Conditioning: The Prowler

[Black_Spit]

Mark in one of your videos you mentioned your guys using a Prowler. I believe in the context of being a relatively safe conditioning tool for knees ankles, etc...

I'm curious if you have any thoughts or recommendations on programming for prowler or sled dragging, recommended amount of time to use it. Sprinting/Distance etc.. For a person interested primarily in strength and just not getting too fat. I've done one PL meet and plan to do more.

Apologies if it's been asked 100 times, but I searched your forum and didn't find anything specific.

[Mark Rippetoe]

We use the Prowler in short pushes, and it's completely replaced the sled drag in our conditioning. 50 to 100m pushes, walked or sprinted, with loads of varying intensities and numbers of reps. The only problem with the Prowler is the fact that it reacts differently to every surface it's on, so I cannot tell you anything about the load that would be accurate for your specific surface. If pushed 60k that killed me over 50m, and I've pushed 90k that was no great effort over 100m, on different surfaces. The Prowler is still being learned about here. We welcome everybody's experiences, so please post.

[abenn]

I used it twice a week, usually Fridays and Tuesdays (my light day was on Tuesday after volume Monday, and Friday was heavy. I'm on an oly program for intermediates from Rip which is M,T,Th,Fri). Rubber floors that made it a total bitch if you stuck a dirty or wet part along the way. I just used two 45 irons on it for 100m pushes, took me about 30-40 seconds, so I'd rest 1:30 in between sets. I think the first day I did 3-4 sets and was a wreck. Worked up to 6-8 pretty quickly. I stay there and just try to push faster. I use it when I need to cut some weight for weight class. I never got sore, although I'd feel like crap for an hour or so afterward, and it never seemed to interfere much with my lifting.

When I don't need to use it to get some extra work in, I just do it now and then when I feel good and energetic. So maybe once or twice a week now, which is all I seem to need to stay relatively well conditioned.

There's a strongman at our gym who uses it 3x/week or so. He swears by it. He's a firefighter and says he has no problem running up stairs for the silly competitions they do, despite being 5'9 235. He does about the same - 6-8 sets with a plate/side on rubber floors, 1-1:30 rest.

[Mark Rippetoe]

The beauty of the thing is the lack of soreness, even after the most brutal workout you can possibly do. The lack of an eccentric component keeps everything from getting shredded, and as a result Prowler training does not contribute to systemic inflammation the way eccentric-heavy systems like CrossFit do.

I don't sell these things, but if you don't have one you're fucking up.

[abenn]

Agreed. The cost-benefit ratio of the prowler is far superior to any type of conditioning work I've dabbled in in the past, including CrossFit.

[rpbrown]

At my university's gym we devised a makeshift Prowler-type apparatus from a 24 inch plyometric jump-box on which we stack plates and push it by the support rods across a carpeted section of the gym. It seems to work well for now and might be viable for anyone in a less-than-optimal situation regarding the availability of special equipment like the Prowler.

[Matt Reynolds]

We use them all the time at STRONG. We have experiemented with numerous ways to use it but at least 80% of the time we use it is as follows:

Depending on the surface (we use both parking lot and indoor turf - the turf is MUCH harder), load it to something manageble (this is usually plates and 25s on the concrete and plates only on the tuf - also our prowlers were done at a machine shop and weigh around 100+lbs empty...

Sprint (at about 80% effort) for approximately 100 feet.
Rest: about 30 seconds or so.
Repeat for as many times as possible.

The really cool thing about using the prowler for conditioning (beyond it being f-ing brutal) is that it can EASILY be trained at ANY energy system. We love to do most our conditioning in the anearobic glycolytic (but alactic) energy system - meaning that we want to teach the body how to recover completely from short bouts of intense exercise. So we sprint (around 80%), and then rest for 30 sec or so and sprint again. At first you may feel your body building up lactate after just a couple of sprints, but soon you'll learnt o recover quickly and be able to hammer out sprint after sprint. (This is great conditioning for sport, like football, as well because it mimics the work:rest time ratio that you see in a game.)

Likewise, when you want to train in the anearobic lactic pathway, all you have to do is increase how hard you sprint. At a 95-100% sprint, and 30 seconds rest, you'll be building up lactate pretty quickly and will be throwing up in the parking lot before you know it. However, your body will learn to adapt to this as well and its not bad to throw it in there once every couple weeks or so.

We've found that walking with LOADED prowler isn't much easier than an 80% sprint or so over the same distance because covering the distance take sso much longer whne walking and the prowler "hangs on" to the ground more.

One last thing...we will often use a heart rate monitor with the prowler as well and sprint our ass off until we get our heart rate above 180. The we'll rest until we can bring it back down below 150 (145-148) and then sprint again until it gets above 180. This is best done for time - say 10 minutes. The first time you do it, you may only get 2-3 cycles in ten minutes, but as you become more conditioned you'll knock out 6, then 8, and even 10 rounds in ten minutes because your heart rate learns to elevate quickly and then drop quickly after the sprint.

Now, the work we do with the prowler, while primarily anaeobic in nature, has a large aerobic component - and certainly post exercise it does. But for aerobic/recovery work we still walk forwards and backwards with a loaded sled because its easier, and the range of motion in the legs is greater, and still completely concentric in nature.

Hope that helps some of you to program the prowler into your training.

[Regin Smidur]

One last thing...we will often use a heart rate monitor with the prowler as well and sprint our ass off until we get our heart rate above 180. The we'll rest until we can bring it back down below 150 (145-148) and then sprint again until it gets above 180. This is best done for time - say 10 minutes. The first time you do it, you may only get 2-3 cycles in ten minutes, but as you become more conditioned you'll knock out 6, then 8, and even 10 rounds in ten minutes because your heart rate learns to elevate quickly and then drop quickly after the sprint.

This sounds like a really cool and accurate way to measure progress. Do you have a brand of heart rate monitors that you would recommend?

[Roadrogue]

I've got about enough room at home to rotate it around in circles. I think I'll just push my motorcycle around the block. I can progressively load it, too. Or let air out of the tires.

[Beau Bryant]

I have used the prowler and sleds pretty heavily in the last year. I work a couple jobs, have three boys under the age of 4 and really don't get much sleep. The sled and the prowler has proved invaluable to helping me recover from weight, squats in particular.

Before I began prowler/sled work I would have a difficult time recovering from the volume day on TM by the intensity day, making new PRs difficult. I have found if I push or pull right after squatting and then again the next day I am nearly recovered 3 days later and fully recovered by my intensity day. I also think that the extra work has led to leg growth which has driven the squat up also. It's really hard to do too much with these pieces of gear.

I have many favorite Prowler workouts but one of my favorites is max distance for a set time. Put a minute on the clock, a load on the prowler and see how far you can go. Builds some pretty good mental toughness as a side benefit. Change the time and load depending on what you want.