Hey all. I’ve been reading and surfing around here for several months, but this is only my third post. I was just wondering if anyone else has ever tried The Deck of Cards workout, and if so what exercises you used?
For those unfamiliar with the workout, you either pick 2 (red cards and black cards) or four (each suit) exercises. Shuffle a deck of ordinary playing cards, turn the top card over and do the corresponding exercise for the number of reps on the card. Face cards are usually ten, Aces eleven, and jokers are 15, 20, 25, 30 or something else crazy.
I’m currently in “bodyweight only” mode, and I tried this out for the first time two days ago (read about it a while ago, though). I chose dips (well, a combination dip to L-sit to tuck planche, but that didn’t last long, so it was mostly just plain ol’ dips), pullups, a variation of a bodyweight squat, and leg curls on a Total Gym (believe it or not, that piece of equipment can give one some nice options. That leg curl is less like a traditional weighted leg curl and more like a leg pullup.). To try to round it out, I decided that jokers would be a timed hold of a “superman” (and man, do those little plastic action figures put up a fight…).
It was a helluva workout, especially the dips and chins. Took me about an hour, but I got some good ideas on what to do differently. First, the bodyweight squats weren’t enough. Next time it’ll be jump squats or pistols (actually, I plan to run through some different exercises all together). Second, I really need to shuffle better. I think I wound up doing about 50 pullups in a row to start and 40 or so straight dips at the end. But, it was fun, it was unpredictable ( to a degree of course), and at the end of the day, you wind up having done 115 or 230 reps of each exercise (forgive me if the math is way off, I’m just an artist, dammit).
Anywhat, if anyone else has tried this drill, I’d love to know what you did.
Toby