Tabatas!

No, it’s not the forbidden dance! Those of you under 30 won’t get that joke!

Today I tried tabatas for the first time. I’d heard about them for a while, but never tried them.

Tabatas are a way of using exercises in anaerobic intervals. Most HIIT routines include aerobic activities in various intensities. The rest periods are typically twice as long as the work periods. Tabatas flip that ratio on its head!

Tabatas feature a 20 second work period, followed by a 10 second rest period. Lather rinse and repeat, eight total times for four minutes of exhaustion.

Today was an upper body day so I tried them with pushups first. That was tough. I had to go to my knees for the last couple sets. Then, I wanted to try something else. I wanted a pulling motion to balance out the pressing from the pushups. So, I tried Face Pulls. I decided that this wasn’t a good exercise for Tabatas. Isolation, or accessory exercises don’t work well for this. I completed the tabata, but decided that I need a much larger movement to make this work.

The third and final tabata was with body weight squats. Oh man! That’s an exercise. I did about 80 body weight squats in 4 minutes. Next time I’ll load the squat…..lightly, very lightly!

If you decided to do loaded squats, be sure to do front squats, or use dumbbells. Back squats are to much work to rack, and unrack. Those ten seconds aren’t enough time.

Be aware that gyminee does not have a good way of recording these exercises. You can record eight sets of the exercise but it won’t capture the true expenditure of calories you get from tabatas.

I’ll let you know how sore I feel tommorrow!

glutamine do it……lol good luck with the pain man

Eh, I’m sticking with strictly whole foods. Because I feel that we ca…..ah, who am I kidding. I’m too poor to afford supplements. Instead I invest in cottage cheese and used tennis balls.

lol I just got some cottage cheese to make some famous cottage cheese pancakes…. should be pretty good, yea sups are very expensive in my opinion to I try to buy them when I have extra money. Since I have gave up eating out or my weekend binge I throw that towards supplements works out pretty well!

I did another round with the squats this morning. So far, no real soreness. I’m digging the tabatas. I’ll be trying burpees, sprawls, etc. I’m looking for more exercises to use.

Try lunges too! They work great.

Have you tried doing Tabata Cardio exercises, like the Stationary Bike or Punchbag? I use the Punchbag fairly regularly and Tabata really takes it out of me.

Liz, I think that lunges would work well. I haven’t tried them because I’ve hurt my knee when trying to do them too quickly. I think I still need to groove that pattern. So, I think its a good idea, but I’ll wait before I try it.

MMCC, those are good ideas as well. I don’t have a stationary bike or punching bag. But, I intend to try tabats on the eliptical.

I have to say that I’m a bit sore today, but no more so than usual. And tabatas are just one of many things that I did this week.

At my crossfit level 1 cert, we had to do bottom-to-bottom tabata squats. Basically, resting in the squatted position. That was hard!

I started doing Tabatas this week. Started with running, then switched to a recumbent bike to avoid high impact and injuries. I’m going to try it on a row machine and the Precor AMT later. I’m trying to shorten my workout and make it more efficient, and low-impact Tabatas seem the way to go for me.

I think Tabatas were originally used to compare cardio interval training to endurance training by measuring aerobic and anaerobic improvement, so I don’t know how or if Tabatas apply to strength training, but I’ve seen several instances where people are applying it like some of the posts above and on other sites.

Just coming to the end of a tabata month. At least 3 workouts per week taken from Muscule and Fitness Magazine April 09. Tabata is brutal, you end up delaying the start with idle chat as you know the pain train is coming. It is addictive though and I am not sure whether I can go a week without some sort of tabata input. If you want real pain try tabata sprints not sure what tasted worst, blood in the lungs or puking. If anyone wants the workouts from the magazine I have them typed up and can email.
Also threw in some of the crossfit girls this month – Fran of course, but Chesea is good but for a real test look for Fight Gone Bad on you tube, it’s pure pain.
Good luck.