Closing the 3rd month - 25% more training

The coach didn't lie to me 3 months ago...He said the level will only go harder faster and longer...Guess what ? He was damn right, I belive this last 3 months had been very good preparation for me since I changed my status from an Amateur to a Pro. (At least in the definition)

I feel much better and stronger, all this hours infront of a mirror in the gym are doing good to me ! I feel my technique has gone up in at least one level....But ! there is so much of work...

Training ice technique

Working on the Quad's

July month is finished today, tomorrow it's Sunday (Resting day) so I can summary July today, July had an additon of 25% to my training hours, the reason is I did so much cycling which even I (And I love cycling) said once : "I hope there is no cycling tomorrow on the training plan".

The hours of training time in each month

Here are this month numbers :

Cycling : 36h:29m:38s

Weight training  : 10h:10m:00

Skating : 14h:27m:41s

Aerobics  (Dryland) : 18h:53m:10

Running : 9h:58m:45s

The number of training units

July month also had more training units since last month, In total I had 91 units of trainings, 10 more than last month.

Training overview by distance

The distance is up by 449km more than last month....

Thanks to a very hard cycling training, almost everyday was opened with a 40-80km cycling.

I cycled this month : 1052km just to compare, last month I cycled 629km, that's around the 40% more cycling this month.

I ran in July 120km....last month I ran 46km....more than 50% on that !

Some Blog numbers :

The most viewed post I made was :

Dryland clip, with more than 200 people viewed it : http://itaydrory.blogspot.com/2011/07/dryland-training-2min-clip.html

My main Audience viewers were Israel,Usa and Russia.

Those 3 are leading big time on my total views count, but I gotta admit watching so many countries on my stats really getting me happy....I mean I got readers from Mexico,Iran,Iraq,Germany,Singapore,Finlad,Sweden....Almost any place I know, someone or a few of them, read my blog....That is the best compliment I can get in the end of the month.

So thank's again for all the reading.....I hope you enjoy it, like I enjoy writing it.

Exercise to strengthen quads - speedskating dryland

The main thing about skating fast and having good technique is building your body to be ready for it.

I didn't knew, how much work this will require from my body and mainly from my legs.

I had been working hours on hours at the gym, jumping and bouncing like a rabbit sometimes for even more than 3-4 hours in a row....

This is one of the hardest exercise that we do, when you do it right you can feel like your quads are about to explode...But this will make you ten times stronger if you do it right.

The general idea :

Starting at sitting (skating) postion, while the legs are at 90 degrees.

Put some wheight on your back, the best thing is just to take another person and ask him to sit on your lower back.

Once you lift him up, try for 30 sec to get your self to 90 degree again and release the power by lifting your ass a bit up.

Try hold this for 30 sec, and DO NOT forget to REST ! after each 30 sec set.

Do that for 2-3 time of 30 sec, and that will be 1 serie, if you can try and do 2-4 series like that of 2/3time X 30sec.

Make sure to make plan for a recovery day after this training, or else you might injure your self !

I have to say that the times and th numbers that I said are not the best for each one, if you want to do it, check your own times and don't take my numbers as a "must" .

Swiming & Sunday morning inline

It's the early morning right now, only 8:10 in the morning, and I'm up.
I guess the question "why?" is going up....Since today it's sunday, the resting day.

Back at Israel, before I came to train as a pro skater, I used to train on Sat mornings....Early hours (5-7am), when there were few cars on the roads....It was very normal to train at those hours when you are working at the office the other days of the week.

Now in Russia, I train in the mornings at normal hours, just like a normal person who goes to work everyday, after all, this is my work now :)

The coach said I could use some swiming to improve endurance a bit more, but my swiming really sucks !

I did my homework on the YouTube and when I got to the pool, AHAH ! It was so hard to do what I seen...My pulse went so high, so quick....Just cause I breath very wrong underwater...Well here is a new goal...Learning to swim, I'm sure it will only do good.

The plan is going to the pool, 1-2 times a week for 30-60min.

The swiming pool inside the ice rink building

Today I said, I don't really care this is my resting day, I want to skate the roads in the early morning, when there are few cars, the weather is good and chilly and I can double push my miles with fun !

And so I DID ! I woke up at 6:30 today, had my coffee and little cake (Sugar) and at 07:00 I hit the roads to Moscow....It started really good, the wind was with me, the drivers have been really nice, and the skating went very good, as I watched my GPS tracker, I was already at avg speed of 33-34km/h.

The 1st uphill came and I burned it....The sign saying "82km to Moscow" was looking good....And than....

The road became a highway....Cars were driving on 100km/h + , and I said this is the time to turn around.

Unlucky me, I was only on 10km :(

I finished this training on 20km with 30km/h avg speed, which is quite nice for a solo training on the roads, next time I'll get up more early so I can even use the highway road....

Maybe with some luck I'll find someone to join me, but it will be a little problem, since the Russian guys think I'm crazy for even skating on the road with cars....Oh well, Ice skaters can't really understand me and where I came from....

Area map from my GPS

Training info

dryland training - 2min clip

Dryland, from my point of view, is proboaly one of the most technique imporving method there is.

Before I came to Russia, I always tried to do a bit of that at home infront of a mirror while watching other pro skaters videos on YouTube, but it ain't nothing like doing it at the gym with a real coach to fix your mistake and explain things to you.

We had been training on dryland for a lot of time during each month, and there are many ways to do this training, I will put a small clip for now with just 2-3 ways and once I'll have enough metrial, I will make a full clip on how to dryland.

