Gold-medal PT - Off Duty, Sports, Hunting, Fishing - Navy Times

Gold-medal PT

You don’t have to be an Olympic athlete to train like one. And just because you have no plans to make a go at elite-level wrestling, boxing, fencing or track doesn’t mean you can’t learn valuable workout tips from those going for gold at the games.

OFFduty caught up with the platoon of military athletes bound for London to learn their secrets to athletic success. No, these tips probably won’t turn you into an Olympic athlete, but put some of these training tactics to work in your own workout and it’s very possible you’ll find yourself making Olympic-sized gains.

Build big boxing lungs

Exercise: Gridiron sprints

What it works: Cardio

Duration: About 1 hour

U.S. Boxing Team captain and welterweight Marine Sgt. Jamel Herring says solid cardio is one of the most important parts of training for the ring.

“You’ve got to open up those lungs,” he says. One of his favorite places to do that is on the football field.

1. Warm up with a light jog twice around the field.

2. Starting at the goal line, sprint as fast as you can to the 10-yard line, then jog back.

3. Now sprint to the 20-yard line and jog back. Work in 10-yard intervals until you’re sprinting the entire length of the field, jogging back to the starting goal line each time.

4. Not done yet. Now, work your way back, again in 10-yard intervals.

5. Cool down with another light lap around the field.

Steel yourself for power

Exercise: Squat push press

What it works: Legs, core, arms

Duration: Four sets of four reps

To master the steel, you’ve got to spend time pumping iron, says epee fencer Air Force Reserve Capt. Seth Kelsey. While all eyes may be on the flash and clash of the blades, fencing is really a full-body sport requiring a mix of explosive power and sustained endurance. To amp up the power side of that equation, Kelsey spends plenty of time in the weight room.

“We do a full lifting program, and it’s all Olympic-style lifts, so a lot of squats, cling pulls and dead lifts,” he says.

He’s also a big fan of the Romanian dead lift, a close-to-the-legs, hamstring-shredding variation. One of his favorites, though, is the squat push press, which builds explosive power in the legs and arms at the same time.

1. Load your bar for four sets of four reps. Kelsey usually goes with 60 kilograms. Starting position is with the bar at chest level, palms out. You can also do it with dumbbells.

2. Keeping the weights at chest level, go into a squat, bending at the knees, with your back straight.

3. As you rise from the squat, go directly into the press, lifting the bar directly overhead. “It’s a quick down and up,” Kelsey says. “It’s a very quick change in direction, like popping, and then exploding your arms up.”

4. Drop the weights back down to chest level and repeat.

Good medicine for endurance

Exercise: Medicine ball pushes

What it works: Stamina, arms

Duration: 20-30 minutes

This is a great exercise for anyone who wants to build endurance, particularly in sports that require lasting power in a specific stance, says Kelsey — including football, shooting and martial arts — while also building power in your arms.

1. You’ll need a partner for this one, about six feet away, and a 2- to 5-pound medicine ball.

2. Facing your partner, get into whatever position you want to maintain with the ball in one hand.

3. “Explode the ball out with your hand, like a shot put, except pushing it, not throwing.” Do 10 reps and then switch the ball to the other hand. Repeat.

4. Maintaining your stance, now do two sets of 10, this time pushing the ball with both hands at the same time.

5. Wrap up by facing to the side and swinging the ball from one side of the body to the other with both hands, like you’re heaving a heavy rock. Catch the return throws with the same swinging motion. Do 10 reps, then switch the side you’re releasing from. Repeat on both sides.

Shoulders built for shooting

Exercise: The running crucifix

What it works: Shoulders, arms

Duration: About 1 mile

Pistol-packing Team USA marksman Army Sgt. 1st Class Keith Sanderson says strong shooting skills are built on a solid foundation of shoulder and forearm strength. One exercise he developed years ago, when he was in the Marine Corps, has served him well in building that base. The idea is simple enough, but harder than hell to maintain, he says.

“Run while locking your arms out in a crucifix position. You try to keep [the position] stiff while putting a little bit of bounce in your step, and you try to do it for an extended period of time,” he says.

Form is important. “Stick your arms straight out, locking your entire shoulder girdle and making a fist with both hands while trying to keep everything as stiff as you can,” he says.

He uses evenly spaced telephone poles to mark the distance, fighting to keep his arms up for two poles and then resting for two — maybe three — poles, before doing it again.

“Usually, I run for, say, three miles and then do three or four of these drills for the last mile back,” Sanderson says. “This takes it out of you. It’s almost like you’re starting to go uphill.”

More importantly for him, “it’s a proprioceptive exercise for all the muscles that control recoil management in your shoulder.”

Full-body building

Exercise: 12-count bodybuilder with dumbbells

What it works: Arms, legs, core

Duration: 10 reps. “One set is enough.”

