World's Toughest Mudder and Goruck Training - Day 17

Friday, October 17, 2011

Today's workout was as follows

At the station before getting off work in the morning
.25 mile warm-up 15% grade 3.0 speed

8 min tabata run
15% grade 5.0-6.0 speed


Then, once I got home

Joaquin Miller Park stairs x3
2:34, 2;33, 2:25
Total of 702 stairs or roughly 35 flights of stairs up and down completed in 17:14


Indoor Rock climbing
v0-v3

4 no foot rope climbs 15'


This workout was pain free for both my knees and shins. I'll start adding in more hill climbs and jogs into my program. World's Toughest Mudder may be on a flat course, but GRC SF is bound to take full advantage of all the hills. Plus this will help to build up my calves and suspension to be better able to handle the mileage of both events.

Proper hydration definitely helped out a bunch here. We went out 4 times after midnight last night but i still had enough energy to get in a pretty decent workout.

World's Toughest Mudder and Goruck Training - Day 16

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Today was a busy day at work so I was only able to get in a few GTG sets. I performed the pistols with eyes closed to further work my stabilizer muscles and balance. Instead of incline pushups my first shift I've started doing assisted wall dips. To do this I do wall dips with my hands on a weight bench, knees bent and feet on the floor.



This is one of the exercises from American Parkour that I've been incorporating into my workouts. The distance in World's Toughest Mudder is only part of the equation. There's 30 as of yet unknown obstacles to contend with for each lap. Parkour is the art of moving through one's environment and obstacles as efficiently as possible so this seemed like a good way to prepare for the Mudder. The wall dips should help with scaling and getting over walls should there be any on the course.

My routine for the day was as follows

GTG x4 sets
5 ea leg blind pistols to weight bench
10 assisted wall dips

40 24kg swings x2

World's Toughest Mudder and Goruck Challenge Training - Day 15

I started out the day with a quick workout before leaving work

4 x .75 miles sitting and 1 x .5 miles standing on exercise bike on the 2 min

6 double bottoms up 12kg kettlebell squats on min for 5 min

12 double 16kg kettlebell deadlift on min for 8 min


After a short break I followed with another quick workout

3 rounds for time
run 200m at 11.5% grade
10 hanging knee lifts
completed in 8:00


Then once I got home I ran the stairs at Joaquin Miller Park up and down twice for a total of 468 stairs or roughly 22-24 flights of stairs

Healthy Firehouse meals

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Once again my turn to cook in the firehouse. In a single company house the cooking rotation cycles through much quicker than a double house. Because of this I've had to learn a few more recipes for work. This time around I had a craving for an old family favorite, black-eyed peas and collard greens. Anyone that's ever had the privilege of being around my mom's house on New Year's can tell you what any amazing dish this is. I cooked a simpler version of this dish for the firehouse. I used whole foods black eyed pea and collard green soup recipe.

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/380

and added in some dried bay leaves. In hindsight, it probably could've used a capful of apple cider vinegar to enhance the flavor, but still tasted pretty good. For those of you using the slow carb diet, this recipe was a staple for me in the time that I used the diet.

I paired it with ChefMd's mustard almond chicken.

http://chefmd.com/recipe_display.php?id=87

This recipe is incredibly easy and everyone always raves about it.

The black eyed peas can also be served over rice or quinoa.

World's Toughest Mudder and Goruck Challenge Training - Day 14

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Today at work was super busy. I higher classed as captain for the first 6 hours of the shift. In that time we ran 9 calls. It was my turn to cook again so that took up a good chunk of the day as well. Between that and running more calls, by the time I got a chance to take a break, it was already 1030 at night. I was pretty tempted to skip my workout for the day and just call it a rest day, but then I figured at the very least I could get my GTG kettlebell swings in before going to bed. My workout for the day was

11 sets of 35 24kg kettlebell swings (one set for each call up until that point)

At the very least, I worked up a decent sweat and got my heart rate up.

World's Toughest Mudder Training - Day 13

Monday, October 10, 2011

Just as I was incorporating more grip strength training into my routine Dragondoor.com released the Convict Conditioning 2 ebook.

http://www.dragondoor.com/convict-conditioning-2-ebook/

The first section of this book is devoted to grip strength. For my first workout of the day I substituted 1 min bar hangs for pull ups. My workout for the day was as follows.

