Posts Tagged ‘circuit training’

Ok-

Lets Talk about how the youth today is going through an epidemic of physical inactivity which we all know turns into obesity. One of the biggest mistakes a person can do is to decide to become inactive.

This one decision alone can have deterimental side effects on the nerological system of the young adults body. It can also cause decrease mood, disease, decrease energy, loss of sleep and more. Enough with the negative lets look at some of the poitive benefits of exercise.

1a) Weight control

2a) Bone building

3a) Cardiovascual protection

4a) Mental health benefits

These are just a few among the many benefits that exercise has on a young person. Hell! not just the young, but everyone. Lets take this a step further though.

Exercise is good, but we want more. Trav and I are specialist when it comes to improving athletic performance. In our humble opinion we train everyone as if they were an athlete. Athlete- a person who is trained or skilled in exercises or games requiring physical strength, agility, or stamina.

Take a look at what an atheltes body looks like compared to others. I’ll let you decide what’s more benifical for human movment. The photograph at the top is a pic of one of our young wreslters.

He has the heart of a lion and strives to be a champion. You’ll see what I mean in a later post. You’ll see one of his workouts below. You are what you think Griff. Keep it up! 

1a) Sand bag clean and press 5x 5

2a) kb lunges length of gym down back 3x

3a) Bw push ups 3-4 sub max reps

3b) Bw pull ups 3-4 sub max reps

4a) back ext 3x 15

4b) Abs 3x 15

5a) Sled work 3-4x 100 feet

 

Stay Forged Strong!

-Joe-

Hey!

It was a crazy morning!

We had the pleasure of hosting a bunch of the Army’s own right here at our gym.

These guys came ready to crush it!  And crush it they did!

Training at the Forged Athlete for these guys was a first time thing.  It was a very new experience for them all.  Most of the guys had never trained this way before.

All have been in the service for some while now and have experienced p.t. but nothing like our style of training.

Our style of training is very different from what most are used to.  We focus on getting you strong, athletic, and tough as all heck!  Our training methods are unknown to many.  We use lots of training methods all rolled up into one.

These guys took the challenge we put in front of them head on and handled it well.  Each of these guys will be seeing a lot more of us as the weeks and months pass by.

This morning we took the guys through one of our baseline workouts which consists of a lot of basic stuff.  Not easy but real basic.  Our baseline workouts are very important because they build up your overall strength and conditioning foundation that will be crucial to have in the up coming months of our program.

Without this basic  foundation, you have nothing and will crumble from your weakness’.

Check out the video of these guys killin it on day 1.  Make sure to be checking back real soon as this was their first day.  Once these guys get the hang of how we train – it’s going to be a madhouse!!!

Check out the video==>  Military Rolls Thru

Get Forged Strong!

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 yo,

It time for part 2 of the 15 min workout!

See how many rounds I popped off!  It was not an easy workout!

Before we get more into the video, this last week of event has just triggered some emothions in me.  Here’s a quick rant:

Keep going hard out there!  Set goals and crush em!

Don’t let negative things and negative people bring you down! 

If you aren’t setting goals your doing nothing else than setting up to fail!

Prove people that say “YOU CAN’T” wrong - F those people!!!

There’s some BIG things coming to the Forged Athlete!

So stay tuned and keep your eyes wide open!

Also, look out for Joe’s video on his latest trip to the Wyo!  He had a good workout himself!

Here’s the 15 workout again:

Check it:

1 15 min round of:

1A)115# sandbag cleans x 5
1B) Bbodyweight pull up x 5
1C) 50 yard sprint x 1
jog back and repeat as many times as possible!

The last 6 mins or so was what really worked my conditioning big time!

Check out the video HERE below!

15 min workout part 2

Stay Forged Strong