Enjoy :)

New aerobic week has started......

After last week with more than 350km of cycling, this week doesn't seem to be any different so far.
When I think about it, today I had one of my best cycling training in quite some time...72km at 33km/h avg speed....Now that is a very nice number for someone who is a speedskater and using mountain bikes :)
We cycled half way to Moscow and returned, it can be seen on this map :

So far we cycled this week 306km by now, and there are still 4 days to training left.....We also did some uphill training of cycling, and I think it does great job in making me much much stronger.

Weekly cycling numbers :
18/7 - morning 66km \ evening 55km (Uphill training)
19/7 - skating 25km + dryland/gym work

20/7 - morning 72km \ evening 113km

My legs had certainly been upgraded

During this week I also had a great opportunity to watch the USA indoor championship....which always made me ask my self....How come our great sport doesn't go to every country like that...I see those young kids sprinting, and I wonder what could of happen if I would had the same terms to start like them on young age, I am really jealous of his young kids doing this at their age.

In one of the days, a team mate had a birthday so we enjoyed a good cake and tea at the coach room...I think this is the only full photo I got with most of my team members....

In one of our resting day, we went to a local lake at night and took some nice effect photos....Here is 1 example, I think the idea was nice...The night has it's own magic on photos.

I know it's not about speedskating....But I have to show I also live a little beside training & sleeping :)

Aerobics week & Skating training with Moscow long track group

It's Sat morning, I'm a bit tired after a few hard days of cycling and running, this week was mainly aerobic work for the heart, I'm thinking about tomorrows resting day....I'll get a good sleep and recovery.
I had 2 crazy days, on the 14/7 I ran 25km and later skated 27km more, And on the 15/7 I cycled 57km in the morning + 111km in the evening...Total of 168km in a day :)
I also had a Chance to skate with the Moscow group of long track skater which are on a training camp during this days on my city, of course a video is made out of that.

This was my weekly aerobic plan :
11/7 - morning : running 11km \ evening : cycling 62km
12/7 - morning : sprint 5km \ evening : cycling 68km
13/7 - skating 20km
14/7 - morning - running 25km \ evening : skating 27km
15/7 - morning : cycling 57km \ evening : cycling 111km
16/7 - morning : cycling 57km \ evening : skating

Inline marathon - Promo

Soon to come.....The full movie version, but for now....This is the Israeli promo :)

Small clip of inline training

Good morning, While I'm working on a new big clip of skating and training I made a small clip of skating training.
Today I will release on YouTube and Facebook a promo for my inline marathon clip so stay tuned :)

Crossover turns - Technique Analysis

After 2 months of non stop working on my Ice (Inline) technique, I got to the stage where I should start analyze it with videos to see my mistakes in slow motion and start working on fixing them.
On this days I'm starting to collect some video materials to do that, and for this time I did it on crossovers which was and maybe still is, my big problem.
All my life for skating I had been working on only 1 side, to turn right, which was my strong side and easy, but since I started speedskating few years ago, and now also on ice skating, I must make my worst side my best side.....So it's a bit of a war but it will be done in the end, I believe in it.

This are 2 video of my skating in slow motion :

St.petersburg inline marathon

I finally finished uploading and editing, I hope you will like the result :)

Training up hill & new necklace

This week was mainly covered by inline and gym power training.
But on this week I tried to work on up hill intervals, I choose a great location out side my rink with 10% Gradient.

And on my running intervals I used same up hill up and down to improve my breakout force.
I got some nice news from my home land (Israel) that a local friend and jewelry designer Dalia Shamir, got my skater necklace all ready !
Here are the photos of my new necklace, hand made of course :)
Can't wait to get it at September.....

I'm working on the clip from St.Petersburg marathon, and that is the reason that I haven't posted any thing about the event yet...The clip should be done today, the problem is that YouTube is making me hard time uploading a 800Mb file....I hope to solve it tomorrow.
Today after a very hard power training yesterday, I'm on a rest day to recover....So I guess I'll catch a good movie or two :)

Closing the 2nd month of training

Hi guys,
It has been my 2nd month in Russia now, and if you follow my previous posts, you will know I always try to track all my data and training plans, so I could see if I can do better on the next month.
If you ever had toughs about being a professional sportsman or a speedskater, this data might be useful to you.

In any case that you are not a follower on my Blog, this was the 1st month summary :
http://itaydrory.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-first-monthly-summary-of-may-2011.html

This month was good since it had 2 big events for me, 1 in my home town, a 10km race & 300m sprint and a 2nd event in St.Petersburg, a full 42km marathon.

Marathon race in St.petersburg

300m sprint at Kolomna inline event

This is a compare from my GPS, that on June I did a total of 1079km of distance, 100km more than May.

The data of June :
Total workouts : 81 (6 more than May) Weight training  - 7, Skating - 25, Aerobics (Dry land) - 23, Running - 7, Cycling - 17 , Spinning - 2.
Hours trained - 67h:22m:01s (1 hour less than last month)
Total distance - 1079km
Total Cal - 41,428Kcal (15,530 on skating + 15,905on cycling)

Blog Summary for June 2011 :

Number of pages views : 2,994 pages

The most viewed page : Short clip from the inline event- http://itaydrory.blogspot.com/2011/06/short-clip-for-kolomna-inline-event.html (it has more than 500 views on YouTube)

Here is a reminder of the clip :