Last Weeks Workouts

In the middle of a sprawl

I thought I’d give you some samples of what I did in last week’s training. It’s a little unusual, but partly that’s the point. Right now I’m working out three to four times per week, but occasionally I adjust that to train for larger abilities. Let me explain:

In this particular series I did four days in a row. I did that specifically because I wanted to develop the ability to keep going and to endure and thrive on hard mental and physical effort multiple days in a row. Most of the time I think you’re smarter to run three to four times a week average. That seems to allow you to get a lot accomplished but sort of builds in recovery and is a very doable, live-with-it-on-the-long-term schedule.

Occasionally you need to crank up harder challenges. Harden yourself to larger abilities. Not just, “Can I do this workout,” but “Can I do this workout several days in a row?” “Can I be prepared or more than prepared for anything that life or lifting or sport might throw at me?”

That’s what I mean by training larger abilities. Yes you’re training overall strength and endurance, but you’re also training your mind. Training yourself not to quit. Training yourself to keep going day after day beyond the challenges of the simple workout. Think about it and see if you’re training is geared to give you those deeper benefits and not just the basic physical stuff, because if it’s not you’ll never get to your full potential.

If you don’t have the mind to take your body further and harder than you think it can go you’ll never actually know what you are or could have been capable of. Every real top level strongman I know has that trait. Yeah that have some genetic gifts, but more than that they have belief that they can and driving commitment to push themselves further, harder, faster than anybody else.

So here are the workouts:

Sunday – Kettlebell swings: 2000 reps with the 32kg bell in 59 minutes.

Thursday – Four to five sets of one to five reps fairly heavy of the following exercises: Table top curl, yoke walk (obviously the yoke walk is for distance and not reps), seated press, one arm press, bent over row, dumbbell row, barbell curl, pinch grips. Then a circuit of 20 sprawls, 20 leg raises, 20 dumbbell bench presses, 20 barbell high pulls and 20 leg presses all repeated non-stop for five rounds. Took me 17 minutes. The other heavy lifting took just over 40 minutes to complete.

Friday – Deadlifts from below the knee 1×10 five sets of one. Sled drags – four sets. Mostly for recovery.

Saturday – 30 sets of sled drags for 40 yards each. Did the first 10, then did the next 10 with 25 pushups in between drags, then did the last 10 sets. The whole thing took about 45 minutes.

Sunday – One arm snatches. Normally I would do these with a kettlebell, but the last few times I needed to do them with a dumbbell to let my bicep tendon heal a little more. 50 pound dumbbell for 500 reps in 29 minutes.

As you can see a mix of hard conditioning both interval and hard steady state and heavy lifting and strongman training. Training multiple levels of maximum repetition endurance and cardio strength. If you’re ready for that kind of strength and to do some real training with deeper benefits then you can find tons more concepts and workouts in Twisted Conditioning 2.

Bud Jeffries