It's Tuesday - which means we're in for another day of Tabata. Before we start, let's check in to a history class before phys. ed.
Tabata was fortunately (or unfortunately) invented by a man named Izumi Tabata. He developed a study with two groups - 1 group of athletes doing high intensity training (HIT) and 1 group of athletes doing high intensity interval training (HIIT). The results? The athletes using HIIT were able to train both their aerobic (exercise lasting more than 2 minutes) and anaerobic (exercise lasting less than 2 minutes) system, while the HIT athletes only showed significant improvements with their aerobic (exercise lasting more than 2 minutes) system.
Want another benefit to do Tabata? Well, it beats doing long distance running. As we established earlier, Tabata works both your anaerobic and aerobic system. In a study of moderate intensity exercise lasting 1 hour - 5 days a week for 6 weeks vs a HIIT Tabata workout for 4 days a week for 6 weeks, the HIIT Tabata group had shown an increase of 28% aerobic capacity as well as improvements to their anaerobic system.
Want to burn fat? Well you have a couple options, you can workout in a steady state (where your heart rate stays relatively the same) at about 65% of your max heart rate (and takes up a whole lot of your valuable time as you get to this stage) OR you can turn up your metabolism, forcing your heart rate to climb (and therefore require more energy) and burn more fat in the process as fuel. Turning up your metabolism also gives you a longer lasting effect, cause you to continue burning more fat in the next 28 hours or so.
So now that you know why Tabata is great for you, let's look at today's workout!
Only 4 minutes each exercise - 20 seconds on and 10 seconds off.
Complete 8 rounds. Rest 1 minute between exercises!
1. Burpees
2. Deadlifts
3. Push Ups
4. Kettlebell Swings
5. Kettlebell Russian Twist
6. Alternating Kettlebell Single Arm Row
Also, if your are looking for a Tabata timer app, just visit the App store and search for Interval Timer - Seconds by Runloop. I use this app for all of my Tabata workouts and swear by it. It's very easy to use; you can customize your warm up, cool down, breaks, etc and even pick whichever songs or playlists you want to play in the background.
Enjoy the workout guys!