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Tabata

by thabo
(secunda,mpumalanga,south africa)

When you say "do as many reps as you can in the 20 seconds"does it also mean as fast as possible? I'm asking that because i was taught to do my reps slow and use to laugh at people doing them fast cause i thought they don't know what they are doing.

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Tabata

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Jul 02, 2010
 Heavy enough to hurt, light enough for good form
by: Greg

Just note - As fast as possible means as fast as you can with good form.

Slow reps are great for building muscle. They exercise control and balance and because you move slowly you actually pick a weight that you should be training at, because its more difficult not to cheat.

Tabata is different though, you are not trying to build muscle, you are trying to break through your anaerobic thresholds, so this means exhausting the muscle of its glycogen stores as fast as possible, in fact you only have 20 seconds to do it in. So explosive fast repetitions are needed.

When thinking about tabata, you want to pick a weight that is heavy enough to tire our your muscles quickly, but light enough to be able to do a lot of fast reps with good form, so it will be a lot less than you would use for weight lifting.

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