Training: How much is enough?

Hercules, Hercules!
Before I ran my first obstacle course or did my first CrossFit class I thought that training 5 days a week was a Herculean effort on my part, and so did everyone I know. Whenever my training regime came up in conversation with friends or work colleagues the athletically disinclined among them would say "I don't know how you do it!" or  "I wish I had your motivation", and for a while I hurt, everything hurt, but my body adapted.

Time to train

The perspective on training changes however, once you start talking with other athletes. An athlete understands that in order to perform well you have to train, generally the more you train, the better you perform. If you practice your chosen sport or activity over and over and over again, you will get better at it. So I trained 6 or sometimes 7 days a week, 30 - 45 minutes each day doing weights, cardio or a combination of the two. Other days I ran as far as I could in the 45 minutes I had in the mornings before I had to get ready to take my daughter to childcare, then head off to work myself. I kept running, kept doing weights and I performed better, running further, suffering less afterwards, I just got better overall. Sure I hurt for a while with the increase in training, but again my body adapted.

10km run

After talking with my CrossFit instructor (Chris from CrossFitCBD) recently I decided to step the training up again. 5 - 6 days a week - 2 workouts a day totalling between 1 and 1^1/2  hours a day. For 3 or 4 of those days I split the workouts into roughly 20 minute blocks:

• High intensity CrossFit style workout
• Traditional strength based weight training
• Running with high intensity sprint splits

I usually do the CrossFit and strength training back to back early in the morning and get a run in during my lunch break. The other 2 days are distance days, usually around 10km depending on the length of the next event I want to compete in.

Oh how we change

5.20am is lifting time

In the early days when my body hurt I would try and push through it, making my body do what I wanted through sheer force of will. I think you need that willpower and determination just to get the ball rolling, just to get out of bed at 5 in the morning and put your shoes on and get into the gym. Getting started was always the hardest part. Eventually even that changed, now I have trouble sleeping past 5.30am (even on a Sunday), and I tend to get a little irritated when I haven't done a workout - even on my rest days. I find now that I have to "listen" to my body, and through experience I have learnt the difference between the ache after a good workout and the pain that tells me I need to give certain body parts some time to repair. Sometimes listening to my body, rather than telling it what to do can be frustrating and I feel like a hippie thinking it, let alone saying it out loud.

So how much training is enough? Honestly I have no idea; it seems that there is no real limit. I occasionally read stories about professional athletes who train 6+ hours a day and I turn just a tiny shade of green with envy. Training like a professional athlete sounds very rewarding, but has to take quite a toll on your body. These athletes and their coaches must have their work cut out for them just trying to prevent injuries from over training let alone the unavoidable injuries cause by accidents. I often wonder if my body could handle that level of punishment. Thus far I have been very lucky, whenever I push harder after a short time my body just adapts and then performs as desired.

Optimism
I genuinely wonder how far I can push my body. Can I reach the goals I am now setting myself? Can I run a 45 minute 10km? Can I learn to do unassisted handstand push ups? Can I do gymnastic ring muscle ups?

I would like to think so, but I suspect it is going to take some time, and a whole lot of sweat.

CrossFit?... What is CrossFit?

What is CrossFit?

CrossFit Games 2012

I first heard about CrossFit in October or November 2011 from Brenton, my personal trainer at the time, while discussing training possibilities for the days that I wasn't seeing him. He mentioned that he thought CrossFit would be a good fit for me.

"CrossFit? ... What is CrossFit?"

Brenton described the CrossFit games as a series of insane gymnastic and weightlifting events given to the fittest people on the planet without any prior warning about the workouts and movements that they would have to perform in each event.

He was right, that sounded like just the sort of event I would enjoy!

CrossFit online and in my garage

Leaving it all on the garage floor

After being shown some YouTube videos on Brenton's phone at the gym that morning I was hooked. I spent a number of hours learning about WODs (Workouts Of the Day). Just like at the CrossFit Games I was surprised to find that these workouts were handed out to regular CrossFitters online, and in CrossFit Boxes all around the world without any warning, and could quite literally be anything! Now that was exciting... and a little scary. Challenge accepted!

After that I changed my morning workouts from what was an assortment of boxing, body weight exercises and traditional basic weight lifting movements like bench press, back squat and dead lift to a more CrossFit inspired selection of movements. My new workouts introduced the idea of an AMRAP (As Many Rounds As Possible) workout. These timed workouts gave me something to measure my performance against, they gave me the ability to set a performance level bench mark, allowing me to gauge any improvements made in subsequent workouts.

As a person who likes logical things like numbers that can easily be quantified, measured and compared I find keeping track of my workout performance is exactly what I needed to help me push myself each and every time I am in the gym. For me the desire to better myself, to beat my personal best on a workout is a powerful motivator that has me leaving sweaty puddles on my garage floor.

Finding my CrossFit home - CrossFitCBD

CrossFitCBD

It seemed so straight forward. From their online presence the CrossFit community appears to be huge! I will just find my closest CrossFit box and head along to a WOD, right? Sadly in Melbourne Australia it is not that easy. There are currently only a few of CrossFit boxes in all of regional Melbourne, and none of them are in my side of the city.

As a husband and a dad with a full time job I spend most of my time in the gym between 5 and 6 AM, and from what I could see it seems that even the most hardcore CrossFit box is not running classes at that time of the morning. With my family's current work/life configuration I have one flexible morning thanks to the fact that my beautiful wife stays home with our daughter on Wednesdays. If I was going to make this work I would have to find a box that could cater to my very limited availability.

