Archive for the ‘speed training’ Category

Hey Kids,

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about what types of cardio are the best to use out there without having to run on a treadmill. Well,  what I’ve done is compile a list of my 5 top “gladiator” style cardio conditioning method workouts.

I call these 5 exercises “gladiator” cardio methods because they help you keep muscle, build muscle, get huge gains in work capacity, and will shred you up so you look like a gladiator.

Whether you’re an athlete trying to get in shape for sport or a regular Joe trying to lose some fat and build some strength and muscle, these methods will help you gain crazy amounts of endurance, speed, power, and rip up your mid section by simply melting fat off your body.

So without further ado, here are The Forged Athletes top 5 “gladiator” cardio conditioning methods.

Don’t ask questions, just do them and you will see results!

1) Prowler Sprints, Drags, and Pushes

The prowler, hands down one of the most useful and effective pieces of fitness equipment available on the market.  If you have the funds to purchase one,  go for it.  I actually was fortunate enough to have my dad weld 2 of them up for me.

The workouts with these are real basic – pull or push the damn thing!

You can do dozens of different sprints, drags, and pushes with the prowler.  My favorite is loading the prowler up with a fairly heavy load and dragging it for 20 yards then pushing it back for 20 yards for 5 sets then rest.  Talk about leg burn.

These will help build crazy strength and power endurance in your legs.  Prowler work will melt fat off your body in no time as well.  It kicks ass!

2) The Battling rope

I love this cardio method as well.  The battling rope is a fairly simple yet very effective conditioning tool as well.  Get a long thick manila rope, roughly about 50’ will work, string it around a post or sturdy object, and whip the rope around like crazy.

Your shoulders, back, abs, and glutes will get worked like crazy!  There’s so many different ways you can do battling rope as well.  You can perform alternating whips, double whips, single arm, arm circles, and you can even add in squats while doing these movements as well.

Our wrestlers love the battling ropes because they build upper body work capacity real well.

My favorite workout with these bad boys are battling rope tabatas – 20 sec work with 10 sec rest for 8 sets.  4 mins of hell!

3) Sledgehammer work on the tire

This is by far one of the most effective and functional cardio methods out there.  Sledgehammer work on the tire is a huge exercise for building up your core conditioning as well as upper body strength and power.

This is simple, get a 16lb sledge, ideally with a fiber glass, none slip handle, and pound away on a tire.   There’s a bit of a kearning curve to getting the motion down for the swing, there’s a lot of ways people can mess this up, usually by trying to use just their upper body to swing the hammer.  The key is to be able to use your whole body to swing the sledge.  You should be using your whole body from your toes to your finger tips to swing that hammer.

My favorite with the sledge is tabatas as well.  Grab the sledge, pound away for 20 secs, rest 10 secs, switch sides and pound away again for 20 sec, rest 10 secs and repeat that 4 times on each side.  Killer!

4) Jump rope tabatas

I got used to these at an early age through wrestling conditioning.  You wanna get your heart rate up quick, these are for you!

You can do these a number of different ways.  The sets will always be the same in that you will jump for 20 secs, rest 10 secs and repeat that for 8 total sets.

Its all in how your choose to jump.  I prefer to do double jumps for my sets.  If you can’t double jump, I recommend doing high knees for your jump intervals.  But again, you can do whatever you like – side to side jumps, single leg, front to back, alternating, ect.

Get a good jump rope and go to town!  Its amazing how much quicker your feet get and this will help your jumping ability as well not to mention it will also shred up your midsection too.

5) Hill Sprints

Last but not least, the most effective ‘gladiator” cardio method out there, hill sprints.

I don’t need to go into too much detail here.  It’s simple, find a fairly steep hill and sprint up to the top, turn around walk back down and repeat.

This will increase power, speed, acceleration, and get you in freaking tip top shape.

There was a hill back where I was from, called Brickyard Park.  I used to go there and run 12 sprints up this hill. This hill was about at a 50-55 degree angle up and was probably a good 40-50 yard sprint from the bottom up to the top.  It was brutal but it got me into great shape and not to mention, helped me get fast as heck!

