Oakland and San Diego (... so far)

Well I flew out on Friday to Oakland to visit my brother and ended up having some great times and some really fun workouts. On Friday I went to visit his school (he teaches P.E., coaches Track and XC and is the Men's Athletic Director) and do some warmup drills and strides with his XC team. They seemed to enjoy it and so did I.

After that we went straight to King's Gym in East Oakland to do some boxing. I'd never boxed before, but Paul has been going for about three months and he hooked me up with his trainer for the day. We warmed up with 3 sets of 3 minute of jump roping, then did some basic learning stuff and then I worked the punching bag for a while before going to work the gloves with the trainer. I probably did three or four sets of 2-3 minutes on the gloves and was absolutely beat. After that we worked the heavy bag some more, and I went home exhausted. It was super fun.

The next day we got up early and went to a cross country race that my brother was running. He ran well and we had a good time people watching and talking about how funny those cross country races are. Everyone takes it super seriously, which is really cool at times and pretty funny at times. Anyway, after that we hung out for a while and then he took me to a place called the Great Western Power Company, which is actually a cross-fit gym and a rock climbing gym all rolled into one. I got a good workout in with some snatch complexes, medball, core and KB swings, and we went home. That evening we went out in Berkeley with my friends Mike Morrisson and his girlfriend Herdis and had a great time.

On Sunday I flew into San Diego, where I will be training for the next two weeks. Today (Monday) was a super fun day, as I got to do some stand-up paddleboarding for the first time ever! I've really been itching to try it, and my step-dad Jim got a board and a paddle recently and let me try it out. Here I am in beautiful San Diego Bay on my first paddleboard trip:

Anyway, Jim and my Mom hopped in some kayaks and we ended up paddling around the bay about two and a half miles. Afterward, Jim jumped on the paddleboard and showed me what I should really look like paddling that thing around. I hope I'm that smooth when I'm 60! Here he is trimming the bay:

Anyway, this is a pole vault blog so I guess I should get back to that. Later in the day I went over to UCSD, a weight room I love to train at, and got in a really solid monday workout with some good hang cleans, plyos overhead pressing and split squatting. Tomorrow I'm going to head out to the Olympic Training Center to train with my friend Yoo Kim. We're going to have a little jump session out there hopefully, which will be my first real jumping of the year. I'm not planning on doing much, but I'm excited to bend a pole a few times late in the session after some more straight pole work. Hope for the best! Until next time...

Jeff

Maxes and Travels

So this week was max week in the weight room. On monday I went in hyped and ready to max in the snatch, only to have my shoulder flare up during the warmup to the point where I just went home and went for a jog. I came back in Tuesday and did my Monday workout minus the max, because my shoulder was still bugging me. I went in Wednesday ready to max in the snatch and the front squat, and was able to get both in. I warmed up and started my snatch progression. I started with some 5 rep sets at 40, 50 and 60 kg. I then hit triples at 70 and 75kg pretty easily, and moved up to make 80kg for 3 from a hang. I was real happy about that one, and you can watch it here. I moved to the squat rack, where we were going for a 5 rep max in the front squat. I have never been much of a squatter (at all), but was able to do some warmup sets at 50 60 and 70 before moving to 85kg for an easy 5. I probably could have gone for 6-8 at that weight or gone up to 90 or 95 for a true 5 rep max, but we decided to cut it off there where I was fairly comfortable but it felt heavy. I was really happy with my maxes, since both of them were probably rep PRs, and then I moved on to do 12 sets of 10 second weighted vest vertical jumps with 40 seconds rest and was done for the day!

The rest of the week has been interesting. After my weight session Wednesday, I jumped in the car and headed to Manhattan, Kansas (9 hrs) to pick up my friend John Jefferson, whose car had completely broken down in Colby, KS. His friend Christian Smith was nice enough to give him a ride to Manhattan, and I met them there, had a snack, drank some of Christian's coffee, and headed back to Bloomington. All-in-all it was a 20 hour trip through the night, and I took a 4 hour nap today followed by my jog and now I'm spent.

Tomorrow I get on a plane and head to Oakland to see my brother for a weekend before heading down to San Diego for about 10 days to hang out with my parents and hopefully do a little bit of training at the Olympic Training Center with my friend Yoo Suk Kim. Should be good!

Jeff

Progress etc.

Well this week was a down week in the weight room but I did manage to get in a couple good workouts in there and otherwise. I have been sticking to doing some straight pole work a few times per week so that I can learn some new concepts there (getting the top hand moving up off of the ground, jumping through the center of the pole with elastic arms and pushing through the penultimate step to name a few) during the fall and transfer it to my fiberglass vaulting in the winter more easily. This week I managed to do a stay behind drill with a grip of 12'10", which is basically a 6 step or 3 left straight pole drill with no swing-up. The highest I've ever really been able to hold before and swing up is about 12'3", so hopefully if it gets even a little bit better and I can start to swing up on it, I will be ready to approach some serious 6 step straight pole PRs. My goal this year was to be able to swing up with 13' of grip comfortably, so I'm right where I need to be there, and it has been 100% a result of working on a number of technical changes on the runway and at takeoff.

Anyway, this week is going to be pretty fun. Tomorrow I get to put up my first max of the year, which is going to be a 3 rep max in the hang snatch. I'm looking for something around 70kg, and 75kg would be absolutely awesome. On Wednesday we go for an 8 rep max in the front squat, which I'm less excited about haha. I'm not much of a squatter but while we're all friends here I can tell you that something around 80kg would be pretty darn good for me at this point. I operate only in kg, so hopefully I'm not confusing you too much! Thats all for now.

Jeff

Change of Plans?

I had a chat today with one of my good friends, Aarik Wilson. Aarik is hands down the best triple jumper in the USA and quite possibly the world... when he's healthy. In 2007 he was beating the best of the best in europe regularly, and posted something like 20 out of the top 25 results of the year in the US in the triple jump, and also has long jumped over 8m!

Anyway, he has suggested to me that I should take indoor a little more seriously this year, and try to get after it a little bit and even get over to Europe. That of course sounds great to me, since I'm itching to get over there and compete ASAP! He explained to me that I could get fired up for indoor, compete hard, get my USA mark and some good experience in Europe, and then not have to worry about jumping outdoors until June. I think it sounds like a good plan, and Jake is totally behind it, so I'll have to talk to Wil, my strength coach, and formulate a plan to make it work. We'll see!

In other news, I have been training hard in the weight room and am feeling pretty strong down there! This week is going to be pretty tough, and then next week we back down the volume and hit a couple maxes for reps to get an idea where I am. Stay tuned!

Jeff

First Few Weeks of Training

Well training is pretty well underway at this point, with the whole focus being on my lifting and a little bit of pole drills for the time being. This past week I started my full time lifting program at Force, and really enjoyed the workouts. Monday we do some explosive work with olympic lifting and plyos, Wednesday we focus on tempo lifts with things like tempo frontsquats at 2 seconds down, 2 seconds up, no rest between reps (hard!!), and Friday we finished up with a few complexes and some biking. I filled in the rest of the days this week with things like stationary biking, pole drills (sand walkovers, 1 step and 2 step sand takeoffs, 4 step and 6 step straight vaults into the pit), and some light running (strides etc.). So far I'm feeling good and staying confident. Sorry this post was a little boring, but things wont really get dialed up until about the middle of October, so for now I just have to keep grinding out these base weeks.

Jeff