Wednesday WODs

Original Post: https://www.americanpartisan.org/2020/01/ap-fitness-challenge/

In keeping with the spirit of the AP Fitness Challenge, I decided to post a Workout of the Day (WOD) every Wednesday to give you, the readers, a challenge to complete. I will be doing them beforehand and posting my results with the WOD. These WODs are not original, new or super secret. You can find lists and lists on the internet and adapt them to what equipment you have – or even if you have no equipment at all. I personally love the book Cross Training 101: Build the Ultimate Athletic Physique, which is where many of the WODs are coming from (I may modify some slightly to make them more relevant to our purposes).

Of course, modify the exercise as needed (i.e. if you cannot run, walk; if you cannot do a push up, do a modified pushup with your knees down OR a wall push up, etc)

Let’s first go over some basic types of WODs:

• As Many Reps As Possible (AMRAP) – Within a certain time constraint, complete as many rounds of exercises as possible
• Every Minute on the Minute (EMOM) – Within a certain time constraint, complete the exercise(s) at the beginning of every minute
• For Time – Complete the workout in the quickest time possible and record your time
• Tabata – Style of interval training where you exercise for 20 seconds and rest for 10 seconds for a total of 8 rounds
• To Failure – Doing reps until you physically cannot do another one
• Pyramid Set – Increasing the number of reps incrementally and then working back down from the peak (i.e. 1-2-3-2-1)

WOD

Shout out to WODWell for this one call the “Pandemic”.

For Time Pyramid Set

• 1 Burpee
• 2 Mountain Climbers
• 3 Sit-Ups

The pyramid goes from 1 to 10, like this:

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1

From WODWell:

The way this workout is designed is you have a pyramid that goes 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 and for each level of the pyramid, you do the listed movements and their multipliers. So for level 1 you do 1 Burpee, 2 Mountain Climbers, 3 Sit-Ups, then for level 2 you do 2 Burpee, 4 Mountain Climbers, 6 Sit-Ups, level 3 you do 3 Burpees, 6 Mountain Climbers, 9 Sit-Ups…etc. all the way to level 10 where you do 10 Burpees, 20 Alt Mountain Climbers, 30 Sit-Ups. Then you go back to 9 and work your way down to 1.

The burpees are straight forward, just standard CrossFit Burpee, get on the ground so your chest touches, get up, jump and clap. The mountain climbers are alternating and split reps, the goal is to take a big jump step and land with your front foot as close to your hand while in the Push-Up position. If the round calls for 20 Mountain Climbers, that would be 10 on each leg alternating for 20 total. The Sit-Ups are meant to be regular AbMat Sit-Ups, but those can be scaled according to athlete needs and abilities.

As they suggest, pace yourself on the way up because the backside of pyramid sets are almost always the worst part.

EDIT: 13:13 EST

My total time was 35 minutes, 15 seconds (finished 10 at 18 minutes 39 seconds). I should have paced myself better on the way up because 8-9-10-9 was murder. I caught a second wind at 8 on the way down, and once I hit 4 I was able to power through the rest. For full disclosure, I did crunches and not sit ups.

Too many quarantinis for me in recent days I think. Still down 15 lbs on the year though. I think I am going to move to a morning routine of 20 burpees, 20 push ups, and 20 crunches. Every week I am going to go up 5 in each until I hit 100 each.

Soundtrack