Recently I was at a meeting with some of the top fitness pro’s in the biz. We planned on getting together on the first night after our meetings for a killer workout. As it turned out, San Diego and the surrounding area had a power outage for over 12 hours. So instead of training, since all the gyms closed, we hunted for food (we never found much by the way, it was a pretty lean night).
Our workout would be postponed until the next meeting…(ps. it was NOT me that caused the power outage in San Diego, altho after attempting the workout below, it may be an option to avoid the pain that will ensue next time we all get together.)
As you can see, there’s alotta beef here. (I’m the only X chromosome in the room.)
I was looking forward, (well, in a knees shaking sort of way), to training with Travis Stoetzel. He’s an animal and I knew that I’d likely be ready to barf after any workout with him. Add to this, the testosterone level of the entire gang and some one would likely die during the course of the workout. It wasn’t gonna be me, I’m far too stubborn for that and since I was the only female in the crowd, I had to represent. I’d lick my wounds in my room later, but I’d have to try to keep up with this crew, the majority of which is easily 20 years younger than me.
So since I was unable to actually do the group workout with Travis and the rest of the fit pro’s in attendance, I thought I’d show you one of Travis’s challenge workouts and then take the challenge myself.
I chose his “Body weight Gauntlet”. Turns out this is a brutal challenge and it’s something I’ll use over time as a measuring stick to see where my overall strength and endurance levels are with my own body weight.
The 4 essential movements Travis used for this gauntlet are:
1) Push Ups – any variation
2) Pull Ups – all grips and variations
3) Squats – ass to grass only!
4) Burpees – chest to floor with a jump at the top
With these 4 movements, the way this gauntlet or “test” will work is you’ll get 3 mins at each station to complete as many reps as possible. You’ll get 60 secs between stations to rest and prepare for the next movement.
You can perform the gauntlet in any order of your choosing. He suggests you go with you biggest weakness first so you can attack that fresh.
Below, is a table he created that has the different “standards” for scores.
This will give you a good look at where you fall in terms of your basic strength and strength-endurance levels with the main body weight movements…
So, I set my timer for 3 minutes of work with a 1 minute rest:
Here are highlights, or should I say low lights of my attempt at Travis’ Gauntlet:
46 pull ups – I’m pretty happy with this number considering my elbows and I aren’t on speaking terms. This and the fact that it took me just under 5 min last time to do 50 pull ups.
103 push ups – I know I can improve on this as I build endurance.
42 burpees – These totally kicked my ass! Truthfully I’ve never done burpees like this before and my number is evidence that I really need to improve here. I was hating Travis at this point.
83 squats – Again, I’ve never done straight body weight speed squats before so I know I can improve this number a lot. I just went slow and steady, I need to increase speed, I had energy at the end of the set.
Bring out the bucket. This was a killer workout and I loved it (well, actually it’s sort of a love-hate thing…).
Considering my age, which I never like to factor into things much, I’m fairly happy with my numbers as a first try. I’ll do this again in a month or so to compare.
My goal as I age is to squeak out another rep here or there, but really, if I can maintain these numbers over time, I feel like I’m winning since lots of folks half my age can’t get this far.
Are you up for this?
Post your results! And seriously, if a 48 year old woman can do it, so can you….
PS. If you’re up for more fun stuff from Travis, you can check it out here.