4 Minute Timer
Set for 4 minutes. Press start — it rings when the time is up.
Free from Ticka — the reminder app that rings like an alarm, even on silent. Close this tab and the timer stops. On your phone, Ticka rings even on silent. App Store → Google Play → App Store → Google Play →
This timer runs while the tab is open. If you need it to go off when your phone is in your pocket — that part needs the app.
Four minutes and the Tabata protocol
The best-known four minutes in exercise come from a 1996 study by Izumi Tabata in Tokyo: eight rounds of twenty seconds flat out and ten seconds of rest. It was designed for trained athletes on a cycle ergometer, and the point was intensity, not convenience.
What spread afterwards was mostly the length. “Tabata” now means almost any four-minute interval session, usually done at a pace the original subjects would not recognise. That is fine as exercise, but it is worth knowing that the short duration was paid for with an effort most people never reach.
Used outside the gym, four minutes is an honest size for anything that should be hard and brief: a set of push-ups to failure, a cold rinse at the end of a shower, a sprint through the worst email of the day.
For the protocol itself — eight rounds with the switches timed and beeped for you — use the interval timer on its Tabata preset.