I’m a powerlifter, but as I’ve gotten bigger I want to maintain decent work capacity. I also may have a beep test coming up for an application to join the fire brigade. I don’t need a massively high score: 9.6. I used to do a bunch of endurance work and I can control my breathing well.
Anyhow, long story short my question is, will doing some kind of high intensity finisher a couple of times a week be helpful?
I’ve been doing this for about three weeks now. So far I’ve done things like:
100 53 lbs kb swings in as few sets as possible (30, 30, 40)
1 to 15 53 lbs kb swings and 15 to 1 push-ups as fast as possible (20 minutes, first five sets in just over 5 minutes)
Prowler pushes: today was three blocks of 5 9.5 m pushes with 220 lbs of plates in a minute with four minute breaks
Any suggestions welcome, ideally something that’ll take 10-20 minutes I can tack on to the end of a session.
There’s a free PDF download on the net titled Greyskull approved conditioning for the modern Viking and another great, free pdf called Death by Prowler, which is a great read and explains how to program prowler conditioning.
Sorry if it sounds like taking the P… but in those circumstances I would be doing shuttles to mimic the beep test. It’s different if general conditioning is your goal - then there are a myriad of ways to mix up your training to keep life interesting.
It’s a completely and utterly valid point. As it turns out, I won’t be needing to complete a beep test at any level in the near future, so it becomes moot.
The truth is I detest steady state cardio. I’ll keep doing general conditioning work though, because I know it is beneficial and I quite enjoy it in a weird kind of way.