Local sports editor for the Santa Clarita Valley Signal Newspaper Cary Osbourne wanted to get a taste of what's often (affectionately) coined 'Dosercise'....here is his story of that faithful day at COC....
By Cary OsborneSignal Sports Editorcosborne@the-signal.com661-259-1234-529Posted: June 12, 2009 8:34 p.m. document.write(writeModDate("June 13, 2009 4:55 a.m."));
POSTED June 13, 2009 4:55 a.m.
POSTED June 13, 2009 4:55 a.m.
We entered an upstairs dance studio at the College of the Canyons gymnasium with AC/DC’s “Hells Bells” rattling the walls. “Was it a message?” I asked, as in, “Get ready for hell?” Robert dos Remedios just smirked as we carried in kettle bells. Over the years, I’ve heard countless times about how dos Remedios or “dos,” the head strength and conditioning coach at College of the Canyons, has gotten COC’s athletes into superior shape through punishing exercise. Greg Herrick, whose women’s basketball team runs a 40-minute stampede and consistently leads the state in scoring, has told me it’s dos who whips his players into shape. Garett Tujague, COC’s head football coach, says his team can play five quarters every game if it has to. Because of dos. I needed to see it first-hand. Tujague told me he had been training with dos, so I asked him if I could watch. Then I asked if I could join him. On June 3, I joined dos, Tujague and assistant strength and conditioning coach Daniel Corbet for a workout. It lasted 30 minutes. After the bells rang and the workout was over, my head was light. Oatmeal was in danger of flowing in a northerly direction. Sweat poured from my head. And I had the worst case of cottonmouth I can remember. The cause of all this was the challenging workout dos put us through. Just three days prior, I ran six miles. For the past four months, I have regularly run about 10 miles a week. I thought I would handle dos’ punishment well. But his philosophy of intense training, giving the maximum on every rep, was taxing on my body. Kettle bells, bear crawls, pushups, pushups with suspended rings, crunches, chopping with a weighted ball, mountain climbers with a band wrapped around the waist, squats. It was constant. dos told me that his kind of workouts are not popular. Not popular with athletes or in the fitness industry. “They’re not popular because of how you feel,” he said. dos said this circuit training uses the overload principle — overload the body to get maximum results. After we bear-crawled to pushups, we duck-walked with a light kettle bell, then a medium kettle bell, then a heavy kettle bell. After that exercise, I walked outside for some air, thinking I might puke, only to be told we had one more circuit left. It was four different exercises done in four minutes with maximum effort. Mountain climbers with a band, plank run, squats and pushups. At each station, I could see the remnants of sweat that dripped from Tujague’s, dos Remedios’, Corbet’s and my head. dos explained that this type of strenuous anaerobic exercise was better than aerobic exercise because it helped the body burn more calories in the long run. He mentioned excess post-exercise consumption, or EPOC for short. EPOC is an increased rate of oxygen intake after exercise and, because of it, the metabolic rate increases for a longer period of time. So as hellish as this exercise was, it was certainly good for me. And in the end, that’s what dos’ job is — to get results. Maybe that’s why Herrick and Tujague, whose teams are at the top of their conferences year in and year out, give him a lot of credit.
