3 Things to avoid on Holiday
Hey everyone, recently got back from holiday and had to put up my thoughts on training when you are away on vacation, so here they are…………
DO NOT DO IT
I repeat
DO NOT DO IT
you should be kicking back and be relaxing!
Don’t Do it!
Here are 3 possible examples of what you might get the urge to do…………..
1) Go out running! For one thing it is just plain cazy to go out running it the heat, it looks so painful! shuffling along leaking more water than you can take in and on top of that you end up lost?!?!? WTF??? No way! not when you could be lying by the pool chilling out!
2) Try to build a sand Castle the size of a small mountain!!! too much effort required!!! Lets your kids do it whilst you lay on the beach and listen to the waves come in!
3) Participate is some crazy assed sport that a holiday rep drags you too.
Ok, so they sound crazy right? but you would be amazed how many people cannot switch off and chill out on holiday!
I have recently spent a great 12 days on holiday with the family. It is always great to get away from it all and really relax and not worry about anything including training.
Your body requires rest and and recuperation through out the year but spending time relaxing away from your normal environment is a great way to recharge your batteries.
The Old Days
It wasn’t always that way for me. Before I had my little lad and was just gung ho training, I went on every holiday armed with my skipping rope and my bodyweight as my tools of choice for training whilst I was away.
My wife thought I was crazy, but alas that made no difference, if I had a half hour going spare, I would pulling myself up trees, squatting, push ups you name it. Skipping was my favourite, however I don’t recommend skipping on a beach, it just doesn’t work, no matter how much you try!
For the people that know me I am known for my drive and intensity when I am training, I just keep going and going. If I can make an exercise harder I will, I really do have a masochistic streak. However as I have gotten older I have also gotten wiser and now I do not do a thing when I am on holiday other than relax and have fun. In the scheme of things you won’t lose much by way of strength or conditioning. Sure it will dip, but letting your body rest and recuperate are more important values in my book.
Some may argue that they need to exercise and believe me, I hear ya, but the bottom line is this….
You, your body and your mind need to back off every once in a while. Realistically you should factoring in a week of complete rest or decreased training volume every 8 weeks or so. Go find something else to do, just take it easy.
And nobody knows that more than me!
You got any comments on holiday training craziness then fire away, I would love to hear from you.
Stay Healthy
Dean
Animal Training for Warriors
A while Back I visited a wild animal park with my Family, it was amazing to see so many animals, in particular the Big Cats. They are the epitome of what we should strive to achieve on a fitness level. These beasts are awesome, I stood there and watched as a 25 stone tiger climbed a telegraph pole effortlessly to get some meat. It was truly incredible.
These amazing animals are in phenomenal condition, they exude power and conditioning by the bucket load. It was good to see the keeper being inventive and keeping them in shape by making them climb telegraph poles! Can you imagine climbing a pole at 25 stone especially as gracefully as these beasts?????
We can learn a lot about animal training from creatures such as this. For one, the only thing they use is bodyweight, no trips to the gym for them, just hunting food and surviving in the wild. Granted they are pretty well equipped to do so!
Although it ain’t sound practice to go live outside in the wild and go killing things to eat to get into awesome shape like these animals, sometimes it is worth looking at mammals and to emulate them in training.
The next time you are going to do some conditioning, think about adding the following into your training……
Bunny Hop
Start in a squatting position, hands behind your head and hop around.
Bear Crawl
Walk on all fours with your butt in the air, move left hand and left foot together then right hand and right foot at a brisk pace.
Crab Walk
Again on all fours, but this time with your stomach facing upwards. Walk forwards backwards and sideways.
Frog Jump
Start in the squat position with you hands on the floor in front of you.Jump forward and land on your hands and feet at the same time.
Inch worm
Start with your feet shoulder width apart, bend forward until your hands reach the floor. Walk your hands forward as far as you can without your stomach touching the floor, then reverse the process, walking your hands back to their starting position.
Kangaroo jump
Begin in a squat position. Jump forward and upwards at the same time, fully extend yourself during the jump. Make sure to land back in a squat position and repeat.
Alligator walk
go into the bottom position of a push up with your arms by your sides and without your torso touching the ground.Move forward left hand and left foot then right hand and right foot.
Get to it
The beauty of these exercises is that they can be done anywhere. The next time you think about doing sprints or shuttles, try doing them this way, I guarantee that you will immediately feel the burn.
in fact try the following shuttle complex….
mark out 25 metres, pick 4 of the exercises above and do them without rest. Rest 1 minute and repeat 8 times.
And before you say it, who cares what people might think or say when you are seen doing these movements. Who cares!!! Get them down doing it, I guarantee they will soon shut up!
Train hard, train strong!
Dean Coulson
Spice up your Training Tabata Style!
Med Ball Slam
There may be some of you thinking, so what is this tabata thing all about? well I ain’t gonna bore you with the science behind it other than it’s named after someone and it is a great conditioning protocol. Thats all you need to know!
