January time and Brian O’Driscoll wants to make you sweat.
The Ireland rugby legend must know that everyone thinks this month is the one they will start the program [albeit from home] that will see them rejuvenate every single aspect of their lives.
Of course, like the rest of us, Brian knows that come February 1 these people will be taunted and tormented from admitting that they basically have zero will power.
But enough about us.
Whether they like it or not, professional sportspeople have to be dedicated gym bunnies, and now the former Ireland captain has shared the day he felt the most pain in a gym trying to get fit.
And by pain, we mean excruciating want-to-call-your-mother agony.
The ex-Leinster man explains on his website that weeks after he returned from the 2009 Lions tour, he met up with his provinces’ strength and conditioning coach, Chris Dennis, who had set up a gruelling workout.
O’Driscoll had taken an extended break after his summertime exertions, but Dennis was determined to make him pay in a workout that should have lasted only 45-50 minutes, but as O’Driscoll explains, lasted closer to an hour and a half.
It was part of a week three pre-season program that many other players had already been working through, which O’Driscoll found himself dropped into one morning.
The former centre explains the hellish nature of what awaited him:
“The session consisted of 10 exercises with each exercise containing 100 reps. The idea was to get through the session as quickly as possible. Rest times were up to you. Set repetitions were also up to you. You could attack them in big chunks with more rest time, or smaller efforts with greater speed.”
However O’Driscoll explains that he was not match for the hellish program of weights that worked every tired muscle in his body over and over again:
“By the sixth the exercise I was doing 5 and 6 repetitions at a go. By exercise 8 it was down to 3 and 4. The Plate press and Extension was my last exercise and I must have finished it with 40 single reps.”
If you think you’d like to give it a go, or a version of it at least, here it is in full. If you need us we’ll be on the couch.
100 x 60kg Deadlifts
100 x 40kg Push press
100 x 40kg Hang high pull
100 x Push ups
100 x Lying pull ups
100 x Box jumps
100 x 20kg Plate press and extension
100 x 20kg Barbell curls
100 x Tyre flips
100 x Sit ups
