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Train Like An Olympian: The Tabata Workout
In this day and age, everyone is looking for a quick fix. And although there's no such thing, there's something called Tabata, and it only takes four minutes.
It’s almost too good to be true to believe that four minutes –- in fact, only 2.4 minutes of actual “work” – could be instrumental in helping you reach your fitness and physique goals.
However, Tabata is one of most efficient and effective high intensity interval training (HIIT) protocols around, utilised by both Olympic and elite athlete coaches in sports such as rowing, swimming, boxing, mixed martial arts (MMA) and cycling.
What is Tabata?
Tabata was named after Dr. Izumi Tabata, Ph.D, a former researcher at Japan's National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Kanoya, who learned about the workout from the coach of the Japanese national speed-skating team.
Specifically, the session consists of eight maximum-intensity work periods lasting 20 seconds each, with a mere 10 second rest in between. The 10 second rest does not include lying down, getting a drink, talking to friends or admiring the form of the person doing one legged toe touches on the bosu ball next to you. If you have the time or the energy to do any of the above, then quite simply, you’re not pushing hard enough in the work intervals!
What exactly will these four minutes of suffering accomplish? It will boost your aerobic and anaerobic capacity simultaneously (allow you to go further and faster), increase your fatigue tolerance, and continue to burn an obscene amount of fat for up to 48 hours after the workout has finished.
In addition, I will guarantee that you will learn a valuable lesson in exactly how much you want to embrace hard work to reach your goals.
The workout
For the ultimate in full body fat blasting, I have combined four of my favourite exercises into a mini circuit. You will complete one four-minute station of each exercise before taking a two minute rest and moving onto the next one.
Remember, the aim is to complete as many full and complete repetitions of each exercise in each set of 20 seconds. Warning: vomiting, whilst not mandatory, has been known to occur.
• Treadmill hill sprints: Sprint for 20 seconds and rest for 10 seconds.
• Thrusters: Squat with dumbbells and push up on every ascent.
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| Be sure to give it your 100 percent during the 20 seconds. |
• Burpees: From standing position, squat down, get into plank position, tuck your knees back in and ascend into a jump. Repeat.
• Pull ups: Hang from a bar and pull up until your chin is above the bar. Repeat.
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| It may take some time before you can even do one pull up, but keep trying. |
The beauty of tabata is that its training parameters can slide across most sporting disciplines, it is able to act as both a cardiovascular and strength conditioning workout depending on the exercises you choose, and if you’re stuck in a hotel room without any gym facilities, you can do a bodyweight version.
You can use a single four minutes as a “finisher” after a weights workout, as a metabolism booster in the morning, as a sports specific addition to a workout, or as above, just as a general stand-alone full body conditioning workout.
There is no definitive list of training options; you have the freedom to create your own. So, in saying that, what’s your excuse, as it surely can’t be time?
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