I’ve sung the praises of Tabata intervals many times, so it’s only fair that I include this interesting reality check from Lyle McDonald.

I meant to give at least a couple of these more individualized attention, but I moved this week, and that is always a nightmare (I think it's the top of my "Suckiest Non-Tragic Things" list). Anyway...

• The Great Fitness Experiment: Sugar Busted. I met (online) Charlotte recently when Mark's Daily Apple linked us both up in the same post. She runs a great (and funny!) blog, and her sugar post hits home given my current abstinence experiment. Sounds like we have pretty much the same sugar bug, and she even links me up! Very cool.
• I've written a bunch on Tabata Intervals, but Matt Fitzgerald really sums them up nicely (can't remember who pointed me to this one). Like Charlotte's, Matt's blog just found a prominent home in my aggregator.
• The World's Healthiest 75-Year-Old Man. Three THOUSAND reps?!

I was talking training with my friend Alec recently, and thought the conversation was worth sharing. He asked about tweaking the Tabata interval (20 seconds work, 10 seconds rest, 8 times in a row) for sprints because, if you TRULY run them all out, you'll be totally spent after two or three. Anyway, here's the ensuing conversation:

Jim writes:

It's hard to say. The Tabata study is actually pretty narrow, even if the results are compelling. Give this a read:

Tabata Intervals by Ross Enamait

That said, Ross doesn't treat the 20/10 ratio as sacrosanct. In reply to one of his forum threads:

My response is not specific to you, but your general statement has become a common trend in terms of the recent "Tabata" madness that hit the web a few years ago.

First, everyone came out with Tabata workouts. As time passed, it then became the in thing to criticize these Tabata variants, making statements such as "it isn't Tabata if it isn't ____."

Here is a news flash however there was ONE study performed with ONE piece of equipment. If you are not using the exact piece of equipment per the specifics of the initial experiment, it isn't Tabata.

But guess what, who cares? The initial Tabata study showed that short, intense workouts were effective. Take this simple lesson and apply it however you want. You don't need to follow a precise experiment.

The original Tabata protocol popularized a convenient timing system (20 seconds on, 10 seconds off). It is much more convenient to use 20/10, as opposed to 17.2 seconds on, followed by 8.4 seconds of rest. I'm sure the initial results would have been similar with a 17.2/8.4 second study, but you wouldn't have seen anyone using it.

20 seconds of work followed by 10 seconds of rest is a convenient way to track time when training. You can quickly glance over to a clock to keep track of time. When someone uses Tabata to describe these workouts, we will immediately know the work to rest ratios being used. Whether it is an exact copy of the initial study is irrelevant. Once again, who cares?

I personally use many "Tabata Hybrids" with 20/10 work to rest ratios. It may not be "true Tabata" but everyone quickly knows the work to rest ratios so I honestly don't care.

I've also seen Ross talk about 30/10 and 30/20, as long as it's intense. I remember reading that the original Tabata subjects were Olympic athletes (speedskaters, maybe), and they went at it hard enough (on exercise bikes) that they only made it through 6 or 7 and had to lie down afterwards. Safe to say, while I have on occasion gone at my Tabatas that hard, oftentimes I leave more in the tank than I should. It's hard to make myself that miserable.

So, sprints, and the general trickiness of Tabata "pacing." I think you really aren't supposed to pace yourself. It's all out, every time. But an all-out 20-second effort is INSANE. For example, I think I told you this, a couple years ago I paced off a 200 meter straightaway. Michael Johnson went that far in barely under 20 seconds, so I knew I had plenty of room. My timer went off, and I hauled like I was in a race. Humbling, how far away the 200m finish line was after 20 seconds. But I stopped, gasped, 10 seconds went by in an instant, and I sprinted back the other way. Came nowhere close to getting back to the start. After three I was all but dead, four was barely a jog, and I called it quits.

