No time to workout? You have no excuse now (sorry)

It's the ultimate cliche we all find ourselves bleating when January hits: New Year, New You.

But each time the calendar turns, we find ourselves grumbling that we just don't have any room in our hectic schedules for exercise.

What with working, ferrying the kids around, watching all those episodes of Homeland (because we need to 'unwind' OK?) and making all those green juice detox drinks, who has time to schedule in a gym slot?

Well now there is no excuse (we apologise). Because the latest trend is the high intensity interval regime (aka HIIT) and it won't eat (no pun intended) into your schedule one little bit. Well maybe a tiny bit.

The idea is that short, sharp bursts of exercise are actually BETTER for both shedding the pounds and toning up than traditional forms of exercise. And who are we to argue with the experts?

Yahoo Lifestyle trialled out Tabata at Fitness First to see if we really COULD get our weekly exercise fix in the time it takes to microwave our porridge.

So what's it all about?
Tabata is an intense session of exercise that is only four minutes in duration (yes really). It promises to offer a fitter, faster workout. Developed by Japanese scientist Professor Izumi Tabata while he was working with the Japanese Olympic speed skating team, Tabata apparently proves that short sharp bursts of intense exercise are the best way to get fit. It consists of a combination of 20 seconds of intense exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest, repeated 8 times.

Put to the test
We turned up to our local Fitness First feeling a mixture of smug, cynical and nervous. Surely it was a cheat to be cramming our exercise for the week into four minutes? Were we going to keel over with the intensity and most importantly how on earth could we get our instructor's body (we're talking SUPER TONED, sickeningly so). Once we've finished gawping, we're talked through the standard moves we'll be repeating - which don't seem too difficult (how wrong we were) - before being put through a fairly easy warm up. Although they don't seem tough in slow motion, it's a real struggle to complete the moves at speed and we're praying for the 10 seconds rest to come around each time we're in a 20-second workout slot. One girl in the class nearly faints from the intensity so we're just grateful that wasn't us. By the cool-down we feel relieved but actually haven't sweated that much. 

The highs
The beauty, of course, is that it makes it much easier to fit into your lifestyle - this class was easy to squeeze in before work without having to sacrifice sleep and it would work for a lunch hour too. The warm up is gently but you can really feel your entire body being worked and your heart pounding as you repeat the exercises. The other big pro is that you absolutely CAN get through it - even if you feel like you're putting your limbs through hell. For those who lack stamina to complete a long distance run or a load of laps in a swimming pool, this is actually manageable exercise. However much pain you're in, it's only for four minutes. And that's enough to get you mentally through the agony.

The lows
The 'four-minute' strapline is a myth as by the time you've warmed up and down it actually takes a full 20, at the least. The warm up/down obviously is unavoidable as it prevents injury but the fact it takes longer than we first thought is a bit of a blow mentally. We oddly didn't come away from the session feeling that sweaty. This could have been because we were holding back ever so slightly so we didn't pass out in front of a load of other gym bunnies, but at any rate we felt slightly unsatisfied all day. The other low is that the instructor told us you ideally need to do it with other exercise and multiple times a week to get the full benefit. That feels a long way from the 'four minutes' we were sold. But hey, who said exercise was easy, right?

The lowdown
Any exercise that is over in four minutes get our vote. And we think we could really imagine working this into our lifestyle. It's intense but bearable - because the minute you start, you're always seconds away from a rest. We're in.