A small shell script for doing interval training (or circuit training) coveniently from your desk. I was inspired to write this quick script after reading the NY Times "The Scientific 7-Minute Workout" article covering the HICT research by Kilka & Jordan. The workout from that manuscript is the default for this script.

The shell script loops through list of exercises (potentially user-supplied) and announces each one verbally (literaly, over your speakers) using the say command. The script sleeps between exercises using the sleep command. It has only been tested on Mac OSX.

First, you probably want to make the script executable

chmod a+x ./workout.sh

Do the default workout

./workout.sh

Or, you can supply a file with your own exercises, 1 per line

./workout.sh my-exercises.txt

Finally, here's how you would supply a file with your own exercises, 1 per line and do each for 45 seconds, resting for 20.

./workout.sh my-exercises.txt 45 20