I've also done them where I go like 80-90% and make it through all 8, and feel like dying at the end. And I've tweaked the rest as you suggest so I can go all out and make it through a few more rounds. No idea what's best, but I bet it's all good. As long as it hurts. If you're only going to exercise for four minutes, it's gotta be painful.

Alec writes:

I had the same experience, back at Union, when you first broke the word on tabatas. Ran 20/10 on the track. 200s are a famously brutal distance, for normal people - even one. Like you, I can max it out pretty good in a 100, even 110. And you ride that for a bit. But then you still have 60 yards to go!

Trying to run two or, particularly, 3 more or less in a row, forget 4, without even fully catching your breath, is really impossible. I think in hindsight it probably turned me off on tabatas. I was pushing and feeling bad and feeling good, etc., on the 3rd one, but what I was doing had nothing to do with "sprinting," more of desperate lurching jog, and I just couldn't believe it was making me any better at the 20-yard sprints for goals.

Jim writes:

I've lately been thinking I'd like to incorporate running that better models what you do in a game. Maybe set up four cones in a square, 20 yards each side. Figure the running portion of a point lasts for what, three minutes? So set the timer for three minutes, and alternate running and jogging the sides randomly. So sprint a side, jog a side, sprint two sides taking the corner hard, reverse, jog two sides, sprint a side, etc. Keep moving for the whole three minutes, rest, repeat as much as you see fit. You can vary your rest, 60-90 seconds to simulate staying in the game and playing another point, 2-5 minutes to simulate taking a point off. You could also put a cone in the middle to do "inner corner" cuts rather than the "outer corner" cuts you get when you stay on the perimeter.

Alec writes:

I like this idea. I actually think its best contribution is that it would strengthen the groin muscles, which straight-ahead sprints don't do.

One change, though. If you watch our final at Nationals, you'll see that at least at the Masters level, even great players in big games routinely WALK for some portion of most points. So if you're going for verisimilitude, might want to incorporate a walked-length?

Jim writes:

Good point. I think it might depend on your goals for the session. If you want to emphasize speed and intensity, you might walk a bit more so you can go harder when you go. If you want to emphasize endurance, you'd eliminate the walking. Perhaps you could even vary between rounds. Like if you did five 3-minute rounds, you could jog/sprint in 1/3/5, and walk/sprint in 2/4.

I also think verisimilitude should only be taken so far. Ideally, the workout should be harder than a real point, so a real point feels like cake.

The other thing I want to get back to on days when I feel like working speed is that NFL combine 3-cone drill. I think I sent you this last year, but it's probably worth revisiting:

More on Turning, NFL Combine, The 40, 3-Cone Drill

For us, I'm thinking the bread-and-butter attributes are, in order:

1. Acceleration, deceleration, change of direction
2. 20-30 yard dash (heavily depends on acceleration)

The box I describe above and the 3-cone drill cover these nicely. Not to mention playing. Not to the exclusion of distances like the 200, of course. Lots of physiological benefits of that distance. Somewhat related, I liked this post:

Connections by Vern Gambetta

In particular:

It is IMPOSSIBLE to isolate one energy system or for that matter one system of the body whether it is neural, cardio vascular, muscular, or endocrine hormonal. Recognize that there is always a spillover effect, for example 3 x 150 meter sprints at 95% with full recovery will maximally tax all systems of the body. You will be working at greater than VO2 max during a portion of that sprint. Understanding this has great implications, as a coach it took me too long to figure this out.

It's been awhile since I posted a workout of the day. From this afternoon:

• Tabata jump rope (20 seconds sprint, 10 seconds rest, repeat 8 times).
• Rest one minute.
• 500m sprint on the C2 rower. Finished in 1:34. My record is 1:31, so didn't feel too upset, given I don't usually do Tabatas first. Three seconds is an eternity though. Every second is precious in the 500. You'd think I'd be able to shave off 0:02 and get under 1:30. Not yet.
• Waited for the blood roaring in my ears to subside, and for my legs to stop quivering. Five minutes, maybe?
• Tabata NordicTrack: See above. Only managed six rounds. Hated myself. Pride is fleeting, shame endures.
• Rest. Three minutes?
• 100 sledgehammer swings for time (10 lb. sledge, striking tire). 3:15. Wanted to break 3 minutes. Alas. Weakling.

