Our Concurrent Training clinic has come to end with our final testing battery being completed on Saturday at Cowboys HQ with the use of JCU sports science VALD testing equipment. We had some terrific results across the board, and we are incredibly proud of our participants and their efforts.
We call our special programs at Hammer, clinics instead of challenges because we have an emphasis of educating and exposing our clients to activities and training methodologies that not only get our guys in better shape but also educate them so that post clinic our guys are consistently doing the right things for our bodies to continue to improve. Our clinic does not prescribe a set diet plan, where we set a blanket calorie target across the board and tell you our guys to eat it, irrespective if its attainable or something you would do long term. We want our participants to adopt eating strategies that still follow the law of thermodynamics but on their own terms, eating foods that they enjoy. This then promotes adherence post clinic and instead of dieting to exercise we have a bunch of people fuelling to train. This then also allows our participants to increase their intensity with their training eliciting even bigger results.
This clinic was based around exposing the general population to how field-based athletes would train during a season. We conducted speed work and speed mechanics education, agility and planned change of direction work, strength and power resistance training modalities using the latest technology that measures how fast or slow we lift weights. We measured training load so that all of our participants were hitting the right amount of training week in week out whilst also giving us an indication if injury is around the corner. Finally, a major component of this clinic was aerobic capacity work. Here we individualised everyone’s running distances so we were hitting the intensities needed to yield the best improvement. We also threw in a couple of curve ball sessions where it was all about some mental resilience and just getting it done.
This type of training when you are lifting and running in a periodised way is the gold standard to get fitter physiologically and aesthetically.
The Results
For the 26 participants tested out of the 34 (6 away at testing time) the results are as follows:
And Skeletal muscle on average over the group went up over 500 grams.
An incredible effort from everyone involved and stoked with the results. The great thing about these results is that they are realistic and will continue to improve post clinic with our strategies with nutrition and training frequency we have put in place throughout this clinic. These are sustainable changes and are not merely for the challenge which is what we at Hammer are most proud of.