30 Days Of Tabata Intervals

February 25th, 2010

Ok today I’ve planned out my routine for the next 6 weeks exercising. I’m going to do Tabata intervals every day. The great things about these is that you spend 4 minutes total exercising. It’s actually 160 seconds when you break it down. I’ve had amazing results with it in the past but am really unfit at the moment.

What you do is a total of 4 minutes exercise each day. You do 20 seconds of exercise and 10 seconds of rest. You do that 8 times for a total of 4 minutes. Including warm up and warm down which are really essential you can be done in 15 minutes each day.

The catch is that you have to do those 20 seconds at your absolute maximum. If it’s push-ups then you do as many and as quickly as you can in that time. It’s intense as hell but it gives results. I did this workout in July 2009 for 2 weeks just to see how it was. I felt amazing and always had energy. I spend a total of less than 1 hour “working out”. How much do you get from a 1 hour workout? I took before and after pictures. Skinny bastard and slightly less skinny bastard. Either way I was pleased with the results.

Obviously you need time to give your body rest so I planned out a schedule that has worked well for me previously as it gives ample time for each area of the body to rest and here it is.

Mondays – Legs
Tuesdays – Abs
Wednesdays – Arms
Thursdays - Legs
Fridays - Abs
Saturdays – Arms
Sundays – Run leisurely pace for 15 minutes (40% of maximum).

Legs involves

• Hold rock and calf raises
• Hold rock and squats

Arms involves

• push-ups
• Bicep curls with rock

Abs includes

• Situps (feet under rock)
• Planks (look ‘em up!)

Not so complicated is it? It’s just the workouts that are physically hard and just how it should be.

I’ve gone the gym routine and I just wasted time, spent money and it was inefficient. I like exercising alone. And yes, I am using this huge rock from my garden for my exercises. It’s tough to grab which makes the workout even more challenging especially towards the end.

I’m getting up at 5am daily to do these and do not have a gym membership but I like working out like this. It’s like a personal meditation. It’s super dark at that time so I’ll be working in my garden with the help of the lights.

You can download free “Tabata timers” from Youtube which you can listen to on an mp3 player. It tells you when the 20 seconds and 10 second intervals start and finish and give you music in the background for when you’re doing it. I plan to get an iPod Shuffle soon which will be perfect for this.

You measure how well you have done each day by measuring your lowest set of reps. For example, if you do sit ups and in your 4 sets you get 5,5,5,3,4 then you get 3 as your overall score. This motivates you in the later sets.

I plan to post each day

• My Set Score for each exercise (eg. 5 for calf raises, 4 for squats)
• An after-workout picture
• Any other observations of changes to my routine.

I’m really excited about tomorrow now! The first day is Friday so that’s Abs exercises …

This is a picture of me before I started