Spartan Training Challenge ( Week 1 )

For me, doing races and having something to train for motivates me to stay in shape. Last month I did Ragnar Wasatch Back with some of my clients and my sister, and later this month my Sister and I are doing a Super Spartan. It’s not my first time so luckily I know what I need to train harder this time around. The downside is that the gym that my sisters and I used to train at closed a few months ago (still super sad about this) and my sister is now gymless ( I have a few other memberships due to being a trainer but she refuses to go to a big box gym). Since she is my race partner I know it’s important for us to both be ready for this race so I decided that I am going to design gym free workouts to prepare us for the race. The park is actually a great and free resource, especially for this type of obstacle race so I figured it would be fun to utilize the local park along with a few small weights and things from home.

I thought it would be fun to invite anyone to join this challenge and post what you think of the workouts. I figure this would be good for my personal input as well as accountability for those joining me. Plus, it’s just nice to know that you weren’t that only one who struggled with certain exercises. Even if you aren’t planning on doing a spartan, this will still be a fun and free way to get in shape. The more the merrier!

Today’s workout has several things that were partner related just because I thought it would be fun. We ended up doing it at the elementary play ground because it was empty and had better monkey bars. You could modify these exercises to be done alone but research has shown that having a workout partner increases your likelihood of sticking with a regimen. Photo credits go to my nephews haha. they are not the best but it should give you and idea of what things should look like; but feel free to get creative and make it your own as long as you are being safe.

Our First workout:

For a warm up we did:

laps around the park for 5-10 minutes (it had a very large field, I forgot how hard running in grass is)
20 walking lunges
20 push-ups
30 sit-ups
20 jumping jacks (great for shoulder mobility if you keep your arms straight and raise over head at the top)

For our workout we did the following 3 times though before moving on to the next exercise:

50 Plank Pattycakes
6-10 Partner assisted pull-ups (if you are alone you could always just jump up and go slow fighting gravity on the way down)
Assisted pull-ups image 1
20 band Step-Ups (could also do weighted
Step Up Image 1
10-15 Hanging Leg Raises (or knee-ups)
30 Yards Resistance Bear Crawls (we used a resistance band but you could use a rope, towel, or nothing at all) * make sure the resistance is close to the knees
resistance bear crawls
10-15 Push-Ups
50 Yards Piggy Back Carries (just how it sounds we carried each other on our backs). * bonus points for trying to run while you do this but just be aware that your legs might give out haha
15 Burpees
Down and back Monkey Bars (we did them timed because we are competitive like that)
We ended with 4 sprint intervals (about 100 yards down, rest 10-20 seconds, and then back to the start line) followed by a plank for as long as we could.