In Just Four Minutes

June 18, 2014

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could replace your hour-long exercise routine with a four-minute exercise that actually gave you better results?

Research shows that you can.

The Four-Minute Miracle, as it is often dubbed, is called Tabata, a protocol developed by professor Dr. Izumi Tabata to train Japanese Olympic speed skaters.

Dr. Tabata and a team of researchers from the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo conducted research on two groups of athletes: one group trained at a moderate intensity level while the other group trained at a high intensity level. The moderate intensity group worked out five days a week for a total of six weeks; each workout lasted one hour. The high intensity group worked out four days a week for six weeks; each workout lasted four minutes.

The results: group one had increased their aerobic system (cardiovascular), but showed little or no results for their anaerobic system (muscle). Group two showed much more increase in their aerobic system than group one, and increased their anaerobic (fat-burning system) by 28 percent!

Now wait, really?  The group of premiere athletes who worked out just 16 minutes a week out-performed the group of premiere athletes who worked out 5 hours a week?

Yes, yes, as a matter of fact they did. So how does that work?

The Tabata Program

The Tabata workout lasts only four minutes, but don’t be fooled.  It may be one of the longest four minutes you’ll encounter. The structure of the program is:

• Workout hard for 20 seconds
• Rest for 10 seconds
• Complete eight rounds

You push yourself as hard as you can for 20 seconds and rest for 10 seconds until you complete eight sets. You can do pretty much any exercise you wish. You can do squats, pushups, rows-any exercise that works your large muscle groups.

An example of a 20-second Tabata workout looks like this:

*Pushups

*Squats

*Rows

*Sit ups

This peer-reviewed research is hard to argue with, as counter-intuitive as it sounds.  So I am doing Tabata four days a week now. I do jumping jacks, mountain climbers, burpees and alternate elbow to knee touches.

You can use a stop watch on your phone but I use the free Tabata app that has the program all set up with music and prompts of when to exercise and when to rest. I programmed mine to play my favorite music and that keeps me motivated to work more intensively and more importantly, go the full 20 seconds per interval. It is good to remember that this is an INTENSE exercise so check with your doctor or trainer before you begin if you have health concerns.

If you can talk yourself into four minutes, you’ll see results quite rapidly. The lament “I don’t have time to exercise” is now as obsolete as eight track tapes.