To Get Results, Get out of your Comfort Zone…

I am a frequent track-go-er.  I’m always looking for ways to mix and change up my workout and push myself in new ways.  Just doing weights or cardio all the time and not incorporating new stimuli will result in stagnation.  The body needs to be pushed outside of its comfort zone to grow and improve.

I find all sorts of new and cool stuff to do at the track. If your track is anything like mine, there’s all sorts of equipment lying around which you could use and include in your workout.  Ours has logs we can drag, tires we can flip and stadium steps we can sprint.  What cool stuff does your track have?  What interesting exercises have you done there?  Let us know!

Sharing with you here an amalgam of some of our recent workouts/exercises at our local track.   

High Knees/Sprint Combo – I found this somewhere on the internet and thought it looked like fun.  We did these today at the track.  They were harder than they look.  I modified slightly from what you see here in the video.  I’ve included a video clip and a caption on how we did them.

• High knees done in a stationary way for a count of 10 followed by a sprint to the 10-yard line, followed by another set of high knees followed by a 10-yard sprint.  Do this for 60 yards total.  Get your knees up as high as you can.  High knees means HIGH KNEES!  Take a moment or so once you’ve gotten to the 60-yard line to catch your breath.  Then, do it again, but this time, do it backwards.  High knees for a count of 10 and then run backwards 10 yards and so on until you’ve gotten back to the original 10-yard line. 

Bunny Hops up Stadium Steps - hop up with both legs 2 steps at a time.  Use your arms to propel you forward and upward.  The guys in this video are INTENSE.  They do these hops at the start of the video.

Bear Crawls with Weighted Sled -  do bear crawls across a length of the football field.  In our case, we attached a 100+ pound weighted sled to our waist.  This same sled in our workout today we attached at the waist and pulled up a mid-size hill.  We also dragged it down and back the full length of the soccer field.  If you don’t have your own sled, and many won’t, get creative.  Try attaching a harness to a log or a tire and dragging these. I include a link with a picture of a homemade device.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b287/pdellorto/Shooto/Workout/strongman003s.jpg

Fun at the Track

I try to get out to the track at least every other week. 

This time, we had to get a little creative, as the track was being used.

We brought our brand new, homemade sled to the track – dragged it around the parking lot, found tires to flip on the soccer field and once again, used the football sleds for a little extra lower body conditioning.

Our New Sled

Here is a still of me pulling the sled – the sled weighs about 100 pounds and William is probably another 175 pounds.  I was pulling him and the sled up a portion of the lot that had a slight incline to it. It was extremely hard to move, which is why I had start and stop and then start up again.

This is a helluva lot harder than it looks!

Here’s a brief excerpt of me pulling – I end up pulling the sled much of the length of the lot.  Another clip of William pulling the sled as well.

Here’s a video of our tire flipping activities.

The idea here is to just get creative! There are so many things one can do at the track other than run around it. There are a number of different plyometric exercises that can be done. We will cover these in future blog posts.

So, for now – get out there and hit the track!