JimWendler.com

February14th

4 Comments

Conditioning Queens vs. Kings

Posted in: Articles, Blog, Q&A

Conditioning Queens vs. Kings

After many years of running myself into the ground in high school, it wasn’t until I got to college that I realized how to properly condition.  There is a trend amongst the natives that when you do conditioning, whether it be running, Prowler sprints/pushes, hills, circuits or whatever your poison YOU MUST STOP JUST SHY OF DEATH.  This is the manly thing to do, right?  No pain, no gain!

No brain, all pain.  And subpar results.

You don’t have to go all out – you don’t have to lay on the ground, gasping for breath.  It makes a good picture or YouTube video.  But who trains for the camera?

Sure, in the beginning this is going to happen.  It may take you a few months of beatings to get your bearings.  This is normal especially if you are playing catch up for years of sitting on your ass, lifting weights and claiming to be “in-shape”.

Conditioning work just needs to be consistant – it needs to be hard, but it doesn’t have to leave you two breaths short of death.  I like to use this as a guide line: if I can push the Prowler for 10, 40 yard sprints (with 90lbs) on my street with 1 minute rest between sprints – I am good to go.  This is done 3 days/week and doesn’t leave me too taxed to live life or too taxed to make gains on my lifting.  Yes, getting there required a ton of work.  And yes, it is fun to do some ridiculous  tests once a month.  But there is a point where one becomes a conditioning queen rather than a bad ass king.  You need to choose what crown you are going to wear.

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4 Comments

  • Comment by Joe — February 14, 2012 @ 5:41 pm

    This is a lesson that comes easier with years of training under your belt. It took quite a few days where I found myself too beat down to make the following day’s training happen before common sense kicked in and I found myself saying, “So, where did I screw this up?”

    Thanks for sharing what appears to be common sense, but doesn’t click for many of us for way too long.

  • Comment by Daniel — February 14, 2012 @ 6:12 pm

    This is a great smack to the head, timed perfectly. Very true.

    Well said Jim.

  • Comment by Dan — February 16, 2012 @ 6:58 am

    Thats the way i’ve started looking at conditioning now. I usually hike once, sprint once and push the prowler twice a week.

    I dont work myself into the ground but I push it enough so Im getting a decent workout and I stop when Im no longer performing well. If I start to drag too much on any one of them I call it a day, there’s no point in doing a sprint session if the sprints have turned into a jog.

  • Comment by Mads — February 17, 2012 @ 6:45 am

    How do you feel about Tabata Front Squats?

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