This weeks workout was shared by Eliza Hodge Fitzgerald via our Facebook Page. It is a particularly good workout for those of you who train indoors at sporting facilities.
Tabata Thursday – Sports Edition
Type: Aerobic, Muscular Endurance, HIT
Time: 60 Minutes
Equipment: MedBalls, Cones, Interval Timer
About Tabata
The Tabata Protocol is something that we see regularly on this website. You are probably already familiar with it, but I thought I would cover it in a bit more detail for those interested in the mechanics.
It is a great tool to use as a warm up with low intensity exercises or as a finisher with harder exercises. You can also use it for fitness tests or for something extra challenging, an entire workout.
The basic premise of tabata is interval training and when someone refers to tabata, usually they are just refering to the interval timing.
Tabata involves an exercise being completed at maximum intensity for 20 seconds followed by 10 seconds rest. This is then completed 8 times for a total of 4 minutes. The traditional tabata drill always used running/sprinting as the set exercise. We in the bootcamp industry can have a little more fun.
When doing a repetition exercise I recommend challenging your clients to at least equal their reps each round.
Example: A clients first round might be 14 push ups. Next round they would try and get 14 again.
Each time they miss their top score they reset their goal to their new lowest. So if the client misses that 14 and only does 12 push ups. They would now try and equal 12 push ups each round. Of course, you can still get them to aim for the 14 if you like.
When using this for a fitness test, you would only record the WORST score that they achieved (12 in the above example assuming they didn’t get worse). The key here is to build endurance along with speed.
Warm Up
Start off the workout with a favourite warm up of yours. You may want to use this time to practice some of the workouts exercises.
Sports
Complete a full round of tabata (4 minutes) on each drill before moving on to the next one. Take a short 60-90 second break between each sport for drinks.
Basketball: Catch and jump shot with ball.
Football: Fast feet with up/down command (up = jump to your feet and fast feet, down = hit the deck)
Volleyball: Squat and spike
Tennis: Court sprints
Soccer: Quick taps to the ball
Baseball: Catch and pitch
Boxing: Hook, Uppercut, Side kick
Track*: Medball shotput, 100m sprint, one long jump.
*Don’t do tabata for number 8 Track. Just have clients do 8 rounds at their own pace.
Further information about drills
Baseball: “For the baseball drill we just used a pretend ball. Squat in a low catchers squat then wind up and pitch. we felt a little silly, and there was a lot of giggling on this round,(especially when we switched sides and tried to “pitch” with our non-dominant hand) but that’s not a bad thing and we could really feel that one in the obliques. The only thing I used any equipment for was the track one. We used a 10lb medicine ball as a shot put.”
Tennis: “On the tennis court sprints we ran up to the net, across the court, back peddled to the back of the court, and laterally again to where we started. Half the ladies in one side and half on the other so we didn’t run into each other.”
About Eliza
I run a free boot camp aimed at mom’s with little kids on an army base, Fort Knox. We meet at a playground and let the kids play while we workout. All my networking has been on Facebook and word of mouth but we have over 150 ladies in the Facebook group that follow the workouts I post and about 30 that come to the playground.
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We have been getting some great workout from you lately. Keep them coming.
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Images: ErinKhoo, Eliza