Ideally, if your after speed training, you should stick to using a hill that’s inclined at 15 degrees up to 40 or so and no more.  Too much steepness and your speed and running form will be compromised.  If you’re simply out for conditioning and getting shredded, the steeper the hill – the better.

So get after it!

Well, those are my 5 top “gladiator” conditioning methods.  All will get your lean and mean.

Make sure you always warm up properly before doing any of these methods and that you’re good enough condition strength wise to hammer these methods out.  Don’t go and hurt yourself!

Until next time,

Get Forged Strong!

Hey Kids,

It’s been a while I know.  Things have been extremely busy at The Forged Athlete!

Get ready for a great unvieling very soon. 

Shit is about to blow up!  I’m telling you!

I just want to throw this out there for all of your serious folk – when we open our doors (very very soon) we are taking 10 charter members that will get VIP like treatment as well as charter member prices for the first 3 months of their programs.

Not only do you get a cheaper membership rate for the 1st three months, you get to be apart of the underground training movement - The Forged Athlete - our gym is going to change Omaha and the way serious people train.    If you miss the boat your going to be wishing you would’ve hopped on cause when you see what type of freaks we’re going to be producing outta this joint your gonna wish it was you.

I’m 100% SERIOUS.  I don’t mean to be cocky but I’ve seen it first hand.  I know what our type of atmosphere and training can do for a person.  If you want it bad enough, you’ll do it.

The RESULTS will speak for themselves!

Now, for the brutal workout of the week:

This is a strongman type workout focusing on strength endurance.  Just because these are strongman type moves doesn’t mean they don’t cross over into speed and power sports. 

Speed endurance is a very important trait to have if your any type of sprinter or power athlete.  Mid distance sprinters especially need to be able to continually produce strong forces for extended periods of time.   Wrestlers also need to be able to be strong in the 3rd period, just as much as a defensive linemen needs to be blowing off the ball still and plowing through his man in the final minuets of a big game. 

I hope you understant the importance of strength endurance.  If your strong but have no work capacity or endurance, you’re not going to go the distance.

Here’s a brutal “strength endurance” workout:

A1) Sandbag Zercher Carries – 200′ x 4 sets

B1) Kettlebell rack walks – 200′ x 2 sets

C1) Kettlebell Towel Farmer carries (loop a towel through the kb’s handle and hold onto that)  - 200′ 2 sets

D1) Double Kettlebell swings – 10 x 3 sets

E1) Loaded Sled Pulls/Push – Pull x 100′ turn around Push 100′ x 4 sets

It may look easy on paper…  Try it and let us know.

I’m out the door right now to crush this workout with Joe.

Stay Forged Strong!

T

 

What up kids!

Just took a huge step forward in getting things ready for the grand opening of The Forged Athlete’s location!

I’m so freaking excited right now I don’t know what to do!

I was so excited that after I got home from getting a bunch of our new equipment (from craigslist, I tell you more in a sec) that I just had to use it.

Here’s the workout I did:

1A) 50 db snatches per arm (do sets of 6-8)   I used a 70 until I got to rep 32, then did 80 to finish it out

1B) 50 Sandbag Shouldered Squats  – I used the heaviest sandbag I got, prob loaded with 110 lbs

1C) Mixed Grip Pulls x max – did rope pull ups, wide grip, and finished with close grip w/ the rope

2C) Mixed Push Ups – did decline, neutral grip off of db’s, then finished w/ close grip off a kettlebell

That was a brutal workout to say the least!  But I has so much freaking energy it pushed me to my limits!

So, about craigslist – it’s a f-ing GOLDMINE kids!

I just snagged a bunch of equipment  (dirt cheap!!!) for our gym and I gotta tell ya, its almost go time!!!

Once those garage doors open to The Forged Athlete’s new facility, it’s going down!

