The other day while I was waisting time on pinterest, I came across a pin for “the world’s fastest workout.” Actually I’d seen it a few times before, but it captured my curiosity this time. Maybe it was because I was in a “need to get in shape” mood or something. Who knows. But I started following the links on the pin, and that led me to more info, and other stuff, and finally I figured out that it is something called Tabata Interval Training. Once I started looking up info on THAT it was somewhat familiar in that it really reminded me of INSANITY only much much shorter!! 🙂 I like short! That, to me, is the biggest drawback for INSANITY. It’s too stinkin’ long!! And I really just can’t go “full blast” for 45 minutes 6 days a week. Honestly, I don’t think many can.
So I decided to give it a whirl. I found a Tabata MP3 that will tell you when to “go” with some music, and when to “rest.” This is important because the intervals are only 20 seconds long, and your “rest” is 10. You do 8 sets, and really have to go “all out” for those 20 second intervals. Now there’s a TON of stuff out there that says do it with weights, don’t even think about doing it with weights, do the same exercise for all 8 sets, do different exercises for all 8 sets, do any exercise you want, only do sprints… yadda yadda. So I finally came up with what looked good to me, since it’s obviously SO subjective.
I chose to do different exercises for the sets because I want to work different muscle groups, and not use weights because I’m interested in cardio and fat burning. I added some stuff to my whole workout that I want to keep, and the entire thing (which takes closer to 10 min with warm up and cool down) looks like this.
Warm up 2 min: Kettle bell swing
Tabata Training: 4 min
4 exercises repeated 2x’s
Cool down: slow jogging in place till I can breath w/o heaving! 2 min (or so)
Then I did mitotic crunches on the ball, and the “cat vomit” exercise (I know, I know) for abs.
And I was done! It really gets your heart pumping and your lungs (in my case) burning like crazy! I have exercised induced asthma, or something, but for 4 minutes, I can manage it! 😉 Still, I was breathing hard for awhile after the workout. But then it was over, and I felt fine. I certainly felt like I had worked out, but I wasn’t all gross and nasty after a 45 min work out, and I felt good, not like a truck had hit me.
Fast forward to the next day. I woke up not even the teeeeeniest bit sore, and began to think it was all a bunch of malarky! Phoh, what’s the point of a workout that you can’t FEEL working, right? 😉 Well fast forward to a little bit farther along in the day. I suddenly “notice” that my abs are a little sore. That “little soreness” gradually increased through the rest of the day till by evening I was REALLY sore! Ah, there it is… the “work” from my workout! WOW! Every bit of my abs were sore all the way to my ribs and then around my sides to my back. My legs were also sore, as well as my shoulders. Hmmmm…..
Today is 2 days after my initial work out, my abs are STILL really sore, but today is another workout day so we’ll see how that goes. Ha! At any rate I’ve decided to give this workout program a shot now, through the end of Sept at least. Can’t hurt, and it’s not like it takes up much time. 😉
Now to the abs diet. 😉 Another thing I came across while I was looking up Tabata stuff was something called Abs Diet. I’m going to try it out. The thorn in my flesh (lol) is my flabby abs from having babies. I don’t know if this diet combined with the above workout will “fix it” but I think it’s worth a try. I’m going to be eating 6 meals/snacks through the day of the foods on the abs diet, which is every 2 hours through the day. I’m thinking that I won’t have a chance to feel hungry at that rate, ha! Anyway, I’ll keep y’all posted on how that works out. I have not, unfortunately, lost that 10 lbs that I wanted to this summer. *sigh* No, no, no. So I have to do SOMETHING drastic here before cold weather comes and all I want to eat are warm, yummy comfort foods. 😉 Ha!
So stay tuned for progress reports as I go. 🙂 My stick-2-itaveness is not so keen with these kinds of things, but right now I’m highly motivated. Wish me luck!