Best Program for Conditioning?

anyone know of any great programs good for conditioning (increasing aerobic ability, gpp i think it is called, cutting)? i have heard of crossfit, p90x, rosstraining, maybe even kelley baggett’s program? (interested in high power output too)

From my personal experience, and this is specific to rugby as well, sprints are the best thing for conditioning. Just mix it up, start out gradual and increase the volume/drop rest periods, etc as you go. This is also going to depend on your personal goals. Just as recommending 4 mile runs is not ideal for rugby, recomending sprints may not be ideal for people only interested in long distance running.

hahaha 4 mile runs.
to clarify, i am not interested in endurance (no marathons and stuff like that). more interested in high power output

crossfit. do it for 2 weeks with the warmup, its in the faq. after that, look up crossfit endurance. it consists of sprint repeats mostly, with some tempo runs and the occasional 5k. do your crossfit mainsite and the endurance site, you will be puking twice a day if you go all out!

btw are you doing this for a specific sport or just because

www.crossfit.com/

mm just because out of shape aerobically wise, and am a slow lifter (powerlifting) so interested in fast twitch work (speed/height)

crossfit is a good program then. there is one variation i have seen called the black box program. basically, your schedule is a crossfit workout, a strength day, a crossfit workout, a rest day and repeat. you may be interested in that variation to keep your lifts up. the crazy thing is pretty much every crossfit workout with weights is dynamic effort, so maybe that could even shake it up to help you on your powerlifts while reaping the benefits of better cardiovascular fitness.

hmm mthat sounds awesome! i may be without a gym, though. but i have a pullupbar, and a 40lb dumbbell, and am thinking of making a sled!

Running is the best thing to increase your aerobic capacity hands down. Lifting weights fast will increase the speed of your lifts the fastest.

Anyone who can sprint a 400 meter or 800 meter will have close to their Max aerobic capacity, but its hard, so you may want to stick to all the other things you said.

[quote]kickureface wrote:
anyone know of any great programs good for conditioning (increasing aerobic ability, gpp i think it is called, cutting)? i have heard of crossfit, p90x, rosstraining, maybe even kelley baggett’s program? (interested in high power output too)[/quote]

Depends on what you like and your specific goals. If you like randomness I would lean towards CF stuff. But if you like a little structure then I would lean towards something more along the lines of Ross’ stuff.

Also what are you time constraints? How often are you looking towards incorporating it? I saw you said you typically do PL’ing, so were you planning on doing conditioning after your sessions? What equipment do you have access to?

There are tons of conditioning options other than CF and Ross’s stuff as well. If you have access to KB’s you can add in some long cycle stuff which can work really well for conditioning purposes. Give us some more information and we can try to help more.

i was planning on conditioning after a weight can period, to cut some fat and get speed/jump. probably will try it for a month, maybe two by itself before going back to weightlifting and dropping it.

my equipment will be almost nonexistent. basically a pullup bar, 40lb dumbbell and making a sled. i do have a pool. and grass. and i think i can find sand :stuck_out_tongue:
structure would be nice, but i dont care as long as it powers up my fast twitch movers.

Pick up some heavy shit and carry it around the yard.

gymjones.com/schedule.php?GymJonesSess=8b543e311052bf37a554aa555db5fd1d

…has some good stuff as well. Monday September 14th has a good sprint type workout. I’ve been checking the crossfit main page, the crossfit jax page, and gym jones page every morning at work to figure out some conditioning finishers to add at the end of my lifting sessions.

[quote]kickureface wrote:
i was planning on conditioning after a weight can period, to cut some fat and get speed/jump. probably will try it for a month, maybe two by itself before going back to weightlifting and dropping it.

my equipment will be almost nonexistent. basically a pullup bar, 40lb dumbbell and making a sled. i do have a pool. and grass. and i think i can find sand :stuck_out_tongue:
structure would be nice, but i dont care as long as it powers up my fast twitch movers.[/quote]

That’s plenty of equipment. Given those options I’d side with the Rosstraining stuff. Excellent books, I’ve only read Infinite Intensity. http://www.rosstraining.com/products.html

http://www.rosstraining.com/articles/hardcore.html

Haha I always wanted to try this. Get a group of friends together and a sandbag and have a game of sandbag Olympics. ie: sprint with sandbag, long jump with sandbag, throwing sandbag, high jumping with sandbag, football with sandbag instead of ball. It’ll be a laugh and then after that just implement whatever useful movements you and your friends come up with that seem useful. Believe me you’ll find some good ones for speed/power output.

If your conditioning to GAIN SPEED then you might want a bit more structure than CF. Maybe look up a plyometric/vert jump program and/or begin sprinting. Another thing you might want to look up i EDT by charles stayley. It is the best conditioning program I have used with athletes. keep you strong and conditions you at the same time. It’s what I do for myself.

But if you ahve no gym then it looks like neither CF or EDT will work at all. Why cant you get in a gym?? there has got to be something around? any how I would just get a training partner and go for some hill sprints.

-chris

Kettlebell Circuits have helped me so much.

They’re fun, helps develop speed in the hips (swings), builds up the core, jacks your heart rate up like crazy, and the movements just generally have alot of carry over into strength sports.

sled drags, log carrys, HIT, tyre flips, hitting the tyre with a sledgehammer(there has to be a name for that?) barbell complexes with little rest, keg clean and press.

if your on a tight budget just buy a skipping rope they’re cheap and give a great conditioning workout.

looks like no one has mentioned prowler flu and sled or tire dragging