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.
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