How To Train And Prepare For An Obstacle Course Race

When I ran my first Spartan Race 9 years ago, it was miserable.

The race took place in the last week of October in the Chicago area and the temperatures were around 40-45 degrees. I assumed to wear clothes that I would throw away after the event so I wore cheap tights, shorts and an old under armour shirt that had the sleeves cut off.

The shoes were the biggest problem. I wore old gym shoes. They were actually old basketball shoes I had from high school.

My assumption was my shoes would get mud logged and there would be no way to get the mud out so I would throw the shoes away after the event.

Later on I would begin to learn the advantage of having special shoes this an event like this. I was slipping and sliding everywhere. The mud was cold. When I was moving I felt okay but as soon as I finished the race, I was freezing despite being next to a large fire.

All was well though. I made it home and was proud of the accomplishment I made. Could I have done better? Absolutely. Have I don’t better since? Definitely!

These are some of the tips I have for training for your first obstacle course race:

Gear Is Critical

The gear that you need to have for an OCR will vary for each event but you should have at least these items:

• Trail running shoes with good treads

• Sleeves for your arms for low crawls helps.

• A sleeve on your knees helps for crawls as well.

• Socks that wick moisture.

That’s about it for the “needs.”

Items that will help you throughout the race might be:

• Sweat band to wipe mud off your hands for obstacles.

• A small liquid chalk so your hands don’t slip on monkey bars.

• A running belt to hold said liquid chalk.

Liquid chalk was a game changer for me. I went from failing every obstacle to completing every obstacle. The problem wasn’t my strength, it was because my hands were so slippery.

Training:

If you just want to get through a 5K or 10K OCR race without a time expectation, you can get through it with normal running training.

You may be a little sore the next day from using muscles that you don’t often use but you can make it through it if you are in decent 5K/10K shape.

You’re not going to be disqualified from failing an obstacle, you’ll just have to do more burpees or face a penalty. It sucks but the races all have extremely generous cut off times. You’ll be fine and make it through it.

Leveling Up Your Training

If you want to level up your training, that’s a different thing. It will be far different that what you’re used to. It will involved some things like this:

• Bucket carries

• Sandbag carries

• Monkey bars

• Rope climbs

• Trail running

• Low crawls

Bucket carries and sandbag carries are pretty straight forward. Go to Home Depot, buy a bucket with a lid and fill it up with rocks and carry it. Do the same thing with a sandbag.

Both of these combined will cost you like $10-15.

It’s a cheap way to stay fit and add something to your training.

Rope climbs and monkey bars are more difficult to do in my opinion because they’re usually aren’t a lot of places to find these.

You can go to a local playground and try to do the monkey bars. I would recommend going during off hours when a bunch of kids aren’t playing so you’re not the weirdo doing workouts when a bunch of kids are playing at the playground.

An alternative to rope climbs can be to get some gloves like mechanix gloves and try to climb the chain on the swing set. (If you try this, fall off and get injured, I’m not responsible for you.)

Monkey bars at playgrounds are usually very low to the ground which makes it tough to do them effectively. Another method you can use is to grab a sturdy tree branch and try to shimmy back and forth on it.

Gaining shoulder strength and grip strength is essential for events like these.

Conclusion

My biggest piece of advice for an event like this one is to think as outside the box as you can for your training. It’s not going to be standard training.

There’s a track I live by and one part of my training is to low crawl down the field, run a mile then low crawl down the field again. It’s tough but it gets me used to the switching back and forth with different muscle groups.

The purpose of OCRs is to test you in different ways. To test yourself during the event you must test yourself in your training first.