Top 5 Conditioning Exercises

I think it’s important for EVERYONE to be ATHLETIC.

Whether your goal is strength, muscle gain or fat loss, being athletic – and in turn, training like an athlete – will never go out of style.

Why? Well, because athleticism is something that can benefit us in our everyday lives.

So that means that we not only should train to look like athletes, but perform like them as well.

That means having wiry, explosive, almost deceiving strength AND being able to “GO” for days.

Being able to “GO” means having incredible conditioning levels that will allow us to perform for hours on end. And you can’t achieve that by using an elliptical machine and reading People magazine.

That said, here are my top 5 ways to conditioning your body and really “get in shape”.

Top 5 Conditioning Exercises

1. Kettlebell Snatches – I’m not sure if there is a better full body conditioning exercise. Snatches will help you develop a powerful hip snap (important for any explosive athletic endeavour) AND doing them for high reps will ensure that you are able to maintain a constant hip explosion for the duration of your event or game (power endurance). I love snatches for the upper back building benefits and how they can smoke your grip like nothing else. Check out the video below on how to do snatches…

Right now, I’m doing snatch VO2 max training. I’m up to 64 sets of 7 reps, resting 15s between sets.

Walter Payton ran hills.

2. Hill Sprints – A close second to snatches are good, ol’ fashioned hill sprints. I love hill sprints so much more than sprints on a flat surface because of the limited range of motion – yet big bang for your buck – that hill sprints provide. Sprinting on a track running at your top end speed, especially if you’re not properly warmed up or if you’ve got restricted mobility and flexibility, is a recipe for injury. Sprinting at your “top end” speed on a hill is humbling. Because of the incline, you’re not able to fully extend your knees thus saving your hamstrings and quads from bad strains & pulls.

We have a HUGE hill here in my neck of the woods in Toronto. I’ll take my oldest daughter with me and we’ll do anywhere from 8 – 15 reps.

3. Kettlebell Swings – The snatch, especially if you’re a beginner, is a technically demanding exercise. So if you still want to gain the benefits of maintaining a powerful and athletic hip hinge, then swings are the way to go. I use this exercise to condition the athletes that I work with mainly because a lot of what they do (volleyball & basketball players) rely a lot on their hands. I give them swings as opposed to snatches because I need to keep them healthy and teaching them how to snatch while they’re in-season isn’t worth the risk of injury.

100 straight swings has been a great standard for my clients to reach. Just make sure to start off slowly and to not burn out too early.

4. Prowler Pushes – I fell in love with the Prowler this past year. The gym that I train at has a cold, indoor concrete hallway about 60 yards long. I slap on a couple of plates and push that thing for 40 as fast as I can. I usually do this after a deadlift workout and use it both for conditioning and for unilateral leg work. It feels incredible. If you can get access to a Prowler, I strongly suggest you give it a try. Owning a Prowler is, by the way, a good sign that the gym that has it knows what they’re doing.

These days I’m doing 10 reps of 40 yard pushes -as fast as I can- with 90lbs on the Prowler.

5. Jumping Rope – Great for footwork, coordination and strengthening your tendons. There’s a reason why boxers jump rope and have been doing so for hundreds of years.

Aim for trying to get to 5 minutes straight and then add a minute per week up to 10 minutes.

So those are my top 5 and it’s rare in a week that I’ll go without doing at least 2 of these exercises/activities.

Being a father to 5 very active children, I’ll always want to be able to keep up with them (and beat them when we play one-on-one) for as long as I can.

Having a great looking body is all fine and good, but if you can’t do anything with that body, then what’s the point.

Make sure you get 2-3 good conditioning sessions in per week and you’ll reap benefits of not only being in better shape, but losing a ton of fat AND sparing your hard earned muscle as well.

Chris Lopez, RKC

P.S. For some really good conditioning drills, don’t forget to checkout the TT Kettlebell Revolution HERE….