The Fun, the Spontaneous and an Alternative to Typical Cardio

Okay so my typical day can involve as much as 2 cardio sessions in a day and as a Bodybuilder competing soon, I am encouraged to do slow cardio for prolonged periods with low intensity, such as stairmaster, uphill walking and a plethora of other boring shit for stupid amounts of time.

Fuck that.

At the very least its high intensity intervals for 10-16 minutes either at the end of a workout or early morning for me, at least this gets it over with quickly and challenges the entire body without taking up massive portions of my day.

But even this gets boring, and we can all get bored with a routine despite how important to us our goals are.

So what to do should/when your workout becomes monotonous one day? It will probably be fine tomorrow, but today, doing the same or a similar workout just won't cut it, that is ok. Do not despair, you can still come up with some fantastic workouts by just taking a look at your ipod (or similar) making a playlist and constructing a workout in the following manner:

• Pick a selection of songs
• Pick any number of exercises and perform a repetition each time something distinctive in the song is repeated
• Play the playlist
• Do the exercises
• Complete the workout

It was James and Jimmy who started riffing on this idea while we were all kinda just messing around at 'The Works' in Wakefield where I work. A couple of the songs and exercises come directly from them, and a few are my own ideas.

Here's what I came up with for myself and a client today:

Song/ Exercise 1: Lou Bega- Mambo No.5

 Hold a press-up position, and time Mr. Bega mentions a woman name...perform a press-up! Either hold the press-up position, or perform mountain climbers between his lady listing! 

 Song/ Exercise 2: Smells Like Song 2

Each time "Woo-hoo!" is shouted, you perform a walkout press-up. Each time Kurt repeats the word "hello" you perform a squat.
 

Song/ Exercise 3: ACDC- Back in Black

 Perform a burpee each time you hear the word "back"
 

Song/ Exercise 4: Witch Doctor- Ting Tang Walla Walla Bing Bang

 

Perform a dumbbell clean and press from the floor each ting you hear "ting tang" then do mountain climbers between verses/ to the beat
 

Song/ Exercise 5: Eiffel 65- Blue

From a v-sit or holding the top of a sit-up perform a sit-up or v-sit each time you hear the word blue- this one is awful!
 

Song/ Exercise 6: Nuclear Assualt- Hang the Pope

 Perform a alternate straight punch each time you hear "hang the pope" repeated. You can punch pads a bag or just out in front of you, it all works.
 

Job and cardio done!

Give it a try.

What songs, exercises and ideas can you come up with?

Dare to make your cardio different.

Making brutality even more fun is allowed. Forget endlessly plodding away on a treadmill, stairmaster or bike in a gym, the time for that is soon to come to an end. Especially in terms of my Personal Training! It is an obsolete form of training for a Personal Trainer's to prescribe for any significant amount of time.

And thankyou to James Riley and Jimmy Stewart for providing the original idea for this concept.

By Chris Kershaw