Welcome to the Shaline show. Shaline is a New York Times best selling author celebrity fitness trainer and obsessed with helping you live your dream life.

Is it really possible to get fit in four minutes a day?

That is the rumor and it's not just a rumor that's new. It's something that people have been talking about for quite a long time. Actually since 1996 people have been talking about

how to get fit by training harder in shorter intervals.

I'm in my gym and just finished my own workout and I keep seeing posts about Tabata and it's become a pet peeve.

And so I want to just kind of dispel some of the myths, some of the misinformation that's out there and hopefully give you some answers so that you know what is best for you.

Okay, so the question is, can you get fit in four minutes a day? Well, it's a loaded question and there isn't a simple yes or no.

But let me begin by helping you understand the difference between Tabata training, hit training, aerobic training, what you should be doing, what's best for you and how to really maximize not only your results, but how good you feel and how much time you have and kind of planning a schedule that makes this all possible for you.

Okay, so first let me explain Tabata.

Tabata is actually the last name of the professor who did the research that really sparked this whole Tabata movement. Now professor Isumi Tabata was a Japanese scientist who was commissioned get this.

Not to sell infomercials, not to create a program for the gyms, but to get Japanese Olympic speed skaters in the optimal performance, the best shape of their lives.

I mean, he was commissioned to make sure that these Olympic speed skaters were the most fit they could possibly be.

So I say that because his job was to scientifically study all forms of training and figure out what is the best.

If my livelihood depends upon me getting these elite athletes in tip top condition, I don't care what it is, I'm not going to pick trend, I'm going to study it and I'm going to figure out what is the best.

Okay, so what professor Tabata did is he looked at hit training, he looked at interval training, he looked at forms of hit training.

And this is how the Tabata system was developed in his study of both hit training and steady state aerobic training, which is anything you do where you're basically sustaining your heart rate at a steady consistent, you know, 50% 60% of maximum heart rate.

And intervals where he was taking elite athletes to near capacity and then all the way to the maximum of their capacity doing intervals.

But what he found was that there was a zero percent increase in overall fitness when he trained these elite athletes using steady state aerobic conditioning.

What he did find is that there was an incredible increase in their overall fitness, both aerobically and anaerobically, which means when you're technically speaking, it means without oxygen, it's when you're at max capacity, you can't go harder, you're looking for a place to puke, like that kind of difficulty.

And so what he found was that the athletes when he trained them at high intervals, they were getting far better results.

So then he started playing with which interval is going to give them the best results. Obviously, that's his job, right?

So we started looking at, okay, so what if I train them three minutes on and one minute off? What if I train them one minute hard and three minutes off?

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