"There Ain't No Need to Go Outside"

This past week was not exactly full of soccer. We had practice once on Thursday and our tournament this weekend got cancelled, the only local tournament we have all year. I have never seen so much rian in my entire life (which is why I included the Jack Johnson quotes of "banana pancakes"). I went by the soccer fields at Thompson Berry, only to see what looked like minature lakes all over the complex. It would have been fun, but dangerous, to play in such conditions; consequently, no one was able to play. Weight lifting was disapointing at the start of the week. I was unable to even get my MAX from two weeks before. However, I rebounded and on Friday I was able to do five pounds more than my previous MAX. I only have two more weeks to lift at school, and I plan on making it worth it. I have decided that I'm going to join Owensboro Gym and Fitness as soon as school is over so that I don't lose all that I have gained this semester. Working, lifting, and preparing for soccer will pretty much occupy my entire summer. Right now my weeks are full of school, then work, then trying to figure out where to sqeeze evreything else in between. All of these things going on at once can make life quite stressful. Summer can't come soon enough...

Louisville

This past weekend my team went up to lousiville to compete in the annual Mockingbird tournament. We had a good showing, winning two games and tying once. However, we did not advance to the championship because of a tiebreaker that catapulted the team tied with us past us by one point. Considering we only had two subs and three players sick (me included), I would consider it to be a successful weekend. I scored 2 goals and had 4 assists in our three games. At times though, I felt myself struggling for air because of the inflamation in my lungs along with the fact that I'm still not quite cardiovascularly fit. Physically, I felt I was above par; I was able to body people off the ball with ease, and I won my share of 50/50 balls in the middle of the field. Weightlifting has really made a difference in my play, which some might find hard to believe since soccer is believed by many to be a "non-contact" sport. This summer will be crucial for me to further improve my muscular strength to the level of a collegiate athlete, as well as maintain a high level of cardiovascular fitness. It seems like as I increase my muscular strength, my cardiovascular strength is taking a hit; somehow I need to find a "happy medium" between the two. I have never been as excited, yet nervous, about anything like I am about playing soccer at Transy. I'm not exactly sure what to expect...

5 Weeks

It seems as if high school was flying by until these last couple of weeks. Ever since I began working, the days just drag by and I find myself hoping that school will end soon. We still have five weeks left, which means I have five weeks that I have to keep my grades up so I can recieve the full 500 dollars of KEYS money that we get every year we have a 4.0. As of now, I am in strong standing in every class. However, one slip up on an AP Biology or AP Language test could prove lethal. With my busy schedule, which includes soccer practice twice a week, thirty hours of work a week, and of course going to school five days a week, it is becoming harder and harder to find time to study for my classes as much as I was used to. So far it hasn't affected my grades and hopefully it won't. I have still been lifting and my MAX on bench is now around 165 pounds. I'm not quite where I would have hoped, but im still on track to get anywhere between 175 and 180 pounds, depending on how much energy I can excert every morning when I lift. Another benefit that I will be experiencing this summer is having more energy to perform my lifts. When you don't have enough energy to exort, you can't break down your muscles and form lactic acid as efficiently; therefore, your muscles are not rebuilding up to their potential. This summer I will only have to concentrate on work, lifting, and soccer. I am looking forward to summer, but I realize that high school is one of the best times of a person's life, which I will definitely miss.

Another Hurdle

I was down to just a few dollars in my pocket, I was now forced to get a job. Now I have to juggle multiple tasks: getting stronger, playing soccer, keeping my grades up, and going to work. Most people wouldn't consider my job dersierable or difficult. I would definitely agree with the first half. Stocking dairy products (milk, eggs, a million different kinds of cheese, etc.) can be straining after several hours. My first day was on Saturday and learning everything is very stressful. It is hard to do everything expected of me as fast as people who have been working at Wal-Mart for a year or longer, and it seemed as if I was being rushed to my job. However, there were about 8 new employees, and I felt as if I was doing my work more efficiently and quickly than them. By starting this new job, I have put a slight wrinkle in my goals for getting stronger and maintaining a sufficient practice schedule. Now I am only able to make 1, maybe 2, practices a week, instead of all three. As far as lifting, I am going to be tired in the mornings when I have my free weights class. This situation could put a damper on my ability to go up in weight because it will be hard to push my exhausted body, not allowing my muscles to perform to their maximum potential. But I have to remind myself that by me working, I am creating savings for when I go off to college. I won't be able to work first semester because college soccer is much more demanding. So, hopefully I will save up enough money so I don't have to work the first semester while I am going to school and playing soccer.

