Mud, Guts & Glory

Tips & Training for Extreme Obstacle Racing

Tracks Publishing

Contents

Technique, Tactics & Strategies

We've talked attitude, origins, soldiers and civilians. Now it's time to get down to the nitty-gritty about what you need to know when you're getting down and dirty. This next section of the book is about technique and tactics and a little bit about strategy to allow you to better navigate the most likely obstacles and terrain you will encounter.

Keep in mind that while we will be providing specific advice in many instances, the wild card nature of these events means that adaptation and improvisation is in order. Use whatever suspiciously specific advice we offer as the template in your training sessions, but adapt, improvise and innovate when you hit the course. Maybe this or that bit of advice is not quite applicable in your unique situation. Use the advice in this book as a baseline, not as rock solid gospel truth.

Improvisation: Case in point

We were running an event situated in the foothills of the Appalachians, only in this case the term foothills did not do justice to the terrain. The topography was nothing like the beautifully worn trails one finds inside The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. These hills were acute angle inclines and declines covered with scree (scree is loose rock/gravel ideal for turning ankles and initiating godawful falls).

We fell into stride with a couple of experienced trail runners who were kind enough to offer the advice of taking these treacherous downhill passages with either an exaggerated lean-back to keep your hips in front of you for speed control, or to use a galloping side-shuffle (we'll hit these in detail later).This advice worked well for many of the downhill switchbacks, but then the acute angle that we thought was mighty damned acute got even acuter (let's pretend that's a word).

In addition to the steep inclination, the switchbacks become shorter and sharper — the very definition of hair-pin turns — while the trail itself grew narrower. The downhill side of the trail was one unkind treacherous drop, and if you hit any uncontrolled overspeed at all via the lean-back, side-shuffle, or any other upright method, there was a high probability of overshooting the switchback and taking a plummet. Add scree and muddy shoes and our original desire to make good time on the downhill turned into a wish to just get down intact.

Everyone, experienced trail runners included, shifted to either a controlled plodding walk, or in some cases, a crab walk. The latter an exhausting but understandable option since this was steep, unstable stuff. To this point good technique (the lean-back and side-shuffle) helped us make good time. The improvised shift to walking or crab scuttling was wise, but much slower ...

Innovation time.

A band of us were walking or scuttling this treacherous downhill section when we heard behind us "Runner right!" This is the courtesy call to let you know that you've got runners coming up on your right who would like to pass. Only these guys weren't running. They were essentially riding a luge on one foot using the loose scree as the lubricant instead of ice.

Eureka!

They were squatting, putting one foot in front and one foot directly underneath the hips — both feet were in contact with the ground.

The rear palm (the hand on the same side as the squatting leg) was loosely trailing on the ground behind them and functioning as a sort of balancing tool. They would rock forward on their hips and tuck the lead leg a bit to speed up, and lean back toward the rear hand to slow down. They were able to come out of this crouch directly to a stand to hit an upright stride when the terrain allowed it.

We watched these "runners" pass and then, without a word and almost in unison, we all adopted the innovation we had just witnessed. It worked beautifully. I find squatting on your subdominant leg (left leg if you're right-handed and vice versa) allows for better maneuvering into and out of the squat back into and out of a stride.

I have used this innovation many times since, particularly on muddy slopes. As soon as I encounter one, I don't even slow down — I just hit the squat luge and go.

The above story illustrates exactly what I'm talking about. Learn proper technique, train with proper technique, then rough up your training by getting it outside of controlled situations and never be afraid to adapt.

A word or thirty about training

To make sure we're clear — this is the how-to section, as in how to do this or that maneuver. For those looking for info on how to incorporate these tactics and strategies into your training, you'll find that in the training menu portion of the book. There we'll give you specific training templates designed to develop these skills while building the peculiar strength and stamina specific to obstacle course events.

Take this info in stride

These events all have one thing in common — running. So if you're going to run, you're probably thinking I might as well be as efficient and awesomely up to date and trendy as I can be.

With that goal in mind, if you're gonna run efficiently, which style of stride do you choose? The Pose Method? Chi running, perhaps? How about running like a Tarahumara Indian? Or a Kenyan for that matter? Or, why not a Jamaican? Seems to work for Usain Bolt. Oh, there's always the Romanov Method. (Yeah, the Pose Method and the Romanov Method are the same thing, I know. But I've seen instruction in these "same methods" that differed wildly on some points depending on who is doing the teaching. Maybe we can chalk these differences up to the adaptation/innovation thing we mentioned earlier).

