Tabata Training

Fancy a 4 minute challenge, which involves 1 minute 20 secs of rest but has proved to make you fitter, stronger, and increase your fat burning potential?! Then try Tabata training – a Japanese researcher called Izumi Tabata invented it.

You can use this training idea on different exercises and machines, but I have found the rower, upright bike, dumb bell squat and press the better ones to use. However, do try different exercises. I’ll show the rower and dumb bell squat and press as examples.

To do the Tabata protocol you simply work flat out for 20 secs rest for 10 secs and repeat 8 times in total.

The idea is to try to match the previous distance. The rower is a really good one to set it up on as you can set the readout to record these timed intervals.

Using the Dumb bell squat and press you will need someone to time it for you. Pick a weight that is about 50% of your normal 12 rep weight. Then off you go again – don’t put the dumb bells down in-between sets.

Again the idea is to match what you previously did – but from experience it’s very hard to keep digging that deep. And the 10 sec rest period feels like 1 sec and the working 20 secs feels like hours!

Give it a go! Introduce Tabata training to your current programme as an extra bonus and try it with any exercise you want. However it is best used for big multi joint moves and not biceps.

By Mark Dopson
Fitness Professional, Rainham