Posts Tagged ‘speed’

What’s going on athlete’s?

I love plyometrics! If there’s anything out there that will shred you up and get you explosive and fast, it’s plyos!

My bro Joe and I recently hit up a nice little soccer field the other day to enjoy the nice hot Nebraska sun and work on our tans (we are white as hell)! Truth be told, we weren’t really there for the sun or tanning though, we meant business. We’re the forged athlete remember, it’s always about business! LOL.

We were there to get down into some nasty plyos. We did lots of bounds, skips, and explosive burpees. One of our favorite types of plyometric exercises is the lateral box hop. It builds great lateral explosion for multi-direction power and quickness. Any athlete that has to continuously stop-n-go during their sport needs to be doing lots of lateral skips, hops, and bounds. Since we were outside and had no equipment, like boxes and hurdles, we improvised! Thus “partner plyometrics” was born! You’ll be seeing more of this to come for sure!

Some quick notes on plyos – make sure to ALWAYS land softly and never do plyos on a hard surface such as concrete or asphalt. Grass, field turf, or other softer surfaces should be used. Make sure you’re advanced enough to do plyos – You need to be able to squat 1.5 of your body weight at least 5 times before getting into plyos. Same goes for upper body plyos – be able to bench 1 x your body weight 5 times in order to start plyos for your upper body. And lastly, don’t overdo it on the plyos – make sure each rep is EXPLOSIVE! If you start to tire out, you’re not doing yourself any good and you could get injured. Make sure that goes for any type of explosive exercise – do it when your fresh and make sure the speed of the movement is near maximum. Once the speed of the movement starts to slow, cease exercise and rest.

The only time you should ever continue to do any type of explosive exercises past your limiting factor is when you’re working on your power endurance and conditioning. Plyos work well for that type of training.

So, start training explosive! For good measure, I included part duex of our prowler work. It was brutal! Go out and get yourself a prowler or make your own!

Stay Forged Strong!

Afternoon guys! Just getting done crushing your workouts and want to do more? It’s ok to. The athletes that decide to do this always end up on top. They are the individuals who shine during moments of importance and are remembered forevever becasue of it. I’m speeking about events and situations that happen during a game, match or during conflicts as in war. The little things always add up to be big at the end.

It was a light day today for my training. We worked for speed during our lifts. At the end of the workout big T and I felt so great that we deiced to do a little extra work on the side. To give you guys an idea on what we did hear is a list below of the exercises we worked with. Remember the whole time each rep is done with speed. We are always telling each other to explode through movments. This was a light upperbody day, check it out.

Bench 3-5×5

Bent Row 3-4×10

Pull ups 3xmax

pushups 3x 6-10

During the end of the workout we felt so great we deicded to add a few things. We grabbed some 100lb dumb bells and walked those heavy ass things down the gym and back. We also crushed some TRX bicep curls and tricep extentions. My forearms were on fire from the Db farmers walks. Not to mention my upper back and entire body to go along with that. I would like to hear if anyone is carrying anything for their workouts and the expericance they get from doing it. Send us a comment on what you guys do.. Till next time stay forged strong. Coach Joe

Man it’s that time again. A few hours remain before I hit the gym hardcore baby. I am stoked about today’s training day. I worked heavy legs on Monday 4/27/09. Today 4/30/09 is the last day of the month and our leg day resumes. Today however is a light day where I concentrate on speed and power. It’s important to train all aspects of human movement.

Who wants to be just strong…  I don’t know about you guys, but I want it all… If you are just a strong football player the faster more power football player will beat you. Athletes need a combination of strength and speed not one over the other. Once we create this athletic dominance you can expect to translate it onto your sport with big time results. Stay tooned for the vids so you can see what I’m talking about…. Gots to go stay strong and kick ass Coach Joe.

Yes, speed kills!  You can’t always just lift extremely heavy things.  When you do, you get stronger, but not nessessarily faster.  While it is good to be strong, strength is nothing compared to power.    The key is to train both slow twitch and fast twitch muscle fibers.   You can do this through lifting heavy and lifting for speed. 

