By Ed Howard (CPT, NASM, FMS)
Today I am going to post a brief blog by Ed Howard (CPT, NASM, FMS) one of our adult trainers at RPP. Ed recently completed his fourth Spartan Race and I thought it would be a great read to see how training at RPP helped him complete the course in record time.
Whenever I tell someone that I’m going to do an obstacle course race like the Spartan Race the first question they often ask is “Why?” Running a Spartan requires strength, agility, endurance and just a touch of crazy (well maybe more than a touch in my case, especially at the age of 61). Not being on a sports team there’s not many other ways to test myself in comparison with other athletes.
I recently completed my fourth Spartan Race and it was the toughest one for me yet. The race is over four miles long, up and down the ski slopes of Tuxedo Ridge New York, 1,900 foot elevation change and 22 obstacles. Two uphill barbed wire crawls over rocks and mud, scaling 8 foot walls, carrying a 5 gallon bucket full of gravel up a ski slope and back down again.
What special training did I do? None!
Did I practice on replicas of the obstacles that might be in the race (as many others do)? No.
I did a few 4 mile runs outside when the spring weather rolled around and that was all the running I did. As a trainer/strength coach at RPP my training consisted of the workouts that everyone else does in the facility, which includes stability/mobility work, functional (all planes of motion) strength training and energy system work (cardio workouts that take me in and out of various heart rate zones).
My daily training at RPP may not be specific to the obstacles course itself but does train the movements and strength I need for the race and in life’s daily activities in general.
Although I did not practice the “bucket brigade” (photo above), the “Sloshpipe” (a 9 ft. long / 52 lbs. pipe filled with 4 gallons of water) helped me get through it with relative ease.
(Sloshpipe)
And Bear Crawls came in handy for the barbed wire crawl.
(Bear Crawls)
By the end of the Saturday heats 5,987 people finished the race and out of that I finished in the top 4% of all Saturday competitors and second out of the 60-64 age group.
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See ya’ in the gym.