alobravo | dig deep

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I have taken many aspects of my training from the Navy SEALS BUDS program, my military experience, personal trainers, and amateur and professional athletes. The SEALS require candidates to do dead-hang pull ups that I do, completely extending your arms until you feel they’re going to pop out of your shoulder sockets; I did alternating superman core exercises as punishment when we were flat singing the wrong notes in boot camp choir; I picked up a few tummy burning stomach routines, from personal trainers, like crunches where I extend my legs completely; and at times I hit sets of 800m and 600m runs on the track like Michael Johnson.

1. Usain Bolt

The fastest man alive, like Michael Johnson and other track & field elite, trained for the 400 meter race.There’s less literature that I could find on how Bolt’s coach, Glen Mills, trained him, than stories giving the American track team an ‘E’ for effort, so if you refer to the North America, Central America and Caribbean Track & Field Coaches Association article on training to race for a 400m race, by Clyde Hart, former Olympic champion Michael Johnson’s coach, you’ll have an idea of how Olympic track stars train for the 400m.

Now, I’ve got a better chance of running the New York Marathon in an hour than fitting that whole routine into my 1 hour and 10 minute interval workout; nonetheless, if you perform just half of any of those speed endurance workouts in the unordered list at the beginning of the article, the pounds are going to drop like the batons in the American 4×100 relay race. Just keep in mind that the repetitions are left of the ‘x’ and the distance of your run is to the right:

Examples of Speed Endurance Workouts

a) 10 x 100 5‑10 minutes rest

b) 6 x 150 5‑10 minutes rest

c) 5 x 200 10 minutes rest

d) 4 x 300 10 minutes rest

e) 3 x 350 10 minutes rest

f) 3 x 350 10 minutes rest

My workout consists of running 1×1600, 4×500, and performing calisthenics in between each repetition, as per a Men’s Health recommendation. My runs are a little more than the recommended 1000 meter total in the endurance interval recommended by Coach Hart.

If you are just starting and committed to slicing off fat from the tummy, like a hot knife through butter, on the track, start off by running a 5×100m - five 100 meter sprints with about 30 seconds to a minute of rest in between each sprint; about half of one of Hart’s examples; or structure your own - e.g. 3×150m plus 1×50m, 1×200 plus 2×100. Ensure that your total sprinting distance totals to 500m. If you’re running each sprint in 17 seconds and resting 30 seconds to a minute in between each, you’ll be done in 10 minutes. This is my secret fat burning weapon; the calisthenics, qualify the workout as a circuit training routine, but I believe, they are primarily for body sculpting purposes.

2. Michael Phelps

“Phelps can manipulate water like no human since Moses.” I’m going to hire that guy as my ghost writer. Bob Bowman, Phelps’ coach, says that his speed in the swimming pool is due to the way he lengthens his stroke. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have an Olympic pool in which to practice my breast stroke nearby, so instead of stretching our arms in the pool longer than Mr. Fantastic, lets cherry-pick what we could do  from his dry-land workout at age 17:

POST-PRACTICE DRYLAND
Wall sit, 2 minutes
3 x 8 pull-ups (assisted if needed)
2 x 15 dips (no weight)
Push-ups
10 elbows in + 5 clap
10 elbows out + 5 clap
10 opposite + 5 clap
10 reverse opp. + 5 clap
Ab roller 2 x 15
3 x ball squats 10
3 x squat jumps 10
Stretching!!!

Phelps performed 3 x 8 pull-ups; correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that means 3 sets of 8 pull-ups; I do 6 sets of 4 different types of pull-ups, with varied repetitions. It may go as follows:

1 set of 29 - 30 behind the neck pull-ups
- mainly works the latissimus dorsi or lats
2 sets of 11 close grip pull-ups
- shifts more resistance and thus further trains the biceps bracchi.
2 sets of 15 chin ups
1 set of 12 regular pull ups

I pull my chest up to the pull up bar to stay strong when doing my muscle up sets. The way I strengthened my muscles to perform more reps was completing what’s referred to as a pyramid. For instance, lets say you can do only 4 pull ups: you do 1 pull up and let go - every time you let go of the bar briefly rest your arms; you then do 2 pull ups and let go; 3 pull ups let go; and keep adding the amount of the reps you can do until you’re jerking like a rabbit hanging from his feet that’s about to get clobbered and skinned. If at 3 reps your arms feel stiffer than a cast, then after you finish that 3, you do 2, let go; then 1 and you’re done. Former Navy Seal, Stew Smith, has a few tips to do more pull ups, and eHow has a nice way of standing on a chair with one leg to assist in doing more pull ups.

3. Dara Torres

Dara Torres, the Aquagirl determined to prove 41 is the new 21, performs an intense weight-lifting, machine, and core routine that would leave Arnold Schwarzenegger huffing and puffing like a woman in labor. Two hours and a half of post-workout resistance stretching, however, is what keeps her from getting benched like Osi Umenyiora by any serious injury.

Aside from various massages and trainer assisted stretches, Innovative Body Solutions, an organization that helps Torres stretch, has images and a brief tutorial on how Torres stretches her quads, hip flexors, medial (back and inside) hamstring.

I stretch for about 30 minutes, if I’m not in a rush to get to work; otherwise my stretches last 15 to 20 minutes. I learned my stretches from taking Yoga classes at the local Ballys’ when I lived in Florida. I got into it by reading a card in the back pocket of a JetBlue plane seat, with animations of people doing Yoga exercises and stretches you could do seated when you’re tired of watching yesterday’s internet national news now showing on the in-flight DirecTV.

Ever since I added a stretching routine into my workout, I cured backaches that plagued me after I got into a car accident when I was 18; it got so bad, I was walking like I had a bigger hump than Ephialtes, the hunchback in 300, at the age of 26. Thank God, I have not had any serious injuries, sprains, or soreness, in spite of the high intensity workouts I have been executing for 5 years straight. Now I have even instituted some gymnastics stretches to replace the splits that were killing me knees; enjoy!