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Old School PT Grinder: The Pulp Throw Relay by Mark Hatmaker


Oh, Crew, looking to get outside the comfy smooth gym and test your real mettle with activities and objects that haven’t been designed to make hefting them easier so you can skip grade-school reveling in the WOD participation trophy hamster wheel?
Then, belly up to the bar for a PT Challenge from ye olde days of lumberjack and woodsman prowess.
Pulp wood was a designation for bucked lengths not quite up to par for lumber use.

For our purposes, and those into Woodsman and Lumber Sports Competitions, grab yourself 4 lengths of log four feet in length with an approximate weight of 30-40 pounds per.
If you don’t have logs available, you can hit the resource that is Home Depot and pick up a couple of 6 x 6 pressure treated timbers. They come in 8-foot lengths so a wee middle cut to each gives you a PT resource that will last. [They’ll be a bit on the light side but they will serve the log-bereft.]
The Course

·        Lay out your four pieces of pulp wood.

·        Measure out 20’.

·        Place two stakes 4 feet apart.


The Method

·        Your gig is to stand behind your line 20’ feet from the 2 stakes and toss the pulp so that it lands between the goal stakes.

·        For newbies if you merely get an end length into the staked area, you’re good to go.

·        For Hosses, you’ll want to get at least the middle portion of each pulp through the stake line.


The Protocol for Partners

·        You stand at one end and your partner at the other.

·        You start and throw the 4 logs though the stake line.

·        Upon completion, your partner heaves them back to a stake line on your side of the course.

·        You will do this for 5 rounds, for a total of 40 throws, each partner having contributed 20 tosses.


The Protocol for Solo

·        Toss your four…

·        Sprint to the opposite stake line and toss ‘em back.

·        Do this for 4 rounds and a total of 16 throws.


The Catch

·        Whether playing solo or with a partner, as soon as you finish…

·        Hit a strict 90 second rest then repeat the tosses.

·        Newbies do this for 4 Rounds

·        Intermediate for 6.

·        Hosses for 8 Rounds.


The Goal

·        Throw fast and furious AND accurately.

·        Always shoot for a sub 90 second performance time, always striving to get faster and faster. [Truthfully, 1:15 is around your minimum target time for the stout of heart.]

·        Over 90 seconds and you are sandbaggin’ or need to go back to the smooth contoured lines of a CrossFit box.


Penalties

·        Pulp that does not cross the stake line must be retrieved by the thrower and re-tossed.

·        Pulp that misses the stakes either to right or left must be retrieved to be re-tossed.


Many an old school boxer, wrestler, rough and tumbler came from a logging or at the very least a woodsman background.  Many of the earl


y competitors in combat sports used actual logging skills as conditioners.
You want a piece of that old school wicked real-world strong, don’t you?
Besides, what looks cooler, you throwing logs like a badass combination man, or squatting down and continuously tossing a squishy soft wall-ball over your head like a lonely kid with no playmates.
[For techniques, tactics, and strategies of Rough and Tumble Combat, Old-School Boxing, Mean-Ass Wrestling, Street-Ready Frontier Scrapping & Indigenous Ability culled from the historical record see the RAW Subscription Service.]

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