Exercise Hack: Deck of Cards
Lana has talked about incorporating the cost of a gym membership into your budget in her series on building wealth consciousness, but what if you want to stay fit and don’t want to go the gym? I’ve long since resolved to not pay for a traditional gym membership: more often than not I work up a million excuses to not go, and the few times in the past when I have gone it’s been crowded and unpleasant. As a result, I’m in no hurry to pay money to make myself suffer. To stay active, I’ve been picking up some workout tips from my runner friends. I love this exercise hack because it gets your heart moving and trains your upper body and core, but it’s also simple and takes very little time.
I’ve never heard a name for this routine (I simply call it ‘deck of cards’), but it’s a simple and can be customized as much as you want it. All you need is a deck of cards. Red equals push-ups and black equals sit-ups and the number on the cards represents the amount of either that you’re going to do. A six of diamonds, for example, is six push-ups. A ten of clubs is ten sit-ups. For face cards, I count jacks as eleven, queens as twelve and kings as thirteen, but my roommate, who was just starting to exercise, would simply take out face cards. You can also work with just two suits if you don’t have a lot of time or if your building up strength. If you’re more adventurous, I like to do one suit as crunches, one suit as diamonds (a push-up where your thumbs and forefingers touch), one suit as push ups and one suit as leg lifts, to keep things interesting and increase the difficulty level.
The reason I think this works well is because it’s less contingent on self-motivation. I’ve often found that if I’m climbing at the local rock wall, unless I’ve set specific goals for that day, it’s really easy to just give up and say I’m too tired. But if my goal is to do a certain number of climbs I become obligated. Deck of cards works the same way: if I’m not going through the full deck, I’ll specify a number of cards that I must go through (often a half deck). You can see yourself getting closer to finishing the deck, which is encouraging, and because you never know what the next card you flip over will be, it doesn’t get boring either. Saying “Just one more” is easier than convincing yourself you’re not tired yet.
The best part is that if you keep a deck of cards accessible (mine lives on my desk), it makes for a great work break. Getting your blood flowing is a one positive way to overcome a temporary slump in productivity. If you have any quick, no cost exercise techniques, feel free to post them in the comments. Zen Habits offers some good routines here and here, but they fall in the realm of more time consuming exercise circuits.
Photo credit: stock.xchng.
Thanks for the great suggestion! I am participating in a weight loss contest with my family, and each week we set weekly weight loss and fitness goals. We get one point for each pound lost and one point for each fitness goal achieved. At the end of the year, the person with the most points wins a cash prize, because we all paid $25 to get into the competition. I’ve been looking for creative ways to meet my fitness goals, and I think I’ll give this one a try!
I definitely am a fan. A different runner friend just ibtroduced me to a ridiculous core workout as well. Thirty seconds leg lifts, thirty seconds leg lifts with heels touching and knees out, thirty seconds crunches , thirty seconds crunches to one side then the other, thirty seconds of sculling situps and thirty seconds of bicycles. Then repeat without stopping. I have to admit though, I rely on my friend to get me through it. My pride won’t let me give up against another person but by myself it’s pretty hard. It’s a good feeling the next day though.
Elizabeth,
This is a great workout! I used to do something similar when I was a Peace Corp volunteer in Bolivia. We called it a “The Deck” and simply assigned exercises to cards – Ace for abs, Two for push ups, etc.
Then I found out about a product called FitDeck, a deck of cards with the exercises printed on them. This really takes the guesswork out of your workout.
Now I do FitDeck on my phone. It works on BlackBerry and iPhone and is available from mobileXware – mobileXware.com.
I’m glad to see that The Deck lives on! -Jason
I didn’t know they actually made decks with the exercises printed on them. That sounds convenient, but I’ll stick with the promo pack of cards I got years ago. I’m intrigued to hear how the rest of the numbering system worked on the Deck you mentioned. It is definitely a great workout for traveling though!
Elizabeth, You asked about the numbering system I used. I know that we all did the Deck in our own way. As for me, I broke it down into 3 separate workouts: 1) Back & Biceps, 2) Chest & Triceps, and 3) Legs. I did a wide range of exercises that incorporated the use of exercise bands and added abs to every workout. I would usually use about 40 cards from the deck (Ace thru 10, for example) and took about an hour to complete. If you want to find out what I did specifically for each workout, just send me a message at http://www.fitdeckmobile.com/contact
That sounds pretty thorough and impressive Jason!