Obstacle Mud Runner - issue 09

Continued... What is grip endurance training for OCR? Ok so let’s cut to the chase here, first of all, let me tell you what it’s NOT. It’s not just obsessively trying to hang from a bar for 10 minutes, it’s not farmer’s walking, it’s not trying to master a muscle up, it’s not going bouldering for 3 hours at the weekend convincing yourself that you’re going to be a better obstacle racer and it’s not pinching plates like a mad man (or woman!) Remember what the goal is here, you want to become a BETTER obstacle racer, not a better weight lifter or boulderer and more proficient on the obstacles, agreed? So your training needs to reflect that. And before I get all the bouldering brigade hypothesising on this, just hear me out for a second because consider that last year at the OCR world championships, Pro division female obstacle racer Nicole Mericole agonisingly lost out on a gold medal because she couldn’t do one of the last obstacles due to her grip failing. Her background is bouldering and rock climbing and she climbs near on every day. Don’t get me wrong, all of those exercises & activities above DO have their place in a training plan, I’ll tell you where in a second, and I’m a big fan of bouldering, but in my humble (but usually correct) opinion, they aren’t the only training methods to develop grip endurance specifically for obstacle course racing. Let’s get very, very specific here, grip endurance can fundamentally be defined as how well your grip copes during an obstacle course race. I mean sure, you might easily be able to do grip-related obstacles like rope climb, hang tough, monkey bars, low rigs, high rigs, individually on their own and your grip is cool with that, but what’s your grip like when your forearms are pumped and full of lactic acid, the pressure is on and you have to do all these obstacles back to back? Suddenly things become a different story right? I know this because I’ve experienced this myself in races. And once your grip has gone, it’s very hard for it to recover again during a race. Think of it like this: your grip muscles are fairly small in comparison to other muscles in the body and they’ll tend to burn out very quickly if you don’t conserve the energy and use it wisely during a race. Grip endurance is important for the following reasons: 1 Obstacle heavy courses Grip endurance doesn’t become so much of an issue when you have a nice 15k distance with 15 or so big obstacles evenly spaced out throughout. Your grip and forearms have time to recover during the running sections, but when you have an obstacle heavy course in front of you like this year’s Euro’s & World’s are going to be and races like ‘The OCR series’, ‘Toughest’ and of course the new 3k short course format that’s starting to become very popular and competitive then your grip endurance starts to become more important to you. If You Are An Obstacle Racer You NEED To Be Training Grip Endurance RACE : TRAINING 25 ForEliteAtheletes to FunRunners 01732 452404 First of all I’m going to kick things off by stating that grip endurance for OCR is completely different to grip strength so if you’re looking to up your OCR game and take things onto the next level of achievement then training grip endurance starts to become very important to you. In this article I’d like to address what grip endurance is, the benefits of having increased grip endurance and the best strategies to increase grip endurance. So if you’re looking to NOT fail obstacles and run a clean race in the not too distant future then read on as this is undoubtedly going to help you Remember what the goal is here, you want to become a BETTER obstacle racer, not a better weight lifter or boulderer and more proficient on the obstacles, agreed? endurance as well as strength Daniel Hannabuss