Friday 29 January 2010

Rowing Machine Tabata

Location: Woodcock Sports Centre, Aston University
Date: 28th January

Workout: Tabata Intervals on the Rowing Machine - at about 95% effort.

Total Time: 5 minutes (including 1 minute warm up)

Post Workout Nutrition: Paleo breakfast of champions (recipe), 2.5 hours later.

I'm getting fitter. I was able to perform the 8th interval with a sense of inner control; and the lung/throat pain I felt when walking around afterwards was less than last time.

Alas, another sign of my improving fitness is the reappearance of the sleep/fitness paradox. Waking up at 4am or 5am with no hope of getting to sleep and a head full of things I want to do.

4 comments:

Greg said...

Thanks for this post on Tabata. I was not aware that there was a link between high intensity training / fitness / waking up at night.
Actually, a funny coincidence, I did a bike tabata on tuesday and woke up at 5:00 am on wednesday, and 3:45 am on thursday... as you describe full of a kind of nervous energy / willingness to do everything on my todo list. I had not made the link with the Tabata... (and I am quite tired now :-))
What's the explanation? any idea on how to improve sleep?
Thanks in advance

Methuselah said...

Hi Greg - I think the link is with fitness generally, not necessarily specifically Tabata... although since Tabata is such a great way to get fit, the two usually coincide for me. It is very difficult to give advice on sleep because I find I have the best nights of sleep when I am living unhealthily. The toxins seem to make my system sluggish so that I can go back to sleep more easily in the early hours. However, I would not recommend this approach - almost certainly it's counter-productive in terms of overall health! I have just learned to accept that a proportion of my nights will not be great, but my body will get what it needs eventually and the less time spent worrying about it, the better it generally is. Hope this helps!

Asclepius said...

What was the breakdown of your Tabata session? What resistance level do you set the machine to?

I am currently looking at splitting my 500m sessions in to 5x100m sprints with 30s rest between.

Methuselah said...

Hi Asclepius - it's just the standard 8 x 20 seconds with 10 seconds rest in between. Your plan sounds like a good one. I've done similar things myself. The rowing machine is hard to beat on this sort of thing. As someone said the other day "you can get as fit as you want on one of those..."