December 23, 2013 Pavel Tsatsouline

StrongFirst Roadwork
Note: About ve years ago, I wrote up the following workout for
operators and martial artists in my newsletter.

Run. Shadow box. At intervals you have set for yourself—so many
minutes or so many phone poles—stop and do one to three pistols. At
the next stop do a couple of one-arm push-ups. Here and there do both
pistols and push-ups. No rest at all and just a couple of reps.

This is StrongFirst roadwork. It does not replace your dedicated

strength training. It adds a severely lacking high force component into
one’s conditioning. Steady state endurance interrupted by occasional
intense contractions is much more speci c to the needs of a ghting
man or woman than high reps of low intensity exercise, such as circuits
of high rep pushups and bodyweight squats.

Kyle Bochniak doing his roadwork on a treadmill at Broadway BJJ & Fitness
in Boston

The Science Behind StrongFirst Roadwork

Your muscle uses three energy pathways:

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1. The rst, most powerful and least enduring, is alactacid. You can
go very hard for ten to thirty seconds—and then the tank is empty.
2. The second energy system, glycolytic, takes over. It has a lot less
power—less than half—but last for several minutes, typically two
to six.
3. Finally, it is the turn of the aerobic system. It produces even less
energy—but it can go on forever.

This is an oversimpli ed pictured below, as all pathways operate at the

same time, but good enough for our purposes.

More and more Russian research is revealing that athletes from combat
and team sports are making a mistake killing themselves in the
glycolytic pathway—doing high-rep circuits to “burn.” The new
paradigm is—train your maximal alactacid power (MAP) in ten- to
twenty-second bursts of intense e ort and your ability to replenish
your tank aerobically. The conditioning portion of the training regimen
in my new book Kettlebell Simple & Sinister is designed in that exact
manner.

There is a lot more to say on this topic and we shall continue this
conversation in the future. For now stop being enamored with the
glycolytic pathway and the “burn.” As one Russian professor has said
in a lecture to wrestlers, “Whose muscles are more acidic in the end of
the match?—The loser’s.”
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Left to right: Head trainer John Clarke, ghter Kyle Bochniak, Tom Wood,
boxing and strength coach Steve Baccari

Maximal anaerobic power + speedy aerobic recovery

= Kettlebell Simple & Sinister

Thank you.

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