Tabata Tuesday: CrossFit Home or Travel WOD #11

Since our garage gym isn’t finished yet (they just put the roof on today!), our backyard has been my “go-to gym” these days. Keenan plays with his tractors and trucks beside me (sometimes he likes to do his own workout!) while I do my WOD. We have established a little routine that Keenan looks forward to every morning: wake up, make our beds, get dressed, put shoes on, get cheerios and head outside to my “make shift gym.” Keenan munches on his “morning snack” of cheerios and plays while I workout. After I’m done, we head inside to eat breakfast. He loves it, since he gets to play outside, and I love it because I get my workout done before it gets too hot. It is the perfect start to the day for both of us!

You are probably wondering what tabata is, or maybe you have heard of it before. Tabata is a type of high intensity interval training that was created by Izumi Tabata, a Japanese scientist who performed a study comparing moderate intensity with high intensity training. He found that high intensity interval training had more of an impact aerobically than moderate intensity, but it also had a positive impact anaerobically. In simple terms, doing high intensity interval training in a short amount of time has more impact over moderate, steady exercise any day, which is why I love CrossFit! Anyhow, a basic tabata workout is 4 minutes long and looks like this:

• 20 seconds of intense training (a full out sprint, doing as many reps as possible)
• 10 seconds of rest
• A total of 8 rounds

A typical tabata workout usually includes a few exercises, so you would do 8 rounds of 1 exercise and then rest 1 minute and do another 8 rounds of another exercise.

To make your life easier when timing your tabata workout, here is a free tabata timer, but there are also tons of free aps for your phone. I use one on my iphone called Tabata Timer.

If you are interested in trying out a tabata workout, here is a fun one (CrossFit Home or Travel WOD #11) that I put together and did yesterday. It requires no equipment, so can do this anywhere! Let me know if you try it out!

 Questions:

Have you ever done a tabata workout?

Where do you typically workout?