zen and the art of strength training

[kopp]

Marathon Results

On April 14, I completed the ToughRuck Marathon in Concord MA, a fundraiser for fallen soldiers and first responders. This was my goal for the first half of 2024. I finished 346 out of 883 overall, and 82 out of 162 in the civilian heavy male category. I averaged 17:30 per mile, including stops. I was pleasantly surprised at how well my body held up. The pads on my feet hurt, but I only got one blister. I had some discomfort in my quads and lower back, but my joints/shoulders/hamstrings/ calves all felt ok. I was sore from head to toe the next day, but not as bad as I had feared, and two days later I feel less sore than I typically would 48 hours after a high volume leg day. All in all it was an awesome experience. It was a really well run event, there was great community support, and it was a lot more fun than I’d anticipated.

Game Day Review:

Week Leading Up: On Friday 4/5 we took our kids to LegoLand in New York, and then on to see the eclipse in Burlington VT. By the time we rolled into my in-laws house on Tuesday, I felt terrible. Many, many hours in the car, lots of fast food, no exercise, poor sleep. Tuesday night I went to Planet Fitness just to move my body (there were actually a lot of really jacked guys working out there), walked a mile on the treadmill, and did some pulling machines. Wednesday I did an easy six mile ruck. Thursday I did some yoga. Friday and Saturday I didn’t do anything but go for some easy walks. Overall, I felt like I showed up on race day having done enough the previous week to not feel stiff and detrained, but without any residual fatigue.

Pack Weight: The minimal pack weight for the heavy division was 35 pounds. I had 20 and 10 pound plates, plus a 2.5 pound vest insert. I weighed in at 38 pounds at the start, having removed all my water and food. At the end of the race, I weighed in at just over 40 pounds. The main difference being I had a little bit of water in my camelback, some uneaten food, and had accumulated some trash. For almost all of my training I was carrying 2 x 20 pound plates, plus a full 2 liters of water. I’m guessing my training rucks were 50+pounds, when you figure in how much weight was actually on my back.

Foot Care: As with all of my long rucks, I wore darn tough merino wool socks. Before starting, I lubed my feet up with vaseline. I’ve also been rucking in the same boots since 2022. This was the first time I’ve had a blister, and it was only a small blister on one of my toes that didn’t really affect the hike.

Hydration: For most of my training rucks, I carried 2 full liters of water. I only ran out of water once, on the 18 miler. For the race, I drank a lot of water the day before, and then tried to polish off most of a gatorade the morning of the hike. I carried one liter of water at the start of the ruck, which I finished around mile 7 or 8. After that, I mostly carried bottles of water, gatorade, or mineral water, stopping to add water to my camel back around mile 20 or 21. I drank a ton of fluid, though I didn’t pee from about 9 am until we arrived home after the race (around 4 or 5).

Food: The day before the race, I had an egg and ham sandwich for breakfast, a reuben sandwich for lunch, steak tips/chicken/potatoes for dinner, and lasagna for a late night snack. I woke up early on Sunday and ate more lasagna for breakfast. During the race I ate a few peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, and 4 or 5 pickles. I’ve read that pickles have salt which can help with cramping. I don’t know if that is true, but I love pickles, and I didn’t cramp, so no harm done. Along the route there were a lot of people offering food. I ate pretty much continuously from mile 10-18 - chips, bananas, oranges, various bars. I felt tired, but I never “hit the wall.”

Apparel: For all of the long hikes, I wore a long sleeve polyester shirt I got from REI, sweat pants, Under Armour biking underwear, a hat, and rubbed body glide generously all over my groin and butt. Never had any chafing problems.

Training Review:

These are some of the considerations that I accounted for when coming up with a rucking plan:

Knowledge: Compared to running or biking, there are far fewer resources for how to ruck a marathon. There is simply no tried and true couch-to-marathon equivalent for rucking a marathon. Most rucking information is targeted at military members, not middle aged weekend warriors.

