Hi this is Matthew coming to you with Tabata. You may be asking: whats Tabata? Tabata is a form of a workout that you do for 4 minutes straight. Well not exactly straight. It's broken down so that you do the exercise for 20 seconds then rest for 10 seconds and it's done for a total of 4 minutes. It's a tiring workout and you'll feel sore after, but like anything you do the more practice you get at it, the better you'll be.
Tabata was invented in 1996 by a Japanese man called Izumi Tabata as an alternative version of HIIT (high intensity interval training). He did a study of how it would affect the body and what the benefits are. He found that doing athletes using this method trained 4 times per week, plus another day of steady-state training, and obtained gains similar to a group of athletes who did steady state training(70% VO2max) 5 times per week. The steady state froup had a higher VO2max at the end (from 52 to 57 ml/(kg min), but the Tabata group had started lower and gained more overall (48 to 55 mL/(kg min). Also, only the Tabata group gained anaerobic capacity benefits. Yeah i don't really know what most the words they're using means, but overall it will increase your fitness level.
Tabata's only one type of HIIT you can do. Theres also: Peter Coe, Gibala and Timmons. Peter Coe focuses on running. Peter Coe (the guy who came up with the idea) was influenced by the German coach and university professor Woldemar Gerschler and a Swedish physiologist Per-Olof Astrand (don't ask me how to say his name because I don't know how). His method involved running 200 metres repeatedly with only 30 seconds of recovery between each fast run. Gibala focuses on long term stamina. Professor Martin Gibala and his team at McMaster University in Canada have been focusing on high intensity training for many years. He did a study in 2009 with students. The workout envolved a 3 minute warmup, followed by 60 seconds of an intense exercise and ending with a 75 second rest. This process is repeated for 8-12 times. There's also an easier version that he created in 2011, it includes a 3 minute warmup, 10 repetitions of 60 second bursts at 60% peak power each followed by 60 seconds of recovery and ends with a 5 minute cool down. Timmons focuses on biking. Jamie Timmons a biology professor at Loughborough university came up with the idea of flat-out intensity. It consisted of three 2 minute sets of pedaling followed by 20 second bursts of cycling at max effort.
As you can tell, there's many different forms of training that you can do, you just have to find the one for you.
