Saturday Morning Central Park Warriors!

On this Workout Wednesday, I gladly share what I’d call my favorite workout in recent memory.

The fact that Mother Nature provided a picture-perfect morning for this kick butt CrossFit UWS  group class in Central Park didn’t hurt. Here’s what Roberto Murichi cooked up for us to tackle:

• Active stretching: included walking lunges, reverse walking lunges and bear crawls.

• Warm up: Burpees Tabata followed by 50 meter walking lunge. Just a reminder on what constitutes a Tabata, the high-intensity training protocol features eight continuous intervals of 20 seconds of maximum intensity followed by 10 seconds of rest. Check out the clip below to see what a few of those 20 seconds of work looked like. Needless to say after we finished the burpees, adding those walking lunges provided one heck of a warm up!

• Workout: I really liked this AMRAP -“as many reps/rounds as possible” – combo. Our mission was to push out as many rounds as possible in a five-minute interval of the following exercises for a total of three rounds. We had one minute of glorious rest in between each round.

Round one

• 10 pistols: Another term for single-leg squats. We used the park benches as a start/end point for the exercise. As a regression, we could switch to “regular” squats as needed.
• 10 box jumps: We used the park benches for these, too. The regression was to do a step-up and step-down.
• 10 push ups

Round two

• 100 meter sprint
• 10 walk out push-ups

Round three

• 100 single-unders (jump rope)
• 25 situps

Just to further clarify the AMRAP concept: in round one, we’d bang out the 10 pistols, 10 box jumps and 10 push ups, then start over with the pistols again and keep repeating as many rounds of the three-exercise combo until we heard the blessed buzzer on Roberto’s iPad. After the five minutes were up, we had one minute to drink some water, stretch and catch our breath before moving on to rounds two and three featuring the different exercise combinations.

The endorphins generated by this killer workout kept me energized from the moment I banged out my last sit up right right through the last out at Yankee Stadium where I happily watched my beloved Bronx Bombers beat the Devil Rays. I’m already pumped to see what Roberto has in store for us next time around!

If you’re beyond the beginner level and looking to kick things up a notch, this kind of workout won’t let you down! Click here for more information about CrossFit UWS.

Remember, regardless of your fitness level, mixing up your exercise routine with different workouts and different venues is a great way to have fun, be fit and feel fabulous!