Dinosaur training

[Thomas]

Emil Zatopek was legendary for his speed workouts. One in particular had him running quarter-mile laps at speed, followed by half-lap recoveries. Sixty times.

That's 15 miles at speed (sub-70 second laps), with another 7.5 miles recovery, plus warm-up and cool-down. So I suppose there's something to be said for that sort of workout.

 

[mizanation]

"dinosaur" training < 20 min? i don't think so. i think the whole advertising hype behind dinosaur training is that you can use "old-school" secrets to unlock your hidden power and strength.

odoreater, if you really only have 20 minutes a day to work out, you could probably get by with 15 mins of cardio a day and a few pushups.

or alternately, you can do descending sets of burpees for 20 minutes.

or if you wanna get fancy apply tabata to burpees. that will kick your ass.

 

[Saucemaster]

Originally Posted by mizanation

or if you wanna get fancy apply tabata to burpees. that will kick your ass.

I have done an easier variation of this recently--not strict Tabata, I did 30/30 splits, and added a tuck jump at the top. It is brutal. Completely inhuman. Great workout, but the worst part is that when you're done, you just want to lie down... but if you do, you feel like vomiting. So you stand up. But you're SO TIRED and achy... but if you lie down, you'll feel like vomiting... repeat for 15 min.

 

[mizanation]

^^^ yeah, burpees have got to be the most underrated single bodyweight exercise. it's strength + cardio + agility + plyometrics (especially with the tuck jump). you don't need anything else. only thing is, it's so taxing physically and mentally. it's like deadlifting. a pre-workout psyche up usually helps.

 

[odoreater]

Originally Posted by mizanation

"dinosaur" training < 20 min? i don't think so. i think the whole advertising hype behind dinosaur training is that you can use "old-school" secrets to unlock your hidden power and strength.

odoreater, if you really only have 20 minutes a day to work out, you could probably get by with 15 mins of cardio a day and a few pushups.

or alternately, you can do descending sets of burpees for 20 minutes.

or if you wanna get fancy apply tabata to burpees. that will kick your ass.

Yeah, nice suggestions. Unfortunately, 20 minutes is about all I can afford to spend on exercising at this point in my life.

 

[mizanation]

20 minutes is a lot of time to stress your body out.

actually, in terms of time, unless you have your own weight set in your aparmtment, weights are not a good option. you have to go to the gym, change, wait for the equipment, shower, change and leave.

if you only have 20 minutes, do what senor saucemaster did and do burpees ad nauseum and you will soon be thinking that 20 minutes is too long for a workout.

i guarantee you that you will not be able to do even 5 minutes of burpees non-stop without a break.

what i'm trying to say is that if you only have 20 minutes, i would avoid the gym because preparations, etc. will take up most of your time.

here's another suggestion, which only takes about 15 minutes.

take a deck of cards and do the old catch wrestling workout. shuffle the deck. pull a card. if it's red, it's a squat, if it's black, it's a pushup. the number on the card determines how much you do. face cards are 10 reps. later you can increase this. jokers can be 15. you can increase this later. i know a lot of people who have gotten great results from this. you want to do this at a pace to complete under 15 minutes.

 

[odoreater]

I have a set of powerblocks and a bench at home that I use now. I also have a squat rack and barbell, but I'm in the middle of moving now and I can't use those at this time.

I've been working out for a long time now so it's not like I'm new to this stuff. I've done various split programs, 5x5 programs, etc. I'm pretty happy with my mass and can just use cutting down on a little bit of fat. At the same time, I don't want to lose muscle by completely cutting weights out and focusing more on cardio - plus, I love lifting weights and hate doing cardio. I'm just trying to keep the intensity as high as possible so that I can keep the time as short as possible. Basically, the plan is to do 2-3 exercises by 2-3 sets of weight training and then finish it off with some tabata cardio.

Here's what a workout might look like:

bench press or rows: 3 sets of 8-10
dumbell clean and press or thrusters or farmers carries or lunges: 2 sets of 6-8
curls or french presses: 2 sets of 10
Tabata on stationary bike: 4 minutes.

Should be able to do this workout in under 30 minutes.

 

[drizzt3117]

Tabata on pushups is always fun... I just did a set with 10 reps in each interval... always fun to do when you do chest in the morning...