Workout of the Week - 300
Challenging workout finisher developed by Patryk Piekarczyk - Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and Combat Sports Trainer.
Guest Workout of the Week - Patryk Piekarczyk
My workouts of the week are typically part of my paid tier. I start each post by discussing a particular type of skill, adaptation and/or workout structure that is beneficial for health, performance, and resilience. I’ll then provide a challenging workout with modifications to make it accessible to all, elaboration on the reasoning behind the particular workout and the benefits it can provide, a technique and modification section with video examples, my experience completing the workout with my team, and a summary.
This week I am keeping the post free so everyone can have access to the excellent work of
and the beneficial suffering I endured by giving his workout my all.For those who aren’t already aware, Patryk runs The Weekly Flex - one of my favorite sources of functional fitness and nutrition guidance on Substack.
Patryk has a Masters in Nutrition & Exercise Science, a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist certification, an NSCA-Certified Personal Trainer certification, and a Kilo level 1 certification.
I never allow credentials to speak for themselves regardless of how impressive they are.
Patryk’s credibility comes from his writing, videos, and daily actions. He’s in phenomenal shape and demonstrates extraordinary passion and wisdom in his profession. He recently reviewed one of my Workouts of the Week called Fight Gone Terrible.
My favorite part of the entire post is his video review at the end. You get to see him talking on the fly demonstrating his expertise and thoughtful application of extensive knowledge.
Today, Patryk is sharing one of his favorite workout structures to give to his clients and has intentionally made it involve one of my favorite exercises - burpees.
Conditioning Finishers
By Patryk Piekarczyk
If you’re low on equipment and want to jack up your heart rate there’s nothing better than the burpee. The burpee was invented by physiologist Royal Huddleston Burpee (yes that’s his real name) to assess the fitness level of soldiers. The burpee was later adopted by the military to prepare soldiers for WW2.
For bodyweight conditioning finishers I like 300s. The concept of the 300 is simple, do 300 reps of any movement or group of movements in as short of time as possible. I typically like to do 25 reps of 3 movements for 4 rounds.
Sample Workout Options:
5 Movements, 20 reps, 3 Rounds
4 Movements, 25 Reps, 3 Rounds
3 Movements, 25 Reps, 4 Rounds
2 Movements, 50 reps, 3 Rounds
The Workout
4 Rounds for Time
6-Count Burpee x 25
3-Count Mountain Climber x 25
Each pump with the legs forward is 1-count, do them as a 3-count. Therefore, one round is 75 total single counts.
Rows (abs) x 25
Complete these three movements in ascending order four times totaling 100 reps per movement or 300 total reps.
A New Challenge
I asked Patryk to give me a good bodyweight circuit that he uses on his fighters to help with conditioning. With 300, he wisely provided me with a component of conditioning that can be used as a finisher or as a standalone when you’re short on time.
Burpees are no joke when it’s not an exercise you’re proficient in. For me, 100 burpees and a few core exercises didn’t look too bad on paper. I would come to find out I significantly misjudged the difficulty this circuit provides.
What I appreciate about 6-count burpees is that they break up the burpee into actionable steps and remove much of the impact on the shoulders when your form is not dialed in. This would be the first time I’ve done burpees since minor shoulder surgery in January and Patryk provided me with an excellent modification to perform. 6-count burpees also encourage a full range, proper form push-up making the movement task the arms and chest more than the speed version I became accustomed to when training for the Guinness record.
Rowers look very similar to a version of the supine sit-up I enjoy but they require continuous engagement in the core without the opportunity for breaks at the top or bottom of the movement if you want to go unbroken. This would be my first time doing this movement.
Technique & Modifications
Watch the video below for my explanation of the workout, expanded demonstration of techniques, and modifications that can be considered:
Pre-Workout
As Patryk explains in his Fight Conditioning post I tagged earlier, functional fitness for a fight consists of building both your aerobic base and your red zone capacity. Two different adaptations, both imperative for performance.
One of the best ways to train your aerobic base is jumping rope. For fighters, this is an exercise that enhances multiple skills simultaneously. With just a piece of rope, one can improve speed, endurance, strength, power, agility, balance, coordination, rhythm, footwork, mental health, and resilience. Jumping rope barefoot adds even more benefit to the exercise for whole body enhancement. I made a challenge post several months ago to help people develop this skill.
