Cheers folks, hope you’re all doing well and feeling good.
I’ll try to make this short and sweet. I train with 5/3/1, lifting x4 times a week. My main focus and goal is to gain strength and improve on the core lifts, I would also like to gain some good mass in the process through proper diet. I have shifted my focus from conditioning as I realize you can’t have it all at once. I do, however, believe I can atleast maintain what I consider a fair level of fitness I have achieved. For this, I do hill sprints after my lower body sessions, and do jump rope and bodyweight calisthenic circuits x2 a week. These are fairly intense are amount to about 15-20 minutes of work.
I’m planning on building a prowler with my dad, but in the meantime have made a makeshift sled and also found a good surface for my sledgehammer. I would like to incorporate these two tools into my GPP days and ideally replace the jump rope/BW circuits.
I was wondering about fatigue, CNS, not muscle or soreness. I realize since sled work is concentric there is very little DOMs. I just don’t want to detract from the lifting, and sled work is weighed at the end of the day. I was wondering about ways to incorporate it that would still allow me to maintain my fitness and possibly help facilitate leans gains via some fat burning while not completely frying myself. I was thinking of either something like 15-30 minutes of continuous dragging with fairly light weight, or short distance sprints with light-moderate weight, say 10 trips. I would just like to hear from some folks who’ve had experience with this and the results they got.
So just to be clear you’ve got a sled and want to replace the other jumprope/bodyweight stuff with it?
I’d say thats a good idea and start with 10 sprints with a weight that allows you to still be explosive and slowly work up to 20 trips adding a trip each time you use it. At 20 trips add some weight and start over. Or of course you could just pull it around until you puke.
Thanks alot man, that sounds good. Figured I’d maybe mix it up, one time do it for sprints with timd rest, another just go for time, 20-30 minutes with some fairly moderate weight.
I would only do the sprints, 20-30min continuous is not good for strength or size gains, and won’t help contribute to your endurance. I say this as you sound relatively fit, you would prob need upwards of 1hr for endurance work, and with your sprints you can add weight as needed to give the best effect for GPP. Sled work is great for GPP when used for HIIT work, but I wouldn’t do 30min continuous with one. If you want to go for a 30min steady state, get a car tire and place a peice of ply in the bottom than add a smaller weight plate and drag that around.
Good luck with it mate.
Thanks alot mate, sound advice there. I’ll take it to heart. I do have one question though.
[quote]rambodian wrote:
If you want to go for a 30min steady state, get a car tire and place a peice of ply in the bottom than add a smaller weight plate and drag that around.
[/quote]
What’s the difference than doing this with a sled? the overall load/weight being dragged?
Yep, nothing different, I miss read your post and was thinking of the prowler your building with the old man, sorry.
Just use the sled for the steady state mate, no worries.
Soz about that LOL
Good luck.
Anyone had any bad experience with doing sled work the day before/after a heavy lower body day?
I figured the day before one I shouldn’t go for high volume or perhaps do the timed dragging on that day.
[quote]NobbyTheLion wrote:
Cheers mate, I found it. Also found one by Tate right here. There are loads of them, I read most of them before I posted. [/quote]
You might also want to check out what Nick Tumminello says about tire dragging (which is essentially a big, round, heavy sled. Ha.) in this article: http://www.T-Nation.com/readArticle.do?id=4700103
[quote]PlainPat wrote:
Before is a no-no according to most (IDK I do it anyway sometimes), on is amazing, and after is good if it doesn’t fall before another lower body day.[/quote]
Cheers again, mate. I ended doing some Tabatas with a Sledghammer, which I think I like even better than the Sled. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had conditioning.
[quote]NobbyTheLion wrote:
Cheers mate, I found it. Also found one by Tate right here. There are loads of them, I read most of them before I posted. [/quote]
You might also want to check out what Nick Tumminello says about tire dragging (which is essentially a big, round, heavy sled. Ha.) in this article: http://www.T-Nation.com/readArticle.do?id=4700103
[/quote]
Cool article, believe I’ve read it before. Thanks for that one, mate!
[quote]PlainPat wrote:
Before is a no-no according to most (IDK I do it anyway sometimes), on is amazing, and after is good if it doesn’t fall before another lower body day.[/quote]
Cheers again, mate. I ended doing some Tabatas with a Sledghammer, which I think I like even better than the Sled. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had conditioning.[/quote]
Yeah I’ve heard good things about sledgehammers being hell, will have to give it a go one day. Just change it up every once in awhile, it makes conditioning pretty damn fun to have a lot of options.
Check out the sled videos in the HP Mass leg training articles from CT. Personally, I’ve had very good success this year putting size on my legs and keeping fat gain pretty low by doing heavy ass rounds with the prowler and sled for short 20m intervals. Because it’s eccentricless, as you said, you can really draw out your workload and facilitate some boost in hypertrophy by keeping the loads heavy.