How To Train For Super Endurance Sports - Fitness Coach Explains

At our personal training center in Singapore, we have several clients who are in the armed forces or who take part in very long endurance events (several days). They include military units such as the Naval Diving Unit, the Commandos.

Besides the usual physical fitness tests which are something we love to help people train for, there are other challenges that we help clients with such as their unit's specialized tests and the Ranger course. As well as super endurance events like long distance navigation or adventure races.

The ranger course or adventure race is special because you can't really "train" for it in a regular way that you can for normal tests like the broad jump. There is really not way to train to survive 30km fast marches or 80 km of waking in hard terrain on little sleep and food.

The idea is to survive it while remaining healthy and performing well in your body and in your mind to get that coveted Ranger tab on your uniform.

The key to this is similar to what I do with athletes in the competitive season. Get as muscular as possible!

In similar fashion to a sports athlete who has a long and grueling sports season, the long distance racer or soldier will get worn down over time simply because of the length and amount of work done during this event. And the thing that takes the biggest hit when you are wearing down is your muscle size (when you are stressed and overworked which is the case here, your body will choose to DUMP muscular weight).

Apart from not looking nice, wasting away muscles have a very unfortunate side effect. It destroys your immune system! You will notice that skinny frail people even in daily life, get sick more often without the stress of minimal food and excessive exercise.

That is the key problem that we face. And this is the reason, that if you are involved in a long event or mission, you should try to be as muscular as possible even before the course starts so that your immune system will be strong to survive the tough parts of the event.

What amount of muscle mass should you put on? I suggest you be 10kg over your regular weight in muscle (not a fatty please) before a long race or mission starts. You will do alot better this way:) That is exactly what our personal training programs for clients who are going for stuff like this do.

Clients who join these kind of activities are often mentally tough already so that will not be their downfall. We only need to remove the "most common" form of failure and that would be falling ill and needing to quit. Being muscular makes this less likely to happen.