Obstacle Mud Runner - issue 10

Continued... Coaches, athletes & race ambassadors will tend to have a biased opinion on this too based on who they’ve studied with, what training protocols they’ve been exposed to themselves and what they already prescribe to their existing clients. Whilst there’s no right or wrong answer here, ultimately a training approach that allows you to grow & develop as an athlete without getting injured or sick should predominate over anything else. Designing The Needs Analysis Before we start looking at what the preferred training methods for OCR are, it’s vitally important that a needs analysis of both the athlete and the sport is carried out. This is to identify what specific areas of fitness and training that the athlete needs to focus on in order to enhance their performance capabilities & move them onto the next level of achievement. Let’s first of all look at the sport. Obstacle course racing as we already know, is an endurance based sport that requires the athlete to have a good aerobic capacity to cover a 15k classic distance & recover quickly between obstacles, total body strength & explosive power needed for those strength based obstacles like walls & stairway to heavens & grip endurance for grip intensive obstacles like low rigs, high rigs and ring traverses etc. Primary movement patterns like crawling, carrying, pulling, jumping & climbing are also important too. Obstacle racers need to be good all rounders so their training requirements need to reflect this. It’s also worth noting here that OCR is currently rife with injuries at the moment and if an athlete has a weakness somewhere in their body then it won’t be long before OCR is going to find them out. Due to the high physical demands of the sport, injuries like back pain, knee pain, shin splints, shoulder pain, wrist pain, elbow pain are all common injury sites that are cropping up more frequently now. I bet physiotherapists and osteopaths are very happy that OCR is the fastest growing mass sport in 2018! Needs Analysis Of The Athlete Before we start looking at how we should be training for OCR, let’s consider the following: Previous injuries/sickness – any previous injuries or illnesses you’ve had in recent years are highly significant as statistics unfortunately tell us that if you’ve been injured in the past then it’s highly, highly likely that you are going to get injured again in the future. You’re high risk. Basically if you can’t stay injury free for more than 3 months then that’s a problem, and if you keep getting ill every time you up-level with your training then that’s not normal either. Training age/experience – you may have been running or participating in OCR for the last 10 years but what’s your strength & conditioning age? I’m not talking about crossfit or bootcamp style workouts, I’m talking about a proper structured strength & conditioning plan that looks to get you faster & stronger over the course of a season without injuring you? If it’s 0-2 years then swallow your pride, you’re still a beginner in the strength & conditioning world. 2-4 years and you’re an intermediate. 4 years plus and you’re ok to be doing advanced stuff. Time of season – what season is it? What races do you want to target? as this will dictate what training phase you’ll want to be in. Generally speaking the closer you get to your event, the more sports specific the training needs to get. A typical OCR season starts around March and give or take will finish around November. What’s The Best Training Method For OCR? RACE : TRAINING 25 ForEliteAtheletes to FunRunners 01732 452404 finding the correct approach One quick search on the internet these days will have you believing that you need to be doing running, bouldering, callisthenics, cross fit, HIIT, obstacle skills, olympic lifts & movement based training in order to have any kind of hope in hitting your OCR goals.