CrossFitCBD was precisely what I was looking for; located in Melbourne's CBD, no need to sign up to costly or lengthy gym memberships and they run a 6.45AM WOD every weekday. So every Wednesday morning CrossFitCBD owner and instructor Chris tortures us with "the unknown and the unknowable", but that is exactly why my fellow CrossFitters are there!

CrossFit vs Obstacle Courses
I find that I question my training regime constantly. I am always looking to improve or change things up to maximize the performance increases the training delivers. After falling in love with CrossFit as a workout methodology it brings up a question for me - "Is simultaneously training for CrossFit and obstacle course racing a good idea?".

Obstacle course racing is an endurance sport, there is a lot of distance running with an obstacle every so often. CrossFit is all about functional movements and general fitness. If you look at the 2012 CrossFit games it is abundantly clear that the level of overall fitness you can reach with CrossFit is extreme, but is that a level I can obtain while working and continuing to be a "family man"?

Should CrossFit training and Obstacle Course running be mutually exclusive?

Call me naive if you will, but I am going to try and do it all at once.

Hold on to your butts it might be an interesting ride!

An ambitious goal / A long road

I am a husband to a beautiful wife, a father to a gorgeous little girl,
a geek and a gamer - but can I be an athlete?

Name: Ben Quinney
Age: 34
Athletic background: None
Short term goal: Top 25% Hidden Warrior December 1st 2012
Long term goal: Reach a competitive level in Australian obstacle course racing and compete in the 2014 CrossFit open.
Question: Is 34 too old to start training with the hopes of becoming a competitive athlete?

Some background for the uninitiated
To be fair, when I say "Athletic background: None", that is not entirely true - well not now. I played a little bit of basketball when I was much younger, I used to skateboard until about the time I was able to drive a car and I did some mountain boarding until our daughter was born - but I was never very good at any of them.

2009 - Approx 115kg

I started seeing a personal trainer back in 2006 but never really got my diet under control, so while I was getting stronger all the time I was not losing any weight or looking or feeling any better about myself.

Inspired by a television weight loss show in February 2011 I set myself a goal - to workout for 100 consecutive days. I started doing a workout every morning using Yourshape Fitness Evolved while taking photos and tracking my weight every day. While my overall fitness improved tremendously after 100 days my weight still wasn't moving very quickly.

Results at last!
It was an iOS app that finally made the difference with my diet. myfitnesspal allowed me to set a calorie goal and easily track my food by using the camera on my iPhone as a barcode scanner and an extensive database of nutritional information from almost every food product I put in front of it. Once I learned what food "cost" in terms of calories I was able to track my calorie consumption accurately I went from around 110kg in June 2011, to 100kg in November 2011 then all the way down to 89.9kg in May 2012.

My home gym

In April 2011 I enlisted the services of Brenton, my old personal trainer again, and started spending a lot more time in the gym in my garage. I increased the regularity of my workouts with weights from once a week to five. In September 2011 I got my squat rack (right) and was then able to put more work into squats and bench press. It was about this time that I first heard about Tough Mudder - Tough Mudder changed my outlook on everything!!

Obstacle course racing
After reading the recommended fitness capabilities of Tough Mudder  I realised that if I was going to have any chance of finishing the 20km Tough Mudder course what I really needed to be able to do was RUN! I started trying to run for 10 minutes, then 15, eventually working my way up to about an hour. In February 2012 I came across the Tough Bloke Challenge and it seemed the ideal warm up event for Tough Mudder. In my maiden obstacle course race I came in 217th place out of 2220 with a time of 39min 39sec. Impressive yes? Well I thought so!

Tough Mudder Phillip Island was a fantastic day - I had my daughter, my wife and her mother and father supporting me, eagerly awaiting my arrival at the finish line. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful location. The course was excellent, a wonderful atmosphere and a varied selection of obstacles. The 20km distance was a challenge - but nothing compared to having to wait FOREVER in bottlenecks where the participants got held up waiting for those in front of them to go over, under or through the next set of obstacles.

Sadly, for me, the waiting on the course took some of the joy out of the event. I hadn't been able to push as hard as I wanted, to push as hard as I could. I finished the course with a rough time of 3hrs 30mins - but at least 45 minutes of that was spent just standing around. As a side note I am already booked into the first time slot (8am) of the first day for Tough Mudder Melbourne 2013 with my 61 year old father, but that is a story for another day.

The hunt for more obstacles
After Tough Mudder I developed an almost hyper awareness, a spider sense if you will for the announcements of upcoming obstacle courses. By "spider sense" I of course mean that I started madly following as many people, events and organisations as I could in the various social media outlets. It seems as though I must have caught the front of what has become an obstacle course tsunami as new events and courses are being announced all the time.

At this stage my 2012 & 2013 obstacle course calendars looks like this, with a number of events still yet to announce dates:

2012

Event	Date	Place	Time
Tough Bloke Challenge	3rd March	217th	39:39
Tough Mudder	31st March	Not tracked	3:30:00
Winter Warrior Challenge	4th August	24th	1:12:00
The Stampede Melbourne	27th October
The Hidden Warrior	1st December

2013

Event	Date	Place	Time
Tough Mudder	19th January
Spartan Race	2nd March
Tough Bloke Challenge	23rd March

TBA
Beach Bash 2013

With so many obstacle courses on the calendar for 2012 and even more expected in 2013 it will take some very serious commitment from, not only me, but my loving family if I am going to attend and be competitive in most, if not all of them.

What does it take to be competitive?
So from the very small sample size that I have (3 events), it would seem, to me at least, that I am not a long way off being able to regularly finish in the top 25% while training 5 or 6 days per week without any specific purpose or direction.

So what sort of training would it take to be in the running for a podium finish?

Am I even physically capable?

Have I left it all too late?