Friday, October 17, 2008

More bodyweight exercise ideas

http://koreantaekwondo.tripod.com/articles/exercises.htm

These exercises look great for developing muscular strength, endurance and flexibility as well as cardiovascular capacity.

There are also some fun, by which I mean fiendishly horrible, ideas for exercise sequencing. That Deck of Cards thing? Blech. How do people come up with this sh*t? Wish I had!

(I'm sort of thinking I might try it today, using kettlebell swings and kettlebell clean and press as my two exercises.)

Update: Tried it. Holy sweatfest! Mr. Taekwondo Dude claims the goal is to get through the deck in 12-15 minutes, but I don't think that's physiologically possible with the exercises I chose. The swings, maybe, but not the clean and press since onceI finished on one side I still had the other to do. Which, by the way, sucks, because it meant I had a total of 510 reps to power through instead of a measly 340. Anyhoo, I got through the deck in about 40 minutes, and I wasn't really taking breaks except to turn over cards, and, you know, curse myself for taking this on.

It was sort of weirdly fun, though, and I probably will do it again although since there are four suits in a deck I think I'll pick four exercises next time for a little more variety. Maybe two plyometric and two total-body core-focused moves, or something like that. Burpees (with the pushup), jump lunges, in and out power squats, and ... I dunno.

I think this could be a great format for a group ex class, don't you?