My Early Spring Conditioning Workout

I usually “enjoy” steady state cardio in the mornings or right after a weightlifting workout so I can rip the fat loss benefits when my glycogen is depleted, but there are also times when I experiment with myself and do some more intense stuff like High Intensity Intervals or fartlek training. This spring I had the chance to try a workout that was highly intense (either that or I was out of shape…ha ha)  and it was a combination of both HIIT and body-weight exercises.

During the first half of March this year the gym where I workout was closed due to some renovations for a whole month. Instead of trying to find a new gym for that period I decided to do some HIIT training, and because I’m not used to making long breaks from lifting iron, I also decided to combine the HIIT with a few body-weight exercises.

There were two sets of parallel bars close to the track where I was doing Hiit. The first set was great for dips and the second for body-weight rows. There were also some stairs near by so I also used them for stair running. Here is how my workout looked like:

After the light warm up I did:

1.  5 sets x 10 pull ups / 5 sets x 10 chin ups
2.  5 sets x 10-12 dips / 5 sets of 20 push ups
3.  5 sets x 10 bodyweight rows.

I was alternating the exercises every other workout. Instead of pull-ups I would do chin-ups and instead of dips i would do push up. After the bodyweight exercises I did:

1. five minutes of warm up (jogging)
2. seven or eight 30 second high intensity sprints with 1 minute jogging between them to cool down.

On my way back I would stop, make a 4-5 minute break and did 5 sets of stair running.  This whole workout lasted about 35-45 minutes, but I was gasping for air and my body was on fire at the end of every one of these workouts. I was doing this workout 3 times a week and lost around 8 lbs in a period of a month despite I ate high quantity of food, lots of protein and calories.

What I learned:

I learned that bodyweight rows can create a hell of a pump in your rear and side delts and stair running creates enormous pumps in the quads. I learned that I was missing the heavy workout i get by doing heavy deadlifts and squats. All jokes aside, what I leaned was that you don’t really need expensive equipment to build a great body. You need to put some work into it and be a little creative.


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