As you can tell from flipping through this website, bootcamp workouts come in all shapes and sizes.
While a lot of the workouts I share with you use intricate drills, tyres, ropes and lots of running, sometimes it’s important to give your clients a basic high intensity strength workout to reinforce technique and burn a lot of energy. In fact I schedule in what I dub a ‘boring’ workout once a week for my groups.
What is a ‘boring’ workout?
When I talk about boring, I mean for me, not my clients. I couldn’t stand coaching eight workouts a week where I am watching the stop watch the whole time (even with a Gymboss). I like variety, I like 3 people running one way and 6 running the other way and the rest dragging heavy ropes across the wet ground. Those are fun workouts.
However, the bootcamps are not about me, they are about my clients and high intensity strength workouts are great because they work.
I am not very good at planning them, so usually I will go to a Bootcamp Girls workout or a bootcamp workout idea for some inspiration. Recently I added MRT Bootcamp Workouts to my repertoire.
What are MRT Bootcamps?
If you have hunted around online for bootcamp training, no doubt you have come across Turbulence Training. In fact there is a banner on our recommended products page.
Craig Ballantyne has created an online empire for his brand Turbulance Training (TT) He is a great role model in learning how to take the skills and knowledge you build as a trainer, packaging them and selling them to a wider audience. TT has had a bootcamp package out for sometime now, but more recently Craig took his new Metabolic Resistance Training (MRT) techniques and turned it into a series of 61 bootcamp workouts.
This book is a great source of simple high-intensity and strength bootcamp workouts to use in conjunction with more fun and interactive challenge type workouts.
See for yourself
So you can get an idea of what I’m talking about, here is a workout I used in some private and small group training sessions last week. It looks simple, but my clients weren’t quite sure what had hit them at the end.
Allow approx 50 minutes of your session for this.
Workout # 2 DB/BW Supersets
Warm-up
Do the following circuit twice, resting for 1 minute between circuits. Each exercise should be performed for 20 seconds.
- Prisoner Squat
- Inchworm
- Duck Unders
- Bird Dog
- Band Pulls
MRT DB/BW Superset
Do the following superset 3 times, resting for 1 minute between supersets. Each exercise should be performed for 30 seconds.
- Split Squat (1-1/2 rep style) (30 secs ea leg)
- 1-Arm DB Shoulder Press (30 secs ea side)
MRT DB/BW Superset
Do the following superset 3 times, resting for 1 minute between supersets. Each exercise should be performed for 30 seconds
- DB Chest Supported Row (30 secs ea side)
- Triple Stop Pushups
MCT Circuit
Do the following circuit 3 times, resting for 1 minute between circuits. Each exercise should be performed for 20 seconds
- Lunge Jumps
- Pushups
- Bear Crawl
- Swing Lunge (20 secs ea side)
- Cross-Body Mountain Climbers
- Shuttle Run
Finisher
Do the following superset 4 times. Rest 30 secs between supersets. Each exercise should be performed for 20 seconds
- KB/DB Swings
- Plank to Pushup
Cool-down, Stretching & Water Break – 10 minutes
If you also have trouble coming up with interesting, basic strength workouts for bootcamps then check out the MRT Bootcamp site. Also, as of writing this, Craig has an excellent video available (no affiliate link) in which he explains why he runs his workouts the way he does. It’s well worth the watch from a trainer perspective.
Image: joshme17
Kyle Wood created Bootcamp Ideas in 2010 when he was hunting around on the internet for workout ideas. He ran a successful bootcamp in Victoria, Australia and spends his spare time managing this site, adventuring (or lazying) with his wife and find new ways to make bootcamps even better.
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