The 4 Minute Workout

A published studies back in 1996/1997 in the ‘Medicine & Science In Sports & Exercise’ showed a four minute workout that is as effective as those that took hours.

Japanese exercise scientist Izumi Tabata created the ‘Tabata protocol’.

The workout uses anaerobic exercise to increase one’s aerobic capacity.

Such short term exercise remove the need to do long duration cardio.

But the scientist found out its too intense for most people and finds only elite athletes are doing it. They are those who don’t want to lose their fast twitch muscle doing long runs, but still be cardio-fit.

The idea behind this is that, such an intense workout will deliver more EPOC (Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption) even after finishing the workout. This will keep burning the calories even after you’ve finished doing it.

Such post calories burning is not present in normal usual slow-steady-state cardio workouts.

Izumi Tabata study shows that each calorie you burn doing his workout, will have a fat loss effect nine times more than slow-steady-state cardio exercises.

Tabata Protocol

• 20 seconds of all-out effort
• 10 second rest intervals
• Workout consist of eight of these all-out effort and rest intervals.