This system is by no means new seeing as the original study was done back in 1996. I am constantly very surprised by the amount of people that have still never heard of it.

We’ve been using Tabata training at M10 for a long time, some of our clients still don’t understand the real background behind the system (do they need to!). All they do know is that their conditioning flies up when they do them and they also shed large amounts of body fat. So with that I thought it was about time I enlightened some my readers on the study that gave the name to Tabata training and why it works so well.

Where did it originate from?

Well Tabata interval training originated from a study that was performed by Dr. Izumi Tabata (and his colleagues) at the Department of Physiology and Biomechanics, National Institute of Fitness and Sports, Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan.

The study?

Well two studies were conducted, both were over a six week period. Individuals trained for 60 minutes per day for 5 days per week at 70% of their VO2 max. After the training, the anaerobic capacity did not increase significantly but the VO2max increased just slightly. The other study used an interval training method which involved 7-8 sets of maximum effort for 20 seconds followed by 10 seconds of rest. The interval method showed an increase in anaerobic capacity of 28% and a larger increase in VO2 max.

Basically the study demonstrated that 60 minutes a day for 5 days over 6 weeks produced worse results than interval training for a fraction of the time. Interval training produced an increase in both the anaerobic and aerobic energy systems.

How can this help with fat loss?

Well intense interval training raises your metabolic rate for longer after your training session has been completed (see article here on interval training for fat loss). If you’re burning more calories in the hours after training you’re going to burn more body fat. There is a lot of evidence to show greater fat loss in individuals that interval train as opposed to those that spend hours doing long drawn out aerobic training on machines like the X trainer. One other bonus, interval training takes only 20 minutes.

What does a program look like?

Put simply, you choose an exercise from the list below and you work flat out for 20 seconds and then rest for 10 seconds. You repeat this sequence for 8 reps and then you rest for 2 minutes. You can then repeat the whole process again with the same exercise or choose another one.

Tabatas are supposed to be hard, if you don’t put a lot of effort in, you certainly won’t get much out of it. That’s why for the less conditioned of you, there is a tapering program to follow below:

Week 1 – 30 work : 60 rest x 8 sets
Week 2 – 30 work : 45 rest x 8 sets
Week 3 -  30 work : 30 rest x 8 sets
Week 4 – 20 work : 20 rest x 8 sets
Week 5 – 20 work : 10 rest x 8 sets – TABATA

Alternatively you can start with the 20 seconds of work and have a longer rest like this until you are ready to tackle the Tabata:

Week 1 – 20 work : 30 rest x 8 sets
Week 2 – 20 work : 20 rest x 8 sets
Week 3 – 20 work : 10 rest x 8 sets TABATA

Exercises to choose from include the following (google some of them if you are unsure):

Skipping Rope
Burpees
Jumping jacks
Split Jumps
Mountain climbers
Prowler push
Sled drag
Sprinting
Rowing machine
Spin Bike

As you can see the list is quite extensive, you can add more to the list but for now that will give you lots to work with.

If you’re ready to go, try this:

Burpees – 20 seconds on 10 seconds off x 8
Rest for 2 minutes
Burpees – 20 seconds on 10 seconds off x 8

How do you feel?

For many of our clients Tabatas act as a finisher to their strength based program, these do not replace the work that we do for the bulk of the main session.

Remember that Tabatas are like many other tools you have to increase your conditioning and strip body fat. Once you’ve hit a plateau, it’s time for a change.

Have fun!

If you would like to read the complete Tabata study you can see it here at Pub Med

For more information on our fat loss system, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it