Welcome to another Spartan Insider VIP Newsletter. This past week there’s been a break from the usual programming as Spartans have been participating in the Oxywealth Games. These sports and activities have been selected from the event schedule for the Glasgow Commonwealth Games and a few of our guys have shown they are pretty skillful and athletic in a number of sports
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Read on for this week’s news…
Oxygen Health & Fitness
Touch Footy
Being that we’re on a break from normal programming and also being the week of the Oxywealth Games, I thought we would select a sport as our Workout of the Week. We had Rugby 7’s last night but it was really just a modified Touch Footy game. This weekend also marks the end of season Jamberoo Touch Football Grand Final Gala Day with the Oxygen Team a good shot at taking out the title of A Grade Champions.
Touch Football is very fast paced and anaerobic in nature making it a perfect Spartan sport. It involves repeat short sprints which as described above is very anaerobic in nature (high intensity). Having to maintain that effort repeatedly can become quite aerobic. There’s plenty of agility work having to side-step defenders, bend down, pass left and right in attack, dive and plant the ball down with one hand. Defence often involves a fair bit of running backwards and sharp changes of direction whilst trying to chase your opponent.
To be good at this sport requires certain skills, passing both sides of the body and running in certain lines whilst learning to read the game will help decision making in both attack and defence. Above those sport skills, the fitness side of things that can be developed through a Spartan program involve Squats and Deadlifts, Box Jumps, Abdominal and Core exercises, Speed and Agility work.
It’s training and playing a sport like that which has elevated many current NRL players, most notably New Zealanders Sean Johnson and Benji Marshall from talented Touch Football kids to NRL superstars.
Charles Staley is a sports conditioning specialist and consultant from California. A former martial arts competitor and trainer, Staley is also an Olympic weightlifting coach, as well as a master’s level track and field competitor (discus event). He has coached elite athletes from many sports, including martial arts, boxing, track & field, football, Olympic weightlifting, and bodybuilding. Staley has written over 100 published articles, and has lectured extensively on the topics of human performance and sport training. He has recently authored a text on conditioning for the martial arts, and has several other books in the planning stages. Staley’s award-winning web site is consistently ranked among the top 50 in the world in the health & fitness category.
Gold Medal efforts
This week’s highlights come from our recent Oxywealth Games events. Instead of the usual Spartan training sessions we had both Weightlifting and Powerlifting. Last week with the Weightlifting it was the Clean & Jerk exercise and the Gold Medal Champion was Sean Casey with a 90kg lift over the head.
At our Powerlifting events, the aim has been to try and complete your heaviest weight that you can lift one time (1RM). We have had both a Bench Press and Squat competition. The Bench Press was won by yours truly with an 83kg lift at a bodyweight of 76kg. I suspect that mark will be annihilated by some bigger guys tonight but we’ll see if they can master more their than their own bodyweight.
In the Squat-off on Monday night Geoff McIntyre lifted a huge 155kg for the Gold Medal but some solid Squats with real depth were performed by Ant Mattata with 150kg and yours truly at 145kg. Top stuff dudes well done!
You can’t spell legendary without leg day