This is what I got – Check it out:

• Got over 600lbs of Olympic plates
• Hex db’s from 5lbs up to 80lbs
• Roman chair
• Db rack
• trap bar
• olympic bar
• Rubber flooring to drop kb’s and db’d on

Kids, there going be some sweat, blood, and tears produced from these pieces of equipment I just picked up NO DOUBT!

We’re taking Omaha by storm!

I hope your ready to crush it!

Check the video out:

rolling heavy – forged style

Crushed a good one today.

I’ve really been pushing the core training and speed work these last few weeks.

The weather has just been way too good to not be outside.

Its good to get away from the clutter of the gym sometimes.

As far as that goes The Forged Athlete Gym is about to open – August 1^st! 

Stay tuned for more updates!

Here’s 1 of my speed and core workouts I did:

A1) Power Skips x 50 yards x 4

A2) Inch worm to plank hold on finger tips and toes x 20 yards

B1) Single Leg Power Hops x 15 yards/leg x 4

B2) Side Plank rotation x 15/side

C1) Triple Jumps into 10 yard sprint x 6 x 4 sets

C2) Prone Plank w/ knee tucks x max out on each side (got about 30/side)

D1) 20 yard ALL out sprints from 3 pt stance x 6

Crush this speed and core workout a couple times a week if your trying to gain some speed and core strength!

Make sure you keep up with our blog – GRAND OPENING footage and special announcements of our new gym and location will be coming very soon!

Stay Forged Strong!

PS – If you want to get in on our “Charter Membership” contact us @ theforgedathlete@gmail.com – the first 10 peeps to get in on the charter membership will have super CHEAP membership access to our gym.  More info coming soon!

I remember I used to run a 4.38 40 and have a 38 inch vert.  Ok numbers for todays elite level athlete.

That was back in the playing days and years ago when I was in “combine” shape.  The way I got there?  Well genetics played a small role I’d have to say.  What really got me there was by doing everything explosively. 

If you want explosive speed, you have to train that way.  Yes absolute strength is great to have, but if you’re not explosive, you’re strength and overall speed isn’t as dangerous.  It’s the fast, quick, explosive burst of power that’s the true game changer.  Speed is just a plus when you’re explosive.     

Nothing can out do having explosive speed capabilities.  If you’re the most explosive player on the field, people are going to know.  It will be very apparent you is the fastest and most explosive.

Now we know we want explosive speed, but how do we get it?  Well, like I had mentioned above, I focused on doing everything as explosive as I could.  Whether it was pressing a weight over head or pulling a weight off the floor, I did it with as much explosion as possible. 

I love the Olympic lifts with a passion.  I’ve spent many years trying to perfect my form to get more explosion from these lifts.  While knowing how to do these lifts is great, for a beginner, learning and perfecting the form can take years.  If you need explosive speed now, you need to focus on other explosive activities, such as plyometrics.

Nothing will ever out do bodyweight plyometrics.  Jumping, skipping, bounding, single leg hops, and yes – lots of jump roping to name a few.  These help create raw explosiveness, speed  and just great overall athleticism.  Different jumps NEED to become a staple in your program ASAP! 

I always recommend doing these types of activities at the start of your workouts when you’re the freshest.  If you try to perform plyometric while you’re tired, you won’t be putting out maximum effort, so you will be training at subpar performances.  This will not get you more explosive, it will help gain work capacity, but not raw explosion. 

Just a few examples of what I used to do for plyometrics, at every workout, especially my lower body days, I would start the workouts by doing skips for height and skips for distance for sets 4 of 40 yards.  I also had access to a long jumping pit that was filled with sand.  I would do sets of 5-8 explosive squat jumps out of the sand before legs days as well.  This really increased my vertical jump and explosiveness due to the fact I was jumping out of sand.  Anytime you jump out of a soft surface, you’ll help increase your explosiveness. 

These are just a few examples of how I used to train and how I still train.  I think plyos are fun, that’s why I still do them.  When you have explosiveness, you just don’t ever want to lose it.  That’s why I train like an athlete still.  Once an athlete, always an athlete.

Enjoy this video of an example of some explosiveness.  Crazy shit!

jump out of pool

Stay Forged Strong!