The 300 Challenge

The movie 300 came out recently. It's so good that I went to see it twice. In fact, I loved it so much that I went to see it twice on the Easter weekend. A quick spiel on what the movie's actually about - it's based on Frank Miller's graphic novel of the same name, which itself was based on the Battle of Thermopylae, one of history's most famous last stands.

Reading an article in Men's Health recently, I read about the punishing regime that the actors had to go through to have the lean, mean physiques that they have in the movie, actually creating Spartans. Some of the stuff would destroy you - and they had to do it for most of a day, for four months.

The actual 300 challenge itself is a test drawn up by the trainer who trained the actors, Mark Twight of Gym Jones.

The actual workout itself is a whole set of 300 reps of different exercises:

25 pullups
50 deadlifts with 60kg
50 pushups
50 jumps on a 60cm box
50 floor wipers
50 single-arm clean-and-presses using a 16kg kettlebell
25 pullups.

Let me emphasise here - there are NO rests between exercises, you do one and then straight onto the next one.
Out of the four people who took part in the training regime the actors went through, only four actually managed to get through the entire circuit.
Gerard Butler, actor who played King Leonidas, clocked in at just under twenty minutes.

It'll be interesting to see how I work up to the challenge of building up the strength, stamina, and endurance to push through that entire workout.