With Hurricane Irene in Jersey, I decided to share one of my favorite indoor workouts, the deck of cards. Sometimes you can’t get to a gym, a mat, and you don’t have a lot of space. This workout can be done pretty much in a closet and you don’t need anything but a deck of cards. A hurricane isn’t the only reason why you might have to workout in your home, apartment, or condo…snow storms forced me many times to workout in my apartment. Don’t let inclement weather or anything else stop you from getting to your goals, and to reach your goals you have to be prepared for anything. I could have said, “Oh well, it’s a state of an emergency. I guess I don’t have to workout today.” But I didn’t and that kind of thing separates you from your competition.

Deck of Cards Original

I have to thank Mike Sparacino, who introduced me to this workout during our time at Hofstra, sometime in 2004. He is the same friend that I mentioned in , who introduced me to the rotating grip ball to help with my grip strength. What the workout entails is taking a deck of everyday playing cards and flipping them over and doing the number of push-ups on the card. So if you get a five you do five push-ups, if it’s a ten you do ten push-ups and so on. Jacks are 11, Queens-12, Kings-13, and Aces-14. This computes to 420 push-ups. Pretty simple. If you want to make it more challenging, throw the two jokers in and make them 15, or even 25 each.

I modified this original deck of cards workout. I don’t like to waste time and doing two push-ups four times in every deck made me feel like I was wasting time. What I ended up doing was any time I got a 2-9 card I flipped over the next card and added them together and then performed that number of push-ups. It moves the workout along and is harder to do. If it is your first time attempting this deck of cards workout, I recommend not doing that. You will be sore enough the next day.

Deck of Cards 2

Now as all wrestlers know, we need a lot more developed muscles than just our chest and triceps to be successful. So I added abs. Whatever card I got, I did my push-ups first and then I doubled the number and then did crunches. For example, if I got a queen, I would do 12 push-ups then 24 crunches, or other ab exercise, which I varied throughout.

Deck of Cards Ultimate

After a few times of doing the deck of cards 2, I decided to add pull-ups. Now for this addition you do need a pull-up bar. I used a simple one you can pick up for twenty bucks and hang in your doorway. After I did my push-ups and doubled my abs, I halved the original card number and performed that many pull-ups. For example, if an ace came up I did 14 push-ups, 28 abs, and 7 pull-ups before I flipped the next card. If the card you flipped over is odd like a 7, round-up and do 4 pull-ups.

Another workout you can do inside with  little space is   I have spent many hours indoors with my jump rope to improve my foot speed and coordination.

The next post will be my other go-to workout out when I was stuck inside.

You always have options.

A word of warning: Build up to the ultimate deck of cards workout.