Could have been worse, but could have been much better. Still, it was hard, so it was good. I'll do some hard running tomorrow, pickup Sunday, then just hone a bit next week and get fresh for Regionals next weekend.

Can't. Wait.

• I enjoyed Keith Scott's simple explanation of the hows and whys of foam rolling. Then I noticed his blog is good across the board. « via Joachim Bartoll »
• From "The Genius in All of Us": How Beckham Bends It. Be sure to check out the highlight reel he links to.
• Two videos: an impressive jump, and the Crossfit women display impressive Tabata squat prowess (you'll have to click through to the video).

Just a quick workout of the day for you: do a set of Tabata sprints, followed by Tabata "backwards overhead medicine ball throws" (hold the ball with both hands, squat a bit while bending over then hurl the ball backwards over your head as far as you can). I used an 8 lb. ball and a 10 lb. ball, so I'd throw one then the other then sprint to them and do it again as fast and as forcefully as I could. My daughter thought this was a particularly fun one to watch.

It's a bit vague in spots, but More Research on the Aerobic Benefit of Sprinting nicely sums up why I've completely eliminated anything remotely resembling long distance work from my training. Why sacrifice speed and power with no upside? Personally, I need every bit of speed and power I can eek out. I do wish I knew how much rest the sprinting group took between sprints, and whether the numbers are reversed in that table, but you get the gist of it.

So as you probably know by now, this is why Tabata Intervals are the backbone of my training regimen. For anecdotal evidence of the protocol's broad applicability, scroll down the third success story on this Clarance Bass page, titled "Tabata Protocol Produces PR Rowing from 500- to 10,000-Meters". « via CrossFit »

Clarence Bass has another great article up on the benefits of sprint training. Subjects in a relatively recent study reaped significant benefits doing "four to seven "all-out" 30-second sprints on a bicycle ergometer with four-minute rest periods, six times over two weeks". They did not get the peak oxygen uptake or anaerobic work capacity benefits of Tabatas, however:

"Most strikingly," the researchers wrote, "cycle endurance capacity increased by 100% after [sprint interval training]." The time to fatigue cycling at about 80% of VO2max increased on average from 26 minutes to 51 minutes!

If you hate grinding out long cardio sessions, this is a must-read. For example:

"To our knowledge, this is the first study to show that sprint training dramatically improves endurance capacity during a fixed workload test in which the majority of cellular energy is derived from aerobic metabolism," the researchers reported. Impressively, the short period of very intense exercise produced improvements "comparable to or higher than previously reported aerobic-based training studies of similar duration." In other words, about two minutes of very intense exercise (15 minutes over 2 weeks) produced the same or better results than previously shown after two hours a day at about 65% of VO2max, or 20 hours over two weeks.

15 minutes vs. 20 hours. Yow.

The "Tabata Compared" section was of particular interest to me (obviously). Fantastic piece. By all means, click through...

I just came across this polished-looking piece on Tabata Intervals titled Guerilla Cardio (PDF). The focus is on fat-burning, but also includes references to many of the training benefits of Tabatas. On the fat-burning front, there's this note:

To prevent overtraining, try to incorporate the program on your weight training "off days." For instance, I train with weights on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and perform my Guerrilla Cardio sessions on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings, before I eat anything. (Studies show cardiovascular exercise performed first thing in the morning, on an empty stomach, burns up to three times more fat than the same amount of exercise performed later in the afternoon!)

Scientists are divided on this idea. Tom Venuto covers it well. Personally, the idea of tackling something as punishing as Tabata sprints upon waking, on an empty stomach, is unappealing, to say the least.

