Fresh off our first race

My team (Southern California Scullers) and I kicked off the start of spring with a quick weekend trip to Tempe, AZ for the Desert Sprints. In short, I entered 3 races end ended up top 3 in each of those events. I got bronze in the Men’s Masters 1X, silver in the Open Men’s 1X, and gold in the Open Men’s Quad. I’m happy with my results since I was racing  open weight (There was no lightweight category at this race) and the guy who beat me (who is also my teamate [pictured above]) has 40 lbs of muscle on me and was a former national team member of Croatia.

First race of many this spring, more to come in the future hopefully.

Bronze, Silver, and Gold. One of every color!

So I finally am publishing my half marathon hybrid that integrates Asylum volumes 1 and 2 with running. I used a similar hybrid to PR at last year’s Hollywood Half marathon. This is a modification because the one I used had NO light weeks and NO taper. For most people that is a bad idea and a great way to get injured so I waited until I worked out what I consider a good set of ‘light weeks’ and tapers. I also added plenty of recovery work (using ‘Relief’, ‘Off Day Stretch’, and foam rolling).

I will say that foam rolling is highly recommended. Rumble Rolling is even better! (More on that later…hopefully).

Personally, I love the ‘hard weeks’ that I built into this hybrid. Living in SoCal, all the races I do have a significant set of hills and the leg workouts in both volumes of the Asylum to a great job preparing you for that. In those hard weeks, take the recovery work seriously so you can keep you muscles happy.

I will also add this to the file I have hosted on Google Drive. So if you want a file you can modify, then head there to download it. To use this in a marathon training hybrid, just swap the running miles with the distances listed in one of my full marathon hybrids. Or Click Here

Enjoy!

Click on Image and Right Click to Save. Go to the ‘Hybrids’ tab to download the excel file off Google Drive

Lately, I have been helping people make their own hybrids for running as opposed to posting hybrids. I admit, part of it has been I’ve been too busy with work to spend time on my blog; but there is also the component where a lot of the best running plans are made to fit a specific person. Recently I got an email about combining P90X3 and running. Since I figured, this may help others I will post my reply here:

 
I should have posted this earlier; but I now just realized that for the month of November Beachbody is teaming up with Feeding America (The nations largest national food bank). Till the end of November, Beachbody will give $20 to Feeding America with every Challenge Pack purchased AND you will get $20 off your next purchase.

Click on the banner above or the link below to view information about Beachbody’s Challenge Packs.

Beachbody Challenge Packs

Once again, I’m writing a post for an event that occurred months ago…

My team rowing team here in sunny, Southern California (Southern California Scullers Club) made a trip to the east coast to compete at USRowing’s Club National Championships. Personally, I competed in the Lightweight Men’s Senior Double (LM2X) and the Open Weight Intermediate Quad (M4X).

To clarify, in rowing there are two weight classes for Men (and women). The open weight class is bassically anything over 160 lbs (165 in Fall seasons). The lightweight class is <160 lbs in spring/summer and <165 lbs in the fall. Also, to clarify intermediate and ‘senior’ events. Intermediate events typically have less competition than the ‘senior’ events. This is because the Senior events enable you to qualify for the Elite events (Elite nationals, world championship trials, etc.).

With that said, I was extremely pleased with my performance. In the Senior LM2X my partner and I placed third. We had a strong start and in the first 500 meters we were in the lead over Malta and Vesper who got gold and silver respectively. Not bad after training for less than a year.

My doubles partner teamed up with another lightweight and a heavyweight guy to form an open quad for the Men’s Intermediate Quad. At first we thought we would have some stiff competition in the heats/finals since we had three lightweight guys and a single heavyweight (openweight) guy in our boat. We breezed the our heats, winning easily and went on to the final. In the Final we had a great start and ended up first with open water on our biggest competition, the Potomac Boat Club. Pretty much it was us and Potomac battling it out all the way down the course and they finally clipped us with a few hundred meters to go at the finish. Considering we had a bunch of ~160ish pound guys against solid heavyweights (180+), I was happy with a silver; but they’ll be no excuses next year.

On my way to my finish

Even though I ran this race months and months ago, I never discussed my results here on the blog. Better late than never! So I smashed my previous PR (1:31:32) by running a 1:27:22 with an average pace of 6:40 min/mile. I ended up 43rd out of 3971 runners. This was a 10 minute improvement from the last time I ran this race a year ago. I even beat an ‘elite’ runner (I bet he had a really bad race though).  For this race I used a Asylum (Vol 1 & Vol 2)-Running hybrid (not posted yet; but I will eventually). Like all races that I have done in Southern California, there were a lot of hills in this race; but it seemed that I did all my passing going up the hills. I think this boost in speed going through the incline came from all the plyo that I did in Power Legs (Asylum Vol 2) and Vertical Plyo (Asylum Vol 1). Like I have said in my previous post(s) about using hybrids for running, the Asylum workouts are designed to improve athletic performance and they really deliver on their promise.

Here is a brief list of some of the half-marathons I have run and the corresponding hybrids that I have used:

Happy Training!

First of all, sorry everyone for not posting updates for a long time. Life has been keeping me busy; but the good news is that I’ll be able to post more in the coming months. First of all, some new hybrids are will be posted soon (ones that some of you requested months and months ago). So stay tuned for those.

