New Year Workout – The 500 Rep Challenge

The 500 Rep Challenge

The 500 rep challenge? What’s that?

Well, as I write this, it’s the start of a new year. Christmas has just gone by and chances are you haven’t trained as much as usual. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably feeling a bit fatter and more sluggish than usual.

Here’s a workout that’ll get rid of those feelings pretty quickly. It’s an amended version of the CrossFit Filthy Fifty workout. I’ve called it the 500 rep challenge. It’s a tough workout, there’s a lot of volume, a wide variety of movement patterns and you’ll burn a LOT of calories doing it!

I put a couple of my Stockport Personal Training clients through this workout post-Christmas. It was tough. Very tough, in fact. They did it though and I think it gave their bodies the kick-start they needed to get them out of that post-Christmas slump.

10 exercises. 50 reps of each.

The 500 Rep Challenge – Here’s the drill….

Perform 50 reps of each exercise before moving on to the next one. There are 10 exercises, meaning you’ll complete 500 reps in total.

It doesn’t matter how you go about this – you can do all 50 reps in one set, you can break them down into smaller sets, you can get the majority done at the start and then introduce rests and smaller sets later on.

You’re the boss.

Your aim is to complete the workout as quickly as you can, using good form throughout. No half-reps, no cheating, no doing anything stupid just to get the workout done quicker.

The 500 Rep Challenge…

• Kettlebell Swings – 24kg men, 16kg women.
• Jump Squats – Bodyweight.
• Push Press – 40kg men, 30kg women.
• Cleans – 50kg men, 35kg women.
• Push Ups – Bodyweight.
• Rows – 40kg men.
• Russian Twists – Bodyweight.
• Lunges – 50kg men, 35kg women.
• Sumo Deadlift High Pull – 40kg men, 30kg women.
• Single Leg Burpees (25 per side) – Bodyweight.

A few words of advice…

You may start this workout and wonder what the fuss is all about. At around the 6th-7th exercise, you’ll understand.

Pace yourself, but the aim is to work to a high intensity. If you’re finding the workout easy, you’re not going hard enough! Reduce the rest periods, perform more reps per set – just work harder!

A good time to aim for is 40 minutes to complete the lot. A time of 50 minutes is respectable. I’d expect most fairly fit people to complete it in an hour. If you are a heart rate monitor user, you’ll notice you’ll burn your way through around 800 calories in the session (if you do it properly).

If you’re feeling sluggish post Christmas, this’ll certainly help you out of it!

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