As a proud sponsor for MudManX, Flexmodo has put together a training video to help you get ready to CONQUER THE ELEMENTS! What do you need to conquer a 5-mile run with 20 obstacles against the 4 elements: Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water?
First things first: START RUNNING!!! Obstacles aside, you need to build the ENDURANCE and STAMINA to be able to run 5 miles. If you haven’t started running yet, the time to start is NOW!!!
What else do you need? Upper body & lower body strength, explosive jumping power, coordination, agility & speed, core strength & balance, and massive cojones…in otherwords, COURAGE to take on the MudManX Challange!!!!!!
Plyometric training, AKA “jump training” consists of exercises that enable a muscle to reach maximum strength in as short as time as possible = POWER. With these explosive moves, you can run faster, jump higher, develop quicker reaction time, quicker footwork, and develop lower body strength. . How are these useful?
Jumping over fire, jumping over hurdles, getting a good spring off your jump when trying to scale those walls, & encountering box jumps.
Sports conditioning/Speed drills: These help with endurance, speed, agility and coordination. If you encounter an obstacle that requires extensive tire runs, you’ll be able to fly through that obstacle with no difficulty!
Upper body & lower body strength:
As you see in this training video, we chose a few exercises that work the upper body, the lower body, and conditioning. (i.e. reverse bear crawl up the hill, spiderman crawl, pull ups burpee, climbing rope) Think about it…in this race, you’re going to be running (requiring stamina and conditioning), then you are going to encounter an obstacle that’s likely going to require having both upper body and lower body strength, and then run again. When you’re training, you want to try assimilate what you will be encountering out in the race. So you’ll see in the video, how we combine running or speed drills with a strength move, and may follow it with a sprint.
This is going to help you scaling over walls. Once you develop that explosive power to get high enough to touch the top of the wall, you’ll need upper body strength to help pull you over the wall to get to the other side. This will also help you in climbing over vertical cables and horizontal cables (traveling ACROSS a cable suspending horizontally in the air.) You may also enounter a very steep hill in which you will have to scale over it by climbing up that hill/wall with a rope. You may also have to carry logs or tires in a shuttle run manner. The spiderman crawl will help you to trudge through the mud underneath the barbed wire.
Core & Balance: A strong core is ESSENTIAL in anything that you are training for. Your core is the foundation & base of your body. Don’t forget, a part of having a strong core is having a strong lower back, which many people tend to neglect! If you develop a rock solid core, your performance in all exercises improves and also reduces the incidence of injury.
Some other things you need to prepare for is being able to run against resistance. Whether you are running in knee high water or running against the element of wind, you CAN train for this. Now if you’re lucky to live near a CLEAN body of water, you can run along the shallow side of a lake, river, or ocean. To my NJ/NY folks that live near the Hudson River, I would NOT recommend running through there!!! *gaaaaag* But if you don’t live near any water, you can run with a parachute attached to you (as seen in the video) or run with a speed sac attached to you. Hill running will get you prepared to tackle these obstacles as well.
As you can see, mother nature is the best training ground for an insane obstacle race like MudManX. (Think Rocky’s training ground vs. Drago in Rocky IV haha…enough said!) Get your training outdoors and be one with nature. The more comfortable you are training with the outdoors & the unpredictability of mother nature, the easier it will be to complete MudManX.
So, get to your local park, start running, and look around what could be a potential obstacle. Chris uses the picnic bench to assimilate box jumps. Need a wall to scale? Go find a dugout and try to jump and get to the top of it. Or try climbing a tree. You don’t have cables to climb or hurdles to jump over? Jump over a bench, the low fence of a baseball field, or climb over the high fence of a tennis court. Get your pull ups and monkey bars in at a playground. While training at the gym is still excellent and important, we recommend to start training your mind to look at the outdoors differently and envision it & utilize it as your training ground.
Let your primal instincts take over and YOU WILL CONQUER THE ELEMENTS of MudManX!!!!
GOOD LUCK!!!!!!!!
THINK FIT, LIVE FIT!!! FLEXMODO!!!!
List of Exercises in the Video:
1. 1-2-3 Ladder Drill + Medicne Ball Push Up
2. Pop Squats Up the Bridge
3. Hill sprints
4. Box Jumps On A Picnic Bench
5. High Knees Up the Bridge
6. Pull Up Burpees
7. Hurdle Shuttle Run
8. Revers Bear Crawl Up the Hill
9. Punching Sit Ups
10. In and Out Speed Ladder Drill
11. Rope Climbing
12. Ski jumps Over Low Hurdle
13. Back Extensions
14. Obstacles: Wall Climb, Laterals, Cables
15. Kettle Bell Swing Squat
16. Cross Country Speed Ladder Drill + Spiderman Crawls
17. Kettle Bell Swing Squat
18. Two Foot Runs on Speed Ladder + Spiderman Crawl to a Sprint
19. Parachute Sprints
20. Chopping Burpee
Flexmodo’s other video suggestions to supplement your training:
1. August Challenge: The Burpee, The Move That Does It All
2. Playground Workout: Pull Ups and Obstacles
3. July Challenge: The Monkey Bars
4. May Challenge: Challenge Your Core
5. Hill Sprint Intervals
6. HIIT with Medicine Ball Circuit Training
7. Sprint Intervals with Variation Exercises
8. Jump knee tucks over a Low Hurdle