Tabata Style!
So how do you train tabata style? the answer is any which way as long as it involves 20 seconds of fast paced exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest, with each exercise having 8 rounds. It can make for a tough 4 minutes if you are flat out. It can be bodyweight, with weight, a mixture, anything that you can go at a fast pace.
Short on Time?
These drills are perfect when you are short on time. They are anaerobic and crank your metabolism right up, with it sitting raised for up to 24 hours after the event. Thats right, higher metabolism = more calories burned even resting afterwards!
Of course that means exactly squat if you then go and eat crappy foods. It may sound boring but the nutrition part goes hand in hand if you want to shave some lard off!
Anyway, it just so happens that today I was short on time so after a warm up on my heavy bag, I tagged 4 exercises together to really crank up a tabata style workout!
doesn’t have to 4, hell it could be 3 or 5, point is though is that you have to be able to maintain this fast pace to its end
Example Workout
I cranked out this workout earlier, using a combination of bodyweight exercises and a medicine ball for good measure!
Here goes:
- Flex strap rows – inverted bodyweight rowing with straps.
- Med ball Slams.
- squats and alternating with lunges with the med ball.
- Pushups (variations).
I added a core finisher at the end of ab wheel rollout’s and hanging leg raises, it is up to you whether you want to tag anything on the end!
it may sound easy, but keeping a fast pace and doing these exercises for 8 rounds each can result in 16 minutes of hell. If it is easy, make it harder, the challenge it to yourself, not to me.
What are your favourite exercises you could plug into tabata training?, fire the comments in and lets find out!
stay fit and train hard
Dean Coulson
Circuit Training Variations
I have been playing around with different circuits to keep things interesting and thought I’d share this cool conditioning circuit.
Using the “integrated circuit training” principle, I created a 10 station circuit using a combination of body weight and weighted exercises. The premise is simple, each station lasts 30 seconds before immediately going onto the next exercise, this continues until the 10 stations are complete.
Make no mistake this is tough, it is meant to be, pushing your body through fatigue increases your general physical preparedness (GPP) and allows your body to adapt to train further during fatigue as well as decreasing your recovery time.
I aim to to 5 circuits with 1 minute rest in between each one. However if you feel you need more rest then take it, however I’d advise to keep it as minimal as possible.
Here’s the circuit:
- Body weight squats (with or without 5kg dumbbells)
- Body weight Lunges (with or without 5kg dumbbells).
- Heavy Bag Punching.
- Elevated Push ups.
- Burpees.
- Squat Jumps.
- Dumbbell Alternating shoulder press (high tempo).
- Bench Dips.
- Skipping.
- Heavy Bag punching.
In this circuit I emphasise “doubling up” on upper and lower body exercises until station 9 and 10. I wanted to create more fatigue on the same muscle groups with a combination of exercises. You can just as easily make it upper/lower. The exercises are not set in stone either, there are plenty substitutes if you don’t have a heavy bag, Shadow boxing with a pair of light dumbbells would suffice.
The key here is that the circuit is continuous. It is possible to play around with the amount of stations, the time at each station and of course the exercises.
Don’t forget an interval timer such as a gym boss is an excellent training tool here, it takes care of the time so you can concentrate on the training.
Stay sharp and train Hard!
- Dean Coulson
Out of the Weight Room
There s nothing like hard labour to mix up your training and give a completely different slant on things.
Last weekend I helped my father in law at his new house. When I say new, I mean it is a newish purchase but is in need of some work. Built in the 1800′s it is in need of some serious renovation, to the point that he not only removed the stone floors but kept digging until there were 5 foot deep holes in each room! God knows why, I am sure there was absolutely no need to create so much work, but he did and is now filling them back in with hardcore aggregate.
I would say around at least 80 tonnes of it to be exact! he had another 21 tonne drop last weekend and I went to help him out, bearing in mind we were using 2 shovels and 2 wheel barrows between us to cart this stuff into the house and dumping it inside.
Here’s when the training comes in, good old fashioned manual labour, it ticks so many boxes, strength, stamina, endurance etc it really is a great all round strength and conditioning exercise.
Breaking it down you have so many similar movements in the gym that are simulated in doing this.
Shovelling, hits all the upper body and incorporates rotational strength for your core. I kept swapping hands so that I could hit each side.
Lifting barrow is like a rack pull. More than enough to hit the quads, back, traps and arms.
wheeling it for distance is like a farmers walk. I know the barrow has wheels but it is still weight over distance and awkward terrain repetitively and seriously eats into your grip strength.
Dumping the load in the barrow goes in as an all over body explosive lift to tip the barrow up, well in my case to flip it, just to add to the fun!
Put all that together at a good pace over the course of the day makes for a damn hard but rewarding session!
It is definitely a man thing, just good old hard honest graft. Even my son was there getting into the thick of it and he is only 5!
Next time someone needs you to pick up a shovel, I would recommend it, beats a gym any day of the week!
- Dean Coulson
