You may of seen on social media that 7 mates and I took on the daunting task of tackling the hardest obstacle course around. The Spartan Beast! This promised to be 14 miles plus over 2 mountains in the beautiful French Alps… So, what did Primal Fitness learn from such a run?
Here’s our 3 lessons we learned from The Spartan Beast – and how you can use them in your fitness journey.
1) Know you enemy
Although I had plenty (more than enough) time to get prepared for this run, I really didn’t research the course or even the obstacles. I knew the upper body obstacles would be fine, but didn’t take into account little things, like walking up a huge black run mountain. If I’d known more I could of tailored my training to suit and made the run much easier.
How this can help you? Well, think of your personal weaknesses - do you lack cardiovascular fitness? Not naturally strong? Or on diet terms do you have a sweet tooth or love those savory treats? With each of these you can tailor your training to improve these weaknesses or just by taking temptation away from the foods you crave that are holding you back.
2) Plan of attack
One big part with any part of fitness and weight loss, is to plan ahead. With the Spartan beast, my running training was well, rather sparse, my hill training, non-existent. To make the event easier and much more enjoyable, trips to the peak district hill walking would have helped a huge amount.
With this in mind, when you have a goal in mind it really helps to think ahead about how to achieve this goal. Using weight loss as an example, then go and do a big food shop, getting all those healthy natural foods in your house, and taking away temptation. Plus, another great tip is to plan your training, a set schedule and training will help take away the guess work and really push forward your progression.
3) You really can do it!
The main thing I learned from taking on the Spartan beast, is that you really can achieve your goals! Even with no running training, at altitude in the sweltering heat, we all conquered the run. There were some very tough times up the mountains, at a distance I’d never even attempted anywhere near before but by putting our mind to it, we all got round the course and even home in time for the second half of the England vs Sweden World Cup game!
So, set your fitness and weight loss goals, and like us on the beast - keep plugging away! If you don’t give up you will achieve them – even if it does take longer than expected (and you get 3rd degree burns sunburn)… You’ll get there and the sense of achievement will be well worth it!!