If you love to exercise it can be really frustrating if you can't get to the gym or your favorite fitness class. But did you know that if you have a deck of cards, you can put yourself through some pretty tough workouts....
No gym? The King of Spades Can Help
One of the downsides of trips away from home is that if you are a keen gym user like me, not having access to one can be a real nuisance.
But did you know that the humble deck of cards plus your gym clothes is all you need to get a really effective bodyweight workout? Let me explain....
Workout in a packLet's look at some traditional bodyweight exercises such as press ups, burpess, squats, crunches etc and use our deck of cards to create a workout that will have many struggling to finish it. Choose four complimentary exercises and assign each one to a particular suit in the deck of cards e.g. Hearts for press ups, Diamonds for burpess, Spades for squats and Clubs for crunches.
Shuffle the cards and then just start turning them over - if the first card happens to be the King of Hearts then that means 13 press ups (the value of the King being 13), do your press ups and turn over the next card. If it's the 10 of Spades then you're doing 10 squats and so on.
Does it make sense? If you leave the Jokers in you can use them for a 1 minute rest.
Let's do the math - if the cards in any one suit add up to 91, that's 91 press ups, 91 burpees, 91 squats and 91 crunches you will be doing in around 20-25 minutes - that is one really decent workout believe me!
Bodyweight exercises, combined with intermittent fasting are a great way to strengthen and tone your body and there are literally dozens of exercises you can do. The books below offer different options but each have very effective advice on this no frills exercise regime.
But remember, if you have some playing cards, you have a ready made routine literally in your hands.
