Has anyone done tough mudder?

[DreamADream]

I'm doing it this year and am petrified! It seemed such a good idea to sign up after a few glasses of wine

My upper body is really weak so I've got to start working on that!

I haven't yet but I'm also doing my first this year. 3 months away! When's yours?

I have poor body upper strength and have tried working on it and my core from December but seem to be getting nowhere fast. Still can't do a push up and fall off the monkey bars at the park. Think I'm screwed What sort of things are you thinking of doing to improve your upper body?

I'm doing mine in September. I finally learnt to do pushups last year, but there's no way I can do monkey bars!

I've got a pull up bar, so hoping that hanging on that will help and going to do pushups and squat thrusts and stuff I think. Going to look into a proper training plan this afternoon+

Ohh you've plenty of time then. Lucky you, I'd love to be able to do proper pushups. Can now do half way down and up which is halfway more than I could do a few months ago :)

Training plan sounds like a great idea, I should get cracking on looking for one myself. Yes I think hanging on a pullup bar is good, grip is a big thing from what I've read.

I do a lot of running and gym, including some crossfit type classes (lots of burpees etc) so at least the cardio side of it I'm not worried about.

Have you done any OCRs before?

I go to a circuits class and that's done a lot for my general strength. I can now do monkey bars for the first time in my life

I did Tough Mudder about 3 years ago. We didn't train and survived. It's not quite as tough as you imagine but great fun. I underestimated the mud (despite the name). I thought it would be run, obstacle, run, obstacle etc. However, between a lot of the obstacles there's so serious mud so you can't run very well. At one point there was a mud mile in which most people were crawling through the very thick mud. There was rain and hail the day I did it which added to the mud!
You can skip obstacles and there is zero stigma about this. I missed 3 of the 24. Some have queues which gives you a chance to rest.
The electric shock ones are the worse, it's the anticipation, but the shock is pretty big!

I've not even done a normal race before, so throwing myself in at the deep end!

mrsmook I think I'm going to try and get back to body pump as I think that will really help.

There's certain bits I'm expecting to miss tbh, I'm massively claustrophobic and I'm not going to beat myself up too much if I can't do that kind of challenge. Quite glad all the mud means I won't have to run the whole thing!

Lucky you, I'd love to be able to do proper pushups.

A lot of press ups is technique rather than raw strength.
Make sure you hands are level with your shoulders and wider than your shoulders and your fingers face forwards.
Brace your core - like when you plank.
If your hands aren't level it's really difficult.
I'd spent years trying to do it with my hands in the wrong place, an instructor repositioned me during a gym class and it clicked.
I can do 12 in a row now

Ohh I hope that's it, thanks Glittery, I have been putting my arms under my shoulders like a plank. Will definitely try it tomorrow, can't today as I can barely make it off a chair after the gym yesterday. Every muscle aching

What ones did you miss Tralala? I hate getting shocked, horrible feeling so not looking forward to that one.

Also a bit claustrophobic and not keen on heights, but I've done a couple of mud runs before and done the climbing ones. I did skips tunnels though. It's the cold that gets me, I'll be wearing my thermal under armour gear this time, despite the fact it's in July.

I missed the one where you had to swim under large pipes to cross a lake. Too claustrophobic for me so I just swam over with a few others.

I also missed a climbing wall across water. I climbed up but a couple of girls in front of us were stuck. After 5 mins of hanging on my fingers went numb so I jumped off and walked around it.
I also missed the big half pipe wall at the end. There was a big queue and my legs had begun to seize up after 10 minutes of queuing so I went round the back to help pull others over. Even without the queue I would have never made that wall, so high.

The first few obstacles are designed to get you as wet and muddy as possible. Think army crawl through mud, followed by the freezing cold ice water dunk, followed by more mud crawling. All before the end of the first mile.