Kenny's gym action

Nice work on the blog Mike.

I’ll talk about what I’m doing in the gym in terms of specificity.

I spend about 10 minutes working on my shoulders. I’ve injured my right shoulder a few times over the years, so I pull on the cable machine for a while at different angles. One that I think is helpful for forehands and backhands is the rotator cuff exercise. With my right hand, I pull the cable from left to right, elbow bent 90 degrees. This works the backhand movement, and vice versa for the forehand. In photos of people throwing forehands it is surprising how much the elbow leads the hand and the disc. So I try and replicate this action.

I’ve also been doing some bench press stuff. It has helped add strength to my running through the arms and shoulders. I beat Matt and Ant and Kai up 6 of 8 hill sprints last week (though they beat me throughout the rest of the running). I reckon this was due to the bench press work.

About 10 minutes is spent on the back and core muscles. Towards the end of tournaments in the past I often felt my lower back tightening up. This hasn’t occurred much since working on it at the gym. Basically you lie face down with your hips taking all your weight, lock your feet in, bend at the waist and come back up. I do about 30 before I start struggling. I’ll start doing it with weights shortly. An alternate exercise to work the side muscles is simply turning to one side and doing the same thing. I think this exercise significantly benefits handlers who get low with their throws.

My knee has been playing up a little bit recently, so I’ve been doing one legged squats and other similar exercises that work the knee and leg muscles.

So that’s most of my routine at the moment. It takes anywhere from 20-60 minutes. When I’m confident in my core and knee strength I’ll talk to the trainers at the gym and look at the explosive stuff Tim and Steve spoke about.

Ken.