Ok, Day 2 of the 300 challenge complete. Time of 31 minutes 42 seconds, so I beat yesterday’s time by 7 minutes 42 seconds. I think the main reasons were:

1. Because I had completed the 300 test yesterday, I already had the belief that I could do it again.
2. I was more prepared this time – yesterday I forgot my water bottle and towel (for the grass).
3. I did more reps without a break.

I’ve noticed that my metabolism was way up this morning when I woke up. It was like my skin was tingling with energy and the feeling is still going. That being said, I don’t remember being this sore, not matter how hard I trained.

In today’s session, I found the deadlifts to be the “easiest”. It’s is probably because I do them regularly. I officially hate floor wipers and whoever put those 25 pullups at the end of the workout is truly a sadist

My body is telling me that I won’t be able to complete a full week of this, but I’m not going to give up, no matter how painful it gets or how long it takes for me to haul myself out of bed.

I’ve been going to bed early each day (10:30 pm) and getting up at the same time (7 am), so that’s going to help me get through this. I’m also making sure I’m getting enough nutrition to support this challenge. Am I regretting the decision to take on this challenge? Not at all. It gives me incredible satisfaction (not to mention a massive pump) completing each workout. I highly recommend anyone go for it.

If you really feel like a challenge, let the world keep up to date with your progress and cheer you on. Post a comment saying you want to participate and I’ll email you author login details to this site. You can post to this site and let us support you and cheer you on.

First day:

I completed the workout in 39 minutes 24 seconds. The hardest exercise for me was the pullups. Because I’ve been hitting the (home) gym a lot lately, I’ve recently grown to 105 kg (230 lbs) and so I’m still not used to my body weight. They also took the longest because I could only do a few before being forced to stop. I definitely felt the after effect of the deadlifts when I did the box jumps. It was weird. The easiest exercise by far was the dumbell clean & press. The weight on that was too light, even for the end of the workout. But that’s the weight I’ve chosen, so I’ll stick with it for the rest of the week. The floor wipers really hurt too.

I was completely drained after the workout and could barely move for about half an hour. I had done as many reps as I could of each exercise, then rested til I could just face continuing, kept going until I could do no more, rested, etc. After the deadlifts, I was seriously out of breath, but got that under control reasonably quickly.

Verdict – great workout (even though it’s meant to be a strength/fitness test), but left me really hungry. Not long after I finished, my wife came home with some roast chickens, so I polished off one of those.

I‘ve been reading a few articles lately that got me really jazzed up to go and train out-doors to bring a bit of change to my usual routine. Posts like Strength Training vs Bodybuilding, Elemental Exercises with Matthew McConaughey and a few of the videos on youtube I came across, as well as the Underground Strength Manual.

That all reminded me of the 300 workout (particularly the tire flipping in the video on Gym Junkies) that I’d looked into when the movie 300 came out. This is what I’m talking about:

 

The “300 test” was designed as a one time test for the actors in the movie as Mark Twight explains here. It wasn’t meant to be a workout in itself. It was meant to be a benchmark to test oneself.

This is the 300 challenge:

25 x Pullup
50 x Deadlift
50 x Pushup
50 x Box Jump
50 x Floor Wiper
50 x Kettlebell Clean & Press
25 x Pullup
Total = 300 reps.

The rub is that you have to do all that as fast as you can with 20 minutes being the benchmark for a pass.

So here is the challenge I set for myself today – to go one week completing the 300 challenge every day in as short a time as possible. Starting today. I’ll keep you updated with my progress.