Caveman Training

Caveman training aims to develop functional strength. Functional strength means that you can jump higher, run faster, hit harder and develop this strength through exercises that will school your body to apply the strength in real world situations. It's not just lifting iron to build up your muscles, it will develop your muscles and strength to make you an fearsome opponent in every sport. Typical workouts consits of mutliple hard training intervals that challenge the trainee extremely hard.

Caveman training has really caught on in mixed martial arts. It combines old school strength training with traditional exercises and creates body workout. It is great for building strength while maintaining lean muscle mass instead of getting very bulked up, losing fat and improvements during peak performance.

Caveman training combines conditioning, cardiovascular and strength exercises. It may appear as a miss match but it is a combination of exercises and principles taken from different types of strength and conditioning workouts to maximize the output.

caveman training key principles

The key principles of caveman training are fairly straight forward. A heavy emphasis is placed on compound movements. The big compound movements mean more muscle is built and more fat is lost, as there have been scientific studies that for example squats and deadlifts can increase muscle growth and hormone output without the use of steroids. Every exercise done in a workout has to be an effective exercise, taxing the body to the maximum. This way you get the best results on the investment of your time and effort. And lastly for athletes, the goal is that training should be harder than competition. And most importantly this is the reason why you should always consult your doctor before you even attempt to do such a training!

Workouts are done in a circuit fashion. No or very short rest periods, for example 15 seconds, between exercises results in maximum intensity. This training does not work with a traditional repetition goal, but caveman training is done for a set time period on the exercises. An example for this is that a trainee may complete as many chin-ups in one minute as possible then move on to do sandbag presses for one minute, followed by jumping rope for a minute, for a final set of burpees.

Caveman training is a brutal way to get in shape. That is why it seems to be so popular for mixed martial arts, as there is the old saying, the more you bleed in training, the easier the fight. Most people may not have the willpower or desire to go through such a brutal workout, as they will not face a fighter who wants to rip your head of in the cage on a daily basis.