Do Interval Workouts Like a Boss With This Timer

We’ve always loved interval workouts, but lately, we’ve really, really loved them. From timed circuit-training to Tabata (oh, Tabata, the love/hate relationship we have with you!), there’s nothing better than an interval workout to get you feeling the burn in a short amount of time. But timing those intervals, especially the short ones? Well, that gets tricky. When you’re working your tail off, breathing hard, giving it your all and sweating up a storm, the last thing you want to do (or, perhaps, even mentally or physically can do — who’s experienced that?! I have!), is track numbers and times.

And this is where the Gymboss MiniMax interval timer comes into play.

We already loved our first-edition Gymboss, but the new MiniMax takes things, well, to the max. A more advanced model, it’s pretty easy to set up (it took me about 10 minutes to figure it out with the directions, but I consider myself to be pretty tech daft) and can time up to 25 different intervals. You can repeat those intervals up to 99 times (goodness, can you imagine that workout?!) and the entire sequence up to 99 times (again, crazypants). You can set the alarm to beep, vibrate or both and you can save up to 20 programs that you set up. There’s a stopwatch function, a clock, a belt clip, and it’s sweat and shock resistant.

For less than $30, it’s a sound investment if you do intervals a lot. It’s simply perfect for Tabata, and I loved placing the Gymboss MiniMax timer on my belt and set to vibrate for my outdoor running intervals. It takes a little practice to be quick at setting your workouts up, but once it’s in there, you seriously just hit start and then go — no having to look at your watch again. Which is awesome. And with so many options, you can customize it to work with pretty much any workout.

Do you use a special interval timer? —Jenn