It’s the most wonderful time of the year…time for my annual Christmas Crusher Workout! What started as a joke when I created a ridiculously hard but fun holiday-themed workout for my personal training clients has turned into a six-year tradition that many of you also participate in!

I will quickly note that this year the name of the workout is changing from the Christmas Cookie Crusher to just the Christmas Crusher because I don’t want there to be any association with earning or burning the cookies that you choose to eat! 🙂

This was my first year doing the Crusher Workout solo. I usually get together with some of my former personal training clients to do it but given everything that has been going on, we opted to skip the gym this year. We may get together after the holidays for a distanced outdoor Crusher in someone’s driveway though.

I am a big fan of this year’s workout! It’s a total body dumbbell strength workout with some cardio thrown in too. I went with a “2020” theme and designed a chipper-style workout with 20 movements repeated 20 times for a total of 2 rounds. I tested the workout for you and it is challenging but really enjoyable! I haven’t done a chipper workout like this in a long time and it kept me moving, motivated and engaged. I also did a 2 mile run to warm up…that is totally optional!

Ready to see it!?

2020 CHRISTMAS CRUSHER WORKOUT

WORKOUT BREAKDOWN

This is a chipper-style workout. That means you “chip away” at the reps as you move through the workout. There are 20 different movements and you repeat each for 20 reps before moving to the next.

Once you finish the first round, rest for 2 minutes and do a second round. You will do 800 reps total when you complete the workout! It took me 45 minutes to do this year’s Christmas Crusher.

WORKOUT EQUIPMENT

All you need is a mat and a set of dumbbells (and water, lots of water). I used dumbbells ranging from 10 to 30 pounds but you can easily make it work with whatever you’ve got!

SCALING OPTIONS

The easiest way to scale this workout is to only do one round. You’ll have about a 20-25 minute workout that’s quick and challenging. The second way to scale would be to reduce the number of reps down to 15 or 10.

MOVEMENT DEMO VIDEO

Here is a video where I demo each of the movements in this workout. You can also find a video on Instagram.

PREVIOUS COOKIE CRUSHERS

2014 Cookie Crusher
2015 Cookie Crusher
2016 Cookie Crusher
2017 Cookie Crusher
2018 Cookie Crusher
2019 Cookie Crusher

MERRY SWEATING!

I hope you’ll recruit a friend or family member to do this with you…either distanced or virtually. I can’t wait to hear what you think!