The BeWOW Breakdown: This One-Weight Workout Gets Five Stars

The Breakdown
Difficulty (out of five): 3.5 (easy exercises to do; not an easy workout)
Soreness Factor: Choose-your-own soreness adventure. We were conservative with weights and we’re still going to be sore tomorrow. If you push it, plan to have sore shoulders for days.
Overall Grade (out of five): 5

First impressions:
This was one of those weeks where our over-commitment nearly sidelined our good intentions. While Emma was out of town, Alon and Rebecca both struggled to find the time and energy to get this morning workout in. The hustle was great for one reason: Neither of us had given the workout any thought at all. We showed up at the gym prepared to face Coach Audrey’s wrath and the only thing we could think about was what the heck that last move was about (reverse lunge with knee drive to overhead press — what!?).

How we felt afterwards:
You know it’s a good workout when you get through the first of five sets and you have to go back and double check on the number of sets (there’s no way we have to do this FIVE times, right?!). And while the first set put us on track to finishing the workout in nearly an hour, we got into the groove and flew through the rest.

To sum it up: Sure, the burpees sucked — they always do — but overall the workout was a fun collection of exercises. Our shoulders and chest definitely got a great workout with a nice dose of core. It was a nice break to have only a single weight. On top of that, Audrey set this workout up with really easy transitions between exercises. Grab a weight and have at it.

About our testers: 

Rebecca Barber is the founder of the Rocky 50K Fat Ass Run, a just-for-fun 50K run that follows Rocky Balboa’s footsteps in Rocky II. She’s a 19x marathoner and 17x ultra marathoner, having started running when she was a kid. She’s an active volunteer with Back on My Feet Philadelphia, where she works to help the homeless community use running as a means to better their lives and find stable employment and housing. When not running all the miles, she is the social media coordinator for The Wharton School.

Alon Abramson is the founder of the West Philly Runners, the creator of RunPhil.ly – a web resource for running in Philadelphia – and the organizer of a number of running events in Philly, including the annual 26×1 Mile Team Marathon Relay, Beat the Bus, and Beat the Commute. Running since high school, Alon is an on-again, off-again runner with ebbs and flows to his mileage and commitment. More recently however, he’s taken a new approach to training, emphasizing cross-training and speed work as much as building up mileage and this has dramatically improved his running performance. When he’s not organizing and running, Alon works as a research project manager at Penn’s Institute for Urban Research, studying energy efficiency best practices. He’s on a number of non-profit

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