Six Weeks of Tabata

Dailydawdle.com

This was not easy.

I’ve mentioned doing tabatas on here before, but I’ve never committed to doing them regularly. Seriously, after doing one of those four minute stints, I barely want to think about them again for a week, yet alone do another! However, after reading about all of the great benefits for top athletes, I thought it was time to incorporate them into my weekly plan. So, for the last 6 weeks, most of my running has come in the form of 3 tabata interval sessions a week (aka 8 minutes of running weekly).

The very short lowdown on Tabata is that it’s a 4 minute exercise supplement designed to expand your aerobic and anaerobic thresholds. All it involves is 20 seconds exercising as hard as physically possible, followed by 10 seconds of pure rest, which you repeat 8 times. If you’re not chugging air like it’s going out of fashion by the end, then the exercise probably wasn’t intense enough.

There are a few changes I will freely admit to making from the original tabata protocols. The main issue was that, unlike the top, top athletes Dr Tabata was training, I had no means by which to check that I was reaching 170% of VO2 max. There was no way around this, so I just worked as hard as I could and hoped for the best.

Unlike the original test (which was done on bikes) I ran my intervals. I ran these outdoors, as running at over 15km/hr on a treadmill scares the living bejebus out of me, which meant I had to take some extra precautions;

• No tabatas if it’s slippery
• Run down streets with no driveways/car park entrances
• Only crossing roads during the 10s breaks
• Run without music
• Take care around other pedestrians

Some of these don’t make for ideal running conditions, and (as you can see below) I did on occasion deviate from the tabata protocol, putting my safety as the top priority if it became a battle between safety/completing the workout as precisely as possible.

However, running outdoors did have one massive plus, in that I was able to monitor how far I was running during each tabata. For the last 6 weeks, I’ve done 3 tabatas a week, which isn’t time to see much progress – I’ve heard it said that it takes 20 workouts to make a big difference – but there still is some change in my times, which makes me unbelievably happy.

* - 5-10 seconds added during one break for road safety ** - tabatas done at the end of workout

So as you can see, that’s a 3lb drop in weight, an inch off my waist and 12 bpm dropped in my HR (I’m sure that’s just a fluke, it seems too extreme). Since Christmas happened during the six weeks (leading to a max. weight of 160lbs during the time period!), I’m okay with losing so little, and, to my shock, my upper abs have started to make the occasional appearance.  Average speed went from 9.68 mph to 11.25 mph (11.7 if you use the slightly flukey 0.52 mile measures).

Unfortunately, I can’t get to a blood pressure monitor at the moment, but next time I have my BP checked, I’ll update you all. As you can see, though, it was on the low side anyway, so I’m not expecting much change there.

It’s worth pointing out that, aside from the noted changes, there have been some other big changes to my fitness! Before these six weeks, the fastest I had ever ran 1 mile non-stop was around 8:55 in August. I’m a really slow runner, and it’s something that I’ve always wanted to fix. Well, I can confirm that, after doing a mile test on the 27th, my new fastest time is 7:35! I think the most amazing part of that is that, in the last 6 weeks, I’ve done so little running. Aside from the Tabatas, I’ve run less than 15 miles in the last 6 weeks – even including the Tabatas, that’s less than 25 miles. Back when I recorded the 8:55, I was running 20 miles a week. Admittedly, I have played netball in that time, which does involve running, but I did that during the 20 mile weeks, too. Aside from running, I can now do 10 manly press-ups in a row, and 20 burpees.

I’m not saying that it’s all sunshine and lollypops – I probably couldn’t run as far now as I could have when I ran the 8:55 mile – but I think it’s amazing progress, considering that Tabatas are all about running for 20 seconds then stopping. I think the best quality that Tabatas produce is a fighting mentality – during that last interval, I’m usually so tired and sore that every part of my mind wants to give up, yet I push through as hard as I can until there’s nothing left to give. It’s not about the bare minimum, it’s about giving everything. By applying that mentality to other exercises, I’ve progressed so much faster.

I’ve got to say, I’m loving my change in speed, and even coming to appreciate the slight burn that comes with sprinting for (effectively) 2:40. I can’t say that any part of me loves Tabatas, however I love what they’re doing to me so much that I’m going to do the 6 week cycle again! I’m booked in to run a 5k in June, and the big goal is to run it in sub-25 minutes. The ‘there is a God and he loves me’ goal is sub-22, but I think that (in the short run) that’s just a pipe dream. I’m not giving up on long-distance running entirely, but for the immediate future I’m going to stick to sprintwork, and a max distance of 5k. The ‘plan’ for the next six weeks is 3 tabatas a week, plus one timed run a week of anywhere between 1-3 miles.

Tabata Resources

- Tabata Protocol. This gives a far better description of how to do the workout than I have above, and also gives beginner alternatives.
- There are two great articles at The Great Fitness Experiment - click here for one and click here for two.
- What Are Tabata Sprints? From Mark’s Daily Apple.  There’s a great video on there that I’d recommend, as it gives you an idea of just how tiring this will be!