From Sloth to Spartan in 100 Days: Week 1 Day 1 – 7

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If you just stumbled across this article from the interwebs, be sure to check out my intro article to a new training program I’m setting up: From Sloth to Spartan in 100 Days. Essentially, this is a Spartan Race training guide. More specifically, this is how I’m going to train for my Spartan Beast race in July.  This is my training program for you to follow along as well.

However, you can use this training to prepare for shorter events, and other obstacle races such as Spartan Sprint, Super Spartan, Warrior Dash, Tough Mudder and many others.

First and foremost, this is how the training program will be presented:

  • weekly training will be posted either on Thursday or Friday – this will give you few days to learn and familiarize yourself with everything you need before starting each week on Monday
  • each article will include your exercise regiment for that week
  • printer friendly version of the workouts
  • where necessary, I’ll post links to relevant resources such as exercise instructions
  • each article will include nutritional advice, and a sample of one daily menu
  • my commentary

Workouts for Week 1 Day 1-7

First 3 weeks I’ll focus on introducing you to various types of exercises, but primary focus will be on getting you into a routine and priming your body for more intense workouts.

In the beginning we will rarely do workouts that cover 2+ major  muscle groups. Each training day we’ll isolate a specific muscle group.

  • Monday: Chest and Triceps, Cardio
  • Tuesday: Legs
  • Wednesday: Core
  • Thursday: Back and Biceps, Cardio
  • Friday: Shoulders, Cardio
  • Saturday and Sunday: Off

Strength training

Each strength training session will start off with compound exercise consisting of 7-9 sets.  The goal here is to exhaust the whole muscle group so that when you perform subsequent exercises you utilize all muscles in that group to execute the reps.

I suggested a range of reps you should do, but you’re probably going to ask, is how  much weight should you do? Answer: lift enough weight to perform the minimum of the set range, but heavy enough that you’ll struggle to move it on the final rep or two.

Cardio

Cardio sessions will consist of 20 minute light jog on the treadmill. That’s it… light jog. No warm up, no cool down. 20 minute maximum.  Remember, this is week 1, nothing too intense here.

Nutrition

The only thing you have to do in terms of nutrition, is familiarize yourself with my rules:

  • no wheat
  • no sweets
  • no processed foods
  • no alcohol
  • limit coffee
  • eat more meat
  • eat more fish
  • eat more poultry
  • eat more raw veggies, berries and nuts
  • don’t be afraid of fat
  • have some fruit
  • learn to cook

This is it for week 1. Good luck and have fun.

Download the printer friendly version of exercises here.