So for those of the CFH community that I don’t have the pleasure to coach very often, I want to say, HI! If you don’t know, 5 weeks ago my wife gave birth to our second child, Jonathan. My daughter, Samantha will be 2 in June. That being said, my day job is as a materials scientist for the National Institute of Standards & Technology, in Gaithersburg. That means my daily commute is at least 50 minutes each way if not longer (because apparently no one can drive correctly on I-95!). All this means that many times I don’t have time to come to the gym. I’m sure many of you have similar situations.
But, that does not mean that on days that are very hectic I can’t get a great workout in. I recently saw a tweet by Reebok that “If you have your body, you have a gym.” I believe that statement to be pretty true. I’m not saying that most of the time you can skip this gym to do some body weight movements all the time, but in a pinch there’s a lot of simple movements you can do to get out of breath, and maintain your fitness.
BURPEES!!!!!!!
I know everyone hates burpees, but they are a freakin’ excellent movement that 1) get’s you out of breath quickly, and 2) needs almost no space to execute. There’s a thousand variations of workouts you can do with burpees. I’ll give you three examples:
1)20 burpees
Rest 1 minute
2) 8 Rounds of:
Run up and down a flight of stairs 3 times
10 burpees
3)7 Rounds of:
15 burpees
15 situps
4)Every minute on the minute of:
x burpees
Okay, that’s 4 workouts. These workouts will get your heart rate jacked, leave you gasping for breath and sweating. The last one is one of my favorites. You can play with how many minutes you go, as well as how many burpees you do. If you don’t have much time try to see how long you can do 12 burpees a minute. If you want to do more, 8 burpees a minute. Or, for the first 8 minutes do 8 burpees every minute. Then on the 9th do 9, on the 10th do 10, and so on until you can’t do the prescribed burpees in that whole minute.
Don’t forget other very simple movements that don’t require any equipment:
Pushups
Air Squats
Lunges
Running (Okay this one requires a little extra effort, but not that much. There’s a website called “mapmyrun.com”. You can start at your address and play with it a little bit to get a 400 M, 800M, and mile route right from your front door.
Plank (not a movement, I guess, but a position)
A similar exercise called grasshoppers
Jumping Air Squats, and jumping lunges
Handstand holds
A simple way to get a quick workout is to pick 4 movements and do a tabata workout. For those of you not acquainted with that, it’s 8 rounds of 20 seconds of movement, followed by 10 seconds of rest. For any smart phone you can download a tabata timer to make it easier. That makes 4 minutes per movement x 4 movements = 16 minutes. Everyone surely has 16 extra minutes in their day for a workout.
I hope that this shows you a couple of options to get a quick workout when you’re pressed for time and can’t go to the gym. As I write this my wife, daughter, and son are all asleep taking a nap (It’s 3:08 PM on Saturday afternoon). I could easily fit a quick workout in of:
10 Rounds of:
10 pushups
20 air squats
Good luck and let me know if you have any questions, or think I left something out that’s kick ass!
Coach TR
Partner work today, bring your smile and get ready for hugs and high fives!
Skill WOD
Partner Skill WOD
In teams of 2 complete as many double unders as possible in 6 minutes
Post total combine number of Doubles
(One person works at a time, you can go then your partner can go or you can go for 1 minute then your partner can go for 1 minute, break it up however you would like.)
(If you can get ONE double under then you should not scale this workout. If you can’t get one double, use this time to practice.
WOD
“Partner DT”
10 Rounds for Time
12 Deadlifts
9 Hanging Power Cleans
6 Push Jerks
Fitness 115/75
RX 155/105
RX+ 185/125
30 min Cap
Score = Total Time
(You do a round then your partner does a round, 5 rnds a piece)
