Unfortunately, like most of you, I am sitting at home whilst I write this blog, locked in my house.
These past two years have been a real rollercoaster and something that I really miss is having a good challenge to set my mind (or body) to. So here we are today, to give you a fun new challenge that has been tried and tested.
The Trifecta Challenge
This challenge requires you to complete 10 squats, 10 sit ups and 10 push ups in two minutes. Not so hard right?
Here is the kicker. Once the two minutes is up you will have another round to complete. You have to try to complete as many rounds as you can before either you can’t complete a set within 2 minutes, or you can’t complete a set.
Push ups, squats and sit ups
For our push ups, we want to make sure that we are keeping our hands in line with our shoulders and our core engaged. As we get tired in this exercise we are going to want to let our hips either drop or lift high, however we need to try to keep as straight as we can from our shoulders to our feet to ensure that we are completing each push up correctly. For anyone who wants to give this challenge a go but struggles with push ups, going to knees is 100% accepted when completing this challenge. It doesn’t matter if they are toe or knee push ups, as long as we are keeping good form and working hard.
Our next exercise is the squat. We want our feet in line, or a bit wider then our hips. As we squat down, our knees should stay in line with our 3rd and 4th toe. Keep the chest up and a neutral spine. You can mark your squats by either sitting into a chair or hitting a 90 degree angle at the knees. As you rise from the squat, make sure that you tuck under your hips and engage your core. This will ensure that we are working our glutes at the top of the movement. If you feel you need more of a challenge, you can add some weights or even move to a single leg squat.
The final exercise is the sit up. You can anchor feet under an object if you need, however to challenge yourself try to keep your feet flat on the ground. The focus should be on crunching through the stomach and lifting our chest nice and high. For those who can’t complete sit ups, you can substitute these for crunches, plank shoulder touches or any other core variation that you would like to try.
These exercises can be done in any order and you can complete them all in one go or split them for example, 5 sit ups, 5 push ups, 5 squats, then repeat.
Gold medal anyone?
Test yourself to see how far you can go.
If you can complete 5 rounds, that’s a bronze medal, 7 is silver and 10 is gold.
There is two schools of thought for this challenge. You can either pace yourself and take the 2 minutes to complete all three exercises each time. This will be working more on your aerobic system as you are working at a lower intensity but providing a consistent effort.
The other option is to complete these rounds as quickly as you can so you can savour the rest period to recover. This course of action means the focus is shifted from the aerobic system to the anaerobic systems. The downfall here will be when our lactic acid build up and we need to try to remove this from our muscles so they can function.
Of course, there will come a point when you’re just pushing through with grit and gut despite your game plan going in. So we wish you good luck whilst you try to beat this challenge.
We look forward to hearing how you do and if you want more challenges like this let us know by finding us on Facebook, Instagram or contact us.
