How to compete in endurance sports

Adam Turner is a barber at Sabre Fine Gentleman's Grooming in Hale, Cheshire; he's got a thing for pushing limits and a few years ago he started pushing his fitness limits to the max. He likes extreme competitions like Total Warrior (totalwarrior.co.uk), X-Runner (xrunner.co.uk) and Wild Warrior (xrunner.co.uk/wildwarrior). In short he mostly likes 10k of pain and punishment and seems to come out victorious. Here's Adam's tips on getting the best out endurance sports.

Tip 1: Training

Focus only on strength and endurance. Build body strength with press ups, burpees, pull ups, dips, squats, lunges and weight work. For endurance you want off road running, hill sprints and intervals. No point keeping to tame surfaces like roads, it won't help you.

Tip 2: Nutrition

Ideally create a diet around 5-6g of carbs to 1g of protein to build up mass energy reserves. Whole wheat pasta, sweet potato and really clean carbs are the way forward.

Tip 3: Equipment

I always run in Inov-8 Roclite 245 trainers. This company does outstanding all terrain gear. I wear as little as possible as clothes tend to weigh you down when they are full of mud and water. My go-to would always be compression sleeves and calves from X-Racewear as they stop cramp and muscle burnout.

Tip 4: Tactics

Always run alone unless you are competing in a team because on race day you are alone. I find listening to metal tunes on my iPod pre-race to get me primed. Stretching before the race is a must-have as it will help you run and will aid recovery post-race. After the race have a protein heavy meal, a hot bath and massage muscle groups with a foam roller.

Follow @sweeneyturner, @Sabre_gb.