How do you push yourself in training? What are you training for? Fitness, self-defense, the ring, the Octagon? In all of these cases interval training is key to being able to fight or compete. I remember reading something to the effect that, you may be a world champion, but if you’re tired enough, your abilities decrease to the point where almost anyone can defeat you. Not such a big deal in the gym or dojo, but in competition? How about in a real fight for your life? That’s where interval training comes in, and great training aids like interval timers.
As some of you might recall, I’m a little old-school, but I am also a little past banging on pots and pans to signal the start and end of a round. Since the mid-80’s, I have had some sort of timer. In fact, I just retired the old one about 3 years ago (see the museum piece on the right? Still have it!) . Since then, I have played with several apps on iPhones and Android, and have now settled on the Impetus Interval Timer.
What do I like about it? Many things! It’s easily configured for whatever you want to do in terms of timing activities. You can set the number, duration, and rest period between rounds. You can set up multiple presets for training, for fighting, and for bodyweight or other training. For example, if you’re going to do some grappling for technique, and want to set up 8-minute rounds, followed by 3 minute sparring rounds, and then two-minutes of just kicking, you can do that, and save it for later. It can warn you before the end of the round, and you can even set it to text-to-voice for all of the warnings and tones, or your own tones. Plus, it lets you play music from your device at the same time, and will pause and silence the music during warning tones or sounds. Finally, it’s optimized for phones and tablets, and looks great on both. All of this, and it’s free for Android. There is an unlocked version for less than $2.00, but I used it for about a year with the free version and loved it.
How about you? What do you use for interval training? Please let other readers know in the comments what you use, what platform (iOS, Android, browser-based), and what you like about it.
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