If you haven’t seen HBO’s The Last of Us, we highly recommend checking it out! This team workout has a zombie theme and designed to bring some novelty, and a little bit of cheesiness, to the grind of long training workouts. Be warned, we are very aware of how cheesy this is and although the workout will be scaled to everyone’s fitness level, this workout will challenge even the best.
The Scenario:
Causing some humans to turn into zombies, a global pandemic has destroyed civilization as we know it! In our new world, the right supplies are vital to survival. Your group has a lead on a large amount of the supplies you need and it’s y’all mission to go and get them. But, its dangerous out there and you never know what you may encounter!
Your coach will explain and guide you through your mission and help you make any scaling adjustments along the way. If you’d like for the workout to be a surprise, stop reading now and just show up to participate in the workout. If you’d like to see the whole workout and set-up, maybe so you can run this in your gym, keep on reading.
Workout Spoilers Below!!!
There are no spoilers here for The Last of Us TV Show, just workout spoilers.
Before each new task, the coach will explain the cheesy scenario and, just like a class, cover the exercises, how to scale, tips, and any rules for the task.
Coach: “Causing some humans to turn into zombies, a global pandemic has destroyed civilization as we know it. In our new world, the right supplies are vital to survival. Your group has a lead on a large amount of supplies you need and you are part of the group that is going to get them. It’s a tricky and challenging operation, but I’ll be there to talk you through each step of the way. Your team’s mission is to:
Carry explosives to the boat yard, to blow up it’s wall.
Row across the lake to the military building that has the supplies.
Avoid the landmine field.
Break into the building
Get the supplies, and
Use the special military bikes to get them back home.”
Task 1: Carry “Explosives” to the “Boat Yard” to “Blow-up” the “Wall”
550m Carry
We will be using a number of GORUCK Sandbags linked together by carabiners to create Worms, like you see in the team CrossFit Games. If you don’t have access to a Worm or Sandbags, finding anything that creates a team carry can work. We have used just barbells in the past and had multiple people carry one barbell at a time seems to work OK. The key here is for the team to carry an object or objects that require team work and a little bit of strategy. Our gym’s running route has a good 550m loop we like and figured it may take about 10 minutes to complete, so that’s why the 550m distance we choose may seem a little random at first glance. Any distance between 400 and 600m should be good.
The coach will have the team organize the sandbags in a manner that will then “blow up” the wall. Our gym has garage doors, so we will line the sandbag worm across the bottom of the door and then the coach will open it and make a cheesy “boom” sound.
Coach: “Here are the explosives (pointing to the sandbag worm(s)). Your team needs to carry these to the boat yard and set them up at the boat yard’s wall just like this (demoing where they go). The boat yard is 550m away, I’ll help you when you get there, but just a heads up, the explosion will be loud, so once you blow up the wall, you’ll need to be ready to run to the boats.”
Task 2: “Run” from the Zombies to the “Boats”
Run in Place + Burpees to song “Roxanne”
Of course a loud explosion will attract the attention of some zombies, so the team must now “run” and “hide” over and over again to evade the zombies. In classic CrossFit style, we are going to use the song Roxanne by the Police. Everyone will run in place and every time Sting sings, “Roxanne”, everyone will “hide” by doing a burpee and then getting back up to run in place again.
Coach: “The loud noise from the explosion has attracted the attention of some zombies, but they can’t seem to see very well over the shipping boxes, so if you get low, you can avoid their attention. I am going to play the song Roxanne by the Police. You’ll run in place and every time you Sting sing the word “Roxanne” you’ll need to do a burpee to hide and then get back up and run in place.”
Task 3: Row Away to Safety
500m Row
After the song finishes, the team must row away. Depending on how many people are in the group and how many rower the gym has, the coach will just say that each boat can fit “x” amount of people (dividing up the group evenly) and that each person should take turns sprinting on the rower to get away. A 350 - 500m Row per should be a good sprint distance for this workout.
Coach: “You’ve made it to the boats. Each boat can hold X number of people and you must sprint to get away safely. Each person will perform a 500m sprint on the rower.”
Task 4: Get over the “Landmine Field” to the “Building”
Traverse across the Rig without touching the ground. If you touch the ground, re-start.
Ohh no, there’s a landmine field, but luckily there are enough trees and things to get over without exploding anything. For this, we are going to use our 44ft Pull-up Rig and play “The Floor is Lava” game. We’ll add some boxes and bumper plates along the way to give people resting places. We’ll leave it up to the team to decide how best to navigate their way across without touching the ground. We’ll provide some “floating” platforms (bumper plates) towards the end of the rack, so that if there is someone struggling, the team hopefully will be able to figure out that they can move bumper plates back and have people just step from bumper plate to bumper plate to get across. The coach will help with that tip if the team needs it.
Note: It is likely the least fit people that may trigger the penalty, so we considered burpees or team burpees, but struggling on this obstacle is likely mentally a penalty enough and we didn’t want to compound that. If you have all advanced athletes, feel free to make the traverse harder and the penalty more severe.
Coach: “You’ve made it to the landmine field, which is the area under the pull-up rig. There’s no way around it, you must go over it. You must traverse your way across the rig, without going on top of it, to get safely to the other side. You may use, stand on, and move any object under the rig to assist your team in getting across. If you touch the ground, you must re-start at the beginning.”
Task 5: Break the “Wall” Down
3min AMRAP (Coach will keep time frame secret from Team)
Squat Clean + Thruster + Ball Slam (with Slam Ball)
To get into the building, the team must break the wall down. This again is going to be noisy, so once the team starts, they’ll have to work fast!
If you’ve got sledge hammers and tires, that would be way cooler than our sledge hammer sub of a slam ball workout. If you don’t have either, a short little kettlebell workout could work here as people could imagine using a KB weight breaking down a wall. We considered having a specific amount of reps the team needs to perform, but we figured to give people the best workout we wanted to have everyone go at the same time and tracking a specific amount of reps would be more challenging than just going hard for time.
Coach: “You’ve made it to the building and now just need to break the wall down. You are going to use these rocks (pointing at the slam balls) to bust through, but it’s going to be loud, so once you start, you’ll have to move as fast as possible. You are going to perform an AMRAP of an undisclosed time frame of squat clean thruster slam balls (demo the exercise) and I’ll let you know when you’ve done enough reps to break the wall down.”
Task 6: Carry the “Supplies” to the Get-Away “Bikes”
200m Double DB/KB Farmer’s Carry (As Heavy as Possible)
Continuing with a sense of urgency, the team must work fast to carry the supplies to the get-away bikes. Each person should carry as much as they can.
Using dumbbells and/or kettlebells, each person should grab as much as they think they can carry and do a 200m farmers carry. Anyone who finishes early can go back and help others on their team.
Coach: “You’ve made it to the supplies! The special military bikes are 200m away. Take as much as you can carry and get the supplies to the bikes as fast as you can. If you get your supplies to the bikes first, you may go back and help your teammates.”
Task 7: Ride Away
1min Max Effort Air Bike
Now that the supplies are loaded on the bikes, everyone must ride like hell to get away.
Similar to the row earlier, everyone will take a turn doing a 1 min air bike sprint as the final get away and ending to Part 1.
Coach: “With all the supplies, now you just need to sprint like hell to get past the last zombies. Everyone will do a 1min max effort air bike to finish the mission.”
We’ll see how this goes and if people are into it, we’ll develop a Part 2 in the future.