Fastest Workout (Introducing Tabata)

It is officially fall! Which pretty much means I am freezing 24/7. But it is so pretty outside! Perfect scenery for running (now if only I had gone).

No more excuses for me! I have to get back to working out and being the best version of me that I can be (hehe, that's so cute, it rhymes. . .oh the English Major still lives). I am 100% healthy again and missing my constant runs and ab workouts. . .with a few leg and arm days.

Honestly I haven't had a lot of time over the last week and a half to workout (I think I worked out a week ago last Wednesday) between work and school. And not running is driving me crazy! I was going to go to the gym tonight and run. . .but as I was looking for workout clothes, I remembered that the gym closed at 7pm on Saturdays and it was already 8:30pm. Darn!

So here you go, instead of running on my treadmill at almost 11pm at night (let's face it, the downstairs neighbors probably won't appreciate that), I am doing a Tabata workout! What is Tabata you ask? Well, Tabata is an intense interval workout, meant to be done at maximum effort because of its short, 4 minute duration. The intervals are 20 seconds of an exercise and 10 seconds of rest and you repeat this 8 times. Now you don't have to repeat the same exercise 8 times, in fact the best thing would be to choose 4 different exercises and turn in into a circuit that you repeat twice.

Tonight's Tabata Workout:
-Squat Thrusts (20 sec.)
-Rest (10 sec.)
-Mountain Climbers (20 sec.)
-Rest (10 sec.)
-High Knees (20 sec.)
-Rest (10 sec.)
-Jumping Jacks (20 sec.)
-Rest (10 sec.)
-REPEAT!

Remember, the point of this workout is to put everything you have into those 20 second intervals without holding back. The idea behind the Tabata method is that it starts a "fire" in your metabolism which lasts for several hours after your workout. In theory you are burning calories even after your workout in done.

So, no excuses! You have 4 minutes in your day to get your workout on! Let's do this!