"Do you suppose they will choose to make war against lean, solid dogs rather than against fat and tender sheep?"
The D-Day Heavy Challenge is in the record books. Before I publish my AAR, this is what I packed. Feet: Rocky S2V boots. I got these on Sgt. Šileika’s advice, and they were champs.Originally I was planning on wearing my GORUCK MACV-1s, figuring “what could be better for an event than a boot made specifically for that... Continue Reading →
Today's the day, friends. 24 hours, 40+ miles, with logs, sandbags, PT beatdowns, and surf torture along the way. Wherever you are today, get after it! Hammer along with me and (I'm completely serious about this), please remember my team and me in your thoughts and prayers. I may be Buddhist, but I'm not choosy... Continue Reading →
Part 4 of our series "The Tao of the Lazy Badass" Long, Slow Distance I hate to say this, but your single biggest priority is to create some modest aerobic base. If you were cursed by an evil genie to be allowed only one kind of exercise, it would need to be something aerobic. Come... Continue Reading →
Part 2 of our series "Tao of the Lazy Badass" The 5x5 is a classic approach because it is a foolproof way to accumulate volume.For liability reasons, however, you should not attempt high-volume midget lifting. Just add more plates. Exercise is a tale of two variables: Volume (how much you do) and Intensity (how hard... Continue Reading →
“Like water, volume is soft and yielding. But volume will wear away rock, and it beats the crap out of excess fatigue. As a rule, volume wins over fatigue. This is another paradox: what is soft and voluminous is strong.”from the lost training manual of Laozi (Lao-Tzu) A difficult book, but the most important one... Continue Reading →
I have lots of surplus packs, but there are two that I love and cherish. For big jobs, I have a version of the legendary Swedish LK-35. For everything else, I carry the nimble, gorgeous Swedish M39, the "Moose Sack." Like in Switzerland, Sweden's neutrality is very much an armed neutrality. Even though Sweden did... Continue Reading →
As Julien says, I recommend Pavel Tsatouline’s original primer on kettlebells, The Russian Kettlebell Challenge (2001), and the open-ended, unscripted training guidelines he gives there: Train 2-7 times per week.You can vary this week to week. You benefit from a certain amount of randomness in loading.Keep it to 45 minutes or less. Sometimes a lot less.... Continue Reading →
Part 5 in our series "20 Years of Pavel Tsatsouline." See Table of Contents here. Pavel Tsatsouline likens his programs to Kalashnikov rifles, which have just a few simple moving parts. You can strip the "Kalash" one-handed in the dark: pop off the top cover, pull out a spring and bolt carrier, and you’re left with one huge, solid main assembly. A rare but... Continue Reading →
The fourth part in our series "20 Years of Pavel Tsatsouline." Table of contents here. In our last installment we encountered Pavel Tsatsouline’s first major book, Power to the People,and his then-revolutionary doctrine that “strength is a skill.” From that doctrine, you can trace virtually every other part of Tsatsouline’s evolving system over the last 20... Continue Reading →
The third installment in our series, "20 Years of Pavel Tsatsouline." “Nothing is more practical than a good theory,” and Pavel Tsatsouline has always excelled at distilling exercise science into something immediately useful and dummy-proof. In his short, entertaining 1999 book, Power to the People, he changed popular strength training by drawing consequences that... Continue Reading →