Speaking of sprints, they are the Tabata exercise of choice as outlined by Guerilla Cardio:

Now, while Guerrilla Cardio can be applied to all sorts of activities—the stationary bike, stairstepper, etc.—I would highly recommend you stick to sprinting for a couple of reasons . . .

First, all else being equal, sprinting elicits a significantly higher peak oxygen consumption (VO2 peak) than do other modes of cardiovascular exercise, according to researchers from the University of Missouri, Columbia, who recently compared treadmill sprinting to high-intensity exercise on a stationary skier, shuffle skier, stairstepper, stationary bike and rower. This is important because this new research shows the closer you come to your VO2 peak while exercising, the more fat you'll burn once that exercise session is over.

Second, sprinting is tough. In fact, it's so tough, many people actually fear doing it, which is exactly why I recommend it. (Remember, if you move away from what you fear, you get weaker. But, when you move toward what you fear, you get stronger!)

Leaving the focus on fat loss aside, and having applied quite a few different exercises to the Tabata protocol, there's no question in my mind that sprinting is the toughest, lung-wise, and by a wide margin, in many cases.

(Burpees are the closest contender, and while I personally feel like they take the title for whole-body muscle fatigue, lactic burn from head-to-toe, etc., I don't think they hit the lungs quite as hard as sprints. But that may be because my burpee technique limits my repetition ceiling, whereas sprints don't have a comparable personal limitation.)

A reader writes:

I plan on trying Tabata Intervals with the college team that I coach this year. I am curious about something though. Have you read anything suggesting that short rest between high intensity reps will cause a conversion of fast twitch muscle fibers to slow twitch muscle fibers? I didn't see anything in the material you cite that discusses what kind of muscle fibers the Tabata Intervals favor. I have read that adequate rest is required between reps to devellop fast twitch muscle fibers. Check out:

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/sclark26.htm

I'd be interested in your thoughts on the subject.

My lame, non-response:

I couldn't find anything that specifically addressed Tabata intervals and muscle fiber recruitment. I'd be curious to know if you found anything. Based on the article you site, it sounds like throwing in a "speed day" where you train strictly for speed (short bursts, long rests) might mix in well with the Tabatas. But I have no idea.

Another consideration would be the type of training you want to do for Ultimate. While it is true that blazing speed is a huge advantage, you don't want to train for that at the expense of endurance. Along those lines, I did find this article comparing the Tabata interval with another that does 30 seconds work followed by 4 minutes rest:

http://www.cbass.com/Sprintendurance.htm

I just tried a minor Tabata interval tweak:

First I set up the pull-up bar and then warmed up on my NordicTrack. For the first set, I cranked as hard as humanly possible on the NT for 20 seconds. I know you're supposed to go that hard whenever you do these, but this set really needs to be super-hard, like it's the only 20 seconds you're going to do, and you're going for the world record. Take note of how many calories you burn in that 20 seconds (so yeah, you'll need a machine with some kind of monitor for this flavor of Tabata interval). Now, during your 10 seconds of "rest" go immediately to the pull-up bar and do as many as you can, keeping count. You now have two numbers. Calories burned and pull-ups pulled. For your remaining Tabata sets, continue to go as hard as you can, but instead of doing them for time, do them for work. So in the second set, you stay on the machine until you've burned the same number of calories as in your first set, then you hop on the pull-up bar until you've done the same number of pull-ups as in your first set. Repeat for a total of eight to ten sets (four to five minutes of total work). Race against the clock, trying to stay within the time constraints defined by straight Tabata intervals. Do not dawdle as you transition from machine to bar and back.

The NT is slightly limiting in terms of how hard you can crank, so doing pull-ups during the "rest" really ups the intensity to a level I hadn't experienced doing unadulterated Tabatas on that machine.

