Playing The Animal Dice Game Again

 Always come back to it at some point or another. It's just fun as hell and doesn't take up a ton of time. A good 15-30 minutes and most would be smoked. If you're not used to it, start with beginner versions of the animals and build your strength and balance from there. Wrote about this workout many times in the past because it's that valuable and can do wonders for your health. 

For those that don't know, what's called the Animal Dice Game is very simple.....

Roll a dice for an animal 

Roll a second time for Steps or Distance 

Repeat until you're done.

You can create all sorts of games with this. You can do games of Tag, Races, Relays, Tournaments, Sports Conditioning, Upper or Lower Body Workouts, whatever works for you. Been playing with this off and on since 2008 and have taught it when I was in college and have taught it to friends, family and others. Played this game with one of my nieces at the park. Rolled for an animal and we'd play tag. Did it until she got tired. She loved it.

Fitness sometimes can feel rigid and strict. You're supposed to follow these rules and stick to this or that and if you commit one little sin of a program, you're a loser and have no ambition. Dude, this isn't fucking prison LOL or a bootcamp. This type of training makes you feel like a kid again from a bygone era in your life where you get to live out being your favorite animal and having a good time. You didn't have to think about getting in shape or WORKING OUT!!! You just played. 

It doesn't matter if you do Steps/Reps or an amount of distance with this type of program, what matters is you learn the fundamentals, learn how the games go and have at it. Do what you can and get amazing benefits. I like to do it for conditioning purposes and keep my brain active. Practicing balance is another great benefit cause if you can handle your bodyweight in awkward positions, imagine being able to move without pain and do things like going up a flight of stairs easily, bend down without injuring your back, keep up with kids or grandkids, perform better in sports, barely ever get tired and minimize the chances of osteoporosis.

"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games." – Carl Jung  

Games showcase the mighty tasks of what we can accomplish while the concept of having fun marks the inner child in all of us. We don't have to do them perfectly, we just do them with enthusiasm and imagination. 

Have a great time and get fit while at it. Getting fit is an adventure, make it worth while and the results will come when you least expect them. Be amazingly awesome. Be wild, be an animal. 

Should You Count Your Steps Or Reps In Animal Workouts?

During workouts, we utilize a set/rep scheme to determine our fitness levels whether for strength, conditioning, endurance or how much we can handle during a certain set. In most circles, this can be good to figure out where you are and how you progress but sometimes, reps don't really seem to matter because the main focus is improving your technique, utilizing tension or using timed sets. Red Delta Project emphasizes those three methods together to help you get the most out of a workout.

When it comes to Animal Workouts, most of the time, rep counts don't really matter but more how long can you last before you start breathing hard. In many cases, a few seconds is all it takes. When I play my Animal Dice Game, it consists of using a step method to count how many times you move throughout an exercise. It can be used as a rep count as well but you don't always have to keep a record of how many steps or reps you do during rounds. In some workouts, you can time it and just play around until the time is up or you can just go until you can't move anymore; either one will get you results fast. 

For a period or ever so often, I do keep a record of how many steps/reps I do in a workout especially if the amount is doubled per animal. I kept a record for a month to see how many I can do and during that month, I recorded over 10,000 Steps/Reps of Animal Exercises. The most I ever recorded in a day was around 2000. Consider that some of those rounds have you doing up to a hundred reps or more depending on if you multiply the dice and you keep going. The highest multiplier I did during certain workouts was around 5 times of what the round called for, so if let's say I rolled a 20 for the bear crawl, I would have to take 100 steps and they can be either fast paced or just "walking" it for that amount. In most workouts, I don't do more than doubled the amount which can still kick your ass in less than a few minutes.

Considering that you don't count your reps and do timed rounds for different animals, you can still end up doing up to several hundred to a thousand or more in a workout. That can be brutal but effective training and developing levels of strength and conditioning that would just astound people. When it comes to the ADG, you never know when you'll start to fatigue, it can happen in one round or 30, you never know. I'll always say that's the beauty of it, no workout is ever the same twice and you never know what you'll have to prepare for cause it can be a breeze one minute and stupid exhausting the next. The bear crawl is considered the foundation for Animal Movements and the easiest to start with; with that in mind, if you had to do even 20 steps of the bear crawl, the next one could be 20 Frog Jumps and you can wear out your legs and be huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf needing oxygen after trying to blow the brickhouse down. 

The thing to remember with this specific Animal Workout is that the more times you multiply the amount per animal, the less rounds you'll end up doing. In one sense if you just did the regular numbers and went for 15-25 rounds or rolls, doubling the amount can take you down to less than 10 and you'll be done. Doing multiple rounds or rolls with a 5 times multiplier can be considered a superhuman feat but until you actually do it, you'll never understand the feeling of it. 

One of the perks of the ADG is that you can do this with a partner and do all sorts of games like Tag, Medley, how many yards you can go for and so on. If you're playing tag, roll for an animal and whatever comes up, both parties have to do that animal. If you're doing distance like a race, roll for an animal, next roll is how long the distance is and it can be feet, yards and if you're insane, go for kilometers. Imagine the amount of reps/steps you take with those kind of games. If you were to do these games for a week, the numbers can rack up in the tens of thousands possibly, talk about being in shape or getting in shape pretty damn quick. 

So with that in mind, should you really be counting? IMO, that's up to you but it's also not entirely necessary unless you have a specific goal in mind like doing 5000 Reps in let's say ten days or you want to average out a certain amount per workout. Regardless of what you do, with consistent training using animal movements, results will come fast and you'll develop skills and other attributes that other methods are obsolete to. Get strong, be wild and be amazingly awesome.