Too many differant training tips got me confused!

[maritime_marine]

Ive read so many training tips that ive been getting confused about training and was hoping i could get some questions answered. I understand that what people are writing applies to them and not everybody however its still confysing me when im trying to make a suitable regiem.

1) In preperation for PRMC should you only do core exercises such as press ups, sit ups, pull ups and not bother with weights or other exercises.

2) Do get better at the 3 core exercises, especially press ups you have to do them alot and ofton, ive read about people doing them max in 2 mins 5 days in a row. However, even though its only 2 minutes dont you need muscle repair and growth? Im not particularly good at press ups atm and can only really manage 20-30 in a row, now thats not really alot if tahts all i do? If training 5 days is acceptable then could you do 100 press ups 5 days in a row with 2 days rest?

3) At my AFCO the main person said that i should be running everyday? Won't this cause over training and possible injury? Im currently injured at the moment but this is speaking as if i wasnt.

4) People suggest doing a minimum of 3 runs per week with some swimming as a cross trainer and for general fitness. However, ive read that you shouldnt do cardiovascular training 2 or more days ina row.

Hope thats made sense if not then just say, hope you can help me with these as its really confusing me.

Thanks Maritime_marine

[Paulc83]

i speak purely for my self here, but as far as running goes i generally dont need to run that often to produce a reasonably good time, i havent run for nearly a month as i have been trying to concentrate on my upper body strength, but if i attempted a 3 miler tomorrow i would get a sub 19 minute time, (although i plan to start running reguarly as of next week)
What im geting at is you neeed to concentate mainly on your weeker areas, but still make time to maintain the others.

[maritime_marine]

What about the core exercises? After 3 weeks of injury and almost no fitness i had only lost aprox 1 min from my 3 miler what i supose wasnt too bad.

[jammin87]

I think if you're doing CV two days in a row you'll be fine. I did cardio Monday to Friday in the summer, and played badminton on the Saturday too, with no ill effects. But, this might not work for some people.

[ali_hire]

I do cardio in the morning (running) and strength circuits in the afternoon. I do this 3 days on, 1 day off, 2 days on, 1 day off (this brings the cycle back round to the beginning of a new week). This, I find, works fine for me and doesn't leave me feeling too worn out to train.

On the PRMC you will be doing lots of press ups, sit ups and squat thrusts. Especially if you don't listen carefully and get punished!
However, I wouldn't recommend ruling out everything else as you're going to be using muscles you never knew you had. For example, doing all those rope crossings will give your forearms a workout like never before.

Go to www.rosstraining.com, there's lots of good info. on there about various different ways to spice up your training. There's one article in particular about the importance of varying your training which is very good, I can't get on the site right now to find the exact link though. He basically says that some people slate doing weight work and some people live by it, but he says the smart athelete is the open-minded one who makes time for all styles in their routine.

The main thing is to do what you feel works best for you, get a well balanced, high level of fitness and determination should get you through the rest.
I understand totally what you mean when you say that all the different advice on here confuses and contradicts, there are a lot of people on here and they/we all have different opinions about what works and what doesn't.

[Spence]

Ali is right when he says that the smart athlete is open minded and varies his training. I don't know about anyone else on here, but if all I did for every training session was a 3 mile run followed by the RMFA, I would get bored very quickly. Nobody does anything well if they don't enjoy it.

Don't forget also that the gym tests only make up a small part of selection. Varying your routine and including different exercises will improve your chances of passing the rest of the assesments.

As for the time between training sessions (and training programmes in general), very few people think about the periodisation of their training. This can get very complicated so the basics may include varying volume of work/intensity, or even focus. For example, you may want to start on a six week "cookie cutter" programme to get a decent base, and that may look like this:

Monday: 30 minute Run
Tuesday: Circuit Training
Wednesday: Active Recovery
Thursday: 15 minute run followed by press up/sit up/ pull up/ Squat circuit
Friday: 1 hour Swim
Saturday: 30 minute run
Sunday: Active Recovery

At the end of this six week phase, you figure out that you can bash out press ups and sit ups like theres no tomorrow, although you can barely make three and a half miles in 30 mins, so obviously less emphasis needs to be placed on your strengths and more emphasis should be placed on your weaknesses. The next four weeks will be spent on a new training programme similar (maybe) to this:

Monday: 30 minute run
Tuesday: Circuit training
Wednesday:Active recovery
Thursday: 20 minute run
Friday: HIIT (High intensity interval training)
Saturday: 45 minute Run
Sunday: Active recovery


OK so now at this point, you may want to take a deload week so that the effects of cumulative fatigue are combated. This deload week may look somthing like this:

Monday: Active recovery
Tuesday: 20 minute Run
Wednesday: Active Recovery
Thursday: Circuit Training
Friday: Active Recovery
Saturday: 30 Minute Swim
Sunday: Active Recovery

Even then, the volume may be too high for a true deload week.

Now we can get back to proper training, after the deload week you are feeling fresh to tackle some new challenges. The next phase lasts four weeks:

Monday: Hill Sprints
Tuesday: Whole body weight training
Wednesday: (AM) 30 mins swim (PM)press up/sit up/ pull up/ Squat circuit
Thursday: 40 mins Run
Friday: Active Recovery
Saturday: HIIT
Sunday: Active Recovery.

Now we might want to start getting some specific training in for the next four weeks:

Monday: RMFA (to include MSFT)
Tuesday: 3 Mile Run
Wednesday: Active Recovery
Thursday: 3 Mile Run
Friday: Circuit Training
Saturday: Hour Run
Sunday: Active recovery

At this point it would be good to include another deload week.