I recently described Tabata intervals in detail. I'm going to recommend timers for timing these intervals, but let me recap how the intervals work real quick-like. First, pick an exercise or a cardio machine (these are particularly brutal on rowing machines). After you're warmed up, go 20 seconds as hard as you can, then 10 seconds as slow as you want (or stop, if you're doing something that doesn't lend itself to slow-paced recovery, like burpees). Repeat that eight times. The resulting four minutes is a Tabata set of intervals. So:

20 sec. as hard as you can, 10 sec. rest
20 sec. as hard as you can, 10 sec. rest
20 sec. as hard as you can, 10 sec. rest
20 sec. as hard as you can, 10 sec. rest
20 sec. as hard as you can, 10 sec. rest
20 sec. as hard as you can, 10 sec. rest
20 sec. as hard as you can, 10 sec. rest
20 sec. as hard as you can, 10 sec. rest

Done. I guarantee, 20 seconds has never felt so long, 10 seconds never so short, and four minutes never so painful.

But given how wrecked you're going to feel at about 90 seconds in (just tried these with sprints today - ouch), who wants to be counting "one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand..." in your head as you pray for 20 seconds to end? Happily, the good folks at Gymboss make an inexpensive timer expressly for this purpose. Mine came in the mail after just a couple days, and it's perfect. It's twenty bucks, is about the size of a small pager, has just three buttons and is very simple to set up, and is configurable to just about any workout via these options:

• You can set it to countdown once, and then repeat each time you press a button, or set it to automatically repeat without pressing anything.
• You can set a single interval to repeat, or dual intervals of different lengths (so you can set a work interval, and a rest interval of a different time).
• Intervals can be set down to the second.
• The alarm can be either a soft beep, a loud beep, a vibration, or any combination of beeping and vibrating.
• The alarm can further be set to go off for one second or ten seconds.

Furthermore, in "repeat" mode the timer will tell you how many intervals you've completed! There's nothing like the right tool for the job, and this is the right tool.

Or, if you want something more general-purpose, some Timex watches are also excellent for timing Tabatas, and they're pretty cheap. I'd link to a specific model, but I got mine at Campmor, and different models keep coming in and out of stock. Here is their full selection. What you're looking for is a watch in the $20 to $30 range, with a "24-hour coundown timer" that does "countdown/stop (CS), countdown/repeat (CR), and countdown/auto-start chrono(CC)." Actually, what we're really interested in is countdown/repeat, but that's how my watch was described, so I think that will get you the same feature. Or you can just try watches in a store. The Timex Ironman watches tend to have this feature, but not always. They are still good ones to start with as you're looking to narrow the field.

When you get your watch, set it to "timer" mode, and then set up a 30-second CR interval. The thing that makes the Timex watch perfect is that it chimes for 10 seconds after each interval ends, but the clock keeps ticking! So this means you rest while the watch is beeping (10 seconds), and crank when the watch is silent (20 seconds). The only thing you have to count is how many work cycles you've done.

(you can also just set the watch to beep every 10 seconds and go for two beeps during the "work" phase, but for me this beep is too quiet, especially if I'm on the rower or jump rope.)

As for comparing the two, the Gymboss has a clip (like on a pager), while the Timex watches have wristbands (obviously). The Timex does everything a watch should do, while the Gymboss just does this one job very, very well. For me, the big things that make the Gymboss better are these:

• The alarm is louder (or you can opt for vibrate mode if you don't want to disturb others in the gym). I just tried a quick test, setting it for one-second loud-beep and vibrate. I clipped it to my belt (wearing jeans) and hopped on the C2 rower. Turned the music on loud enough to hear over the C2's fan. You could feel the vibration, but it was a big faint (might be better through shorts). The beep was clearly audible though. If you like your music louder it might drown out the beep, but you can always increase the beep/vibration to 10 seconds, which I imagine would be hard to ignore. Not sure what that does to battery life though (it takes one AAA).
• It counts elapsed intervals.
• You can set any dual interval times you want, wereas the Timex only fortuitously handles 20s work/10s rest.

