Workout of the Day: Tabata Something Else

New York Times: Can You Get Fit in Six Minutes Per Week?

There was a time when the scientific literature suggested that the only way to achieve endurance was through endurance-type activities,” such as long runs or bike rides or, perhaps, six-hour swims, says Martin Gibala, PhD, chairman of the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. But ongoing research from Gibala’s lab is turning that idea on its head… In other words, six minutes or so a week of hard exercise (plus the time spent warming up, cooling down, and resting between the bouts of intense work) had proven to be as good as multiple hours of working out for achieving fitness. The short, intense workouts aided in weight loss, too, although Gibala hadn’t been studying that effect. “The rate of energy expenditure remains higher longer into recovery” after brief, high-intensity exercise than after longer, easier workouts, Gibala says. Other researchers have found that similar, intense, brief sessions of exercise improve cardiac health, even among people with heart disease.

WOD: ‘Tabata Something Else”

8 rounds of the following exercises:

• pull ups
• push ups
• sit ups
• squats

Do all 8 rounds of an exercise before rotating to the next. Do them in the order listed. Count total number of reps and post score to comments.