John,
Please share your comments and edits on the following review. Your product is excellent and I really appreciate your sending me the review copies. I am sorry this took much longer to do than I expected. My life got unexpectedly crazy shortly after you sent it, and I wanted to actually test your workouts prior to writing.
For the past several years I’ve been doing Crossfit as my primary training program. However, I’ve always had a fascination with body weight training, and I check out every body weight training program I can find.
As a result of a recent move, I’ve had to shift more toward bodyweight training. I am a huge Ross Emanait fan and was following a Ross Emanait system. Although Ross puts some excellent material on the market, I was getting bored and needed something new to push me past a mental and physical plateau. I found it in the Wildman Training System. John Grube put together two absolutely super manuals for training, “The Wild-Man Training Program” and “The Super Strength Playground Workout Manual.”
These books are available on his website www.wildmantraining.com. He also has a newsletter where he shares sample workouts and other training advice. His newsletters impressed me because he was actually giving workouts instead of just teasers and sales pitches like most of these newsletters.
The Playground Workout manual is spiral bound with a protective plastic cover. This is great because I can open it flat to any page while exercising or following a routine. Every exercise is illustrated with photographs. The book includes about 15 different types of pullups, many of which I never tried before getting the manual. There are a few exercises in the manual that I especially favor such as Commando Body Rows. Grube has a section on exercises to do with swings.
Almost every exercise in that section appears to be original. Like Ring exercises, the swing exercises are very demanding. One of his exercises is a walking swing to a handstand. This exercise is helping me to master handstand pushups. Grube also includes a selection of bodyweight exercises that include several highly explosive exercises. Grubes’ workout routine section features several sprint workouts. Grube completes the manual with sections on nutrition and the mental aspect of working out.
Grube’s training style is most similar to Crossfit or Ross Emanait. It is very high intensity, performance focused athletic training at its best. I like the Wild-Man Training Program for fast metabolic workouts that I can do any time and any place.
It is more sprint focused than Crossfit or Emanait. Grube also has several workouts involving different animal walks which I enjoy as a change of pace from Crossfit. His workouts are filled with exercises like Burpees, Jump Squats, Star Jumps, Hindu Pushups, Mountain Climbers and more. Each exercise is illustrated with actual photographs. He has some great whole body exercises that are somewhat unique. Grube’s real talent is how he sequences the exercises together in to interval workouts and mill style workouts that leaving me gassed and on the floor at the end of the workout. My personal favorites are the jump rope sequences, animal walk sequences, and the sprint interval workouts.
The Wild-Man Training Workout book is 88 pages in length, plus some pages for notes in the back. The book is designed to be used while exercising. It is spiral bound so that any page can be laid flat while following instructions or a workout, and the book has a protective plastic cover. Toward the back of the book Grube gives advice about nutrition and hydration. Throughout the book he is persuasive and motivational.
My ultimate opinion is that Grube delivers an excellent value. He put together highly effective, intense, and time efficient routines using whole body functional exercises, sprinting, and jumping rope. His playground manual is original, practical, and very demanding. I would recommend Grube for people who are looking for intense functional workouts that can increase a person’s athletic ability.
Please let me know what else I can do to help you get the word out and make wildman training as successful as possible because you deserve it.
Thanks,
Michael Halbfish ( crossfit trainer )