Time: Rucking is obviously a lot slower than running, and therefore much more time consuming to get anywhere near the same volume as on a typical long distance running or cycling program.

Specificity: Most marathon running programs focus on running, usually 3-4x per week. Rucking that much (especially if you were to keep the distances the same as in the running program) would be both prohibitively time consuming (due to the slower pace) and likely lead to injury.

Strength: You need to have a strong back, shoulders, legs, to carry 35 pounds for 26 miles, which benefit from training other than just rucking.

Recovery: Long rucks make it hard to recover from strength training, and itself requires a huge amount of recovery. Rucking long distances makes it harder to get stronger from lifting, yet getting stronger from lifting is important to being able to ruck long distances.

I balanced these considerations by focusing in equal measure on rucking, sled work, and lifting.

Rucking: For most of the last few months, I rucked every other week. In December I rucked with a 30 pound pack up to 10 miles. Starting in January I used 40 pounds (likely 50+ when accounting for water, etc..), going roughly every other week (weather dependent) and increasing mileage by 2 miles. I credit training heavier than the event as critical to why I felt good on race day.

There are some articles on this site suggesting you can be proficient at rucking just by lifting (usually in the context of effective military training). I’m not sure I agree because 1) doing at least some ruck-specific training is necessary to toughen your feet and joints, and 2) as a practical matter, I found that each ruck I got tired at a later point, even though I wasn’t appreciably stronger from one week to the next (and so there must have been some value to rucking that I didn’t get from just lifting). That said, I don’t see any reason to ruck long distances (10+ miles) more than 2-3x per month, especially given its recovery toll. And even that should probably be limited to the months leading up to the event.

Sled Work: I found that the more I pushed a sled, the better I felt rucking. Pushing or dragging a sled mirrors the lower body stress of rucking, but you can load it heavier and thereby stress the same systems in a lot less time. It also is easier to recover from. The one thing I would have done differently was to add more sled dragging, at least once per week. If I do another marathon, I’ll probably do sled work of some kind at the end of every workout.

Lifting: The last few months focused on back strength (deadlift, rows, lat pulldowns, shrugs). I did little lifting for leg strength, and essentially dropped squats in January. I couldn’t recover from long rucks, sled work, deadlifts, and squats each week. I find squats harder to recover from than deadlifts, and generally my back recovers quicker than my legs. If I were to prepare for another spring rucking marathon (Bataan, or doing the Tough Ruck again), I would do a ton of squats and RDLs in the Fall, and then gradually reduce squats and other barbell leg work in favor of rucking and sleds over the winter and leading up to the race (this is more or less what I did, if not exactly deliberately).

In the end, this was great to train for, and something I’d like to do again in the future.

[kopp]

Goals by mid-July:

1) Prepare for backcountry hiking trip to Rockies in mid-July.
1.a) Prior to trip, do three 10+ mile rucks
1.b) Drag sled 185 pounds x 1 mile

2) Improve strength
2.a) Squat/Bench in PR territory (PRs from last Fall: Squat 4x4x280; Bench 3x5x215);
2.b) Add 20-30 pounds to current deadlift/BB Row PRs (Current PRs: Deadlift 15x1x375; BB Row 3x5x195).

Program:

4x/week, ABAB/ABAC

A. Squat / Sled Drag or Push (optional: additional upper back work) (2x per week)
B. Barbell Row / Bench Press / Barbell Shrug / Lat Pulldowns (optional: additional upper back or tricep work) (1-2x per week)
C. Deadlift (Optional: sled / sandbag / ruck / box squat / B. exercises) (every other week)

Rep Scheme:

A. Squats, Rows, and Bench Press: start light with 3 sets of 8 reps, add 5 pounds each workout or every other workout, and gradually decrease reps as the weight gets heavier. I might add a fourth set at some point to keep overall working set volume > 15 reps. Once the weight gets heavy I may also periodically have lighter days.
B. Deadlifts: continue to lift singles with limited rest periods (i.e., on the minute). Each workout should be either heavier weight, more reps, shorter rest periods, or better bar speed.
C. Rucking: do easy rucks (30-40 pounds, <7 miles, 16-17 minute mile pace) either on off days, or after deadlifting, once or twice a month. Do a few longer rucks closer to the hiking trip.

