Back row: Martin, Thomas, Simon, Gregor, Janis, Vinz, Jo, Alex, Lukas
Front row: Karl, Harald, Peter, Dominik, Christian

April 17, 2010. Dominik Feischl once again calls out for all his “Naturtraining-Warriors” to assemble at a seminar, this time taking place in Obermühlau, near Thomasroith at the residence of his mentor and training partner Karl Humer, best known for his rafter pull-up.

The so far largest gathering of this kind was formed by twelve athletes (Dominik and Karl not counted) who travelled long distance (two athletes from Vorarlberg, one Swiss athlete) to show up. On a sunny spring day, the perfect stage was set for an perfectly enjoyable day packed with intense training.

The seminar was split up into four parts, which we tackled after a warm-up run (including hill sprint and quadropod action) through the beautiful Hausruck spring landscape:

1. Dominik’s Tactical Strength Challenge
2. Climbing with Karl Humer
3. Toying around with tyres
4. Pressing Power and Climbing Challenge

1. Dominik’s Tactical Strength Challenge

Prior to the seminar, Dominik sent out various e-mails, containing the set-up of the Tactical Strength Challenge. Pavel Tsatsouline, inventor of the Tactical Strength Challenge advised him to adapt the set-up of his exercises to the circumstances of the event – with opened the door for a set-up completely different from the original deadlift – pull-up – snatch configuration. We matched our strength and strength endurance skills in the following disciplines:

1. Rope climbing (for distance)
2. Clean & Press a ~38 kg stone (for repetitions)
3. Parcours climbing (for time under tension)
4. Farmer’s Walk with a ~80 kg tyre (for time under tension)

Rope climbing had to be done without using the feet, pressing the stone way allowed any way we could do so, the parcours climbing demanded crossing the parcours at least once (touching a log at the far end of the parcours) and the Farmer’s Walk required constant movement.

Every single participant showed tremendous performance throughout the disciplines. The fighter spirits were high and the respective winners of the disciplines performed remarkably. Christian won the overall contest, placing first in both the Farmer’s Walk (66 seconds) and parcours climbing (~2′23” time under tension) even after dropping back with a mere 7 repetitions of the clean & press. Thomas, Harald and Lukas were very strong with the clean and press (38, 38 and 50 repetitions).

Side note: If he had competed, Dominik would have won the overall event. He outclassed all of us in the disciplines he tried (Farmer’s walk and Rope Climbing).

2. Climbing with Karl Humer

After such a ‘warm up’, things started to get hard when Karl pushed us along his newly extended parcours. Climbing horizontal ladders in various ways and reaching along logs was probably the hardest part of the whole seminar. Karl has installed six lanes that offer various challenges – including what they call the Trojan Horse, a construction featuring bars in different thickness and a stiff ascent as a finisher.

3. Toying around with tyres

After a short break our legs had to work as well. With an already sore upper body, dragging and carrying around tractor tyres was a welcome change of setting, as it mainly focuses on lower body work. We supplemented the tyre work with decent hill sprints, combined with a quadropod descent.

4. Pressing Power and Climbing Challenge

Coming back to the parcours, Karl made us do push-ups in all variations – then supplemented with dips. Following this push-up madness, Karl took out his garden hose and watered the Trojan Horse – making it more difficult to cross, which we had to do. Climbing the diagonal support poles was another difficult task. Lastly, we worked our abs with leg raises – followed by blocking, if you can. One of the last highlights of the training seminar was hanging on the Trojan Horse with tucked feet and karl throwing punches at our abs for a straight fifteen seconds. This sure was a torture that everyone felt for some time after the seminar.

For dessert, we faced another challenge: How fast can you go through the longest lane of the parcours (horizontal ladder + woodstick climbing, Trojan Horse (minus ascent) and support hold walk along the parallel bars)? Peter won this one with a breathtaking time of 17 seconds. Do I have to mention that speed is his skill?

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To commence the event, we went to a nearby inn together and did what we had to do after such a exhaustive day: Eat freely of whatever feels good to our bodies.

