Hope you enjoy the video – trying to mix up the content here at ol’ Fierce and Mighty. I do a lot of public speaking for work and, honestly, I enjoy doing it. If y’all like it, I will do some more.
And if you are interested in nominating me for the Hartford Courant’s Webster awards for best blogs in Connecticut, please do click here. You don’t need to be from Connecticut to nominate, but you do to win.
For a quick overview of the training talked about in the video above, it may look a lil’ bit like this:
Sunday: OFF
Monday: Lifting
Tuesday: Conditioning
Wednesday: Lifting
Thursday:Conditioning
Friday:Conditioning
Saturday: Lifting
The lifting will obviously be 3 times per week, but the overall split is 4 days (hence I will not have Mondays set as “Bench Press” or the like). The split will be using the 5/3/1 template and will look like this:
Day 1: Deadlifts
Day 2: Overhead Press
Day 3: Cleans and Squats
Day 4: Bench Press
The conditioning could be any of the following: Prowler, car push/pulls, hill sprints, sprints, biking, playing hoops, playing soccer, etc. – essentially, whatever I feel like. This is getting back to the fun of it all – I mean, God forbid I enjoy this stuff.
Where I plan on changing things around the most will be what I do after the big lifts. I’ve realized that I like my training best when it works towards me being quicker, more mobile and more athletic. Hence, there will be some typical core lifts, but also more kettlebell work, turkish get-ups, tire flips and so on. And clearly, A LOT more stretching and mobility work.
Bottom line: It’s time to get back to doing this to enjoy it again… enjoy the process, enjoy the work, enjoy the craft of lifting. It’s been my rock and it’s been good to me – time to get back to that place again.
And in the words of the most confident anteater of all timer… COME AT ME BRO! (Seriously… that never gets old for me).
A book I read a few years back and enjoyed immensely was “Jarhead” by Anthony Swofford. It’s his personal story of being a Marine sniper during the first Gulf War and is both interesting and extremely well-written.
One line from the book that always stuck with me was the greeting new Marines would receive from their comrades when first getting to Iraq… “Welcome to the suck.”
I must confess I get that notion a little bit of late. As I begin to really hone my focus more for my May 6th Tough Mudder, I begin to switch up my training program from a primarily strength-focused regimen to one where I lift less and run more… a lot more. Up until this point, most of my running was in the form of sprints (either on a football field or up a hill) or while playing a sport (usually soccer or basketball). Running for the sake of just… well… running? Sweet mother of God… why would anyone want to do that? But here I am… a dude who is running in my super-jazzy new New Balance kicks (lovely, aren’t they?) and doing all I can to get myself into running shape for my race.
So where does the suck come in? Simple: My lifting (my pride and joy!) is taking a hit right now as I am spending more energy and recovery resources with running. However, my running is really not very good… at least not yet. That puts me in the middle of a bunch of suck. My good thing is becoming worse (although that should level out soon) and the thing I am spending a ton more time on… well… I’m still a bit awful at. POWERFUL SWEET!
But this isn’t a post about wallowing in the suck, bemoaning my state of being to the uncaring Fates… ohh not at all, not at all. This mucky middle I find myself in… this place where I am feeling all out of sorts… is actually a good place, even if it doesn’t feel that way. This is a growth spot – a place where I am firmly out of my comfort zone and figuring out what I can do.
It hurts. It’s frustrating. It’s certainly not all that much fun.
It’s also supremely satisfying in a lot of ways (at least after the fact when I am done running, I feel good and I am popped on the couch watching Manchester United play soccer like I did today).
Tomorrow I will get up and run again. It will (hopefully) hurt a less little and I will be a little quicker.
In short… I will embrace the suck until the suck it is no more.
My trusty new kicks. May they make me fly like the mythical shoes of Hermes.
As I’ve written about before, I made the totally awesome (or epically stupid) decision to do a Tough Mudder in Vermont in May. Now, in preparing for that little life adventure, there was one thing I assiduously avoided as much as humanly possible… long distance running. “Dearest Kevin… why pray tell would you avoid running when preparing for a race that involves around 10 miles worth of that very activity???”
Because… I haaaaaate it. Good Lord, do I hate me some running. Not sprinting or flying around on a soccer field or a basketball court. That’s all good. Oh no, I’m talking about just running over long distances and nothing else. Where each landing footfall causes me to wonder why on Earth I am putting myself through such drudgery.
Ya feel me, dawg?
But my competitive nature won’t quite allow me to just blow this off completely. I signed up for this race and damn it, I am gonna punch that thing in its smug face… umm… you know, if an obstacle course can have a face upon which to even have a look.
So the beauties you see above represent a new step for me – my newest weapons in the battle for running dominance. Before you assume “running dominance” is an utterly insane assertion on my part to go from running-hater to super-elite-marathoner… rest assured, it is not. Rather, I am running to dominate myself a bit and break through the mental barrier I have to it.
That began today with 2 mile of running during lunch. Like many things in life, there were positives and negatives. The positive? My endurance was actually pretty good. The negative? The muscles in the bottom of my feet and lower legs felt like they were hit with napalm. The BURN! My God… the BURN! I chalk this up to having done sprints a day or two ago in my minimalist shoes. I think, absent that, I would have done a lot better today. Also on the positive side of the ledger was that the shoes were actually very comfortable (napalm burning aside).