[kopp]

Monday April 15 - Thursday April 18

OFF - Recovering from Marathon

Friday April 19 (A)

Squat 2 x 6 x 185
Sled Drag 15 minutes x 160 pounds (outdoor turf)

Sunday April 21 (B)

BB Row 2 x 6 x 165
BB Shrug 2 x 10 x 165
Bench 2 x 6 x 165
Lat Pulldown 2 x 10 x 120

Monday April 22 (A)

Sled Drag warmup
Squat 1 x 6 x 185

Extreme cramping in right hamstring.

Thursday April 25 (B)

BB Row 3 x 8 x 165
BB Shrug 3 x 10 x 165
Bench 3 x 6 x 165
Lat Pulldown 3 x 10 x 140

Friday April 26 (A)

Squat 3 x 8 x 185
Sled Drag 800m x 135 pounds (outdoor pavement)

Sunday April 28 (C)

Deadlift 15 x 1 x 345
Bench 3 x 8 x 165

Deadlifts were double overhand hook grip, took 9:05, which is 2 minutes faster than on March 27.

The purpose of this week was to ease back into lifting, after a few weeks away. In particular, I'm being conservative with the squats and bench, which I haven't done consistently in months.

The squats in particular felt extremely awkward and unnatural. I videotaped a few sets on Friday and the biggest issue is I am way overextending my upper and lower back and not bracing properly. This was an issue when I first started squatting, but I corrected it last year. I think I am just out of practice. It will be something to work on moving forward. I don't think the time away hurt my deadlifts at all.

[kopp]

Wednesday May 1 (A)

Squat 3 x 8 x 185
Sled Push

Squat form was much improved. Focused on properly bracing, not overextending back. On the sled pushes, I only did a set or two before I started feeling nauseous. Not sure what the problem was. It may have been that this was the first hot day of the year, and I wasn't accustomed to the heat. Got a headache later in the day. May be battling a bug, or maybe allergies.

Thursday May 2 (B)

Barbell Row 3 x 8 x 170; 1 x 10 x 135
Bench 170 x 8,8,6
Lat Pulldown 3 x 10 x 160
Cable Rows

Friday May 3

Ruck: 4 miles, 30 pounds

Easy active recovery day. Averaged around 18 minutes per mile. It was a really beautiful morning, good to get some fresh air.

Saturday May 4 (A)

Squat 3 x 8 x 190
Sandbag to shoulder 7 x 2 x 150

Pouring rain outside, so did sandbags instead of sled.

Sunday May 5 (B)

Barbell Row 3 x 8 x 175
Bench 170 x 8,8,7/2
Barbell Shrugs 3 x 10 x 185
Lat Pulldowns 3 x 8 x 170
Pushups 3 x 10 x BW

The rows feel really good. I took a video of second and third sets and I think my form on these is solid. I do these bodybuilder style - floating the weight at the bottom, try to hold my back parallel to the ground, or slightly angled, minimum body english. On the bench, I barely got the 7th rep on my third set. After that I racked the weight, counted to ten slowly, and did two more reps. Will go up to 175 next week.

Felt pretty good this week overall. In particular I'm feeling much better about the squats. I think I have my form issues ironed out, and I should get plenty of practice over the next few weeks before the weight starts to get heavy.

[kopp]

Tuesday May 7 (A)

Squat 3 x 8 x 195
Sled Drag 1000m x 135

The sled work was outside on the access road behind the gym. Did five laps from the gym's backdoor to a set of dumpsters, which was about 100m according to my phone.

Thursday May 9 (C)

Deadlift 15 x 1 x 375
Lat Pulldown

These were double overhand, hook grip, on the minute. Total time was just under 15 minutes. My entire posterior chain was sore from this workout. Also had a gnarly blister on my right thumb. After deadlifts, did 2-3 sets of lat pulldowns to failure, or near failure. Don't remember what the reps/weight were.

