly.

Side planks fall under the category of stabilization, NOT balance. Most people execute a side plank by stacking their feet on top of each other and spending a lot of energy balancing (with their shoulder and ankle muscles, not their core!) and when you watch someone using this technique, most of the time it looks like they are practicing their wobble moves rather than holding a perfect plank. But a side plank is meant to stabilize, and use the muscles throughout your core—like your glutes, hips and back.

Next time you do a side plank, try this. Instead of stacking one foot on top of the other, place your top foot on the ground right in front of your bottom foot. Now instead of concentrating on trying not to tip over, you are working on engaging your core to keep your hips up and your body straight rather than trying to balance forwards and backwards.

Easy fix!

Form Fix of the Week: Box Jump

Ah, the wonderful world of plyometrics. They take any athlete up a notch in performance and can give them a huge jump (pun intended) on the competition. Today’s form fix is on the box jump. A very powerful plyometric exercise and if done correctly will take any athlete to new heights (more puns!).

When choosing the right box height, one should select a box that can be 1.) landed on with both feet firmly on the box and 2.) landed on in a standard squat position (a.k.a. an “athletic” position), NOT a deep squat. If you find yourself landing in a deep squat it means the box is too high. In relation to sports performance, you won’t find yourself very useful in this position as you will always need to be in the “ready” position to react quickly for your next move. Like you would with any other exercise, be patient and build up to the different heights as you would with weight in your resistance training. The stronger you become, the higher you will be able to jump.

Also, a good rule of thumb for plyometrics is that you are using power and explosiveness for the way up, not down. If you are jumping down with the same force, you are at risk for placing unnecessary force on your achilles tendon and causing serious injury. So when you are performing your box jumps, it is better to use the jump up-step down method.

Now, jump to it! (Last pun, I swear.)

So You Think You Can Run

proof that i'm pounding the pavement.

After retiring from derby, I said I would concentrate on speed skating. But I have put off recreational sports until I am back on my feet after moving halfway across the country. To replace my cardio conditioning, I started running.

If you’ve known me for years or known me for five minutes, you would know that I actually hate running. It is not my cup of tea. I don’t like the high impact. I don’t know how to breathe properly. I get really bored if I have to run longer than 20 minutes. If I were an Olympian, I would rather sprint like Usain Bolt than run a marathon. You get the point. But now that I am in foreign territory and there is a whole lot more to look at here in the PNW with such a mild winter, I had no excuses.

the view on my running route. in the middle of winter. say what?

When I first started running 4 weeks ago, I could barely make it a mile. I was frequently losing my will to live and awkward pains shot up my legs. And that old Joanie Utah knee? The one that cries in agony all the time? Not happy. My boyfriend would constantly remind me that I was a trainer and assumed that all trainers enjoy doing every type of workout. Wrong. Like normal human beings, trainers also have preferences for workouts. I have a preference for cardio conditioning that involves being on wheels. Skating, biking and spinning. If I knew how to swim, I would probably do that too. But you can’t tie a rope around my waist and throw me in the pool, can you? So how did I manage to stick to it for 4 weeks?

I had wrote out a simple plan. It started extremely light. 30 minutes of light jogging on day one, then having a goal of 2 miles on day two, then switching it up on day three with stair climbing (272 of them). From there I would slowly pick up the pace or add intensity/mileage depending on the day and monitor how I felt after each run. My pace has picked up, which I am very proud of and I need less breaks. My longest run so far has been 4.5 miles and I’d like to think that when I get to 5 miles, I won’t have the desire to run any further.

you want me to do how many sets? 

I don’t have a goal of running a marathon or becoming a distance runner. The goal for starting running was keep up my cardio conditioning. That was a good enough goal for me. As I wrap up my 4 weeks, I plan on taking a nice recovery week from running all together, then seeing if I can translate that work into getting back on my bike and tackling these mighty hills that were non-existent in my 15 years as a midwest biker. 60 miles was no problem in Chicago. But let’s see how far I can get here in Seattle and how long it takes before either my quads or my bike explodes.

Lesson of the Day

Even if you know you hate a particular type of training, give it a try. Mixing up your training will challenge you in different ways and keep you intrigued while making physical gains. When in new territory, always start smart and ease into it. Then, after you’ve gotten the hang of it, mastered it and realize you still hate it, you have now earned the right to loathe it with your own two feet.