Metabolic training > Worn out shoes.

I see so many people trudging away on treadmills still and I don't know why. Really, if you are far enough down the line to know that you need and/or want a gym to gain physical fitness and a healthy lifestyle then to me it seems a little research into how to effectively make use of your time in the $200 a month "mirror fest" that is most gyms today, is pretty much a no brainer.

These are my immediate thoughts when I see someone pounding away on a running machine or plodding along on the elliptical. I think "should I have sympathy with these guys, should they simply 'know better' by now"? It’s difficult to have sympathy but easy to see why they still do it. Its simply because that is the way gyms are and have always been marketed. They are set up with a tardis of different futuristic looking machines designed to suck in the masses. Many machines = great gym- Great gym = tomorrow I will look like Arnie in his prime. A simple and stereotypical equation I know, but a frighteningly accurate one I fear.

Besides relatively small and exclusive garage/basement gyms and Crossfit dungeons are there any gyms now that aren’t marketed directly to the masses? Is there an in between? The reason I ask is because last summer (2011) I spent around 10 weeks writing daily workouts in 10 minutes (at most) that can and did tank literally 3x more calories, in half the time that you would spend trudging on the treadmills. In fact, I never once used a gym for any of them, nor will I use one for "Do More 8.0".

Now I will just dive straight in. Metabolic training is nothing new. It has been around for a few years and grown in popularity with imbedded fitness professionals, but the mainstream are still in the dark about it (PT's keeping it to themselves to keep the clients coming back probably). This is by no means a selling tool (as I have nothing to sell) but what I am about to propose is a bit more difficult than running on the treadmill aimlessly for 90 minutes but a LOT more effective. Starving yourself whilst slogging through mass cardio for great fat-loss won't work lads and lasses. Here’s why.

Eating less and moving more is a great theory, mainly because it works. But, if you want to lose 1 lb of fat from your body (providing your body wants to let it go, another issue for another time) you would have to burn in excess of 3500 calories. An hour of steady state cardio on average will burn about 400-600 calories for most people. Now tell me if you have 6+hours a day to spare thumping the treadmill and cracking your shins? I thought not. So in turn, people don't see the gains (because they don't have the time or there legs are crumbling), eat less, and send their body into starvation mode, clam up their metabolisms and make it even harder to lose anything. Our bodies are homeostatic organisms; plainly speaking this means that they are resistant to change. Dropping the calories and under eating is the quickest way to make your body hold on to what its got so that it doesn't starve. Therefore fat is a wealthy resource for it to protect. Instead you will see your body using lean muscle mass and protein and saving the fat.

Couple the above with the fact that as the superior life form we are incredibly quick to adapt to things we may have once found difficult or painful. Therefore running an hour a day for 3 days in week #1 may have been hard, but if your ultimate goal is fat loss (which it almost always is) by week #6 of the same type and styles of training, your body will adapt to optimise using the fewest muscles, calories and bulk of energy possible, rendering the hour on the treadmill a little bit more futile.

So here is where metabolic training routines show their superiority. A metabolic training routine causes your body to continue to burn calories well after the work's done. It does this via increased levels of intensity, not time spent ruining your knees. Your increase in metabolism, levels of testosterone produced and excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) can keep you burning calories and therefore burning fat for up to 36 hours after you’ve finished slogging it out.

Metabolic routines combine resistance with intensity to give you what is known as the "after-burn" effect. You can use weights, body weight, resistance bands, kettle bells and at the moment where I am, rocks and tires. The routines are focused around usually 2-3 multi muscle/joint exercises using big compound movements to propel whatever the resistance it is that’s being used.

For example an exercise I use regularly called the M100 (or the mandatory 100 as its known) is 100 repetitions of an equal mixture of 3 exercises (burpees x34 reps, mountain climbers x33 reps, jump squats x33 reps) to be completed without rest if possible in as fast a time possible. The resistance here is just your body weight against your muscles, but the beauty of the exercises used in metabolic training is that they can almost always be adapted to make new exercises and then routines. A jump-squat with a kick, or a burpee with some dumbbells or push-ups included provide so many more options than wearing out your shoes on the dreaded running machine. Not to mention the added bonus of it being far more effective too.

Not only is this form of training more effective than the traditional forms, but for me is far more enjoyable because I don't do the same thing twice. Constantly mixing things up keeps my muscles guessing, uses new muscles and stops my body from adapting to what it knows (something that can't be said for the gym goers stationary machine of choice). Yes it can often be harder to perform, but the adage stands true that "anything worth having is worth busting your arse for" or something to that effect.

This post wasn't meant to delve fully into the scientific points of metabolic training, yet instead spur both you and I to do new things.

Look out for further posts into metabolic training routines and finding a more effective means of becoming leaner, stronger, faster, happier and simply a better athlete. I will be posting regular workouts that I’ve designed and performed with hopefully some videos of the more complex exercises so you can try it out too.

Shock treatment + intensity + large muscle movements - starvation and boredom

= us

Have a great weekend.