Saturday May 11 (A)

Squat 3 x 8 x 205
Ruck 4 miles, 30 pounds

These were the first squats I've done with a belt in a few months. Afterwards went out and rucked a big loop in the park near my house. The weather has been cold and rainy lately, and today was a really beautiful morning, so wanted to get outside.

Not going to get in a fourth workout this week due to mother's day. All in all this was a good week. The deadlifts in particular standout as a real positive.

[kopp]

Monday May 13 (B)

Barbell Row 3 x 8 x 175
Bench Press 2 x 8 x 175, 1 x 6 x 155
Sled Drag 600m x 135

This was a late night lift, and I was really tired. My arms felt dead after the second set of bench, so dropped weight. It has been raining a lot the past few weeks, and this was one of the few nice evenings, so decided to drag the sled so I get outside. This was a check-the-box workout, but glad I got something in.

Wednesday May 15 (A)

Squat 3 x 8 x 210
Deadlift 15 x 1 x 325
Lat Pulldown

Very early in the morning - around 6 a.m. I don't recall the last time I worked out this early, but it was the only chance I had. The squats went well. I'd planned to do sandbags but the indoor turf area was filled with people, so decided to deadlift instead. The deadlifts were on the minute, focused on bar speed and form. My right thumb is still recovering from a nasty blister, so these were all double overhand but regular grip, not hook grip, which limited the weight I could use.

Thursday May 16

Ruck: 4 miles, 30 pounds

Active Recovery. Beautiful morning so wanted to get outside.

Friday May 17 (B)

Bench Press 3 x 8 x 175
Barbell Shrug 3 x 10 x 195
Lat Pulldown 3 x 8 x 180
Cable Row

Decided not to do barbell rows because lower back is feeling a little off. Bench is much easier when it is the first lift of the day.

Sunday May 19 (A)

Sled Drag/Push Warmup
Squat 3 x 8 x 215
Sandbag to shoulder 10 x 2 x 150

Early morning Sunday lift, the gym was pretty much empty. I've watched a few Matt Wenning/Mark Bell videos where they discuss doing light sled work as part of the warmup on lower body days, especially for people, like me, who have sedentary jobs. I did the sled work on the indoor turf, since it was raining outside. Squats feel good. During warmups I got up to 275 for a single no problem. On the sandbags, I felt pretty gassed around sets 3-4, but then really hit my stride around set 6 and felt good through the end. I tried to do a set every other minute, and finished all ten sets in just under 20 minutes.

Pretty good week overall. I'm hoping that we get a few days without rain before it gets super hot. This has been the wettest spring I remember.

[kopp]

Monday May 20

Barbell Row 3 x 8 x 180
Pullups BW x 6,3

Evening lift. Gym was crowded and I felt pretty crappy. Progressed on the rows and then called it a day.

Wednesday May 22

Squat 1 x 285; 3 x 8 x 220
Sled Drag 600m x 135

Friday May 24

Deadlift 15 x 1 x 355
Bench 180 x 8,8,6/2

Deadlifts were double overhand hook grip. Took just over 9 minutes. On the bench, got two sets of 8. On the last set, I stopped after the sixth rep, rested a few seconds, and then finished the last two.

Saturday May 25

Ruck: 30 pounds, 7.5 miles, 15:36 per mile pace

Good week overall, moved the ball forward on the four main lifts I'm focusing on and got in a good ruck. Main issue this week has been sleep. My kids have been sleeping terrible, I think it might be because it is getting hot. I've also been waking up on my own a lot thinking about work, the Gaza strip, and a bunch of other random stuff that is making it hard to fall back asleep. This week I am going to focus on turning off electronics after 8 pm, not drinking caffeine in the afternoon, and getting to bed by 10.

[kopp]

Monday May 27

Squat 1 x 295; 3 x 8 x 225
Leg Press

The sleds and sandbags were in use, so decided to try the leg press after squats. Started with 225 (4 plates + whatever machine weighs) and did a few sets, not sure what the reps were.

