Posts Tagged ‘tabata exercise’
Best Exercise To Lose Weight
What is the best exercise to lose weight? Well, best is a subjective word, and there are lots of variables that would come into play when trying to decide on what exercise is the best when it comes to losing weight. But when it comes to the most calories burned in the least amount of time, there is no better exercise than tabata exercise.
What in the world is “tabata?” If I recall correctly it is the name of a (Japanese I think) scientist who did the research on the topic. That research proved that doing exercise at high intensity with short rests in between had better effects than doing the same exercise at medium intensity with no rests. Although the research applied to muscle development, but there is no reason why the same idea couldn’t be applied to weight loss.
To give you an example: instead of running for 10 minutes on tread mill, you could do 100 mete sprints with say 50 seconds in between. In the same 10 minutes you’d get 6-7 100 meter sprints, and it would be a heck of a work out compared to just running on a tread mill. The end result? You spent the same 10 minutes but got a much better / harder work out and burned a lot more calories.
Almost any exercise can be done in tabata style. The other way to do it is to have a set amount of time and try to do as many repetitions of an exercise as you can, rest, then do it again. A popular exercise for this method is tabata squats - you do as many squats as you can in 20 seconds, then rest for 10 seconds, you do 8 of those series in a row (so 20 seconds of squats, 10seconds rest, 20 seconds of squats 10 seconds rest..) The goal is to do as many squats total. Doing it this way not only turns what is normally a rather boring exercise into something much more fun, but also gives you mini goals to strive for.
Having goals to strive for and achieve is very important when it comes to keeping focused and not getting side tracked. So it’s another thing that makes tabata exercise so good. Not to mention most of the tabata exercise will take 15 minutes or less. The tabata squats from above would take as little as 4 minutes! An intense work out in just 4 minutes! Yep, and that is one of the reasons why tabata exercise are the best exercise to lose weight, especially if you are short on time.