This month we take a look at the X-vest and Coach Davies new book
for extreme athletes.
The X-Vest (www.thexvest.com)
Weight vests have intrigued me for quite some time. In fact,
after seeing pictures of the old Indian wrestlers performing calisthenics
with giant ring shaped rocks around their necks, I became sort
of obsessed with the idea. Those giant rings looked cool and I
had no doubt they played a key role in the training of the great
Indian wrestlers. After all, simple bodyweight exercises can take
you only so far before you need to up the ante. Of course, there
are some drawbacks of those rings. First of all, they do not stay
in place unless you have your hands on them. Second, rocks take
forever to smooth out, so they would be expensive and fragile.
Third, you would look like a caveman walking around with a rock
slung over your shoulders! Enter the X-Vest.
The X-Vest solves all of the problems associated with those caveman
donuts and adds a few new benefits. The first thing you notice
when you put it on is that it fits like a glove. It is fully adjustable
to fit your body and it has elastic straps with Velcro attachments
to ensure a snug fit. Unlike barbells or those ancient stone rings,
you do not have to tie up your hands while you exercise with the
X-Vest. This is the biggest benefit of the vest. You can wear
it while you run, do calisthenics or even during plyometrics.
One of the exercises I really enjoyed was performing snatches
with a kettlebell while wearing the vest. If you do a set with
the vest on, the next set will feel like a piece of cake if you
take the vest off. It is a great way to achieve training overload
for your hips. Another favorite was circuit training on gymnastics
rings and with kettlebells. During the workout, I would perform
multiple circuits of 10 body rows and then 10 pushups on the rings,
followed by 10 front squats with the kettlebells. I did this workout
for a few weeks and every time I would add a few more 1-pound
weights into the vest.
Adjustability is perhaps the best part of the X-Vest. It is adjustable
in one-pound increments up to 40 lbs. The weights are each one-pound
and shaped like a hot dog. To add weight, you insert each weight
into its own individual compartment. With this system it can take
a few minutes to get to the desired weight, but the advantage
is that they do not move around at all while you exercise. Forty
pounds is obviously not enough for a heavy squat workout, but
I found it to be more than sufficient for most exercises. Because
the weights fit so tightly, your hands are free to use other implements
to add extra resistance if necessary.
One additional factor that comes into play when wearing the vest
is that it restricts your rib cage. This makes it more difficult
to breathe, so your respiratory muscles get a harder workout.
Oftentimes, I had to spend extra time catching my breath because
of the added challenge of the X-Vest. I prefer to wear the vest
tight, for this reason, and to ensure that the weights stay in
place. The only time I experience any weight shift is during sprinting.
The front flap seems to go up and down right below where the elastic
straps connect to the front of the vest. I guess this is what
it would feel like if I had an extra 25 pounds of fat on my gut,
but for sprinting it was a minor nuisance. For jumping exercises,
the vest stays in place pretty well. I really enjoyed doing jumping
exercises with the vest. I just wish there was a faster way to
adjust the weight so that I could wildly vary the weight and quickly
go from set to set.
The Good: Fits like a glove. Easily fits into most training
routines. Great for improving explosive power. Incrementally adjustable
up to 40 lbs.
The Bad: Flops around while sprinting. Takes a few minutes
to adjust the weight.
The Verdict: Overall, this is an excellent product and
the best weight vest I have seen. If you are into bodyweight calisthenics,
this is a must-have. If you are into lifting weights, this can
add a new spin on your workouts but will only have a few novel
benefits. I really like this vest and highly recommend it.
Xtreme Sports Training:
Renegade Style
(www.renegadetraining.com)
By Coach Davies
Extreme athletes are thought of as cutting-edge rebels with amazing
skills in some of the most exciting sports in the world. They
are also thought of as punks, slackers and potheads. Perhaps there
is a mix of both, but I think the new generation of extreme athletes
deserves to be regarded in the same echelon as athletes in traditional
sports such as tennis, football, basketball, etc. While much attention
is given to the dangerous tricks they perform, very few people
have focused on the training side of extreme sports. What makes
this book interesting is that it is targeted towards a group of
athletes that have never been taken seriously in the training
community. The result is a book that probably will not be taken
seriously by a lot of people. Many critics have already written
off many aspects of this book as dangerous, unproven and ineffective.
Click to enlarge
Hardcore lifters scoff at the idea of balance and agility training.
In weight rooms where strength is everything, other attributes
such as balance, agility, flexibility and speed are often overlooked.
However, the extreme sport athletes instinctively knew that adding
20 pounds to their bench press would be meaningless unless they
could tap into that strength while in precarious balance on a
board or bike. This book is geared towards the development of
strength in balance. As a result, you will see many exercises
performed on Indo Boards (www.indoboard.com) and Swiss Balls.
Some of the exercises are absolutely mind-boggling. For example,
the basic bodyweight squat on a Swiss Ball is feared by even the
most macho lifters, but is only a basic exercise in this book.
Believe it or not, Coach Davies performs hang snatches on the
ball! The implications of this are enormous. This is literally
a whole new family of exercises that has been until now unexplored.
Strength in balance, what a brave new world.
However, there are many traditional exercises in this book as
well. Sprinting is a major component of the training, as is rope
skipping and tumbling. I am a gymnast, so forgive me for being
a bit of a tumbling fiend. While I really like the idea of athletes
tumbling, I wish there was more in this book beyond the basic
forward and backward rolls. If you attend a gymnastics class,
you will learn this and more in the first day. For me, this section
was the weak point of the book. I would recommend any reader of
this book to take an adult gymnastics class and explore this area
a little further. Once you learn some more stuff, it will be easily
to plug it into your Renegade training program. Another thing
that was omitted from this book was training for "air awareness".
Most extreme athletes do a variety of tricks that require flipping
and twisting. However, there are no exercises in this book that
take you airborne or require any twisting. Trampoline work would
be a cool addition to this book, but obviously a trampoline is
a very expensive piece of equipment that most athletes will not
have access to. All in all, I think the selection of exercises
in this book is great. It is limited in some areas, but incredibly
vast in other areas (such as balance and strength).
One of the problems with Coach Davies original book, Renegade
Training for Football, was that it had a wide variety of exercises
but no training program. When it came time to put together workouts
and formulate an overall plan, that book was sorely lacking. This
book solves that problem by including a very detailed six-week
training program. To me, this is a huge bonus! While I did not
actually follow the six-week program, I received positive feedback
on it from a friend of mine that is a professional flatland BMX
rider. He has followed Coach Davies training program for X-athletes
and had great results.
The Good: A very wide selection of never before seen exercises.
A very solid six-week training program. Tons of pictures!
The Bad: The balance training will not appeal to everyone.
Requires a pretty wide variety of training equipment. Limited
selection of tumbling exercises.
The Verdict: For extreme athletes, this is a must-have
book. It is not only the best book on the subject, but probably
the only one. For athletes in traditional sports or just looking
to get in shape, you will find a lot of interesting and challenging
exercises. However, it is recommend that you build up a solid
foundation in traditional training (as found in the Renegade Training
for Football book) before moving into the Extreme Sports Training.
At the very least, it will be an entertaining diversion from regular
training. At best, it could unlock new levels of performance in
many of the oft-neglected areas of fitness.
