3-22-17 HY: Pickle-ball + Unlock your Hip Flexors.

3-22-17 HY: Pickle-ball + Unlock your Hip Flexors.

Pickle-Ball Day!  Again, since we are on vacation, we were able to play for as long as we wanted, or at least as long as our bodies could hang on.  So today, we were playing games for close to two hours.  If I include the pre- and post- stretching, warm up and cool down, about two and a half hours of FUN Exercise!  We made a huge step in our level today, but not by choice.  I have about 12 game balls.  We use only 4 at a time.  Since we began, we have broken three balls.  The balls we were using were indoor balls, but now, we had to delve into the outside balls to keep four on the court.  The one outside ball that we used had a huge difference with regard to bounciness.  It was much more dead than the other three.  We were missing and misjudging it during the warm up.  We had it in our hand while we played the games, but we were nervous at how we would play with it. So, like fraidy-cats, we didn't use it in the first three games.  Finally, in the last game, we decided to try it.  I won the first three games, 15-13, 15-6, 15-11.  In game one, I had a 13-1 lead.  I almost let that go, but finally closed it out.  I just rolled in the second game, and it got pretty competitive in the third.  Although I describing the games quickly, each game took close to half an hour.  Lots of exchanges of serve, long points, and rallies, etc.  But the fourth game was when our style of play was forced to change.  Using the outside ball, we had to move forward a lot and play a lot more of a net game.  Until now, we were sticking with our tennis style playing more of a baseline game only coming in occasionally.  But being forced to come to the net really picked up the intensity of the game and each point.  The ball, being an outside ball is made from a slightly different material that grips surfaces a lot more hence being able to spin the ball is a new aspect of the game that we had to get used to.  My friend adapted faster than I did and he took the last game 11-15.  From next time, I'm going to bring all outside balls and we'll see how much that will change our game.  Looking forward to next week!

I did the UyHF routine before going to bed and again, I felt the huge discrepancy between my left and right.  Hopefully, this program will even them out and hopefully will actually unlock my hip flexors so I can do the splits.  I also did a lot of hamstring stretches so I was feeling really loose before going to bed.  I totally forgot to do my Flow.  So double Flows tomorrow!

In the end, after just about two and a half hours of Pickle-Ball in which I torched well over 1000kcals, and over an hour of Hip Flexor stretching and opening, I finished my workouts.  Looking for results!