Card games

One of the things I love about running is the simplicity of it - all you need is a pair of shoes and you can walk out the door and start running.  Minimal equipment and easy access are keys for me to stay interested and to keep at something.  Running definitely fits the bill.

But, today I didn't get up to run, and I knew I needed to do something.  I've been teetering on the edge of complete slothdom, and I need to snap out of it!  I wanted something quick and easy that I could do in my living room.  Thanks to Google and my favorite lady Jillian, I found this:

Try this workout (compliments of Bob Harper). Grab a deck of cards and assign four exercises (one for each suite). Burpies for clubs, push ups for spades, squats for hearts, dumbbell rows for diamonds. Then go through the whole deck doing every card as a set of exercises. Good luck!

Perfect, right?  Easy, can be done at home, uses minimal equipment and it's something new!  So, I got my cards, grabbed my 8lb dumbells and set up shop. 



This is my type of equipment list!

 In case her explanation isn't clear - it basically goes like this:  You take the deck, turn the top card over and do that number of whatever exercise is assigned to that suite.  So for a 10 of hearts, I did 10 squats - a 9 of clubs would be 9 burpies, etc. etc.  I made face cards and aces count for 10 as well. I did the exercises as suggested, but added weights to the squats instead of just doing regular ones.

OH.MY.GOD it was hard! 

I actually thought at first that I would go through the deck a couple of times, but once was definitely enough for today. I used to think that I knew what muscle fatigue felt like, but seriously after drawing the 3rd spade card (pushups) in a row towards the end of the deck - my arms completely gave out!  I literally couldn't do any more.  So this means three things - 1) this is a good little workout; 2)  I have definitely lost any strength that I once had; and 3) I need to do this again!

This workout is also really versatile because you can change the exercises to focus on other body parts if you want.  And the element of surprise that comes with drawing the cards is fun (I was totally praying for low numbers at the end of the workout, "no 10's please! How about a 3?".  Anyway, I really enjoyed this quick little workout. 

Let me know if you try it out and what you think about it!