The Completely Random Workout

Over the past few years of training people with kettlebell and CrossFit methods I've noticed something.

Even though from session to session these workouts are highly varied and challenging, quite often when athletes are given a workout they'll mentally start to break it down and pace themsleves. Conserving energy in one area in anticipation of a harder exercise thats coming up. For example a good runner might ease off on the run because they know that a set of 30 burpees is up next.

The other day while training a group of three clients (all of them experienced in my regular training methods) I thought i'd try something slightly different.

After a warm up and a brief kettlebell strength workout I laid out their conditioning for the day.

1. Set out on a lap of the oval
2. As each individual arrives back at the start point they will be given a mini workout to complete before heading out again on the next lap
3. The mini workout will be different for each client, each lap.

Examples of the mini workouts that they ended up doing.

A. 20 burpees + 100 situps
B. 10 burpees + 10 double clean and jerk (kettlebells) x 3 rounds
C. Boxing for 4 minutes
D. 20 m sprints with a burpee at each end
E. 10 pushups + 10 alternating split jumps
F. 20 kettlebell snatches + 20 pushups x 3 rounds

This workout turned out to be one of the hardest both physically and mentally that the group have done. At the end all three of them looked like they were about to collapse!

So if you want to spice up your workouts and introduce an element of unpredicatability I suggest getting a friend (or enemy) to write out say 3 - 6 little mini workouts and stuff them in an envelope then head out to the park or gym and start pulling stuff out at random and hammer through them as fast as possible.