I arrived on a Wednesday and by Thursday morning I was in the gym where we started off playing soccer for warm up. Then it was on to playing soccer while dribbling, then dribbling with the left hand, then with two balls. We’ve pretty much done every combination of sport; basketball, soccer, rugby, even tag which doesn’t count as a sport until you have to dribble two balls while staying on the lines of the court. Sometimes its soccer, sometimes its rugby while dribbling, sometimes its tag on one foot (actually that hasn’t happened….yet).
But soon after our ‘warmup’ we began full court drills so I was happy. Since then I can’t really adequately describe our typical practices since they vary so much. I do know that we practice all the time. One day we literally had and hour of weight lifting in the morning. Then it was back to the gym for an hour of shooting, followed by a three hour break. Then we came back to the gym, had individual workouts for an hour, went and ran up in the mountains for crosstraining, then continued back to the gym for team practice, which was scheduled but significantly reduced. After six hours of being in the gym, our coach decided it was time to go home.
Its not that workouts are so difficult, we just have them all day long. I have to say I am glad since my town is small and I’m not sure what else I would do with my time. I’ve never been one to complain about practicing too much. However, I am much more of a 400 meters type of girl and not a marathon runner. I’d much rather be killed for 2 hours than dink around for 6 but like I said, not going to complain about working out.
Clearly sports specific training hasn’t quite caught on here since we are coached like endurance athletes sometimes. The running up mountains is a little odd for anaerobic athletes but its at elevation so it has some benefit. The weight room, however, typically has us doing 5 sets of 15 repititions which is the equivalent of Lance Armstrong doing a Olympic power lifter’s workout. Yesterday we did 8 sets of lunges. Today no one could walk.
The weight room is the size of my parents kitchen and filled exclusively with machines. We are pretty much on top of each other during workouts. I go along with some of it but adamately refuse to do chest press on a machine when I can do push ups. I have to say though, it isn't our strength coach's fault; European girls hate the weight room. There is not a one of them that doesn't just go through the motions. Let's put it this way....They walk around the weight room barefoot.
The crosstraining is pretty fun. The first day we took off on a trail headed uphill most of the way and after about 20 minutes had gotten a pretty good workout. It was a fabulous view although I couldn’t look up much since I thought I was going to trip
on a root and tumble down the mountain side. Probably not the safest or smartest thing for basketball players to do but I love a little fresh air and exercise. I could just imagine Coach Fennelly’s heart rate rising at the thought of our team at ISU running around tree roots, over rocks, and up pebble strewn trails. We even had to hurdle two large trees that had fallen on the route since the last time they had ran. It wasn’t the way up that worried me but rather the way down. I don’t really like downhill. And since I had talked with my coach for a minute about Slovakian history, everyone started back without me. I found myself alone in the forest with no idea where my teammates were (I couldn’t imagine they had ran that fast). I thought we were walking down the trail and only started running to catch up. Instead I kept wondering where the hell everyone was and whether they had found a short cut. Plus running downhill, avoiding roots and rocks and brush is a task in itself without wondering if you are being left. I swear it took longer to go down the hill.
The next time we went running up in the mountains was a little different. We started jogging downhill, then walking, until I
realized that our whole “workout” was a hike in the woods. It was beautiful! I kept laughing that we were on vacation, hiking through the mountains. We started at a nice but deserted ski resorts, next to the bare ski slopes and almost directly under the ski lift and started down the trail around cabins and finally ending at a huge resort. Literally it was a 30 minute downhill hike. Not sure how that applies to basketball or basic conditioning except for some patellar tendon and front quad strengthening. Probably not the best place to put pressure on the body but what the hell, it was beautiful. 
So needless to say, I’ve been busy and haven’t had a whole lot of down time. Seeing as we practice four times a day, when I am not working out, I’m doing laundry. Its almost like having a real job! When you go through eight sports bras and 5 pairs of socks a day and don’t have a clothes dryer, laundry is a daily activity. Apparently at least one teammate doesn’t deem this task very important. Body spray is for scent not for cleaning.
I’m sure I will have plenty more stories in this regard in the coming months. All for now..
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