The Tabata workout training protocol offers a way of maximizing athletic fitness in the minimum amount of time. Because of this, it is ideal for triathlon training.
How To Use Tabata For Triathlon Training
You will want to do the same exercises you will do during your triathlon during your Tabata workout.
Spend four minutes on each exercise every morning; if you are serious about being your best, do another four minutes for each in the afternoon.
Running
Let’s start with running. To get yourself up to shape for your triathlon running, you’re going to be doing eight extremely high intensity bursts of running at maximum speed, each twenty seconds long. These twenty second bursts of intensity and speed are going to be separated by ten second long recovery intervals. This is where you need to try to catch your breath.
Before you start, make sure you’re all set up for injury-free running. Choose a level field, track or quiet street to run on. Make sure your shoes have got enough shock absorbency left in them. Then, turn on your stop watch and run as if the devil was after you.
You need to be using all your physical capacity, straining all your muscles.
When twenty seconds are over, stop. Rest exactly ten seconds, and then do another twenty second sprint.
For your Tabata running workout you’ll have to do this for eight rounds. It’ll only take you four minutes total.
It is vital to not slow down toward the end, you have to keep that intensity up in round number seven, and eight, just as you did in the first. If you’ve done it right, you’ll feel like collapsing on the ground in utter exhaustion when it’s finished. You may even see stars, or throw up. If you do, just clean up the mess, get some Gatorade in you, and prepare to do it again tomorrow.
That’s Tabata. The work is intense, but, the rewards are great.
Swimming
You can give yourself a short break before going on to the next round. Then put on your swimsuit and get out to the pool. Here you’ll follow the same protocol.
For twenty seconds, you’ll swim as if your life depended on your speed. Then ten seconds of rest, hanging on the side of the pool.
Then twenty more seconds of water fury unleashed.
8 rounds, 240 seconds total.
Since you can’t see a stopwatch in the water you may want to ask someone to play timekeeper, or put on an mp3 that tells you when your twenty and ten second intervals are up and it’s time to switch gears.
Biking
Biking is more of the same. Using either your regular bike on safe, traffic free roads or an exercise bike inside your home, pedal madly for twenty seconds, then give yourself ten seconds to just rest. Add as much resistance as you can handle, an incline works very well.
Make sure you keep up that absolute intensity through all eight rounds. Intense doesn’t just mean fast biking. It means really fast biking. There shouldn’t be any way imaginable in which you could carry on a conversation when doing it.
You should be gasping for breath, literally out of breath, as that is the anaerobic state that comes with Tabata, and it is exactly where you want to be.
You should be pretty much dead when it’s done.
The Rewards
The intense bursts of work in Tabata are highly effective for building stamina and endurance. It is during these intervals that the body is pushed to its absolute maximum and is forced to perform beyond its capacity.
One of the most important aspects of participating in a Triathlon and having a successful race is to work on endurance and stamina levels and, while Tabata is grueling it is also very effective to that end.
There’s your Tabata workout for triathlon training. Now get to training!
Jeremy LaRochester 