Sonntag, 3. Januar 2010

Wintertraining in Thomasroith 2009




"We ride together, we die together. Bad Boys for life."

Have you seen the movie "Bad Boys"?
It doesn´t really mather. I´ll come back to the quote in a few moments...

Our host Dominik Feischl (http://www.naturtraining.at/) invited us to the Wintertraining 2009 to Thomasroith in Upper Austria.
I have been invited to several camps but i never know whats going to happen to me once i get there.
Altough Dominik only uses simple, highly effective training tools and methods he has succeeded in combining it with his amazing creativity and passion for training into a flexible training system where you never know whats going to hit you.

Only two things are for sure:
-you will have to demonstrate your will to perform in every energy system you got( from anaerobic to aerobic, from maximal- strength to strength- endurance)
-you will meet only people there, willing to go that extra mile, that extra set of pullups, that one-more-rep-with-the-log with you.

We started the day with a light warm-up jog(yeah, I know, I know, I jogged... ;-D) and some joint-mobility combined with bodyweight- movements to get our blood flowing and increase our core- temperature.

The first workout was provided by Karl Humer.
Karl, "Charly", is a guy you can get up to a pullup- bar, go away, do your christmas- shopping, meet some friends for coffee, shop for dinner- ingredients and then come back... Be sure he has been up on that bar doing pullups, one- arm- static- holds, grip- variations for the whole time!!
So we had the pleasure to learn from his method of strength- development, exercise- selection by doing all this stuff for about one hour!!

My favourite exercise was when all the trainees where hanging from the bars and we had to pass down a brick from one person to another...That is some amazing strength!!

The second workout was the Wintertraining- Challenge by Dominik Feischl.
To keep it simple: as fast as possible do all of the following exercises:
-30x Trapbar-Deadlifts 70kg
-20x Tire Flips 160kg
-3x Tire- Carry for about 40m
-30x Ring- Pushups
-100x Sledge Swings
-50x Around- the-world with a bulgarian bag, estimated13kg
-3x up and down stair-crawls

I don´t know where to start... Yesterday I started with the stair crawls...They kick some serouis a**!!!They almost killed me!
I proceeded to the tire flips, which are normally quite easy for me, since i got a good technique due to all my Kettlebell- work. But thanks to the snow, the tire was almost impossible to grab and therefor you needed almost 3 TO 4 attempts to lift the damn thing ONE TIME!!






The sledge swings where ok for me, since I do them myself and I got a good pace. Nevertheless my heart pounded like a drum. :-D

With the Trap-Bar-Deadlifts I got motivated and did them in one set. Oh yeah, by the way, my hammies, quads, glutes and lower back quit and went on vacation after about 25 reps.
After that the Ring- Pushups were hellish and the fairly light Bulgarian Bag almost killed me.
I will not talk about the final tire- carries here...;-) Although they were fun.

After that nice, little challenge we had a cup of tea. Literally...one cup. It felt more like a box squat...
Taking your weight(the cup), sitting back on a bench, taking a sip and then you hear your coach (in our case Dominik) shouting "UP!!!" and you give it all you got to make that lift.
When you are up... Well... We were off to our next workout.

The third and final workout of the day (yes, ONE DAY!) was another challenge by Dominik.

We went for a run in the woods surrounding Dominiks´ self- made gym.

This one was in its own way the most difficult one but at the same time the most beatiful.
Running, brief walking, Sprinting up inclination covered with ice and snow, between tress, branches,... It just felt right to work out like this. Thank you Dominik for this experience!

Between the slopes we did a ton of pushups, pullups(about one hour into the woods we absolved a pullup- ladder with some guys going up to 9 reps and an additional all-out-set!!), and squats, clean & presses, overhead- squats with logs we found on our run. Some you could pick up yourself, otheres required teamwork.

The most difficult thing was keeping your gloves flexible, since we sweated a lot (I wonder why...) our gloves were soaked and if you did not move them for about an minute, they simply froze up on you...
Getting them flexible again was sort of a grip- challenge inbetween. :-D

After that (by the way, we roamed the woods for about 2 hours without a break!!) we hit the showers and we all went to a lovely tavern for dinner. This was a perfect oppotunity to exchange thoughts and interact with the fellow warriors over some eggs, meat and vegetables.
(I admit, I had some french fries too... Shame on me. ;-D)

To get back to the first quote:
10 athletes, with 10 different focuses, 10 different approaches towards training, 10 different personalities, 10 different performance- levels.
Some there were a lot stronger than me, but I kicked their ass during the hill-sprints. Some kicked mine there as well, but I had an advantage with the deadlift since I got a good base built with Kettlebells.
Some guys could only walk the slopes while others sprinted them. So what?! The faster one simply carried each other uphill.
If they still had some spare time... We´ll... Always time for some pushups and pullups!!
Everybody performed at a different level at each station/workout.

It was never important to us.
Some guys we had to drag up the slopes. So what?! We ride together, we die together!
We started this together, we finished this together!!
That is the mind-set you expect and get from warriors who understand the effort it requires to push ones limits!

Thank you Dominik, for giving people the possibility to experience such a mental effort at least once in their life or to come back several times a year and develop it as a ability, as a tool aiding in ones´ whole life.

















Train hard and enjoy life.
All the best,
Harry

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