Every seminar poses to me the question of “What did I learn?” My answers for this time:

• Janis made me aware of a dysbalance in my balance, stance and power that I have noticed but mostly ignored throughout the last years.
• The core is the weakest part of the body for most athletes. This problem is particularly striking while climbing. A weak core leads to a lack of stability which in course leads to an inefficient technique
• Companionship is by far the most important factor in a training group. People have to fit together well in order to achieve more than they would be able to do individually. I am looking forward to work on this one with my CrassFit comrades in future
• Every athlete has a very different profile of strengths and weaknesses so that every one has the chance to shine in a specific discipline as well as the chance to learn a tremendous lot in others
• Attitude is of utmost importance – your attitude not only partially decides whether or not you will succeed in all challenges
• Harald mentioned that one can only teach things that one has learned three steps down the way. There is no way one can teach the things one has learned just yet
• Kettlebell technique seems to be an issue for most people. Working with kettlebells sure is easy to learn and hard to master
• Dominik and Janis both confirmed from their experiences that most Americans do not care too much about the quality of their nutrition – even strength coaches
• Most of the participants have a reasonable attitude towards nutrition that relies heavily on their experience of what is good for them – experience seems to trump science

Furthermore, I have to congratulate all of my comrades. Some I knew from former seminars, some were new to me. Likewise they shared an utmost uplifting spirit. Some of my observations:

• Janis has a good eye for posture problems in other people. He had just returned from a Underground Strength Coach certification prior to the seminar and I am convinced he will make a greatly positive impact on the people he works with in future
• Thomas has made so much progress that it is hard to believe that he was barely able to perform a pull-up last Winter. He handled the climbing challenges with an ease and grace that is stunning. Hats off!
• Harald has impressed me with his ability to focus. To me, he is prototypical for the calm warrior – I have great respect for him
• Gregor has a most uplifting spirit he carries along with him. On most pictures I see him smiling while he performs at his best. He is one of the athletes I would consider indestructible under normal circumstances
• Peter is a tremendously quick athlete – as expected from a former short distance runner. No wonder he managed to win the speed climbing challenge. His ability to push himself farther is remarkable – it’s like he is unable to experience unbearable pain

Once again, this seminar has proven to be extremely enjoyable while being just as exhaustive. What can be better than a day with like-minded people – training hard, chatting about things that matter to you and have a great time? Few things come to my mind.

I am looking forward to see you at the next seminar held by Dominik. Make sure you don’t miss out if you’re around.

Train on and stay strong,
Simon

P.S.: It’s now Wednesday and I’m still feeling a wee soreness in my forearms, shoulders and back. The sheer training density on this day caused deep muscle fatigue, I guess.

We’re back from a long break. We either trained abroad, were sick or not motivated enough to train – which applies to me in particular. With today’s training I consider myself back

After a long drive to Linz, battling myself through snow-covered roads amid the cold Mühlviertel winter landscape, I picked up Peter. We almost instantly decided not to train at our usual place – somewhere nearby would suit us better. Peter suggested the stairs in the house he lives in. A great idea!

The house has a total of twelve floors, all of which were utilized today.

We did the following:

• Crawling up the stairs backwards (six floors)
• Utilizing jump variations (six floors
• Crawling back down (three floors)
• More jump variations (nine floors)
• Stair sprint (twelve floors at once)
• Lunges (twelve floors at once)
• Farmer’s walk up the stairs (most stairs with either 48 or 40 kilogram, one floor with 88 kg of additional weight)

We finished the workout with some back exercises (either stiff leg deadlifts or rows) to give our back the proper portion of work in the end.

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I have to say that I am amazed! Crawling up some stairs is a tremendous workout for the whole body – I already feel my shoulders and core aching. The sprint upward was a killer for the legs in terms of systemic workload, the lunges and weighted walks were a test of muscular endurance.

Overall the training showed that you do not need much to train properly. Stairs are everywhere – and usually not frequented well. During our workout, we did not run into one single person. All of them were taking the elevator instead – a pity, when you think of the possible health benefits of taking the stairs instead of the elevator. For those who sit all day, this is a welcoming way of exercising a little every day. If you want to take it further: Climb up the stairs instead

Thanks to Peter for another great workout!

Onward to continuing next week – hopefully!

Train on and stay strong,
Simon

With a bit of delay: The coverage of our official Christmas-workout, done on the 22th of December 2009.

Unfortunately, the creator of the workout we used was not present – Dominik Feischl was absent due to work issues (curses on his boss), the same reason hindered Peter from being present. It therefore was down to Rainer, Jozy and me. The three of us had a distinct task: Not putting Dominik’s name to shame in the execution of the following workout:

Workout “24″

• 24 Snatches each arm
• 24 Swings each arm
• 24 High Pulls each arm
• 24 Clean + Press each arm
• 24 Pull-ups
• 24 Ring dips

Finisher: Farmer’s Walk.

