Other than the whole law school thing, the biggest development in my life has been entrance into the world of Olympic Weightlifting. Now this isn’t power lifting and it isn’t body-building. This is the real deal. Lifts as old as time. Technique above all. Fast twitch muscles. Don’t get it twisted, the men and women who are good at this stuff are incredibly strong, but it’s about much more than strength. The assistant coach isn’t a big guy. He’s dense. And he’s oh-so-fast.
The sport consists of two lifts: the clean and jerk and the snatch (laugh it up). I spend 6-8 hours a week working on what amounts to two motions. We do more than just competition lifts in training. We squat in various ways and do presses and push-ups and pull-ups. But it’s all in the service of the two competition lifts. I think about it the way I think about Yoga. The concentration is intense, but this isn’t a sport about thinking. It’s about moving past concepts, past strategy, past any kind of plan. It’s an attempt to get your mind and your body to act like the whole that they are. In Yoga this is done through deliberate motions and concentrating on release and body position. Olympic lifting is all about setting and then moving as fast you can in one fluid motion until you have an incredibly large amount of weight over your head. When the best lifters move you can hardly see it. There are lots of discreet motions, but when they happen together it looks effortless (contrast this to folks doing deadlifts).
I’m a big fan of sounds and this sport has two of them. First, you wear platform shoes with solid heels (to keep you straight when you are in the full squat position and to give you something push off of when you stand up). The lifts are done on wooden “platforms” (not actually raised) and when you lift you come up on your toes on the pull and slam your heals onto the wood when get under and catch the weight (it goes into free fall when you get under it). The sound is a snap of the best kind. Second, the weights covered in rubber, so you get to drop them when you complete the lift. Few things are more satisfying than tossing 180 lbs from 8 feet.
Ultimate is a great sport. I’ve found a group who play in town on Mondays and Wednesdays. It’s a mixed crowd. The guy who organizes things is a short, middle-aged guy who played on a world championship team. I mention his size because in Ultimate it helps to be tall. So much of the game is about extension that guys with long arms and a good vertical leap are at a major advantage. Of course, you also have to be quick and have good endurance, but height is a big advantage. To see a guy who can’t be more than 5′5” playing at level is impressive.
Overall, the folks who play are pretty friendly and helpful. There’s an aging hippy who yells too much, but other than that they’re pretty helpful. This is of utmost importance in a game that is built around sportsmanship. Everything about Ultimate is about ‘spirit.’ Even at the national championship (oddly enough, held in Sarasota every year) there are no officials. You have lines-people and an arbitrator, but most calls are made by the players. If you foul someone and you know you fouled them, you’re obligated to call the foul. The rules leave little room for argument and everything is built around being a good sport. That doesn’t mean that competition isn’t fierce. Even in pick-up games people get excited and sacrifice their bodies to score points. It just means that if you get fouled, you say you were fouled, and if they person who fouled you doesn’t understand what they did, you just tell them. The game understands that competition need not be aggressive and when there is aggression, there’s no reason to carry more than a few seconds. The rules force this mentality on the players, meaning that most Ultimate games you see will be civil. New College won the Spirit Award at most tournaments. We often didn’t win any games, but were great sports, and that was something we took great pride in. We had trick plays and we dressed in costumes. That’s what makes the game so great.
It’s also an incredibly difficult sport. A handler (the person throwing the disc) must deliver a piece of plastic at high velocity in the middle of heavy traffic. A good handler can make the disc curve and float and dip and rise in a variety of ways. Quarterbacks are under more pressure and must throw harder, but the ways you can throw the ball are much less complicated. Meanwhile, the receiver must streak the way soccer player streak (in quick bursts) while catching the high velocity disc. The best handlers lead their receivers like a quarterback, and the best receivers are expected to go horizontal (lay out) to make their catches (and the defenders are meant to do the same). Defense is equally difficult, and because there’s no contact, you have to have great timing and body control to gain position (you can’t just put a body on a weaker player to force position).
The game is high-scoring and fast and with seven players per side, the strategies are complicated. You could make it a professional sport. It’s like soccer, but higher scoring (good for Americans). If you get the chance, learn to play. I love this game.
Filed under: Sports
Last night I tried to play softball. I was actually able to throw the ball, which was unexpectedly sweet. I was also able to connect with the ball at bat, but after connecting things went bad. Last May I dislocated my shoulder in a freak accident at the gym. I went to see an orthopedic surgeon and he said that I had very loose joints. He told me to be careful and just see how I did. Surgery and/or major physical therapy might be necessary some day. My shoulder has sense been at times sore and I’m very careful with what I do with it. Luckily, it’s my left shoulder, so I’m still able to do things like fencing and racquetball. What I discovered yesterday is that I cannot hit base/softballs with my shoulder. My first at bat saw me swinging well, but as soon as I made contact my shoulder scooted out of place, causing me to lose most of my power and grimace. I still managed to hit a nice hopper to third base. My speed got me safely to first. My second at bat didn’t go so well. Same popping of my shoulder, more pain, and I didn’t quite make it to base. At that point I knew I was done for the night. That sucked because softball is fun. I’ll have to stick with right-armed sports (I can’t wait to get back to a university to play Ultimate).
The night wasn’t a complete bust; I did get to watch adult softball at its finest. The team for which I was playing (they were short a couple men this week) is mostly made up of middle-aged labbies. They’re mostly overweight and slightly nerdy. There are a couple younger, athletic guys, but it’s mostly beer-bellies and cigarettes. The teams we were playing were mostly non-labbies from the area. Espanola probably. They were equally out of shape and fat, but they had tattoos and funnier clothes (the pitcher for The Diablos was wearing a leather vest).
It was fun to watch people whom you can’t imagine engaging in physical activity engage in physical activity. It wasn’t that they were bad. They could hit and some of they could field. They were very competitive. They couldn’t run, but that’s expected; the knees go before the arms. They were like kids whose bodies had just shut down. I hope I never end up in that situation, but the odds are not in my favor.
In related news, I finally got Beki to check about an Ultimate league in Los Alamos and she found it. Monday will find me back in my athletic element.
With this article, in which he calls Horry “Big Shot Bob.” He must read my blog.
