This week seemed to "fly" by.(sorry, that was an awful pun...),

I was pretty excited this week when I was able to accomplish one of my goals. I was able to pull off a full and complete back bend without the use of my hands including recovery of it. 

If you are wondering, it looked a little like this...

So that was really exciting. This is not the first time that I was able to accomplish it, but it was the first time I was able to do it for a camera. It was hard. My problem is that I put a lot of weight on my head so when I need to get back up, I have to shift a lot of weight to my feet so either I end up falling back over when I crane my neck up, or I give a pretty big stumble when I do come up. But this can be fixed, and will be fixed. 

Some things that will help me: 

1. My back isn't too flexible yet. I need to do a lot more stretching there so it is not as tense when I do this.

2. Because my back can't bend too comfortably yet, I sink too low with my legs and loose a lot of strength they give on the way back up. I need to use them more for the upward pull then for letting my body down.

3. I also need to start practicing with the mace I will be using as a counter-balance instead of the camera stand that I am holding in this picture. The mace is lighter but most of that weight is down near the ball on the far end so it is a completely different feel.

The nice thing about my efforts is that this is the clothing that I will be wearing while trying to perform this move. This assures that I know what kind of weight my jacket has(which feels really heavy at times like these), and also allows me to feel the "stretching limits" of the uniform. With long dress pants, your legs don't bend too well so i have to set my legs just right in order to receive the maximum "stretchy-ness". The shoes are also a little weird. They are just loose enough that the soles want to stay flat on the ground allowing my feet the slide sideways in the shoes. This is a problem for when I need to get back up.

As for swimming, I was not able to get into the pool again this week. I will be continuing the workouts of push-ups and such until such times that I am able to be swimming again. I am currently doing several practices for a Ultimate Frisbee Club team that I am on. This provided a lot of coordination that is really nice to practice and also endurance training. Both of these I can take back to the pool for fly improvements.

But as it goes, this is my last mandatory blog post. My overall view of this project is very positive. Though I couldn't achieve a much more improved Butterfly, I did improve upon my back-bend a lot.

In the future both of these goals are thing that I will be trying to make a reality. One day maybe I will have a picture of myself flying through the water or, even more important to me, a picture of me kissing the turf with the crown of my head to the ecstatic cheers of the crowd.

Until next time. Stay classy.

Brigham

Again, due to lack of internet access, this one is up a little later than I wished.

Well due to my found lack of usable pool area, I have decided to add(which I know that I have the "presentation" like this week) to my project. I have been working since the beginning of this summer on a thing called the back-bend. This is a position in which one would attempt to bend over backwards in an effort to touch one's head to the ground.

Why would I do this? Well along with having an exceptional swim team, my high school also sports the biggest marching band in the valley. It consisted of over 200 members this last year. This is big for us as that is like 1/6 of the schools size just in the band. I am one of the 4 drum majors of this band(you know, the guys who stand on ladders and conduct the band, sometimes also performing extremely cool stunts). One of the traditions that is upheld, when their is a capable drum major, is that during the pre-game march onto the field, a drum major will perform the back-bend during the fanfare. My brother did it his senior year and was really good at it. He was able to touch his bare head to the ground(which is impressive as some previous drum majors just touched the top of their hat and plume to the field). That was one of my main reasons for wanting to be a drum major, to follow in his footsteps and copy that move.

It has been a lot of work. The hardest thing is that the muscles that you need to stretch, those of the lower back, are apparently un-stretchable for me. Nonetheless, I have made considerable progress and, when I am loose, I am able to always get within maybe 3 inches of the ground. I have successfully done a back bend a few time but I need to work on getting consistent.

So my goals:

1. Continue stretching. I need to build up more flexibility, especially in my lower back.

2. Continue with personal exercises to help my shoulders, core and arms for the butterfly.

3. Make a sweet presentation for the project fair*

I hope all goes well with my presentation. I don't know exactly how I want to present what I've done. I was thinking videos but maybe not. I have (some very little)time to work it out.

Well as always, until a possible next time, stay classy.

Brigham

*The project fair is where we are hosting the presentations with all of my classmates.