Thursday, March 22, 2012

Putting Money Where Mouth Is

It's no secret that I don't train myself the way that I train my clients (I prefer to think of them as my athletes. I push them like athletes, after all.) I'm hoping to get most of them to a place where if they decide they want to try something new next week, they'll have the coordination, strength, and confidence to do it. This involved lots of heavy lifting, and high intensity intervals, mixed in with some skill based days here and there.

I don't do this with myself, since after all, I'm a "specialized" athlete. But given that I'm starting to branch out to other activities, I'm beginning to really notice where my specialization has left me weaker. For instance, my lower body is disproportionately stronger than my upper body, so when I'm supposed to use my arms to leverage myself for pole dancing or trapeze, it's REALLY hard and half the time I fail at the more complex stuff.

So next week, I'm biting the bullet, and putting it out here for people to see so I can't back down. I'm starting Tabata Tuesdays. For the first few months of getting back into conditioning, I'm going to start doing 3-4 Tabata sets on Tuesdays. Easy goes it, right?

Since I'm still doing lots of leg strength based work, these sets will primarily be upper body and midline (pull-ups, sit ups, push-ups, etc).

In the three years that I've been a weightlifter, I've done the occasional rowing interval session, but really the only CrossFit-esque workout I've done was during my level 1 certification weekend. Team Fran. It left me wrecked for a week. Fran will not be my first foray back into conditioning (though I'll probably attack her in a couple months to start a test/re-test).

So, if you see me next Wednesday, ask me if I did my Tabata Tuesday. And if I say no, you have full permission to force me to a Tabata workout right then and there. Assuming enough people see this, a Wednesday Tabata day could be worse than what I try to wuss out on. :)

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