6 sets of GTG 20 incline pushups and 15 tucks


3 rounds
25 swiss ball sit ups
25 supermans
15 24kg kettlebell swings
15 8kg bottoms up floor press
1 min bar hang

3 x 1 mile sprint on exercise bike w/ 1 min rest
3:25, 3:05, 3:20

The 1 minute bar hangs were a surprising challenge. The last 5 seconds of each round really began to light up my forearms. From a rock climber's stand point the grip strength progressions in this book are surprisingly simple and intuitive. I'm pretty excited to see how my forearms and grip respond to this program.

World's Toughest Mudder Training - Day 12

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Yesterday morning my client called to say he was running a few minutes late. I primarily train out of Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland. One of the great things about this park besides all the trees, fountains and amazing views, is during the Great Depression the Works Projects Administration (WPA) built an amphitheater in the park. Leading up to the back of the amphitheater are 234 stairs of awesomeness. Since I train clients at the base of these stairs, a quick sprint to the top seemed like a great use of time while waiting for my client. Two minutes and 34 seconds later I realized it's time to adjust my training and ramp things up again.

In the last Norcal Tough Mudder my climbing skills served me well on several obstacles. I've got a hunch this, a decent cardio and recovery component, and a healthy dose of grip strength will be the case for the upcoming World's Toughest Mudder. I incorporated both of these into today's workout.

Bouldering 5 v2s

1 15' no foot rope climb

50 burpees 6:23



This is the first time in a long time that I've done burpees (partly because of my shoulder and partly because of the pukey feeling they tend to cause. But hey, that type of metabolic conditioning is just what I need these days). I have my volleyball kids do these all the time because they truly are a great all around full body exercise. Plus volleyball players have to be able to both get to the ground and get up from the ground quickly. I followed this with a rowing machine workout to further work my conditioning and recovery rate. Distances per round are shown after the row duration.

3 rounds of
:45 row 206m, 207m, 213m
:45 rest
1:30 row 398m, 352m, 348m
1:30 rest
3:00 row 676m, 734m, 661m
3:00 rest

Rowing is another great full body exercise that is also low impact and works my lats helping to strengthen the stabilizer muscles in my shoulder.

World's Toughest Mudder Training - Day 11

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

For today's workout I performed the following

21, 15, 9 double 8kg kettlebell bottoms up thrusters and kettlebell swings in 4:34

4 x .75 miles on spin bike on the 2 min

30 double 8kg kettlebell cleans and push presses


Even though my shoulder is feeling better I'm still going light with the overhead movements. I'm focusing instead on the speed and control of the movements to get a good workout. I'm loving how the double bottoms up movements put my brain through all sorts of happy mental gymnastics to keep both the weights balanced especially during the more dynamic movements. I would however, caution against doing these until you have a very stable base in single bottoms up kettlebell movements and to start out light. It's all fun and games until someone takes a kettlebell to the noggin.

World's Toughest Mudder Training - Day 10

Monday, october 3, 2011

Today I started out the day with

10 x .4 mile sprints on the exercise bike on the 90 second


then a few hours later

Rock climbing top rope
5.10b, 5.10a, 5.10c

15, 12, 9 double 12kg kettlebell thrusters supersetted with 90, 60, 30 jump rope

15 min beach run

World's Toughest Mudder Training - Day 9

Sunday October 2, 2011

Today I performed the following

GTG (Grease the Groove)
7 sets of 12 TRX Rows with my feet below the anchor

3 x .8 miles on the 2:30 on the exercise bike

7 sets of 5 rest 1 min between sets
Double 12kg kettlebell clean, press, squat, push press, squat
Completed in 11:35

My legs were still a bit sore from the previous workout and today was also going to be a decently heavy leg day, so I skipped the leg portion of the GTG and focused solely on the rows. The kettlebell complex work is taken directly from Geoff Neuport's kettlebell muscle. Since I'm still going light with the upper body movements, one of the things that I really like about Geoff's program is that it focuses more on the speed of the bells to generate force and build muscle more than the weight of the bells.

World's Toughest Mudder Training - Day 8

Saturday, October 1, 2011

I started the day of with presses and pull ups.

