Baptiste Meyer, 22, joined Innovative Fitness Kitsilano back in April with a very specific goal in mind. Baptiste told us his goal was to move to France in order to join the French Foreign Legion by September, and he wanted our help to get there. He had kep active by playing soccer and other sports, as well as having a physically demanding job, so we knew we were going to have a fun and wild ride ahead of us to help him maximize his potential and achieve his goals.
The foreign Legion is a military service branch of the French army, unique in that it was created for foreign nationals willing to serve in the French Armed Forces. It is today known as a unit whose training focuses not only on traditional military skills but also on a strong esprit de corps. As its men come from different countries with different cultures, this is a way to strengthen them enough to work as a team. The Foreign Legion requires its new recruits to complete personality and IQ tests, alongside physical training to ensure that they are able to withstand the physical demands required of a Legion Officer. In order to pass the initial recruitment process, each recruit must complete the Beep test, a multi stage fitness test, which involved rhythmic running between two points that are 20 meters apart side to side, and be able to make at least 4 pull ups. Easy enough right?
Wrong!
After the initial assessment, recruits then begin several months of training that includes introduction to military lifestyle, push ups, learning about Foreign Legion traditions and the French language. This is followed by a 60-75 mile 3 day ruck march in full kit from Perpignan to the Basic Training camp at Castelnaudary, push ups, technical and practical training, mountain training, and after all that, a final examination. Oh, and did I mention push ups?
So where do we come in? My colleague Matt Roland and I are working with Baptiste four days a week to ensure he is being trained in the most applicable and dynamic way possible to meet these taxing demands. Matt sees Baptiste on Mondays and Tuesdays and primarily focuses on hypertrophy and strength training, with emphasis on upper body push and pull exercises. While the entrance assessment only requires recruits to do four pull ups, once training really begins, they’ll be required to do pull ups and push-ups until failure, and forget about moving forward if you can’t do at least twenty of each!
Matt has been focusing on building strength in both the posterior and anterior chains of Baptiste’s upper body with a combination of heavy weights, high number of sets and lower reps per exercise. Matt’s approach is based on alternating between four main functional exercises, the bench press, pull ups, squats and deadlift. Adding variations on these four exercises, Matt is able to continuously challenge Baptiste and ensure that smaller accessory muscles for both upper and lower body are also being targeted to allow him to hit his maximum potential.
After two solid days of strength training, Baptiste’s Thursdays and Fridays with me are a whole different story. My favourite work to use with him is endurance. Cardio, core, or strength endurance – you name it, we’ll do it. Baptiste is an absolute cardio fanatic and there seems to be no end to what he’s willing and able to do when it comes to it.
We start off the day by doing that week’s cardio challenge. Most of these challenges are time-based and take around 3-4 minutes, which is nice because the next day, we do it again with the goal of beating his personal time from the previous day as well as beating he overall best time for that week.
After that, we spend the rest of the hour doing a mix of cardio and strength endurance blocks that mimic what he’ll be expected to do once in the Legion. These blocks are around 5-7 minutes long and have no breaks between exercises until the set is done.
Because Bap is already so fit, my goal here is to keep his heart rate up between 80-85% of his max throughout the set and start pushing his muscles anaerobically so they can adapt to the lactic acid build up that comes from doing reps until failure. The more his body adapts to the ‘burn’, the more we can push it to a new limit every time.
I’ve found doing pyramid reps within a set to be an excellent way to stimulate Baptiste’s muscles as well as keep things interesting for him. For example, we start off with a 1000m row, followed by 30 pushups, 30 dips, 30 rows, and a 3 minutes core complex. The next set would follow as 750m row, 20 push ups, 20 dips, 20 rows, 2 minute core complex, and so on and so forth.
Keeping the exercises relatively simple and adding extra resistance as need be like a weight vest for running or doing pull ups, or a plate on his back for push ups and planks, are going to take his endurance to the next level and will set him up for success during his initial assessment in September.
Not only does Baptiste work his butt off in here four times a week, he also continues to challenge himself with trail running and IF events on the weekends. Baptiste goes on weekly hikes (including a new PB on the Grouse Grind last month), he ran Tough Mudder in June, and will be competing in the Adventure Challenge in September.
We’ve got 3 months until Baptiste’s departure date and with all hands on deck we’re not looking to slow our pace at all! We’ll be working harder, faster and stronger until his very last session and you can bet it’ll be a true IF sendoff. Good luck Baptiste!
Lydia-Rose Kerouac
Professional Training Coach
Innovative Fitness Kitsilano
www.InnovativeFitness.com
