workout at home for women's

                                                  workout at home for women's

allow individual workouts at team fields starting May 6

Since the Premier League started in 1992, only six teams have ever lifted the Premier League title: Manchester United (13 times), Chelsea (5), Manchester City (4), Arsenal (3), Blackburn Rovers (1) and Leicester City (1).

Liverpool were well on their way to becoming the seventh team on that list when the 2019-20 season went on pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On this week’s episode of the Premier League on NBC podcast, the group got together to pick from the best that the Premier League’s 28 seasons have to offer for a make-believe 6-a-side tournament. True to form, each manager had their own vision for their side with some opting for a more bruising approach (we’re looking at your Robbie Earle) while others vying for a little more panache and attacking flair (Kyle Martino).

The draft went in a snake format with Arlo White getting the first selection, which was quite a doozy.

Arlo White: Jamie Vardy, Paul Gascoigne, Riyad Mahrez, Graeme Le Saux, Lee Dixon, Kasper SchmeichelRobbie Mustoe: Dennis Bergkamp, David Silva, Ederson, Ashley Cole, Rio Ferdinand, Cristiano RonaldoRobbie Earle: Roy Keane, John Terry, Vincent Jones, Diego Costa, Peter Schmeichel, Tony AdamsKyle Martino: Thierry Henry, Eric Cantona, Gianfranco Zola, Gareth Bale, Jaap Stam, Fabian BarthezGraeme Le Saux: Eden Hazard, Paul Scholes, Andrew Robertson, Didier Drogba, James Milner, David de Gea

There certainly were some interesting choices made, especially since none of the all-time top five Premier League goal scorers made the cut.

Nor did the all-time leader in assists (Ryan Giggs) or in clean sheets (Petr Cech) find their way onto any of the five squads drafted above. There was also no spot for players like Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard or even the last Englishman to win the Ballon D’Or as the top footballer in the world, Michael Owen. No love either for current greats Harry Kane (.60 goals per appearance), Mo Salah (.64) or Sergio Aguero (.69 goals per appearance, the highest strike rate in Premier League history).

You’ll have to listen for yourself as to why certain players like these were left off of the lists for each of the pundits on NBC’s Premier League coverage but there are some glaring holes amongst the sides.

For commissioner Rebecca Lowe, it was an easy choice as to who would win this tournament and honestly, it’s not really much of a competition for Robbie Mustoe’s side.

He somehow snagged Cristiano Ronaldo with the penultimate pick of the draft. That should tell you all you need to know.

A two-time Premier League Player of the Year left until the 2nd-to-last pick? The only concern is if they went up against the leg breakers of Robbie Earle.

Beware the two-footed, studs-up tackle. 

02

Unpolished gyms: Olympic plans on hold for Minnesotans, but workouts must go on

© Elizabeth Flores/Minneapolis Star Tribune/TNS Olympic shot putter Maggie Ewen practices and works out at her family's farm, Thursday, April 30, 2020 in St. Francis, Minn. Ewen has trained for several years in Arizona because she went to Arizona State, but has moved back home to her parents' farm. They have a gym set up in the barn and plenty of open space to throw. She said it s like turning back the clock to high school.

Bruce and Kristi Ewen never threw away their daughter’s homemade shot put ring. After Maggie went to college at Arizona State, they tucked it in the back of their barn in St. Francis, where their home gym shares space with a tractor and a boat.

Maggie didn’t expect to use that plywood circle again. But she also didn’t expect a pandemic to shut down her training facility in Moorhead. With no other options, the reigning U.S. bronze medalist moved back home in March, dusting off her old throwing ring and doing strength workouts in the barn.

“My parents are into fitness, and they have all kinds of stuff: dumbbell sets, battle ropes, a squat rack,” Ewen said. “It’s nothing fancy, but there’s everything you need to get the job done. I’ve been really lucky throughout this whole crisis, with the level of training I’m still able to do even with everything closed down.”

Though the coronavirus outbreak has delayed the Tokyo Olympics until next summer, Minnesota athletes hoping to make the U.S. team are continuing to train. Many are in the same straits as other Americans, with their workplaces — gyms, fields, swimming pools, wrestling rooms — shuttered indefinitely.

That has forced them to figure out new ways of pursuing their Summer Games dreams. Wrestler Pat Smith of Chaska is working out in his garage. Kyra Condie, a climber from Shoreview, built a climbing wall in her attic. Rower Kate Roach of North Oaks moved from her New Jersey training center to California, where there are fewer restrictions.

The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee released guidelines last week to help athletes slowly return to normal training conditions in the months ahead. Until then, Ewen will stay in St. Francis, lifting in a barn and throwing from a circle made of scrap wood.

“Everyone is figuring out how to transition,” she said. “That’s all you can do right now.”

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Before the pandemic hit, Ewen was training with coach Kyle Long at Minnesota State University Moorhead. Long, the school’s throws coach, is Ewen’s boyfriend and moved with her to St. Francis.

She feels lucky in that regard, too. Since stay-at-home orders and social distancing protocols went into effect, many athletes have been able to work with their coaches only through video conferencing. Not all of them have the same access to training venues, either, because coronavirus-related restrictions vary from state to state.

Roach, who is pursuing a spot in the women’s quad for the Tokyo Olympics, usually is based at US Rowing’s training center in Princeton, N.J. The stay-at-home rules New Jersey adopted in March stopped them from taking boats out on the water. Faced with the prospect of rowing only on a machine, she made a snap decision to move to California’s Bay Area, where she can train in a one-person boat among kayakers and paddleboarders.

“I’m still in touch with my coaches and teammates on the phone and by e-mail,” said Roach, who placed seventh in the quad at last year’s world championships. “But I’m a little bit lucky. I think I’m one of the few (team members) able to be on the water right now, which is a pretty big asset.”

