On Thursday, Tannys and I were looking for a different type of workout, to give us some extra challenge and excitement. With those goals in mind, we decided to do a 300 countdown workout!
When the movie 300 came out a few years ago, it created a lot of stir. Not only was it quite entertaining (in our opinion), but the actors' physiques were widely commented on. Many different people in the fitness world began capitalizing on the movie's popularity with their versions of the 300 workout. Having tried several of them, here is what we would share with you as a general observation - they are all circuit-based workouts with an overall repetition goal of 300.
Sadly, there is no hidden magic here and you will not transform into Gerard Butler overnight. However, by consistently working out, eating well, and using effective and efficient exercise programming (such as circuit training), you will definitely achieve great results.
Lance Armstrong performing kettlebell swings - part of a 300 workout???
In designing this 300 workout, we could have chosen any exercises using the standard 'countdown' format (which we will describe below). However, for the best results, we chose exercises that would target most major muscle groups, as well as selecting them based on difficulty (aligned with the repetition goal for that exercise). Check it out:
100 reps - Kettlebell swings (Tannys - 24kg, Alex - 40kg)
80 reps - Overhead (kettlebell) lunges (Tannys - 12kg, Alex - 24kg)
60 reps - Wide-grip pullups (Tannys - band-assisted, Alex - bodyweight)
40 reps - Kettlebell press / Bench press (Tannys - 16kg kettlebell, Alex - 275lbs barbell)
20 reps - Turkish Get Ups (TGUs) - (Tannys - 12kg, Alex - 24kg)
When you add up all the repetitions, you perform 300 overall. We did this 300 countdown in a circuit-style, moving from exercise to exercise and recording our reps as we went. Thus, our goal was to perform the workout with as few sets as possible (we did it in 18 sets total). The benefit of doing it circuit-style is efficiency, as you minimize the rest-periods, as well as effectiveness (through eliminating that rest and generating a strong metabolic and hormonal response).
You could, arguably, tackle each exercise one at a time, completing all the reps before moving onto the next exercise. However, I suspect that you would need to take increasingly long rest periods to let that particular muscle group recover (this would be similar to traditional bodybuilding style workouts).
As mentioned above, select your exercises carefully. For example, we are really glad that we selected the TGUs for 20 reps. This turned out to be a really tough challenge (even breaking it into 3 sets of 8, 6, and 6 reps). If we had put that as the 100 rep exercise, it might have killed us!
This is how tough you will feel after completing the 300 countdown workout
This was a great workout for us and we felt pretty hardcore after finishing it. We hope that you enjoy this style of workout!
- Alex & Tannys
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