Listen up, core-heads. Are you ready to get shready? Because this insane lower torso circuit is guaranteed to DESTROY your abs by forcing them to recognize how infinitesimally small they are compared to the vast, lonely expanse of the universe. Just as dark matter dominates the endless nightmare of stilted space, this workout will dominate your midsection with a mix of heart-pumping resistance movements and classic existential works designed to make your abs ponder the futility of believing in God. Your core will be ABsolutely crestfallen.
No existential pain, no max gains. First, we’ll do an oblique-burning side plank cable row scorcher and superset that with a live reading of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra over a soundtrack of Elliott Smith B-sides. Then, to carve out some SERIOUSLY DESOLATE ABS, we’re gonna max out five sets of kettlebell Russian twists and five critiques of Russian proto-existentialist Lev Shestov, whose philosophy of despair exposed an incongruity between faith and reason in light of the unspeakable evil that surrounds us like a lead blanket. (Please bring your own lead blanket and TheraBands—we can no longer provide them due to recent thefts.)
Next, we scramble the very moral fibers of your rectus abdominis by blasting through an insane AMRAP, which includes weighted decline crunches, landmine anti-rotations, and a staged adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Trial by members of The Wooster Group, including Willem Dafoe and Laurie Metcalf. (Please sign up for Willem and Laurie’s leg-conditioning clinic if you want to craft some SERIOUSLY ROPEY THIGHS while workshopping an audiovisual ode to David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.)
Of course, sculpting eye-popping, ripped abs that have grown spiritless and dejected by the very notion of a godless universe isn’t just about looks—it’s about building strength and stability. So strap in for a final conditioning set based around the works of Norway’s earliest eco-philosopher, Peter Wessel Zapffe, whose love of mountaineering somehow imbued him with the crushing realization that the human condition is a cruel BIOLOGICAL PARADOX, as our species evolved to form an overdeveloped skillset that clashes with nature’s design. We are, in Zapffe’s words, an abomination, an absurdity, an exaggeration of disastrous nature.
Six rounds for time: forty mountain climbers, forty V-ups, forty weighted Swiss ball crunches. Recover with a set of muted crying in a shadowy corner as your newly dysphoric abs wrestle with the cursed knowledge that recovery is a myth, existence is a farce, and only death can free your soul from the absurdity of the human condition.
Join us next week for a KILLER bicep routine set to a nauseating loop of scenes from Ruggero Deodato’s 1980 banned masterpiece, Cannibal Holocaust.