Putting Our Money Where Our Mouth Is: A Journey In Human Performance

The Challenge:

I work with dedicated athletes from almost every sport, firefighters that compete in rigorous fitness challenges, and everyday people from ages 8 to 79 who push themselves to maintain their physical fitness. No matter what they do outside of the gym my golden rule before I work with any athlete is that they have a goal. It is vitally important to training otherwise that extra mile to be stronger, faster, and just better isn’t there. Now you’d think because I place so much emphasis on goal setting and striving towards that goal I’d have one myself, but I didn’t; until one day one of my clients asked me what my goal is. I was stumped. Of course, I train every day and push myself hard, but I wasn’t doing it for any purpose. This is why I built the RVXtreme challenge. The ultimate fitness challenge that will push my body to its physical capacity. I want to show people that with the correct implementation of programming it is possible to put two fitness aspects that are on the opposite ends of the spectrum, together; heavy lifting and long-distance running.

Have you ever seen a weightlifter run a marathon, and fast? What about a long-distance runner lift heavy weights, and I mean 405lbs squat heavy. There’s a good chance you haven’t and for obvious reasons, they’re two competing ideas. Looking at the body type of a power athlete (heavy lifter) and an endurance athlete (long-distance runner), physically and biologically they’re completely different from the inside out. Simply put, as athletes lift heavier, their bodies retain more mass which makes running more challenging. Because of that extra mass, the more an athlete runs the more mass they will lose. It sounds damn near impossible to make these two completely opposite entities work together. Which is exactly why I am doing it. I am doing it to show that with correct programming and diet control it is possible to lift the universal standard weights for heavy lifting while qualifying for the universal marathon standards.

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Where I’m at Now:

I am a high-performance trainer specialized in body mechanics, body movement and training elite level athletes in movement mechanics. AKA, I definitely consider myself more than qualified to come up with the right programming in order to complete this challenge. I’m 25 almost 26 and 6’2”. 5-8 years ago, I did a lot of recreational running, but nothing over 10km and I’ve only accomplished that maybe a handful of times. I haven’t done any long-distance running, at all, ever. I predominately work on

sprinting, sprint mechanics and speed acceleration. So yes, I am a rookie when it comes to long distance running.

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How I am going to do it: