Tabata Timer

Tabata is twenty seconds of work, ten seconds of rest, eight rounds, four minutes in total. That is the form the name settled into rather than a transcript of the 1996 study by Izumi Tabata's group it was taken from, which ran its efforts to exhaustion instead of to a round count. What the twenty seconds meant there is the part everyone forgets: an all-out effort at roughly 170 per cent of VO2 max, on a cycle ergometer.

That matters because tabata done at a comfortable pace is simply a four minute circuit. It is not a bad workout, but it is not the protocol, and the results people quote from the study did not come from it. What separates the two is effort rather than timing, and no timer can tell you which one you did.

The tip: pick one movement and stay on it. The protocol was tested with a single exercise on a cycle ergometer, and switching every round turns it into a circuit where the transitions eat the rest. Squats, bike, rower, burpees: one thing, eight rounds.

The lengths are adjustable if you want a gentler ratio, and the settings live in the address so a variation you like can be bookmarked or shared.

Questions