Anyone who’s worn a uniform has likely come face to face with the dreaded bodybuilder exercise more than a few times. There’s the standard eight-count type and the slightly more sinister 10-count variety. Always in search of ways to better work his arms and shoulders, Sanderson likes to unload a killer 12-count bodybuilder into most of his workouts while packing a pair of hefty dumbbells for good measure. He uses 35-pound weights but suggests starting with whatever taps you out after 10 reps. Once you get to where you can do 20 reps, add more weight. He does it once a day for two days, takes a day off, then starts again. Here’s how it breaks down:

1. Start standing, holding the dumbbells by your sides, hands facing out.

2. Curl up both dumbbells toward your face.

3. Rotate hands 180 degrees as you raise the dumbbells up over your head.

4. Reverse the motion, returning to the starting position.

5. Bending at the knees, squat down to the ground, putting the dumbbells down beside your feet while still holding them.

6. Kick your feet out into a pushup position.

7. Do a pushup.

8. Bring your feet back underneath you, and keep your back straight as you rise into the starting position.

Run and gun breathing

Exercise: Indian swim

What it works: Breath control, cardio, core

Duration: Varies

The sinister mind that conceived the five-event modern pentathlon made sure to save the two hardest parts for last. It’s not that they’re individually all that bad, but you try running a 3K course, then steadying your aim enough to shoot targets after a day of swimming, fencing and horseback jumping competitions. And now, with the upcoming summer games, it’s about to get even harder, with the shooting challenges spliced into the run itself.

“One of the things we’ve done to help prepare for this new aspect of the sport is set up treadmills in our shooting range,” says Army Olympic pentathlete Spc. Dennis Bowsher. “We’ll do a minute at a moderate to hard pace and then jump off the treadmill and hit five targets.”

And then repeat 19 times. Success, he knows, will be measured by his ability to control his breathing while his heart is trying to burst out of his chest. Turns out, that’s also a skill he’s been honing in the pool.

“I got to work out with the swim team earlier this year, and they do this thing that’s the same concept as an Indian run, but in the pool,” Bowsher says.

For the uninitiated, the Indian run is usually with a squad of six to 12 single-file runners, in which the last person in the line has to run up to the front of the line in a constant leapfrogging succession.

“It was tough,” Bowsher says with a grim smile. “There were five guys on the team, and I was number six. They set up buoys in the pool and we’d swim in a constant loop.” In addition to building better breath control, the Indian swim hones what elite swimmers call “switching gears,” he says. “It’s about being able to recognize how much you have left and when you can push it.”

Hard-core hamstrings

Exercise: One-legged squat

What it works: Hamstrings, balance

Duration: 10 reps on each leg

Who says you need a world-class coach and elite training facilities to become an Olympic athlete? Army Staff Sgt. John Nunn credits his win at the track-and-field qualifiers this spring to the DVD-delivered Insanity workout.

“I’m a firm believer that Insanity workouts were what helped me get through my training making the Olympic team,” says Nunn, who will compete in the grueling 50K race walk.

Because of strict rules on form, successful race walking requires herculean hamstrings.

“That’s why I’m a huge fan of the Insanity stuff — because it works everything inside and outside the hamstrings,” Nunn says.

He describes the 45-minute workouts as mostly “plyometrics and calisthenics, so it’s a lot of jumping and sideways movements, squats and these different stretches.”

“If you put into it what’s being asked of you, you’re exhausted at the end,” he says.

One of his favorite hamstring-busters is the one-legged squat:

1. Start by standing on one leg.

2. Extend the other leg behind you as you counterbalance by bending forward at the waist. The arm opposite your rear leg comes forward as well. The deeper you bend your grounded knee, the better the workout.

3. Switch legs.

Cut weight with the big boys

Exercise: Cardio weight blaster

Good for: Losing water weight

Duration: 1 hour

Weighing in at 265 pounds, there’s no getting around the fact that Army Sgt. 1st Class Dremiel Byers is a big man. And that’s just when he’s weighing in for a match. Normally, the heavyweight Greco-Roman wrestler is as much as 30 pounds heavier. Byers says one of the hardest parts of his sport is what he calls “the discipline of the weight.” It’s a delicate, if sweat-soaked, dance of building mass through months of training only to slim down just before a match to bring as much muscle — and as little else — as possible. That process can take weeks but typically goes down to the wire, ending the day before the tournament during the official weigh-in. The stakes are high: Come in over your weight class limit and you’re out.

Byers says he likes to wake up the day of weigh-in needing to lose about 4½ pounds.

His routine for quick “cutting” comes down to a simple formula.

“You have to find a cardio workout that works for you. Mine is 10-20-30,” he says. That’s 10 minutes on the treadmill, 20 minutes on the elliptical and 30 minutes on the stationary bike. “An hour of that, straight up with no breaks, and I can pull 7 or 8 pounds off,” Byers says.

When he’s really cutting it close, he’s had to lose as much as 11 pounds on the day of weigh-in.

“That’s when it’s real bad. It’s ugly,” he says. “But you just do more cardio and burn it out of you.”

After weighing in, he says he’s learned the hard way to fight the urge to dig into a big meal.

“After you make weight, you want to put hot stuff back in you. That relaxes you. Some soup and tea. Your stomach will swell up and then you just keep pumping fluid through,” he says.

He likes Pedialyte to replenish electrolytes.

“It’s more concentrated,” he says. “You can get more in you right then and there.”