Tabatas and Time Management

What is a Tabata and why are they becoming more popular amongst the performance enhancement community? A Tabata is a form of short, highly intense exercise that has been found to be very helpful for the conditioning of combat athletes. The workout is an interval training cycle of 20 seconds of maximum intensity exercise, followed by 10 seconds of rest. This cycle continues without pause 8 times for a total of four minutes.

The name of the exercise was derived from its founder, Dr Izumi Tabata, a Japanese researcher from the National Institute of Fitness and Sports. It was found that this training method produced both anaerobic and aerobic benefits in only four minutes of time.

You can adapt most exercises to this training protocal. For example, a trainee could perform this workout using pushups, squats, medicine ball throws, and chin-ups to name a few. Or you could you could lengthen the workout by adding separate intervals of a different exercise.

For those fitness participants who are interested in fat loss, you may find Tabatas to be a time efficient metabolism booster and a fresh change of pace from the typical 30-60 minutes of mindless cardio. The intensity of the Tabata is what delivers more bang for your buck from a fat burning perspective. Your fat burning metabolism is revved up post exercise due to EPOC (Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption) so that your body is burning calories around the clock versus traditional cardio.

So, if you find that you need a break from conventional aerobic exercise due to time constraints or you just want to mix up your training, then give Tabatas a try!