So lots of people come up with lots of excuses for not doing exercise. One of the biggest ones is that people do not have time to fit exercise into their day. Some of the posts in this blog will be about short workouts you can do at home - so there is no longer the excuse of time!
Tabata is a great, short blast of exercise and if you do it when you get out of bed it will set you up nicely for the day. Tabata is short bursts of exercise followed by a short rest then repeat. For example you could run on the spot for 20 seconds rest for 10 seconds and repeat it 8 times. That's 4 minutes of exercise. 4 minutes, everyone had got time for that!
Tabata can also be a really really simple exercise. You are best to pick one and do that for each round. You could choose to do:
- running on the spot
- high
- squat jumps
- press-ups
- Etc.
Whatever you choose to do we need to do, you need to work hard for each of those 20 second bursts of exercise. Make sure you use the 10 second rest as effectively as possible, try to control your breathing and get ready for the next round. Tabata should be hard work but if you're in the early days of getting fit, you might need to build up your fitness before you go full throttle at these sessions. Even if you can't go full pelt, it could help you start building your aerobic and anaerobic fitness levels ,as well as form a great habit if you do it regularly. It's only 4 minutes (plus a short warm up) so once 4 minutes is over it's done! It's quick and easy to fit in to your day.
Don't just leap out of bed and go straight into a 4 Minute tabata session. It's important to make sure you warm up first. So for a couple of minutes get your pulse up a bit with some jogging on the spot, then do some star jumps, some high knees and spotty dogs. Do some stretches and then get going!
Tabata isn't something that you should do every single day but it's worth trying to build it two or three times a week especially on the days we don't particularly fancy doing a longer workout.
Here is my Tabata session from this morning. I did sprinting on the spot as my exercise. My daughters did it with me although they just ran around the room shouting "COME ON! PUSH!". Great little motivators!
Have you tried tabata?
