Use This Workout to Train for a Spartan Race in the Gym | Train Like | Men's Health Muscle
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00:00There's way too many people that have to say no to things later on in life in their 40s,
00:0750s, and 60s and beyond.
00:08It might be the ski trip or the hike to Grand Canyon with the kids that you would love to
00:12do and you find yourself saying no to that.
00:14So one of the key missions that we're on at Spartan is to help people stay always ready
00:20so they can say yes to the type of work they want to do, the type of fitness they want
00:23to do.
00:24That's just extremely, extremely important to us.
00:27My name is Jansen Culp.
00:28I'm the co-creator and senior director for Spartan DECA, and today we're going to show
00:32you how we train to get you prepared for a Spartan race.
00:45At Spartan, we're in the business of dealing with the world's most powerful drug, fitness,
00:49movement, exercise.
00:50The power of the start line, and as we like to say, you will know at the finish line.
00:56Anybody that's stepping up to a Spartan start line that's fit, it's going to meet you where
01:00you are right now.
01:01It's going to be a great test for you, but we also see tons of people that are walking
01:06up to maybe their very first start line and they might fail.
01:12When you find yourself out on course and you're walking up to an obstacle where you have to
01:15traverse through the obstacle, the reason why people fail those is they lack grip and
01:21pull strength endurance, especially later in the race.
01:23The reason for this training session today, I want to show you how we can develop that
01:28grip and pull strength and grip and pull strength endurance.
01:34Today we're going to be doing some assisted pull-ups and some assisted rows.
01:39Then the rep scheme will be 10 assisted pull-ups, 10 assisted rows.
01:44Just take about five seconds.
01:45We're going to shake out the grip.
01:47We're right back to the assisted pull-ups for nine reps, assisted rows for nine, and
01:51then we keep going down, descending ladder, eight, seven, six, five.
01:55For these, you can drape a section of rope or a towel over a bar.
01:59For some people, you're going to be able to reach up nice and high and do the full pull-ups.
02:04For people that maybe lack the ability to do full pull-ups, you can just sneak those
02:08hands down a little bit to where we're working in more lower body strength training to help
02:12pop that body up off the ground.
02:14Then over time, you can slowly work those hands up to where you're getting a full crushed
02:20grip pull-up.
02:27As the co-creator and senior director for Spartan DECA, it's our indoor Spartan race
02:31that takes place inside almost 400 gyms across the country and the world.
02:37We've been able to develop DECA into a globally recognized sport designed for all levels.
02:41I find myself doing a lot of just good old basic functional fitness inside the gym, clients
02:46that I coach.
02:48I think one of the key reasons that the people have fallen in love with Spartan race is a
02:53lot of us competed in sports growing up.
02:56At a certain point in time, the sports went away.
03:00For a competitive person like myself to be able to step up to that start line and compete,
03:06but also have this fun race where I could invite friends, family members, co-workers
03:11and neighbors, put my coaching hat on and drag them out, and they catch that bug.
03:20So after our assisted pull-ups, we're going to go into an assisted row.
03:24With the pull-ups, we're working the lats a little more, and with the rows, we're going
03:27to get into the rhomboids a little bit.
03:31I've been racing Spartan races for 12, 13 years.
03:37I met our wild, crazy CEO, Joe DeSena, on the side of his mountain in Pittsville, Vermont
03:43in 2013.
03:44About 30 hours into a 72-hour Spartan death race, we found ourselves talking business,
03:49and we've been working together ever since.
03:51So I get asked the question all the time, why have 15 million people done a Spartan
03:57race?
03:58And I've narrowed it down to this very key reason.
04:01At one point in time in our life, we splashed in our last mud puddle.
04:06It was raining outside, and we jumped in the mud puddle, and we woke up the next day, and
04:09we never did it again.
04:11My first Spartan race, I was 40 years old, and I went back to my childhood.
04:16I'm splashing in the mud.
04:17I'm conquering obstacles on the side of a mountain, and it took me back to my childhood,
04:23and that's been wonderful for me.
04:24And I know that's a huge reason why so many people love Spartan racing.
04:34The second piece of this workout, we're going to focus on farmer's carry followed up by
04:39two assisted pull-ups.
04:46And the farmer's carry, you can almost cheat the grip and pull strength training with farmer's
04:51carry because if we're just doing farmer's carry hold, you know, when we're working pull-ups
04:55and rows, we're really putting the back muscles into fatigue phase where they need to have
05:01recovery.
05:02With farmer's carry, you can sneak in a few more days of farmer's walking or just farmer's
05:07hold just to work the forearms and the grip strength.
05:19There's so many people out there that have a gym membership or doing some type of training.
05:23Maybe at home, when you look at the physical makeup of a Spartan race, you get out on a
05:29course, you run or you walk to an obstacle.
05:33You may be carrying something, you may be crawling around, you may be climbing over
05:36something, you may be traversing something, almost like a ninja type obstacle, all these
05:41fun functional movements, and then you just rinse and repeat over and over and over again.
05:46People will find themselves with a good training program, failing fewer obstacles, maybe running
05:51their very first clean race, we like to call it, no obstacle failure, and the time to completion
05:57over the various distances starts to improve as well.
06:08So we've just knocked out a couple great training sessions to work the grip and pull strength,
06:12the grip and pull strength endurance, a little bit of lower body and core work as well.
06:17If you're thinking about doing your very first Spartan race, or maybe you've done a couple
06:22and you're training to get better, or maybe you're a seasoned veteran, finding a coach,
06:27training consistently, doing everything you can do to take care of what I call your beautiful
06:32machine so you can stay always ready to enjoy this beautiful rock of ours called planet
06:36earth.
06:37So get out there, enjoy a course with us, soon, much love.