4:59 AM

4:59am. That is what time I arrived at the gym this morning…Ugh, I’m so tired!

I mean, it’s a good kind of tired, but tired nonetheless! I’m really trying to kick it into gear this week so I can keep up downward trend on the scale.

At one of my recent weigh ins, I mentioned changing up my workout a bit. Yes, I was definitely working up a sweat pedaling away for an hour while reading The Hunger Games trilogy, but I know that sitting on the recumbent bike for an hour is not the most efficient use of my time! I’m always complaining about being so busy…so why am I sitting on the bike for an hour when I could be getting just as good a workout in half the time or less? (Especially since I blew through all three Hunger Games books in 6 days and no longer need to have my nose stuffed in a book?)

Enter the Tabata Protocol.

I won’t get into the whole scientific explanation of this kind of high intensity interval training (you can see www.tabataprotocol.com for a pretty decent description), but I will say that even though I have been doing it with Trainer for over a year, it still kicks my butt every time…and in about 10 minutes or less!

I’ve still been getting up early to hit the gym in the mornings, but instead of going straight to the recumbent bikes and parking it there, I’ve been sneaking into the spin room and doing between 8 and 10 intervals of Tabata on the spin bike, which is what I use with Trainer also.

It’s really only recommended that you do a Tabata workout about 3 times a week because your body needs time to recover in between each workout. The first time I did the workout on my own at the gym was last Saturday…then I took Sunday off. I did a Tabata workout yesterday morning (Monday), and then found myself sneaking into the spin room again this morning even though it should have been an off day! I could definitely feel it by the 8th interval…my legs were burning…I’ll definitely take tomorrow off and see what Trainer has to say about my antics when I see him on Thursday. I may or may not get scolded for my overzealous use of his secret weapon! I’ll keep you posted.

The other change-up I’ve made in my workout so far this week was to add rowing back to the mix. I have this lofty goal of rowing 10,000 meters…I don’t know why I chose that number, I think it just sounds like a good round number…so I am going to slowly work my way up to that. On Saturday and then again this morning, I rowed 1,000 meters in roughly 5 minutes. Only 10% to my goal distance, and I can feel it in my biceps, back and shoulder blades! I am planning on rowing about 4 days a week, and then at the start of the next week I can kick it up a few hundred meters. I’ll row that distance for a week, and then kick it up again…until I reach 10,000 meters. I don’t have a deadline for this new training goal…I’m just going to go for it and see what happens!

Here are my rowing workouts from Saturday and today:

And finally, I did finish up by doing a shorter, easier cruise on the recumbent bike.

Tabata, row and cycle…not bad for a Tuesday morning! And I was in and out of the gym in about an hour…the same amount of time I spent on the bike each morning for the last couple of weeks, and I feel like I got at least as good a workout but most likely better!

How about you? Do you tend to do low intensity workouts at the gym, like riding the bike? Or do you do some kind of high intensity training?