Hate cardio? Want to hate it even more?
Welcome to the wonderful world of tabata training, a type of High Intensity Interval Training that last only a mere 4 minutes but will give you the results you are yearning for much more effectively then you mincing about on the treadmill for an hour at a time.
Tabata training hails from Japan, discovered and named after, well you probably guess Dr Tabata!
Dr Tabata did a study on 2 groups of participants, one group doing moderate intensity exercise vs the second group who did high intensity training and the results spoke for themselves.
The first group showed an improvement in there aerobic performance, which benefits your cardio vascular system, but nothing in their anaerobic, which benefits your muscles as you work without taking in enough oxygen to break down your lactic acid etc
The second group improved in both, with an impressive 28% in their anaerobic performance and a greater increase in aerobic performance than the first group.
The fun doesn't stop there, you fat burning is going to be vastly increased and your body will enter EPOC or Excess Post - Exercise Oxygen Consumption where your body goes wild trying to return you back to how you were before you decided to abuse yourself with some Tabata training.
This means calories expenditure, repairing muscles and replenishing energy doesn't just happen, calories are needed to sort your life out, with some cases doubling your metabolic rate and potentially lasting up 36 hours this is nothing to be sniffed at.
The average tabata training burns about 13.5 kcals a minute so with my quick maths that would be 54kcals from each 4 minute session.
This might sound tiny but when you burn about 300 kcals in an hour on a treadmill and you are going to get greater results from 4 minutes of Tabata training overall while also boosting your testosterone much more and helping to build muscle rather than losing it
Hopefully I have sold you on Tabata training now but I should probably actually tell you how to do it!
You go all out for 20 seconds and rest for the 10 seconds, rinse and repeat 8 times which should add up to 4 minutes in total including your rest periods.
You should also include a good warm up of all the muscles that you be using and a cool down.
I recommend going for exercise that hit a lot of muscles to maximise work like squats, press ups, mountain climbers, kettlebell training and my favourite, the rowing machine!
Due to the intensity it is not recommended to attempt this on a treadmill as you would have to get off and on it as a high speed which as funny as it is to see someone shoot off a treadmill it is dangerous and should be avoided.
You will probably start off thinking that this is easy but by the end you will agree that Tabata training is 4 minutes of pure hell and if you don't then you are not working hard enough!
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