Saturday 28 June 2014

Rubber Match






Here's an example of a really simple but effective conditioning workout that can be done with just a beat-up old tractor tire.  These aren't hard to find.  I picked mine up for $50 on Kijiji.  If you have farms anywhere in your vicinity, I bet they have old tires that they'd be willing to part with quite cheaply.  Mine weighs about 350 pounds.  My sledgehammer weighs 12 pounds but you can experiment with different sizes.  Again...very cheap...maybe $10-15 the hardware store, and of course will actually work as a legit sledgehammer too if you need it for such.  This stuff will last forever.  I've used this tire a lot and it still has that new tire smell (well not really, but it looks pretty good still)


"Tire 300" workout:

10 rounds for time of:

10 x tire flips (bend down and "sumo" deadlift/clean the tire to chest level and then push it over on itself)
10 x sledgehammer smashes (pretty self explanatory...just hammer that big rubbery bitch!)
10 x box (tire) jumps (i.e. jump with two feet onto the rim of the tire and then off again)


Therefore, each round is 30 reps in total.  10 rounds of 30 reps is therefore a total of 300 repetitions.  Complete one round nonstop and then take as little rest as possible before moving onto the second round, etc.  I find the flips the hardest, so I start each round with them.  The order of the box jumps and smashes could of course be reversed.

It's a quick but challenging full-body workout.  And it's a damn lot of fun.  There's no science behind the 300 rep total.  It's kind of a rip-off of the GymJones benchmark workout for the film 300, and also mimics the kind of rep ranges you'd see in a CrossFit Fight Gone Bad-style WOD.  Something that most relatively fit people are going to be able to do in under 30 minutes, and that you can gauge improvement by shaving time of your last attempt of the same workout.

One tip: do the flips on a soft surface like grass (or shallow snow in the winter).  It helps in allowing you to get your fingers underneath to clean the tire from ground to chest level.  Concrete\asphalt makes it more difficult to get the initial grip...though not impossible.

Happy flipping!

2 comments:

  1. Sometimes simple is the best option! And who wouldn't want a tractor tire! It's pretty badass. It's a good way to recycle too! Is that a homemade kettle bell I see there? as from the 4 hr body?

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    1. thanks Sean! And yes the T-bar kettlebell is something I stole from Tim Ferris' book. It's amazing and only cost me about 10 bucks to make.

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