12 Min Total Body Tabata Workout is an excellent and intense finisher workout from Heather Robertson. She uses total body pretty loosely in her workout titles. You are working your upper and your lower body, but you are not hitting every muscle group (as usual, the back is neglected). And due to the pace of this workout you can not use heavy dumbbells. But it is the perfect finisher to add onto the end of another workout. Especially since she did not include a warm up, so you can jump right into it already warmed up from whatever workout you just came from. The stretch is also very short. I did Heather’s 30 Min Full Body HIIT before this one and paused that workout right before the stretch at the end. I did this finisher then returned to 30 Min Full Body HIIT for the stretch. Between the two workouts I burned 439 calories. And after just completing another workout, the first tabata in this finisher was a serious shoulder burner!
This workout is done tabata-style. A tabata is a type of HIIT (high intensity interval training): 20 seconds of work followed by 10 seconds of recovery; repeat this 20/10 interval 8 times for a 4 minute tabata circuit. There are 3 tabata circuits in this workout, which equals twenty-four 20/10 intervals. There is a timer in the lower right hand corner of the screen counting down your recoveries and intervals. During the recoveries Heather previews the next exercise. This is not a low impact workout.
12 Min Total Body Tabata Workout is 14:41 minutes; 30 second intro, no warm up and 1:40 minute stretch. Equipment: dumbbells and fitness mat. Heather is using 5 pound dumbbells. The weights listed below are what I used.
Tabata 1:
- Squat & raise (holding a DB in each hand, lower into squat while also doing a straight arm front raise, lower arms and lift them behind you when standing) (6# DBs)
- Mountain climbers
- Repeat #1 & 2 three more times
Tabata 2:
- T-push ups (holding one DB in each hand, do one push up then rotate into side plank, reaching top arm/DB to ceiling, alternate sides with one push up between each side plank) (10# DBs)
- Lunge, curl & hop (do one reverse lunge with a bicep curl, when you stand hop with DBs at sides, alternate legs when lunging) (10# DBs)
- Repeat #1 & 2 three more times
Tabata 3:
- Squat & jack (with DBs at shoulders, lower into a narrow squat, when you stand, jump legs out wide while doing a double arm overhead press) (5# DBs)
- Burpee & swing (plank burpee–holding one DB in each hand, place DBs/hands on floor, jump feet back to plank, jump feet back into hands/DBs, when you stand, swing DBs from sides to overhead keeping arms straight) (10# DBs)
- Repeat #1 & 2 three more times
For more info on Heather Robertson’s workouts and other (free) streaming workouts I’ve sampled and reviewed, check out my Streaming page.
