Tabata Intervals question

Quoted message said:

How do I know if its actually working?

If you can still stand at the end of 4 minutes of Tabata intervals
then you aren't going hard enough.

Other than that the only way to tell if Tabata intervals are for you
is to try them for yourself. Set a baseline that you can measure (say
a mile run) time yourself, and then do Tabata intervals for a month
and see if you are any faster. If you wanted to get technical you
could go in and have your VO2 max tested before and after and see if
it changes.

Or you could just see if you like them 🙂

Jason

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

How do I know if its actually working?

You should be able to do more reps as you progress. In any case, why
wouldn't it work?

I just want to know if its really working. I can wait a month for
results, but I don't want to have wasted a month for nothing.

Quoted message said:

I just want to know if its really working. I can wait a month for
results, but I don't want to have wasted a month for nothing.

Hmm... Tabata intervals are not the sort of thing where it is
inherently difficult to see the results. What sort of Tabata
intervals are you doing?

For example, I have done sprints, thrusters, and front squats. When I
do thrusters and front squats one of the measurements that I take to
help measure progress is total number of reps. Once the total number
of repetitions that I can do gets to a certain point, then I add
weight.

Measuring progress in the sprints is a little bit more complicated,
but not excessively so. One way to measure progress is to simply see
how far you run. If you ran farther today than you did last week then
you are making progress. Another variation is to set a minimum
distance that you want to be able to run in the 20s and keep doing
intervals until you can't run that far in the allotted time. Once you
can do 10 intervals (for a total exercise time of 5 mins) simply
increase the distance slightly.

You should be able to see this sort of improvement almost immediately
as your body responds to the new stimulus. The real trick is
measuring the effects that Tabata interval workouts have on your level
of fitness. After all, very few people are directly concerned with
their performance in Tabata intervals. People do Tabata drills
because they want to burn fat, or increase their VO2 max, or lower
their mile sprint time, or force their quads to grow, or whatever.
That's the progress that people are actually interested in and the
Tabata intervals are nothing more than a tool.

If you are interested in figuring out whether Tabata intervals are an
effective tool for your particular goals the only real way to do that
is to quantify your goal and make the experiment. Take a baseline
measurement before starting Tabata intervals, try it for a time, and
then take another measurement.

Good luck,
Jason

Ok, thanks, I'll try it for a few weeks, probably with sprinting.

Ok, thanks, I'll try it for a few weeks, probably with sprinting.