For Beginner

What are the toughest, most mentally and physically challenging workouts that youve ever done? There are many discussions online on this topic, so I figured Id add my own opinion to the mix. These are in no particular order; just a list of things that absolutely, positively destroyed me.

20 rep squats

 

1. Load a barbell with a load you normally squat for ~10 reps
2. Unrack the barbell
3. Dont rack it again until youve done 20 reps

Back in 2009, I did 20 rep squats once every week as part of my Crossfit hybrid routine. I started at 205lbs and each time I got through all 20 reps, Id add 5-10lbs for next week. I made it up to 300lbs for a set of 20 before quitting. It was without a doubt the longest, most excruciatingly unpleasant, dear-god-make-it-stop-cant-breath single set of any exercise Ive ever done. This is why 20 rep squats have been nicknamed "widow makers", "man breakers", "breathing squats", and "death sets" and are discussed all over the web.

I have to admit that, week after week, 20 rep squats were the one workout I dreaded. I typically did them on Wednesdays and would spend all day at work thinking about them and trying to come up with excuses for skipping the gym. Once the weight got heavy, Id be sore for days after the 20 rep workout. Having said that, they were also extremely effective. I saw huge gains in 2009 both in terms of mental toughness and overall strength: squat +90lbs, deadlift +50lbs, overhead press +30lbs, power clean +50lbs, snatch +60lbs, etc.

Eva


Five rounds for time of:

• Run 800 meters
• 2 pood Kettlebell swing, 30 reps
• 30 Pull-ups

Like most Crossfit workouts, Eva is done "for time", which means you try to get through the workout as fast as you possibly can. Unlike most Crossfit workouts, Eva makes me want to quit long before Im done. The combination of 2.5 miles of running, 150 heavy KB swings and 150 pull-ups destroys my lungs, legs, and grip. Its a 45-60 minute nightmare of a workout and it takes every bit of my willpower to pick up that kettlebell each round.

Rowing and burpees


For time:

• Row 1000 meters
• 25 Burpees
• Row 750 meters
• 50 Burpees
• Row 500 meters
• 75 Burpees 

Rowing and burpees both have the ability to get my heart rate through the roof. Putting together 2250m of rowing and 150 burpees made me feel like my chest would explode. Ive only done this workout once and am not sure I ever want to do it again.

Inverted burpees


Five rounds for time of:

• 25 Inverted Burpees
• 25 Pull-ups
• 25 Burpees 

You know whats worse than burpees? Inverted burpees. Seriously, these things are downright mean. And 125 of them - in addition to 125 pull-ups and 125 normal burpees - is just plain evil.

400m repeats



This may seem like a strange one, but Im not sure any other workout allows me to approach 100% exertion quite like all-out 400m repeats. Im actually a pretty terrible runner and suffer at any distance, but 400m has a special place in my heart. It starts out easy, but before you know it, every muscle in your body is burning and your veins are pumping battery acid.

Pick your poison

What workouts do YOU fear? Post them in the comments.

I couldnt resist another dorky software engineering post. Non dorks may stop reading here.

At work the other day, while debugging my code, I noticed that one of my servlets was getting called twice for each page load. What was even more mysterious was that the second call would happen as the page was partially loaded. I scoured my code for iframes, accidental use of the servlet, rouge AJAX calls and so on, but couldnt find a thing. I resorted to just commenting out huge chunks of the page at a time to see which parts were causing the second page load. After a while, I narrowed it down to this:

<img src="$imgUrl" />

where $imgUrl is a variable whos value is filled in at runtime. So, you might be wondering how the heck an img tag can cause the entire page to reload? Well, it turns out (at least in Firefox 3) that if you have an img tag with a blank src attribute, the browsers tries to load an image at your base URL - that is, the URL of the page youre on. Therefore, every time $imgUrl turned out to be blank, my browser would re-request the page I was on. This, of course, caused a bad performance hit, was screwing up statistics and so on.

Moral of the story: make sure that your img tags never have an empty src attribute.