Top 5 WODs You Can Do at Home

Getting in an awesomer Workout of the Day (WOD) doesn’t have to mean clocking in at the gym. There are some intense, challenging WODs that you can do right in the comfort of your own home (assuming that you consider pushing yourself to your physical limit comfortable!). Here are 5 of our favorite WODs, giving you a different challenge every day of the week (you can take the weekends off!).

WOD #1

• Pull Ups x 5
• Push Ups x 10
• Bodyweight Squats x 15
• 10 Rounds for Time

This bodyweight WOD provides you with a good balance between strength, fitness and cardio endurance. It will challenge the muscles of your back, shoulder, chest and arms, as well as the glutes and quads on the squats. After a couple of rounds, you’ll also be puffing as you push to get through this thing in as quick a time as possible.

The key to success here is to push yourself and maintain a steady flow. Many people find it help to listen to music as they are pumping out the reps.

WOD #2

● 5 Mile Run with Burpees / Push Ups

This WOD combines the steady cardio endurance of a five mile run with the heart pounding challenge of burpees and the strength of push ups. To perform this workout, activate a timer and then set out on your 5 mile course. Check your pedometer so that every half mile you stop to do either 25 burpees or 25 push ups. Alternate back and forth between push ups and burpees, starting with whichever one you prefer. Be sure to hit your numbers before you continue your run. At the end of the 5 miles, you will have completed 125 push ups and the same number of burpees!

This is a challenge for time, so one each subsequent WOD your goal is set a new PR.

WOD #3: MURPH

Hero WODS were created to honor fallen servicemen and women who gave the ultimate sacrifice for their country. These are the actual WODs that were the favorites of these heroes. The best HERO WOD, and the most popular, is Murph. It is in honor of Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2005.

Here’s what it involves . . .

• Run 1 mile
• 100 pull ups
• 200 push ups
• 300 squats
• Run 1 mile

This is a great example of a workout that requires a strategy to get through. Break up your pull ups, push ups and squats into bite sized chunks in order to get through them. If you try to go to failure each time you do those moves, you will not get through them. The first time you do this workout, do not worry about your time. Your goal should be simply to get through the workout. You may also choose to break your start and finish runs up into shorter segments, interspersed by the other exercises.

WOD#4: Riley

Riley is another HERO WOD. This one is in honor of Army Sgt. 1st Class Riley G. Stephens, of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne). He was killed in Afghanistan in 2012. This is a simple, but extremely challenging, workout that involves the following:

• 1.5 mile run
• 150 burpees
• 1.5 mile run

This is all done while wearing a weighted vest. Men should wear a 20 lb vest, and women a 14 lb vest. Burpees are an extremely taxing multi part exercise involving a squat, a kick back and a push up all in one. Most people hate doing them because they are so challenging. So, doing 150 of them sandwiched between two one and a half mile runs is seriously hard work. As with the Murph WOD, you should break up your burpees between portions of the run.

WOD#5: Diminishing Sets of Burpees, Push Ups, Air Squats

In this WOD you perform 10 sets of the following:

• Burpees
• Push Ups
• Air Squats

The difference here is that each succeeding set drops a rep from the previous. In the first round you do 10 reps of each exercise, then 9, 7 and so on until you are doing just one rep of each. This is a very effective workout that can be done in a confined space without any equipment. It is also motivational in that you know that the number of reps per set is coming down with each succeeding round.

Set your time on your first WOD and then try to beat it next time!