“What am I going to expect at these Tough Mudders, Spartan Races,or Warrior Dashes?”

What’s up, guys? 

It’s Pete Isip again from www.howtotrainformudruns.com.  

 Hope you guys are doing awesome!!!    I had a couple questions coming to me like:  

What is the tough mudder? What is the Spartan Race? 

Tough Mudder? Spartan Race? Warrior Dash? What are you going to expect? 

So all in all I’m going to put a sum into it and make it pretty big and basic.  Depending on what you’re doing, where you’re at, how long it is, some of them range from let’s say, 12 miles, some of them a little longer depending.  Some of them are only three miles.  Some of them five miles.  What happens if you have obstacles in between.  Not only that, the terrain is a lot different.  It’s a rougher terrain, maybe more sand; maybe more swamp land, maybe more woods.  Then again, it depends on where you’re going to do it.  So maybe if you’re in Florida you know it’s going to be swamp land, some sand.  If you’re out in the neck woods Pennsylvania, obviously it’s going to be some woods, the necks.  If you’re out in Colorado you know it’s going to be mountainous terrain, a lot of rocks and a lot of high altitudes and stuff like that.  So that’s what you want to train for depending on where you’re at.  

How should I work out?

So you can’t say it’s always specific to one type of race or any one workout that you should really focus on. Doing a lot of our workouts will help you get into it.  But not knowing where to start.  Yeah, I put the workouts out, but there’s also a beginning phase and a better phase to be starting into it.  I’m just trying to get you somewhat prepared for these things.  If you would like our 2 free gift please download it here. This is our Top Mud Run Mistake and how to kill those monkey bars.

That said, there’s different obstacles, obstacles that can hurt you, can do some hurt depending if you’re not ready for it.  

Can you skip Obstacles? 

Yeah, some of them you could just skip and just walk around.  But is that something you really want to do? Do you really want to enter a challenge or enter a run where you’re going to skip most of them? I watch people just skip through these things and then they say that they finish it.  Yeah, if you’re really, really scared or terrified to do it, like people don’t want to be electrocuted.  To be honest with you, I don’t like getting electrocuted.  That shit hurts.  But at the same time, just run through that shit, get pounded and that’s it.  But there’s some people that shouldn’t do it.  If you have heart conditions, don’t do that stuff.  Be smart about what you’re going to do.  Play it right.  If you got knee problems, ankle problems, don’t jump off the wall because that’s where your knees are going to buckle.  That or make sure you train to strengthen those knees.  Make sure you train to strengthen your ankles.  If you got a lower back problem and you know some things are going to bother you like, once again, jumping off the wall, jumping off high, high things.  You’re not really feeling it, find out what’s going to bother you before you step into it.

I know for Spartan race you are penalized for skipping obstacles and will have to hit a certain amount of burpees for skipping to the next one.

Will there be Mud?

Hells yeah!!!

Pretty much in a sum, there’s a lot of mud.  A lot of mud.  Sometimes not as much mud as you think.  Some people call theirs a mud run, and all they do is take a hose out and they wet it for a couple that I’ve been to.  But for the more serious ones, yeah, it’s muddy, it’s wet.  You’re going to be wet off the bat.  You’re going to be really hot.  You’re going to be really cold depends on the time of the year that you’re doing it.

Will I be ready for these obstacles?

You might be hit with some obstacles that you’ve never heard of and/or weren’t ready for.  So be ready for that.  Make sure you can crawl different ways.  Make sure you can support your own body weight.  Make sure you’re strong in that pulling aspect where you’re hitting some pull-ups, inverted rows, really getting strong.  Make sure you’ve got good grip strength.  A lot of pushing strength, meaning you could do good pushups.  At least maybe five decent pushups where you could hold your body up and your trunk would be stable.  I’ll cover that in  my next article.

Make sure you’re doing a lot of squats, lunges, so you get a lot of leg endurance and really working those legs to endure the work capacity that you’re going to be doing with all the walking and the jumping and the climbing and the trekking up walls or trekking up hills, I’m sorry.  

Are there serious obstacles? I heard you have to swim?

Some of them make you swim. There are some you will have no idea what you are getting into. But also the day before you will know and can get mentally ready for your approach. If you can’t swim or are afraid of water, skip that bad boy.  But try not to skip the easier ones where it’s like crawling through the net or bear crawling through mud or just walking through the mud.  If you’re walking through high pitches of mud and just afraid of slipping, that’s something you really don’t want to skip.  Go through it.  That’s what you’re there for.  Go through that bad boy.  Trek through it and make it as tough as it can to your capacity or to your level of fitness.

Are we timed? or Just go at our pace?

What else could I tell you about these things? It’s always a good time.  A lot of these things, you go in there with friends, make sure you’re in with a group.  If you want to do it by yourself, that’s cool.  I know a lot of Spartan Racers do it by themselves, but they end up working out with people next to them at that level.  So if you got those really big competitors like my boy Chris Rutz ( I got an interview with him I’m gonna share) or Hobie Call, they like to be in the front and they like to rip it and see how fast they do it.  That’s what Spartans do.  

Tough Mudder, no time.  They’re just doing it to do it, and really their goal is just to finish with some weird obstacles in between.  Warrior Dash is timed as well and is the shorter of the 3 main runs. They will give you a chip where you actually are timed and tracked which is pretty cool and great to track your progress or if you are competitive to see how you rank against others. Guys/ Gals that train with us at KRANK always rank in the Top 10% not to brag (clear my throat) 🙂

To close up this story

So with that said, make sure you’re ready to run.  Make sure you have good gear.  Make sure you eat correctly to that so you perform well.  Make sure you take care of any injuries and/or something dysfunctional in your body before you attempt it.  make sure your know if you have a heart condition so you don’t get zapped by electricity and/or your heart races up to a level that it can’t really control.  If you have high blood pressure, make sure you go to the doctor before you’re ready to start training for it.  You should be ready in every aspect, not just go into this thing and just jump right into it.  Sure, can you do it? Absolutely.  Is it going to be a shitty time? Most likely.

All right guys, I just want you guys to be safe.  Trust me.  I’ve learned from experience.  Ive been fucking myself up all different ways and I don’t want you guys to do it.  That’s why I make the mistakes to help you guys out.  

All right, this is Pete howtotrainformudruns.com.  I’ll talk to you later.  

Peace out or peace in.

Kill the day!!!!

Pete Isip

Your Mud Run Trainer