Ok so this post has gone on a bit longer than I originally intended, however, What I am trying to put across is that the training programme you come up with this week, doesn't have to be the same as next week. Play around with rest days, work volume, work intensity, exercise selection and decide for yourself what works. If somthing doesn't work then change it. If somthing does work, change it every four to six weeks.

And remember gains will only be made after rest. Oh and one more thing, I would avoid doing anything fitness/sport wise everyday.

Spence

[GGHT]

Ive read so many training tips that ive been getting confused about training and was hoping i could get some questions answered. I understand that what people are writing applies to them and not everybody however its still confysing me when im trying to make a suitable regiem.

1) In preperation for PRMC should you only do core exercises such as press ups, sit ups, pull ups and not bother with weights or other exercises.

2) Do get better at the 3 core exercises, especially press ups you have to do them alot and ofton, ive read about people doing them max in 2 mins 5 days in a row. However, even though its only 2 minutes dont you need muscle repair and growth? Im not particularly good at press ups atm and can only really manage 20-30 in a row, now thats not really alot if tahts all i do? If training 5 days is acceptable then could you do 100 press ups 5 days in a row with 2 days rest?

3) At my AFCO the main person said that i should be running everyday? Won't this cause over training and possible injury? Im currently injured at the moment but this is speaking as if i wasnt.

4) People suggest doing a minimum of 3 runs per week with some swimming as a cross trainer and for general fitness. However, ive read that you shouldnt do cardiovascular training 2 or more days ina row.

Hope thats made sense if not then just say, hope you can help me with these as its really confusing me.

Thanks Maritime_marine

Aright bud, some excellent posts above.

If I was training for PRMC again I would focus on the 3 basic exercises at home. This would be 5-6 days a week, with perhaps some some easy weightlifting exercises to increase tricep strength if your lagging a bit in that area. Even better would be bodyweight dips.
Basically focus on your weakest area.

Try and keep your exercises generally high repetiton and low resting time, say a max of 30-45 seconds.
Vary things by doing underarm pullups, different styles of pressups (inclines, wide armed etc) and situps with twists and leg raises.
Basically keep your muscles adapting, but make sure you give the PRMC standard ones the most attention.

The other exercises that they use on PRMC are squat thrusts and tuck jumps, but not to a massive degree, and you could get enough practice of these in a weekly circuit session.

CV
I would build to running at least 4 times a week (better to do 5) and do a tough circuit session as well, obviously if I was uninjured and relatively fit before hand.
So 5 days CV a week. One complete day of recovery where you literally do nothing but sit and eat and one day where you go for a walk, active recovery basically.
I would mix/rotate these these runs to be comfortable longish runs, one fastish paced run of about 4 miles and then a day devoted to shuttle runs/sprints. Mix up the terrain, so you include hills, different surfaces etc.

Make sure you practive the bleep test at least 3 times before you go down.

Even though there are a lot of sprints/shuttles, endurance is the name of the game.
Our bottom field "session" for example, lasted about 4hours all in all and is like nothing you've ever experienced before as a civvie.
Gym test 2 lasts a good 45 minutes also, and is kind of like an intense circuit training session. Looking back it's purpose I think was to test agility, upper body strength and teamwork.
The three mile run has a short, intense warmup before hand involving sprints, squat thrusts and tuck jumps/pressups, but if you can run 3miles in 21mins and under you will be fine, as you do it "fresh" as such.

On the bottom field this is a tiny snippet of what you can expect....

In pairs you sprint 20 meters to an 8ft long ditch filled with water, bound over with a double footed landing, then burst to the next obstacle, a red brick wall. On reaching that you have to slow yourself down instantly and leap vertically 5ft and haul yourself over a wall, using all your upperbody strength. This type of exertion is repeated over and over in the form of monkey bars, cargo net crawls, and horizontal rope heaves all with intermittent sprints until you come to another 5ft high high wall which needs to be jumped and scaled. You then have to run up a horrible little hill on top of which is yet another 6ft gate which has to be vaulted. there are still around another 3 obstacles after that lol.

This is done with 100% aggression and effort and after a 25-30 min exhausting warmup, plus the previous days "activities" not to mention Corporals bawling at you the entire time! As you can see you need to be as CV fit as possible, every second of rest needs to be beneficial.

The PRMC NCO's (gawd bless em'! ) will look for any excuse to get you doing an obstacle again and again to prove you will do something on command despite being exhausted.

Generally I think most people fail on the 3 miler which I thought was the easiest test. I think that weeds out the ones who have put no effort in at all. You do have to be fit for PRMC, and have stacks of determination.

[maritime_marine]

Thanks for all the posts, helping me out, im gunna build my runs back up because ive got the tail end of shin splints at the moment. Im gunna include a few circuits and do the occasional weights session.

I've got lots of differant options now to mix everything up and hopefully see some real improvments over the next few monthes.

Cheers all

[rodgie]

Some good replies here. I just want to emphasise you need to build up your workload. If you decide to run 5 days a week, dont start by running 6 miles each of those days.

I know it seems obvious but start with maybe 1.5miles and build up slowly so that your joints adapt. YOu dont want to pick up injurys by doing do much to soon.

Before my PRMC I was running (in the morning) 4 days a week, followed by pushups, situps, pullups on 3 of those runs. In the afternoon I did the beast (search this site, basically a bodyweight circuits with sprints) once a week, and a weight training circuit once a week plus I was training judo 4-5 nights a week.

The deload weeks mentioned above are very important to prevent yourself burning out. I took an entire week off and basically did nothing after pushing hard for 3-4 weeks. A better way may be to go for a couple easy runs and knock out a set or 2 of the pushups.