What is the history of the Tabata experiment?
Tabata HIIT was discovered by Dr. Izumi Tabata and a team of researchers from the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo.
Dr. Tabata studied two groups of athletes - one group worked out at a moderate intensity level, 1 hour a day, 5 days a week, for 6 weeks.
The second ground worked out at a high intensity level, just 4 minutes and 20 seconds a day, 4 days a week, for 6 weeks.
What were the Tabata experiment results?
The moderate intensity group increased their aerobic fitness, but showed no gains to their anaerobic fitness.
The high intensity group increased their aerobic system more than the first group as well as increased their anaerobic system by 28%.
Dr.Tabata discovered that 4 minutes of high intensity exercise could yield tremendous results.
What is the structure of a Tabata workout?
Tabata is a 4 minute workout of 8 rounds of 20 seconds of high intensity exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest:
- 20 seconds of max effort
- 10 seconds of rest
- Repeat 8 times for a total of 4 minutes.
What kind of exercises are good for Tabata?
You can run a Tabata for any type of exercise. For example you could do 8 sets of mountain climbers or switch up the exercise for every set to a different movement.
Pro tip: Create a Tabata template workout in IntervalCam and duplicate it to create Tabata styled workouts for all types of exercises and movements.
