Full-Body Tabatas

This 5-day whole-body training program takes the popular Tabata technique to a place it's never been.

Written By Jim Stoppani, PhD

Updated May 24, 2024

High-intensity interval-training (HIIT) meets my #TrainWithJim full-body approach to help you build more muscle and burn more body fat 4 minutes at a time. Introducing…

Full-Body Tabatas – a 5-day program that will condition you for great results like no other #TrainWithJim routine to date.

Most of you are probably familiar with Tabata intervals; I use them often as the cardio component of my training programs to provide a more efficient (and effective) way of getting leaner, as compared to traditional steady-state cardio.

I covered Tabatas in my Complete Cardio series , but here’s a quick refresher on what it is: 8 rounds of 20 seconds of intense work and 10 seconds of rest. That’s one Tabata interval – 4 minutes of brutally intense training that, depending on the exercise, will burn the lungs as much as the target muscles. The 20 seconds of work is simply doing reps of a given exercise, so the exact number of reps you do in each of the eight intervals (sets) can vary somewhat. (When you're doing Tabatas for a cardio activity, like jumping rope, you'd do the activity for 20 seconds straight.)

Aside from the Complete Cardio article linked above, here's another piece I did that sums up the benefits and protocol of Tabatas: Tabata Weight Blast Workouts .

FBT Specifics

In my Full-Body Tabatas program, you’ll be doing one such 4-minute Tabata (8 rounds of 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off) for each muscle group – chest, back, shoulders, legs, biceps, triceps, traps, forearms, abs, calves – with a short rest period between each. The rest period will simply be the time it takes you to from exercise to the next; because you'll be switching to a completely different bodypart, you

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