Endurance Training Program for Adventure Racers: How I Trained Sonja Weick for Eco Challenge Fiji
To watch the full video, click here: https://youtu.be/TtSp0o4d4yU
Have you ever considered what goes into training for the world’s toughest race eco challenge, covering hundreds of miles in less than 10 days racing 24 hours a day? Just you, your team, a map and a compass and checkpoints along the way facing exhaustion, fatigue, injury. How do you train for something like that? Well, my name is CJ Kobliska, I’m the director of programming here at Gymnazo. And we had the opportunity to train one of eco challenges finishers Sonya wick. Today we’re go into an inside scoop of what when to programming for such an individual? And how do you assess how do you figure out what this individual needs standing in front of you to help set them up for success for something like the world’s toughest race, the race that eats Iron Men for breakfast
a little background on Sonia, when she came in, she had done quite a bit of Ironman done long races, you know, a couple dozen miles, 50 miles. She could run basically for days straight. But when she came in saying I’m preparing for eco challenge, she said, I don’t know what I got myself into. But I’m prepared for war, and I’m ready for you to throw it all at me. What do I need, she knew she needed a little bit of upper body strength, she needed some core strength. But really she needed some more access into the sphere. For movement, think about running straight ahead for hours on end, non stop consistency moving forward. What happens when you throw a bike on their back? What happens when you put them on a bike and they’ve got to work their way through uphill downhill in the mud. What happens when we put that runner onto a paddleboard into a kayak or a canoe, and they’ve got a paddle for hours on end? Is their body ready for it? Well, that’s what we had to figure out. And so today, I’m going to share with you some of the specific motions that we went through, not all of them, but some of the kind of more interesting, more dynamic motions that helped me assess what she was capable of and where we need to go next with their programming. We kept some strength and then of course, for upper body for core for low body, but we really explored some of the dimensions of her access of training. Could she go forward? And back? Of course, because she goes side to side that was a little bit iffy. And could she rotate under load under tension under fatigue? Those are the most important things because when you’re racing for 10 days straight, the conditions are not perfect. So how can we prepare Sonia for imperfect conditions perfectly, we had to expose her to things that would stress her out, things that a pisser off things, put her a little off balance and change her breathing things that tired her out so much, and then requiring better balance and more focus. Because this race is not about perfection. It’s about True Grit. It’s about endurance. It’s about overcoming those challenges, things that you’ve never faced before, but could figure out a way through them. And so next up, I’m going to show you some of those exercises and kind of break them down and explore what it is that we did to get Sonia ready to be a finisher for the eco challenge Fiji. Now he started of course, with a movement assessment, just exploring lunges forward, back side aside, and rotationally seeing how she could get in and get out of that motion not to say about just getting there and stabilizing. But could she do it again and again and again and be consistent and be able to communicate with her body and say what do I need to do to adjust to make this more functional? What can I do to make this better. And that came into account, especially during the race when she was in pain, hurt a knee hurt an ankle, but she needed to continue on? Well, typically, we don’t advise continuing to move while you’re in pain. But when you’re in a race, it’s either you finished or you don’t and you go challenge. You don’t have to be the first finisher to feel like you’ve got the Stoke and you’ve completed something that was dang near impossible. You just got to get through it, restore and heal afterwards. But what do you do during that race. And so we explored different ways to walk toes in, toes out, we did lunges in rotation that required more of her hip and thoracic spine in core to work synchronistically and coherently so that she could do it effectively. We also did things like kneeling position, supine position prone position, but put her on a surface that was a little bit more wobbly, so that she had to communicate where her center was, if she was biased too much on one side or another. Or if she was leaning a certain way, she would end up feeling the fatigue in those areas. And now on the on the battlefield, how she’s racing, if we’re biasing one side too much, our body starts to compensate in ways that are not very effective, not very efficient unless we have this open communication with our body. So one of these motions was to put her on a wobble board. We put on a flat surface on top of a Bosu ball kind of that Half Dome flat header let sit up on top and bias one lean.