I'm keeping my Timex for telling the time, but for exercising it's the Gymboss all the way.

In preparing for the 2005 Ultimate Frisbee season, I made the switch for the first time from predominantly long aerobic training to high intensity interval training (HIIT). Before I get into all the supporting documentation, let me repeat something: last season my workouts were hour-long moderate intensity aerobic sessions. This season my workouts were 20-minute HIIT sessions. When I finally stepped on the field in the spring this season, I was easily two months ahead of where I was the previous season, conditioning-wise. In other words, I cut my workout times by 66%, and was significantly, noticeably more fit as a result.

The workout I adopted was Taku's Interval Training. Taku underscores the point above (he's writing for combat athletes, but it really applies to all athletes except pure endurance athletes, like marathoners):

Hopefully it is starting to sink in that for combat sports, long slow distance training is ineffective. Jogging or running at a steady pace continually for 20-45-60 minutes at a time is really a massive waste of valuable training and conditioning time. To maximize your efficiency while training "Cardio" for combat sports build your routine around high intensity interval training.

You can skip down to "THE PROGRAM" if you don't want to read the science. What it boils down to though is this: once you've worked yourself up to the most intense form of the intervals, you do 15 minutes warm-up, followed by 5 minutes of intense training, followed by 5 minutes cool down. I know that looks impossible, but you are reading that right: the hard part of the workout is only five minutes long. This is exactly the routine I substituted for 60-minutes of lower-intensity aerobic work, with much better results.

I have since found many more articles detailing this form of HIIT. Phase 3 that Taku describes is a Tabata Interval, named after the study by Izumi Tabata that compared it to a different interval. I haven't found the study itself online, but Peak Performance has a compelling summary:

On a different day the subjects performed two different kinds of interval workout. The first session (I1) comprised bouts of 20 seconds with 10 seconds rest at an intensity equivalent to 170% of their VO2max. The subjects performed six or seven bouts each until reaching exhaustion, ie, they could no longer continue at the prescribed intensity. The second session (I2) comprised bouts of 30 seconds with two minutes rest at an intensity of 200% of their VO2max. The subjects managed four or five of these bouts. [snip]

The conclusion from these findings seems to be that the I1 workout, the 20-second bouts with 10 secs recovery at 170% VO2max, is a better training stimulus for aerobic and anaerobic systems than the I2 workout of 30-second bouts with two mins recovery at 200% VO2max. In support of this, Tabata et al found that a six-week regime of I1 resulted in a 13 per cent improvement in VO2max.

The results of this research by Tabata et al clearly show that two different intervals workouts have different demands and therefore training effects. I1, with 20-second bouts with 10 secs rest at 170% VO2max places the aerobic and anaerobic systems at peak stress. Therefore it would be a fine session for improving both aerobic and anaerobic capacity. Events where both aerobic and anaerobic demands are high are, for example, 400m, 800m and 1500m running, sprint cycling, canoeing, rowing and speed skating. This kind of workout would be great for these sports. Games players may also want to use the I1 workout as an intense training method for improving aerobic and anaerobic fitness.

The benefits described above are from just one Tabata set (20 seconds all-out work followed by 10 seconds rest, repeated 8-10 times). The gang at Crossfit string multiple Tabata sets together in a workout titled Tabata This. Ross Enamait, in his fantastic book The Underground Guide to Warrior Fitness also advocates stringing together Tabata sets. There are many exercises that lend themselves to the Tabata treatment: sprints, jump rope, squats, pushups, burpees (killer), chinnies, etc. There's no end to the ways you can torture yourself with Tabatas.

The one good thing about all that aerobic training was that it laid a pretty good foundation upon which I could build this more intense work. You would not want to undertake Tabatas or any other HIIT without a solid conditioning base. As is true for everything I write here—but particularly for stuff like this that might make your heart explode—consult a doctor before embarking on new fitness regimes.