A year ago I was introduced to the Tabata interval training method – to be precise, the Tabata squat interval. This unique exercise set originated from a study performed by Dr. Izumi Tabata at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo, Japan in 1997.
In this study, Dr. Tabata took a group of athletes and experimented with intervals. The experiment results showed that he was able to produce phenomenal improvements in anaerobic and aerobic conditioning in his test subjects with four minutes of high intensity interval training. The test results were published in the journal, Medicine in Sports and Exercise.
What was most incredible was that the 4-minute, high intensity group got better VO2 max improvements than the control group that followed a 60 minute regimen of moderate intensity training.
From this the Tabata Squat was born.
The actual set will only take 4-minutes in total. Complete 20 seconds of squats as quickly as you can, followed by 10 seconds of rest, then repeat another 7 times for a total of 8 intervals. Note, the trick is that you want a high amount of reps per interval because your personal score is the lowest number of completed reps in a single set. For example:
Interval 1 you complete 15, followed by 13, 13, 12, 12, 10, 10, and 7 in the last interval. Your personal score would be 7.
Check out some of the videos on the Crossfit.ca website for examples of this drill in action. Then challenge yourself and friends to see who can score the highest…
My workout sets yesterday went as follows: 22, 22, 22, 21, 21, 21, 21, and lastly 21 reps on the 8th and final set. So my final score was 21.
Give it a shot and post your results to comments. Happy squating!
(Note: you can take this training principal and do pretty much any exercise you want – i.e. push-ups, sprints, chin-ups, dips, etc, etc)
Tabata Squat is now on tomorrows workout agenda.
[...] Tabata Squats: So you think you’re tough do you? [...]
I was trying to do tabata pushups. It was 25 in first 20 seconds, then 22, 18, 9 and … thats all
I was unable to do anymore.
At another day I was doing one round push-ups, one round squats, push-ups, squats… It was much easier than doing only pushups
[...] from a previous post: “Complete 20 seconds of each exercise as quickly as you can, followed by 10 seconds of rest, [...]
You can find a Tabata Timer for your iPhone or iPod Touch at http://www.katr.com/iphone.php#tabata. It has visual as well as auditory cues so that you can watch or listen for your activity and rest periods. If you are listening to music on your device, the sound cues will overlay your music. It really helps keep you focused on your workout without worrying about your timing.