Full Transcript
Aaron King (00:06):
I'm Aaron King with coach Bob King. And today we have a topic that is going to hit close to home for me. And maybe some of y'all, I don't know, but we're going to talk about weekend warriors and some training there, but before I get into that how's this, how's this quarantine treating you,
Coach Bob King (00:25):
Please end soon. I mean, you know, I'm set up here at the house. I've got my StairMaster and erudite and a weight program that I'm doing with resistance training and so forth, but somebody saved me, please.
Aaron King (00:38):
Yeah, I saw the F-150 chains and dumbbells
Coach Bob King (00:45):
Tough times call for tough measures. And you know, it's kind of a throwback because you know what I mean? I hate to date myself, but back in the day, we didn't always have a lot. We started out with a plastic seaman field, field weights, and telephone poles back in junior high. So kind of just kind of reverting back. So, and surviving. I think I still have a little muscle lift.
Aaron King (01:10):
Well, so this topic comes from a couple of things. We, we have one kind of this isolation, quarantine of boredom. There's been some, some folks I know you've been working with some triathletes or an iron man, iron man which is usually a little bit older. And then myself, I had, I'm getting a little bit bored in my training and obviously we don't have access to the gym. And so I, I, I hit the track for the first time in a while coming off of an injury. But I was, I was feeling good. And so I wanted to break down the weekend warrior and this almost goes into more of a fitness topic than it is art or performance and everything. Especially when I, I talked to entrepreneurs and in a tech field or whatever field they're in and everyone's, they have their hobbies and they have all their interests. It's fun to mix it up and not be just going to the gym and kind of money.
Coach Bob King (02:14):
Well, change is good.
Aaron King (02:17):
Change is good. And so let's kind of kick it off with you've said something before this about periodization and kind of some new research, some studies, which again, we, we've kind of known of that for a long time, but it, it does, it's hard to apply that to a weekend warrior who doesn't have the schedule.
Coach Bob King (02:41):
Exactly. And so you just use the word I was getting ready to translate here. Periodization is our word for schedule. That's all, that's really all that is, you know, what's my schedule. You don't have to ask me if I need to periodize this, or I need to do that. You need to ask me, just what's my schedule. Am I, when am I doing what? And that's what periodization is all about and it gets published and it's out there. And so if somebody sees it, I want them to understand that I just look at it and I start writing a schedule, what that amounts to, and what goes into the schedule is kind of behind the scenes about, you know, I'm going to do two, four, six, eight, 10, four, eight, six, or whatever. And so just keep that in mind, not to overthink that, because all that periodization does give you a schedule and tells you where you're going and how you're going to get there.
Aaron King (03:31):
So for me, what I did the other day and I'll give you a little bit of context. So I joined this group. We have this group here in Austin called sprint squad, and I was, it's like a social group. Oh, well, he runs sprints. I was like, sounds great to me. I, I went out one day and I think I made it to about number 14 before my Achilles 14, 14, I think we had 20 total. So it's more of a, a run group than it is a spring group, but everyone else sprints, Um but I pushed it a little hard. I hadn't run in probably almost a decade. You know, I do, I do basic stuff now, but I have not sprinted in about a decade, literally sprinted like that.
Coach Bob King (04:17):
Let me ask you something, were you feeling pretty good when you got started? Kind of like the oldest? Oh yeah, of course.
Aaron King (04:23):
Right, right now I feel like I could go out and play a whole game. Do you know why? Because I haven't been playing. My body's not beaten up.
Coach Bob King (04:31):
I'm going to laugh all the way through this while you tell me these stories because they are all too familiar to all of us. I mean, I have a, I have a whole, I can give my whole liturgy. I can give the ones, the guys I know, but just keep this in mind and everybody watching. But when you start talking about what you're doing, and somebody says, Hey, I've got this sprint squad sprint group. Do you want to go? And I go, yeah. Because why you think? And remember back to the last time you did that and you probably go, wow, that was so fun. It was great. Well, your brain had instantly thought of it, but your body has gone through whatever years, decades. And it's like, it doesn't remember as well as your mind does. So that means you've got to channel your brain.
