Training the body is all about intense movement and activity while keeping the heart rate up intermittently (exercise hard for a brief period, stop/rest, exercise hard again, stop/rest, repeat over and over again...most forms of exercise follow this work to rest format). You don’t need to go to a fancy gym and pay $80, 90, or 100 a month in membership fees.
Old school athletes trained anywhere, everywhere, and wherever convenient. Old time strongman and competitive weightlifting athletes 50, 60, and 70 plus years ago trained with heavy rocks, logs, backpacks, ropes, sticks, water jugs, barrels, tires, and whatever rusty heavy metal they could find. They did not let the lack of equipment stop them from training. Rather, they worked around their lack of resources and generated clever ways of training.
We can certainly learn from these highly resourceful athletes. If you really want to train the body and exercise it hard, you absolutely do not need expensive equipment, or any equipment at all. The only requirement necessary is a functioning body and the will to train, the mental fortitude to strain, huff and puff your way to a stronger and healthier you!
Today, the modern commercial gym/health club is only one of many centers for fitness. You can work out in the park (with monkey bars used for pullups/chinups/muscle-ups, wooden blocks for step-ups and squats...you get the idea 
), on the track field/football field, or even in your basement/living room/bedroom with a home gym (get the bare minimum of an olympic barbell set and bench station and you're set).
An equipped home gym isn’t even necessary to “work out.” In fact, you don’t need any specific piece of exercise equipment. Dumbbells, barbells, treadmills, stationary bikes, and all those fancy cable machine stuff are just tools for exercise and training.
You could really just exercise with anything you can find. Don’t have weights? Can't get to a gym? Fill a backpack with books and use that as extra resistance for pushups.
Free weight bars and plates and machine stations are pillars. They’re only one of many means to an end.Many unconventional tools exist. You can get a heart-busting workout with just the floor as I outlined in the 100 burpees routine. And As you can tell from the article title, we’re going to use a deck of cards as a tool for this workout. Talk about being resourceful.
Now, I’m sure you have a full deck of 52 cards (54 if you count Jokers) lying around somewhere in your house. Go and pick it up right now. If you don't own a deck, head out to your local supermarket, 99 cents store, or pick up one at amazon.com. It's only a few bucks.
I’m going to show how you can get a fun workout with a deck of cards.
Playing cards are not exclusive for the use of poker and blackjack.The deck of cards routine isn’t revolutionary or new but it sure is tough and very effective at promoting and improving every aspect of your fitness levels.
Boxers, wrestlers, and even UFC fighters have been using these workouts a lot lately.The routines do actually look easy on paper but don’t be fooled. Try and see for yourself.
The rules are as follow:
- Assign one exercise to each card color and symbol. For example, pushups for red hearts, crunches for red diamonds, body weight squats for black spades and janda sit-ups for black club.
- Perform the number of reps for each exercise equal to the cards value. Ex. do 10 reps of pushups if you come across and have assigned pushups to red hearts. The Jacks, Queens, and Kings have a value of 10. Aces have a value of 11. You may exclude the Jokers or include them for a value of 20.
- Shuffle the deck thoroughly before beginning.Complete all cards with each exercise as fast as possible with as little rest as possible. Try to keep the rest periods between each card to 20-60 seconds. The goal here is to move quickly and complete the entire routine in the fastest time possible. This incorporates a cardiovascular element into the workout to target strength endurance and aerobic capacity.
That’s it. You can make the routine as tough or easy as you want. Try to select two upper body exercises for one color(red) and two lower body/core/abs exercises for the other(black for a full body approach.Mix it up with weights if you have a home gym. You don’t have to limit yourself to just bodyweight movements.You may even want to focus on just the upper or lower body by assigning two exercises, instead of four, for both colors
Here are 10 more sample bodyweight routines that I’ve tried in the past with great success (use these routines to give you some ideas of selecting exercises for each card):
Routine 1
Red diamonds and hearts: elevated pushups
Black spades and clubs: wide grip chin-ups
Routine 2
Red diamonds: handstand pushups
Red hearts: close grip pull-ups
Black spades: crunches done in USMC form
Black clubs: V-ups with a 10 pound Olympic plate
Routine 3
Red diamonds: burpees
Red hearts: pushups
Black spades: single legged squats
Black clubs: sit-ups
Routine 4
Red diamonds: pushups
Red hearts: standing ab wheel rollouts
Black spades: body weight squats
Black clubs: hanging leg raises
Routine 5
Red diamonds: dips
Red hearts: explosive pushups
Black spades: flags
Black clubs: plank holds x10 of card value for time
Routine 6
Red cards: pushups
Black cards: bodyweight squats
Routine 7
Red cards: burpees
Black cards: pushups
Routine 8
Red cards: hindu pushups
Black cards: pullups
Routine 9
Red cards: barbell-supported pushups (upper body elevated)
Black cards: bench supported dumbbell row
Routine 10:
Red cards: situps
Black cards: single leg squats with one leg supported on bench/chair
Here's a silent video of the deck of cards in action,
What kind of results can you expect from these routines? They're perfect of fat loss, building muscular endurance, and improving general conditioning and fitness. Once you do them, you'll experience what I mean.
Keep in mind that these are just samples. If you’re relatively new to exercise, keep the routine simple and pick the most basic body weight exercises like pushups, chin-ups, sit-ups, and crunches. Work on the simple stuff first and then go from there. The body needs time to adapt and overcompensate over many workouts.
If you can't do the required number of repetitions for each card, then take it easy and break it down into sets of the number of reps you can do. For example, take the first routine above, you flip a card over and it comes to a 10 of spades. If you can't do 10 reps of wide grip chinups, then break that set of 10 reps into 2 sets of 5, 3 sets of 3/1 set of 1, 5 sets of 2, 1 set of 6/1 set of 4, or something similar. As long as you complete the required amount of reps for the card, you're set.
Now, progression is also key here for keeping these workouts challenging. It allows the body to further adapt to the training stress. You may either do one of these things when the routine becomes easy:
- Choose more difficult exercises for each bodyweight routine. Pick more difficult variations of body weight movements or replace with weighted movements using dumbbells and barbells.
- Reduce the rest period between each exercise/card. Instead of resting 30 seconds between each card, try resting only 20 seconds and go through the deck as fast as possible.
- Increase volume by multiplying each card value by 2 or more. For example, you assigned crunches to red hearts. If 10 reps of crunches for the 10 of hearts becomes too easy, increase it to 20 reps (10×2).
- Increase volume by going through the entire deck once more. You can choose a different set of exercises or stay with the same. So instead of going through 52 cards for 52 sets of exercises, you're now doing 104 cards for 104 sets of different exercises. Fun stuff.
Some of the body weight exercises like dips, chin-ups and pull-ups obviously requires a bar of some sort. You may pick up a doorway bar for $20-30 or purchase a chin-up/dip station.
The deck of cards workout can be done anywhere as long as you have a deck of cards. It doesn’t require any specific equipment (unless you choose certain exercises). It’s fun, intense, and challenging if you haven’t done anything like this before. Come up with your own workouts. You’re only limited by your imagination. I guarantee you that these workouts will dramatically improve your physical fitness levels so you can lead a healthier and fitter life.
Train Hard. Train Safely. Train Smart.
Feel free to contact Me at ZQH245@gmail.com or ZQH250@gmail.com if you have any questions, comments, or seeking additional advice. Good luck!
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