Ingrid is the awesome woman in this photo who lead most of our course. So RAD! (Had to throw in some California slang!)

Yesterday I attended a Level 1 Battling Ropes Certification course.

It was AWESOME!

Honestly, it is one of  THE BEST THINGS that most people AREN’T INCLUDING in their program.

Who can do battling ropes?

That is the best part…EVERYONE!

It was one of the few workouts we can all do that really has no risk of injury AND doesn’t need a lot of practice to get the “form” correct.

When we are teaching someone to deadlift, it is a slow and long process. Their joints and connective tissues have to be ready to lift the weight before they can bump up the resistance. So even if they have the muscular strength to do a weight, their body might not truly be ready to handle it. AND form is an important part of the deadlift. You have to learn the form before you can increase the weight you are using.

But that isn’t the case with the Battling Ropes. With Battling Ropes, a beginner or a professional athletes can use the same 50ft, 1.5 inch rope and get a killer workout.

Everyone’s connective tissues can handle the weight of the ropes. AND everyone can DEVELOP correct form as they do the ropes more. At the beginning your body may compensate, but as you get tired your entire body has to work together correctly to produce the force necessary to make waves all the way down the rope. Imbalances will reveal themselves AND correct themselves as people do the ropes more and more.

All of the PROBLEMS that develop or can hinder progress with traditional weight lifting can be corrected using the ropes.

And on top of that, THEY AREN’T EASY!

I can bench press, do tons of push ups, deadlift and squat heavy weights, but one minute on the Battling Ropes and my body is says, “OUCH!”

I just love it!

Battling Ropes help increase your work capacity, teach you how to use your entire body to move EFFICIENTLY and increase your power and strength. They do everything basically AND everyone can do them.

You just start by making the waves go as far down the rope as you can. That may be two feet or all the way down. As your body learns how to move efficiently and becomes stronger, you will get the waves further and further down the ropes and increase the speed at which you can produce the waves.

Start with just a minute. Each time try to go longer! Right now I have two challenges that I want to take down. Five minutes straight of the alternating arm waves (after that I’ll try 10 minutes) and then the 1 mile rope pull. Wish me luck!

If you want to learn more about Battling Ropes and the exercises you can do with them (hopefully I will have some of my own videos soon!), check out these videos by John and his crew. John’s website also has some great info on it! Our gym also has some great videos that I will link to as soon as our site is back up!

Next we will discuss some more natural movements for our body, CRAWLING. Not only forwards, but also backwards. It is crazy how hard the backwards because we never train that movement pattern YET it should be something we train since we have to do it naturally!

P.S. I thought one of the most interesting things about using Battling Ropes is that you don’t get SORE from a workout with them. Because of the constant motion and the use of only concentric and isometric contractions, you don’t get sore the next day. Fatigued, yes, but sore, no.