Week three of the TOSH Training Program was another good one. Each staff member is feeling more and more comfortable with the exercises and seeing dramatic improvement in what he or she is able to do. With McKenzie helping us along and correcting our form, we are beginning to really feel the benefits of the program.
Tuesday’s workout was another plyometrics day. It was an extremely tough day, and we will never look at towels the same way again. We started normally with doing some jumps on the dots, before turning into a towel exercise and box jump circuit. We started on the hardwood with two towels under our feet and did lunges up and down the court. Then box jumps. Then back to the towels for a different exercise. Then more boxes. The circuit continued several more times finally finishing up with towel mountain climbers and single leg mountain climbers. It burned. Talking to McKenzie about the circuit she explained some of the “why” behind the exercises. “Towels and box jumps were in a circuit form to help mimic the type of “fitness” that we typically see through most athletic competitions (especially soccer). Run hard for 10, 20, 30 seconds and then its slower pace and then we are back up again chasing the ball down the field or making the run for a through ball… etc.” The box jumps were the aerobic portion of the workout while the towel exercises were the rest period.
Following the plyometrics portion of the workout we went to the treadmill where we did backpedal for the first time. Each staff member grabbed a harness and were strapped into the machine, as the treadmill runs each participant is asked to participate in a backpedal, it’s really tough to get a hang of the movements but well worth it. “Backpedal is a great tool to use for activating our hamstring that doesn’t happen as effectively with forward running. We use the backpedal machine a lot with our athletes who have suffered lower extremity injuries, to help get the hamstring activating in a healthy sequence with our quadriceps muscle and obtain a co-contract balance between hamstring and quads.“
Thursday was back to the treadmill. Today was an anaerobic day meaning longer stretches of running with core exercises in between. Today we also really focused on form and technique making sure that our hips and core were doing the right things, as you can see in the video below. The anaerobic exercises are important to the whole process means our muscles have the stamina and strength needed.
We look forward to continuing next week!
