Sunday 5 July 2015

Obstacles.

Another week, another fat loss and conditioning workout for you to add to your nomad toolbox. Like previous posts, this can be used as a dicey finisher to polish off your usual weights workout and ramp up the calorie burn, or it can be used as a standalone session to illicit a fat torching, lung burning, oxygen consuming effect.


The premise

I occasionally enjoy a medium distance run, I think everyone should have the capability to run a 20minute-ish 5k, it's a good standard to strive for and the carryover benefits of getting your body to this level of fitness will be huge.

However... Getting good at anything implies an amount of efficiency, and with efficiency comes reduced energy requirements, not really what we want when it comes to training for fat-loss/ aesthetics, in this case we want to be expending as much energy as possible to create a calorie deficit (without having to live on lettuce leaves and child sized portions). 

So how can we make ourselves less 'efficient' and induce the kind of energy output from our run that we're after? How does any journey get more difficult? We encounter obstacles...

Any one who's ever run a Tough Mudder or the likes will tell you, the constant stop/start nature of an obstacle race makes it very difficult to hit and maintain a pace, you accelerate into challenges, you're constantly trying to catch your breath coming out of them, your body struggles to adapt to the demand for different energy systems, having to shift quickly from a slow cardiovascular jog, to an all out effort of climbing, jumping, sprinting or heaving your body through space. In short, it's an energy sapping battle, that demands an astronomical calorie contribution. Exactly what we're looking for when training for body composition...

Fear not though, you don't have to find a weekly novelty race or sign up to The Royal Marines to take advantage of your body's disinclination to adapt to using multiple energy systems on the fly, we can recreate the effect in any setting; because that's what this blog is all about.

The first thing you need to do is look to the first rule of The Nomad Way; 'survey your environment', we're looking for something that you can pick up from the floor and press above your head around 5-8 times before you have to bomb it, a barbell, dumbells, kettlebells, a log, a keg, a barrel, a bag filled with sand, a rock, the possibilities are only limited by your imagination (and level of discomfort you're willing to endure to get results). 

Get yourself into a large open space where you've got at very least 50-100m of room to run in, a football pitch works well as you've got markers to ensure your distance is staying consistent as you start to tire. Set your 'weight' down, pace out 100 yards and place an item of clothing on the floor to keep yourself honest (if you are on a football pitch just start at one goal and use the opposite goal as your distance). After a light warm-up, jump straight into the following protocol.

1) Run 100m away from your weight (don't go hell for leather, but don't go easy on yourself either, around 30-40s initially should do)

2) At the 100m mark perform one burpee, keep the form solid but as soon as you're back on your feet you need to be moving again. This is just enough to break your tempo.

3) Run back to your weight at the same pace.

4) Now you're weight is going to act as an 'obstacle', breaking your pace, jacking up your heart rate, flooding your muscles with delicious lactic acid and generally giving you hell. 

You've got three 'obstacles' to get through, perform 5-10 reps of each before repeating steps 1-3. (ie perform obstacle A, run 100m, one burpee, run 100m, perform obstacle B, run 100m, one burpee, run 100m, perform obstacle C etc. Until you've performed all of the 'obstacles' three times over).

The obstacles

A) Ground to overhead- pick up your object from the floor, to your chest and press it overhead. The specifics will vary depending on your weight, just get the thing in the air.

B) Press-ups over weight- Aim for 10-15 of these, perform 1 press up with no hands on your weight, place one hand on for the next rep and both for the third, reverse then repeat this until you hit your target reps.

C) Squat- Pick your weight up and squat it, ass-to-grass for 5-10 reps, keep your form tight and don't rush these.

Get through each of these three times with the short runs in-between and the calorie burn will be huge versus the same amount of time spent running at a steady pace. Throw this in weekly, bi-weekly or even three times and it will make a serious dent in your calorie expenditure, which ultimately is the main goal of any fat-burning protocol.

Get over to Instagram and drop me a comment with any questions or just to let me know how you get on, as always; all feedback is appreciated!

Good luck!

AT

[photo courtesy of Charles Moriarty www.charlesmoriartyphotography.com]




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