A Tougher Walk

The other day we introduced the walking squat to add variety and conditioning to your routine. Today I’d like to add a little tougher variation of a walking conditioning movement. Actually “a little tougher,” might be the wrong expression. Cruel and unusual punishment may be more appropriate.

Walking Animal Pushups. Again simple to perform yet devastatingly brutal. Pick your favorite animal conditioning movement. I.e., bear crawl, lizard walk, tiger, gorilla… aardvark …. Okay I made the last one up. Now as you begin to perform it, you simply take one full step forward (whatever a step in your particular animal movement constitutes) and then perform a push up. Just a few sets of these would probably be enough as most animal movements are pretty brutal on their own. I would pick five different movements and do say a set of 20 to 25 of each movement. Whatever the particular position that you make your body assume in imitating that particular animal is the position you do the push up in. That way you get muscular strength and endurance from a lot of different angles as well as sky high cardio and total body involvement. You could combine this with the walking squat as we already suggested and double your fun.

Adding a walking element can make any conditioning exercise tougher and more productive. For instance the walking kettlebell swing, walking dumbbell deadlifts, walking sandbag presses, etc. Mix and match and make your own. You can keep progression by reps or by covering a certain distance. These exercises are a little different take on this concept, but if you want to learn more about distance conditioning and how to get into incredible, butt whoopin’ shape, then take a look at the “Going the Distance” section of Super Strength and Endurance for Martial Arts. http://www.strongerman.com/martial_arts.com