The prescribed weights were 16 kg for men and less for women (Jozy used the 8 kg Kettlebell). We also swapped Ring Dips with elevated push-ups, as we all were not capable of doing such a lot of repetitions of dips.

The structure of the workout has been to freely choose how much sets of which exercise and in which order exercises were done. We all opted for sets of six repetitions and four rounds thereof.

While the mark has been hit with pull-ups and push-ups, the other exercises were slightly to little of a challenge. After the second round I changed gears and did the exercises with a 20 kg competition Kettlebell – which proved to be a much more of a challenge and the right weight to work with (for me). The weight probably has to be spiced up to make this workout a real ‘killer’.

Our finisher were two rounds (approx. 100 meters) of Farmer’s Walks. Jozy used 2 x 20 kg, Rainer and me opted for 2 x 36 kg – heavy enough to leave us exhausted – perfect! As it was beginning to get really cold, we ended here – short and sweet.

Kudos to Dominik for the workout – we’re off into the Christmas holidays with this. The next challenge will be the Winter training camp at Dominik’s premises on the 2nd of January, 2010.

A late merry Christmas and a happy new year to all of you – and do not forget to train on

Simon

P.S.: Please excuse our memory lapse – we forgot to take photos!

This Friday, the CrassFit crew assembled again – but in severely diminished numbers. It boiled down to only me and Jozy doing the workout at last. The workout session was dominated by instruction work – I found myself in the rather new situation of being the trainer and motivator – normally Dominik’s role (too bad he was missing out as well). I learned a lot from the experience, nonetheless

As for the workout itself, the workload was a little less intense than the last few workouts. We were both not in prime physical condition so doing some ‘easy’ work came in handy.

After a warm-up – where I stole a lot of elements from the warm-up we normally do at my Aikido courses – we did the following:

Pre-Fatigue

3 rounds of

• 5 + 5 Front Squat
• 5 Sumo Deadlift High-Pull
• 5 + 5 Sots Press

I all too soon found out that the exercises were uneven in workload. While the squats (Jozy used 8 kg, I used 24 kg) were relatively hard to do, the High-Pull was too easy (me using 24 kg, Jozy 16) – five Repetitions were quite a joke, twenty would have been better. In hindsight, doing the exercise unilateral would have been an appropiate solution to the problem. The Sots Press was too hard to manage in most cases (Jozy used 8 kg, I used 16 kg), so I supplemented them with regular Military Presses.

Metabolic Conditioning

Clean – Military Press – Squat performed in a ladder-style workout:

Round 1: 1 complex left – 1 complex right – rest
Round 2: Round 1 + 2 complexes left + 2 complexes right – rest
Round 3: Round 2 + 3 complexes left + 3 complexes right – rest
[...]

We did five rounds. The focus here lies with the grip – it is simply not allowed to let go of the Kettlebell while performing one round. Due to the rather light weight we both used (Jozy 8 kg, me 16 kg) we did not really break a sweat nor were we challenged with grip issues. This should normally be a lot harder than it actually was.

Post-Fatigue

For post-fatigue I stole the workout pattern from our great workout two weeks ago: Farmer’s walks. As I had not enough weight available, I tried to make things harder by choosing either rack walks or (partially) overhead walks as a substitute.

The finisher thereafter were three sets of towel pull-ups. I had a hard time squeezing out a lot of repetitions and so did Jozy – it simply is the most difficult variation of pull-ups, especially if you struggle doing the regular ones already.

[---]

Conclusion: This workout simply wasn’t hard enough to be called a really ‘tough’ challenge. I have to think of other means to challenge ourselves for the next one

Train on and stay strong,
Simon

Whenever either time is scarce or your hunger for a extremely intense workout is impossible to satisfy, training with complexes is the right thing to do. We did lots of complexes with kettlebells during the last few workouts – but this workout surpassed the experiences we gathered up to now.

For this workout session, our CrassFit crew has gathered in complete – with the exception of Harald, who is working out with Till Sukopp this weekend. I, Dominik, Rainer, Peter and his sister Jozy – we did our best.

First off the facts:

Warm-up

Carrying the equipment to the place of the workout Farmer’s walk for half a kilometer with lots of weight is fine for a workout

Pre-Fatigue

4 rounds of

• 8 repetitions handstand push-up (assisted)
• 8 repetitions towel pull-up

If the prescribed repetitions could not be achieved, the maximum in repetitions was the goal. For those who had a hard time doing (assisted) handstand push-ups, they were substituted with push-ups with elevated legs.

