I was recently talking to a friend who does a lot of weight training but not much cardio (he’s a boy!) and he was saying that he recently started including a Tabata workout at the beignning of his weights sessions and had reduced his body fat percentage as a result. I hadn’t really heard much but was intrigued…
I did a little bit of research into it and discovered that people have had great sresults with Tabata training.
The idea with Tabata is that it is 20 seconds maximum intensity exercise, followed by 10 seconds rest, repeated for a total of 8 minutes.
Intense exercise raises our basal metabolic rate (BMR), when you do repeated short bursts of intense exercise, your body has to increase its BMR to handle these demands. Increasing your BMR will mean an increase in the amount of fat that your body burns even when you’re not exercising. Developed by Dr Izumi Tabata in the 90’s, Dr Tabata noted that after completing Tabata training for 6 weeks, his subjects had a 28% increase in anaerobic capacity, as well as a 14% increase in their ability to consume oxygen. Source.
Time to give it a go…
| Tabata Treadmill Workout | ||
| Min | Speed KMPH | incline |
| 0-5min | 7 | 1 |
| 5-10min | 9 | 1 |
| 10-10.20 | 15 | 0 |
| 10.20-10.30 | 0 | 0 |
| 10.30-10.50 | 15 | 0 |
| 10.50-11 | 0 | 0 |
| REPEAT FOR MINUTES 11-18 | ||
| 18-25 | 6.4 | 1 |
Although this was only a 25 min workout I was seriously puffed and sweaty! For my rests, I just left the treadmill running and jumped off and on using the sides. Next time, when I’m not suffering from a cold, I will definitely increase the pace of my sprints to 15.5-16 KPH, and continue to increase them. You could set the level at whatever level is a real challenge with you.
I heard in one of Jillian Michael’s podcasts that you should ‘want to die’ after each 20sec hit of speed. Well I know I could have upped it a notch, but I did want to die by the end of my 8mins! Success.
I would definitely complete a Tabata workout again- I like how you only have to do it for a short time, and that it could work on any cardio machine or circuit workout. I think it’s a great pre work workout, and would be great combined with a weights circuit or PowerPlates workout.
It was the perfect workout this morning when I just wanted a quick, sweaty treadmill run!
I really love doing the treadmill exercise. I love executing it.
buy treadmill