Eric Frey.net

Today was the first day of Tabata in my revised workout program leading up to the Thanksgiving day 5k race. I did a circuit with the medicine ball. 8 exercises. 20 seconds a piece at maximum intensity followed by 10 seconds of rest before moving on to the next exercise. I went through all 8 twice, then did 2 rounds of 4 ab exercises the same way.

Here are the exercises I did, followed by the number of reps for each round:

• Thrusters: 13 - 10
• Throw and Chase: 5 - 4
• Medicine Ball Slams: 8 - 10
• Overhead Squats: 9 - 16
• Power Overs: 10 - 11
• Medicine Ball Burpees: 4 - 3
• Medicine Ball Cleans: 6 - 6
• V Sit Side Touches: 26 - 26

And the ab routine was:

• Bicycle Sit Ups: 42 - 55
• Supermans: 15 - 17
• Medicine Ball Crunches: 16 - 17
• Medicine Ball V-Ups: 6 - 8

There are some changes I need to make to this routine to make it a bit more intense. I guess some exercises just don’t lend themselves to intervals this short. I will likely keep the ab routine as is, subbing the crunches for the side touches in the main routine.

The thrusters were good, and so were the ball slams. The cleans required a little bit more coordination than I have right now to do them with the proper intensity to elicit the desired metabolic response. The burpees were really difficult, and I’ll keep them in. The overhead squats are a bit redundant if the thrusters are done at high intensity, so I’ll take them out. The power overs are a decent move, I’ll leave them. The throw and chase thing was just too difficult to do in such a short amount of time. With a longer interval, that could be a very good exercise, but it seems to have too much changing of the movement (stopping, picking up the ball, throwing it, sprinting the short distance to the ball, repeat) to get a really high intensity in just 20 seconds. So, the revised circuit would look like this, done at least 4 times:

• Thrusters
• Power Overs
• Slams
• Burpees

Abs, also 4 times:

• Bicycle Sit Ups
• Supermans
• V Sit Side Touches
• V Ups

Since the exercises are more simple, I should be able to keep up a much higher level of intensity, which is what this is all about. Notice in the second round, some of my reps went up. Part of that was due to remembering that this is supposed to be max effort for 20 seconds the second time around. I think I unconsciously paced myself a little on some exercises the first round so that I’d have some gas left in the tank towards the end. But, that’s not what this kind of routine is about. If you are not a gelatinous heap that’s about to barf by the end, then you didn’t do it right.

Other obstacles to max intensity were fumbling with and resetting the stop watch every interval, and having a wet medicine ball from the wet grass at the park. I got better at dealing with both of those obstacles in the second round. Since I’m going to be doing a lot of Tabata in November, I may try to find a way to embed cues at 20 seconds and 10 seconds into my iPod playlist so I don’t have to screw with the watch.