Tabata Intervals: The Fast Way to Fitness

To succeed in events that require a lot of stamina and endurance, you need various weapons in your competitive armoury. However, for an endurance athlete hoping to perform at an elite level, a high level of aerobic power (also known as VO2max) is really a minimum requirement.

Aerobic power is extremely important for just about any endurance athlete seeking to perform at their best. An advanced level of aerobic power helps you to run, cycle or swim faster for a longer time.

Achieving a high level of performance in virtually any stamina-based competition will take years of training, which is required to develop a strong foundation of conditioning. Having said that, there is an expanding body of research to indicate that it is possible to significantly improve your VO2max in three weeks or less.

Interval training has formed a large part of runners exercise programmes for a number of years. It requires rounds of intense exercise (i.e. sprinting) interspersed with periods of low intensity exercise (such as walking or jogging).

In the last few years, a branch of interval exercise often known as high intensity intermittent exercise (HIIE) has built a track record of providing fast improvements in VO2max – in some cases employing workouts lasting just less than five minutes. HIIE (which has also been referred to as tabata intervals – http://muscleevo.com/tabata-intervals-fat-loss/) entails brief bouts of maximal effort lasting 30 seconds or less. Rest periods can range from between 10 seconds and five minutes.

Leading exercise experts think that high intensity intermittent exercise routines can play a huge role in boosting your aerobic power in the period before a race or event.

For example, scientists at the University of Barcelona tested a HIIE programme lasting just a fortnight. The plan involved daily workout sessions comprising 15-second maximal effort work intervals, accompanied by forty five seconds of rest. Following just two weeks of training, VO2max had increased by a striking eleven percent – a change normally associated with programmes lasting considerably longer.

Even more interesting is an investigation from a team at Japan’s National Institute of Fitness and Sport. The researchers analyzed a pair of exercise routines, the first made up of conventional moderate intensity exercise (cycling) for 60 minutes, 5 days each week. The other training routine involved high intensity intermittent exercise, and contained 8 all-out work bouts lasting twenty seconds, with 10 seconds of rest. Despite the fact that each workout lasted just four minutes, aerobic power gains in the HIIE test subjects were 55% higher than those in the traditional steady-state cardio group.

Similar discoveries have been documented in numerous other experiments, some involving just ten all-out work bouts lasting thirty seconds each. Even the investigators were astonished at their findings, describing such remarkable changes in aerobic power as surprising, in light of the short length of each workout.

Not only has HIIE demonstrated exceptional effects on aerobic power, research shows it may also supercharge your endurance performance. A research group from the University of Cape Town Medical School analyzed the effects of 5 unique variations of interval training on a 40km race. The length of the work periods varied between half a minute and 8 minutes. Each cyclist performed a total of half a dozen training sessions over a three-week time period, performing their usual training on separate days. You

The thirty second work bouts led to a significant improvement in results, while intervals lasting one minute had no effect. Even though scientists weren’t sure why the thirty second bouts were so effective, they suggest that short, more intense work periods can make the body more resistant to tiredness.