A week of disappointment

Well, one would think after getting demolished on Sunday afternoon, that the players on my team would be motivated to get better so this monstrosity would never occur again. This was obviously not the case because there were only nine players at our practice on Wednesday night. It is nearly impossible to have an effective practice with so few players, so the majority of practice was spend scrimmaging. Although scrimmaging is fun and a good way to improve your decision making on the field, there are more important things that need to be worked on. Hopefully the people on my team will realize this and show up to practice tonight, since we have a league game this weekend. State Cup is still about two and half months away, so we have time to improve. On the other side of things, the disappointment from this weekend revived my spirit to work out harder in the wieght room. It can only help my game if I am one of the strongest and most in shape players on the field. This week I maxed out on bench at 160 pounds, which in 15 pounds more than I did at the beginning of the semester. I am convinced to improve this MAX between 20-25 pounds for the next nine weeks, to reach my goal of around 185. Although the weekend left a sour taste in my mouth, I figured out that I was scouted by a few schools, the main being Oakland City. The head coach contacted me and offered me a $15,000 scholarship per year, which is about 70 percent of their tuition. I most likely will not go to this school because they don't have the area of study I would like, acccounting, but it is definitely an achievement and worth a visit. Hopefully if I keep working hard I will have bigger and better achievements to come...

Memphis Tourney? Kentucky Basketball!

Well, the weekend took on two totally different moods. On a positive side, Kentucky basketball signified they are on the top of the latter in the SEC. They cameback to beat Alabama in the quarter finals, blewout the 16th ranked vols, and squeaked out an overtime win against Mississippi State in the SEC Finals. Now, expectations are mammouth for the NCAA tourney, which they didn't even make last year (sorry North Carolina fans, I feel your pain). Kentucky is a 1 seed for the first time since 2004 and are now expected to meet Kansas for what people would expect to be an explosive final between the two most talented teams in college basketball. However, there was that infamous negative side of my weekend that really put a damper on Kentucky's success. Saturday, we played two inferior teams but onlny managed to pull out a tie. I'm not one to make excuses, but the fields were soaked/muddy and the half times were cut from 45 minutes to only 30 minutes. Both of these games we dominated, but we just couldn't manage to put in another goal. Sunday we were still playing for second place, if we could pull out a win against a team that had blown out both other team 7-0 and was ranked in the top 50 in the nation. I knew going in it was going to be a tough game, but never did I imagine that we would get blanked 6-0. There was no excuse for getting embarrassed this way; it was time to get back to practice and work out some kinks that obviously needed some fixing.

Polishing Rust

It's only a week away from the big tournament in Memphis, Tennesse. My soccer team has practiced the last three days in a row in an effort to polish up the rustiness from not playing outdoors since the high school season ended in early November. As any athlete knows, such a break can get you a little off your game. However, there is always going to be this long of a break when there is temperatures below 20 degrees Farenheit and snow on the ground for nearly three months. As a soccer player, there is not much we can do about this long absence besides playing a type of indoor called futsal. This is basically a type of soccer a hard floor with boundaries (not the typical off-the-wall that most people picture indoor as). The ball is slightly heavier so the game is not too fast to make it more game-like. The field is about the length of a basketball court, as well as the width. In return, it doesn't take near the cardiovascular strength that an outdoor game requires; it is also much different when you play with this heavier futsal ball than a regular outdoor ball. So, this is another barrier between the two games that does not keep the rust from forming. Hopefully the last couple of weeks have allowed us to get rid of the majority of the rust that had formed. This tournament in Memphis is mammouht in importance because of the amount of top college coaches that will be attending. Although I have pretty much made up my decision on going to Transy for soccer, there is always an outside chance that I could get a better offer from a better school if I play well.

