“All Hands on Deck Workout”

What do you get when you cross Galway’s #1 Cutting Edge Personal Trainer & A Deck of Cards? A Frickin Awesome Fat Burning, Muscle Toning Workout that’s what! You’ve never played cards like this before that’s for sure. Wanna workout that’ll burn calories, tone muscle, get your heart pumping??

So I hope you enjoyed my Donkey Confidence post, you better of took some action on it, be sure to let me know what action you did take… (I mean it!! ) For now though, goin “gittin” into some good stuff today…

Gotta great post for you on one of my favourite workouts. It’s highly customisable and the beauty of it is you only need two things to do it. Your body and a deck of cards… A deck of cards? What? To workout? Yup that’s right – this workout’s great for the when your in your Galway gym, fitness centre, at home, outdoors or when your travelling and ya still wanna get your workout in. In fact I’ll prob be doing this when I head to California next month (going bashing heads with some of the top fitness professionals in the world – see if we can come up with some great ideas for you and your fitness goals). More on that soon but for now let’s get down to bizness!!

 

“Expect Success Fitness All hands on deck!!”

(Forget the Loveboat references – ain’t gonna be no love lost with this baby!)

Advance warning: You gonna hate me (but love me) after this workout!!

Here’s how it works: 54 cards (we’ll be using the Jokers too).

Now each card is assigned an exercise or “station”.

Each Black card (Spades & Clubs) have a specific exercise, you do X amount of reps depending on the card. For  example if your exercise for the black cards is Pushups and you get a 10 of Clubs then you have to do 10 Pushups.

Each Red card (Hearts & Diamonds) have a specific exercise. Same story here, if your exercise for the red cards is oh let’s say Jumping Jacks and you get a 9 of Hearts you do 9 Jumping Jacks. Pretty easy so far yeah?

Aces, Kings, Queens & Jacks have their own exercise. It’s a good idea for these exercises to target different body parts. So Aces can be Abs/Core, Kings can be Arms (Biceps), Queens can be arms (Triceps) & Jacks can be Back. Assign a specific rep count for each of these – usually between 12-15 is a good number.

Joker’s are your wild card (the exercise you love to hate) – for me I love to hate Burpees, so there usually my my wild cards. There a brilliant total body exercise and there tough as hell! Your gonna either wanna do these to failure (as many as you can manage) – or on the upper end of 12-15 at least.

So you’ve got your 54 cards and you’ve got your exercises for each. Shuffle your deck of cards. Now turn the first card and do that exercise. Without rest turn the next card – do that, then the next card and so on…. Sounds pretty easy right?

Need some help picking your seven exercises? No problem, leave a comment below or contact me letting me know where you’ll be doing this workout (home, gym etc) and I’ll give you some variations. I’ve put some examples of some good exercises for each card below. Go ahead and pick one exercise for each and let me know how you get on.

Some good exercises you can use as your main (Red & Blacks) are: Jumping Jacks, Pushups, Bodyweight Squats, Bodyweight Lunges or variations of these. Try to either split these into Upper/Lower body exercises or a total body exercise.

For example if you are going to go with the above and have Aces as Abs/Core, Kings as Arms, Queens as Legs and Jacks as Back you could pick:

Aces: Mountain Climbers, Plank (hold for 30, 60 secs), Lying Leg Raises. Whatever you do don’t do situps or crunches – don’t  even get me started on them!!

Kings: Curls, Hammer Curls, Chins,

Queens: Tricep extensions, Tricep pushdowns, Kickbacks, Dips

Jacks: Low row, High rows, Superman, Hyperextensions

Jokers: Burpees, variations with pushup, without pushup.

 

This is most definitely a pleasure/pain love/hate workout if ya get me – it can be torture at times but I love it nonetheless. My shuffling technique is crap to say the least as I duly found out the last time I did this. Got hit with Double Burpees – Joker followed by Joker – ARRRGGGHHHH!!! Hate it but Love it!! That’s the beauty of this workout – you don’t know what exercise is coming next – it keeps you on your toes and keeps your body guessing and crying!! No two “All Hands on Deck” workouts are ever the same. The possibilities are endless and the workout never gets boring because you can’t be bored if you don’t know what’s coming next!!

 

Starting off you may not be able to complete the deck and that’s fine. Just do as many as ya can then next time out aim to beat your previous and slowly but surely work your way up to a full deck. You can also rest in between exercises if you need to but try to keep rest times short. When you do complete the full deck, trust me you’ll feel absolutely brilliant, you’ll be tired, very tired, but the sense of achievement you’ll get will make you forget about how tired you are straight away. This really is a gem of a workout and can be customised whether you have a lot of equipment or none at all. It can be done completely with bodyweight exercises and is just as effective.

Try it out, let me know how you get on, if you’ve any questions on it or need help picking some exercises let me know by either leaving a comment below or if you’d prefer to contact me in private you can do so by clicking here. Hopefully you’re starting to realise that at Expect Success Fitness I do things a little differently, I’m not here to sugar coat things, I’m not here to tip toe around with stuff that doesn’t work, I’m here for one thing: to make sure you achieve your Galway Personal Training and fitness goals. This “Expect Success Fitness All Hands on Deck” routine is just one way I can help you achieve your fitness goals, it’s proof ya don’t need any “fancy as” workout equipment to get in a great fat burning, muscle toning routine, I hope you try it out, add it to your training arsenal and start taking the steps in the right direction to fitness success.

 

Speak soon.

John.