(The name is a riff on “International Delight” brand products)
This workout had several things that inspired it – but the main inspirations for it have been a couple of my current clients! These two don’t know each other (one is remote) but they have a lot in common, especially that they’re EXTREMELY motivated and love a challenge. Like… a LOT.
Many times I’ll design a workout for one of them and then get so fired up about it I’ll write a version of it for myself that fits within what I’m working on. That happens… quite a lot now that I think about it. One of the moves in this workout is something called an “8-Count Bodybuilder” which I had somehow missed for years and years (?) it came to my attention when my remote client and I were watching a live feed of the GoRuck Selection as research. I need to make a video version of it (the neighbor is mowing the lawn right now or I’d do it right now) for you, but in the mean time here’s a link to a very nice example from SEALfit. I was immediately intrigued as this is a great bodyweight cardio move and also something that falls into the category of what I call a “hand flattener”.
Hand Flattener (attrib: Adrienne Harvey): Exercise or move that requires the hands to be flat on the floor during part or all of the movement and for a significant amount of time. Usually sandwiched between grip challenges.
If you’re one of my advanced clients you know that we do things like pushups and crow holds as a break to “flatten out our hands” sometimes as the main objective. Yes, this might sound funny out of context, or if you’re at a different point in your training. “The push-ups are the break” WHAT?!? 🙂
So this workout is also one of those where the harder you try, the more difficult it is. And I love those sorts of things – they self-scale in a way. Basically, if you can do more pull-ups, you’ll need to do more 8-count bodybuilders. You can see why this is not a workout for someone who isn’t motivated to push themselves.
Depending on how much time you have available to workout, you can also approach the circuit differently. If you have to squish the workout into an hour, then maybe go for five rounds total. If you have a lot of time and/or want to give yourself a significant challenge (especially if you can do a LOT of pull-ups) you might want to consider continuing rounds until you can only do say… 3 pull-ups! For simplicity’s sake the example below is for 5 rounds (and it’s what I did last night).
Very proud to report that on the first round I managed 13 very solid dead hang pull-ups (it goes without saying if I say pull-ups on this site or in any workout I am only referring to dead hang “tactical” aka no thumbs, pull-ups. You could try this workout with chinups and if you do, please tell me how it goes)
I warmed up with joint mobility and the Trifecta from CC2 (bridge, l-sit, twist), along with some extra hip mobility, shoulder mobility and other such things (I was finishing listening to a standup comedy album so I may have gone overboard). I also did some “dislocates” with the ProBar (if you’re curious, click through and use the discount code AH10 at checkout to get 10% off.. which is nearly $20 off!). I’ve been experimenting with the ProBar and will have a whole article for you about it soon. The short answer is yes, I like it, and yes it has been useful with EVERYONE I have been training locally!
For the example workout below, I grabbed a 16kg kettlebell and a 32kg kettlebell.
Kettlebell Press Pyramid with a minimum of rest between sets: (I went up to 7 and back in the interest of time) this looked like:
1 press right, 1 press left, 2 presses right, 2 presses left, 3 right, 3 left, 4 right, 4 left, 5 right, 5 left, 6 right, 6 left, 7 right, 7 left, 6 right, 6 left, 5 right, 5 left, 4 right, 4 left, etc. all the way back down to 1/1.
Now, for the circuit (I went for 5 rounds):
- Pull-ups Max or near-max unbroken set, write down the number (I did 13 for the first round, but… that meant…)
- 8-Count Bodybuilders (do the number you wrote down for your pullups… so for the first round I did 13 of these)
- 10 heavy kettlebell swings (however YOU are currently defining heavy for you)
- 1/1 get-up with the press kettlebell if possible… this is your break, btw.
- 3x 3-Way Lunge* with the press kettlebell held at the chest
I did a cooldown with a little more joint mobility and some of the ground exercises I’d learned at my Systema private lesson the day before. Actually I wasn’t sure how well I would do with the 8-Count bodybuilders since I’d done some pretty crazy things at that lesson to include falling push-ups (eyes closed) talk about intense negatives! HAHA. I might look as cool as Christian Bale does in the Batman movie yet, but I think it’s a very interesting move. Here’s a neat set of progressions for it if you’re interested. Because of my prior training, I was able to do them standing but with a bit of knee bend… it also helps that I’m very short… I can’t imagine some of my tall friends doing these without a good bit of well justified fear.
*3-Way Lunge is holding a KB at the chest while doing a lunge to the front (right leg) a wide step to the side (right leg) for a sumo squat, then a lunge to the back (right leg) then lunge to the front (left leg), wide step to the side (left leg), then a lunge to the back (left leg) That counts as ONE.
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