Ultimate Obstacle Race Training

This workout courtesy of Jonathan (my trainer) at UFL5280, who has been kind enough to tailor our afternoon sessions towards obstacle race training.


The workout:
10-1 barbell complex plus laps.
Equipment needed:
45lb. olympic barbell, or equivalent. Scale as needed.
1/4 mile track or equivalent.

Warm-up = 1/2 mile jog.

Complex as follows:
"Half burpees" (in push-up position, thrust legs out and back in) x10 reps
Push-ups x10 reps
Back squat x10 reps
Overhead press x10 reps
Frontal squat x10 reps
Clean x10 reps
Bent over row x10 reps
Dead lift x10 reps
Bi-ceps curl x10 reps
Tri-ceps extensions x10 reps

After the above set, run 1/4 mile.

Return to the bar, repeat above complex x9 reps, run 1/4 mile. Then, x8 reps +1/4 mile, etc. down to x1 rep and finishing with one last 1/4 mile.

At the end you will have run 3 miles total (with warm-up 1/2 mile) and completed 55 reps of each exercise. And also likely, you'll be looking for your medal, t-shirt and free beer.

This is a real burner and great race prep. If you can kill this in under and hour, you'll be well on your way to a strong 5k obstacle race finish.

So, Jonathan, where's our cold one?

TLB training day

The line in the sand has been drawn.

Time to dust off the gear and get serious about race preparations once again.

With just over a month to the Spartan race, Team Live Badass got together for a little spartan inspired race training.

We started out doing the Spring Pentathlon, as a training precursor. This consists of a quick 1/4 mile warm-up run, followed by 2 minutes of push-ups, 2 minutes of sit-ups, a few broad jumps, a sit and reach stretch and a one mile run to finish it off.

After the Pentathlon, we were ready to get to some Spartan type training, so it was over to the playground for some rope climbing and grenade throwing.

The rope

Fast rope technique

First up was the rope climb. Dave brought a thick rope and we practiced with some fast rope technique. We weren't able to hang it very high, but it still gave a good feel for a couple moves up the rope.

It was surprisingly easy with proper technique. This obstacle gave me trouble at the last Spartan Sprint, but there I was using the grade school style climb.

It will be interesting to see how well fast roping works with the knots and mud at the race, though.

Regulation size hand grenade

Mid burpee

Then we decided to work on the grenade toss. Another obstacle that cost me 30 burpees last year.

We played around with a few variations, but the best seemed to be doing 5 burpees, throwing the grenade, if you miss you have to sprint to the grenade and back to the line and try again.

If you make it, no penalty, if you miss after 3 throws: 5 more burpees. We tried to keep moving and to throw when fatigued and/or out of breath for maximum stress.

When we had it down, we were running relays with very little rest in-between attempts.

Dave throwing like a boss.

We didn't have a spare 55 gallon drum around to use for a target, so we settled on a 5 gallon bucket. This, of course, made the throws significantly harder, but all the better for training. An underhand toss seemed to produce the most reliable results. Although Dave remarked we will look like girls doing the granny throw on the course. :)

On the way back to the car we did some interval running using the Zombie, Run! app on my Android.

It was interesting, and made for some good sprints to avoid the hordes.

Not satisfied quite yet, we tossed around the "marathon" medicine ball (a homemade ball by Dave that just happens to weigh in at 26.2 pounds), did some high box jumps and practiced our terrible parkour technique on some wall climbs.

A very productive start to this years race training. We were out and about for nearly 3 hours and I was smoked when I got home.

Pentathlon - Spring 2013

The time for quarterly numbers has arrived yet again.

We began the Pentathlon last year to help measure progress in five popular exercises that are handy for a variety of sports conditioning, including obstacle racing. The five exercises are: push-ups, sit-ups, broad jump, timed mile and sit and reach.

Push-ups and sit-ups are max reps in 2 minutes. The jump can be done as many times as you want, but 3 times seems to be where we got our max. Initially we would resets very 60 days, but we have now changed that to quarterly testing.

Below are the results of the 2013 Spring Pentathlon for myself, my son and our buddy Dave. Next to our names are our ages at the time of testing. Next to the results are changes from the last Pentathlon, where applicable. Numbers in red are overall changes from the first event.

Kellan, mid broad jump.

Wade (39):
Push-ups - 60 (+3) (+11)
Sit-up - 60 (-3) (+20)
Broad Jump - 84.125" (+.125") (+3.125")
Mile - 7:36 (-:24) (-:54)
Sit & Reach - 0" (-1.625") (-1.5")


Kellan (13):
Push-ups - 59 (+12) (+4)
Sit-up - 65 (-2) (+17)
Broad Jump - 64.75" (+8.75") (+14.5")
Mile - 7:14 (-:39) (-2:16)
Sit & Reach - .25" (-.625") (-1.25")


Dave (33):
Push-ups - 30 (-10)
Sit-up - 57 (+6)
Broad Jump - 85.125" (-5.375")
Mile - 7:52 (+:21)
Sit & Reach - .5" (-1.75")



Notes:
1. The sit and reach is all over the place. We figure that's because we're doing it after our runs, and as we push our mile times, our muscles are getting tighter at the finish line. For the Summer test we will do Sit & Reach before the mile run to try and steady the numbers.

2. Dave is coming off a nasty ankle injury from late last year. We expect his numbers to improve drastically.

Have your own numbers? Feel free to share in the comments section. :)