COMMON ABBREVIATIONS:
#=pounds
BW=bodyweight
KB=Kettlebell
TRX=TRX Suspension Trainer
Oly=Olympic lifting
WOD=Workout Of the Day
PU/PU=Push-ups/Pull-ups
LADDER=Ascending or descending sets of x # of reps.
*For example, a 10-1 Ladder would be: 10 reps, 9 reps, 8 reps, 7 reps, 6 reps, 5 reps, 4 reps, 3 reps, 2 reps, 1 reps.
*A 1-10 Ladder=Same as 10-1 but in other direction (1 rep, 2 reps, 3 reps, 4 reps, 5 reps, 6 reps, 7 reps, 8 reps, 9 reps, 10 reps)
CIRCUIT=perform all movements as specified in sequence as a continuous circuit without stopping to rest
‘I Go/You Go’=A buddy workout wherein one buddy performs a set of exercises while the other buddy rests and vise versa
P1/P2: Where noted, ‘P1’ refers to Partner One and ‘P2’ refers to Partner Two during a buddy workout (two people).
MEET THE DRILLit CREW
You’ll encounter a recurring cast of characters on DRILLit.TV. We’re like you—normal folks striving for extraordinary results just trying to suck the last drop of marrow out of life. Here’s who we are and what we do:
ERIC MATTHIES=The Southland Warrior a.k.a. EM a.k.a. The Illustrated Man
EM is an award-winning documentarian, director, poet, writer, and producer who owns and runs EMP,INC./PROJECT LAB along with his wife Tricia (also very fit and the impetus behind EM’s journey into Pilates). EM and Tricia’s primary areas of athletic focus are surfing and cycling for pleasure.
EM came to the functional training light after he met and trained with world-class badasses, paleo photojournalists, and former military operators on the sets of films he worked on. While the Cause for Alarm skews to the radically epic, time-consuming end of the workout protocol continuum, EM is the king of the DIY lunch break training sesh and serves an inspiration to all of us to rise above our desk shackles, get off our asses and do something fun and sweaty with the limited time we have.
The Illustrated Man cycles for fun and when he has time hits up prime surf spots in SoCal and around the globe. Accordingly, his training has a heavy surf-orientation, because that’s where his fitness needs to function. EM likes to mix up his own gnarly functional training brews of bodyweight, kettlebell, dumbbell, med ball and TRX movements, all geared towards making himself a better surfer, cyclist, and human being.
Visit www.humanpoweredtransport.net or www.emp23.com to learn more about The Illustrated Man.
BLAKE KASEMEIER=The Fury a.k.a. The East Bay Fury a.k.a. Sweet and Lowdown a.k.a. The Cause For Alarm
A full-time student, Sweet and Lowdown cut his training teeth on the mean streets of Los Angeles where he moved after spending his late teens and early 20’s fronting Life’s All Over (L.A.O.—not to be confused with L.F.O., the Light Funky Ones), a seminal hardcore band with a cult following—and a love of P.F. Chang’s orange chicken.
The Fury spent his early teen years dominating the high school cross country running and long distance track running scenes in Ojai, CA where he grew up. Later, after L.A.O. disbanded, the Fury took a life-changing, brutal, multi-day backpacking trip to Machu Picchu where he got in touch with his inner Tony Robbins and motivated a deconditioned buddy to walk through fear and make it to the top of the heavily traveled route.
Following this life-changing event, the Fury dialed into the CrossFit main page and began to rip through WOD’s like Jack LaLanne tearing apart phone books and towing barges with his teeth at 85. Soon the Fury took to the pull-up bars, trails, and playgrounds around Los Angeles in an obsessive quest to forge ultimate fitness. Then came a Gym Jones addiction, many trips to the pain cave and eventually a meeting with HQ, many park and playground-based workouts and training rides in Los Angeles, and ultimately a lasting detour into the world of functional training.
Today the Fury resides in Berkeley, CA where he has made the student rec center his personal ‘pain cave,’ a ‘dark place’ where he sees the light of ultimate functional fitness glimmering at the end of an infinite tunnel of effort. The Fury still runs like the wind, often over punishing distances and up crippling inclines in the Berkeley hills. When he’s not crushing inhuman WOD’s, he’s out on his road bike prep’ing for a full-frontal assault on the NorCal bike racing scene in 2011. If the Fury can keep his frame pump from popping off his bike, he’s always a threat on the climbs.
ANDREW VONTZ=HQ
HQ is a journalist who writes about people, places, and things at the limits of human experience for a broad variety of national publications from Rolling Stone to Outside magazine. He’s also a functional training expert who produces audio, video, and text content for a wide variety of clients including Fitness Anywhere. He is the host of TRX Radio, the official TRX podcast, and interviews and profiles leading strength and conditioning experts, trainers, athletes, and every day people who achieve extraordinary results using the TRX for Fitness Anywhere.
Greg LeMond got HQ off the freestyle BMX bike and skateboard he grew up shredding on and into bike racing. The freedom of big wheels and the fun that came with them kept him riding. HQ has been on the bike (mountain and road) riding and racing (off and on) since he bought his first racing rig, a Schwinn Circuit with Shimano Santé components (does anyone even remember that gruppo?) at age 13 with money he earned mowing lawns.
Along the way, he’s lived through numerous strength and conditioning, nutrition, and training fads that science and experts said worked that ultimately promoted dysfunction, injury, maladaptation, and didn’t really work at all. HQ started to tune into functional training circa 2000 when he was exposed to training protocols for elite rugby players that integrated the leading edge of the functional training movement. Since then, he has applied functional training principles to his on and off-bike training. If HQ could reach back in time, he would take back every moment he ever spent doing leg extensions on a machine in a gym and the thirty minutes it took to eat the single Exceed energy bar he consumed prior to a crit (that he got last place in—thanks for cheering anyway, mom and dad) in 1989.
HQ’s work frequently brings him into contact with the biggest minds in functional training who continue to elevate his training knowledge and approach to programming for himself and others on the bike and off. Twenty-two years after he started riding, HQ still turns to the bike for leisure, competition, recreation, and transportation.
Racing has taken a back seat to life for HQ at the moment and the training focus has become general physical preparedness for the adventures work and life dish up for him—like the time in September ’09 that Maxim magazine dispatched him to Colorado to tackle an eight hour day on the mountain bike in a driving snow storm with Travis Pastrana, Kenny Bartram, and Special Greg from Nitro Circus. And HQ had packed for warm weather. Living alive means not freezing to death, so never leave your winter mitts at home, kids.
Visit www.andrewvontz.com to learn more about HQ.
