Hi, I’m Mark and I’m a 42-year-old fitness enthusiast. My training journey began seven years ago, when I took up running to improve my fitness and I’ve never stopped! I’ve gone from 10k races to marathons, ultra trail marathons, and triathlons.

I love to share my passion with others; I’m a Level 3 personal trainer, a boxing fitness instructor, and am currently training to get my Level 4 Strength and Conditioning Coach qualification. In addition to this, I also take part in Hyrox competitions with my wife Becky as part of a doubles team.

When I started participating in functional fitness my training regime had to change a lot from triathlon and ultra training, no more logging 120km+ a week of running. For functional fitness I needed more strength, both push and pull as well explosive power. Training has now become a mix of running and training for functional stations.

I find that hybrid training allows me to do shorts workouts that fit in around every day life more easily. For example, I’ll arrive early to my work gym and grab a 10kg Mirafit wall ball and 50-100 3m reps. Sometimes to mix this up I will use a 12kg slam ball as it is harder to catch. Having a dedicated staff gym allows me train at lunch times as well.

My Typical Workout Session

• 4 minute run with a Weighted Vest for Running.

• 4 minute ski on a ski machine.

• 4 minute weighted run.

• 4 minute row on a Rowing Machine.

• 4 minute weighted run.

• 80m of burpee broad jumps.

• 4 minute weighted run.

• 100m of lunges with a 30kg Power Bag.

• 4 minute weighted run.

• 200m farmer's carry.

• 4 minute weighted run.

• 100 wall ball throws with a 10kg Wall Ball.

The recent addition of the Mirafit cardio range has been a huge benefit, especially the ski machine. This allows you to really get your HR up fast whilst working almost all of your muscles in one exercise. It’s also great as it hardly takes up ay room in the gym, it just bolts to the wall with a very small footprint.

I have also been using the ski machine and rower for some of my Zone 2 cardio workouts. If the weather puts me off going for my Z2 run then I can jump on either the rower or the skier and just keep the pace low and comfortable whilst watching my HR on the console that connects to my Heart rate monitor chest strap. The skier is also great for some intense HIIT sessions, I love doing a few sets of 500m all out Ski with 1 min rests in between. Having gym floor tiles also helps to make my burpee broad jumps more comfortable.

Looking to the future I’m not sure which challenging new events I will train for, but I do know that I won’t stop training and improving.

Written by guest author Mark Harris

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Tags: Exercise Type > Cardio ; Exercise Type > Conditioning ; Misc > Workout