Current training program

I haven’t spoken a lot about my physical training recently, but for the last eight months, I’ve been concentrating on Scott Sonnon’s “TacFit Commando” program. It is whole-body, six-directions and no-equipment. There are probably a dozen other specific good things about the program, and I was totally happy with it.

Then a few months back I had trouble pulling myself out of the water onto a three-foot platform after a short swim. True, the sides were rounded, and I couldn’t get a good grip, but it still suggested some serious weaknesses in my training, weaknesses that could have cost me dearly in the wrong situation.

Now, Scott had another program based on TacFit called “R.O.P.E.” (“Rapid Onset Pullup Employment) and I had looked at it but not tried it, wanting to go deeply into TacFit. But after this event, I decided that I needed more pulling strength, something that I’ve never really worked. I wonder why..?

Anyway, I pulled out ROPE and tried it, using a Jungle Gym portable pullup system. Worked pretty well (I have a little work to do to get it perfect). The upshot is that the system works great, but is a little less “perfectly” balanced than TacFit. In other words, one of the things I LOVE about TacFit is that you hardly need to stretch afterwords, it is so well designed. You DEFINITELY need to stretch after R.O.P.E. What I’m using is the seven-day rotation (Sunday: joint recovery. Monday: yoga. Tuesday: moderate TacFit or ROPE. Wednesday joint recovery. Thursday yoga. Friday moderate TacFit or ROPE. Saturday INTENSE TacFit or ROPE) alternating TacFit and Rope. This seems to work very well…and my task is to keep myself sufficiently recovered. I can use muscle soreness and sleeplessness as a measure of this.

The nice thing is that this covers every single aspect of fitness I choose to cover, with the possible exception of one-rep limit strength. I can add five minutes of jumping rope (twenty seconds work, ten seconds rest) and get a more intense aerobic effect, but don’t actually need it. This is a beautiful program, and I’ll keep you posted.