Work out to your favourite Cindies bops in lockdown: A guide

Do you miss the sweaty nights at Wednesday Cindies? Do you miss the endless loop of 30-second long bops that keep getting cut off right before the chorus?

Fear not, because with this exercise routine you will (unless you’re a legit athlete) be dripping buckets and want nothing more than to give up and go to bed as soon as you can, in true Cindies spirit. Except this time, it’s free.

You shouldn’t feel obligated or pressured to exercise anymore than you’re accustomed to doing outside of quarantine. However, some of us may be missing Cambridge and our weekly nights out, and this routine is quite a fun way to ease your nostalgia!

If you missed the article about the ranking of Cindies bops that this workout routine is based on, you can read it here.

1) The playlist

Find all of the songs from The Cambridge Tab’s ranking article, and add them to a playlist in their ranked order from seven to one.

These will only be needed for 30 seconds each, to fully recreate the weekly frustration that you most likely felt at Cindies’ DJs.

2) The breakdown

You’re going to be doing seven different exercises, each representing one song, for 30 seconds each. Your rest time is the time that it takes you to skip to the next song in your playlist, and you can choose the moment in the song that you prefer. Though if you’re looking to stay true to Cindies, that’s almost never the chorus. In fact, switch the song just before the beat drops and fuel your workout with nostalgic rage.

After you’ve done each of the seven exercises for 30 seconds each (set on your timer), take a one minute break. If you wish, you can use the loo during this interval and forget to flush, in order to truly get the full Cindies experience.

3) The exercises

1. Timber – Kesha: Two prisoner squats into one squat jump, and repeat for 30 seconds.
   

   Excuse the discontinuity, but I was lazy.

2. Bonkers – Dizzee Rascal: Burpees, for the nausea from being shoved around in the club when this comes on.
   

   You can choose not to go down into a press-up, by staying in plank before jumping back up.

3. What Makes You Beautiful – One Direction: Standing ab crunches will give you that giddy (or painful) feeling in your stomach when the DJ plays this absolute banger.
   

   Crunch, stand, crunch, stand. 

4. Breaking Free – High School Musical: Sink into a squat and do air punches for entire 30 seconds. Put every bit of your strength behind that punch to recreate the adrenaline rush from throwing your arms into the air when this comes on at Cindies.
   

   Punch out all your frustration at not being in Cambridge right now.

5. Love Story – Taylor Swift: We’re slowing it down into hip dips. Make it nice and sensual and picture the soaring hearts of every Cindies clubber when Taylor belts out those lyrics.
   

   Get into a plank and sink down onto each side with your hips, while squeezing everything together.

6. Circle of Life – Lion King: I was going to make you do roly polies, but we’re settling for glute bridges instead. Press up into a glute bridge and lower back down, repeating for 30 seconds.
   

   Squeeze ’em. 

7. Mr Brightside – The Killers: And last but not least, to truly finish you off (figuratively, of course), settle into a plank and squeeze your entire body until all you want to do is anything but smile.

Squeeze your entire body and keep your spine neutral. Don’t move for 30 seconds.

When you’ve done these seven exercises for 30 seconds, take a break. Then, repeat this entire routine the same number of times you think these songs get played in one night at Cindies.

Don’t cheat and stop after one, unless you’re the friend that always leaves the club early. We’ve all been there; there’s only so much sweat one person can take.

Hopefully, this will help you to recreate some of those glorious Cindies memories if you actually feel like exercising in lockdown.

To add to the experience, get your friends involved by doing this routine together on a group call! It only adds to the experience if the video glitches or blacks out. I’m pretty sure that’s how my brain feels on a night out anyways. Have fun!