Combos for Conditioning

I call treadmills, stationary cycles, ellipticals, stair climbing machines, etc. "gerbil cardio." I don't like huffing and puffing and going nowhere. However somehow I don't mind lifting things and putting them back on the floor over and over (go figure). When I went looking for alternatives to traditional cardio for conditioning, I was intrigued to find some options that involved the barbells that I like so well.

I read some postings from Ethan Reeve that sounded interesting. Ethan Reeve is currently the head strength and conditioning coach at Wake Forest University and a great innovator. The first posting I found detailed a workout he developed when he was the conditioning coach for the US women's rowing team. It seemed simple but still interesting:

Romanian Deadlift x3

Power Shrug (from the floor) x3

Power Clean x3

Squat Clean x3

Jerk x3

Chin x2

Box Jump x3

You perform this sequence of exercises with one fixed weight on the bar, without rest; you don't let go of the bar for the first five exercises. You want things laid out so the platform, the chin bar, and the box are all in one place. You perform all seven exercises, then rest and repeat ten times. You start a trip through every two and a half minutes. That's where they get you!

I remember reading that Reeves said a few of the women on the team eventually got this with 60kg / 132#. I thought I should be strong enough match that effort; these women are world class endurance athletes, but after all I'm much heavier so I ought to be able to handle it. Well, I got half way through with 135 the first time I tried this. It was ugly.

I set the workout aside for a while until I had access to a gym with bumper plates. (This is not an easy workout to do in a commercial gym, since you need to monopolize a fair area for about 24 minutes.) I started light with 88#/40kg. It was still tough and left me sweaty in a heap.

I modified the workout a little to suit the layout of the gym. I substituted 3 bentover rows for the two chins, and I substituted 3 jump-ups for the box jumps. Jump-ups are done by kneeling on the floor sitting on your heels and jumping up, landing in a squat. These substitutions seem like a fair tradeoff.

Doing the combo once a week with 40kg/88#, once a little heavier, I was able to get up to 110#/50kg before long. After that point, every 2.5 pounds was a major addition. It took about six months to get to 132#/60kg.

I did a little digging and a fellow named Istvan / Steve Javorek, a former Romanian weightlifting coach now working in the US, devised a number of similar workouts. His workouts were (surprisingly) featured in Muscle and Fitness one issue a while back. I tried a couple of these workouts looking for some variety, but I found that most of them have some relatively light movement (upright rows, curls, etc.) in the mix that limits the overall intensity of the circuit. Truth is this circuit is hard to improve on for a total body endurance workout.

A surprising thing about this workout is that even though it's exceptionally difficult, it is fairly easy to recover from and causes little soreness. I find it's just too much work to do twice a week - I made better progress doing this just once a week. But it doesn't leave you to spent to do whatever weight training you want to do the next day. Just don't plan anything at all for a little while afterwards. You're not going to feel like doing abdominals and neck at the end of this.

This circuit just scratches the surface of what's possible with these combination workouts. For contrast, consider another much simpler Reeves combo. With one fixed weight, do a three rep combo ten times in ten minutes: power clean, hang clean, jerk. That's it. It's simple, much more strength oriented, but you'll get a good sweat going and tax your lungs at least a little for ten minutes. This combo was designed for wrestlers, and the goal is to be able to do it with bodyweight or your weight class limit.

I have to thank coach Reeves for inventing these terrific workouts, for sharing them freely, and especially for taking the time to answer my questions and help me out with them. It's helped my training tremendously.