Saturday workout fun with the lady, and that guy just left...with NUTS!

Well, I'm officially beat. My sweet, dear ex-wife of a girlfriend (confused?) and I went out to get in a hard 30 minute workout earlier. Unfortunately my super hippie organic coffee did little to get my brain up to par with the rest of my body. I couldn't think of a fun workout that would challenge both of us, and that we could get done quickly. Then I turned and saw my best and most hated fitness friend: the deck of playing cards. Boom. Problem solved. Oh boy...

If you're lacking creativity then a deck of cards is your savior. You can assign certain exercises to each suit, and then decide the reps, intensity level, or whatever depending on the face value (FV) or color of the card.

Here is Ray Lewis speaking on his deck of cards workout. His is fairly simple. The options are endless.

Now you see why I love them and hate them. The deck of cards workout is a physical and mental battle.

Once you've figured out which cards go with whatever exercises go ahead and shuffle the deck. Once shuffled, pull the first card. Perform the exercise. Then pull the next. I like to time myself to see how long it takes to go through all 54. This will keep you from over extending your rest periods, and hopefully help push you to do better each time. Naturally that only works if you're doing the same exercises for the same cards.

Here are the exercises I assigned to each card. Face cards (king, queen, jack, ace) are all worth 10:

• Club - jump rope - Face value (FV) x 10 skips (if you pull a 4 of clubs you do 40 skips)
• Spade - plyo/bench jumps
• Diamond - glute/ham raise  
• Hearts - sit-ups

So, we made a promise to each other to make it all the way through the deck. We would draw a card, and then both of us would do the exercise. We had to stop with about 10 cards left. It took us around 40 minutes to get through that much, as our conditioning could use some work and it was already 100*+ outside. Regardless, our butts were kicked. Oh and it's very annoying to consistently draw the same suit. Talk about giving you a major burn. 

An hour or so later we headed over to Whole Foods to spend thousands of dollars on exotic beasts and produce. Well, maybe not that much. I'm just whining about how pricey it is buying organic. Don't judge me. While there we got hit up by one of the local vendor's free sample stand. It turned out to be Nate's Raw Harvest They sell pre-soaked organic nuts, which are supposed to be free of phytic acid, lectins, and other anti-nutrients. 

For those that don't know, phytic acid is a mineral blocker that affects your absorption of calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, and zinc. Lectins affect your gut lining and can cause gastro-intestinal distress on top of other things. Feel free to google your face off on that one. Peanuts used to be a huge part of my diet, but now due to the anti-nutrients I've removed them completely. I needed a replacement crunchy and salty snack badly! 

I ended up going with the pumpkin seeds. They tasted fantastic and I figured they'd go great with all of the organic spinach I just snagged.

I love supporting a local company. Although, these nuts are $12.99 at Whole Foods. They are $10.99 on the website. Go check them out!

You stay hard.