Hope everyone is having a great day so far! I was feeling ambitious and doubled up on classes this morning—a 6AM Btone followed by a 7:30 spin at B/Spoke. I was given a free month of FitReserve (similar to ClassPass but you can go to studios 4x a month and there are different membership/payment options), and was so excited to see B/Spoke on there. I went to my girl Steph’s class this morning and it kicked my butt per usual. I’ll go into more detail about FitReserve after I give it a full month’s test, but in the meantime you can get $50 off your first month if you sign up with THIS LINK.

Speaking of group fitness classes, I wanted to share a workout that is a truncated version of a tabata class I taught at BURN last month. I don’t regularly teach tabata, but I sub the class from time to time and always LOVE it! If you’re local and like to plan ridiculously far in advance, I’m also subbing it Thursday November 19^th & December 3^rd at 7:15pm. 🙂

Tabata Superset Workout

Equipment I Used:

• 10-lb dumbbells
• Gliders (or a dish towel)
• Exercise mat
• Gymboss Interval Timer

A tabata is four minutes long: 8 rounds of 20 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest. For this workout, each tabata will consist of two exercises that you’ll alternate between: Exercise 1 for 20 seconds, rest for 10 seconds, Exercise 2 for 20 seconds, rest for 10 seconds, Exercise 1 for 20 seconds, etc. So even though there are eight rounds, you’ll only do each exercise four times.

Once you finish the first tabata, rest for 30 seconds (ish) and then move right onto the second tabata. In total, it will take you just over 30 minutes to complete the seven tabatas (taking rest into account). 

Tabata 1

• Lunge Sliders (alternate) | My fellow megaformer addicts will recognize these as “carriage pulls.” I love finding ways to recreate mega moves off the machine! Start in a low lunge with your right foot forward, knee bent to 90 degrees and stacked over the ankle. The ball of your back left foot should be planted on a dishtowel or slider. To make these harder, hold dumbbells at your shoulders, otherwise just use your bodyweight. Hinge forward at the hips so that the weight of your torso is slightly forward, over the target right leg. This will allow you to keep your back foot light.From this starting position, slide your back left foot forward, bending the knee in and staying low on your right side. Slide it back out behind you into the starting position and continue crunching that back knee in and extending it out. The goal is to keep your weight in the right heel the entire time, staying low (think isometric hold for the right leg)—as you slide the left foot in, try not to shift your bodyweight into that foot (it’s tempting!). Another small note about form—try not to grip the ground with your right toes. If you keep the toes light and the weight back in the right heel, you’ll feel your glute kick in and really start working. It’ll also help protect your knee.
• Jump Lunges | Start in a split-stance lunge: right foot in front, ball of left foot planted on the floor behind you. Both knees should be bent to 90 degrees, front knee aligned over ankle, back knee hovering just a couple inches off the floor. From here, push off your feet to jump up in the air, switching feet in mid-air and landing back in a lunge with left foot forward and right foot planted behind. Continue, alternating feet with each jump.

Tabata 2

• Squat Thrusters | Hold the dumbbells at shoulder height, feet about hip’s width apart and squat down, keeping your lower abdomen held in and sliding your bum and hips back and down. Once you reach your lowest squat, power up, driving your hips forward and engaging the glutes as you straighten your legs to stand. As you do so, press the dumbbells overhead into a shoulder press.
• Shoulder Shaper – Press Up Combo | Start with arms in goal post position: elbows bent at 90 degrees at shoulder height. From here, maintaining those 90-degree bends, bring your forearms together in front of your face. Holding your forearms close together (make the number 11 with them and picture your elbows are magnets), press your fists up towards the ceiling in front of your face. This might only be a few inches up—that’s fine (it’s tough!). Reverse the combination, lowering your elbows back down to shoulder height and then opening your bent arms back open to goal-post position, squeezing your shoulder blades together as you do. Elbows should stay at shoulder height or higher (during the press up) the entire time—let that burn build!

Tabata 3

• Sliding Bear Crunch to Pike | Start in a plank position with your feet on a towel. Keeping your hips level with your shoulders, back flat, slide your feet forward, bending your knees in towards your elbows. Slide feet back out, straightening your legs into plank position. Now, keeping your legs straight, pike your hips up into the air, bringing your body into an upside down “v” shape. Try to keep your heels lifted as you do this, sliding on the balls of your feet. Once you hit your peak (if you have tight hamstrings, you may not be able to get your hips up very high—that’s ok!), slowly lower back down into plank position.
• Hand Release Push Ups | Start in a plank position and begin to bend your elbows as if you were doing a push up, but instead lower your body all the way to the ground. From here, lift your chest and hands off the ground, squeezing your upper back. Lower your hands back down to the ground by your rib cage and press your body back up into a high plank position.

