Conditioning queens vs kings

Another goody by Mr. Wendler on conditioning.


Conditioning Queens vs. Kings
By Jim Wendler

After many years of running myself into the ground in high school, it wasn’t until I got to college that I realized how to properly condition. There is a trend amongst the natives that when you do conditioning, whether it be running, Prowler sprints/pushes, hills, circuits or whatever your poison YOU MUST STOP JUST SHY OF DEATH. This is the manly thing to do, right? No pain, no gain!

No brain, all pain. And subpar results.

You don’t have to go all out – you don’t have to lay on the ground, gasping for breath. It makes a good picture or YouTube video. But who trains for the camera?

Sure, in the beginning this is going to happen. It may take you a few months of beatings to get your bearings. This is normal especially if you are playing catch up for years of sitting on your ass, lifting weights and claiming to be “in-shape”.

Conditioning work just needs to be consistant – it needs to be hard, but it doesn’t have to leave you two breaths short of death. I like to use this as a guide line: if I can push the Prowler for 10, 40 yard sprints (with 90lbs) on my street with 1 minute rest between sprints – I am good to go. This is done 3 days/week and doesn’t leave me too taxed to live life or too taxed to make gains on my lifting. Yes, getting there required a ton of work. And yes, it is fun to do some ridiculous tests once a month. But there is a point where one becomes a conditioning queen rather than a bad ass king. You need to choose what crown you are going to wear.