Your Turkey Day Workout!

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This post was kindly written by our sadistic talented coach and CrossFit owner, Max Shippee :) 

“Oh…my…god.””What?”

“These are PERFECT!”

“Um…what are those?”

“They’re my pregnancy pants, with the elastic waist!”

“Um….you’re not pregnant anymore, why the excitement?”

“They can be my Thanksgiving dinner pants! Room for expansion! Duh!”

“Oooohhhhh…right”

So, it’s coming. We all know it. The biggest, most baddest cheat day of the year. Christmas is one thing. You can kind of excise yourself from the table and go play with your new Lego set. But Thanksgiving? It really is about the food!

Even if we manage to stay Paleo, the overindulgence factor is, well, overwhelming.

I’m going to advise you on how to do a little damage control before the meal even starts. And yes, it’s better to “pre-pay” for your food a little, instead of working it off later.

(You may want to print this out, and hang it on the board at work… you’ll be a hero.)

For the metabolism nerds out there, we’re going to try to burn through a wee bit of muscle gylcogen on Thanksgiving day so that when we have our Thanksgiving awesomeness it’s got somewhere to go besides straight to our backside.

There are 3 workouts here, depending on how deep down the horn of plenty you’re headed. Pick one and tear it up, or do all three and earn an extra helping of dessert & sweet potatoes!

Note: There are links to videos of all these movements at the bottom of this post.

“Cranberry Sauce”

Perform 3 rounds of the following:

As many push-ups as you can do without dropping (you may stop/pause, in the “top” position only to rest). This is a good one to challenge your in-laws to for dish duty.

Estimated prep + cook time: 3-4 minutes
Your “score” is your push-ups for each round! (you’ll have 3)

“Turkey & Stuffing”

Perform 5 rounds of the following:
– 1 minute of burpees
– 1 minute of rest

This is a great one for the kids! They LOVE burpees. Find 5 kids, then challenge each of them to burpees for 1 minute! Or 1 kid, and talk them into more treats if they do all 5 with you. See if you can get to 100!

Estimated prep + cook time: exactly 10 minutes
Your “score” is your total burpees!

“Pumpkin Pie”

Perform 8 rounds of the following

– 20 seconds squats
– 10 seconds rest

This one is done best when holding a baby. The up and down calms them, and gives you a little extra weight. Extra servings if the baby falls asleep! Go find that baby now!

Estimated prep + cook time: exactly 4 minutes
Your “score” is you total squats!

All in all, these workouts all together will take less than 20 minutes. The push-ups you could even break up throughout the day. Challenging that nephew to “double or nothing” each time. Getting at least one of them done will help with any guilt you have about portion size, while doing all three will hav you doing some really good damage control. I’m NOT saying you shouldn’t bust out the elastic pants, I’m just saying you might as well sweat in them too! ;)

We’d love it if you shared your scores with us! Leave them in the comments below!

Form/Technique

The Push-Up (full size video link)

Standard push-up. Toes and hands on the ground. Drop down until your chest touches the ground, return to the top. Down and up is 1 rep. If scaling and going from your knees, be sure your butt isn’t way up in the air. There should always be a straight line from shoulder to hip to knee to ankle.

The Burpee (full size video link)

Standard clap overhead. From a standing position, place hands 18-24 inches in front of feet, kick both feet back, drop to push-up (chest to ground), jump feet back to start, stand and jump while clapping overhead. The clap is the count!

The Squat (full size video link)

Standard “air squats.” Feet shoulder width apart, weight in the heels, knees tracking over the toes, hips dropping below the knee (a marble placed on your knee should roll back to towards the hip), hands in front for balance, and midsection firm and active.