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Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Workouts That Suck... So You Know They Work.

Want a quick workout that destroys every energy producing mechanism in your body, will leave you rolling around on the ground in agony, and will probably be impossible to finish the first time you try it? Great! I have a workout for you:

You will perform Front Squats and Powercleans for 4 minutes. The layout looks like this:

Front Squats for 20 seconds
10 seconds of rest
Power Cleans for 20 seconds
10 seconds of rest
Repeat 4 times. Including the final rest interval, this only takes 4 minutes.

Here is how you Front Squat:


Here is how you powerclean:


Here is the biggest d-bag I have ever seen:






The set up (20s on/10s off for 4mins) is called a Tabata interval. I am pretty sure Dr. Tabata was watching "SAW" one day and thought, "I can do much worse than that." You can basically insert any exercises you want (1 exercise for 8 reps, 2 exercises for 4 reps, 8 completely different exercises for the whole 4 mins) but these two exercises put together will leave you questioning why you want to get in better shape.

A couple rules to follow:

-Pick a moderate weight that you can do 6-8 reps within the 20 seconds and get at least 6-8 reps during each 20 second time period.
-Never let go of the bar. You can rest it in the Front Squat position, hold it at your waist, or hold on to it while it is on the floor, but do not take your hands off until the 4 mins is done... this is more terrible to do than you could ever imagine.
-Don't die.

Tabata intervals are excellent at stimulating oxygen debt. By the end of the 4 minutes your body will be frantically trying to figure out why there is no more air in your muscles. The elevated breathing rate required to "refill" all of your lost oxygen will last anywhere from 12-36 hours depending on how well trained you are. Why is this important? The elevated breathing causes and elevated resting metabolic rate. In other words, you use more calories and go through more metabolic processes than you normally would during the time you are not exercising. This whole process is called Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption... and its awesome.

Good luck.

Sprint. Kill. Eat.