Posted in: Workouts / Goal Setting

All things Tabata

Hi all!

As promised, I’m posting a reminder that some of us are going to try out a Tabata-themed week starting tomorrow (Monday). You can find the proposed schedule in the original post - https://www.fitnessblender.com/community/discussion/9014/invitation-to-a-tabata-week

Everyone is welcome to join in, at any time and any manner suitable for them. The basic idea is to explore a little bit about the Tabata structured workouts and see how we like them (and how they go together back-to-back).

I’ve personally done Tabata only occasionally, when it popped up, no more than once a week, and I usually needed a good rest afterwards – so let’s not forget those important things K&D taught us – listen to your body, watch your form, drop the weight (or insert extra breaks) if your form starts to suffer, don’t work the same muscle group if it’s still sore, modify and reschedule as needed. In short – make it work for YOU! :)

I believe it’s going to be challenging, but I don’t see it as a “challenge” in the sense of a set goal to achieve, more like an open-ended experiment and a chance to learn about Tabata, and ourselves, our preferences, fitness goals etc.

If you’re stil with me (zzzzz) and while on the subject of “learning about Tabata” – I first thought that Tabata-style meant working out in cycles of 4 minutes per exercise (20sec on, 10 off, 8x), and that’s the structure of the chosen FB workouts for the week. But after reading some more about it, I realized we will not be doing true Tabata, but HIIT workouts with Tabata timing. And although this definition involves the word HIIT, don’t be alarmed :D it’s actually less intense than the original idea of a 4-min Tabata repeat. For more info here’s the link where I read about it - https://www.escapefitness.com/when-is-tabata-not-tabata. I don’t think any of us would want to do just 4 minutes a day, one Tabata cycle, but so intense (at 170% VO2max) that it would be almost impossible to do more. Let’s leave those kinds of experiments to professional athletes who know what they are doing or are under expert supervision, and take out from the Tabata idea only the parts that best suit us (i.e. the timing)

Ok I wandered off too much… I promise I’ll stick to the task at hand in the following check-ins, and for tomorrow it will be this - https://www.fitnessblender.com/videos/lower-body-toning-workout-56-minute-butt-and-thigh-tabata-workout

If you would like to do this killer lower body strength workout, but are not sure about the rest of the week, no worries, feel free to hop in for a day and hop out at any time. The same applies to any of the proposed workouts, in any order. And the not proposed :) - if anything with “Tabata” in the title, or with 8 sets per exercise, happens to pop up in your own schedule, drop by our check-ins and let us know. Let’s make this an all-things-Tabata week! :)

See you in tomorrow’s first day check-in. Cheers!