Tough Mudder

[StarShine1975]

Hello All!

I just signed up for the NorCal Tough Mudder in Sept. Has anyone who's done Tough Mudder before have any advice on the training? I am starting to run (which I hate) and I am continuing my heavy lifting. I am focusing on finally doing a damn pull up because of the rope/wall climbing involved. I am also thinking of doing some swimming too.

Any advice or tips would be awesome. Thanks!

-Star

[Native88]

+1 this!

I'm doing a Tough Mudder in September as well (I think.. so far away I forgot the date). I'm just going to do as much body weight circuit training as possible. Also, if I can run 3-5 miles with random body weight exercises every 1/2 mile, I think that would help.

[Crooked]

In on this as well - I'm signed up for a Tough Mudder in May and I really need to get better at running and bodyweight strength. Think I'm going to just program increasingly long runs, but I also like the idea of interspersing them with bodyweight exercises. Then I figure Crossfit will help with pull-ups and strength. Not too much to be done about the electrotherapy field, I guess.

[AustralMoonBear]

I haven't done it before but a friend of mine in Melbourne, Aus runs a personal training company and is training a few people up for it.

He's put a couple of articles up that might be worth reading </semi-hameless plug>

http://www.activered.com.au/news_and_events/toughmudder

[PenelopeRevelry]

Hey,

Both my parents are army officers and I walked them through the Tough Mudder course and they gave some training tips:

- practice crawling. Your elbows should be under your shoulders and your knees should be out to the side. Apparently a lot of people have trouble with this and crawl with their elbows outside their shoulders and end up dislocating/hurting their shoulders.

- when you climb ropes, hands go on the vertical ropes and feet on the horizontals. Look at the rope climb before you start, and climb at the edges/where the ropes are being supported. There's less slack and so it's easier to climb. Have callused hands or wear gloves.

- practice with your team. After the first five challenges most teams will start arguing/break up which makes everything else harder. If you've trained together you know everyone's strengths/weaknesses and you can help each other out.

- practice the drops. It's not enough that you can get over the walls, etc, but you need to be able to get back down the other side without spraining your ankle/ruining your knees.

In short they were really about going through the actual challenges, or as close as you can get, as much as possible. They've seen heaps of really fit/strong people bomb out on these things because they trained in a gym and not in real life.

Anyway I'm new to these forums so I hope I'm not telling you how to suck eggs! I found these really helpful things to think about.

[StarShine1975]

Thanks for the advice everyone!

I need to find me some real world things to practice on. I wonder if there is a boot camp type training ground around the Bay Area.

@FeloniusMonk Thanks for the link. There is a lot of great tips on there. =)

[Ryan Sannar]

Dude thanks for the advice. I think I'm going to get my performance team together to do this.

[StarShine1975]

@Native88 Is it Norcal in Patterson? That's the one I'm doing.