Water Bucket WOD

The Water Bucket WOD.  

The Water Bucket WOD is designed to replicate the experience of extreme water poverty. Carrying the day’s water by bucket is a daily, sometimes multiple times per day exercise. Retrieving water is often the responsibility of the girls and women and is not unusual that they must also carry a child on their back, wearing a weighted vest/ruck/backpack will mimic this experience. The workout is scalable to any fitness level, feel free to modify any part of the workout.

• Use 1 bucket instead of 2
• Add more or less weight or water
• Use body weight instead of a Ruck or weighted vest
• Substituting exercises

What you’ll need

2- 5 Gallon Water buckets with lids or weight equivalent of 20-40 lbs. (dumbbell, kettle bell, cinder block, etc.)

GORUCK Rucksack/Backpack/Weight Vest (optional)

Positive Attitude (mandatory)

The Workout

Ruck/Weight Vest worn the entire workout 30# Men/20# Women, this represents the weight of a child as women are the primary water carriers and often must bring their young children along with them.

Water Buckets filled to full capacity (5 gallons). Lids are recommended to prevent spilling water on yourself.

The Morning Walk: 

600 meter bucket carry. 600 meters is approximately 1 ½ times around a track or standard football field or .37 miles.

This distance represents the average distance, 6 km, that someone in water poverty must walk to gather their water.  Setting the bucket down as few times as possible, cover the distance and keep track of the number of times you set the bucket down!

A Day’s Work:

For the “workout” portion we will do a 13 minutes and 5 seconds AMRAP (As many repetitions as possible). 13:05 is 785 seconds, this represents the estimated 785 million people in the world currently living in water poverty.

Front Lunge x 20 single leg (right leg, left leg = 2 reps) cradle bucket in front

Decline Pushups x 20 (Feet on top of the bucket, do a pushup)

Front Squat x 20 (Cradling your bucket)

Bucket Press x 20 (Press bucket overhead starting at your chest = 1 rep)

Bucket High Pull x 20 (Holding bucket in front of you by the handle by both hands pull the bucket up til you elbows are parallel to your shoulders)

The Evening Walk: 

600 meter bucket carry (yes another one!) keep track of drops again.

Spilled Water:

When you live by your bucket any water spilled has consequences! Do 2 burpees for every time you set your bucket down.