Tabata

The annual end-of-summer shutdown week at the Jennersville Y starts Aug. 20, and my fitness instructor there gave us a send-off workout today that I suspect will stay with us the whole time. It featured something called a "tabata," which is a four-minute-long, high-intensity interval training that's supposed to be amazing for fat burning. It's very simple: you do one exercise -- say, good old jumping jacks -- for 20 seconds. Then you rest for 10 seconds. Then mountain-climbers, again for 20 seconds, and another rest, and then a different kind of jacks, rest, and another kind of mountain-climbers. Repeat. By the end of the eight exercise segments I was gasping for breath and the woman next to me was light-headed.
And then we had to do a non-cardio segment, and then back to the tabata. For a half-hour.
Grueling. But it certainly took my mind off the hassles of the day.
("Tabata," by the way, is the name of the Japanese exercise physiologist who developed it.)

(For those of you who don't know what mountain-climbers are, here's an illustration. You have to drive your knees in toward your arms, alternating legs, as quickly as possible. By about 10 seconds your thighs are screaming.)