Getting In Shape

After running for the first time, I realized how long it had actually been since I had ran. The last time was in November shortly before my high school team was eliminated in the region finals. However, I realized that I had only lost about one minute on my two mile, which I didn't consider to be too bad. I had my first outdoor, and i quickly figured that just because my two mile hadn't quite lost its sting, my "soccer conditioning" was no where near where it should be. After only 30 minutes of scrimmaging, I found myslef clutching my kness, bent over, and gasping for breath. There is a significant difference betweem being in good distance shape and being in soccer shape. The game of soccer requires constant shifting back and forth between sprinting and jogging for two 45 minute halves. This requires a different kind of conditioning that is almost impossible to achieve unless you are actually playing games consistently. So, no matter what I do, I am fearful that I won't be in "game shape" until after getting several games under my belt. As far as my weight lifting was concerned, I was still slowly improving (gaining about 5 pounds on my bench MAX every 2-3 weeks). There is only one thing that was bothering me and that was there are too many days that I was not able to lift because of various situations. Some these were assemblys, snow days, and pointless surveys that required us to miss class. I feel like if there were not so many distractions that caused me to miss class, I could be consistently improving 5 pounds on my MAX every 2 weeks, instead of it sometimes taking 3 weeks. If this were the case, then I could actually surpass my goal by five pounds by the end of the semester. At the the rate I am going right now, I will prolly fall 5-10 pounds short of my 185 pound goal I set at the beginning of the semester. This means that I am going to have to work a little harder to make sure that I can acheive both my goals of being cardiovascularly and muscularly in shape...

New and Improved

My new technique was working. I started out the first week on my bench doing seven sets of five of 115 pounds. This was a little bit of struggle when it came time for the last two sets, but I could really feel my muscles tighten when I was performing my lifts. Then next day I was fairly sore, but my protein shake helped ease the pain, so I could again do incline bench after only a day of rest. Then Friday I used a toning workout, doing five sets of ten of 115 pounds. Yea, you read that right; I was doing the same weight except doing ten repetitions at a time. This new routine was already working its wonders. I took the weekend off from lifting, except for the occassional push ups, sit ups, and pull ups. However, my first soccer tournament was coming up in a close approaching four weeks, so I needed to also be getting some cardiovascular work. I went for a simple two mile run, which I realized about halfway through that I hadn't done since my soccer season ended in November. This meant that I was terribly out of shape, and it was a miserable run. I hadn't been this out of shape since sophmore year, when I was coming out of my fat, awkward stage. Now I had to jostle two battles, getting stronger before college and getting in good enough shape to where I could play a 90 minute soccer game. This was a tough task, but I was determined to acheive both goals. The next month is going to be exhausting, but I am excited to see the results of my hard work paying off.

Improving

After nearly two weeks of lifting, it was time to check our progress by maxing out on our bench press. I got on the bench, sweat dripping from my brow, and easily lifted my previous max weight (145). Then, I added 2.5 pounds on each side, bringing my total to 150. I seemed to struggle a little but managed to get up the bar. Next I tried something a little bit ambitious, lifting 155. I almost completed this lift, only to stall only three inches from locking out my elbows. I was devastated, but I should have been looking at the possitive side; I had improved my max by 5 pounds in just two weeks. At that rate, I would improve my max by nearly 40 pounds at the end of the semester. But I went to coach Hurley and asked for some advice, which I hoped would prove beneficial. He told me to modify my workouts from pyramids (which is benching by increasing weight doing sets 0f 7,5,3,2,2,1) to heavy weights doing seven sets of five with a heavy weight. This strategy made me very sore the next day, which was a good sign because it meant my muscles were tearing more, therefore, rebuilding getting stronger. Your muscles get stronger by tearing and rebuilding. When they rebuild, they are stronger than they were before. However, if you do the same workout every time, your muscles adapt and don't tear as easy, so you have to change it up and almost "keep you muscles guessing." I hoped this new technique would greatly improve my strength, and next time we max I was striving for 160 pounds.

Starting Out

It was now time for our first official week of lifting. My group consisted of me, Chris Morgan, and Kyle Johnson. Chris and Kyle had maxed out at 175 the previous day, compared to my puny 145 pounds. At first I was a little hesitant because they were quite a bit stronger than me, but I decided that this would be good for me because they would push me to lift more. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were upper body days, and Tuesday and Thursday were lower body days. Your muscles must have a day of rest, so thats why we set the workout to rotate between the two major muscle groups, lower and upper body. Then inside these two groups are several sub groups. Upper body has biceps, triceps, latisimus doris (upper back), shoulders, and chest. Lower body consists of quadracepts, hamstrings, calfs, hip flexers, and abdominals. As you can tell, there are signifucantly more muscles in the upper body section of the workout, which is why we work upper body three days a week and lower body only two days; plus, everyone wants to have a strong upper body because it just looks good and is beneficical when it comes to picking up ladies on the beach. Now, the first day coach Hurley said would make us the sorest we would be the entire semester. I kind of took this statement lightly, until I woke up the next day. When I rolled over out of bed and tried to do my regular morning yawn and extend my arms above my head, I was sent into shock by the tearing sensation of my chest and arms. We had done a benching workout the day before that also included workouts such as curls, 1 armed rows, and many more. I found myself wondering if I was going to be this sore all the time, but I was determined not to give up. So, I took a shower, downed my protein, and headed off to school for first block once again, free weights.

