4 ways to train for an obstacle course race like Toughest

Ahead of Toughest's UK debut on Saturday April 23, OCR World Champion Jonathan Albon tells us how best to prepare for a race
Champion: Jonathan Albon
Mateusz Szulakowski
Jonathan Albon18 April 2016

Training for an obstacle race is incredibly fun, in fact just about any activity or form of exercise will help prepare you for one. The key therefore is not what type of training you do, it’s more about how much you enjoy doing it. The more you enjoy it, the more you will do – making you improve.

Training for a more specialised event, like running a marathon, will see you continually doing that form of exercise for weeks on end. Chances are, by the time the event comes along you will be so sick of training specifically for it, you won’t be able to stand the thought of continuing afterwards to simply keep fit.

Obstacle races contain an endless variety of activities; you will be swimming, crawling, climbing, jumping, running, lifting, even throwing. You can therefore keep your training so varied it will always seem new and exciting without getting repetitive or boring. Training in this way will also make you a more rounded athlete and less prone to injuries. You may not become the best at any one thing but being good at everything is much healthier.

If you are however intent on streamlining your training specifically for an obstacle race like Toughest, there are some key areas you can work on most. These come in the form of running, circuit training and climbing.

Running

Running is the most important of the three as at the end of the day, it is a running race and most time will be gained or lost on the running sections in between obstacles.

For many, the best way to improve running would be to simply to do more of it - and the majority of the time this comes down to motivation. Signing up for a race should sort this out but if not try planning new running routes, signing up for fitness app Strava or including a run as part of your commute to make the experience more interesting.

Mateusz Szulakowski

The key to improving your running quickly is to constantly vary all aspects of it. For instance you could change the terrain - from a running track to hills; running surfaces - from roads to swamps; your speed - from all-out sprints to long slow runs; and the distance you travel - from short to long. By doing this, you will become an all-round runner and less specialised to any one form, which is crucial for the varied nature of obstacle racing.

Try including three main key sessions a week: an interval session with very fast running sections followed by rest periods. A tempo run where you run at a moderately fast pace for a more extended period of time. A long slow run where you keep the pace steady but cover lots of distance.

Circuits

Second is strength training. Circuits are my favourite way to do this and these will help build you into a more rounded healthy athlete. Working on your strength will not only help you on the carrying and lifting obstacles but also make you a faster runner and strengthen your body making you less prone to injury.

The majority of my circuits are made up of body weight exercises, like plank, squats, press-ups and pull-ups. I would combine these with many more in endless variations to keep my body guessing, mixing in sprints too to give a complete workout.

Climbing or bouldering

Third is climbing. Toughest has some really cool obstacles that take a standard set of monkey bars to a whole new level. Bigger muscles won’t help because you will be carrying the weight of them through the obstacles with you (as well as around the whole course). Working on your grip strength and improving your strength to weight ratio by climbing will help the most.

I like to go bouldering, unlike traditional climbing it requires a lot less expertise, time and equipment to get a good workout. When bouldering you don’t need a certificate, harness or someone to belay you, you only climb to a maximum of three metres over big mats. Once you are confident with a difficulty grade you can challenge yourself by climbing harder problems or climb routes back to back.

Toughest - in pictures

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Specific obstacle technique

With the upcoming Toughest race it is also a good idea to think about certain obstacle technique. Most obstacles can be conquered not through strength but through techniques you had naturally when you were a child. At some point in our busy lives we forgot how to complete a set of monkey bars: something the vast majority of children can do naturally.

Toughest does have a great concept of offering penalty lanes if you struggle with an obstacle, as well as harder lanes, so people can really challenge themselves. For example, if you find monkey bars easy, you can try the 'flying monkey' instead. This is the hard lane where you have to jump between bars set 1.7 metres apart - if you make it, you can a shortcut reward around the next obstacle.

Again though the most important thing is to have fun, unless you are happy in training and racing you will never be as good as you can be.

Jonathan Albon is the OCR World Champion; jonathanalbon. Toughest tickers are available to buy on the day on April 23; toughest.se

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