Emlyn Lewis Misadventures

Suffer Club – Workout #4

The last thing you want, when you’re asking people to suffer with you all the time, is to keep them standing in one place, knocking out reps of the same exercises over and over. We’ve been pretty challenged with this pandemic, because we’ve had to leave all our usual equipment, bands, kettlebells, medicine balls, at home, really just depending on body weight moves. To keep it fresh, I like to move the crew around during the workout, so although they’re doing familiar movements, they’re running a bit and getting a different view.

Today’s workout took in six locations. Our park lends itself well to a plan like this, because there are a lot of distinct areas, each with their own topographic/geographic challenges. This is a Choose Your Own Adventure workout. You get to choose which location and which exercise you do. The complication is that you can only do one exercise at each spot before moving to another spot, so, for example, you might choose to do the 30 Triceps Dips at Spot 1. Then you would need to move to another location to do another exercise, before returning to Spot 1 for the next exercise on the Spot 1 list.

The Suffer Clubbers did this “milk run” style. They’d choose three spots and three exercises to do right in a row, before returning to me with the exercise list, to get three more. No one got more than two exercises at every location in the 45 minutes we spent.

Obviously, we’re super lucky to have a big, hilly park with a variety of terrain and equipment in it. If you’re doing this workout at home or in a less awesome spot, just add about a quarter mile of running for the changes between locations

Spot 1 – School (Across from our park there’s a school with a low wall that we often use for stuff like…)

  • 30 x Triceps Dips
  • 30 x Step Ups (Left + Right = 1 rep)
  • 30 x Declined Shoulder Taps (Feet on the wall, hands on the ground, tap each shoulder once with the opposite hand. Two taps is one rep.)

Spot 2 – Playground (The playground is full of instruments of torture).

  • 30 x Swing Tucks (Face down, feet in the seat of the swing, pull the swing toward your chest).
  • 30 x Body Rows
  • 10 x Wall Climbs (This wall is a little over waist high, so we climb it, two hands on the wall, push up, kick a leg up, stand up straight, get down).

Spot 3 – View (This is a flat area with benches that overlooks Boston and great for watching the sunrise over the ocean or…).

  • 50 x Scissors
  • 20 x Burpees
  • 100 x Russian Twists

Spot 4 – Basketball Court (At the back of the park, a brand new basketball court).

  • 5 x Shuttle Runs (What we called suicides when I was a kid, baseline, free throw, half court, free throw, end line).
  • 100 x Mtn Climbers
  • 30 x Plank Twists

Spot 5 – Top View (At the top of the park, there’s another flat spot with benches).

  • 40 x Elbow to Knee (E2K) Crunches
  • 30 x Squat Jumps
  • 30 x Crab Taps

Spot 6 – Stonehenge (The water tower at the top of the hill above the park. You probably don’t have a stonehenge, but find a hill and do this stuff at the top of it).