The BeWOW Breakdown: This Workout Flies By Super Fast

"Overall, we feel like we kicked this workout's ass — but we have this creeping feeling that it's going to get back at us ... "

This Week’s Workout: Muscle-Burning Burpee Workout

The Breakdown: 
Total time commitment: 40 minutes
Difficulty (out of five): 4
Soreness factor: You may not feel sore right away, but those core moves are going to come back and bite you tomorrow.
Overall grade (out of 5): 5. Hopping around on one foot was silly fun.

First impressions: 

We (okay, maybe just Alon) spent way too much time fretting about finding an exercise band to work with at the gym, since only Rebecca had one. But, duh, we were able to get the same results by subbing in cable pull equipment. We weren’t really sure how the hopping around thing was going to play out and overall the workout seemed like it would be a short and pretty easy one.

How we felt afterwards: 

It had been weeks since we all (Rebecca, Alon, and our new addition, Emma) worked out together, between 100 milers, minor injuries, and vacations. So from our perspectives, this was a little reunion fun at the gym. We were rearing to go and this jam totally delivered.

The workout was a ton of fun and did feel really short, though when Rebecca actually checked her watch, we realized it took us over 40 minutes to complete. All the sets of jumping around and moving between exercises added up. Speaking of those exercises, Audrey has a good sense for how to put muscle groups together. We didn’t realize it until we got going, but every muscle group she targets — shoulders, obliques, and glutes/quads/hamstrings — is one you use when hopping around. Right? Yeah, so then fast-forward to hopping on one foot after doing your 45th squat jump. You get the idea.

Overall, we feel like we kicked this workout’s ass — but we have this creeping feeling that it’s going to get back at us when we wake up tomorrow and realize our cores and shoulders don’t work. Wish us luck!

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 16x marathoner and 14x 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 boards and works on his whole-home retrofit project whenever there’s free time.

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