Coach Bob King (05:17):
And this is across the board. You've got to channel your brain into regulating what your body does because your, your brain is just going to get in your way. Because last time I ran, Oh man, I was a beast. That was the last. And I'm going to just stick this in here. You talked about your Achilles for anybody who doesn't have an injury or hasn't had one, there are two things. Let's put it this way. The first time is always preceded by never, you know, somebody gets hurt and comes to me. He goes, man, I never, I know because the first time was always preceded by never if you have a preexisting and this could be years old years ago if you have an existing injury, it hibernates. Now I will say this aside from a surgical reconstruction, which takes care of the problem of strains and things that happened.
Coach Bob King (06:04):
I had a low back problem from being clipped at a football game decades ago. And it took forever to resolve that, but it hybernates it ways for you to do the, just the right or wrong thing to fire it back up. So it's still there, which means, all right, I've got this thing I've been asked to go to, I want to do it, but I have to be smarter than than my brain has to be smarter than my memory. And so the the deliberate warmup stretch what we call warm-up, lead up and then build up, make sure you're transitioning from zero to whatever speed in little increments, not zero to a hundred. It's going to be zero five, 10, 15, 20 miles an hour.
Aaron King (06:45):
You know, it's funny. It reminds me of going back to when Emmett Smith going into one of his final seasons, he was doing a lot more, let's call it core training and just different types of training. And he was saying how his body felt better than it had and forever. Well, he had a terrible season, but you know, it's, your body feels good, but that doesn't mean that you're performing and you're not, and you're not. Cause sometimes the grueling training is what you need to perform at a high level and look at JJ watt breakdown.
Coach Bob King (07:16):
Yeah, we have kind of our saying is to say, we're going to prepare you for what you're going to do next. And so the classic comment, a classic example is in football players. When we get you, you're going to the combine, are you going to a showcase? We'll get, we're going to get you ready to look good in space, run against cones, run against directions, not an opponent, not contact. You go into training camp. We're going to change the training to get you ready for what you're going to do next. So if you're a weekend warrior, what are you going to do next? Well, I'm going to go play in a basketball league. What are you going to need to, you know, stop, start change directions, job? I'm going to go to a sprint club. Well, you need to get ready to go straight ahead.
Coach Bob King (07:59):
You don't have to worry about abrupt stops and changes to direction, but you need to transition to accelerating. And that's the key part because as you start accelerating, it can be very difficult to get your foot off the gas soon enough to avoid a strain. And one other point on that strain business. So let me correct myself or back up.
Coach Bob King (08:22):
A lot of times we have to solve for X and X is the number of repetitions or the strides or whatever that I can take before something starts to break down. So I go in, I have a hamstring history. I have a Kelly's history. X is how many times can I take a stride before I start feeling it? And you will, that is your traffic light. And so you do a, you do a sprint and you start to feel it. You don't have to grab it and be hurt. You need to say, okay, I need to back that off because just solve for X. That's the number of reps I could have strides I can take and not be hurt because it's telling me anymore and you may get hurt.
Aaron King (09:05):
Yeah. And that that's been my concern. So the other day, kind of back to what kicked this off for me is I was feeling decent. I started doing some sprints on the track, light sprint, just cone drills here and there. Just trying to mix it up since I don't get into the gym. At the end of my workout towards the end, you know, it wasn't a heavy workout, so I wasn't super fatigued. I was like, you know, let's see what my 40 time is. Just, just because like, I have a baseline from 10 years ago, I'm not sure. See, is that a baseline? I have a baseball. And I'm like, okay, I know what I've run before. I know what my capacity is after full-time training. So I went out and ran and it was, again, this is an iPhone stopwatch, not anything Olympic level or anything like that, but the timing was 4.72 and then a 4.8. And so again, don't know how reliable the timing is. Okay. If I can crack the sevens, you know, I'm, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not terrible, but now I'm kind of curious what my capacity is.
