Kitchen Timer Training

[meguro]

How much strength and conditioning training can you accomplish in 10 or 20 minutes? I say a lot. That's the premise of this thread and my workouts. My aim is to make strength and conditioning segue seemlessly into your day, like brushing your teeth and combing your hair. If you've got a shiny pate and crowns on your choppers, these workouts are for you, especially if you like maxing out your heart rate.

Today, I'm using dumbbells an ab-wheel and a kitchen timer. I set the timer for 10 minutes. I started with 50 burpees at an easy pace, no record attempts today. This took about 3 and a half minutes. I followed with 10 ab-wheel roll-outs from the knees, pausing for 10 slow seconds at each full extension. Next, 5x5 dumbbell clean & push press. At this point, I was ready to quit but the kitchen timer said I had some time left so I made an effort to work the grip by holding on to the weight while doing hang power cleans and finally just holding the weight till the timer went ding.

[Dent]

Osu!

Sounds good, Meguro.

I hit legs at the gym for the first time in what feels like a very long time. 45 mins including warm up and cool down, and non-stop moving in between.

Good for those with family and work commitments, who can still get the benefits of training.

Osu!

[Bloke]

Thats a great idea meguro - thanks

[jcc]

Osu! meguro,

I´m just wondering what you have in the oven? Nothing too fattening, I trust

Osu!

[meguro]

Osu! Dent, I'm not organized enough to plan my training according to body parts. I'd probably keep forgetting something, so I hit everything at once.

Glad your pleased, Bloke. Just trying to keep it simple.

JCC, sadly all I've got in the oven at the moment are a couple of clean broiling pans in storage.

[meguro]

This morning's workout was a variation of yesterday's. I started off with 50 burpees, followed by 10 standing ab-wheel negatives and finished with a grip/stance iso hold. This last exercise comprised holding on to 45# db's while in left and right neko ashi dachi.

I must say that I must have messed up the timing: either I didn't have enough time on the clock today or I had too much yesterday. It was over too quickly compared to what seemed like drawn out torture yesterday.

Overall, I'm happy with these condensed workouts. However, part of me wonders if I'm missing out on the benefits of isolation type exercises, or if sticking to whole body exercises prevents proper recovery. On this last bit, recovery might not be that big a deal since the sessions are so short.

[meguro]

Real simple today-50 dumbbell burpees in ten minutes. The plan was to see how many reps I could do in the time alotted-turns out only 50 with 25# db's. Went into overtime for kneeling roll-outs:10 with 10 sec hold.

[Dent]

Osu!

You're a proper beastie, Meguro! As much as I dislike burpees, I will do some today as a show of solidarity.

Osu!

[meguro]

Osu! Dent, I'm just a paper beastie. Yay burpees.

[meguro]

I took a rest day yesterday.

This morning I set the kitchen timer for 10 mins.
-(21 burpees & 10 dead hand pull-ups) x3
-3x10 kneeling ab roll-outs
finished with 3 secs to spare.

I planned on doing 21 pull-ups to match the burpees, but because of the way my new bar hangs so low I could not kip, which is essential for high vol pull ups. There was no way I could pull-off 21 dead hang pu's following 21 burpees, at least in my present condition; 10 were plenty enough.

[meguro]

Yesterday I unwrapped my ConceptII rower, which had been cocooned in bubble wrap for the move. I should have done this months ago. Anyway, better late than much later.

Rowing is physically and psychologically painful. If a 100 burpee challenge is 9 on a scale of 1-10, rowing is a 12 or 13. It sucks and I love it, sort of.

Sunday's workout consisted of 4x500m sprints on the rower. It took all 10 minutes including rests. Overtime was occupied by feeble bodyweight dips and pull-ups. I was spent.

[Dent]

Osu! Meguro,

If it's taking up too much space, I guess I could store your rower at my place. I'd even grant generous visitation rights...

No? Well then... (Sulks back to Craigslist... )

Osu!

[Bloke]

I used to love the rower when I was a gym member - I know what you mean when you say you love and hate it.

[meguro]

Osu! From a budget/priority standpoint, the rower is the centerpiece of my out of the dojo training-it trains the heart in all senses of the word.

Space can be a problem. A portion of the living room is has got my db's, puzzle mats, ab-wheel, bands, balance board and pull-up bar in semi-disarray. The master bedroom's got my dip stand and rower. My wife's pretty tolerant about the equipment and takes advantage of the dipstand by hanging her clothes from it. She draws the line at me acquiring a 24kg kettlebell.

Concept 2's are not cheap, but if you consider the cost of some globo gym dues it can be had for a year's membership. The beauty is you keep the rower forever or until you upgrade. I was fortunate to receive the rower as a gift from my dear wife. I didn't even have to beg or hint at it. One Valentine's Day, there it was in two big boxes.

Monday: set the kitchen timer for 20 mins.
-c&p and neutral grip pull ups (3x8)
-15x10 sec superman planks
-Tabata rowing
-deadhang from pu bar till clock runs out (40 secs)

Today's workout was real taxing on the grip.

[meguro]

Yesterday I spent an hour at the physio so I'll count that as active recovery.

This morning I set the kitchen timer for 10 minutes. 5 Cleans, 5 weighted dips, 5 knees to elbows, repeated till the clock ran out.

[ksan]

http://www.sportequipment.nl/sporttimers.htm

http://www.kringe.de/tq.html

http://www.sporttimer.nl/

lets you program 2 times (work and rest) and automatically repeats untill you turn it off.. it gives a loud biep and on both end time a different biep... I use it a lot and it works great...

[meguro]

Osu! Ksan, thanks for the links. You might want to consider this product as well. I like to use this when I'm training intervals at home. My rowing machine also has an interval timer which works great.

The reason I use a simple kitchen timer is because 10 and 20 minutes (depending on the activity) are the absolute limits for me as far as training at a high intensity without rest. Afterwards, I usually ooze perspiration for a half hour.

[Dent]

Osu!

I've got an old Everlast one downstairs, but this has been good for away trips:

http://www.speedbagforum.com/timer.html

Osu!

[meguro]

osu! The speedbag interva timer is great. I like how you can select from different buzzer sounds (bell to start work klaxon to signal rest).

5th of July Fireworks: Set kitchen timer to 20 minutes, cue Depeche Mode's A Pain That I'm Used To
-4x10 burpees & pull-ups
-4x10 push-press
-4x10 weighted dips
-Tabata rowing

I started out with the idea of doing burpees and pull-ups for the entire 20 minutes. By the third set, pulling became a problem and I stopped at the fourth set-didn't want to open up some blisters on my smooth-as-a-baby's- bottom hands.

I try incorporate spinal loading in most work-outs, hence the push presses. Nothing remarkable about the weighted dips, except form started to suffer around the third set. I was pretty happy about the Tabata rowing. Eventhough I've layed-off the rower for a long time, my splits(times) haven't deteriorated too much and seem to be improving. Timer goes ding as cool off on the rower.

[meguro]

This article appeared in today's paper. It's about the extraordnary size of rowers' hearts (other athletes' hearts were also studied). Rowing, it seems, creates larger, more flexible and more efficient hearts than other activities (eg., American football, speed skating).

I got a new kitchen timer from Crate & Barrel (I wasn't kidding about the timer) dirt cheap and was anxious to try it out. Set new timer to 20 minutes.
-Thrusters (3x8)
-Weighted Pull-ups (3x3)
-3 10x10sec ab roll-outs
-Rowing (5x400m)