Tabata 4

• Bent Row – Reverse Fly Combo | Start standing with feet about hip’s width apart, a dumbbell in each hand. Have a slight bend in the knees and hinge forward with your torso, keeping the abs engaged and sending your hips back behind you. Start by rowing your elbows back up behind you. Extend the arms back down and then perform a reverse fly: keep a soft bend in the elbows as you pull the weights out wide to the side, squeezing your shoulder blades together and engaging the back. Return back to starting position and do a row, alternating back and forth between the two.
• Dumbbell Burpees with Thruster | Start standing, feet about shoulder-width apart, elbows bent and dumbbells held at shoulders. Squat down, bringing the weights to the ground by your feet and jump both feet back into a plank position, still gripping the dumbbells. Quickly jump your feet back up by your hands and shift the weight into your feet, bringing your torso upright into a low squat position with weights back at shoulders. From here, stand up, pressing weights overhead. Squeeze your glutes and thrust your hips forward as you do this. Lower the weights and go immediately into your next rep.

Tabata 5

• Seated Leg Circles (alternate directions) | Start in a seated position with your fingertips lightly on the ground behind you for support. Extend your legs straight out. From here, keeping your legs straight, you’re going to circle them over to the side, up, down to the other side and back down to a hover. Think of your feet as the hands on a clock. At 6 o’clock, your torso will be reclined back at a hover; at 12 o’clock, you’ll lift and crunch your torso up and in, bringing your body into a “v” shape. Fair warning: these can be uncomfortable if you have tight hips (bend your knees slightly to make it more manageable). Alternate the direction in which you circle your legs each interval you do this exercise (clockwise, counter-clockwise, clockwise, counter-clockwise).
• Full-Body Crunch with Dumbbell | Start laying on your back with legs outstretched and hovering a couple inches off the ground. Holding a weight in your hands, arms should be outstretched overhead and hovering as well. From this starting position, crunch up, bringing your knees in towards your chest as you lift your shoulder blades off the ground and bring the weight up and over towards your shins. Extend back out, lowering to starting position. The goal is to never bring the legs and/or weight to rest on the ground when you extend back out.

Tabata 6

• Squat Jacks with Oblique Scoop | For the low body, think jumping jacks in a squat position. For the upper body, think paddling a canoe. This one can be like rubbing your stomach while patting your head, so don’t be frustrated if it feels uncoordinated at first—you can always eliminate the upper body movement and just hold the weight at your chest as you jump your feet in and out.Start in a low squat position with feet wide, weight in your heels, low abs engaged, hips back and a dumbbell held at your chest with both hands. Staying low in a squat, jump your feet in close together as you scoop the dumbbell down and around to the left of your left leg. As the weight comes up and back to center, jump your feet out wide again to the starting position. Repeat, this time scooping the dumbbell down and around to the right side of your legs as you jump them close together. The goal is to stay low in a squat as you jack your feet in and out, fluidly scooping the dumbbell side to side like a figure eight or canoe oar.
• Lunge Stomps (alternate) | Shout out to Barry’s Bootcamp for introducing me to these! Start in a low lunge position with your right foot forward, knee bent at 90 degrees and stacked directly over your ankle. Ball of the left foot is planted on the floor behind you, leg is long but knee is soft. To make these harder, hold dumbbells at your shoulders; otherwise, just use your bodyweight (it’ll still be challenging—I promise!). From here, you’re going to press off the right heel as you shift your weight into the back left foot enough to lift your right foot off the ground, slightly kicking it forward in the air before landing back down in that starting low lunge position. The slight outward kick will help you land in a knee-safe position with the right heel stacked under the knee (you don’t want the knee to ever be farther forward than the toes).

Tabata 7

• Mountain Climbers | These are like doing high knees in a plank position. Start in a plank, hands stacked underneath shoulders, core squeezing in tight (don’t let your low back sag or your butt stick up in the air). From this position, drive one knee at a time up towards your chest, like running horizontally. The pace on these should be quick.
• Army Crawls | Put your feet on a towel and get into a plank with your forearms at the end of an exercise mat. Army crawl your way up the length of the mat, one forearm in front of the other, maintaining the plank position as you slide forward. When you can no longer go any farther forward, reverse the motion, crawling your forearms backward towards the starting edge of the mat. As you move, try to keep your hips level in a plank. They’ll want to dip side to side with each step of the forearms; use your core strength to stabilize them. Beginners: you can do these from your knees, just make sure to add an extra towel for padding.

WEARING | leggings: Booty by Brabants // tank: H&M (old but similar here) // bra c/o WITH // sneakers: Nike

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