If you have a deck of cards then you have the perfect means
to get a wicked fat burning workout while you are on the
road or in the field. This is a workout I use with my
fitness-orientated clients that want a change of pace. It's
perfect for the people that don't want massive muscles but
want to burn fat and stay athletic and trim. My clients
find that after a couple weeks of this style routine, they
are able to climb, snowboard or keep up a high energy pace
all day long.
In my army days, this was a great one to do while on
exercise in the field because it required no equipment and
the cards could be used for less physical fun later!
If you do MMA, you can also get great results with this
routine. All that changes is the exercises in order to
better mimic actual fighting movements. For example the
Burpees would turn into more of a sprawl. The jumping jacks
and step ups could be replaced with specified reps of
combinations on the heavy bag.
It's simple yet so effective, just keep flipping cards.
Give this a shot and maybe keep a bucket handy if you are
really going to give a good go.
Start off with one minute each of the exercises below. Go
through the whole list before taking a break:
Jumping Jacks
Bodyweight Squats
Sit-ups
Pushups
Now onto the good stuff. Assign each suit in the deck with
an exercise. Here is what I usually pick for the beginner
level:
Clubs - Burpees on bench or floor
Spades - Walkouts
Hearts - Sit-ups
Diamonds - Pushups
This is the easiest assignment. Whatever number card you
pick, you do the number of the card with the exercise for
that suit. For example if you turn the Jack of clubs, that
means you would do 10 Burpees. All face cards are 10. Aces
thank goodness are only one! Black jokers are 100
bodyweight squats in under 4 minutes. Red jokers are 75
sit-ups where every five you flip to do a pushup in 4
minutes. I have a "special" deck that a couple extra jokers
sneaked into somehow. You do ten cards nonstop and then
take a 30 second break if you are new to this type of
training.
If all is going well and you want to up the ante some, then
try this assignment. It will work the muscles with higher
resistance movements with focus on the lower body.
Clubs - Burpees off the floor with a jump.
Spades - Dive Bombers or Hindu Pushups. This is a killer
effective when done right.
Hearts - Do a sit-up on the floor, then standup and do two
punches (jab, straight) and two front kicks (left and
right).
Diamonds - Jumping three way lunges
Start fast and attempt to complete all the cards and jokers
by the end of 60 minutes. If you start to fade on the high
impact exercises, throw in an active rest. You do this by
automatically adding the equal amount of jumping jacks
followed by step-ups as the previous card had you doing.
For example: An eight of hearts would mean 8 sit-ups, 8
jumping jacks and 8 step-ups, then flip the next card.
When you do finish the deck in under an hour, then you
start to race the clock. Keep track of how long it takes to
complete the deck and race to beat that time at your next
session.
This method has given my clients and myself many hours of
"pleasure"! Give it a try when you want to do something
different for a workout, want extra conditioning for MMA,
sports or have little weight training equipment available.
----------------------------------------------------
Ray Burton is the owner of BuildingBodies Personal Training
and author of the Fat To Fit Diet And Workout Program. Ray
teaches you how to lose fat and increase your metabolism
using the little-known secrets of the world's best athletes
and military personnel at his free fitness information
website http://www.buildingbodies.ca
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