So instead of just balancing staying stable up at center, we shifted her weight just a little bit to one side, and then I would walk around her toss a medicine ball to her not anything that was too light to eight pounds. While you’re on a wobbly surface while trying to maintain stability. You start to notice how your body’s coming. and saving, or getting the job done. And if it’s different on both sides, how do we adjust that to make it more symmetrical, less asymmetrical, more symmetrical to the tissues, more safe loading and better endurance. So as she was loaded on one side, I’ll be walking around, and she’d have to rotate her thoracic spine so that she could face me, she was ready to catch it, while her feet are stabilizing on a surface. This came into account when she was out walking across this, this river, basically, that had this crazy rainfall the day before, I think for a couple of days, and essentially, this water was rushing. And if you hit across it is pulling you one way, you had a bias one leg and you don’t even know what’s beneath you, the rocks, you fish, you got things that are kind of moving around and scare the crap idea quite literally just sitting there going, am I able to get through this. And so that’s one thing I wanted to prepare her for was when we had that tension, or that kind of instability in the feet could see maintain composure, maintain focus and trust her body to get her through. It’s not about making it through. But that communication, that internal ability to change your breath, to change your thoughts, to change your focus to get the job done, just get across. But doing it effectively so as to not get injured. Also not to waste too much energy. Now we couldn’t simulate, of course, the exact forces of the river. But we also brought things in like a resistance band, this little torque strap we call it that’s attached to a bungee and elastic bungee. And I had to go on a little slanted surface trying to maintain balance one leg, other foot to simulate gait on an uneven surface, while at the same time you got something pulling you one side of the other tremendous full body strength and awareness to do something like that. Now, of course, you get your whole team there to help stabilize but somebody doesn’t have that stability. When you go, you all end up rushing down the river. And that is a scary thing. So when I had her on this slanted board, and had this tension wrapped around her and a core, basically, every time I’d pull on that elastic band, she’d get pulled a certain direction. If I was behind her, she’d get pulled that way, if I was in front of her, she’d get pulled that way. But it wasn’t just pulling her thoracic spine, I had it wrapped around her shoulder wrapped around her thoracic spine while on the uneven surface. Doing it very specifically with the version inversion and then pulling making it even on one side of the other as she was transferring weight from one foot to the other foot. And if she could demonstrate control with that, she was going to be safe to go for the eco challenge. Another movement that we worked on was a sled push and a sled rope pole Sunday she had to do during the race was to traverse or to climb, basically upside down, climbing across the rope and then also going vertical up. So pulling hoisting got to latch in, grab a rock, pull yourself up latch into the next loop, pull yourself up. So a lot of these dynamic angles. But full body strength pulling this is not just an upper body task, you got to stabilize your feet on a wet surface rocky surface things that might become uneven and in the dark. So we got to become very familiar with how our bodies moving and adjusting to meet the demands that are that are being placed on it from the physics than from the environment of where she was at. So when I had to do the sled push and pull, essentially, the push sled nice and heavy straight ahead like you’re working the muscles that are going to get you up a hill or climbing a mountain on a bike riding up a mountain on a bike of course. And so as she is pulling this or pushing the sled, she’s having to drive one side drive to the side, a little bit of coiling through the core. So she’s emphasizing not just straight ahead pushing, but bringing in that body motion. So she’s on her bike and pedaling. It requires a little bit of core strength, certainly that kind of pumping mechanism. So applying those principles, and then she had to run back and then go pull the sled in a split stance, going one hand reaching other hand reaching and pull, so required thoracic rotation, and a little bit of lateral flexion. And then continuing from that length to pull. So anything that involves posts your shoulder, mid back strength, lower lats pretty much everything she did in this race involve those muscles, we were just building endurance, but also building awareness on how to transition smoothly and more effectively, kind of problem solving with our body. She pushed it down, pull it back, push it back down, pull it back switch in the angles that were utilizing both sides.
