Diamonds, Hearts, Clubs, and Spades

Did I get your attention? Aren’t diamonds a girl’s best friend? Well, I’m not giving away any freebies this blog post, especially not diamonds; but I am giving you a new outlook on how to include a deck of cards, yes a deck of cards, of all things, in your cycle classes.

Take your standard deck of cards, 52 cards to be exact. You’ve got your four suits each with an ace, king, queen, jack and cards two through to ten. Now depending on your deck, you may have one to four jokers as well. So many cards and so many things you can do with the deck to spice up you next cycling class. And think, how many card games you know that you could ‘play’ in a cycle class?

Drill #1: Pick the Number, Pick the Duration

Take a typically drill (e.g., hills, power, sprints) and let the deck dictate the duration. I typically use only the number cards (tack an extra zero on the end of the number to equal seconds) with random jokers in the deck. For example, I pull a three of spades and thus the group needs to do 30 seconds of the drill. Now, if I pull a joker, it is a random card and I let the group yell out the duration. Watch those highly motivated cycle participants yell out a 10; thus, the drill is for 100 seconds!

To keep the cycle participants engaged, pull four cards from the deck. The first and third cards are the duration of the drill and the second and fourth cards are the recovery duration. Boy, you can sure get some mismatching happening in which cycle participants can get more work than rest!

Drill #2: Numbers Count - Jumps and Lifts

Using the whole deck of cards, randomly distribute a card to each cycle participant. Since the cycle participants could receive any of the potential cards in the deck, ensure that you announce what each cards represents. Of course the number cards would be pretty self explanatory but say face cards are worth 15 jumps/lifts and all jokers are worth 20 jumps/lifts.

Throughout the class, call on participants to reveal which card they have and follow their direction on how many jumps/lifts the class is to complete.  Expect to call on at least five separate cycle participants to help dictate the number of jumps/lifts the group is to do. Alternatively, depending on your duration of jumps/lifts (four, eight, or sixteen beats of the music or using stop watch every 10 seconds) you may need more or less cycle participants to participate.

Now who knew that a simple deck of cards would be so handy in a cycle class?

Stay tuned for part two, of Diamonds, Hearts, Clubs, and Spades…