I got an email recently about what is better for training for a half or full marathon: Insanity or the Asylum? Here was my response to the email:

“Hi <_____>, I am glad that you like my site. I have had much more improvement following the hybrids that use Asylum than I have with my Insanity hybrids. I haven’t posted this yet; but I just did a half marathon where I PR’d by almost 10 minutes using a hybrid of Asylum vol 1 and 2 combined with running. Asylum is harder so it really pushes your fitness to a new level and really benefits athletic performance. Without a doubt I suggest using the Asylum for your training. I will say that Insanity does help during light or recovery weeks.”

To expand upon this a bit, The Asylum (vol. 1 and vol. 2) were designed for improving athletic performance. Shaun T isn’t kidding when he says that this program is made for elite athletes and if you are not an athlete, you will be one after completing volume 1. The number of elite athletes using the Asylum is growing steadily (see some of my earlier posts). I can personally attest to this since I have joined an elite rowing group in sunny, southern California and we as a group have started using the Asylum at least once a week in our training. I will say that one of the members of the team who is going to this year’s world championships really really loves the program. While we’re here please root for Rachel Stortvedt (She’s on the right in the picture I linked to) as she competes in the lightweight women’s quad the the World Championships in Chungju, Korea.

Sorry about the rant….back to why I support ‘The Asylum’ for training….so in comparing ‘Insanity’ to ‘The Asylum’ I believe that the increase in difficulty provided by Asylum will lead to greater gains in any type of running race you do (5k, 10k, half, full marathon). Workouts like ‘Vertical Plyo’ and ‘Power Legs’ really work on the fast twitch muscles in the legs and strengthen them in a way that you can run faster during your races. Also, since these workouts are 40-60 minutes long it also improves your endurance (and slow twitch muscles) which will help you maintain speed for longer periods of time. On top of those two you have ‘Speed & Agility’ and ‘X-Trainer’ which both work purely on speed (but also on endurance since they are long workouts with almost no break).

There really isn’t a workout in Insanity that compares to these four workouts found in ‘The Asylum’. Many of you who have done ‘The Asylum’ know that once you finish vol 1 or vol 1 and vol 2, the workouts in ‘Insanity’ seem easy and therefore may not help you actually improve your fitness.

For these reasons, I really support the use of Asylum in training; but until you are ready for the Asylum, stick to Insanity because it will get you ready for the Asylum.

Happy Training

I almost forgot to mention that I also just finished my first round of Les Mills Combat. Here’s my ‘After’ Picture. I definitely recommend this program to anyone who is loves martial arts of any kind.

Shaun T is coming out with a new program in the summer of 2013, Focus T25. In a nutshell, its like Insanity and the Asylum; but all the workouts are 25 minutes. Great for busy people like myself (and my wife) who find it hard to fit workouts in a busy work week. So far they have just released a teaser; but more info will come in the future. Look forward to it.

Click on the image and you can get a full resolution file to download

Hi all, I’m finally getting back to making hybrids that have been requested. Sorry for the delay; but I’ve been really busy with my day job and training for some races. Excuses aside….I’ve been really interested in Les Mills Combat ever since they began proposing it as a new series at Beachbody. When I was a lot younger I did a lot of martial arts training and received two black belts over ~15 years of training. One in Shotokan karate and one in Shito-Ryu karate. I’ve always been interested in martial arts; but this has made me really skeptical about DVD martial art programs. With that said, I definitely give Les Mills Combat an A+. Why? Well most other programs just provide workouts without teaching how to properly kick, punch, block, etc. I was pleased to see that the program actually came with a DVD (Basics) that was solely dedicated to teaching you how to kick and punch properly.

With that said, the workouts are good; but if you have been doing Asylum (vol 1 or vol 2) like me then most of these workouts won’t kill you. Nevertheless, they are great workouts and will help bring diversity to your fitness library.

As always, this hybrid will be added to my compiled list, so check out the Hybrid page for more.

Shaun T’s ‘Before’ Picture

For those of you who are following Shaun T on Facebook or Twitter, you have heard that Shaun T has been cooking up a special challenge for users of Insanity. All you have to do is submit a ‘Before’ picture within the next few days (Officially, the submission process started today [March 4th] and you can submit until March 11th). After completing the complete 60 days of Insanity submit your ‘After’ picture. The deadline for the ‘After’ picture is May 15th. The rules are listed below and you can click on this link for more details.

But here’s the goodies…if you win Shaun T and his friends will come to your house and have a live workout with you!!!—LIVE at your home, anywhere in the world!

HOW TO ENTER

1. Take your before photo holding your INSANITY booklet along with a piece of paper with today’s date and “Shaun T Birthday Challenge” written on it, like the photos featured below.
2. Submit your before photo using the link on This Page.
3. Once you complete the full INSANITY calendar as part of Shaun’s Birthday Challenge, you must submit your after photo with the finished date and booklet—the same as you did with your before photo.

CONTEST DATES

You must submit your before photos between March 4, 2013 – March 11, 2013 and your after photos must be submitted by May 15, 2013. You must have both a before and after photo in order to be entered into the contest.

SELECTION OF WINNER

The winning person will be drawn at random by Shaun T in a video posted to this Facebook page on or around May 15, 2013.