Another tool we used was the pulley system Kaiser, we attached a little rope panel to it. So is it something a little bit more dynamic, a little bit more flimsy, not super stiff and rigid. But something that also improved grip strength, that’s a huge part was grip strength, holding on to something while you’re under fatigue and while you’re freezing is extremely difficult. So the more we could practice it, the better off she was going to be. We had different rotational loads, working the diagonals through a system so it wasn’t necessary for anything specific in the race much more so that she could utilize her upper body. How could she sink her motion, not just with their arms pulling, but how could she tilt in such a way reach to load a posterior lateral court and then coil into that side so that anything that involves one hand reaching Any kind of paddling, any kind of picking something up lifting a bag up over a wall up over a tree up over a cliff, basically preparing for anything needs to be facing, we need to have access into these anterior diagonals, and post your diagonals. So a lot of the rotation great, but with that lateral flexion created a whole nother dynamic that we exposed a weakness in Sonia, we couldn’t go very heavy hit and go very quick. But after a few weeks, you can start to see the awareness grow and shift and all of a sudden she’s out there crushing it with a couple dozen pounds, we got 20 30 pounds on their shift and with more reps than she could have ever imagine without that training. Another exercise that expose one of Sony’s weaknesses also exposed one of Sony’s most amazing focus points or ability just to focus in on something she cannot do and figure out a way to get it done was the Almighty abdali It’s really just a roller that’s just a flat surface with four wheels on the bottom that it’s kind of like a really shitty shopping cart, you try to push shopping cart and one wheel spinning. If you can’t figure out how to straighten it out, it’s gonna be a bad trip. So we had an almost abdali on our forearms and not only moving forward and back that was tough enough as it is walking forward just to push but then to step backwards and pull pull elongating the core shortening the Cory long gating shortening, we started to build this length and shortened ability in her ribcage and their abdominals that when she was running she was not utilizing she was maintaining was upright posture, putting a lot of stress more so in the low back and hips, which she can run for days, we’ll take it but if we want to be able to make sure we can paddle and then run and then bike and then go paddle some more and then go climb, hike, ride a bike, whatever it may be, we need to make sure that we could target all areas of our core and link them in ways that she had not been exposed to in the past. So after we went forward and back, I had her walking laterally basically a lateral crawl down prone, tilt the abdali pole, tilt the Abdoulaye pole or one side, pull other side pull, lengthening the coil and then shortening it back down, making her much stronger with anything that involves that downward force from a lengthened position through her core. That was a fun one to watch. Because now she picks up that abdali smiles at it and goes, Let’s go to work. And you can tell that her body is built for war. Now as a runner, she was very good at upright stance, everything that involved right foot forward, left foot forward with an arm swing, dialed in good to go. We started to expose some weaknesses, taking her down into kneeling position, seated positions, supine positions, prone position sideline positions, positions that she had not been exposed to in her training for running, swimming, and biking. As soon as you brought her into those kneeling positions, it’s a whole nother dynamic load through her system, she now has little less foot assistance, a little less ankle a little less knee help, and the hips are a little bit more limited. So as we put her into this pulley system in each of these positions and worked on different swings, reaches poles, all these different motions, we started to find out or get a better picture of what was going on and anterior core lateral core and rotational core. And we started to progress, the load started to progress, the intensity and the time or the duration of these exercises. And to see Sonia grow from being great upright to also being great kneeling being great sideline and being great super are prone. All these other positions that she wasn’t great at before. Oh, it was amazing. It was like we could see the growth happening in real time. And she could feel the growth happening in real time. It didn’t end there positions were important. But we need to also make her breath perfect. I needed her to be aware of where she was while she was in these positions doing these motions. So as we expose more motions in these other positions, we started to find a holding of breath or a bracing in the shoulders, basically extra muscle contraction that’s going to end up tying her out in the long run. So as I found these opportunities to say hey, let’s hold this position and just breathe
started to see her composure, relax, become focused in and all of a sudden the grooves of the motion became so much more smooth, we start to throw more loads at or more dynamic reaction and then put her on more these more unstable loads or unstable surfaces that then would expose her when she would freak out exposed to her when fear kicked in. When her thoughts would shift from I got this to Holy shit I don’t have this, too much of that in a race and it’s going to end up knocking you down and exhausting you fatiguing you from the mind through your body. So a great practice we brought in was breathing mechanics not necessarily making it perfect in and then out on the effort. But being able to change her breath on command and becoming so much more aware of how her body is communicating versus just getting through the race and going hard as possible and not realizing that we’re over utilizing our breathing or over utilizing your oxygen we need to end up relaxing our body focusing on what the task is in front of us and then getting that job done. It was such an honor training such an incredible athlete and we congratulate Sony on finishing the world’s toughest race. If you’d like to bring the same level of knowledge, creativity and intention to your programming, please download the link below as it is the template I use on programming for all of my athletes.
Leave a Reply