A Deck o' WOD

Today, I went to CrossFit to do some WODing with the lovely CRCF owners, Erik and Melissa.  For a long time, I had wanted to try a WOD I had seen on Mark's Daily Apple, which he dubbed Primal Poker.  The premise: take a deck of cards and assign each suit an exercise.  Then, pick a card and complete the number of reps on the card (as determined by the suit).  Grab a new card and repeat until the deck is finished.

After debating what exercises to do, we settled on kettlebell swings, wall ball shots, box jumps, and push ups.  We even convinced (or coerced, depending on your perspective) Grant, a junior CrossFitter, to join us.

Then we realized that no one had a deck of cards.  No problem: Melissa googled "deck of cards";

printed them out, and we made our own!

Blurry, but it's our bag o' cards.

Next, we had to figure out the "terms" of the workout.  What suit should each exercise be?  What rep number do you assign to an Ace? Jack? Queen? King? We finally settled on:

Hearts: Kettlebell Swings (1 pood for myself and Melissa, which is 16 kg, or 35 pounds; I didn't pay attention to what the boys did, but 1.5 pood is always a good standard)

Spades: Wall Ball Shots (14 pound wall ball for the ladies, 20 pound wall ball for the guys)

Clubs: Box Jumps (20 inch for the ladies, 24 inch for the guys)

Diamonds: Push Ups

Ace counted for one, Jacks for 12, Queens for 14, and Kings for 16.

So, if we pulled a 6 of hearts, we did six kettlebell swings.

Then, we set up:

My 20 inch box and my kettlebell;

Wall balls, ready to rock and roll!

We also set up a system: unused cards went in the blue plastic cup, used cards into the translucent cup, aptly labeled "DONE."

This system was brilliant -- it was a fool proof way to keep track of progress and not get used and unused cards confused.  Next to the cups was our cheat sheet of the exercises each suit was assigned to, as well as the card values for non-numbered cards.  Without that piece of paper, this workout would have never happened.

Goodness, this work out was a killer, but so worth it.  The first card pulled was the King of Hearts, so we started off the WOD with 16 kettlebell swings.  It was great to get some of the hardest cards out of the way.  But, since this workout is so randomized, the first half of the workout seemed to be dominated by box jumps and wall balls, and the second by the kettlebell swings and push ups.  Often, we'd get the same suit a few times in a row, which was especially a pain for the push ups.  We also made it a rule that if you finished the set of reps first, you pulled the next card.  And we didn't start the next set of reps until everyone was finished.  I liked that it was spontaneous, varied, and surprisingly quick-paced.  Luckily, we were pretty much on the same pace for most of the reps, and finished just short of 30 minutes, at 29:58.  I wanted to quit a few times, but working out with everyone gave much needed momentum to keep going.   I'm so lucky to have such a great CrossFit family.

And just in case you were wondering, we did each exercise 97 times, for a total of 388 reps.  

The beauty of this workout is that you can change it as you see fit.  Can't do a wall ball?  Do squats instead!  No access to kettlebells? Do sit ups or burpees.  Try double unders or regular jump ropes (just triple the value on the card).  Let your imagination run wild here!  I think this is definitely worthy of being a once-a-month WOD.

My post-WOD celebration?  A KIND bar and a pedicure!

I bought these two at Starbucks today, and ate the Cranberry Almond -- it was very tasty! I definitely recommend them (although the $1.95 price tag is a bit steep, so I may start ordering them online).  

Have you tried something new this week?  Or had a new exercise experience?