Crazy and Foolish Conditioning

February 2, 2010 on 7:53 am | In Strength Training | 3 Comments

This is the story of how the band broke up – “craziest conditioning day.”

I’m telling a story to prove a point. This story is going to be about the CRAZIEST day of conditioning I ever….ever performed. Let’s see if you can figure out the point before I explain it at the end of the article.

I used to train with two friends in college, Max and Greg.  We used to come up with these rules for our training sessions.

For example:

• You cannot rest more than 2 minutes between sets.
• No talking to your girlfriend during training.
• No cheating your form.
• No showing up late.

The punishment for every violation is 1 suicide up on the basketball court after the workout and everyone had to run them. One day was the perfect storm of rules violations…and out last training session together.

It started off with me thinking it was a good idea to run from my house to the gym. Of course I lived 4 miles away, and am apparently a lot slower than anticipated!

I trucked into the gym 13 minutes late, which added 13 suicides to our total.

Throughout the workout Max’s girlfriend stopped over a handful of times and Greg was taking his sweet time between sets.   Jerk…

The final count was 23 suicides. If you don’t know what a suicide is, here is a brief explanation. You go to a basketball court and sprint to the foul line, touch it, and then back to the baseline. Repeat for half court, the far foul line, and the far baseline. That is 1 rep.

 

The suicides were much harder than I remembered during high school. After the first 4 I was getting gassed, but we kept on going. The last dozen reps or so were more of a painful jog.

At the end we all just laid there for about 15 minutes and got up to leave…and then I remembered I didn’t drive. I jogged about 10 feet and then walked the remainder of the 4 miles back to my house.

The next 3 days were almost as bad as the conditioning. My legs, feet, back, and even lungs hurt. I could barely get out of bed, let alone think about working out.

This conditioning – which some people would like to try – essentially ruined my week of workouts. I lost more for trying this “killer workout” than I gained.

And here’s the kicker….

Greg enjoyed it and decided to leave our regular workout group and start running on the treadmill instead. He gave up the weights.

Three months later the school year ended and we had a reunion tour workout with the 3 of us. Not only was Greg significantly weaker, he also finished last in nearly every sprint!

Weird, huh? I mean, he ran a lot so he should be faster?

The problem was he was performing the wrong kind of conditioning to get fast and strong. He was slow, did not lose much weight, and lost a lot of strength from his treadmill workouts.

Here’s the point, conditioning workouts just doesn’t happen by moving your legs around, it’s a science and we all screwed it up that year! Just because it is “hard” doesn’t mean you are getting any better in the big picture.

I was foolish to think more is better, but I’m trying to make amends for my damaging workouts and start spreading helpful information about conditioning!

- Joe Hashey, CSCS -

PS.  TWO DAYS LEFT before the bonuses and the discount price on Bull Strength Conditioning IS OVER!

PPS.  I am truly amazed at how many people got on this program on Day 1!  Thanks for your support and let’s start dominating our conditioning workouts.