Posts Tagged ‘conditioning’

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!