Dear God, What Have I Done?

Day 2:

It's day two of my training tonight. I posted my intro earlier today so you'll have to forgive there being two posts in a row but from here out, I will only be doing one a day.

I've just finished up tonight's workout. Allow me to introduce you to a special exercise called "Tabatas". Never heard of it? Neither have I. Let me share with you what I've learned.

Tabatas were invented by a Japanese man named Izumi Tabata. You see, he compared two groups of people working out: one group with moderate intensity training and one with high intensity. Now wikipedia says that he noticed the group that did high intensity training was getting better at aerobic and anaerobic exercise much more than their counterparts. 

I believe this to be a lie.

I'm not saying the exercise won't work as designed, I'm sure it will, but having just completed four tabata sets, I'm pretty sure this was designed specifically to suck as much as possible. I think Tabata was scared as a kid by fit people or something and he decided to make an exercise that would cause as much hate in its victims as possible.

Allow me to elaborate. This is the Tabata timer (It's very useful should you wish to torment yourself) and the way it works is that you put in the number of rounds for each session, how many sessions you want to do, and then how much time you have to work versus how much time you get to rest between each round.

As you can see, I have it currently set to allow me 15 seconds of workout, then 15 seconds of rest, for a total of 8 rounds. Right now, you're telling yourself "What is she complaining about? 15 seconds is nothing!" That's what I thought too. I laughed at the idea of this. I wanted to raise the work time.

I was wrong.

Those 15 seconds add up very quickly. See, each round consists of a different exercise done as fast as you can. The exercises are Body Rows, Push-ups, Squats, and Bicycle Crunches. Body rows are what you do when pull-ups aren't really an option. I can do ONE. One pull up every 15 seconds is so not happening. Thus body rows. I have a pull-up bar that slings over my door frame and I drape two towels over it. Grab the towels, lean back to a 45 degree angle, then, holding onto the ends of the towels, pull yourself back upright. The steeper you incline, the harder it will be. This builds you up to a pull-up someday. Here's my set up for visual reference:

Not exactly glamorous but it works. Also, something to be noted: do NOT use nice towels!! This exercise will put all your weight on them. Use towels from Goodwill or something because this is what will eventually happen:

Back to Tabatas and why they suck. So normally I can do most exercises ok. I'm no athlete or anything but I can push out a few push-ups and rock a few body weight squats. After a while I need a break though.

Well, Tabata gives you breaks...15 seconds worth. Suddenly this exercise becomes a strange time experiment where 15 seconds takes 15 years when you're struggling to push out more repetitions and those 15 second breaks? Yeah, those are gone before you can finish coughing up your lung. The timer is especially obnoxious as it barks at you to "work" and "rest" every fifteen seconds. I don't think I've ever cussed a computer this much in my life.

Despite all my complaining though, there's something really important that came out of this.

I managed to complete them. 

All of them. 

For all that I'm grumbling about how much effort this exercise is, there's definitely something to be said for that feeling of accomplishment on the other end. I'm sweaty, sore, a little admittedly stinky (no one said working out was romantic), but I'm victorious and that's a great feeling. I feel like I just walked up to Tabata and kicked him in the head. I did it. I won. I battled myself and my laziness and I came out the other side knowing that I'm just that tiny bit stronger than I was yesterday. I'm savoring this moment.

To celebrate, I am having a fruit smoothie. This part is REALLY important (not that all that victory stuff isn't). It's not only good for me by giving my body something to process so I grow more muscle, it's also that prize at the end of the workout that says "here, have something that tastes like dessert."

The recipe is simple and I'll share it here tomorrow for anyone interested.

Now I'm going to go curl up and draw something.