Metabolic Conditioning

3 rounds of the following barbell complex

• Bent over row
• Clean
• Military Press
• Front Squat
• Back Squat
• Good Morning

8 repetitions per exercise

The experience of such a workout is bar description. At each and every point you either approach muscular or grip failure – although normally the grip is the element that fatigues earlier. It was a real relief that we could ‘rest’ the barbell from the back squats on – otherwise, the load would have been too much of a challenge.

We adapted the load to the strength and endurance level we could sustain. Rainer and me, we used 20 kg of weight, Peter 40 kg and Dominik stunning 50 kg, which were operated in a machine-like accuracy and speed. Impressive! Jozy started with 20 kg and did a reduced workout – which is perfectly alright. It’s important that you sustain a distinct workload that fits to your abilities in order to progress.

Post-Fatigue

Kettlebell complex work

• 10 one-handed swings (each side)
• 10 snatches (each side)
• 10 cleans (each side)
• 10 overhead presses (each side)
• 10 forward lunges
• 10 both-handed swings
• 5 snatches (each side)

Focus was on work for time with a specific load – a skill that we already trained with the barbell complexes. Jozy used a small dumbbell, Peter, me and Rainer used the 16 kg kettlebell and Dominik challenged himself with my green monster (24 kg).

Here, the grip also is the limiting factor – next to the fatigue that limits what is possible over time.

Finisher

As we were not destroyed yet ( ), Dominik decided on a finisher exercise: Farmer’s walk! We did circles around a sandbox – for those challenging themselves with 2 x 24 kg (kettlebells), 2 rounds were assigned (Jozy did 2 rounds with 2 x 16 kg), those who went for 2 x 40 kg (16 + 24 kg kettlebell per hand), one round was sufficient. I personally did one round for two times (sets) with 80 kg of load – a new personal best

Now we were really done – and had our problems carrying the weights back to our cars. No wonder I felt extremely tired this evening and went to bed relatively early.

Conclusio

What a great workout! All of us enjoyed it and we learned a lot from it – and hopefully progress in power and endurance by doing workouts like this one



Dancers in the dark



Dancers in the dark




























Breathe in – work out.



Our dancer in the dark :)










Instructions















Click on pen to

Odd objects in movement – this was the slogan of our latest CrassFit workout. Our comrade Harald supplied us with tremendous tools to train in classical strongmen-fashion:

Water tubes filled with cement (25 kg each)

A gym ball filled with water (circa 42 kg)

The biggest advantage of these training utilities is their price. Harald calculated the tubes for us. Buying the PVC tubes, the metal grip and the cement (50-50 with water), he invested around 15 Euro for both of them. The waterbag is even cheaper – depending on how much money you spend on the gym ball you may well afford it for a few Euros.

After a warm-up session consisting of numerous coordinative exercises (ducked backward lunges for instance – a hard challenge for the CNS), we split up in groups of 3 and 2 persons. One group started with workout A, the other with workout B.

Workout A

3 rounds of
Farmer’s walk with 2 Tubes, 100 m (2 x 50)
Sprint, 200 m (4 x 50)

Workout B

5 rounds of
Waterbag shouldering 5 each side (NOVICE: 5 waterbag lifts, bearhug)
Pull-Up x 5
Kettlebell military press 5 each side (16 kg kettlebell)

Workout A was short, sweet and hard. The tough part was the waterbag lifting in workout B. If you haven’t had the chance to lift a waterbag yet, I highly anticipate trying it. Without a center of gravity, the whole body has work the stability constantly in order to balance out the water masses and their force of gravity. Explosive lifting and absolute control are key factors of this exercise –pull-ups and military presses are like rest, in comparison.

As a ‘finisher’, we tried out overhead presses with the cement tubes. It was beyond my capabilities but well within Dominik’s abilities – hats off to my strong comrade!

In conclusion, this workout was a highlight for our CrassFit course. It was inspiring and motivating and we look forward to more workouts with even more attendees – with five of them we set a new temporary record at this stage.

More to come next week – training is scheduled for next Tuesday 18:30, Freinberg park.

Train on and stay strong,
Simon

P.S.: Dominik delivered my new kettlebells alongside yesterday’s training. I will put them to good use