Your weekly mission: move your ass!
Hey dudes,
It’s a tragedy to see people who think you need big, complicated, and expensive machinery just to get stronger. Likewise for stronger cardio. This is what Pointman is all about.
Don’t be a fool!
You can have a great workout using anything you already have, or not needing anything at all. I’ve already showed you how to jump rope and run over the hill… we need to talk about the most simple, accessible, and effective cardio ever.
Move your ass! Run, strategically, for 20-30 minutes.
Running long distances aimlessly is just sightseeing. For most of us it’s too stressful on our body, terribly inefficient, and takes too much time. If you are competitively trained in cross country, this might work for you. Most of us aren’t, and don’t want to be, because it will interfere with strength training. So we need a better way.
[I’m not the first person to say this but: google image search for marathon runners vs sprinters. Who do you want to look like?]
Here’s what you need to do:
Design a loop near your house or wherever you can find quiet streets that suit you best. Make sure the loop is greater than 400 meters (i.e. once around a standard track) but not much more than that. Google for “run map” to see all the tools that can help you do this.
SPEX level 0:
Run your ass around this loop for 20+ minutes
If you can’t run nonstop, you can jog
Don’t fucking stop
SPEX level 1:
Run around this loop for 20+ minutes nonstop
Wear a stopwatch and note your split for each lap
Bring your lap splits down over time
SPEX level 2:
Do everything in SPEX level 1
Time your split for the hardest leg on the first lap
On every subsequent lap, during the hard leg, try to match your first lap hard leg split
This is all you have to do for super strong cardio. It’s stupid simple but brutally effective.
STRONG STORIES
No video today because it would be boring, here is a pic of my backyard instead.
My loop is the block that surrounds my house. It’s 3/8 of a mile, so I run it 8 times, which gets me to 3 miles, which is also just shy of a 5k race. Not a coincidence! Recently I tried something different and brought my course time down by 30+ seconds, which is big.
My hard leg has a slight but sinister uphill, and often has a headwind. I can usually run that part of the lap in about 40-45 seconds when fresh. This time rather than daring myself to finish the leg in 45ish seconds each lap, I mentally added 45 seconds to my time at the beginning of the hard leg. This gave me a tangible and immediate time based goal, and I thought about it every stride.
Small changes in perspective and strategy go a long way when you are running laps. Pretty sweet.
Nate