Lehigh in Japan - Day 7 Blog

Aug 12, 2013 by Willie Saylor

Lehigh in Japan - Day 7 Blog

Three Lehigh University wrestlers: Mitch Minotti, Laike Gardner and Mason Beckman, are in Ajinmoto learning and working out at Japan's National Training Center. They will be providing a daily blog to FLO documenting their trip and experiences. It all began from JFK airport in New York to Seattle to Tokyo-Haneda Airport.

August 11th - Sightseeing at Mt. Shirane (by Mitch)

This afternoon me and Laike felt adventurous and hopped on a bus outside with the team not knowing where we were going. As it turned out was an awesome experience. Mason unfortunately opted to stay behind and definitely missed out. It was a twenty minute winding ride up a mountain leading to the top in which we finally parked and hiked up a trail to the summit in which we uncovered some beautiful scenery! The only downside was our legs were extremely sore, but after seeing the country it was certainly worth it. Here are some awesome pics from the short trip.

August 12th - Hills Like South Mountain and a Cookout (by Mason)

We awoke at 7:30 on day 7 of our trip to find that we were in for some Japanese-style hill sprints. Mitchell, Laike and I had a bit of a laugh when we heard this, joking that we were halfway around the world and still couldn't get away from running hills. As is custom, we stretched as a team and headed out on the warmup jog together. Roughly two miles of uphill jogging later, we arrived at the bottom of the ski slope portion of the area we're in.

The workout began with a set of six relatively flat sprints of about 75 yards. With the sun beating down on our backs and sweating pouring off our bodies, we moved the starting line further up the hill to the steep section. We then ran a set of four sprints up the steepest portion of the hill, which was probably about 50 or 60 yards long. As hard as these kids push themselves, it was apparent that they weren't used to running hills the way that the three of us are. I guess living on a mountain does have its advantages!

Following the hill sprints were frog hops. After we did that exercise twice, we headed back to the flatter part and did various partner exercises and buddy carries such as wheelbarrows and crab-walks with your partner holding your arms up (straddling your chest and walking forward while you crab backwards). To finish up, we had a race between the freestyle and greco-roman groups to the top of the hill. The winners received a pass on the last 5 minutes of the workout, so you can imagine our relief when us freestylers got to the top first! Both sides did a quick set of abs and we headed back down the mountain to shower up and get ready for the barbeque later today.

After everyone returned from the trip up the mountain and had gotten a chance to lay down and rest for a bit, we started setting up for the cookout. Massive amounts of meat, rice and corn on the cob were brought out and prepared to be cooked. For most of the afternoon, a few kids manned the two grills as well as the beef that was cooking on the spit. Needless to say, the food was fantastic! They insisted on feeding us as much as possible and would take the finished meat off the grill and drop it right on our plates when we weren't looking! I can safely say that Mitchell, Laike and I weren't going to complain.

As the day wore on, the freshmen put on a comedy show and the coaches and wrestlers alike started sharing many funny stories from years past. It was pretty wild to hear so many stories that took place at Worlds or the Olympics! We were asked by just about every member of the team to pose for a picture, which we were more than happy to do. All in all, it was an afternoon full of great food and even better people! We only have one workout scheduled for tomorrow, and that is a practice in the afternoon. We'll be sure to let you all know how it goes!

PS - The shorter coach on the far right is Kenichi Yumoto, a 2008 Olympic Bronze medalist in freestyle 60kg. He lost to Coleman Scott for Bronze in London. And the big guy in the middle is Matsumoto who was a 3X Olympian for Japan in Greco-Roman at 84kg.