This time last year, everyone (especially me) was talking about the now legendary "300 Workout". This year Craig Ballantyne, author of Turbulence Training, has put together a new challenge for 2008.
The Bodyweight 500 (Can you beat 27 minutes?)
50 Prisoner Squats
50 Pushups
25 Jumps
25 Stability Ball Leg Curls
50 Stability Ball Jackknifes
50 Step-ups (25 reps per side)
25 Pull-ups (NO substitutions)
50 Forward Lunges (25 reps per side)
50 Close-grip Pushups
50 Inverted Rows
50 Squats
25 Chin-ups (NO substitutions)
The 300 Workout vs The Bodyweight 500
The Bodyweight 500 is a pretty wicked physical test.
The first thing you’ll notice is that it has 200 more reps that 300 had. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily that much harder. It’s just different. 300 was a savage fitness test, and so is the bodyweight 500.
One of the big advantages of the Bodyweight 500 is that you don’t need a ton of gear to do it. Doing The 300 Workout requires about 10 minutes of setting up the barbell, finding a place to rack the bar for floor wipers, gathering together all of the kettlebells, boxes to jump on, ect.
For the Bodyweight 500 all you’ll need is a stability ball and bar to do pullups and inverted rows on.
The Bodyweight 500 is every bit as savage a test as The 300 Workout.
It’s just different.
The Four Week Program Workouts
Craig and I agree on a lot about fitness and fat loss, and his new Bodyweight 500 Four Week Program has everything I like in a workout program.
It’s packed full of my favorite kinds of workouts – supersets of big movements and interval training.
So the workouts in the program are straight up Turbulence Training – intense combinations of awesome full body moves prisoner squats, dumbbell bench press, pullups, with some moves that are newer to TT like dumbbell swings and renegade rows.
It’s worth noting that the workouts are different from the test. The workouts are Turbulence Training supersets. The Bodyweight 500 is a fitness test.
As my mentor Pavel so eloquently put it – testing and training are different things.
Fitness Tests
The best reason to do hardcore fitness tests like The 300 Workout and The Bodyweight 500 is that they are so much freakin fun.
That is, if you’re crazy like I am.
If you’re the kind of person that likes to really kick some ass in the gym, you’ll love this workout.
And it gives you a clear picture of if your fitness level is improving. If you repeat the workout a month later, you can see if you can do it faster.
You wouldn’t want to do the BW500 every day. Try once a month. You could alternate between the BW500 one month and 300 the next month. Watch your scores (and your fitness, and your intestinal fortitude) improve over time.
When I ran track, the ultimate was always race day. That’s what we trained for. The all out, balls to the wall test – racing the clock. That was the juice. That’s why I got up in the morning. To see what I was made of. To see how bad I wanted it that day. To see how well I’d trained.
I just have this deep inner need to push myself. And something that I’m always stoked about is testing myself.
That’s the same reason I like fitness tests like these.
By Josh Hillis
Author of How To Lose The Stubborn Seven Pounds and the upcoming Fighter Workouts for Fat Loss.
Josh is one of the five fat loss experts in The Ultimate Fat Loss Answers
Josh is a fat loss expert, a kettlebell instructor and personal trainer in Denver, Colorado. Josh helps women and men lose stubborn fat.
Josh ran a 4:22 mile, back in the day when he was a runner.
© Joshua Hillis 2007
This gets very close to a workout I would dearly love to see, which is one that assumes NO equipment (i.e. no bar for bodyweight rows or chin-ups) and limited space (we can do three walking lunges the length of our space).
My partner and I live in a 22′ Airstream trailer half the year and get to the gym when we can, which is not nearly as often as we would like, while on the road.
We’d love to see a version of this workout that we could do in our limited space with our limited tools that would really challenge us.
We track our food type and calorie intake and have genuinely made a major lifestyle shift within the last several months when it comes to preparing food and choosing carefully what we eat. We’re performers. We have to look good and, well, we were slipping toward the end of the year.
Now that we’re back on track with eating we’d like to be doing more than we are on the workout end of things. We have no room for purchased equipment, just our present space and ourselves.
We’d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for all of the great information and inspiration. Looking forward to a great 2008!
Hey Josh, I have been keeping up with your articles since I left Denver. Lot’s of good stuff as always! I still can’t find a trainer that can put together anything like the workouts you had me doing.
You know I want to do this new body weight workout! Is kipping allowed when doing the pull/chin ups?
Keep up the great articles! I am still hoping to see those L-pull up movies!
Happy New Years!
What is your time Josh? Is it 27 minutes?
Hey Will!
What’s up bro! This workout doesn’t allow kipping on the pullups or chinups – they’re all strict.
Hi Maki!
I haven’t tried it yet.
Craig put the “can you beat 27 minutes?” challenge.
I was hurt for a while and just got back to regular workouts 5 weeks ago. You can check my current workouts at:
https://joshhillis.com/josh_hillis_personal_work/
Hey Charon!
A total bodyweight version would be really cool.
Any bodyweight only program has got to include one legged squats i.e. “pistols”.
If you can fill a backpack up with books you can do one legged deadlifts also.
Pushups and handstand pushups would also be good additions.
The trick would be getting in a good pull.
Here is my favorite pulling movement when I don’t have any gear:
Wrap a towel around the doorknobs of a sturdy door, lean back, and do one arm rows with your body as the resistance.
Hi Josh,
After seeing your posting today I just had to try the 500. I have been doing a couple of 300’s a month and liked the sound of this. It turned out to be a pretty brutal workout.
However, I have a question. Do you think it is best to perform all the reps of one exercise before continuing to the next?
When doing the 300 I tend to cycle through the different exercises and keep score. This is great because I am in constant, exhausting motion.
For my 500 today I performed all the reps before moving to the next exercise. This typically meant that I was hitting failure and then working within the failure zone to complete the rest.
Anyhow, I didn’t time it but was nowhere near 27 minutes. That’s insane. It was more like 45. Maybe next month…
Thanks!
Can someone kindly point me to where I can find the proper way to do :
Prisoner Squats
Stability Ball Leg Curls
Stability Ball Jackknifes
Inverted Rows
Thanks!
never mind.. google is my friend!