The way to train for speed is to use lighter loads of what your 1RM is.   As you have read aboce about this workout, we are doing a light “speed” day to focus on the speed of the movement.   We incorporated some max band squats to force us to accelerate through the movement.   And we started the workout with some hihg box jumps, which are an excellent plyometric tool to use in your arsenal. 

With free squats or box squats, ou can use either bands or chains.  Both are fun and bad ass to use. 

So, just remember, in order to be the most explosive player on the field, you need to have speed and strength which equals alot of power.  Use light “speed” day in your weeks routine to delaod and work on movement speed.  You’ll definitely see some results! 

Keep getting stronger,

Coach Trav

Alot of athletes ask me how to get faster and more explosive.  Sometimes its not what they want to hear but its what I know will do the job.  Working your beach muscles and “mirror” muscles is the easy part, but that will NOT get you faster.  You can become a brick shit house that way but you wont be fast.  You visually see these muscles and its easy to remember to work them out.  What alot of athletes do, and I’m guilty of this when I was growing up, is forget to train their backside muscles or “posterior chain”.  I’m talking about your big power producing muscles like your hips, glutes, hamstrings, calves, and lower back.   These muscles can create large amounts of power and strength.  But if you don’t work em out, you’ll be weak and in trouble.

 This is where your typical athlete is lagging BIGTIME, the backside.  Not that its your fault or anything like that, its either your forgot to work these muscles out, or you didnt know any better.  I was a little of both.  I didnt know alot about muscle anatomy back in the days growing up or what the role the hamstrings played in sprints or how much my glutes helped produce tons of power.  I dindt care, I just wanted the gun show and big chest for the beach  

Well, it’s time to wake up!  Get your ass in gear and start TODAY with building up the backside of your body!  Its that important!  I’m posting a  few killer backside workouts below to show you guys some different ways to build a solid posterior chain.  You’ll be busting through brick walls when your through with these exercises.  Of course, keep working the usual muscles like the shoulders, chest, back, quads and the like.  Adding these posterior chain exercies will make you a full on bad ass instead of just a half ass like you were before without  a posterior chain   So get at it!

Posterior Chain Focused Workout A

a) Straight Bar Deadlifts 5 x 5

b1) Bulgarian Split Squats 3x 8/L

b2) Band Pull throughs 3 x 20

c) kettlebell swings 3 x 20

Workout B

a) Front Squats 5 x 5

b1) Single Leg DB Romanian Dealifts 3 x 8/L

b2) Ab rollouts with ab wheel or swiss ball 3 x 15

c1) Weighted Walking Lunges 3 x 12/L or 100′

c2) Reverse Hyper Extensions 3 x 10

Try these workouts out for your legs days!  But be warned, go easy at first, your ass will be hurting the next few days.  Train smart!  Listen to your body!  If these are NEW exercises to you, take it slow, learn them and get good at the technique, then crush it!  Until then, post any comments or questions you may have! 

Happy butt-power building!

What up to all athletes and people who train hard. Anybody that has ever got under the bar knows that after a workout you can be fatigued and sore within hours after you workout. That’s why it is better for all you high speeds to get plenty of rest and eat healthy. Oh and also to drink plenty of water. It’s recommended that you take it easy if your sore from the last workout and wait to recover before the next workout. I know all you hardcore dudes will want to crush it the next day regardless of how you feel, but if you want to have progression in your program you should give the time you body needs to heal. Don’t worry, you can crush the next workout if you so choose. All right killers, that’s all for now. Till next time be consistent and don’t over do it. The forged athlete

When you train your core as an athlete, it needs to be dynamic.  Dynamic meaning to have movement, or be movement oriented.  As an athlete you use your core the most during movements.  Depending on your specific sport, most sports are movement based and require you to have strong core characteristics.  Your core can determine just about every aspect of an athlete’s performance.  Core strength can determine an athlete’s overall power, balance, coordination, and speed.  Next time you train your core, train your core using dynamic core movements to make the core exercises as sports specific as they can be.   Get forged strong.