Are you afraid of change? Change is such an interesting word. Change, variety, and “switch it up” are often popular buzz words thrown at people in the fitness industry. Many people talk about changing up their workouts, but few people do it. The perfect example is….me.

I mean, on one hand I do a lot of crazy intense things with my workouts. But, at the end of the day it’s all just high intensity bodyweight and free weights workouts thrown together in complex circuits. True change for me would be to go into my gym tomorrow and train like a power lifter. Continue reading

Coming from a Martial Arts background, conditioning almost always overtook all of my other goals. Forget about fat loss if you can’t even go a few rounds without puking. Muscle mass and all that will come with the training you need to do to prepare your body in sport.

The true mark of an athlete is not one that gives his all, but one that keeps giving his all, again and again. We call this Work Capacity, or the amount of work you can do and how hard or fast you can do it. In martial arts, a higher work capacity is what gives you the fighting edge over your opponenet.

Think about it. If you can perform 30 punches with good form in 10 seconds as opposed to your opponenet being able to throw 20 punches in 10 seconds with good form, who has a greater chance of winning the match? It’s actually hard to tell. But what if I said your opponenet threw went all out for 10 seconds, then needed a minute to rest up while you were ready to throw your assault within 10 seconds of rest? Now who has a better chance of winning?

So in other words, work capacity in my book is how much work you can get done in a short amount of time, recover, and repeat the same performance over and over again.

How do we Increase Work Capacity?

My favorite method of increasing work capacity is something called Density training. There are two ways of doing a density workout: either do more work in the same amount of time, or the same amount of work in less time. I will show you examples of both variations:

Density Workout One: Do more work in the Same amount of time

Complete as many rounds in twenty minutes as you can of:

10 Kettlebell Swings, each han

5 Pull-ups

Lets say you did a total of 120 swings, and 60 pull-ups. Your goal for the next work is to be able to do one more rep, or 121 swings and 61 pull-ups in the same time.

Density Workout Two: Do the same amount of work in less time.

For time:

25 Medicine Ball Haybalers

50 Clean & Press

75 Push-ups

75 135lb Deadlift

50 Burpees

25 Medicine Ball Woochops

Time the workout, then strive to complete the workout in less time.

Start implementing Work Capacity workouts in your training for increasing conditioning!

Related Posts:

• Differences in Training
• Train your Body as One Unit
• Stop Rationalizing and Lift
• Your Fitness Routine Away from Home
• Keep Changing Your Routine for Constant Progress

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