A Crazy Summer Workout!

One of my favorite things to do on a hot summer day is go out in the yard and do some sort of crazy circuit workout that involves cardio, core, plyometrics, and anything else I can think of. Half the fun is designing the workout. The other half of the "fun" is powering through with the sun beating down, sweat dripping in my eyes, and grass sticking to the backs of my legs.

I haven't done one of these in a long time. My knee troubles probably seem like ancient history to you, but I am reminded of my wonky knee every time I push myself a little too hard. But yesterday, I just thought, "F&CK IT! I wanted jump and squat and mountain climb- KNEE BE DAMNED!"

**Spoiler Alert!!! My knee actually held up pretty well, but I was totally prepared to suffer any consequences bestowed upon me.**

So I lugged my kettle bell, jump rope, stability ball, beach towel, deck of cards, and the HUGEST glass of water in the world out to my front stoop and got started. I had on my tightest, shortest black shorts and a cut off green camisole that was acting as a sports bra. (My goal was to push myself hard while at the same time getting a tan.)

Here is what I did:

Deck of cards workouts go like this: Each suit represents an exercise. You pick a card from the deck and do the number of the exercises indicated on the card. Example: 9 of hearts would be 9 burpees. Face cards equal 10. Aces normally equal 15 but I made my Aces 150 jump rope rotations. I also assigned a 1 minute plank to the jokers. You go until you get through the entire deck.

The workout above took me 27 minutes.

This is how I did the ladders. I started with 5 burpees. Then I did 10 push ups and 5 burpees. Then I did 15 jump squats, 10 push ups, and 5 burpees... You get the picture.

Both of the Ladder Workouts took about 9 minutes.

As I started my cool down, me knees felt like jelly. "This must be what it feels like to do an Ironman," I thought to myself. Then I laughed because it was probably about 1% of the difficulty of doing an Ironman. When I finally got in the house, and chugged my second glass of water, I felt sort of nauseous. It was the heat. Or the burpees.

So, what does all this random jumping around translate to? Here are the final stats!

Run- 2 miles

Burpees- 115

Squats- 85

Push ups- 135

Sit ups- 85

Jump rope rotations- 800

Planks- 2 min.

Jump squats- 60

Plank w/ knee tuck- 60

Wall sit- 50 sec.

Jumping jacks- 100

Stability ball pull ins- 30

Kettle bell swings- 50

Mountain climbers- 60

Bicycle crunches- 60

Tell me about your craziest circuit workout!

Favorite at home exercises?

Do you enjoy designing workouts as much as I do?