My Cardio Session From 10-10-11…

In the below video you’ll see 2 rounds of the cardio session that I performed yesterday.  I went with the “Inverted Ladder.”  I’ve written about the inverted ladder in previous blog posts (again, props to Tony Gentilcore as he’s the person that
I learned the inverted ladder from).

Basically, you choose an exercise and perform 10 reps.  You then move on to the second exercise and perform 1 rep.  And you finish off round 1 with a third exercise that you perform the same amounts of reps of on each round (the “constant”).

In round two you take off one rep of exercise number one (so you go from 10 reps down to 9 reps), and you add one rep in exercise number two (so you go from 1 rep to 2 reps).  And once again, keep the reps for the third exercise the same (you’ll see that I did 3 reps on the hang clean in every round, as my constant).

Keep taking away a rep on each round for exercise number one until you go down to 1 rep.  And then add a rep every round to exercise number two until you hit 10 reps.  So, you’ll end up performing 10 rounds.  Complete these 10 rounds as fast as possible.  Mark down your time, and the next time you repeat it, try to perform the entire inverted ladder (with the same weight) in less time.  To see what a couple rounds look like on video…

As you can see, I went with…

-TRX Jump Squats (10 reps working my way down to 1 rep)

-Plank-Ups (1 rep working my way up to 10 reps)

-Hang Cleans (3 reps on every round)

I finished in 7 minutes and 9 seconds.  Next time my goal will be to get 7:08 or better.

If you watched my recent YouTube video, “Why I’m NOT a fan of distance running,” you’ll realize why I prefer to set up my cardio sessions like I did in this inverted ladder… because there is less repetitive stress and for whatever joint stress there is, it is spread more evening throughout the body (compared to running miles and miles).

Now, if you’re a student of the game, you may be thinking; “wow, every time you finish the rep on those hang cleans, the weight comes crashing down.  That doesn’t look too joint friendly”  This is true, and if you were thinking this then you get  a gold star!  This is actually the reason that I don’t have my clients perform cleans unless they have bumper plates and they can just drop the weight to the floor on each rep.  I mean, it basically takes the entire body to get the weight up to your shoulders, and then as the entire load comes crashing down we are asking our shoulders to take on the brunt of the load as the weight “yanks” on the shoulders as we catch it down by our quads.  BUT, when you using cleans in cardio sessions the weight is typically light enough that this is NOT an issue.  However, if you perform cleans as their “usual” purpose (using heavier weight to develop power), I recommend using bumper plates and dropping the weight on every rep – like THIS.

When setting up my cardio sessions for myself and my clients, I also try to make sure they are as joint friendly as possible.  So, give the inverted ladder a try.  If you are anything like me, you’ll think that this is way more fun than a 3-mile run.  By the way, for your 3 exercises, just choose any 3 that are big compound movements that really challenge you.  For example; Jump Squats (10-1 reps); Kettlebell Swings (1-10 reps); Jumping Jacks (always 5 reps).

If you missed my reasoning for not being a fan of distance running (for MOST people), you can check out the video below…