Coach Bob King (10:17):
Do you feel that they, after what was the next day? Cause it's always, it's never, that day really overly concerned. It's going to be if you get through the workout and here's the thing, just, this is all working together. If you say I'm going to run 12 sprints when you get through with 12 and you feel good, you're through, I feel good. I want to do a couple more. No, you feel good. Leave feeling good. And so it's always that next day. So when you ran your four, seven and four eight, how was it? Okay.
Aaron King (10:45):
I mean, I wasn't like limping to the bathroom or anything.
Coach Bob King (10:49):
So you didn't max yourself out completely. Did you feel like you ran pretty strong?
Aaron King (10:53):
No, I don't get me wrong. There was still some soreness there. You know, like a little bit of tightness, just like any workout where you push it, nothing devastating at all. So you know, so I'm 35 years old. Things hurt. My AC joint is partially separated. I believe. That's an old injury too, but I just hit the weights a few months ago, but it hasn't recovered yet. And so for all the weekend warriors out there, I kind of want to be a Guinea pig. And I want to put myself through some training during this time and see what I can do with limited weights. I only have some of those quick-change dumbbells. And so, you know, I really want to go out and really apply basically the training that we always tell folks to do, but do it in a week weekend warrior type, if you will. And I know you have some folks that are trained for the marathons. So I already mentioned that the Ironman, so what let's look at, you know, maybe, maybe it's five days a week, let's go full-on. So it's not, no, don't get me wrong. It's not five days of, you know, you got your running for an hour and then you get your weights for an hour and a half and get your yoga and then your treatment, this is not full-on training. So I mean, you get one activity a day.
Coach Bob King (12:19):
Right, well, what you want to do is rotate it. And you know, there's the thing, you know, periodization has been out there for a long time. There's a lot of new stuff coming out, which is really not new. But let me just mention this so that it's clear that people understand periodization is the strength, coaches, world word for schedule. So what's my schedule. And that's what you're talking about. Your schedule is I'm going to do something five days a week. And in the beginning, there are several ways to do. And this is based on what you're doing in other events and sports would be slightly different, but I always tell people, man, here's what I want you to do. Something like you're talking about. We need to get the legs in shape, get them used to that. Sprinting stretches the muscle.
Coach Bob King (13:06):
That's where that soreness comes from because there's two things going on. Your stride is stretching the muscle where it hasn't been in a long time and then your foot's landing on the ground. So you get that eccentric load and all that is stuff that you know, where the body weight is magnified, Oh 9x-10x times its total weight when you land on a sprint stride. And so you're going to feel soreness normal. But what you want to do is to condition for that and vary the distances. So you know what I like to have people do, for example, let's go out on a track if you ha it doesn't matter, but it's got a reference. But the classic is to stride the straits and walk the curves. You get two things out of that. You get a chance to run and open up your stride comfortably, and then you get to walk the curve.
Coach Bob King (13:51):
So that you're now just doing a, a, an active recovery. You don't just sit out or stand in place. It allows you to regulate your speed. So you don't have to be setting any records, but stride the straits and walk the curves. And I emphasize stride because it's, that is different from say, sprinter streets and walked curves and cause people to misinterpret that to say, well, I'm going to sprint. So here they go, I'm going to stride. Which means, you know, I don't do a lot of percentages and running, but that would be almost top end would be three quarters, 70%, three-quarters of your speed, because you want to get those. The sprint strides are just a matter of running repetition. And that's what we're trying to accomplish with that. And then come back on another day, say, let's just say a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, maybe come back on your next running day.
Coach Bob King (14:43):
And you stride out what you're trying to accomplish. And that would be in this case, the 40. So I'm going to run X number of forties. I'm going to run six forties, take a break. I'm gonna come back and run six more, take a break, come back and run two to three more just to kind of build up the volume of training that you need. But again, you're kind of self periodizing your training because the schedule says I'm going to do go long and then come back and do short. I'm going to come back and do medium. And I'm going to rotate the stress on my legs. So I have a chance to train and recover.