Allow me to make this decision a little easier for you. Which method or stride will be the absolute best fit for you? (Drum roll, please!) Why, it's the one you already have. Chances are if you already include running in your training, you have fallen naturally into a stride that works best for y-o-u, and you didn't even need a lesson.

I know we all seek to be a bit better at what we do, that's only natural. Who doesn't want to be awesome, right? I am not denying the loads of anecdotal reports from any method you want to name of this or that dramatic improvement, but I would like to call your attention to the fact that good research into the efficacy of changing an athlete's stride revealed little to zero improvement over the long term and perhaps only incremental results over the short term. (You'll find sources at the end of this chapter.)

According to the smart guys in lab coats, running is such a natural bit of locomotion hardwired into our brains that tinkering with it may actually interfere in the long term as the athlete puts attentional/intentional energy (a glucose dump) into overriding what is a lifetime habit. It can be likened to switching your writing hand from your dominant hand to your subdominant simply because some blog or convincing article in Penmanship World struck a chord.

Of course, the argument can be made that all training in any physical endeavor is a hardwire overdrive, so let's just ignore these lab-coated meddlers. But consider this: Tasks that show measurable and lasting improvement under strict conditions is the training of skills that aren't necessarily natural, intuitive or encountered readily. A few tips on climbing a rope are often welcomed or needed because we don't often confront shimmying up a 20-foot length of 2-inch nautical rope in our day-to-day lives; whereas painstaking advice on how to specifically place one foot in front of the other and then doing it again seems to interfere with your cognitive processes.

This bit of interference is called choking.

There are many studies that show the best way to make skilled athletes choke is to have them become hyperaware of just how they perform some given task they have trained so much that it has become second nature. If we can bollix up pros by making them over-think what they do, it follows that we can easily bollix up ourselves by second guessing what we already do naturally. (Again, all the science-y sources at the end of this section).

Before you completely discount what my sources and I say, consider the following. Stride training is often relegated to ideal conditions on tracks, roads and clean trails. Now compare the ideal stride environment with the muddy, scree covered route that you will travel in water logged, mud-laden shoes. Will these variables affect that perfect form you've been working on? Oh, you know it will.

What will you do when you encounter these variables? Run the adaptation calculus so that you can best adapt the perfect stride to the less than perfect conditions? Sure, that's doable. You can also keep on running and trust the fact that evolution has designed humans for bipedal locomotion and has millennia of evolutionary adjustments behind the wisdom of how we travel on two feet. You will, in all likelihood, navigate these varying terrains and conditions just fine without any need for cognitive thought.

Still not convinced? Let's look at stride training in the context of cost-to-benefit analysis. Compare the time (and perhaps money) that it requires to run this or that drill to build the new stride in hopes that you will maintain that perfection so few athletes actually do who complete stride training. (Again, I'm relying on the data here, this ain't me with a stride bone to pick).Add in the time and cognitive effort required to completely override how you naturally run. Compare the time invested in this endeavor with the time that could have been invested in what has been shown in study after study to actually work — High Intensity Training.

HIT

High Intensity Training (HIT) has been shown time and time again to reap significant rewards for those who use it as the fundamental basis for physical training. (As a matter of fact this manual will use the HIT method to build your obstacle course conditioning while building specific nonintuitive skills.) If we are attracted to perfect stride training because we have a Jones for efficiency, then we should be all the more attracted to HIT training because it is not only efficient, but quantifiably and qualifiedly proven to be efficient.

Furthermore, if we are serious about efficiency, we would then compare the time costs between a method of training that may not manifest once the blush falls off the rose of our initial training honeymoon period (stride work) and how much HIT training we could have been doing with that time. In other words, even if we are charitable about the efficiency of stride training, we have to ask where should we spend our limited training hours — working a method with questionable results or working one with verified results?

If you are a devotee of this or that stride method and you just know in your heart of hearts that you have benefited enormously from your stride relearning program, then by all means ignore all the data and arguments I have offered and run how you see fit. But how exactly do you disentangle what gave you your measured benefit? How can you tell where your stride is responsible for your speed or endurance and where it might be the actual endurance/speed training you have put in. I'm just saying.

In a nutshell, you will need to run to condition for these events. But less important than how you run is the fact that you do run and that you run with intensity. And that your running must include the sort of random variables that most closely duplicate the odd nature of obstacle course work. More on this in the next section, but first those promised sources.

