It’s a brand new year and what does that mean for a lot of us? New Year’s resolutions. We have many resolutions; from going to church to achieving financial stability. Another very common one is being healthier versions of ourselves. That includes working out and a better diet. You can check out some useful products that will jumpstart you on your journey to a healthier lifestyle RIGHT HERE. For now, I wanna focus on working out. Some of us love it and some of us hate it. I’m one of those people that loves it. And I can show you one workout that I do from time to time. It’s pretty fun and simple. All you need for this workout is a deck of cards.
Exercise and a deck of cards? How??
Decks of cards have been used for a number of fun things. These things include card games (Go Fish, Gin Rummy, Spades, etc.), magic tricks, and building houses and pyramids. How can someone possibly have fun with a deck of cards to workout? A good question. Now here’s an answer.
You can spice up your workout regime with a deck of cards by assigning a specific exercise to a card. Think about it. There are a total of 4 suits (spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds) in a standard deck of playing cards. Each suit has 13 cards (from ace (1) to king (13)). You can assign each suit an exercise and the number on the card can be the number of reps that you do. For example, spades could be push ups, hearts could be squats, clubs could be sit-ups, and diamonds could be planks. As far as black vs. red cards, they can decide how many reps you do. For example, red cards (diamonds and hearts) can be 5 reps and black cards (clubs and spades) can be 10.
How do you use the cards, J?
There are a variety of ways that a simple deck of cards can be used to workout. This has been a great alternative to the gym for me. I made it a habit to go to the gym on a regular basis. Now that we’re in a pandemic, I avoid going at all costs (even when it’s open). It’s much safer that way.
My use of the cards is a little bit different than the ways I mentioned above. For each number (regardless of the suit), I assign a specific exercise. I also don’t workout my upper body and lower body on the same day (excluding running/walking for cardio). I give each muscle group at least 48 hours to rest to ensure healthy muscle growth. On days that I work my upper body, I came up with 13 exercises that work the upper body; one for each number in a deck of cards. These include variations of push ups, tricep dips, planks, and burpees (I HATE those). The same thing goes for the lower body. Exercises that I do include variations of squats, calf raises, glute/hamstring raises, and wall sits.
I shuffle the deck and place it face down. I then pick a card from the top and do 20 reps of whatever exercise the card tells me to do. After the exercise, I take a 1-2 minute break (sometimes shorter if I want the challenge). I started out doing five cards a day until I ran out of cards. Then I started over and increased the number of cards a day to 6. My plan is to do this until I do a workout where I do 20 reps of all 52 cards. Sounds insane, right? It kinda is, but I like a good challenge.
It’s A new year. Start it off the healthy and fun way.
This brand new year, make your health a priority. Make your resolution a goal that you MUST meet. A deck of cards and a good attitude are all you need. Pick a card…any card. The fun of it all is anticipating what card is next and what exercise you’ll do. This will help prove that working out can be fun. Trust and believe me on that!
Response Magic