Since we are on the subject this week on obstacles, we are going to be looking at a specific obstacle that gave me a ton of heck at the Ohio Spartan Beast Race.
Welcome to the Twister!
Ok ok ok! For those of you in the calisthenics realm of things, practicing this kind of obstacle poses a number of challenges, mostly related to the fact that normal people don’t have this sort of twister device lying around in their backyard. However, since it is the month of the Pull Up over on the VIP forum, I got to thinking about how to train for this obstacle when you simply don’t have the device on hand (I wonder how expensive one of these things would be. . hmmm).
Criterion: You must be capable of performing 5 dead hang pull ups or 5 dead hang chin ups IN ADDITION TO flexed arm hangs for a solid 20 seconds.
Here’s a demo of all that and then some more.
Dead hang pull ups (note, under hand grip is used for chin ups. Featured here is the overhand dead hang pull up).
Flexed arm Hangs
Dailed in? Great! Now on to step two!
Considering that you have to maneuver your grip multiple times throughout the twister, you have to mimic how the obstacle is actually moving. TO mimic the twister, we are going to do a drill that involves switching our grip multiple times while circling the pull up bar. We will also factor in dead hangs with both two arms and on one arm at a time for three separate sets to also mimic the amount of hang time we will have on the twister as well! PHEW! Lots to be done here.
But just how do we go about this? Check out the demo below!
Give yourself a solid few weeks on this drill and follow the progressive training below.
Week 1: 3 bar rotations and two arm / single arm hangs at 3 seconds.
Week 2: 3 bar rotations and two arm / single arm hangs x 5 seconds.
Week 3: 3 bar rotations and two arm / single arm hangs x 8 seconds.
Week 4: 3 bar rotations and two arm / single arm hangs x 10 seconds.
Instructor note: the “bar rotations” refer to how many times you switch your grip on the pull up bar. The time listed indicates how long you are holding each hang position week after week.
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