Thursday, March 15

Pike Workout

This was a challenge. The idea is to do it as quickly as you can:

Get a Deck of Cards.
Shuffle them.

Spades: Burpees
Clubs: Mahlers
Hearts: Pushups
Diamonds: Squats

2-9 = Face Value
10-K = 10
A = 15

Go through as quickly as you can and keep time. My time was 28:09 (4.27 seconds per exercise). There were reports of times as low as 20:58 (with the change of Mahlers to Mountain Climbers).

To quote Clay Davis: "Shiiiit."

I'd like to explain it away by saying the mountain climbers and lightweight nature of the guys with lower times means I'm doing fine, but that would be an excuse.

Instead, I've got another goal to shoot for: Under 20 Minutes or 3.03 seconds per exercise by August. Drop 1.25 seconds per exercise.
--
Workout Total:
28 minutes Circuit

7 comments:

Jim Biancolo said...

Looks like a killer workout. What does a single mountain climber rep. look like? 1 of each leg, or 4-count? Either way, it does seem like you could get through those faster than the Mahlers. Also, it seems like the Mahlers are going to contribute to burpee/pushup/squat muscle fatigue more than mountain climbers will.

I do like the mountain climber substitution though, as it seems to work different things from the other exercises.

Libby said...

What's a mahler? I googled it and found something where you roll on your back, land in a squat and do a push-up. Is that it?

Also, what's a grasshopper? Google failed me there...

dusty.rhodes said...

Based on a previous email to the team, one set of Mountain Climbers should be one rep for each leg.

I should take the time to mention that I hate Mountain Climbers with a passion. I would rather do Mahlers all day long.

In this set of exercises, I thought of the Burpees/Mahlers as full body exercises and the Squats/Pushups as Lower/Upper exercises. I think if I were going to use MCs, I would substitute some other full-body exercise for the pushups to make all 4 of them full body exercises.

Mahlers: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/mahler48a.htm
Grasshoppers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE2AcqxjmL8

I should note that I learned/do grasshoppers slightly differently, as I basically do a pushup and then kick out my leg as shown in the video instead of kicking the leg before.

Jim Biancolo said...

Cool. So when you do the Mahlers, and you're transitioning from the pushup back to the squat (so you can start your next rep.), do you bring your feet to your hands like a burpee? If so, I assume that means you end up moving forward with each rep, so you need a bit of space. Also, do you stand up between reps, or is the lower squat position as high as you go until you finish the set?

dusty.rhodes said...

Roll back, roll forward straight into a pushup, repeat.

No standing. The things you pick up as you do them:

1. You'll need about 2 times your height (maybe less if you're really consistent) in space length-wise to do it.
2. As you work to do it as fast as you can, you'll kinda hop from pushup to squat and from squat to pushup.
3. The more of them you do, the more you realize the "position" of squat is not what you need to focus on. Instead, if you just focus on going from supine to pushup as quickly as you can, the rest is irrelevantand will sort itself out.

I think that was reasonably well articulated.

Anonymous said...

There were a couple of times towards the end of this workout where I failed to right myself in the mahler and crashed backwards onto my ass. It would be funnier (for me at least) if I didn't do the workout on a hardwood floor.

dusty.rhodes said...

That is a priceless mental image.

I was having difficulties with the Mahlers as well, but I just slowed down a bit like a true O-Player. You, of course, went full-bore, like a true D-player and almost hurt yourself in the process.

I'm not sure which is better.