Powerful Fat-Burning Workout in Less Time

Workouts don’t have to be long and tedious. In only 20 minutes a day (or less), you can get a powerful metabolism-boosting workout that will burn through your fat stores, and you don’t even have to buy a workout DVD, gym membership, or any special equipment.

Tabata Training

Tabata training was created by Izumi Tabata at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo. He discovered that exercises done at 20-second intensities with 10-second breaks significantly increase your body’s ability to operate anaerobically (endurance).

Follow-up studies have shown that Tabata training targets fat-burning 9 times better than long slow workouts. In other words, a much higher percentage of calories burned during Tabata training come from fat. In also boosts your metabolism long after the workout, giving you an extra resting calorie burn throughout the day.

How to Do a Tabata Workout

First, you need a clock with a second-hand that you can see clearly. Alternatively, you can get an inexpensive sports watch that includes an interval timer, or you can pull up an online interval timer on your computer or laptop from this website (You can get that same timer for the iPhone or Adobe AIR through that blog).

This exercise intense, so be hydrated and have water handy.

Next, pick 3-4 exercises. If they involve weights, the weight should be light. The more of your body they use, the better. An example workout might be push-ups, crunches with knees raised, jump-rope (or imaginary jump rope), and lunges (with or without light weights).

Don’t be afraid to change it up with different or random exercises for each workout. That will keep things interesting.

Now, using your timer to guide you, perform 8 sets of each exercise. Each set will last 20 seconds, and you will try to get as many reps of each exercise in as possible. Reset for 10 seconds, and that’s one set. Immediately do as many reps as possible for another 20 seconds until you’ve done 8 sets (each 20s work/10s rest cycle is a set). That will be four minutes.

Take a one minute break, sip some water, and move on to the next exercise on your list and do the same thing.

Here’s a table showing our example workout by exercise:

Exercise	Work	Rest	Sets	Total Time
Push-ups	20 seconds	10 seconds	8	4 min + 1 min break
Crunches	20 seconds	10 seconds	8	4 min + 1 min break
Jump-rope (imaginary)	20 seconds	10 seconds	8	4 min + 1 min break
Lunges	20 seconds	10 seconds	8	4 min + 1 min break

When you’ve finished all three or four exercises, you’re done with your workout. You’ll be exhausted, but you’ll know you’ve done your body a great service.

Track Your Performance

A good way to track your performance and improvement over time with your Tabata training is to record a score for each exercise. Your score for is the lowest repetition count on one of your 20-second work periods during the four minute period for that exercise.

For example, if I performed the following reps for each set of my push-ups: 18, 19, 18, 17, 16, 16, 15, 16, then my score for the push-ups would be 15.

How Often?

You should only do Tabata training 1-2 times per week, and with at least one rest day in between. It’s a great way to improve your exercise routine toward fat-burning, but always remember that fat loss is 70% nutrition and 30% training. Combine this with my Body Hacks for Guaranteed Fat Loss, and you’re well on your way to controlling your body’s shape for the rest of your life.

Have your own Tabata workouts? Let us know in the comments.

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