Amazing Tabata Protocol Increases Anaerobic Ability

Tabata Protocol

Back in the mid-1990s, Izumi Tabata, Ph.D., then a researcher at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo, studied an interval program designed by the head coach of Japan’s speed-skating team. The routine consisted of 4-minute sessions alternating between 20 second of maximum effort with 10 seconds of recovery.

After comparing it to programs with varying degrees of intensity and duration, he found that the skaters’ program was far more effective in increasing aerobic and anaerobic fitness (conventional wisdom at the time said high-intensity programs could increase on or the other, not both).

The routine was dubbed the Tabata Protocol. After following it for six weeks, five days a week, athletes increased their VO2 max by 14 percent and their anaerobic ability by 38 percent. (Unless you’re an exercise physiologist, those figures probably won’t mean anything to you, but suffice to say those are two ways that scientists measure exercise capacity, and both measures improved significantly).

HOW YOU CAN USE THE TABATA PROTOCOL FOR ENERGY
Why do I bring up a grueling routine designed for Olympic-medal winning skaters, you ask? Because you can follow the principle of the protocol while bringing the routine down to the level of a normal human.

To do that, you change the ratio of effort to rest from 2:1 to 2:3 or even 1:3, and you can dial down the intensity from all-out effort to between 70 to 85 percent of max. In plain English, that means you work out hard for 1 to 2 minutes and do “active rest” for 3 minutes, as far more doable option. (Active rest just means you’re still moving, but not really working hard. So if you’ve just sprinted for 30 seconds, you might slow down to a walk for your “active rest” component. Make sense?)

For instance, after a 5-mintue warm-up, sprint for 20 seconds, then rest for 30, and repeat up to eight times. (If that’s to difficult to manage, start with 10 seconds of all-out effort, followed by 30 seconds of rest). As you increase your fitness level, you can move closer to the Tabata Protocol ratio of 2:1 (20 seconds of exertion, 10 seconds of rest).

If this is sounding familiar because you’ve been carefully taking notes throughout the entire exercise section, it’s because it is familiar – it’s simply a clever variation on AI Sears’s PACE program (see page 106) and Mark Smitih’s Burst Training for the X-iser (see page 108). All are well-designed interval training programs that can be summed up like this:

Work out hard. Rest. Repeat as needed.

What these interval programs have in common is that for a limited investment of time, you get the cortisol-lowering, BDNF-flowing (see page 100), dopamine-rushing results that translate to a boost in mood and energy (and it comes with a side of fat-burning, too).

Don’t despair if all this sounds too hard. Even someone who walks for 20 minutes a day can do interval training. Let’s say on a scale of 1 to 10, you walk at an exertion level of 5. Fine. For 20 to 30 seconds, move it up to a 7. Then go back down to walking at the comfortable 5 (called “active rest” or “recovery”) while you catch your breath. You’ve just done an “interval”. How hard was that? The rest is just details, different ways to up the stakes. The 7s become 8s, you do more frequent intervals, and you take shorter “active rest” periods. And you’re on your way to a huge boost in energy!