Someone at my CrossFit box posted a challenge Facebook. A 31 day, January Tabata challenge.
And when I first saw it, I thought it looked cool and proceeded to ignore it.
But then, the new year approached, and I felt compelled to give it a closer look. Could I go 31 days, the entire month of January, doing 2 tabata sets every single day? Why not? Tabata is simple. It can be done at home with body weight exercises. It’s just 8 sets of 20 seconds of work followed by 10 seconds of rest. Twice.
And so, on January 1st, I completed with sit ups and jumping jacks.
On the 2nd, I made it to the gym and tackled planks and single under jump ropes.
I didn’t want to go to the gym on the 3rd, but my husband dragged me along and I reluctantly kept my streak going with dead hang and rowing. Both of them were harder than I thought they’d be. (Actually, everything has been harder than I thought it would be.)
On the 4th day of the challenge, I decided to try and make it 7 days without repeating an exercise, leading me to knee push ups and chair triceps dips.
The triceps dips were a last second substitution. I tried doing air squats before completing the dips, but my quads were still wrecked from last Thursday’s WOD. Sure, I only completed 25 sets out of 30 in the allotted 30 minutes, but that’s still an awful lot of box assisted pull ups (125), knee push ups(250) and air squats (375). After attempting a single round of tabata for air squats, I decided my legs were, in fact, hurting with bad pain, not “work through it” pain.
I had the best of intentions on the 5th day. I was going to get up and just do them, whatever they might be, most likely a glute bridge and mountain climbers. Instead, my husband woke me at 6:04. The alarm was set. Ambrose tells me the alarm went off at its designated time of 5:42. But I didn’t wake up enough to do more than hit the off button – not the snooze button, the off button. And I don’t remember hitting it.
And so it was nearly 7pm before I managed to get my glute bridge and v-up tabatas done. But I did. And I will complete challenge.