We absolutely love Tabata. Done well you really can get all the workout you need in just 3 x 4 minute sessions each week. In practice each session should be a minimum of 20minutes. A good warm-up is essential to avoid injuries and to prepare you for the intensity of the Tabata session. We work on the basis of 10 minutes warm-up, 4 minutes max rate plus Tabata, and 4 minutes warm-down. The other couple of minutes is absorbed in transitions within the stages.
This is Why 90% of Tabata Training Videos are Useless
In truth, 90% plus of what you see on the internet that pretends to be Tabata is at best misleading and at worst is useless (an may be positively dangerous). There are 3 basic problems:
- The Exercises are wholly inappropriate
- The intensity of the exercises is far too low
- There is no understanding of the principles that under pin Tabata
We have written a post on the characteristics of good Tabata exercises. Visit the link for more information. For now we will just repeat – good Tabata exercises engage the whole body and are capable of being performed repeatedly at your maximum intensity.
The whole point of this post is to give some examples of what we mean by maximum intensity. This is one of the best examples we have found. Sure, it is based on spinning but it provides a good view of what 8 sets of 20 seconds at max intensity should be mean whatever exercise you choose to take.
