For advanced athletes, summer brings the opportunity to add some extra “play hard” to your “work- hard-play-hard” routine. To the most dedicated of gym buffs, the thought of laying around on a beach for a week during vacation sounds absurd. So what should you do when you have to leave your regularly scheduled workouts and your gym membership at home? Luckily, there’s a workout for you — it’s called the Sore Legs, No Equipment Workout. WORK OUT ON THE ROAD The No-Equipment Workout
The Sore Legs, No Equipment Workout, also known as the Hotel Room Workout, was created by Bobby Maximus, author of “Maximus Body” and a regular contributor to Men’s Health. While this workout is especially beneficial for endurance and strength athletes, anyone up a creek without a paddle, or rather, in a hotel room without gym access, will find this workout helpful. Maximus’ Sore Legs, No Equipment Workout involves a series of repeated lunges and wall-sits to bulletproof your lower body. Not only will this give you more stamina on a long run or ride, but you’ll also get rid of aches and pains. Better yet, if you don’t have any lower body issues related to running now, you’ll prevent issues down the road by using this workout. Most strength athletes find themselves in a rut because they don’t do enough reps. This workout is designed to solve that problem. This workout is not only designed to increase your lower body strength and harden your body, but to challenge you mentally as well. It’s an old, worn out warmup routine. The pitcher, 45 minutes before the game, will do a light stretch and toss the ball for 30 minutes or so before their 20-30 minute bullpen practice. Then he’ll throw on a jacket and take a seat in the dugout — not exactly what I’d call prepared for “peak” performance. We have a saying at The Ranch: “Your body can’t possibly recruit what isn’t awake.” Basically, if all of your body’s components aren’t fully awake and ready to go, you can’t use them to their full ability. Your full body, not just your arm, needs to be awake and ready if you want to see any drastic improvement to your pitching performance. Although most athletes know they need to have complete utilization, or wake-up/warmup of their body, most people try to get by on less. In the end, their warmups are ineffective, and even dangerous. Let this be clear: Warming up your arm is not enough. Without focusing on the entire body during a warmup, pitchers put themselves at a greater risk of injury, and that’s something we have zero tolerance for here at The Ranch. If it’s the fear of getting worn out during the game that concerns you, you might need to rethink your conditioning. YOUR OWN WAKE-UP, WARMUP Creating an Individualized Pre-Game Routine
In essence, the Sore Legs, No Equipment Workout involves 40 alternating bodyweight lunges,
followed by a 30-second wall-sit. Then, 38 alternating lunges, followed by another 30-second wall-sit. You reduce the number of
alternating lunges by two every time and end each rep with a 30-second wall-sit until you are down to two alternating lunges followed by a 30-second wall-sit. To get the most out of this workout, it’s recommended that you make it through the workout without resting. Most likely, you’ll find that a few reps into the Sore Legs, No Equipment Workout, your legs will be just that — sore. Beyond that, this workout is a great way to add variety into your normal workouts and keep you at your strongest during summer vacations and work trips.
A warmup should never be the cause of fatigue. This means the pitcher should strengthen his warmup process, constantly tweaking it and adapting until the ideal level of personal readiness for peak performance is achieved. For example, if the first inning is where you struggle the most, ramp up your warmup to a “third inning lather.” If you start to fade later in the game, it’s probably time to look at both your warmup and conditioning. Warm up this way, and your body will adjust and even crave that level of stimulation before game time. The big takeaway here is to develop a routine that works for you. This might mean your wake-up and warmup routine is more lengthy and involved, but continually adapting to your individual needs is what will make the process the most effective.
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