Fitness While the Kids Play

Time is precious. Whether you’re working late, up early, or rushing to your kids’ next practice, it can be hard to carve out enough time to get to the gym for even one hour. Why do we need an hour? Our society does things by the hour, so it carries over to our workouts too.

And what if you can’t get to the gym? Maybe you can maximize your fitness with the time you have available by doing some smart multitasking — get quality work and results in way less time with nothing but your bodyweight and some creative set-ups.

Some simple exercises that we all know and “love” can be combined into a killer circuit that can help you build strength and keep a high level of fitness. The best part? This circuit only takes 10 minutes and can be done on a playground while playing with your kids!

I use this workout as part of a larger session for myself and my athletes, but it is by far one of the hardest circuits I’ve ever programmed (my athletes can attest to that). If someone came to me and said “Cole, I have 10 minutes to train, what should I do?” This would be it.

Keep This Playground Circuit in Your Pocket

The best part about this is the only equipment you need is your own bodyweight and a chin-up bar (or monkey bars).

3-5 Rounds:

• As many push-ups as you can. Go to failure.
• As many pull ups or chin ups as you can. To failure.
• Then, Quadzilla:
  • 10 rear-foot elevated split squats each side (20 total) straight into
  • 10 walking lunges per leg (20 total) straight into
    20 air squats — that’s 60 straight reps!
• Rest 1-2 minutes between sets

Why do I like this so much and why will it get you results?

First, it sucks. Maybe you can tell just by reading it, but believe me, it sucks more than it looks. I love to lift but after this circuit I’m pretty toast. Especially if you do it in a weight room and add some weight to that Quadzilla circuit…

But the suck comes with a major benefit — doing hard things improves your resiliency as a human & athlete (cue David Goggins). But the benefit of this being hard is in the volume, not that you’re moving heavy weight. So while it’s mentally tough, there’s little injury risk, and as the sets go on, you do fewer reps due to fatigue. You might bang out 50 push-ups and 15 pull-ups in the first round, but by the third you might only land 10 and 5.

This workout is very easy to track your progress. How many total push-ups did you do over 3 sets? How many chin-ups? Try and beat those each session.

For example, if your push-up sets went:
Round 1: 50
Round 2: 32
Round 3: 12
Total: 94

The goal next time is to get at least 95. So you could have a rougher start, but still crank more out later because you have a real-time goal to hit. As long as your total volume is up, you’re making gains!

Why This Workout is Effective

First, it hits your whole body — chest, arms, back, grip, legs, shoulders, everything will burn. If you’ve ever run suicides in practice or been “bag-skated”, this will bring back those fond memories.

This workout forces you to train to failure multiple times, which increases the muscular damage and metabolic stress needed to grow your muscles and improve your fitness. If you continue to progress in volume as mentioned above (via progressive overload), you’re sure to make big gains in your body control and composition.

Even better if your goal is to lose weight. You’re using all major muscle groups with short rest intervals, which is a recipe for plenty of calories burned. (Whether you get big or shredded will come from what you do after the circuit, your eating!)

With minimal equipment needed, this workout can be done at the playground while the kids run out their energy, OR at home if you have a space to do chin-ups/pull-ups.

So if you are short on time, eager for results, and have a “taste for the tough,” give this workout a go.

Peace & gains!

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