READY
READY
Four minutes is a tabata session from start to finish, which is why most people arrive at this number. Eight rounds of twenty seconds on and ten off comes to exactly four minutes, and it is the shortest workout with a serious study behind it.
Away from the gym, four minutes is a plunger of coffee, the mile Roger Bannister was told was physiologically impossible, and about the length of a pop song, which is why kitchen timers and radios have always agreed on this number.
The tip: if four minutes is the whole workout, spend two minutes warming up first and do not count them. A cold start at genuine tabata intensity is how people injure themselves doing the shortest session in the plan, and the warm-up is not part of the four.
Start it with the button or the space bar. For the eight rounds with a sound at every change, the tabata page runs the pattern itself.
At the intensity the tabata study used, yes, and that intensity is the catch: it was an all-out effort by trained athletes. Four comfortable minutes is a warm-up with a famous name.
Four minutes is the usual figure, and coarse grounds forgive a little more. The coffee page has the timings for the other methods, which vary far more than the packets suggest.
Not here: this is one plain countdown. The tabata and interval pages track work, rest and the round number, and sound at every boundary.