Yesterday Jane posted our workout:

“Workout 1: High intensity interval training – it’s Tabata Time! After monitoring the Japanese speed skating team in the early 90’s, Dr Izumi Tabata noted that VERY hard but intermittent exercise appeared to be as effective as standard intensity, longer workouts requiring several hours a week. The Tabata protocol involves 20 seconds of high intensity work followed by 10 seconds rest. These are traditionally performed for 8 rounds on one exercise equalling four minutes in total, or two mins 40 seconds of HARD WORK! You’ll be doing Tabatas on 6 exercises, with each exercise being completed for the eight rounds. Do one exercise eight times, with eight rest periods, then give yourself a 2 minute break, and onto the next exercise on your list. Time for some training…you will need to download the Tabata Pro app on your phone, or use a timer that can handle two different interval lengths. Do a 5 min warm up-I min each star jumps, squats, shadow boxing, hi knee jogging and arm circles, forward and backward. Your exercises are: lunges; plank; mountain climbers; squats fast hi knee jogging on the spot; push-ups/tri-dips (alternate these for the 8 rounds and Betty, you can do angry uppercut punches instead of the tricep dips). It’s 20 seconds as hard as you can, then 10 seconds rest, 8 rounds per exercise except for the alternating pushups.”

So last night I downloaded the free Tabata fitness app because 1: I want to see what it is all about before putting any money out that can go toward my ticket and 2: Do I really need the music portion? Pretty sure my heart will be pounding so loudly through my ears that I wouldn’t hear anything anyway.

This morning I awoke and did Jane’s workout.  Here is how it went for me:

As instructed, I started with the lunges.  I’m fresh and rested and a bit excited so not too bad.  I might have grabbed the chair nearby to steady myself a bit toward the end.

Planks: The first two or three 20 second planks are not bad, but I’m fairly certain that the timer had a flaw after that and was taking more like 40 seconds to time the recommended twenty and the rests were a mere 2-3 seconds.  There is a distinct possibility that I started compensating for the discrepancy by splitting the time a little more evenly between the intense workout portion and the resting portion.

The Mountain Climbers had me feeling like there was about 900 pounds of weight on my hands by the end.

I started the squats with real gusto.  Since I have been doing squats every day, I’m thinking I have this one – no problem.  Only thing – I did my usual number of squats in the first set and then there were another 7 sets to do!  Suffice it to say that each set might not have had as many reps in it.  That’s gunna hurt again tomorrow.

High Leg Jog?  Can you say hip replacement?  Going to have to work my way into that one better as it was more of a high stepping march toward the middle and end.

Push-ups and Angry Uppercuts for the final sets…. Nice to alternate.  And Jane, I was doing some visualization on where I might land those angry upper cuts.  Wanna guess who I was punching at in my mind?

Wilma,  There are two possibilities as I see it for Jane’s motives of this workout.  Either she really is striving to get our sad butts in shape or she is trying to kill you off and I am just collateral damage.  Have some tea and feel better.

Love Betty