Love decks of cards, but Egyptian Rat Screw not quite intense enough lately?  Have I got a workout for you!!

After a long day at work, the gums weren’t feeling 100% but definitely a little better than earlier, so I popped a few Advil (that claimed to be expired…  I like to live dangerously), threw back many glasses of water, and knew I was ready to hit the gym, and hit it hard.  Luckily, today I had a friend! Melissa, a new employee at my office, came off as a fit gal from first meeting, and when I mentioned how much I love my gym, O2 Fitness, and how there was a contest going on if you brought a friend in to win a year of free gas, she was totally down to come with today. We got changed at work and hit the gym hard.  After giving her a little tour of the facilities:

we steered clear of the group fitness room and went our separate ways for the first 20 minutes. I got my race on with the strangers next to me on the elliptical (and kicked everyone’s asses, duh) for 2 miles, and then hopped off to join her in something she called “The Wreck Deck.” I didn’t hear her fully when she first told me the name, so I thought it was called “The Death Deck”. Little did I know how right I was…

Here’s the way it works:

• Take a deck of cards, any deck will do. 52 and 2 jokers is all that’s required.
• Each suit is a different exercise

1. Clubs are legs. Squats or lunges is the exercise she had listed, with weights or not, whatever makes you comfortable.
2. Diamonds are pushups. Chest, tricep, diamond, cat (for numbers 6 or less). On your toes, on your knees, or if you are as EXTREME as Melissa, put your toes on one medicine/bosu ball and each hand on another. Then you will impress everyone around you.
3. Spades are abs. We did these things she modified from V-crunches where you sort of balance on one butt check (easy enough if your butt cheek is a cushiony pillow of joy like my own), then in the middle, then the other butt cheek. That’s one. (Here’s a video of a V-crunch, even though that’s not exactly what we did: V-Crunch!)
4. Hearts, ironically enough, are Burpees. Or mountain climbers, when you are less extreme or feeling extremely tired. For every one burpee that I didn’t do, I tried to do 2 mountain climber sets. Hopefully it evened out.

• For the numbered cards, do one rep for each number (aka a 8 of hearts means 8 burpees!)
• For the Face cards, a jack = 11, a queen = 12, a king = 13, an ace = 15 though!
• For the jokers, do five reps of each exercise
• DO THE WHOLE DECK!!

Here’s Melissa drawing the last card (we were both super elated at this, and I’d only down half the deck!)

Of course, it was 5 burpees. we pushed it out, gave each other copious amounts of high fives, and felt more boss than ever!!

I was proud as a peacock and, to end the day at the gym, Melissa did me a solid and signed up for a membership (translation: new workout buddy andddddd a free month!)

To sum it up, this was basically the coolest day at the gym that I’ve had since I discovered My So-Called Life streaming on Netflix. Admittedly, that wasn’t at the gym, but it felt equally as cool.

Have you tried any new workouts lately?

How do you choose to get swoll?