As I’ve mentioned, this week has been pretty bad in terms of work, so I’ve been trying to find workouts that don’t take too much time. Burpees are one example.

I found that I couldn’t do more than a few burpees yesterday since my muscles were still sore from the last time I did them. So I set up my road bike on my trainer and did some intervals.

The workout consisted of 10x of:

1. Put bike in maximum gear and pedal as hard as possible for 60 seconds
2. Switch to smaller front gear and cycle at a recovery pace for 30 seconds (basically as slow as need be)

With a 30 second warmup in the easy gear, it adds up to 13 minutes.

I like this length because I definitely felt I was going all out for most of it. After the first two sets my heart rate was around 160, and it went up to 176 (at least — I’m measuring it during the breaks manually, so I don’t really know what it was during the peaks). At the end it was a steady 160. With my max HR around 195, I’m targeting 165 as my 85% threshold for “high-intensity”.

I’m also able to at least complete the exercise in the given time parameters, while with burpees, after five sets I need to increase the break times.

I’m hoping to get back into the pool next week, once I’ve finished this major project.