This is one of my favourite workouts to do. It requires nothing but a deck of cards and a whole lot of wind sucking. It can be done indoors or outside and everything is bodyweight only. This is great for capoeira conditioning or any other quick burst…followed by short rest type events.
This bodyweight workout is one of the staples I use for our commando cardio conditioning classes.
Start off with one minute of:
· Jumping Jacks
· Bodyweight Squats
· Sit-ups
· Pushups
Assign each suit of the deck with an exercise. Here is what I usually pick.
· Clubs – Burpees
· Spades – Walkouts
· Hearts – Sit-ups
· Diamonds – Pushups
This is the easiest assignment. What ever number card you pick, you do the number of the card with the exercise for that suit. For example, the Jack of clubs would be 10 Burpees. All face cards are 10. Black jokers are 100 squats in 4 minutes. Red jokers are 75 sit-ups in 4 minutes. You do ten cards nonstop and then take a 30 second break.
If all is going well there, then try this.
· Clubs – Burpees off floor
· Spades – Cobra Dogs. This is my baby. Its part cobra and part downward dog combined and done over and over.
· Hearts – Sit-up into standup with two punches and two kicks
· Diamonds – Jumping lunges
Start fast and attempt to complete all the cards and jokers by the end of class. If you start to fade on the high impact exercises, throw in a rest. You do this by automatically adding the equal amount of jumping jacks followed by steps as the previous card had you doing. For example: An eight of hearts would mean 8 sit-ups, 8jumping jacks and steps, then the next card.
