The conditioning Centre

The California Chronicles

The California Chronicles: Lessons in strength from across the pond

Four months ago I went to the Smart Fitness Summit in Newcastle, Dos was the lead speaker. I was impressed with his programming and the set up he has at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita. I asked if I could come and see him and he agreed. I am now here in California and cannot wait to get in the gym.

We have been in California for 3 full days now and spent two of them in the gym with Robert Dos Remedios, Coach Dos to the athletes, watching and learning from his programme. My first impression was that of the size of the place, the College of the Canyons (COC) has over 20,000 students between 18 and 20 years old and sport is very important at the college. Below is a video of the strength and conditioning facility at COC, there are 14 platforms, 5 squat racks and a huge amount of weight to put on the bars. Add to that a variety of other tools such as kettle-bells, landmines, TRX's and Dumbbells and you have a facility ready to build athletes.

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Dos and his assistant coach Dan Corbett have a lot of athletes to work with: Football, soccer, volleyball, basketball, softball, track & Field and students that can enrol in weightlifting classes, so the key to the programme is efficiency. Get the athletes in, work them hard and move on. To this end the coaches are strict as hell and the athletes are expected to work with an adult attitude and learn quickly, if not they risk some serious F-bombs and a much harder session.

American football has a team of 131 athletes and they have 90 minutes to train the entire group. So sessions are split up into three 30minute blocks of different sections of the team. Each athlete only trains for roughly 30 minutes but the programme is about density. Complexes and supersets are used to ensure maximal work in the given time:Jump shrug/Hang snatch or OH lateral squat/Ham string raises with the emphasis and form and not load. These guys train hard and get strong, not to mention freakin' massive and there isn't a biceps curl in sight!

The next sport worth talking about is men's basketball, today they were subjected, and yes that is the best term for this session, to a "Running" session by Dos. It was supposed to take roughly 25minutes but lasted twice that because the players weren't performing to Dos's standards. Below is a video of the drill which resulted in a series of punishments from repeating it 13 times to the American classic: Up-Downs. This session will definitely make the athletes fitter and it showed that anything other than everything is a waste of their and Dos' time.

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Today we saw the sled for the first time; I have used them before and love them. If you ever need to end somebody with a hard full body conditioning session this is the tool of choice. The video below shows the basketballers supersetting a sled push with kettlebell swings. The sled was also used as a push/pull superset by the women's volleyballers to develop upper body strength, power and conditioning. I will definitely be breaking my sled out when I return to Bournemouth.

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The TRX is a tool regularly used by Dos and Dan and today the Track team had a session based around it. The video below shows a series of exercises used on the TRX, all were tri-sets with some form of kettle bell exercise. I think the TRX is a great way to safely load the body in a huge variety of ways and I may well have to get some. TRX if you are reading I'll take some for free to test them out if you like!

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The Complex

Dos and Dan have a penchant for complexes and have one in particular that they have some scores for; as we are the new boys it only seemed appropriate that we have a go at beating them. Dos has done it with a 40kg bar in 1:38 and Dan in 1:42� so we have our targets.

The complex is 10 reps on the following exercises and is pretty damn hard: Jump shrug, Clean Squat, Push Press, Hang Snatch, OH Squat, RDL, BO Row and Clap Press Up. Here is a video of Tom's attempt at toppling the big dogs.

He managed 1:52 .so the record still stands, stay tuned for future attempts.

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Fun with tyres!

Dos has 4 tyres at his disposal to use for training, they range in size from around 200lbs to 400lbs. Today Tom and I decided to have a play with them and see what we could come up with. Below are a few videos for your viewing pleasure:

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The BIG 10

Simple:10 bars, start at 60kg/132lbs work up to 129kg/284lbs. 60 footballers competing to lift big and getting psyched. Below is the video of the 10 attempts, Nick (Hercules), completed the set first, as did a few others.

For the real big boys Dos set up a Big 11^th: 308lbs. Hercules had a few attempts at it:

Close...but no cigar

Then a guy steps up, must be around 190lbs, Tom and I looked at each other thinking it would be pretty special if he did what everyone else had failed to do. Here is a video of his attempt and the other guys who made the Big 11.

Finally, for the strongest in the team, the weight went up: check it out:

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Strongman / Woman Conditioning

One facet of the programme at C.O.C is outdoor conditioning. Today Men's Basketball and Women's Softball had a chance to experience the strongman style training that Dos runs. Below is a video of each team completing the session. The softball team mid session and the basketballers doing the finisher: roughly 2 minutes of solid work aimed at reminding you that you have done a hard session.

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Classes and training will take place in the Bournemouth and Poole area.

For information on class times and dates email russell@conditioningcentre.com

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