A Whole New World

Now it was time for a new start: College Soccer. My old goals are no longer set in my mind. Some of them I accomplished, while others I did not quite reach. However, I think it is best not to dwell on the past; so, I made up my mind to become a more complete player and become muscularly fit (if thats a word). What is the best way to accomplish this goal? Well, I decided it was to enroll in the always popular for slackers weight lifting class at our very own Daviess County High School. Most people took this class so they wouldn't have to take a challenging class like anatomy. The consequence of this is a class 90 percent fool of kids that don't actually care a bit about getting stronger and enhancing their athletic abilities. Thankfully I had one good friend that was just as motivated as me about getting stronger. As most people know, if you don't have someone else there pushing you and spotting you, then you're not going to get the most out of your workouts. Chris also happens to be my best friend, so this weight lifting class was turning out to be a brilliant idea. It was now time for the first day of class and wow was I in for a big surprise. It was my turn to MAX OUT, which is a term used to show your progress as the class went along. My bench press MAX was only 145 pounds; there were some people in the class that had maxed over 200 pounds (but I didnt feel too bad because there were some guys who couldn't even bench 100 pounds). I felt pretty weak, but I was determined to increase my MAX by the most in the entire class. So what did I do? I set a goal to get my MAX up to 185 pounds, which Chris thought was unrealistic. I blocked out his remarks and now I had my complete focus on reaching my goal.

The Message

Well, I was always middle of the pack when it came to strength all the way through my junior year playing high school soccer. Of course I had a strong leg, but my upper body wasn't exactly filled out like it should be. So, the off season going into my senior year I started lifting a little, but still not as much as I should have. Then I was approached at one of my games by the Transylvania soccer coach, and he told me he really wanted me to come play for them next season. However, it was what followed that statement that really motivated more than anything: "if you put on a good ten to fifteen pounds of muscle in your upper body you have the chance to really compete for some good miunutes and maybe even a starting job." This was a huge wake-up call that I have used to motivate me. This was during the season so I couldn't start my strength training right at that moment because every good athlete knows that the majority of your improvement, as far as aerobic and strength, comes during the offseason. So, I finished the rest of the season with a few more coaches contacting me with the same message but none of them seemed to be the right fit like Transy did. I finished the season on a good performance of my own, but it was not the ending I had been dreaming of since I entered high school. We had lost to Henderson County in the regional Finals, the only positive being that I got All-Third Region Tournament Team. I couldn't really appreciate this award because I had failed in my goal to make it to the final four. My teamates and I were devastated becuase this was supposed to be our year to make it, but we had failed in the worse way possible, penalty kicks. The next few weeks I spend sulking, but then it was time for me to set my new goal: College Soccer.

Misconceptions

Many people don't realize what it takes to play soccer and perform at a high enough level to be a decent player. The common, yet false, mental image of a soccer player is a person that is very weak and runs a lot. Most people don't think it takes any strength at all to play soccer, but these are the same people that have never played an actual intense game. Of course the average soccer player has to have fairly strong legs, which the occassional bystander would probably agree with because soccer players obviously have to be able to shoot, pass, and cross. A soccer player must also have exceptional core strength to be able to withstand hard attempts of opposing players trying to knock you off the ball. Some bystanders might agree with this, while others might have some scepticism. It's the last part that hardly anyone can understand besides soccer players themselves: A good soccer player has to have a strong upper body! What if "good" isn't quite good enough? To be a great soccer player, you must have an exceptionally strong upper body. I'm not talking about offensive linemen (football) strong, but I am talking about the same kind of strength as a great basketball player. This is the part where people that don't play soccer really start to lift some eyebrows and chuckle. But, believe it or not, soccer IS a contact sport and people DO get hurt. Soccer is the third most contact sport behind only football and hockey; and yes I did put it in front of basketball, which is a sport that seems to have a foul every 30 seconds. Soccer is a game full of action that goes on for two continuous 45 minute halves that requires tremendous cardiovascular and muscular strength.