About a year and a half ago, a friend of mine had an amazing idea.
He, like me, loved fantasy. He, like me, loved fitness. So why not combine the two, and write a story that was also a guided journey through a bodyweight fitness regime? And why not bring a friend with a passion for writing fantasy on board?
Eighteen months later, here we are, clutching the beta of Warlocks and Workouts in our sweaty paws. We worked on it together during Melbourne's 112 day lockdown, Skypeing every morning for months, bouncing chapters back and forth, experimenting with exercise instructions, working out exactly how to convey worldbuilding and character arcs in 30 second sprints...
Now it's time to put it to the test.
...so what is Warlocks and Workouts?
W&W is a fantasy adventure audiobook. It's a full-length novel about a thief who breaks into an ancient temple in search of loot and is soon entangled in a plot to raise an ancient, evil god. It's got goblins and golems, evil warlocks and mechanical beasts, traps and crumbling ledges and death-defying leaps. All the fun stuff from a classic dungeon crawl, or a 70's pulp fantasy paperback.
And it's ALSO a high intensity interval training (HIIT) fitness program where you're the hero.
The W&W audiobook is divided into nineteen chapters, each around 20-25 minutes long (plus tutorials). In each chapter, the narrator will guide you through a crafted HIIT workout. When the hero crawls through spiderweb-choked tunnels to escape a goblin attack, you'll be crawling. When the hero sneaks past a warlock on patrol using lunges, you'll be lunging. When everything goes hilariously wrong and it's time to sprint in the opposite direction, you'll be sprinting.
The novel begins at a nice, achievable level so everyone can dive in and start building their cardio, then gradually ramps up the intensity chapter by chapter. By the end... phew.
I have to admit, I’m not prepared. I've spent the last twelve months not doing all the fitness stuff I promised I'd do. And now I have to test Warlocks and Workouts, start to finish.
And I'm going to share my journey with you.
Starting today, I'm diving into Warlocks and Workouts. I'll be playing the entire story through, start to finish, 2-3 chapters per week.
I already know what's coming. Some of the workouts we crafted together are devilish. Some were specifically inserted because I knew I was terrible at them, and I needed to improve. And now that's come back to bite me in the ass.
But I'm also excited. This is a perfect test of the story we created together. See, I'm not a very fit man. My weight is pretty average and I think a lot of it is muscle left over from back when I trained parkour regularly, but it's not very good muscle, because 15 pushups breaks me. My cardio is terrible. I can't run 500 meters. Hell, I get a stitch from a brisk walk.
Something needs to be done.
So here I go. I'm diving into an all-new fitness regime and hopefully regaining the strength I lost during lockdown. But I'm also reliving a story I had a ton of fun writing this past year-and-a-bit. It'll be the first time I've listened to the entire novel in full, and I can't wait to be immersed in this weird, wacky world of body-building warlocks and derpy slapstick goblin henchman and explosions and near-misses and massive, world-devouring snake-gods.
And hell, I'd like you to come along with me.
If you want to try Warlocks & Workouts for yourself, for free, you can sign up for Early Access and start right away. We're still fixing bugs in the app and the audio needs some levelling work, but the whole story is there. A free, professional HIIT program you can do in your living room, appropriate for all ages, fitness levels and body types.
It's pretty rad. I hope you have as much fun sweating through it as we had making it.