Indigenous Ability

Oh, Crew, looking to get outside the comfy smooth gym and test your real mettle with activities and objects that haven’t been designed to make hefting them easier so you can skip grade-school reveling in the WOD participation trophy hamster wheel? Then, belly up to the bar for a PT Challenge from ye olde days of lumberjack and woodsman prowess. Pulp wood was a designation for bucked lengths not quite up to par for lumber use. For our purposes, and those into Woodsman and Lumber Sports Competitions, grab yourself 4 lengths of log four feet in length with an approximate weight of 30-40 pounds per. If you don’t have logs available, you can hit the resource that is Home Depot and pick up a couple of 6 x 6 pressure treated timbers. They come in 8-foot lengths so a wee middle cut to each gives you a PT resource that will last. [They’ll be a bit on the light side but they will serve the log-bereft.] The Course ·         Lay out...

This offering is an Old-School PT Challenge, a mini tutorial on form, and a bit of a finger wag at an aspect of “functional” training. First the PT Challenge: The Lumberjack Tabata Gear ·         You ·         An Eastern Single-Bit Ax [you can go double-bit but you won’t be shifting surfaces.] ·         A downed log to work [or if you’ve got a tree that needs to be felled, you’ve got a twofer—conditioning and chores—you’re welcome.] ·         A timer set to Tabata Intervals. The Protocol ·         Hit that timer and chop furiously for 20 seconds. ·         Rest for a strict 10 seconds. ·         Then back on the stick for 20 more seconds. ·         You do this for a t...

[The following is part of a loose series on Rough ‘n’ Tumble combat kicking starting with “Kicking in the Wild West .” Look for physical demonstration on upcoming RAWs.] The Americas, particularly what were to become the United States, were a true melting pot of peoples, cultures, ideas, cui sines, manners, morals, mores, quirks and, to our facet of focus—combat stylings. In any port-city you had vast influxes of all of these comingling into a motley stew and, of course, those intrepid enough to push further into rugged frontiers were likely, in many cases, hardy enough [or disreputable enough] to have more than a passing familiarity with the native cultures’ ways of throwing hands, feet, people, and weapons. Along the way they met other like-minded lusty, hearty, and ofttimes violently active souls. This is how author Joseph Alexander Altsheler, writing in 1911 described the atmosphere of the port city of New Orleans, just after the War of 1812. “ The basis of the...

Drop your gonads and grab your socks, Crew, as this one is a bear. It is a combination of movements that was formerly used to make puddles of men used to humping logs around like matchsticks, so why not grab a little old school logger brawny goodness? Used, was a log with two driven “U-Irons” for hand-grips. We’ll substitute an Olympic bar. If you are a Rookie I’ll suggest the empty bar. Stout-hearts and Foolish minds load her to 65 pounds, or 95 pounds if you have nowhere to be for the next 3-days. Mark off around 100 yards headed uphill. [The hill is specified.] Grip the U-Irons [O-Bar] and hoist her to hang at waist level. Swing-Snatch that thing overhead 3 times. On the 3rd rep—Lock her out and take 10 walking lunge steps up that hill. Kiss that rear knee to the ground with each soon to be quaking step. After the 10th step—drop it back to hang at the waist. Repeat until you top that hill. Then… Turn around and repeat to the bottom and…this portion i...