40th Birthday Workout

Today I am 40 years old and in better shape than I have ever been.  The last 4 years have been dedicated to my return to martial arts after an 8 year hiatus.  In 2009 I was in pain, depressed and out of shape.  I was in an accident that caused me great pain in the lower back.  My job requires a great deal of sitting, which I could not do for long periods of time making my work difficult and contributed to a lot of stress and anxiety about my ability to perform my duties.  All of this made day to day living a misery.  Exercise that I was used to such as biking and running were hard to do.


In July of 2009, I started to fight back.  I learned about high-intensity interval training as a way to have a good well rounded workout.  Over the course of a year I developed a few circuits that I used to re-build my body and prepare it for a return to a normal work/life with the hope of eventually returning to martial arts.  I celebrated my 40th birthday this morning with the following workout:







Training Circuit (Perform 2 iterations):

1. Jumping Jacks 100x
2. Jab-cross 30x (left and right)
3. Knee strikes 20x (left and right)
4. Burpees 20x
5. Sit-ups 20x (with 8lb medicine ball behind head)
6. Goblet Squats 20x (with 20lb dumbell)
7. Jab-cross-Jab-uppercut-Hook 20x (left and right)
8. Mid-section round kicks 20x (left and right)
9. Mid-section side kicks 10x (left and right)

I perform the above with less than a 10 second break between the exercises.  I have a two-minute break between sets.

What I found with this workout is that it releases a massive amount of endorphins.  I am high after it for the whole day, and it works better than any pain reliever I have every tried.  I stopped using painkillers in '09 for my back pain, which I still have, but this and my martial arts training keep it at bay.