Friday Five: 5 Gut Busting Indoor Workouts

TGIF Guys!  Only one more week till I'm outta here and sitting on a beach.  I'm telling you it can't come soon enough.  Southern Ontario is in a serious deep freeze right now and that means I'm not stepping foot outside to do any sort of workout.   It's times like this that I'm thankful I'm not training for a spring marathon, ha ha. 

Since it's Friday, I'm linking up with the DC Trifecta Ladies (Courtney, Cynthia and Mar) for a little Friday Five action.  Ironically today's topic is Indoor Workouts, ha.  Since I'm a triathlete, I'm going to share a few of my favourite swim, bike & run sessions as well as some other workouts I do indoors.

SWIMMING:

Living in the Great White North means that swimming is something that is done primarily indoors.  I only get to swim outside in the summer.   Getting into the pool in the middle of winter is always challenging for me.  There's something incredibly unpleasant about getting out of a warm bed, going out into the cold and then getting into a cool-ish pool.  However, once I'm in, I'm good.  Thankfully I swim with a Masters Club so that also keeps me motivated to go.  If I swam on my own, chances are I'd skip a lot of my workouts, ha ha.  Our swim coach usually has us on a 3 week build, 1 week recovery cycle and she tends to hammer us pretty hard in our build weeks.   Some of the workouts are absolute killers and this one is no exception.  I like it because it's 100's but it's a lot of them and it really teaches you about pacing.  It's all done on pace times so you need to watch the clock.  This would be the workout for the lane I swim in:

400 warm up:  MS:  5x100 on 1:55, 1 min RI, 5x100 on 1:50, 1 min RI, 5x100 on 1:45, 1 min RI, 5x100 on 1:40, 1 min RI, 200 cool down. 

When you see "on" a pace time that means you have that much time to complete the 100.  However, you also need to factor in rest so you want to swim at a faster pace to allow yourself to get some rest.  So for the 1:55's, we'd try to come in on 1:45 so we get 10 seconds rest.  The same for the other sets, although usually by the last set, I'm lucky if I get 5s rest.  This is a seriously tough workout. 

CYCLING:

The 3x3:  This a brutal workout that I honestly think is better off being done in an indoor trainer.  If you have a power meter then you're going to be working at above your FTP (functional threshold power).  If you're training with heart rate then this is going to be high zone 5 (anaerobic max).   It's a good one if you've just started doing anaerobic max work.   And it may make you barf. 

Warm up:  20-30 minutes.  Then 3x3 minutes in zone 5 with 3 minutes recovery after each one.  Cool down 10 minutes.  This will definitely get your heart rate up.  As your fitness progresses you can add another set or you can try to drop your recovery to 2 minutes. 

RUNNING:

I am not a fan of treadmill running.  Unfortunately I spent a lot of time on it last winter due to the sheer amounts of ice and snow we had last year but I tend to avoid it most of the time.  That being said, there are some good workouts that you can do on a treadmill that will break up the boredom.   These are two of my favourites:

Intervals:  Warm up 10-15 minutes, then 10x2:00 minutes hard, 2:00 easy.  The goal is to do about 20 minutes of hard work to get the heart rate up.  Cool down 10 minutes

Progressive Run:  These are tough no matter where you do them.   The goal of a progressive run is to end up at your goal race pace or maybe even a bit faster.  If you're racing a half marathon and your goal is 1:45, then you'd want to end up running 5:00 min km's or faster for your last km.  So, if you were going to do a 10km progressive run, you'd warm up for say 3km at a very nice easy pace.  Then you can build throughout the remaining 7km.  Try to drop 10 seconds off each km.  This is what a progressive run for a 1:45 half would look like:

Warm up 3km at an easy pace (5:45-5:50/km's).  1st km: 5:35, 2nd km:  5:25 3rd km: 5:15 4th km: 5:05  5th km: 4:55 km

Followed by a cool down of at least 10 minutes.  It could be walking or a really slow easy jog but you should definitely cool down.

STRENGTH WORK:

I usually go to the gym to do all my strength work because I like having the space to spread out and I like to incorporate free weights into my workouts.  However, if I don't feel like going to the gym, I can do most of my workout at home in the basement because it's all body weight work.  You only need a few pieces of equipment:  a mat, a stability ball, bench or chair and a bosu ball (which is optional).   This is a combination of some of my favourite at home exercises.

2x10-15 mountain climbers
2x10-15 push ups (option to do them on the bosu if you want to really challenge yourself)
2x10-15 jump squats
2x10-15 tricep dips off a bench or chair
2x10-15 side plank with rotation
2x10-15 single leg glute bridges
2x10-15 jackknifes on stability ball
2x10-15 burpees
2x10-15 oblique crunches on stability ball





Well there you have it.  Five sweat inducing indoor workouts that will get definitely get your heart rate up.   Check out the other blogs in the link up...there are some GOOD ones posted!!