Welcome to Tabata

Here’s a little JavaScript game I made this morning, coded with the help of ChatGPT. It takes a bunch of exercise movements, things like squat and wall sit, and combines them together at random to make new exercises, randomly prepending a country or state name, and randomly appending os or arinos or andos as a suffix. My favourite so far is Scottish Tricep Dip Kettlebell Swingandos.

Invent an Exercise

Tap the button to make up a random exercise.

What led me down this path of whimsy?

In mid-September I sent this email to Amila Topic, owner of Kinetic Fitness, after Lisa suggested her name as a good person to reach out to about launching a fitness regime:

I was an active YMCA kid from ages 8 to 16, involved in all manner of things (gymnastics, racquetball, swimming, basketball…). I loved moving, being active, and revelled in it.

After that, a long period of sedentary, lasting into my 40s. Still an active walker/cyclist by times, but nothing intentional nor organized.

A year-long stint at the UPEI fitness centre when I was 43, with an intention of achieving some basic fitness goals, guided by a plan that Stan Chaisson put in place. This drew to a close when I experienced an unusual fascia injury in my side that has eluded diagnosis or effective treatment since, but which has gradually receded from being problematic. More significant than the injury itself was the “fitness = bad, risky, boring” attitude I left with.

From age 48 to 54 I supported my late partner through incurable cancer, until her death in 2020. This was a long period of stress, internalized emotions, and little movement.

In 2020 I started cycling more, and began using my bicycle to get around places I used to drive (grocery shopping, etc.). I began to appreciate how, slowly and steadily, I felt my capacity and endurance grow. I haven’t kept this up at the same pace in the 3 summers most recent, but I have continued to cycle.

Since late 2021 Lisa and I have been together, and I’ve seen the benefits in her emotional and physical health that come from working out in a disciplined, regular fashion.

Simultaneously, I learned to ride horses over a stretch of 18 months, and have practised improv for the last two years, and each has instilled in me the re-realization that any practice, entered deliberately and practiced intentionally, can result in growth. In a sense I’ve found the faith that “effort pays off.”

Now I’m 57. I am intrigued by the idea of taking on some kind of regular fitness practice. I don’t seek to run marathons or learn to kite surf, and I’m not looking to pursue fitness religiously, for its own sake. But I do want to build strength, endurance, flexibility, and to prepare my body for a healthier next 50 years.

I’m almost completely naive with regards to all things fitness, so I’m an empty vessel. I don’t know which muscles are called what. My three-dimensional sense is weak, so it takes me longer than typical to figure out the geometry of body movements when they are demonstrated or described to me. The difficulties of the last decade have gifted me a “What’s the worst thing that could happen?!” gusto for trying new things. I suspect my upper limit of capability is somewhat higher than I’ve ever imagined; I’m interested in finding out.

I think it might help to start or with some one-on-one training.

Amila referred me to Cayla Jardine-Hunter, one of the trainers at Kinetic, and a few weeks later, after an exploratory consultation, I signed up for a block of 12 personal training sessions in the gym. My first workout was on September 14, 2023. I’ve been working out twice a week ever since, and I’m about to re-up for another block of 12.

It seemed like a privileged luxury to have a “personal trainer,” one of those sentences that started with “I’m not the kind of person who…” that I’ve been trying hard to wiggle my way out from underneath the weight of. Brian Grazer has a personal trainer, I imagine. I didn’t produce A Beautiful Mind.

And yet Lisa had shown me, by working out twice a week with her own trainer, the benefits of outsourcing some of the rigour. From “just showing up” to formulating the workout, to tracking practice, to something as simple as just doing the movement count. I knew from my last dalliance with exercise, the one I wrote Amila about at UPEI, more than a decade ago, which I tried to self-manage, that I needed help.

And Cayla has proved an ideal helper: she met me where I showed up, she’s excellent at demonstrating movements, at dosing out encouragement and guidance, at helping me understand what we’re up to together, and at (and this seems like a weird thing to outsource, but it’s so, so helpful) counting movements (8, 7, 6, 5… halfway there… 4, 3, 2, 1).

Working out has its own arcane language, a language I’m only just beginning to grasp (I still get dumbbell and barbell confused; for most of my life I thought they were the same thing). Hence the whimsical JavaScript game, a game that produces exercises that, in truth, don’t sound implausible after the 15 weeks I’ve been at this. “We’re going to start with some dead lifts, then do a wave with ring rows and reverse press squats, and end with a Tabata finisher.”

There is method to this madness, I realize: working out can get boring very quickly. After all, it’s purposeless, in the moment: it’s not like I’m helpfully moving crates of cauliflower from ship to shore; I’m doing made up stuff to move my body in helpful ways because I don’t move my body in helpful ways in my regular everyday life. Having a varied program of moving every week, that’s a big help for boredom mitigation. So bring on the Russian Twist Deadliftandos: I need novelty to keep it fresh.

Do I love it?

Not completely. I keep going, week after week. I haven’t faltered. Some mornings I wake up and think “fuck, it’s Tuesday.” Some mornings, though, I think, honestly, “I get to work out today!”

And nothing beats the feeling of just having worked out, no matter how exhausting it is.

When Cayla first introduced the Tabata, I had no idea what she was talking about. I thought she might have said Tabatha. I think I called it the Tabatha for a few weeks.

The Tabata was invented by Izumi Tabata, a Japanese scientist who conjured it up as a particularly efficient way of high-intensity interval training. Basically, you work out hard for 20 seconds, rest for 10, and repeat. Four minutes in total. With a variety of movements. Accompanied by music purpose-built to the task. It’s all another bit of workout arcana. And as much as it’s exhausting, it’s also (kind of) fun.

Yesterday Cayla wasn’t available for a workout, so I worked out with Lisa and her trainer Matt for the first time. We finished up with a Tabata. Afterwards Matt texted that I was welcome to join Lisa whenever Cayla wasn’t available, finishing with:

any fitness is better than no fitness at all in a pinch.

I went through “no fitness at all” for way, way too many years, for reasons myriad. Laziness, fear, procrastination, time claustrophobia. And, maybe most significantly, not sitting inside my body confidently, not seeing it as a machine worthy of, deserving of, capable of, improvement, honing, longevity. 

This fall that changed. And that makes me really happy.

I’ll be back at the Bolivian Flutter Kick Lunges next Tuesday.