You already own the equipment. It is in a drawer somewhere, probably missing the two of clubs.
The deck of cards workout is the oldest trick in bodyweight training. Assign an exercise to each suit, flip cards, do the reps on the card, keep going until the deck is empty. No plan to write, no app to open, no equipment to buy. Just a deck and a floor.
It has been running in barracks, garages, boxing gyms and CrossFit affiliates for decades because it solves the one problem that actually stops people from training: deciding what to do. Here is the whole thing.
The basic rules
One suit, one exercise. Four suits, four movements. Add the jokers as a fifth if you want a finisher.
The card tells you the reps. Number cards are face value. Face cards and aces get a fixed number that you set before you start.
Flip until the deck is empty. No rounds, no sets, no rest periods. The shuffle is the programming.
Your time is your score. The workload is identical every time you run it, so the clock is the only variable.
That is it. Everything below is a refinement.
Assigning the suits
Pick four movements you can do 100 or so reps of without wrecking yourself. The classic set is one push, one pull or core, one squat, one full-body:
| Suit | Common assignment |
|---|---|
| Spades | Jumping lunges or squat jumps |
| Hearts | Push-ups |
| Clubs | Air squats |
| Diamonds | Sit-ups |
| Jokers | 10 to 20 burpees |
If you have a pull-up bar, swap one suit for pull-ups and cut the card values in half for that suit. If your knees are unhappy, replace jumping lunges with reverse lunges. There is nothing sacred about any particular set. What matters is that you decide before you shuffle, not during.
Setting the card values
The version we run, and the one printed on our deck:
- 2 through 10: face value
- Ace: 11
- Jack, Queen, King: 15
- Joker: 15 burpees
Other common rulesets: face cards at 10 to make the math easier, aces at 1 for a shorter deck, or aces at 15 and face cards at 20 if you hate yourself.
What that adds up to
Worth knowing before you shuffle, because the deck does not negotiate.
Every suit holds the same thirteen cards. Under the values above:
- 2 through 10 adds to 54
- Ace is 11
- Jack, Queen and King are 45
- 110 reps per suit
Four suits is 440 reps. Two jokers at 15 burpees is another 30.
470 reps, every single time.
Roughly 110 push-ups, 110 squats, 110 lunges, 110 sit-ups and 30 burpees, delivered in an order you cannot predict. That is a genuinely serious volume of work, which is why the deck has outlasted every fitness trend that came after it.
How long it takes
Straight arithmetic. At an honest working pace including rest:
| Pace | Time | Who |
|---|---|---|
| 24+ reps/min | Under 20 min | Well conditioned, no rest, going for a score |
| 14 to 19 reps/min | 25 to 35 min | Regular training, pushing |
| 10 to 13 reps/min | 35 to 50 min | Most people, first full deck |
| Under 10 reps/min | 50 min+ | Beginners, or scaled with generous rest |
If your first deck takes an hour, that is a completed deck. Write the time down and beat it next month.
Eight variations
Half deck. Twenty-seven cards. The correct starting point for almost everyone, and the best way to learn pacing before you commit to the full thing.
Red and black. Two movements instead of four. Red suits are push-ups, black suits are squats. Same 440 reps, split across half as many muscle groups. Considerably worse.
Ladder deck. Sort by rank before you start and run low to high. The workout gets harder exactly as you get more tired. Run it high to low if you would rather front-load the misery.
EMOM deck. Flip one card at the top of every minute. Anything you do not finish inside the minute, you owe at the end. Teaches pacing faster than anything else on this list.
Partner deck. Two people, one deck, alternating cards. You recover while they work, which means you both go harder than you would alone. The most fun version by a wide margin.
Head to head. Two decks, two people, one start command. First empty deck wins.
Loser takes the joker. Partner format. Whoever is behind when a joker turns up does all the burpees alone. Changes the whole psychology of the middle third.
Weighted deck. A vest turns 470 bodyweight reps into a different animal. Do not attempt this on your first deck, or your fifth.
Common mistakes
Starting too fast. The first fifteen cards feel like nothing. Everyone learns this once.
Grinding fifteen push-ups to failure at card six. Break big hearts into sets from the start. There are 110 push-ups in the deck and failing early costs you the back half.
Choosing movements mid-workout. Decide before you shuffle. The entire value of this format is that it removes decisions, and a suit you have not assigned is a decision.
Cheating range of motion on the lunges. They are the hardest move in most setups and the easiest to shorten. Full depth, or scale to a movement you can do honestly.
Not timing it. The reps are fixed. The clock is the only feedback you get.
Running it every day. It is 470 reps. Two or three times a week is plenty, with something else in between.
Who this is actually good for
People who travel. It fits in a jacket pocket and works in a hotel room with the bed pushed aside.
Anyone training in a group. One deck, one card at a time, everybody working. Nobody stands around waiting for a machine.
Groups of friends who need a reason. Competition does more for adherence than motivation ever has.
Anyone who quits programs. Not because the programs were bad, but because opening the app, reading the plan and deciding what to do is four steps too many at 6am.
A standard deck versus a printed one
Everything above works with the deck in your drawer. Genuinely. If you take one thing from this page, take the rules and go run it tonight for free.
We printed a version because of a small, stupid, real problem: a standard deck does not tell you what to do. Somebody has to remember that clubs are squats, somebody has to explain it to the person joining in, and somebody has to settle the argument about what an ace is worth. Every one of those small frictions is a place where the workout does not happen.
The Deck of Death puts the movement and the rep count on the face of every card. Fifty-four cards, five moves, no decisions and no explaining. That is the only difference, and it is the whole difference.
Suffer now. Transform forever.
The Deck of Death. 54 workout cards, $17.95. Free shipping on orders over $30. Full ruleset on The Deck of Death Workout: Official Rules.