And the true positive of it at all? Today was a fair number of steps (both physical and mental) towards getting better at something that has always challenged me. Each step, no matter how painful, was a necessary piece towards preparing for my May race… and also part of my own process to fight through a difficulty I would rather avoid all together.
It sounds horribly clichéd, but this is where character is built. If I’m not ready to push myself through 2 miles now, how will I ever be ready to do it for 10 with slopes, obstacles, water, mud and freaking electrical wires? Each step builds on the one just before it and the best path is just to put your head down, don’t think about each time your foot strikes the ground and before long… progress… and not long after that… the finish.
But no finish for me just yet. 68 days and 12 hours to go… and many, many steps.
I’m someone who likes finding some new challenges for myself every now and again. I like new stimuli since I can otherwise stagnate, so when my friend, Jason, let me know he was putting together an obstacle trail race to benefit The Wounded Warrior Project, I was 100% game on. OK, maybe more like 99% game on. I was there in attitude for sure… but I suppose actually doing a whole bunch of running BEFORE the race probably would have been a good idea and a finer example of 100% game on.
But I was able to recruit my brother (the gentleman with his eyes closed below) and our friend Tom (who ran a half marathon the day before this) to venture forth for 5 miles and 15 obstacles worth of mayhem-filled fun a few weeks ago.
The Spigot Warriors... a team to be reckoned with. Now if my brother can just keep his eyes open.
And I even learned a few things along the way. What, pray tell? So glad you (and by you, I mean me) asked!
1) Keep your head down.
I’m not great at endurance style exercise. This is a combination of not really training that way and not being terribly well-built for it. Both of these things can be overcome (the first by different training and the second through not letting this become an excuse). So when I was in the midst of this race, there were a lot of moments that were difficult for me. If there was one pretty useful trick I used to keep myself moving, it was to keep my head down. This is actually a big part of why I wore my baseball hat and pulled that sucker nice and low.
If my head was down, I was only focusing on what I could control at that very moment: my next few steps. Looking ahead to see how much was left to run did me absolutely no good. Heck, it would have probably discouraged me if I thought about it all that long. But those next few steps? I could do those and I could do those every single time until I was done with the 5 miles.
This happens in life all the time. If you have a daunting task in front of you… especially one that could take quite some time to address… it will never help you to look too far ahead because the only thing you have some semblance of control over is the here and now. So crush the here and now and move onto the next step. Keep… your head… DOWN.
2) Stronger teammates = stronger you.
Unless you are some kind of Shaolin monk with keenly-honed powers of self-mastery, the environment around us has a big a effect, both for good and ill. If you work in an office full of people who are horribly negative and whose chief hobby is complaining about anything and everything… I have a hard time believing you will be all that productive (at least not without listening to your iPod all day long to drown them out). If you lifts weights consistently with people a lot stronger than you are… lo and behold, you will get a lot stronger too. I would contend you will also get a lot stronger than you ever would have on your own.
On our team of 3, Tom was the strongest on the endurance front BY FAR. It wasn’t even close. He could have left my brother and I in the dust multiple times, except many obstacles required a team effort to complete. That being said, Tom was still at the lead of our little pack at all times… and he ran a freaking half-marathon the day before. I kid you not.
The big positive is that Tom always being there pushed me and Chris to keep running just a little bit more and pressing just a little bit harder. If Tom could keep running, so could we, damn it. And ran we did… for 5 miles and for a total of 1 hour, 11 minutes. I have never run that far or long in my life and if Tom wasn’t there, I cannot really say I would have done all of that.
3) It takes all kinds.
Dress the part. Or at least dress part of yourself.
I cannot imagine why anyone would have run this in purple short-shorts… shirtless… and with double pierced nipples. I kept imagining the potential to be hurling yourself through an obstacle in the woods and there being that one branch sticking out juuuuust the right way. *shudder* But hey, he was probably through that course in half the time I was, so who am I to judge?
4) I want more.
It’s sometimes the things you least expect that can interest you the most. I finished this race, felt like my legs had been beaten severely by a gang of Muay Thai fighters… and yet I wanted to do another one. As I noted above, I am in no way well-suited (at least not currently) for this kind of activity… but if there is one thing I know about myself, it’s that I need challenges to bring out my best. This was something new… something hard… yet something ultimately fun that I can do with a team (and I like team stuff quite a bit). I am already looking up 2012 events for things like Tough Mudder, Spartan Race, Warrior Dash and so on. I know I will need to rearrange how I train, but I enjoy the chance to do so. Sometimes a little forced evolution is good for the soul anyway.
In the end, the entire event reproved something I’ve long known to be true: competitive sporting events are never just a moment of physical activity, but are often very pure opportunities for learning a lot more about yourself. I would definitely encourage you to give it a try. You don’t need to be a hyper-competitive monster to enjoy these kinds of things, but until you’ve pushed yourself past a moment after moment where you wanted so badly to quit, I don’t think you will truly know yourself.
The conditioning could be any of the following: Prowler, car push/pulls, hill sprints, sprints, biking, playing hoops, playing soccer, etc. – essentially, whatever I feel like. This is getting back to the fun of it all – I mean, God forbid I enjoy this stuff.
