15 minute workout?

I've done a couple of Tabata sessions on the Concept2 indoor rowing machine in the last couple of days. The first was to record a distance for a monthly fun challenge, the second was because I didn't have much time before playing tennis.

I've read up a bit on the Tabata interval training and I am wondering if it really is as effective as everyone claims it to be? The theory can be applied to various different exercises but for my sake, it's all on the indoor rowing machine. 20 seconds of high intensity effort followed by 10 seconds of rest and repeat 8 times. The total distance rowed during the work phase is recorded for your 'score'. You can also use the lowest number of meters done in a single work rep and use that as an alternative but I prefer to use the whole session total.

I'll be doing more of them in the coming weeks so I'll guess we'll see. One thing that will affect the results is that I'm on Day 4 of stopping smoking too so there will be some natural gains from that at the same time.

Anyway - the session is all on the Concept2 erg machine:

-> 1000m warm up, gentle pace (around 4 mins)
-> 1 min rest/preparation
-> 8 x 20 seconds of high intensity work then 10 seconds rest (3m50s in total)
-> 2 mins recovery
-> 1000m cool down (around 4 mins to 4 mins 30secs)

Total Time c. 15 mins

My results so far:

1/ 894m (2nd Sep)
2/ 909m (3rd Sep)
3/ 916m (19th Sep)

I'll keep coming back to update the scores on this blog post so I/we can compare and see what progress, if any, is made. Any comments or shared experiences are welcome, please comment or rate below.

I think that it would be useful to see how this type of training can affect overall fitness so I'll do a 1000m time trial in the next day or so to set a benchmark and then again in a month to see what difference there is. Again, the no smoking will affect this result so it can't really be used as a scientific experiment, more a personal observation.

Also, here are a couple of links to websites I've set up for people to support each other in weight loss or stopping smoking - they are free to join and very positive communities, come say hello!

Stop Smoking Together

Lose Weight Together