Tuesday May 28

Bench 185 x 8,8,5
Lat Pulldowns 3 x 10 x 160
Cable Rows
Tricep Pushdowns

Friday May 31

Squat 1 x 305; 3 x 8 x 230
Leg Press

The 305 moved easier than 295 had on Monday. I think I'll be setting PRs in short order. The sled was in use, so decided to do some leg presses. This was shameless burn-chasing.

Saturday June 1

Barbell Row 3 x 8 x 185
Bench Press 165 x 8; 185 x 8,5
Cable Rows
Ruck 2.5 miles, 50 pounds, 17:00 avg mile pace.

On the bench I messed up the weights on the first set. I thought I was really feeling strong but I just mis-loaded the weight. Immediately after the lift, went for a short ruck with 50 pounds dry weight, plus 2L of water, so probably around 60 pounds total. It was a beautiful morning, high 60s, sunny.

Good week overall, made progress on squats, bench, rows. I'll give bench one more try for three sets of eight reps at 185, then adding weight regardless. The squats feel really good, I think my form is spot on, and the weight is moving well.

[kopp]

Tuesday June 4

Barbell Row 190 x 8,8,6,6
Lat Pulldown

I had initially wanted to squat, but on Monday I tweaked my groin walking up the stairs, and one of my kids jumped on my back. I also only had about 30 minutes to lift because needed to get home to meet the plumber. Busted out some rows, did two sets near failure on the lat machine, and called it a day.

Wednesday June 5

Bench 3 x 8 x 185
Tricep Pushdown

Had about 25 minutes to lift pre-work. Made progress on the bench, then did a set or two of pushdowns to failure, and called it a day.

Friday June 7

Squat 1 x 310; 3 x 8 x 235
Leg Press 2 x 12-15 x 245

On the last set of leg presses I got a bad headache. Not sure if it was an overexertion headache or something else. I had initially planned to do sled drags but i was so wiped after the squats that I decided to do something a little less systemically fatiguing. Groin felt fine.

Sunday June 9

Barbell Row 195 x 8,6,6,6; 2 x 15 x 145
Bench Press 3 x 8 x 190

Most days when I do bench press after rows, the bench doesn't go as well. Today the bench felt really strong, even though I did them after a lot of rowing. On the last set my headache came back. Very frustrating. I'm going to try and get ahead of these headaches before they become a serious problem. I'm going to do a light week, focus on hydration and make sure I'm consuming plenty of salt. Hopefully that will address the problem moving forward.

[kopp]

Wednesday June 12

Squat 1 x 310; 5 x 240
Bench 5 x 185

Headache set in on the fifth rep of bench. Goal for this workout was to do just enough to not detrain, but not so much to get a headache. Was very annoyed that the headache set in nonetheless.

Friday June 14

Sled push 4 x 40m x 180
Cable Rows

Easy, felt good, no headaches.

Saturday June 15

Sled drag 1600m x 135
Cable Rows
Tricep Pushdowns

Sunday June 16

Ruck: 30 pounds, 10 miles; 15:22 per mile pace.

I set up an appointment with a doctor for Tuesday to make sure the headaches aren't anything serious. A lot of anecdotal evidence about this from the internet, but it seems like this is most likely due to pressure in the skull while holding breath during lifting. This is consistent with when it comes on, as well as the fact that it hasn't happened during sled work / rucking / smaller lifts where I'm not holding my breath. Most people say if you take a few week break from the lifts that are causing the issue that may resolve the problem. Other common internet recommendations are to do more warmup, focus on hydration, and take ibuprofen.

My #1 priority is to be in shape for a three day backcountry hiking trip to CO in mid-July. Given the above, I think I'm going to back off from barbell lifts and focus on sled push/drag, rucking, and maybe some less intense isolation lifts that don't require a lot of bracing. Hopefully, I'll be in shape for the trip, and then once I get back can return to lifting without any issue. Not ideal, but not terrible either.