Over the past few years obstacle races such as Tough Mudder, The Dirty Dozen and the Spartan race to name a few have become the latest and biggest craze in the world of fitness. I am sure like mine only a couple of weeks ago your Facebook feed was full of pictures, videos and posts about Tough Mudder. If you have been inspired to enter next year or have an obstacle course event coming up soon what is the best way to train for it?
Here are my top tips on what to include in your training.
1. Build dynamic leg power and strength.
A familiar challenge to many assault courses are high wall style obstacles, which demand you to push and power yourself off the ground to get the necessary climbing momentum. To help train your legs this way include:
- Jump Squats: stand with your feet a bit wider than hip width apart, drop into a cat position and then quickly explode into the air for maximum height. Land in the squat position and repeat.
- Alternating Leg Squat Jumps: from a lunge position crouch and then jump upwards, switching your leg position mid air. Land and explode into another repeat. Do 4 sets of 10. when that gets too easy increase.
- Calf Raises: stand with your toes and balls of feet on it and your arches and heels by extending your ankles as high as possible. lower the heels by bending your ankles until your calves are stretched. Do 4 sets of 10. Make sure you rest the calves thoroughly before you go running.
- Lunges: stand with your hands on your hips. Take a large step into a lunge with one leg. Both knees should be at a 90 degree angle. Return to the original standing position and repeat leading with the other leg. This is great for building up strength in your quads, hamstrings and glutes. If you have access to weights you can increase the load by holding dumbbells at arms length or a loaded barbell across the shoulders.
2. Fartlek
When training for an obstacle course event, make sure you build up enough endurance strength to complete the full distance. The best training technique to improve your fitness and enable you to run quicker is fartlek. (Which means speed play in Swedish).
Complete a warm up for 10 minutes and begin a succession of efforts varying in length. It doesn't need to be an exact science - some might be a minute, others two minutes one might be for four minutes - all with rest in-between. It might be that you use lampposts to walk and lamppost, jog a lamppost, sprint a lamppost. You may run to the top of the hill. Make sure that the rest in between is a very easy jog/walk of a minute or two and then go on to your next effort.
3. Upper Body Exercises
Obstacle courses make demands on your upper body strength too. Strengthen your back, shoulders, arms and chest will come in very useful when you are scaling large walls or clambering up ropes. If you have access to weights and a gym focus on doing shoulder press, lat pull downs, bicep curls and bench press. For endurance perform sets of 15 reps and for power lift in sets of 3-6reps. In either case go close to max effort twice a week.
4. Gym Free Body Work
If you can't get to the gym then no worries as you will be lifting and pulling your own body weight around then get practising by doing press ups in a wide shoulder width position and also a narrow position on a regular basis.
Pull ups. Yes they are hard but your be doing a lot of this and they are great for working out your arms, back and shoulders.
Tricep dips. Try and work up to 4 sets of 20 reps off a chair. Once you can do this try raising your feet off the ground to make them slightly more challenging.
5. Core Strength
Be sure to work your core strength when training for a course of crazy climbs, ramps, mud pools and drops. A strong core is vital for maintaining a great running posture and so many injuries are caused by being weak in this area.
Exercises like crunches, oblique twists, reverse crunches, front and side planks will help to build your core. There are hundreds of exercises that you can use to keep this part of your training fresh and interesting every training session.
6. Agility
With a course full of obstacles, agility training will make your performance slicker. It will also reduce the risk of injury or being thrown off the course through failure to deal with its demands.
You can add agility exercises into one of your easy runs, by finding a step placing one foot on it then swap over feet as fast as you can for 30 seconds. This will train quick feet and ankle stability to help combat uneven surface. Also find a low log and stand astride it, then jump onto it placing both feet on top. Pause then drop down and repeat for 30 secs. You'll test your balance as well as develop leg power here.
7. Mind Games
Training won't just prepare you physically, but it will also give you the mental confidence to know that you're as prepared as you possibly could be. When on the course try and focus on the immediate task you come across. Before you know it you will have tackled that obstacle, take 10 seconds to reflect and congratulate yourself and then move on to the next one.
Remember the courses are design to be tough and challenging but at the end of the day the are mostly designed to be fun, so enjoy yourself.
I hope this helps and thank you for reading.
Pete
