Tabata Is The 4-Minute, Fat-Burning Workout You Need To Try

Wundervisuals / Getty Images

A fat-torching, sweat-pouring, hard-as-hell workout in just four (yes, four) minutes? That’s Tabata for you. This workout maximizes the benefits of interval training in a short amount of time, and you can do it with almost anything—cardio machines, bodyweight moves, you name it. Of course, there’s one major key to fat-burning success with Tabata: You’ve gotta push yourself to the absolute max.

Tabata involves 20 seconds of balls-to-the-wall effort followed by 10 seconds of rest (either pare down your effort or stop completely), repeated eight times for a total of four minutes. Every four-minute bout is one complete Tabata. The workout was originally developed by Dr. Izumi Tabata to train Olympic speedskaters, but it can seriously benefit your non-Olympian workout routine, too.

Why Tabata is so efficient:

High-intensity interval training in general is especially effective at burning fat because it requires your body to work harder to return to a resting state (a phenomenon called EPOC, or excess post-exercise oxygen consumption), so you continue to burn calories long after you’ve toweled off. The added intensity in a Tabata workout means your body will have to work overtime to return to a pre-workout state (read: even more calories burned).

“It’s a quicker interval method on steroids,” says Michele Olson, Ph.D., an exercise science professor at ‎Auburn University Montgomery. “Since the intensity is all-out, 100 percent effort, taking you into the aerobic-plus zone, it requires less time [than other workouts to be effective] and also provides a bigger afterburn.”

Olson tested the method in a 2013 study: She had 15 participants do a Tabata workout with bodyweight jump squats and asked them to work as hard as they possibly could during the 20-second work sections. “I found that you torch about 14 calories per minute [of Tabata] and that your metabolic rate [the calories your body burns at rest] is doubled for over 30 minutes after exercise,” Olson tells SELF. That’s the extra afterburn effect at work.

Of course, every body is different, so it’s worth noting that those aren’t exact figures for everyone. But one thing’s for sure—Tabata is a great way to get a killer workout in a short amount of time. 

The post Tabata Is The 4-Minute, Fat-Burning Workout You Need To Try appeared first on SELF.