Tabatas. If you haven't had the pleasure of utilizing this training method in your own routines, you have no idea what you're missing. Over the past year I have worked tabata training into my workouts, but no matter how often they come up in the programming, I'm still surprised by how much it kicks the stink out of me. Last night was one of those nights...Warm-up: 3 Rounds
- 15 x 20" box step up
- 10 x lunges
- 5 x pullups
Tabata (8 rounds of each exercise: 20 seconds of work per round, followed by 10 seconds of rest)
(note that when scoring, your lowest amount of reps in a single round 0f 8 is your final score for that exercise set)
- Tabata push-ups;
- Tabata Ab-mat sit-ups;
- Tabata ball slams (25lbs ball);
- Tabata squats.
Some strategy is needed when one tackles a tabata workout. I see it all the time when a new person tries tabatas for the first time. They opt to go all out each round rather than choosing a realistic number for each 20 second interval and sticking to it. I remember the first time I did tabata push-ups. I went 15, 13, 12, 10, 10, 9, 7, and in the last round 5 reps. Based on how we score tabata workouts, that would mean my tabata pushup score was 5. Ouch!
Yesterday, I opted to pick the numbers I would do for each round and then made sure I did it. My workout looked like this:
- Tabata Pushups: 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12 (score of 12)
- Tabata 25lbs ball slams: 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12 (score of 12)
- Tabata ab-mat situps: 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12 (score of 12)
- Tabata squats: 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20 (score of 20)
My total tabata score for yesterday was 56. Looking back on my loading, I should have added at least 2 reps per round to push-ups, ball slams and situps as I had minimally 4 or 5 seconds left per round and could have eked out a few more reps for sure. I guess we'll see next time.
Give it a rip and post your scores to comments.