Aaron King (15:20):
Yeah. I feel like that's just a good number for me, I also want to do something that other folks can maybe jump on the bandwagon, try it out. And I think four weeks is tolerable. It's that four-week challenge. Maybe you go to the eight-week challenge for some folks, but that's really when you get when you get eight weeks, you know, you're talking about you're changing your habits and your lifestyle. This is a fun, just a test, you know, that 30 days or so. Do you think five days a week you think that's overkill or do you think, cause I know I'm just going off of what I'm used to previously where I was like five days a week plus like an active recovery day. And those five days used to be super intense, but now it's like,
Coach Bob King (16:04):
Well, I go to the something every day is good with then those days off that are scheduled. Now, what I'm talking about is you're going to run two to three days a week and you're going to be doing your strength work the other days, two to three days a week. And any kind of active recovery, whether you have a bike or even just some self-stretching, yoga type of activity because all of these are going to work together. You've got to stretch the muscle. You've got to create a good range of motion for that stride. Strength is critical because that's, you can't be fast if you're not strong. So you need to maintain as much strength as you can, upper and lower body. Because if you're sprinting, the upper body is quite aggressive. So you have to match it.
Coach Bob King (16:50):
You don't want to have a weak link in your chain. So doing something every day is recommended. It doesn't have to be at a breakneck speed or, you know, a personal record every time, but just staying active. Now the the footnote to that, the parent's medical statement is to listen to your body and you may get up and go, and I've done this, this is not new to me at all, but it's like, okay, not today. And so, okay. Just pick it up and look at it in terms of a seven-day block. And so, okay. Not today. Well and that was me yesterday was a not today day. And so today it did the Airdyne and the, and the StairMaster combination. I did my little in-home weight program where I hit it, you know, pretty short and quick but effective because I knew I hadn't done anything yesterday, "not today". Well, when I came back today I knew that I also was going to be kind of refreshed because my body, you know, I had good eats last night and slept well. So I'm going to take advantage of that and I'll feel good after having worked out and knowing tomorrow I can continue my week and be back on schedule. So that off is not bad, but just acknowledge it "not today". And that is not a bad thing.
Aaron King (18:13):
All right. Well I'm looking forward to doing this, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna nicely ask you to write this out for me. We'll put it on the app for everyone to follow up. We'll start with proceeding with caution. Yeah. So we'll have to maybe map this out, but I think yeah, two to three alternating or whatever, I think I can definitely knock that out. It'll feel, it'll feel good to go out there with a purpose, you know? These jogs are killing me.
Coach Bob King (18:43):
Oh, and that's the truth. Good Lord have mercy. You will if you also want to keep this in mind too, if you have the ability to do some sort of aerobic activity the sprint and aerobics work together. So don't know, don't neglect that because you had mentioned those times and there, you know, could be, the timer could be you a lot of times person goes out and it gets that burst and then it's like, wow. Okay. Where'd it go? The second time is not so good. So that's just an example that any type of activity fitness is recommended. Fitness is almost a non-negotiable because there is no, there is no half-time for fatigue, as I always told my team. So we gotta be ready.
Aaron King (19:25):
All right. Well, I hope the weekend warriors out there got something out of this. I know we're kind of rambling and I was hoping I can be the Guinea pig because I'm feeling it, I'm feeling it all. But if you all want to follow along, we'll put this, we'll get this written up, and put this on Kingsportstraing.com. Absolutely probably make it the speed daily workout for a while. And go that way, but we can follow this up with a lot. Yeah, totally. If y'all have any questions again, be sure to follow us. Coach Bob Kings on Twitter and Instagram @CoachBobKing, and I'm on Twitter, Instagram as well @DeepSnap, and then go to Kingsport strain.com for training programs, content, everything that we're putting out. And we'll talk to you next time here on the podcast.
See you later.
