FJ's Verdict:

A little while ago, I reviewed a nifty product called the FitDeck. The concept was, and still is brilliant. Replace playing cards with fitness cards… then you shuffle them up and end up creating exercises that are always different. Awesome. What’s not to love right? Well unfortunately this almost fool-proof idea was flawed because of poor execution and exercise choice. That product was their “bodyweight” series, today I’ll be looking at a booster pack that is designed for “Combat Sports”. For the geniuses out there, you know it means they were inspired by UFC.

Product Name: FitDeck Playing Cards – Combat Sports
Company: FitDeck
MSRP: $9.95  >>Click To Check Out Lowest Prices<<
Availability: Medium-High

In the box: You get your exercise cards, info cards, a cardboard card holder, a mini promo brochure and a hard plastic carrying case that is actually quite well made.

So my first impressions started off well, but quickly turned a bit sour. First of all, I want to get a few quirks out of the way for those that didn’t read my previous review (since these quirks seem to be present throughout their product range). Let’s start off with the card count – FitDeck says that this “booster” pack has 26 cards on the packaging, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Six of the cards are info cards and two of them are “wild” cards that tell you to either repeat the last card or “double up” the next card. This leaves you with a grand total of 18 actual exercise cards. Kinda lame if you ask me.

Next we have this custom cardholder. You get a hard plastic case so I’m not sure why this was necessary but I figured maybe it’s not a bad idea to have it… since it will keep everything organized. The problem? It’s the wrong size. LOL! The cards are wayy to big for the card holder, see for yourself…

So that was a complete waste. In the garbage it goes.

Then we have the infamous names that are made up by the crack team of “experts” at the headquarters of FitDeck. You see, while color coding the cards is good, they should pay attention to the terms used by today’s standards. So blue is for upper body, orange is for lower body and green is for “middle” body – they meant to say core, in case you’re confused. But in this deck, the crazy naming is not as bad as their original deck. I had a good laugh with that one, they should’ve called it the comedy deck.

Real World Results:

Now, being a guy who’s done Karate for YEARS, is a huge fan of MMA and teaches self defence… I know a thing or two about “combat specific conditioning”. So I was excited to see what they had to offer.

Unfortunately I was shocked… shocked to find that they had omitted some crucial combat drills and exercises from their deck. Like, my fucking jaws dropped to the floor! Before we go into the details, here are the exercises that are included:

• Judo Pushup (or more commonly known – Hindu Pushup)
• Fingertip Hold (in pushup position)
• Sprawl
• Staggered Leg Pushup
• Escape Drill
• Mule Kick
• Spiderman Plank
• Shoulder Bridge
• Backbend (so useless…)
• Red Rover
• Hip Up (Also known as pulse ups)
• One Arm Tripod
• Level Change (basically half lunges with hands up)
• Horse Stance
• Hopping Knee Strike
• Jumping With Rotation
• Tightrope
• Rear Thrusting Kick

Some of these are ok, some of them don’t need to be there, but where the HELL are the essential ones?! Where is shrimping? Where are the 3 basic kicks? (front, side & roundhouse) Where are clap-pushups for explosive power or knuckle pushups for strengthening your wrists and knuckles? Where are the god damn blocking drills… those alone used to make me sweat. How about elbow strikes? How about dodging, ducking and shoulder rolls?

I cannot believe this is called the “combat sports” deck. That’s like calling a bowl of diced chicken with 3 pieces of lettuce on top a “chicken salad”. Or Soulja boys’ songs “music”. There is a lack of substance for what it claims to be, and that doesn’t fly with me.

As for the workout itself, it works just as well as the original deck. You will have great variety, a decent challenge and its fun when you get the Double wild card once in a while… but there is no way this will get you combat ready. No way! There are wayy too many essential drills and techniques missing. I think with the rise of UFC and the worldwide explosion of MMA… that this could be a GREAT product for FitDeck. In fact, it could be one of their hot sellers, but they need to revise it and put up a true card count. Again, they can always talk to me… but something tells me they wont. Oh well.

Conclusion:

I guess if you look really hard, think about it and maybe sleep on it… you will see that this deck would be decent enough for a beginner to combat sports. Or it could make an ok booster for the original deck… but who wants to look that fucking hard? I don’t.

I know it’s 10 bucks but unfortunately I was less impressed with this deck than their original. For this reason, I’ll give it a major passing grade at 2.5stars outta 5.

- FitJerk

P.S – All hope is not lost! I still have 2 more decks left to review… watch for them in the coming weeks. At this point I’m literally ROOTING for FitDeck to impress me with something kick ass. I have my fingers crossed and everything… let’s see what happens.

Originally Written By FitJerk for www.fitjerk.com - © 2010 All Rights Reserved – Content not to be republished without author consent.

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