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.