Evolve: Use Nature to Craft a Workout

Instep Lunge outside my apartment

Over the past few months, I have run and jumped around every inch of my Culver City neighborhood and found some easy ways to put together workouts using my surroundings. Cost for this is FREE and best yet, it takes less than an hour.

Everyday movements involve pushing, pulling and squatting. Each movement in the list is chosen to model one of these types of movement. Our human anatomy loves to move for short, fast bursts and then rest. The idea with these 10 minute AMRAPs (As Many Rounds as Possible) is to provide the body with a full body workout, while adequately giving each muscle group rest and time to recover in between the exercises. In addition, these workouts are metabolic, which means your whole body will be engaged and heart rate elevated. This is good for your heart and for keeping you lean and spry.

Choose 4, GO for 10 minutes:

Sporting goods stores sell tubes

Pick one movement from each category in the following way:

Chest Press w/ tube around a No Parking Sign

Day 1, 3: Push, Leg, Core, Cardio
Day 2, 4: Pull, Core, Cardio
Day 5: Leg, Core, Cardio

Rapid Step-Ups on a curb on my street

Box Jump up to the curb

Perform these workouts 5x/week with 2 days off of your choice. 

Example

The Hill- right down the street

"Lunge O'Mighty"
10 minute AMRAP:
Leg: Lunges uphill (10 each leg)
Cardio: Sprints up hill (50 m)
Core: Sit-ups (15)

Evolve: Tough Muddered- Snow Valley- Big Bear

This past weekend marks one of the most fun weekends of all time!  A friend of mine and myself completed our first Tough Mudder in Snow Valley, California, by Big Bear. Prepping for the feat consisted of lots of morning runs, push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups and YouTube previewing of the event. However, out of all the training nothing could mentally prepare me for the electroshock therapy challenge nor the ice bath. The challenge started promptly at 9AM- although there were hundreds of people and a lot of room for chaos, I have to say things were quite organized. We had a motivator speaker pump our group up before we were given the GO. As soon as the event started, I could already tell this was going to be a long day. However, we took it one mile at a time. We climbed over five huge dried up ski slopes at 6500-7000 ft. elevation. It was incredible! However, no matter how tired we got, my friend and I kept pushing each other and laughing the whole way. I am proud to say after 12.5 dirty miles, some beautiful scenery, one scrape, some sore knees and many bananas later,  I completed the course and made it successfully through each obstacle on the first try. At the finish, I was greeted with a cold beer and the infamous orange headband.

I recommend this challenge to anyone who wants to have a fun time, face some fears, and make some lasting memories. Next year, I'd love to bring a group of us out and form a team to make it even more exciting. I will warn those who want to do the challenge to be sure to train some prior. Strong legs, coordination and endurance are a must. The Tough Mudder website provides some resources that will help you prepare.

Enjoy the video! E-mail me if you have any questions!