The Lost Training of Ancient Spartans (Ancient Greece)

The Spartans are some of the most famous warriors in history. Anyone who's seen the movie 300 or heard of Leonidas and the last stand of his 300 at the Battle of Thermopylae understand the level of skill, strength, and devotion that these guys had. It was possibly unmatched by anyone else in history except for maybe the samurai. Now, that begs the question, how did guys like this train? Okay, obviously they practiced with weapons, they drilled, they maneuvered, all that, but how did they work out? Like, did they build that level of physical strength and conditioning? Because they didn't just dominate on the battlefield for centuries, they also dominated the Olympic Games. For instance, for years, the Olympic Pankration champion was a Spartan, and Pankration is basically ancient mixed martial arts with no rules at all. Kicks, punches, takedowns, submissions, all of that. Obviously, that was a big part of their training along with wrestling, but in terms of how they approached their actual gym workouts, it's actually really fascinating. First, you have to understand that in ancient Greece, the primary type of weight that people used was called a halter. Now, this is essentially a carved stone weight that looks like a mixture of a dumbbell and a kettlebell, and many of the ways they used these were similar to how we use dumbbells and kettlebells today. You know, curls, presses, they even did swings. It was essentially like a swing, but with weights in each hand, you know, a double pistol swing. But they also did some exercises that we no longer do today, some that were specifically aimed at being good for warriors. You have to understand that the Spartans, when they fought in battle, they fought in a shield wall, a big formation called a phalanx. It was essentially a shield wall that was many rows deep. Each man would hold a large oak shield covered with bronze in this arm and a spear in this one, and they would advance forward as one, as like a wall of grinding bronze against the enemy. Very effective, but very physically demanding for the men in the phalanx. And they're carrying all that armor, and they cannot let that heavy shield, which weighed about 22 pounds, they could not let that fall even for a second, because then they would expose them and the guys behind them to arrows, swords, spears, all of that. So the Spartans trained accordingly. And one thing they'll see is they did their lunges in a very unique way. And they would take both halteres and hold them directly out in front, which honestly on its own is just really difficult. If you grab a pair of dumbbells and just hold them directly out in the front like this, like, let me know how long you can do that for. And what they would do is they would keep those dumbbells in that hold, core nice and tight, and they would do lunges like that. Okay, now if you go ahead and you try these, they are not easy at all. Even with like some crazy light weights, 10, 20 pounds, you'll find that these are extremely challenging. And that was one of the, what we call now, sports specific exercises that the Spartan soldiers would do to build the strength of their shoulders to be able to hold their shields up and be able to use their spears for hours on end. And you will actually see that these, a lot of these exercises work in the same way. They're, you know, crucifix holds like this, all sorts of swings, presses, and a lot of the other movements that they did involved simply lower body movements where they would hold their halteres out here or out wide in a static position. Another one would be like doing squats, just simply holding your like dumbbell weights out in front of you. Extremely challenging. Another form of what we'd call sports specific or warrior specific training in this context would be a race called the hoplito dromos. Now this is interesting because this was a foot race that was essentially one lap around a large track, so about 400 meters, but everyone running it would be running it carrying a full shield and wearing full armor. And they, this race would essentially train Greek soldiers to rush through the 400, roughly 400 meter range of Persian bows to close with the enemy and get to fighting really quick because you see the Greeks were really good at fighting up close. They had heavy bronze armor and weapons, whereas the Persians relied more on archery. So for the Greeks, it was really about just getting through that storm of arrows and getting to grips with their enemies. And so this, uh, the hoplito dromos race would actually train Greeks and it wasn't just the Spartans, all Greeks, you know, would train this race and it was an event at the Olympics even, but, uh, the Spartans were just like pancreation better at it than everyone else. Another interesting thing that Spartans were known for was doing calisthenics training. Okay. They did these every day, uh, even when they went to war, uh, although it was when they were on campaign, they would do lighter exercise. All of these exercises would have been the basics that we know today, the pushups, pull-ups squats. One thing I should note though, is that they did everything barefoot. In fact, the Spartans lived completely barefoot. The other Greek city-states wore sandals, uh, but the Spartans, whether they were running, fighting, or living, wore no shoes at all. They started at the Agogi, the elite training institute for young men, boys in Sparta, where they were sent to become warriors from a young age. It started there. No shoes. They would have to run, lift, walk, train, fight all barefoot. And over time, their feet became really strong and, uh, it became, they, you know, they actually believed that in time you could run faster that way. So taken on the whole Spartan training was highly functional. Uh, it blended an excellent mix of strength and endurance. And to give you an idea of the intensity that they trained, I'll leave you with this quote. The Spartans were the only men for whom war provided a respite from the training for war. If you're interested in learning how to integrate real Spartan workout training techniques into your own routine, I will link my 70 days in Sparta workout program here. And it is the only training program on the entire planet that is historically accurate in its reconstruction of real Spartan strength and conditioning techniques. So if you're looking for how to train like a real Spartan, or simply how to spice up some of your workouts that have grown stale, check that out.