The Tabata Protocol: My experience & why it works so well!

Greetings RAW Warriors,

One of the reasons I went with the new FitRanX system to apply in fitness camp and sports performance settings with my training is the Tabata protocol applied to it.  I've been doing the Tabata method format since around 2000, back when I first read about it in an issue of Muscle Media magazine.  I used to read & enjoy MM a lot back in the day.  Then the magazine just kind of died, not sure what really happened there. but way back when, it was a really good cutting-edge magazine with awesome workouts that didn't seem 'meathead' like. Anyways, the article I believe was entitled "Guerilla Cardio", and it went like this in a nutshell for the workout, just a 12 minute workout in all.

Jog 4 minutes easy
Perform 20 seconds of sprinting effort, with 10 seconds rest (I would 'coast' along in a slight jog during my 10s times) x 8 rounds of this - 4 minutes
Jog/Walk 4 minutes to recover - a lot of times I would jog it out, since I was used to hard workouts as a cross-country coach and our intense practices.  People tend to think XC runners just go out for runs and have fun.  Well, we got BUSINESS done back in the day and 'did work' on speed days.  We had banners to put on the wall. :)

The 4 minute period of 20s work, 10s rest x 8 is commonly named the Tabata Protocol.  If you have read about this on other sites & articles, this may sound pretty familiar to you already.

Anyways, I turned a lot to the Tabata sprint protocol for my running, more often than I thought I would, mainly due to time constraints as a trainer, and for a brief time as a Mayor of the town I lived in. My early AM runs would have to be short due to a long day ahead of me with work, meetings, coaching, and maybe even more meetings at night some days.  It was crazy, but the Tabata format allowed me to get in solid, hard, quality workouts with the little time I had.  In fact, one summer, a majority of my workouts were Tabata based.  I went into the fall season and was running right alongside the top boy runners on our team.  It was proof to me that a program like that can really work in improving fitness levels.

Along the way in my coaching career, I would use this 20/10 format with my XC kids and Track kids from time to time, as a way to break up the monotony of speed workouts and introduce a little 'organized chaos' of hard/easy efforts.  The results for both my personal running improvements and the athletes I coached were great: times reduced for 5K, 4K, 3200, and 1600m times through the season. To this day, this format is applied to my coaching.  Even as a basketball coach, I apply 20/10 work/rest formats to mini-circuits at the end of practices, which I've dubbed 3-Minute Warnings...and have applied similar formats to the RABC plan I offer on this site each day.

When the FitRanX system came out and I was able to view some of their daily workouts, I really liked the style of it, and I knew it was on the cutting edge of fitness by applying it.  Also, after coming off of a few months of training with an entire system using the 20/10 format, Craig Ballantyne's Home Workout Revolution series (link provided at the top of this blog here for you to view), it helped me lose 18 pounds in 3 months: even more personal proof for me.  This really drove home the fact that the Tabata protocol can be used in a fantastic manner in a wide variety of ways.  I've used it as a coach, in my own fitness training business, in my kettlebell training workouts, and now, an entire fitness ranking system applies it too.  I am familiar with it, 12+ years experience with the protocol itself....so when I do the FitRanX system with my clients, you will know that you have a trainer who knows this type of training well and can apply it easily.

Here's why I think it works so well:

The simplicity of the Tabata protocol when applied to multiple training avenues (strength, cardio, general physical preparation, etc) is that it uses the principles of quality control and high intensity interval training.  There is a reason why you have to rest when doing any form of interval training. Your body can only handle so much intense work for so long, so the brief rest periods of 10s within the Tabata protocol allows you to briefly recover and hit things hard once again. 

When you look at a 4 minute period of Tabata protocols, its 2:40 of work, with 1:20 of rest.  If you were to try and do push-ups for 2:40 straight, you wouldn't last very long, and get only so many in.  But with the 10s rest periods, you can keep going longer and do push-ups for the same amount of time, because the brief rest will give you just a little bit of recovery to keep on going.  See where I'm going here? YOU CAN GET MORE WORK DONE over the course of time.  That's why you can condense your workouts to a shorter time frame, and still get quality work in!  It saves time, allows you to do quality work under control, and helps push you to new levels overall. 

If this protocol didn't work 12 years ago, it wouldn't still be around today, in my opinion.  It really is a ground-breaking fitness protocol to apply, and I'm glad that programs like FitRanX and CB's Home Workout Revolution have discovered its greatness as well.  They took what I already knew about the protocol from a running perspective, and stepped it up a BIG notch. 

I can't wait to get this going!

Lift. Dominate. Repeat.
Rats Alley Barbell Club
Coach Rick Karboviak