One of the conditioning practices I have been following for years is Tabata. It's basically a pretty short hiit session. The protocol calls for 20 seconds of "All out" effort followed by ten seconds of rest. This is done for eight rounds totaling four minutes. Four minutes of work, easy right?
Unfortunately I believe I was making this easier than it should have been for years. When I was in my more voluptuous stage I would do it with body weight movements such as squats, push ups, and crunches. I moved up to using kettlebell swings, then jump rope, and most recently squat thrusts.
All of the above taxed me pretty well at the time. The squat thrusts were the toughest until now. In my quest to get in better shape, I was doing a little research and got smacked with the reality that I'm probably not doing my Tabatas as they were intended. In order to illicit the results from the scientific study, you need to be working at 170 percent of VO2 max. From what I gathered, that's the highest amount of oxygen the body can consume and use for energy.
What does that all mean? You should pretty much feel like it's killing you in order to be doing it correctly. To test this theory out, I decided to use the original exercise from the study, a stationary bike. Luckily I have an Airdyne in my house. I bought it years ago off of Craigslist and the thing is indestructible. It's a great piece of conditioning equipment to have in your arsenal.
Well after one all out 20 second burst on the Airdyne I instantly knew I had not been doing Tabata correctly. I could hardly breathe. I took the ten second rest and then resumed the next 20 second burst. After the third rest period I just did not have enough in me for another all out burst. I took that twenty seconds off and slowly pedaled. I ended up getting the next and one other burst in.
Even though I had only completed four of the eight bursts, I was more fried than I can ever remember from conditioning work. When I got off of the bike I was dizzy to the point that I went to my knees as to not fall down. I stayed there hunched over a chair for a number of minutes where I worked on catching my breath. Even a good five minutes later as I climbed up the basement stairs I still felt light headed.
I have never been so excited about almost killing myself. At one point I did beat myself up a little about only making four of eight rounds, but so be it. I am going to keep working until I can get them all. When I get to that point, I know I'll be in a really good place conditioning wise.
The moral of the story, Tabata should be really hard! However, if it's not nearly killing you, it's ok, you are still doing work. Work really never goes wasted. I'd rather hear about someone doing easier conditioning than not bothering to get off the couch. But if you really want to get after it, try doing Tabata on the bike.
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