Strength and Conditioning for an OCR athlete.

Gemma Spackman is the Head Coach at Fundamental Sports and Fitness in Nottingham, she has worked with many sports people at a local and national level, helping helping them to conquer their fears and get results in 5k and 10k races all the way up to marathons.

A number of Gemma’s clients have taken part in Tough Guy, Tough Mudder, Rat Race’s Dirty Weekend and she's had the pleasure of training an OCR World Championship (2016) competitor.

As an OCR competitor whether you take part for fun and a laugh with your friends or aim to get a race timed, all training you do should be specific to the type of obstacles you may face.

This means your sessions need to involve a good quality strength and conditioning programme designed specifically for you and what you want to achieve.

Now a common question I often get asked is, what exactly is Strength and Conditioning and why do I need it?

It’s more than just lifting weights and thinking about getting stronger. It involves everything you need to get fitter as an athlete, from speed, agility and plyometrics to endurance and core work. Having a balanced programme will mean you’re race ready and set to tackle any obstacle that is on the course.

Clients who take part in my Blast Programme all about OCR Specific Training, follow a set training system which works on all of these areas to ensure by the time it gets to race day, everyone is as strong and as fit as they can be.

How this can work for you guys is splitting your training into lower, upper and a whole body session during the week. I find this is a great way to target all body parts and train each one to the max whilst allowing a perfect amount of recovery time between sessions and meaning you can still get in at least one run during the week as well as a couple of active recovery days, to keep your training balanced and to avoid picking up any unnecessary injuries.

Here is a whole body session for you to have a go at. This is keeping you in the endurance phase of training with the amount of reps and sets you’re doing. Use weights that really challenge you on the last 2-3 reps of the exercise. You want to feel fatigued at the end of each set.