Just three minutes

For ordinary moments of life three minutes feels like it goes by in an instant. This changes when it’s a physical activity and three minutes becomes a lifetime.

For yesterday’s workout, I was designated as the lead and had to come up with a routine that would be both challenging and fun, and last 45 minutes. I had the genius idea to do three-minute intervals with thirty-second breaks in between.

Here is the exercise list I came up with, minus the warmup:

• 3 minutes of blockies – a burpee with a cinder block (30 seconds rest)
• 3 minutes of low/high plank – switch when you get tired (30 seconds rest)
• 3 minutes of squats (30 seconds rest)
• 3 minutes of air jump rope (30 seconds rest)
• 3 minutes of plank jack to sit-up (30 seconds rest)
• 3 minutes of star jumping jacks (30 seconds rest)
• 3 minutes of crunches (30 seconds rest)
• 3 minutes of pushups (30 seconds rest)
• 3 minutes of lunges (30 seconds rest)
• 3 minutes of mountain climbers (30 seconds rest)
• 3 minutes of side plank alternating sides every 30 seconds.

The routine ended up being one of those that sounds much nicer on paper and was a pretty serious beatdown.

The CPAT is a sequence of events requiring you to progress along a path from event to event in a continuous manner. Designed to find candidates who are physically able to perform essential job tasks at fire scenes.

It reminded me of a story I once heard about the local Fire Department’s CPAT test. The whole test must be completed in 7 minutes and at the start one guy said, “It’s only seven minutes, I can do anything for seven minutes”.

Then two minutes in, he was bent over, gasping for air, and about to throw up. He also didn’t finish in the allotted time.

Of course, time goes the opposite as well. It’s easy to say I’m only going to check social media for three minutes, then get lost in the abyss. Before you know it, you’ve wasted an hour.