HOW TO RUN

Isn't that title hypocritical? I spend a few pages telling you not to listen to anyone tell you how to run, and here I go doing just that. Not really. I am not advising you how to run in the "put this foot right here and exactly like this" manner. My concerns are what attitude to run with and what conditions to run in. The advice regarding attitude can be summed up via a maxim used by elite special forces:

Let your training reflect battlefield conditions.

If we assume our mudslicked, outdoor obstacle course is our big kids' battlefield, then how much sense does it make to run on a flat track or road or (God forbid) a treadmill? It is advisable to pass on these less than battlefield reflective running environments and opt for running outside whenever possible. And when outdoors, strive for off-road trail work — the hillier and more varied the terrain the better.

If you live in an area without trails, you're not out of luck. You still have an outside at the very least, so take your runs outside. And in your outside/non-trail environment look for routes that provide hills and sloping/slanting terrains. Perhaps cut through parking lots and pass over a curb or two, hop a bike rack here and there. If there's a puddle, run through it with a 4-year-old's abandon.

Again, we are simply talking attitude and conditions. In the menu section, you will find specific workout templates for several running options. Remember that all are meant to be performed with the described attitude and environment variability.

Hills can be hell

Hill running, uphill or downhill, can take a toll on your legs and stamina. It's worth taking a couple of moments to pass along a few ideas that may lighten the load.

UPHILL TACTICS & STRATEGY

Posture

As a rule, all your running will be a bit more efficient if you maintain an upright posture. Pitching forward at the waist or rounding the shoulders forward can lead to increased load on the quadriceps. While this load is not necessarily detrimental in flat work, a tendency to lean forward or round the shoulders will become more acute as you run uphill. This is where that increased load on the quads will take its toll.

Don't reach

There is often a temptation to treat steep uphill passages like a flight of stairs, more so if the terrain is stony and actually resembles stair steps. But it is recommended that you step on every stair rather than hustle up two at a time.

This overreaching requires more muscle mass to climb and eats a good bit of energy. You don't necessarily know how many "stairs" you will be climbing that day, so backing off on bounding may be a wiser plan of action.

Overstep

Don't think that because I suggest you kibosh bounding "upstairs" with vigor that I am encouraging you to take it slow. There is an alternative to overreaching and that is to overstep.

Overstepping is simply taking three steps when two steps will do. When you hit an incline, don't reach forward with your strides because this will turn your run into a climb. Instead, focus on reducing reach thus allowing you to maintain good posture as much as possible and therefore conserving energy. For a mental picture, you will be taking short choppy steps up the hill as opposed to big muscular bounds. Nibble at the hill, don't take big bites.

Four-wheeling

When the terrain is right on the cusp of too steep to run upright and not quite steep enough to turn into an actual climb, you can opt to four-wheel it.

To four-wheel is essentially hitting a bear crawl variant on a slanted terrain. Your hands will touch lightly on the ground where they will assist by pulling you along. Most of your power (a good 90 percent) will still be driven from the legs.

If you keep your hips shifted above your feet relative to your angle of inclination to the hill, you will lighten the load on your arms and legs and travel more efficiently than if you shift your hips further forward or rearward.

DOWNHILL TACTICS & STRATEGY

Overspeed

If (if) you can see your downhill terrain clearly and have judged there to be no issues with hitting overspeed, than do so to gain time and conserve energy.

To overspeed downhill you will take a slight lean of the entire body forward (not simply at the waist) that will propel you to move forward down the hill. Your stride will naturally fall into place to keep you from pitching forward, but ...

Don't reach

I repeat the advice from the uphill section. Overreaching on the downhill feels mighty natural, but just as with the uphill, it can begin to take its toll on the legs from absorbing the downhill impact. A downhill overreach is essentially a series of leaps with multiple G-force and one-legged landings. A tough course full of such repeated shock absorptions will play havoc with your legs as the race goes on.

Overstep

The uphill advice holds here as well. If you use the forward lean to assist your overspeed and kill your temptation to reach by "taking three steps when two will do," you will have both the benefit of the downhill to assist your speed and the chopping rhythm of your stride to keep the shock impact on your legs to a minimum.

Lean back

When the way is a bit steeper than you'd like, you're unsure of the footing or you've got switchbacks to navigate, you may want to reverse the overspeed posture and lean a bit backward at the waist. The backward lean allows you to get a better handle on your speed.