45th Birthday Workout – Groundhog Day Edition

The funny thing about birthday workouts is that the older you get, the wilder the rep ranges get… though in all cases, birthday workouts are an exercise in creativity – how can you use a set of numbers in a way that makes sense in a workout for your current level. This workout is fairly advanced, so if you try it, please modify it to make sense for you and your training situation (and let me know what you did in the comments below the post!).

The “Groundhog Day” element is a reference to the movie with a long 22 minute EMOM where we do the same thing over and over (plus one bonus pull-up). More on EMOM workouts here (and check out the shiny new PDF). Since my advanced workout buddy and I have had plenty of complexity this week in various ways, I opted to keep things relatively simple. Mainly this means a short list of exercises and a whole lot of short sets.

Today was also the last day of Ryland Lanagan’s 10 Day Parkour Challenge–which I really enjoyed and hope to do again soon. He had a few of his clients on the Zoom call today with him at the parkour gym and it was so inspiring to see how well these people were moving, rolling, and vaulting, did I mention they were in their late 60s? For the past 10 days we’ve all been taking an hour to work on mobility, strength, and of course some basic but still very cool moves. So, I came to the workout with a bit of extra mobility. I’ve also really enjoyed some of the really practical upper body / shoulder mobility moves that Ryland has been including in the warmups – they’ve been finding their way into workouts here and there over the past 10 days, that’s for sure.

The 45th Birthday Workout (Groundhog Day Edition!)

OK! After our joint mobility warmup we began….

Warmup Circuit – moderate kettlebell, no biggie.. 3x

• 10x Kettlebell Swings
• 1x Goblet Squats

22 Minute EMOM (Every Minute on the Minute)

• 2x Full range of motion dead hang pull-ups (go slow to make this even tougher)
• 3x Burpees (or whatever variation of them that makes the most sense for you)
• 5x Bodyweight squats (in this capacity, it’s kind of active rest)

ONE bonus pull-up to bring it to 45 total reps…

and then it’s time for…

A weird Kettlebell and Floor Tap, Knee-Raise Lunge Circuit 1x:

Let’s do a bunch of kettlebell snatches (use RKC test weight kettlebell or whichever kettlebell you are comfortable doing a total of 90 snatches with… listen to your hands, you have done 45 pull-ups before reaching this point, if managing your grip means going lighter or using shorter sets, then do it!)

• 15/15 Kettlebell snatches
• 5/5 Floor tap, knee raise lunges
• 10/10 Kettlebell snatches
• 5/5 Floor tap, knee raise lunges
• 10/10 Kettlebell snatches
• 5/5 Floor tap, knee raise lunges
• 10/10 Kettlebell snatches
• 5/5 Floor tap, knee raise lunges

And last but certainly not least…

The Abs Combo 3x:

• 3-5x Power breathing crunches (game changer… more about this later)
• 30 seconds scissor kicks
• 30 seconds flutter kicks
• 30 seconds “Boat” hold (thanks, Ryland!)
• 30 seconds hip bridges and full bridges(optional)

We of course cooled down with joint mobility. I went home and ate a steak as big as my head. There was much rejoicing!