Tabata Original
The rise of interest in very brief, high-intensity interval training.
This approach to exercise started to take off in 2006, when Martin Gibala, a physiologist at McMaster University in Ontario, and his colleagues published a study showing that a three-minute sequence on an electronic stationary bicycle -- 30 seconds of punishing, all-out pedaling followed by a brief rest, repeated five or six times -- led to the same muscle-cell adaptations as 90 to 120 minutes of prolonged bike riding.
The study, which was published in The Journal of Physiology, soared to the top of the journal's "most e-mailed" list and stayed there for years.
Since then, Dr. Gibala and his colleagues, as well as other groups of scientists, have been closely parsing the effects of brief bouts of intense exercise, trying to determine just what happens in the body when you work it very hard for a short period of time, and what dosage of such intense effort is likely to be most effective and tolerable for a majority of people.
The most recent research suggests that a few minutes per week of strenuous exercise can improve aerobic fitness, generally more quickly than moderate activity does.
Norwegian scientists found that three four-minute runs a week -- at a pace equivalent to 90 percent of a person's maximal heart rate, an intensity that will feel, frankly, unpleasant -- improved volunteers' endurance capacity by about 10 percent after 10 weeks.
Other recent studies have shown that 16 to 30 minutes per week (depending on the study) of highly intense exercise also improves certain markers of health, with volunteers developing improved blood pressure and blood sugar levels after several weeks of these truncated workouts.