TABATA INTERVALS BODY PART TRAINING : ACTIVE RECOVERY FOR THE PARASYMPATHETIC SYSTEM?

Welcome to all! I'm sure that everybody knows the benefits of tabata interval training. The principle is actually simple, 20 seconds of work followed by 10 seconds of rest for 4 minutes. Lately, I have been experimenting with this technique on how my body reacts to shorter workouts due to a high physiological loading of my everyday life.

Like a lot of people, I work around the clock getting very little sleep and reached severe levels of adrenal gland fatigue. One of the first steps is using Active Recovery. By reducing your workouts to 60% of intensity and volume, one can slowly allow your body to recover and make the training sessions parasympathetic to your body.

The big challenge of trainers today with cases such as myself is always the ability to keep the client interested & motivated in their training sessions. How could one be goal oriented and still have amazing results with a modified short Tabata training sessions? Here are the two rules i use to get results and feel i accomplished something in my workout.

1- I never go to failiure on any of my sets and use open and closed chained movements.
2- I make myself a 4  day split program workout using bodypart training principles of bodybuilding.

Example 1: My chest workout was an open/closed chain program using 2 exercises :

- Close grip press with neutral grip on a vicore bench
- Pushups on the Powerplate machine

Example 2: My Back workout was an open/closed chain program using 2 exercises :

- Trap bar Deadlifts
- Seated Rows on hammer strength machine

Of course these are only examples but these can be tweaked to include a bicep on back day and a triceps on chest day. Which i do for a pump!

Nevertheless, i never feel drained  and still feel like i got a decent workout. Now combine this with stretching and zone exercises and you got yourself a cool little program.