Do active rests count in exercise time?

kbk1335

I’ve started tabata style training, but between each 4 minute circuit is a one minute “active rest”. If I’m doing a 20 min workout from youtube and it overall has 4 minutes of break, do I deduct these four minutes from the 20?

cmriverside

I wouldn't. I mean 16 or 20 minutes of Tabata won't make a whole lot of difference.

Do it one way or the other consistently, see how your weight management goes. There are lots of ways to make errors especially when trying to estimate exercise calories, this is just one of them. Your heart rate is going to stay pretty high in those rest breaks. Track consistently for 4-6 weeks and then adjust after you have accumulated the trending data.

sgt1372

What's an "active" rest?

IMO, either you're resting or working and, if you're resting, it doesn't "count" for anything.

AnnPT77

sgt1372 wrote: »

What's an "active" rest?

IMO, either you're resting or working and, if you're resting, it doesn't "count" for anything.

I don't know what the heck OP means, but active rest (a.k.a. active recovery) is a common idea.

If I do classic Tabata intervals on the rowing machine, it's eight times (20 seconds max effort, 10 seconds easy effort), plus WU and CD of course. The easy effort bits would be "active rest" - still rowing. More generically, "active rest" or "active recovery" means you keep moving in some way, like stretching, walking or whatever; as opposed to actual rest, which would be standing or sitting, doing nothing.

OP, cmriverside is right: The difference in calorie burn with a workout that short isn't worth worrying over. If you log your exercise consistently, and log your eating, and monitor results, it'll sort itself out. It's a tiny percentage of your all-day calorie burn. I assume you're probably doing some of the newfangled calisthenics or circuirt or "functional fitness" Tabata. Just log the time as calisthenics or circuit training, it'll be fine.

NorthCascades

I guess it depends what it might or might not count for / towards.

If it's a race, your time is from when the starting gun goes off until you cross the finish line. If you take a nap in the middle of it all, the clock keeps ticking.

If it's to estimate calories, in this case do what's easiest. Sure 4 minutes out of 20 is a large % but you burn so few calories with tabatas that the difference will amount to a few grapes.

amusedmonkey

When it comes to burning calories, your body doesn't care how intense the exercise feels to you, it only cares how much energy you're expending. There is a certain correlation between exertion and calorie burn, but it breaks apart the higher the intensity because if you can't continue at the same pace you aren't burning as many calories.

When I started running, I had to start with intervals. I could burn more calories incline walking and didn't feel wiped out afterward as I did after my interval running sessions. My calories were basically running minutes + walking recovery minutes. Calories wouldn't be as easy to calculate for a Youtube type workout because there isn't a reliable formula for those.

What are your goals? Are you aiming to increase fitness through these workouts? If so, continue doing them and simply log them as 16 minutes of moderate aerobics, circuits, or calisthenics, depending on the nature of these workouts. The difference between 16 and 20 minutes isn't really that significant and MFP tends to over-estimate aerobics calories anyway. You can always adjust later if you're losing more/less than expected.

If your goal is calorie burn, then you may want to rethink your exercise strategy. The exercise that will give you the best calorie burn is the one that has you exercising at the highest intensity reliably sustainable for the period of time you wish to dedicate for a workout. Example: if you want to exercise for 30 minutes, but you go so hard that you wipe out within 5 or 10 minutes, that's not the best calorie output for you. Similarly, if you finish 30 minutes feeling like you could have gone harder, that's not the best output. It takes a bit of trial and error and experimenting to get close to your best calorie burn potential.

MelanieCN77

I would leave them in your total for tabata style training. When I'm doing other stop-start kind of activity I keep an eye on my watch and pause if my HR goes below about 110. I find that gives me a decently accurate end result if I am concerned about my cals.

kbk1335

AnnPT77 wrote: »

sgt1372 wrote: »

OP, cmriverside is right: The difference in calorie burn with a workout that short isn't worth worrying over. If you log your exercise consistently, and log your eating, and monitor results, it'll sort itself out. It's a tiny percentage of your all-day calorie burn. I assume you're probably doing some of the newfangled calisthenics or circuirt or "functional fitness" Tabata. Just log the time as calisthenics or circuit training, it'll be fine.

Because I can’t go to the gym, I’ve started doing HIIT style tabata. Would it be better to log it as HIIT or calisthenics or circuit training? In total I do around three 20 minute videos. The ones I do are high impact and get your heart rate up. So was wondering which one to log.

AnnPT77

kbk1335 wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

OP, cmriverside is right: The difference in calorie burn with a workout that short isn't worth worrying over. If you log your exercise consistently, and log your eating, and monitor results, it'll sort itself out. It's a tiny percentage of your all-day calorie burn. I assume you're probably doing some of the newfangled calisthenics or circuirt or "functional fitness" Tabata. Just log the time as calisthenics or circuit training, it'll be fine.

Because I can’t go to the gym, I’ve started doing HIIT style tabata. Would it be better to log it as HIIT or calisthenics or circuit training? In total I do around three 20 minute videos. The ones I do are high impact and get your heart rate up. So was wondering which one to log.

I'd suggest logging it as the type of exercise you're doing (calisthenics or circuit training).

HIIT is really not an exercise; it's an exercise pacing strategy (High Intensity Interval Training, right?). "Tabata" is ambiguous: The guy seems to have allowed his name to be associated with a particular style of pacing strategy, and also later with certain workouts, so "Tabata" now seems to have become a remarkably generic (thus not too meaningful IMO) term.

A person can do HIIT or Tabata intervals on a bike, running, with weight circuits, with calisthenics/bodyweight exercise, with functional fitness stuff, on a rower (or rowing shell), and more. Would you expect those all have the same calorie expenditure per minute? (I wouldn't. ).

It's great that you're getting your heart rate up. In the style of exercise you describe, some of that heart rate increase is in reality correlated with oxygen demand, so correlated with calorie burn. But it's also likely that some of that heart rate increase is from, essentially, strain, because there's a reasonable strength component to what you're doing - it's not very pure cardio. That doesn't make it a bad exercise (may make it a good one, depending on goals ), but that makes it an exercise that heart rate monitors (HRM) and fitness trackers (that rely on HRM) are likely not to be terribly accurate at estimating, because HR is not a fabulous correlate of oxygen demand/calories in that situation.

These (links below) were written a while back now, but it's still absolutely true. Even if you aren't using a fitness tracker/HRM at this point, it's a good brief education on heart rate and how it relates to calorie expenditure - really valuable.

https://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/the-real-facts-about-hrms-and-calories-what-you-need-to-know-before-purchasing-an-hrm-or-using-one-21472
https://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/hrms-cannot-count-calories-during-strength-training-17698

Best wishes!