Spartan Warrior Workout Club

Sorry…

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Hi Folks sorry for the lack on content on the blog. I’ve been crazy busy since early September. My enrollment has grown by 25% and keeping up with all the tasks involved in teaching them proper form and the paperwork involved etc. is taking too much time so I’m trying to automate as much as I can.

I plan on adding new content at least once a week starting next week, but I’m also writing my second book on kettlebells and I have to get it cranked out my mid-November.

On top of all that we are moving the gym Continue Reading

Some Q’s some A’s

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Hi Dave,

I bought the SWW a few weeks back and have been eager to get into it. I’ve been doing CrossFit for 3-4 months now so I’m familiar with most of the moves, but I have some questions for you (I’m slowly going through the book; I’m on page 22 now and savoring it while the Concept2 challenge is on until mid October).

First, on page 19 it lists out program 1 and 2 — but then in the table and elsewhere it says “Level” and goes from 1-3 (and ALL). Is level 3 mentioned somewhere that I missed? Continue Reading

More on Renegade Rows

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In the last post on the RR we looked at how they work the core and strengthen your obliques glutes and hips to prevent rotation while pulling.

Now we’ll look at a few other things RR are good for.

Scapular retraction – pulling the shoulder blades back. This helps strengthen the muscles of the upper back which will help prevent rounded shoulders, that hunched over appearance. Most people these days are desk-bound, working on the computer and usually sit up and hunched over the keyboard. The position lengthens the muscles in the upper back and shortens the pecs and anterior Continue Reading

Renegade Row

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Why do Renegade Rows?

• core stability
• anti-rotation
• scapular retraction
• full body tension
• support the body on 1 arm at a time
• upper body strength
• ability to shift weight from side to side and maintain position

Core Stability – If you do Renegade Rows (or body weight rows – the same movement with no weights) correctly, you WILL do core work, especially the obliques.

Your hands should be about shoulder width apart. Drive the hand into the bell by placing the bone on the heel of the hand under the pinky ( the lunate bone) on the handle then the rest Continue Reading

Program 2 Day 1 Typos

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In program 2 Day 1 there’s a misprint It says 20mins rest for pullups and deadlifts. That was a transposition from a column that was removed from my original spreadsheet

The column that has the 20mins in it was titled Time/Interval – how much time the exercises was to take or the interval like 20/10 or 30/30. The actual rest for the Pullups is the amount of time left in a minute after doing 3 reps. It’s the density protocol. Do 3 reps (or whatever you can do) every minute on the minute for 20 minutes. The same for the Continue Reading

Some Clarification

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I did Program Day 1 of the SWW today and as I was looking at it I realized it might not make sense. The layout is a bit confusing

The 1st exercise is pullups and you need to know whether you are a beginner (can’t do any) which is Level 1, Intermediate (can do a few p to 5 or so) or Level 2, or Advanced (can do more than 5 easily) or Level 3.

Level 1 should be doing

Dead hangs for as long as possible twice – hang as long as you can rest 1 min then do Continue Reading

The Workouts

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Once I figured out what exercises and variations I would use I had to write step by step instructions on how to do each one. That was very time consuming, but developing the actual programs was the hardest, most daunting part and I’m sure there will be some fitness “gurus” who will tear my programming apart, but as they say, all publicity is good publicity.

In the Level 1 program written for the true beginner fitness buff I focused on programming using sets and reps, emphasizing proper form everywhere. It wound up being  a 30 day training period but spread Continue Reading

Dead Clean and Press

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The Dead Clean and Press is a killer combo. It is a lower body pull from the ground and an upper body push to the sky. Done correctly it hits mostly the quads, but also works most of the back especially the traps.
The press, again if done correctly, works the lats, triceps and deltoids.

In both lifts the core is heavily recruited to protect the back and provide a firm base to press from.
Doing heavy dead cleans will fire up the quads almost as much as doing squats and because they are dynamic your heart rate will shoot Continue Reading

The Writing of the Book

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When I was first approached about writing the Spartan Warrior workout, I was a little hesitant. Okay, a lot hesitant. Sure, I write reasonably well, but I’d never done the “300″ workout and had to look it up on YouTube to see what it was all about.

Then I looked up Mark Twight’s site (http://gymjones.com) to see what information he had about his time training the cast and crew and this workout in particular. There was some info there which helped me get a better idea of what this workout was all about.

As I state in the book, and Continue Reading

Pullups – Getting 1

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Pullups are one of the 6 main exercises in the SWW and most people struggle with them. 25 pullups to start and finish is tough. If you get through the workout in under 20 minutes there isn’t much recovery time between those two sets.

So how can you improve your pullup numbers to get through both sets as quickly as possible, and without cheating?

First can you even do a pullup? If not you need to follow the beginner’s pullup routine detailed in the book.

Basically you do dead hangs with the arms extended, slow negatives getting the chin over Continue Reading