Card-io

Intro

A standard deck of 52 cards has 4 suits: hearts, clubs, diamonds, and spades, each with 13 cards. Every suit includes 9 number cards (2-10), 3 royal cards (Jack, Queen, King), and an ace. Shuffling a deck creates 52 factorial (52!) possibilities, which translates to over 8 quintillion (8,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) unique sequences, ensuring no two Card-io workouts are ever alike.

The goal of Card-io is to complete the entire deck of cards in a single workout. This is a high-volume challenge, so be sure to scale the workout to your personal fitness level. If the exercise drawn is too difficult, listen to your body and find an alternative if necessary. The goal is to challenge yourself, move your body, and improve over time, not to complete the entire deck at all costs.

Some quick ways to make an exercise easier include: reducing the number of reps entirely, breaking the reps into smaller sets, finding an easier alternative exercise, or any combination thereof. For example, if you draw a card that requires 10 pushups, you could instead do 1 set of your limit, 2 sets of 5, switch to knee pushups, etc. If you draw a card that requires 30 seconds of planks, you could do one set of your limit, 2 sets of 15 seconds, switch to a wall plank, etc. Get creative and find what works for you!

The Card-io workout is designed to be scalable to your fitness level, so you can adjust it as needed by deck size and a multiplier. Anytime, you can skip a card or tap out to end the workout early and view your results. Shuffling the deck before each workout ensures that you will never do the same workout twice. However, be aware that the deck is shuffled before being cut, so the results for half-deck workouts are entirely random.

How It Works

The original challenge consists of exercises from each of the 4 primary muscle groups (push, pull, legs, and core), plus timed challenges. The original exercises are always the same, allowing you to compare your performance over time. You can modify the challenge to your desired difficulty by selecting the deck size (full or half) and a multiplier (x1, x2, or x3) to increase the total volume.

Values for exercises are determined by card groupings. The base values are as follows: number cards are worth their number in reps, royal cards are worth 5 reps, and aces are worth 30 seconds. For example, if hearts are assigned to push exercises, then the 2 of hearts would be 2 push-ups, the 3 of hearts would be 3 push-ups, and so on up to the 10 of hearts which would be 10 push-ups. The Jack, Queen, and King of hearts would each be worth 5 dips, and the Ace of hearts would be worth 30 seconds of planks. The same applies to the other suits for pull, legs, and core exercises.

How much Volume?

To calculate the volume (total reps and/or time) of a Card-io workout using a x1 multiplier, we can first determine the reps for each exercise by card grouping (number, royal, ace). If you complete all the reps for a number exercise, you will complete 9 sets of 2-10 reps (2+3+4+5+...+10) totaling 54 reps. Royal exercises consist of 3 sets of 5 reps, totaling 15. Aces are 1 set each of 30 seconds. The total volume for a workout is the sum of reps/time from all the completed exercises.

Analytics and Stats Saving

After completing a workout, view your summary with a bar chart displaying percent completion per muscle group and a table exercises with the reps completed for each.

You can choose to save your workout stats in the summary, which saves them to your account and enables viewing the analytical line chart in your profile to track progress over time based on overall workout completion. Only like-workouts are compared, so if you complete a half-deck original workout with a x1 multiplier, it will only be compared to other half-deck original workouts with a x1 multiplier.

AI Insights and Custom Workouts

With at least one saved workout, you can get insights generated by ChatGPT's gpt-4.1. It will retrieve your most recent saved workout stats (up to 5) and generate insights into the trends of your data.

Along with insights, it will create two custom workouts designed to help you improve your performance in the Card-io challenge and strengthen underperforming muscle groups. The workouts are designed to be practical and safe, focusing on simple exercises that can be done with minimal equipment or at a standard gym with basic equipment. The AI will also provide a brief warmup and cooldown routine, along with motivational tips. You can click-to-copy the generated workouts to your clipboard to easily past into your favorite notes app or workout tracker.

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