Wanting to do 300 with my team on Sunday morning where I often engineer and execute these workouts of the week, I knew I wanted to add in some aerobic base conditioning prior to going Spartan mode for 300.
Therefore, we started with ten minutes of jumping rope. I encouraged those who aren’t proficient at jumping rope to pick a number of rotations to try for and do that repeatedly. For example, one girl would do ten reps and then take a few breaths. Others would try to jump rope for 45 seconds straight and then rest for 15. I had one student who was still struggling to complete a few rotations, so we had him go without the rope and just do hip claps - tiny jumps where you clap your hands against the side of your hips each time you’re in the air to emulate jumping rope. Hip claps are an excellent way to begin training your coordination and rhythm for jumping rope. As always, do whatever you can at a manageable level for the prescribed time period.
Following the ten-minute jump rope, we then did five minutes of bear crawling. Bear crawls are another excellent whole-body exercise that can be done in a confined space to increase aerobic capacity. I encouraged everyone to try and nasal breathing as much as possible to keep exertion levels around 60-70%.
After five minutes, we finished our aerobic conditioning with five more minutes of jumping rope.
We were now ready to go to war with ourselves.
300 would test our limits.
My Experience
I put a 20-minute timer on our clock and told everyone to get as far as they can in this challenge. Exertion levels were encouraged to be in the 80–90% range based on proficiency while also reminding everyone to dial it back and modify as needed. I also encouraged some of the beginners to do a lower rep count such as 15 reps per movement if need be so prolonged breaks were not needed.
Starting out, the burpees felt pretty good. Slowing down my usual pace to ensure good form in the push-ups initially felt like this workout might be a breeze…
I powered through the mountain climbers and then started the rowers. As I mentioned, this was my first time doing the specific rower core exercise and I quickly learned there was nowhere to recover during the movement. Almost every sit-up variation has a bottom and top position that allows for micro breaks during repetitions at any speed. Not rowers. My abs were burning by the end of the first round. I finished the first round in just over 2.5 minutes.
By the end of round two, I had developed a puddle of sweat and I was hurting. The previous jump ropes and bear crawls hand worked out my shoulders more than I realized, and the hardest part of the burpees was now trying to clap over my head at the end of each rep. It felt like each arm weighed an extra 20 pounds.
There was no hiding in this workout if trying to go unbroken. I was taking a short breath between reps in the burpees and otherwise going dark in my mind and grinding through the movements.
Absolutely exhausted, I finished in 12 minutes and 45 seconds.
After recovering for a few minutes in my man-made puddle, I decided to attempt a 5-minute plank to finish out the timer while my teammates continued to get after it.
Like burpees, planks are something I’ve become accustomed to after years of consistent training. My personal best hold is 41 minutes which makes five minutes seem like a breeze. Planks have taught me stress is not linear. The waves of stress that come during an isometric hold like a plank are temporary. These sensory signals of discomfort and fatigue can be managed by the mind with controlled breathing and deep focus to remain calm and carry on. All that being said, the 5-minute plank I was able to complete at the end of this workout ranks among the most difficult planks I’ve done. That last minute was pure pain, and it felt like someone was standing on my back during the last 15 seconds.
As I splashed down into my now larger puddle after the timer went off, a profound sense of gratification moved through me.
Summary
Consistency will always beat intensity. That being said, intensity is also a skill that needs training.
One challenging workout per week that tests your limits in a specific domain provides data objectively and subjectively on how you respond to extreme stress.
Where does your mind go when you’re hurting and tired?
Can your mind override your body’s impulses in extreme conditions?
Is your spirit an asset or a liability?
Leave these questions up to circumstances outside of your control and you may not like the answers.
I can’t think of a better stress test than a challenging workout to enhance mental, physical, and spiritual resilience.
Improve your will by training the skill of resilience.
If you enjoyed today’s workout and/or are interested in improving your fitness and nutrition in any way, I can’t recommend The Weekly Flex with
enough.
Solid, functional training. Great stuff Kyle.
Absolute gold, Kyle!!