Basic Pursuits

I'm always searching for ways to get the most out of exercise in the shortest period of time. Like many people I don't have an hour and a half to two hours to devote to working out.

One thing I've found that's very effective is interval training. Basically, interval training involves periods of high energy output interlaced with periods of rest. The Swedes who discovered this method of training call it fartlek, which means "speed play" in Swedish. Interval training these days is often referred to as HIIT, or "High Energy Interval Training."

Over time, I've developed several routines that address the two exercise requirements of fast and effective. But recently I discovered Tabata Intervals, sometimes known at the Tabata Protocol, which may be the golden fleece of HIIT.

What is Tabata? A better question is, who is Tabata?

Izumi Tabata is a Japanese exercise physiologist who was involved with training his country's speed skating team in the mid-90s. His research team set out to find out the optimal interval for HIIT. How long to work? How long to rest? And how many of these intervals should a person do? His research came up with the perfect solution to the problem of getting really a great workout quickly. Listen to this.

Tabata's optimal time for working is 20 seconds. Followed by a 10 second rest. One period of work plus one of rest is one interval. Eight intervals is a workout. Do the math. That's just four minutes.
Of course, you want to put in a warm-up. Mine's six to eight minutes. Then I do a cool-down for about seven minutes.

I'm done in under 20 minutes and believe me, I know I've done some exercise. I'm worn out. But I recover fast with a nice sense of well-being. In fact, my experience over the last few weeks is that Tabatas are incredibly energizing.

Tabata's research team did a six-week study in which it compared a group of trained athletes doing Tabata intervals to another group that simply did aerobic exercise for an hour. Both groups exercised five days a week. The Tabata exercisers increased their aerobic capacity by 14%; the aerobic exercisers by 9%. In addition the Tabata exercisers increased their anaerobic capacity by 28%. The aerobic exercisers saw no increase in their anaerobic capacity. (Anaerobic refers to exercise like sprinting when the body exhausts its oxygen stores.) Here is an abstract of the Tabata study.

Earlier this week, I decided to do a six-week Tabata "experiment" of my own. I started day before yesterday and intend to report on my progress here. I'm going to post my exercise log plus a few measurements that I took the evening before I started.

Stay tuned.