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I ordered Kurt Angles book the other day, and he has a pretty decent sized section on the trianing he did leading up to the 1996 Olympics. I thought it looked pretty interesting - it was mostly geared toward conditioning/endurance, but since a lot of it involves weights, I thought I'd post it in here.
He would do a thing he called 'Fatigue training". In the book he writes "I trained to the point where I was fatigued and didn't want to do anymore. Then thats when I'd just be getting started."
A normal day of training would be: a twenty minute warm up on an exercises bike, and some stretching. Then he'd go on a four mile run through the hills of Pittsburgh, sprinting on every hill he hit, usually for 200-200 yards. He'd average around 7 minutes a mile.
When he got done he'd be pretty tired but he says "thats when I was just beginning."
He'd do 15 hill sprints carrying his manager Jim Perri (Sounds very Enamait style), who weighed about 185. He'd vary the way he carried him; sometimes hed have him in a piggy back style, then in front of him, the same way you would carry your wife, and sometimes fireman style. He'd get to a point where he was exhausted he could hardly stand, then do the "hardest drill of all", where he would wrap a bungee cord around himself, and his manager would hold him back, so he was sprinting up against resistance...kinda like Rocky pulling the sled in Rocky IV. He said he'd do about 10 of those, and did it faithfully almost every day. His whole game plan was to be the best conditioned wrestler at the Olympics, so he could wear down the bigger, stronger heavyweights.
Some of the weight lifting he did included:
100 Jump Squats with 80 lbs dumbells.
Squatted 225 lbs 77 times.
Squatted 315 lbs 44 times
Squatted 405 lbs 28 times.
Squatted 135 lbs 136 times.
(All those were on deifferent days)
Those would be the very beginning of his weight lifting workouts. He didn't believe in maintenence lifting. He writes "To me, if youre just maintenence training, you're actually losing strength. I always went in with the idea of lifting heavy, getting an intense workout. And I was able to keep my strength, sometimes even improve during the season. So I'd start with those squats, then move on to heavy lifting".
For plymometrics he did:
"80 lbs dumbells, squat down, and jump up as high as I could, for 50 to 100 times. Then I'd do the same thing on one leg. I'd lunge up on a bench and come back down on it - twenty five each leg. Then I'd grab 30 lbs dumbbells and hop back and forth over a bench."
All this coupled with the fact that he was on the mat wrestling like crazy, including one story where Dan Gable made them wrestle only one wrestling match...however instead of it being 3three minutes followed by two, two minute rounds, it was a 30 minute round followed by two, 20 minute rounds. He said he'd put in an average of 7 hour worth of conditioning, 6 times a week.
I'm pretty bored, so like I do, I thought you'd all like to see how an elite level athlete trains. The book itself isnt too bad, it actually covers more of his amateur wrestling days than his WWE days.
What do you guys think? Good regime? Overtraining?
He would do a thing he called 'Fatigue training". In the book he writes "I trained to the point where I was fatigued and didn't want to do anymore. Then thats when I'd just be getting started."
A normal day of training would be: a twenty minute warm up on an exercises bike, and some stretching. Then he'd go on a four mile run through the hills of Pittsburgh, sprinting on every hill he hit, usually for 200-200 yards. He'd average around 7 minutes a mile.
When he got done he'd be pretty tired but he says "thats when I was just beginning."
He'd do 15 hill sprints carrying his manager Jim Perri (Sounds very Enamait style), who weighed about 185. He'd vary the way he carried him; sometimes hed have him in a piggy back style, then in front of him, the same way you would carry your wife, and sometimes fireman style. He'd get to a point where he was exhausted he could hardly stand, then do the "hardest drill of all", where he would wrap a bungee cord around himself, and his manager would hold him back, so he was sprinting up against resistance...kinda like Rocky pulling the sled in Rocky IV. He said he'd do about 10 of those, and did it faithfully almost every day. His whole game plan was to be the best conditioned wrestler at the Olympics, so he could wear down the bigger, stronger heavyweights.
Some of the weight lifting he did included:
100 Jump Squats with 80 lbs dumbells.
Squatted 225 lbs 77 times.
Squatted 315 lbs 44 times
Squatted 405 lbs 28 times.
Squatted 135 lbs 136 times.
(All those were on deifferent days)
Those would be the very beginning of his weight lifting workouts. He didn't believe in maintenence lifting. He writes "To me, if youre just maintenence training, you're actually losing strength. I always went in with the idea of lifting heavy, getting an intense workout. And I was able to keep my strength, sometimes even improve during the season. So I'd start with those squats, then move on to heavy lifting".
For plymometrics he did:
"80 lbs dumbells, squat down, and jump up as high as I could, for 50 to 100 times. Then I'd do the same thing on one leg. I'd lunge up on a bench and come back down on it - twenty five each leg. Then I'd grab 30 lbs dumbbells and hop back and forth over a bench."
All this coupled with the fact that he was on the mat wrestling like crazy, including one story where Dan Gable made them wrestle only one wrestling match...however instead of it being 3three minutes followed by two, two minute rounds, it was a 30 minute round followed by two, 20 minute rounds. He said he'd put in an average of 7 hour worth of conditioning, 6 times a week.
I'm pretty bored, so like I do, I thought you'd all like to see how an elite level athlete trains. The book itself isnt too bad, it actually covers more of his amateur wrestling days than his WWE days.
What do you guys think? Good regime? Overtraining?
