Looking for a way to spice up your workout and have a bit of fun with your exercise routine? Grab a deck of cards and give this workout a go!
The benefit of this type of workout is that it’s completely random. There’s no right or wrong way to program your exercises, just pick a focus area for your workout, choose your exercises, and you’re ready to go.
How To Play:
1. Assign an Exercise for Each Suit
If you’re looking for a full body workout, you can assign a core, upper-body, lower-body and total body exercise for each suit. For example:
Diamonds = Mountain Climbers
Hearts = Push Up
Clubs = Squat Jump
Spades = Jumping Jacks
If you want to focus on one muscle group in particular (e.g. legs), you can choose your exercises accordingly.
2. Know Your Reps
The number on the card will determine the number of reps you’ll perform for each exercise. Using the exercises above as an example, if you pull out a seven of diamonds you’ll complete seven mountain climbers.
For the face cards you can either decide to count them as a certain number of reps, e.g. Jacks = 11, Queen = 12, King = 13 etc., or you can make them special moves or challenges. A challenge example could be:
Jacks = 30 second wall sit
Queens = 30 second plank hold
Kings = 10 burpees
Ace = 30 second glute bridge hold
Joker = 30 second rest
3. Set a Time Limit
You can set your time limit for as long or as little as you like. The idea is to get through the complete deck of cards, but if you’re limited for time or have chosen more difficult exercises you can adjust this to suit your workout requirements.
If you feel like mixing it up, you can change your exercises at any point during the workout. For example, you might focus on your lower body for the first 20 cards, upper body for the next 20, and then program some core for the last 12 cards. Instead of number of cards, you can also select time limits for each focus area – e.g. 10 minutes of upper body, 10 minutes of lower body.
4. Shuffle Your Cards & Go
Now it’s time to get started! Once you’ve assigned exercises for every suit and know how many reps you need to complete for each card, it’s time to start sweating! Be sure to shuffle your cards before you get going to ensure you’re not performing the same exercises consecutively.
Once shuffled, pull the first card from the deck, complete the designated exercise for the assigned number of reps, then immediately pull another card from the deck. Continue drawing cards and performing exercises until your time expires or you get through the entire deck!
Exercise Ideas:
Core – Mountain climbers, Sit-ups, Plank jacks, Hollow hold, Russian twists, Leg raises, Dead Bugs
Lower Body – Squat jumps, Jump lunges, Glute bridge, Tuck jump, Deadlifts
Upper Body – Push ups, Tricep dips, Shoulder press, Plank shoulder taps, Supermans
Cardio – Burpees, jumping jacks, high knees, touchdown jacks, Bear crawls
