Grow Your Wings, Then Learn to Fly

Got out for six miles on another amazingly warm November day. Nothing burns the calories like running. Managed to stay about 600 calories down for the day; even with Thanksgiving and its aftermath, I'm not too far over my budget for the week.

Saw a forum thread on sasukemaniac.com the other day, and I wanted to get down my thoughts. The poster was arguing that it's pointless to train for ANW with exercises like weighted rope climbs that aren't specific to the skills tested in Ninja Warrior courses. I disagree, and don't know these people well enough to mix it up in their debate, but here's why.

First, of course you need to train at some point for the actual challenges you'l face in competition. But every football player spends hours in the weight room and on the practice field in drills, even though no football game has ever required players to bench press or run through tires. Players do that sort of training in the off-season, for a few reasons.

First, the off-season's a time for recovering from the stresses particular to the competition. That doesn't really apply to a guy like me, who's training for something he's never done before. But for any regular athlete in the seasonal cycle of competition, recovery's an important consideration.

Second, the off-season's the time to build the base level of strength and endurance necessary to perform the skills specific to competition. You need to grow your wings before you can learn to fly. Not much point in scrimmaging if you don't have the strength to be competitive. And you can't build the strength to compete simply by going out and competing; you won't live long enough to get strong enough.

Third, adaptation's an important consideration for any seasonal athlete. I know I can only go four, six weeks at the most in a workout before I plateau, physically and mentally. That's why I've broken up my training not just into four stages, but also changing it up within each stage. Keeps me fresh mentally, and I buy into the notion that it stimulates more muscle growth and fat loss by challenging my body with different exercises every time.

With that, it's time to get ready for bed. Another week of 5AM workouts starts tomorrow, with another grueling interval workout. Turns out I misread the last one, and did eight sets of the same exercise. Even though I wrote these workouts, "DB Thrusters" can look a lot like "DB Snatches" without careful reading.