HUZZAH! THE BURGHER IS BACK ONLINE!
I hope you had a fantastic weekend and are ready to take your primal journey to a new level of awesome! 🙂 Yours truly had such a busy week last week that I had to actually take some time off the blog to do some much needed website house cleaning. I am happy to report that all things are well here in da Burgh, and today, I get to share with you all a truly unique and on the spot workout I came up with when I was called for Jury duty in downtown Pittsburgh last. I cannot think of a better way to start off the week with you all after my week away from blogging. Get ready! Yinz ain’t seen nothing yet!
The world can be your gym, and living in the City of Pittsburgh makes for a perfect urban style gym that makes workouts fun and in my opinion, that much more edgy. 😉 With all that in mind, I decided to come up with a pretty stellar on the spot workout to kill some time on my lunch hour from jury duty. For those of you who are hardcore fans of kettlebells and calisthenics, the words “Courthouse” and “Workout” should ring a bell! What do I mean by this? Well, I have a confession to make here.
A courthouse workout has already been done, and it has been done by the incredible RKC II instructor Adrienne Harvey of Giryagirl.com. If you are not already familiar with her Courthouse Calisthenics Workout, please check it out now! It’s unbelievable! It’s inspiring! IT’S UNBELIEVABLY INSPIRING! In fact, I was so inspired by this workout when I read about it that I decided to make a spin off of the workout as I too, was called to jury duty (call me a poser, but I think we can all agree that making our own unique workouts based off of someone else can be fun!)
After hours of waiting and having not been called back into the courtroom, me and the other jurors were dismissed for lunch. Because I don’t like paying for expensive meals downtown, I had packed away some of my primal nori sheet rolls to tithe me over until the end of the day. After allowing for some digestion to take place, I realized I still had an hour to kill, so it was off to explore downtown to see what I could get done functional fitness wise. What I ended up with was something more focused on conditioning than calisthenics, BUT HEY! My workouts as of lately have been more on the short and intense side anyway. I think what I came up with is perfect for those of you who needs to kill some time when you’re downtown for jury duty yourself. Check it out!
Pittsburgh Courthouse Workout
Warm up
Walk down three flights of stairs and head out the door of the Allegheny courthouse. Walk 3 blocks down form the Courthouse to a fun little remote location for pull ups (if you ever come to visit me in the City, I will show you this amazing spot downtown!) Total time spent walking: 3 minutes.
Round One: Weighted Pull Up Ladder
Note: I had packed my backpack for the day with various items to keep me busy while I waited around in the courthouse. My back back had my NASM text book in it, my MacBook Laptop, a water bottle, my workout clothes and vibram shoes for co teaching at Pittsburgh Kettlebells in the evening, and my RKC training log I made for myself. When I came home that day, I weighed the bag out of curiosity. I found out that it weighed 15 pounds. Neat! I also found a nice remote location for pull ups in downtown Pittsburgh. Should you ever visit me in Pittsburgh, I will show you this spot! It’s SICK!
Using a 15 lb backpack strapped to yourself, do a ladder of the following:
3 pull-ups, followed by 2-pull ups, followed by 1 pull up. Then go back up the ladder starting at 1Â pull up, then 2, then 3.
I did this a total of three times going up and down the ladder. Total pull ups completed were 36 with a 15 pound bag. Total time to complete the ladder was roughly 7 minutes as I took about 10-15 seconds rest between pull up sets.
One minute leisurely paced walk back into the Courthouse followed by a 1 minute rest period to get back through security at the Courthouse.
Round Two: Courthouse Staircase Blaster
Note: Three flights of stairs were available at the courthouse. The beauty of doing this on lunch hour was that there was NO ONE AROUND, so I could get away with a quick routine. I have a stop watch on my iPhone so I just went all out for 5 minutes until the buzzer went off. I did not wear my backpack during the half burpees or the push ups you will see below.
At the bottom of the stair case, do 15 half burpees. After that, run up the three flights of stairs with my 15 pound back back strapped to you. At the top of the stairs, do 15 push ups. Then, run back down the stairs with my 15 pound backpack. Perform 15 half burpees again. Complete as many rounds as you can for 5 minutes.
.
Cool down
Walk roughly 30 yards from the top of the stair case to the rest room. Do some calf stretches, fill up your water bottle and head back for duty! (total time, roughly 3 minutes).
So…from start to finish including warm up, work out, and cool down, we have a public display of functional fitness clocking in at roughly 20 minutes. Had I a kettlebell with me, this could have been a ton more interesting, but I don’t think the security officers would appreciate me lugging around something that looks like…well…a bomb with handles on it. And that’s real talk, ya heard? 🙂
That about sums it all up for me today! I hope this workout shows you all that you can make a fun and intense on the spot workout using your surroundings when you have just 20 minutes to spare. As always, remember to eat smart, train hard, and enjoy your life!
Love Always,
Janelle
