- I'm Shane Farmer, this is Dark Horse,
and today, we're covering the fastest
and easiest SkiErg drill that you can implement
in the next five minutes.
(energetic music)
Welcome to Dark Horse
where you are the hero of your own story,
and we are the guide to help you build good habits
and pursue your passions.
Today, you're just gonna pick up
this really quick and easy drill
to help you get better on this machine
so that you don't have to be pining
over how this machine works
and what mechanics to use and da da da da.
There's so much that you can do,
but today, it's a quick focus drill
that's gonna get you feeling how to be more powerful,
move faster, and get better workouts.
I'm going to eschew with my normal long,
drawn-out explanations of why and how and all this
because I just want you to get the drill,
so let's just get right in
to how this drill is going to work,
and maybe we can talk about the how after.
To execute this drill,
you're going to need three simple tools.
The first is going to be a band.
I'm using a 30-to-60-pound band.
A simple anchored spot that's not gonna move on you
when we tie this band to it,
and three, a SkiErg,
but the SkiErg may also double as your anchor spot,
so it's two or three tools.
All right, so what you're gonna do to set this thing up
is you're gonna tie the band off to
preferably the SkiErg,
and then, you're gonna weight the SkiErg down.
I have a 54-pound kettlebell
or 24-kilo kettlebell,
depending on how you prefer to reference weight,
but I have this kettlebell here to anchor it down
so that it doesn't slide on me.
Now, I have the band tied off just to the posts.
You can tie it to anything.
If you have an anchor on a wall or a fence or whatever,
anchor it to something.
The next thing we're gonna do is get into a supine position.
Now, I'm gonna bring my mic with me.
That supine position is simply a belly up position,
so you're gonna get into a belly up position,
and what I want you to do is go into what's called a hollow,
which is feet off the floor, hands out overhead,
shoulders up, just your lower back on the floor.
Now, what we're trying to accomplish here
is essentially putting you into a horizontal catch position
that you would have on the machine.
So you're gonna get into a horizontal position.
You're gonna start in just that hollow
so that you understand
how do I get my shoulders off the floor
and get into this nice, tight almost crunch, okay?
Now, I want you to keep your head neutral,
keep your, by lifting your shoulders up,
lift from your chest, not by crunching your chin down.
Then in that position,
we're gonna start to form what is the standing catch.
So (exhales sharply) from that hollow position,
you're gonna start by bringing your knees apart
as you would be standing on the floor
and then a slight bend in the knees.
Then you're gonna take your arms which are overhead,
and you're gonna bring them
to what would be the catch position, right?
So I'm in this horizontal, vertical catch position.
I'm then gonna choke up on this band
so that I have some established tension on the band,
and I'm essentially going to just do crunches,
keeping everything from my waist down quiet,
so I'm not gonna bend my knees.
I'm simply gonna do small crunches,
and I'm gonna do 20 of them.
I'm gonna do three sets of 20 crunches.
Then I will jump up,
and I'm gonna mimic that exact same movement on the machine.
So 20 vertical crunches, if you will,
holding all my positions.
I'm not gonna go to a full stroke.
I'm just gonna go 20 vertical crunches
as if I were holding the band,
except I'm going to be holding the handles on the machine.
Once I've done 20 there, I come back to the floor.
I do 20 more on the floor, 20 on the machine,
20 on the floor, 20 on the machine, three times through.
You are seriously gonna start feeling this in your abs,
and that's the whole point.
How do you feel the brace and the lock in the lats
while using that initial contraction to engage the machine?
So that's what we're gonna do,
so I'm just gonna show you how that looks right now,
and then, I'll take you through a full circuit of it
so that you can just see the back and forth.
So I set up in the supine position.
I'm gonna take that hollow.
Then I'm going to split my legs, bend the knees slightly.
Then I'm gonna find my tension on the band,
get in line with it,
elbows bent, and now, it's 20 crunches.
(Shane exhales sharply)
Okay, 20 of those, and let's see how it goes.
So now as I get up off the floor,
I'm gonna take that same position on the machine,
knees slightly bent, hands on the handles,
and now, I'm going to establish that same position,
and it's crunch
(handles clattering) (SkiErg whirring)
so that you can begin to feel that transition
from drill to machine.
Then we get back to the floor.
Now, keeping in mind again,
what I want you to accomplish is three sets of 20,
20 crunches, 20 strokes,
20 crunches, 20 strokes, 20, 20, and so on and so forth.
That's gonna be our drill, three times through,
so I guess not so on and so forth.
Three times through,
and that's gonna help you get this feeling
of how to first engage the handles for the stroke.
Once you learn that, you can relay it
into other parts of the movement.
Now ultimately, the mechanics that you want to end up with
are that you are keeping,
think about this as an actual ski stroke, right?
If you were on skis,
you would not be squatting all the way down.
You would simply be planting the poles, leaning on them,
and leveraging yourself into the poles,
so hands are gonna pass the thighs,
and it's this short movement
where it's not a tricep extension.
It's you using your upper body to contract
and send the handles.
So I just want you to be able to see the technique
that we're working towards
so if you haven't watched any of our other videos,
you know exactly what you are gearing up for.
So let's just take a look at the mechanics.
(SkiErg whirring) (handles clattering)
And that's what I want you aiming to get to
after this drill's accomplished.
(playful music)
And that's it.
It's really that easy.
You just need to get a little bit of time on the floor.
Work back and forth between the floor and the machine.
The whole objective is to get you feeling what it's like
to catch tension because as we talked about on the rower,
the catch is the most important part of the stroke,
and the same goes for this machine.
If you don't know how to find the catch,
and if you don't know how to feel engagement,
you're gonna be lost through the entire stroke,
and that's why we place it at such a high priority
and such a high premium,
and this drill is primed to just give you feeling
(fingers snapping) after feeling after feeling
at the catch position
so that you know how to grab tension.
We can work on the other mechanics later,
but we need to prioritize a good catch
because with that, the rest of the movement
can be good as well, and at the end of the day,
we want you faster, stronger, and getting better workouts,
and that's what matters most,
making you the hero of your workout
so that you're not just pining and working and feeling
and laboring without getting the fruits
of being there for that purpose, right?
Make your process valuable every single day,
and that is why you are a Dark Horse,
so as always, guys, thank you so much.
I love all of you Dark Horses out there,
and I mean it from the bottom of my heart,
and if you heard this and you're like, "You know what?
"That clicked with me.
"Like I make, I connect to who that person is,
"the person who wants to be the hero of their own story,
"that wants to work hard for themselves, build good habits,
"and I'm pursuing my passions,
"like I believe that there's something greater for me
"that I wanna work towards,
"and I wanna be a part of that community,"
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(energetic music)