You’d have to be crazy to think you could get fit in four minutes.
But you’d be wrong. It turns out that ‘less’ can actually be ‘more’ where fitness is concerned.
Science has proven that just four minutes of super high intensity exercise can burn some serious fat, while improving physical fitness.
Enter ‘Tabata’ training. You’ve probably heard of the Japanese training protocol, created by scientist Dr Izumi Tabata, which has been around for several years.
But how does it work, how do you do it and what results can you get doing just four minutes a day?
Dr Tabata’s research was stunning. He had two groups of people training for six weeks – one doing moderate intensity exercise five times a week and the other doing high intensity intervals.
The difference was dramatic – the first group totalled 1,200 minutes of cardio over the study and the Tabata group just 120 minutes.
But the results were incredible. He found that this super-fast training protocol increased both aerobic capacity (V02 Max – oxygen consumption) and also boosted anaerobic performance by 28 per cent.
The brilliant thing about Tabata is it also creates a calorie ‘afterburn’ effect. So you not only burn calories during the workout but also for hours and hours afterwards (It’s what’s know as EPOC training – excess post-exercise oxygen consumption).
HIIT training in general is great at boosting your resting metabolism, even past the 24 hour mark.
Basically, doing this Tabata type training can get you fitter but also build lean muscle and burn fat.
So what do you have to do?
The protocol is simple. It’s just 20 seconds of flat-out, maximum effort exercise followed by a 10-second rest period, repeated eight times.
It almost sounds too easy, but if you’re doing it right you’ll be in pieces by the end.
In order to get all the brilliant benefits of Tabata you need to hit it as hard as you can – so anywhere from 80 per cent to 100 per cent of your V02 max.
Tabata workouts work best with cardiovascular training like sprints, rowing and cycling.
But other metabolically demanding exercises like burpees, squat jumps and mountain climbers can be incorporated into your Tabata plan.
So one example would be 20 seconds of sprinting, followed by 10 seconds rest. Then 20 seconds of burpees and 10 seconds rest, repeated four times.
Remember with high intensity interval training it’s always vital to warm up doing active mobility and then warm down afterwards. The last thing you want is an injury.
