The fun and efficiency of workout mashups

The fun and efficiency of workout mashups

I have been doing various forms of cross training and core work into my routine over the past few years. I like to experiment with different variants to keep it interesting. It’s a form of play that gets me to the gym – but it also often produces some useful workout mutations that I then add to my collection.

One of my challenges, and I’m sure one of yours, is being efficient with my workout time. When I’m busy at work or on the road I may not have the time, or energy, to do some long involved structured workout. I have found some variants that work almost anywhere and allow you to get a decent workout in whether you have 30 minutes or an hour.

An excellent way to create new workouts is to mash together two or three other workouts.

This works particularly well when those other workouts are getting stale or were not compelling to begin with. For instance; using the elliptical or riding the stationary bike in the gym…Fairly boring and non-engaging.

Another way this works well is with workouts that require a ‘rest period’ between reps. Like Steve Speir’s 100 pushup program and all its variants. These programs recommend a rest period of a minimum of 90 seconds between sets. To me this seems like an opportunity to throw some other activity into the empty space and optimize the routine.

Mashing up workouts allows you to practice the ever popular ‘confusion’ theory too. You can mix a core workout like pushups or crunches with an aerobic workout like spinning. Furthermore since you’ll be breaking up the aerobic part of the workout as well you can ratchet up the intensity there too.

In addition, if you have one of those things you don’t enjoy, like stretching, you can make it part of a mashup workout and get it done proscriptively. This makes stretching easy to swallow because it is just another ‘activity block’ in the workout and you get to do it on muscles that are already warmed up.

What’s an example?

Yesterday I wanted to do Day 8 of the 100 pushups program and the 200 crunches program. I also wanted to work in some deep stretching and I needed to do something aerobic as well and I didn’t have much time in my schedule for the workout.

I mashed up the three workouts into a great 38 minute routine that covered all the bases.

The 100 pushups day 8 schedule is six sets of pushups, 20, 25, 15, 15, 30. Day 8 of the 200 crunches is six sets of crunches, 30, 38, 23, 23, 40. In between these you need at least a 90 second separation.

The stretching I wanted to do was 1 minute each of calves, anterior Achilles and hurdler stretch. I decided to mash in 3 sets of these.

I had biked on the previous day so I decided to use the elliptical as my aerobic filler mechanism.

Here’s how it goes:

Start

Set of Stretches

2 minutes on the elliptical at 90 rpm. (very high cadence to get the HR up)

Jump off and do 20 pushups and 30 crunches