"Do you suppose they will choose to make war against lean, solid dogs rather than against fat and tender sheep?"
From Sgt. Sileika, a lean, solid dog in Vilnius who serves as our resident subject-matter expert in ruck marching and sentence diagramming. Living in the Baltics, he is located at the intersection (to use a fashionable word) of three of our favorite things: kvass, kettlebells, and Varusteleka. Power to you, sir!
Yesterday we wrote about some Army researchers' finding that, in a long, heavy ruck march, the guys who march fastest are the most muscular ones. Not necessarily the strongest, but the most muscular. How can that be? If you beef up for a long ruck with an extra 20 lbs. of muscle, you're schlepping an... Continue Reading →
Strength and endurance are rivals. “Strength loves rest,” as the saying goes, and it hates endurance. Strength and endurance compete against each other for your training time and recuperative powers. Yes, you can do both (and you should, at least a little). But unless you are a pure strength athlete or pure endurance athlete (e.g. a... Continue Reading →
Rucking looks to be the “next big thing” in exercise. In a word, you fill a rucksack (a glorified backpack) with weight and go hiking. For bonus points, you can haul other heavy things too: sand bags, a water can, a kettlebell, a log, a sledgehammer, a stone, a weighted sled. Try to read this... Continue Reading →
Today's rucking game was called "Five Elements": drag a charred tree limb (fire & wood) and schlep a steel club (metal), a stone (earth), and a backpack of water up to Faerie Ridge by any means necessary. Two takeaways: (1) You can haul even a very heavy jumble of stuff if you're willing to spend... Continue Reading →
New cardio hack! You've heard runners say, "An ounce on the foot is like a pound in the pack?" Well according to some researchers the ratio is more like 1:5, but that's still useful. So to work around some shoulder and hand injuries, today's game was to hike the Faeriemount with ankle weights. That way,... Continue Reading →
Part 6 in our series "20 Years of Pavel Tsatsouline." Complete table of contents here. Before Pavel came along, we did not deadlift. By “we” I mean young ironheads who wanted big muscles and got our (mis)information from dime store bodybuilding magazines. "[T]he deadlift is THE exercise of choice for anyone." In 1999 Pavel sounded... 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 →