What constitutes a "hard workout" is relative: Your warmup may actually be another person's full workout.
Landmark workouts for people's birthdays (like my 50th this year), holiday challenges (Murph, Hero Workouts) or racing events should be created to match the fitness levels of those doing it.
If you join a group for the first time on a day they are doing a landmark workout, you may want to pull back and go at your own level of fitness if you are not used to the volume in the routine. Whether it is repetitions, weight, mileage or just a long amount of time required to complete the task, a logical progression to get to the new workout level is the only way to proceed.
Birthday challenges
Throughout the fitness world, you will find avid exercisers challenging themselves with racing events on their 30th, 40th, 50th and 60th birthdays -- sometimes even older.
For instance, people have challenged themselves with a marathon on a decade birthday or perhaps 30 pull-ups on their 30th birthday. I had a friend who hit 50 pull-ups at 50 years old. These challenges are for those who may be getting older but are still young at heart and very well-conditioned. This year is no different.
For my 50th year, my training group and I will challenge ourselves by doing the following:
50 different calisthenics, weight and TRX exercises (upper body, lower body, core), such as a variety of push-ups, pull-ups, dips, crunches, plank pose (50 seconds), squats, lunges and many more. You can make these as tough or as easy as you prefer.
However, between each 50-rep exercise, you have to run 50 meters. So plan to do this one on a football field and bring dumbbells, kettlebells, TRX, bands and other exercise aids. Most of the exercises actually will be calisthenics. Next, you get to swim 50 laps in a 25-meter pool to total 2,500 meters in distance; or run 50 minutes; or ruck 50 minutes with 50 pounds.
In a separate cardio-only workout later in the week, my group will do the 50-50-50 triathlon: 50 laps/2,500-meter swim with fins, 50-minute run, 50-minute ruck with 50 pounds.
That is one way to celebrate your birthday with a group of tactical athletes and special-ops candidates.
Over the last five years, my group has done this exact workout with 45, 46, 47 and other annual challenges, so it is not a shocker to the system. We also have done fun holiday workouts such as the Memorial Day Murph, Thanksgiving Day Feast Guilt-Free workout and even a Super Bowl Sunday Guilt-Free workout challenge. It typically involves a little more volume than we are used to, but the large variety of exercises makes it more of a fun group challenge -- part gut check -- than an overly challenging workout that causes people to hurt themselves.
My advice is to build up to it. Take a few months practicing the events of the Murph, multiple exercise volume workouts or high-rep calisthenics max rep challenges.
Be smart, and you can avoid injury. Jump into something unprepared, and you could be down with a variety of overuse injuries.
Stew Smith is a former Navy SEAL and fitness author certified as a Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) with the National Strength and Conditioning Association. Visit his Fitness eBook store if you’re looking to start a workout program to create a healthy lifestyle. Send your fitness questions to stew@stewsmith.com.
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