5, 5, 5 Double 16kg KB presses

3, 3, 3 Double 16kg KB Bottoms Up Push Presses

1, 1, 1 24kg KB Jerk each side


Followed by

5, 5, 3, 3, 2, 2 Pull ups


This is the heaviest I've lifted overhead and most pull ups I've done in months due to a mild rotator cuff strain. All of the movements were pain free and felt good. The jerks with the 24kg bell actually felt way too easy. I've done jerks with a 36kg bell around this time last year at the RKC II, but expected to lose quite a bit of strength after mainly doing overhead lifts with 8kg bells. The toughest lift in this sequence was the BU push presses. I think this was the first time I've done this exercise. It forced me to engage my grip and mind all that much more to keep both the bells in a safe and stable pressing pattern.

I'd put my pull up max somewhere around 7 or 8 right now, which isn't too shabby considering I haven't been training pull ups at all, mainly using GTG TRX rows.

Later that afternoon I met up with a prospective Goruck Tough classmate and went for a run on the beach. The tide was in so the sand was a bit firmer for parts of it. Still, having a workout buddy made the run more enjoyable and pushed my pace a little bit faster than I normally run on sand.

We covered 2.4 miles in 32 minutes.

One of the best realizations about this run was that I didn't have any shin or foot pain like the last time I trained for the San Francisco Goruck challenge.

World's Toughest Mudder Training - Day 7

Friday, September 30, 2011

Today I performed 6 GTG sets of 25 incline pushups and 20 knee tucks.

The knee tucks that I do are a variation of the Convict Conditioning ones. I do these ones either flat on the ground or on a bench, without my feet touching down in between reps.


My main workout was as follows

Morning

10x5 double 16kg KB front squats on minute

8x7 double 16kg KB deadlifts on minute


Afternoon

7 rounds for time

6 12kg double KB snatches

10 jumping pull ups

Completed in 7:51

Jumping pull ups are a surprising exercise; they get the heart rate up in a hurry and if you do enough of them the arms will definitely get a nice burn.



Then I finished off the workout with

10x400m on exercise bike on 2 min

World's Toughest Mudder Training - Day 6

September 28

In an effort to increase my leg strength, in particular my internal quads, and muscular endurance I've been doing more biking. It's been a great low impact exercise. Today's workout centered primarily around a spin class followed by some weight and interval training. It was as follows

1 hour spin class

8x3 12kg Bottoms Up Floor Presses ea arm

20:10 tabata row 8 rounds

Towards the end of the spin class we did standing isolations where we focused on keeping our upper bodies as still as possible. These were a great leg burn. I chose to do the floor presses BU to work my grip strength and shoulder stabilizer muscles. The Concept II rower is one of my favorite forms of cardio training. It's low impact and works the whole body.

World's Toughest Mudder Training - Day 5

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

My WTM cap arrived today. Sometimes having a tangible reminder of what I'm working towards gives me that little extra push. Today was a good day of working out.


Indoor rock climbing

Total of 15 boulder problems 9 v0, 5 v1, 1 v2 all on sights (climb 1st attempt without previous knowledge of the climb)

1500m row 6:17

30 BU KB cleans w/ double 16kg bells

2.2 mile run on soft sand 34 minutes.


During the last Tough Mudder Norcal my climbing experience helped out on a good number of the obstacles. Most notably on the Funky Monkey monkey bars. The pics are from my second time through this obstacle just for fun.


http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.276312655719903.72087.259946717356497&l=35b46b40f8&type=1


As I was going through someone yelled out to keep the arms bent. I can only guess they've been watching a steady dose of American Ninja Warrior. True, for that application bent arms will help, but for monkey bars it makes the obstacle a whole lot harder than it needs to be. When rock climbing if the arms are kept straight during most climbs, then the weight will be on the bones instead of the muscles. I kept my arms straight, body relaxed, and swung from one bar to the next. Next time you're at a playground watch how the kids do it. Do they fight the monkey bars keeping their little arms bent the whole time, or do they swing effortlessly from one bar to the next. Kids are some of the best teachers when it comes to ergonomics and movement.

I haven't been on the rowing machine in a while so this was an easy warm up ro focusing on form and fluidity. The wheel was set at resistance level 7.

The bottom's up cleans did a great job of working my grip and lats. Without knowing what the obstacles on the WTM will be, I have a gut feeling that grip strength will play a significant role.

The soft sand run was a great workout and served to remind me that the bay area is an incredible playground that I need to take advantage of more often. Running on sand is great for several reasons - it does a great job of working my stabilizer muscles and proprioception, it reinforces foot strikes directly below the body and strong push offs, and it forces me to increase my stride rate to increase speed because longer strides are fairly ineffective on soft sand.