Train Like an Olympian

Train Like An Olympian

The 2012 Summer Olympics will take place in London soon and we will get to see some of the world’s greatest athletes perform incredible feats.  When I watch the Olympics, I always am struck by the level of muscle and conditioning that many of the athletes possess.  Whose physique do you admire most?  Do you like the thin, emaciated bodies of the long distance runners?  The lean musculature of the swimmers?  Personally, I’ve always admired the builds of the gymnasts and the sprinters.  Think about your goals and think about how you want your body to look.  This should inform and form part of your training. 

For years when doing cardio, I would go slow and long, doing 20-30 minute runs 3-4 days a week.  Guess what? I looked thin and had great abs and if that is all that is important to you then maybe this should be the type of training you perform.  However, that’s not at all how I wanted to look. I wanted huge cannonball shoulders, big muscular arms, wide flaring lats and a small waist. Who looks like this?  Gymnasts and sprinters.

As I eased up a bit on the slow cardio, my gains in the weight room increased, but still I knew that conditioning was important and no one will ever know how much muscle you have if it’s covered by layers of fat.  What was the answer?  What would melt fat away while maintaining muscle?  Sprints.  Sprints are not only incredibly anabolic (Muscle Building) but they are a great time saver.  Ten minutes of sprinting will not only get you incredibly winded but it will stoke your metabolism to burn fat for hours and hours after your workout.  It is one of the most time efficient conditioning workouts you can perform . 

As adults, many of us have stopped moving quickly and haven’t run “Fast” in years.  Jumping outside and running all out right after reading this is not my intention.  Work your way into it.  You can even start on a treadmill.  Here’s how I began:

Image from Integrated Strength.

Treadmill Sprints: Begin jogging slowly at maybe 6mph on the treadmill for about 10 seconds.  Now jack the speed up to 8.5 mph and run for 20 seconds at that speed.  Roll back the speed to a 4mph fast walk for 30 seconds.  As you are nearing the minute mark get yourself back to your slow jog and then repeat the sprint. Let’s say your first workout you do 8 rounds of this.  How many of you waste 30 minutes or more on the elliptical, stairstepper, or bike?  Do you realize that in less than ten minutes you can complete this sprint routine?  

 Not only that but you will have done more in that time period than the loser talking on his cell phone beside you on the elliptical.  Now the name of the game in working out is progress and there are a myriad of ways you can tweak the routine.  You can set the elevation on the treadmill up a level or two.  You can move your speed up to 9 or 10 mph.  You can cut your rest time by 5 seconds per round.  As the weather improves you can move the workout outside as well.

If you remember the beginning of this post, I mentioned that I also was impressed by the gymnasts builds.  Seriously, I’ve been lifting weights for 18 years now and I still haven’t built arms like some of these guys.

One of the best ways to begin training like a gymnast is to perform body weight exercises like dips, pullups, and all of the pushup variations.  Many people have problems performing pull-ups and there are a number of ways to remedy this.   I’ll write a blog post solely devoted to pull-ups some time in the future.  Remember that many gyms have an assisted dip/pull-up machine.  If you are just beginning, try to seek one out.  Once you’ve made some progress I highly recommend picking up some rings.  I went cheap and bought mine on Ebay for about $30.  TRX makes a more expensive pair that are phenomenal: http://www.trxtraining.com/shop/gear

However, if you aren’t ready to devote $200 to some rings, these will do just as well:

http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Body-Press-Gymnastic-Rings/dp/B003TYHTEE

There are a host of fantastic upper body exercises you can perform on rings.  I would recommend cycling through these 4 exercises to begin:

Ring Dips, Ring Pullups, Ring Pushups with fly at the bottom, Ring Rows

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OsOZ7VrHuE

The video shows a different order for the exercises, but I highly recommend trying it in the aforementioned order as it begins with the harder movements and progresses to the easier ones.

Do each exercise in a row with as little rest as possible stopping just short of failure.  I’d recommend beginning with 4 rounds of this with a good 2 minute rest at the end of each round. A good rule of thumb is to leave one rep in the bucket on the first 3 rounds and go to all out failure on the last round.  As you progress you can experiment with different holds and movements like muscleups until you achieve one of my favorite strength move on the rings; The Iron Cross.

If you wanted you could combine the sprint routine with the ring workout for an awesome total body workout that you could complete in less than 30 minutes.  I would recommend ring work and sprints for everyone from the novice to the most advanced athlete.