In Minnesota, too, facilities closures have limited what athletes can do. Swimmer Regan Smith has had to focus on dryland workouts, including running and strength training. Even being out of the water for a few days makes a difference; when she gets back in, she said, “it feels like you’re swimming through Jell-O.”

Pat Smith, a former Gophers wrestler, is still doing gut-busting runs on a staircase near the Mississippi River and up a hill in a north Minneapolis park. But he has a long wait before he can grapple with an opponent again. Dr. Jonathan Finnoff, chief medical officer for the USOPC, said close-contact sports such as wrestling will be among the last to resume, because of the high likelihood of contagion.

A Greco-Roman specialist, Smith has found inventive ways to practice wrestling moves in the mini-gym in his Lauderdale garage. He uses long resistance bands and a heavy, horseshoe-shaped “Bulgarian bag” to mimic an opponent’s weight and strength.

It helps, Smith said, to envision every run, lift and push as a competition in itself. He also uses his imagination. When he’s gasping for breath during his fourth trip up the hill, he pictures himself feeling that kind of exhaustion at the end of a close match, then fighting through it to score.

“Some of the things probably look pretty funny to the neighbors,” said Smith, who competed at last fall’s world championships. “In my driveway, I’ll get in my stance and move around for three minutes at a time, visualizing a match. With the resistance bands, you can do motions like ducking under a guy and simulating reaching around the body, and the bag lets you simulate lifting a body up.

“It’s hard. I’ve never been in this situation before. But with all the changes, the goal is to keep your mind-set the same. Instead of worrying about when you can get back on the mat, just do what you can every day.”

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Condie is among a handful of athletes already named to the U.S. team for Tokyo. In her sport, athletes have to be nimble and solve problems on the fly — qualities that came in handy when her climbing gym closed.

She already had a hangboard, which allows her to strengthen her fingers, above a doorway in her Salt Lake City condo. Her attic gave her a canvas for a much larger project. Condie attached sheets of plywood to the underside of the roof, which sits at a 55-degree angle, then studded her makeshift wall with climbing holds she owned or had borrowed.

The padding on the floor gives her a soft landing when she falls, but it doesn’t muffle sound very well. When a neighbor complained that the noise was bothering her husband, who is working from home, Condie explained that she’s working from home, too.

“Home walls are popping up everywhere,” she said. “For me, it’s making a huge difference.”

The USOPC’s return-to-training guidelines outline a four-phase process, with a set of precautions athletes should take during each step. There is no timeline. All U.S. Olympic sports have suspended competition, and few have announced new time frames for national championships or other events.

Even for athletes with good home training setups, Condie said it can be hard to stay motivated. Athletes have no competitions to target, and few or no workout partners. The Olympics, now set for July 2021, feel very far away.

As strange as they are, Pat Smith believes these unprecedented times also present an opportunity.

“At this level, you have to take ownership of your own path,” he said. “It’s a hard situation, with a lot of uncertainty. But you can’t let this time go to waste. There’s too much to do.”

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©2020 Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

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Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

03

For home workouts, trainers suggest using soup cans, water bottles, even your kids as weights

A broomstick for balance exercises. Soup cans for biceps curls and shoulder presses. Bottles of laundry detergent for dead lifts and bent over rows.

Twin Cities personal trainer Amy Verby has used them all in the weeks since gyms were shuttered because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“We had to get creative,” said Verby, a Snap Fitness coach who leads free home boot camp classes on Facebook Live and paid online group-training sessions via Zoom. “Not all of our clients had weights and gym equipment at home.”

Like Verby, trainers across the country are coming up with quarantine workouts using household supplies. And people are actually doing them.

More than 870 people viewed a late April Snap Fitness boot camp on Facebook live — complete with soup can triceps kickbacks and kettlebell exercises using a tub of cat litter.

While setting up a home gym isn’t cheap, even those ready to splurge on proper home workout props and weights aren’t finding much in stock. Demand jumped suddenly with stay-at-home orders, and inventory was already low because Chinese factories had been closed during the country’s earlier outbreak. That led Minnesotans to post on Nextdoor, hoping to find neighbors who had weights gathering cobwebs in the garage.

There are plenty of workouts that don’t require equipment at all, but for those who love to lift weights, higher rep sets using household items or even a backpack stuffed with books can provide a great workout, Verby said.

Luke Smith, who owns a Snap Fitness and also teaches classes, said that most of their clients use a heart rate monitor called a Myzone belt to track their workouts.

Those who are now using the monitors at home are racking up similar points, Smith said — even when doing a workout that employed a plastic bag with rolled up towels inside.

“They are the same as we would get in the studio. It’s efficient,” said Smith.

Some gym rats stranded at home are getting even more creative.

Before the lockdown, author and Me Before Mom podcast host Bert Anderson, who lives in Rogers, worked out at the gym four to five times a week.

“I love squatting,” she said. “I can’t wait to get into a squat rack and feel that bar against my shoulder blades again.”

In the meantime, she figured out how to lift that much weight in her living room. She had seen photos and videos online of people squatting while lifting their dogs or cats.

“One night, while we were just hanging out as a family I got the idea to try to squat all three of my kids,” she said. “Why not? There’s nothing else to do, right?”

It “kind of” felt like a real workout, she said. Her two daughters both weigh under 70 pounds, but her son weighs 100.

“While I can squat 230 pounds with a conventional bar and plates, trying to get the right balance, use the right muscles so I didn’t hurt my back and not drop him was definitely a workout,” she said.

The biggest benefit? A little respect from her brood.

“I’m a plus-size gal and my kids have made comments about my tummy and such,” said Anderson. “After squatting all three of them, they’ve looked at me differently. Now my youngest, who’s almost 6, always wants to work out with me and be strong like Mom.”