Focus for the month: Single Leg Stability
Find out more about the origins of Mad Dawg Style training.
Warm-Up (video here)
Test: 3 x Toe Touch
Supine/Prone: 2:00 – 4:00 minutes Foam Roll Calf, Quads or Low Back
Suspended: 5 x Shin Box Flow – per side
Stacked: 5 x Tall Kneeling Front Press + Torso Rotations in each direction
Activity: 5 x Single Leg Deadlift + In-Place March – per side
The toe touch test looks at the entire posterior chain of muscles that go from the bottom of your feet to the top of your head. We will apply some mobility drills and some stability drills and see if they affect the range of motion of the toe touch. Supine, prone, suspended, stacked are all spine positions and are part of developmental milestones used to measure the progress of infants as they learn to walk. I use these milestones to make sure we are getting a clear look at how the athlete’s body is moving pre-workout. There is no rule that says a warm-up has to contain all them milestones, in fact, in some of the classes we skip certain parts of the warm-up because circuit A behaves like a warm-up.
I like to use one exercise for each major movement pattern, squat, hinge, etc. to make sure we aren’t missing anything, especially for a generalized program like this one. If you feel like you want to double down on squatting movements and add some bilateral squats to the unilateral squats, be my guest. However, I would not leave any of these movement patterns out.
Squat: Crossover Squat
Hinge: Single Arm KB Clean Progression
Push: Push-Up Progression
Pull: Seated Row or Ring Row
Core Static: Bird Dog Progression
Core Dynamic: Backwards Roll Progression
Locomotion: Komodo Dragon Progression
Loaded Locomotion: Side Lunge Progression
Optional: Kettlebell Tricep Extension
Optional: Kettlebell Curl
You will notice that I have included some extremities (i.e. beach muscle) exercises like curls and tricep extensions. It is unlikely that you’ll get bigger arms from these exercises but I have started including them in the majority of my programs because, using higher volume and medium-light weights can help strengthen the connective tissue in your extremities over time. Tendons, can take about 100 days to strengthen and one of the most common reasons athletes get injured, and stop training, when strength training is by getting tendinitis/tendonosis/tendonopathy so adding curls, tricep extensions and, soon, calf raises is my attempt to head off injury and try to do what we can to help athletes stay consistent.
You will also notice that the exercise videos I provide are just demos with minimal, if any, explanation. As we progress through the months, I will add some videos explaning the finer points of these movements and why I use them in certain couplets and triplets.
Cool-Down (video here) – I like to spend 1:00 in each position and gradually increase through the month to 1:30 – 2:00 in each position.
Spine Extension: Sphinx Pose
Hip Extension: Brettzel – This is a longer explanation, see the Cool-Down video for a quick demo
Spine Flexion: Childs Pose
