Jade Teta ND, CSCS and Keoni Teta ND, LAc, CSCS
As a personal trainer or fitness enthusiasts, you have probably heard about hypertrophy training, high-intensity interval training, endurance protocols, or functional training. If we asked you to give us a protocol to increase strength, improve muscle mass or increase muscular endurance you could probably give us the textbook answer. However, if we asked you to explain what metabolic conditioning was could you? It is very likely you have not yet even heard of this new style of training, but metabolic conditioning (also called metabolic exercise, metabolic training, or metabolic effect) is changing the face of fitness and if you want the best results and the most cutting edge techniques it is time to bone up on this new fitness genre.
What is it?
Since there are a ton of so-called “metabolic” programs popping up all over the place, lets first cover what metabolic exercise is not. Metabolic conditioning is not aerobic exercise. If the body is not being forced to push beyond the anaerobic threshold during a workout, than you are not doing metabolic conditioning. It also is not interval training. Metabolic conditioning involves the use of weights. If you are doing heavy full body weight training and taking several minutes of rest between sets you are not doing metabolic training. Single joint, body part focused bodybuilding workouts are definitely not metabolic conditioning. And no matter how cool you think it might look, having a client balance on one leg on a Bosu while you throw balls for them to catch is no where close to metabolic conditioning. We define metabolic conditioning as a system of exercise that uses the latest understanding of endocrinology, exercise science, and strength and conditioning research to fully tax the body’s major energy systems with the chief goal of maximizing the greatest amount of fat that can be burned both during and after the exercise session.
Protocol of the Athletes
Unlike other exercise protocols that focus exclusively on developing power, muscular endurance, aerobic capacity, or bigger muscles, metabolic conditioning is focused on burning fat above all else. This means metabolic exercise protocols are not modeled after the old school weight training methods and monotonous aerobic exercise of the past. Metabolic exercise takes its cues from the world of sports. 95% or more of all sport involves multiple parameters of fitness, and challenges all three-body energy systems. The simple fact is athletes don’t train to look good, they look good as a natural consequence of participation in their sport. Consider a gymnast, boxer, American football player, and tennis athlete or soccer player. If you watch these sports what you will see is fluid steady movement patterns that will quickly morph into chaotic unpredictable bursts of strength and speed before changing back again. Metabolic exercise seeks to reproduce the nature of sport by combining resistance training, interval exercise, old school calisthenics, bodyweight exercises, plyometrics, and explosive Olympic style movements in one integrated workout. The workouts are fast paced and hard hitting involving short rest periods and full fatigue protocols.
Metabolic Conditioning is Combination Training
Metabolic conditioning focuses on compound exercises that work multiple muscle groups across several joints like squats, powercleans or deadlifts. It employs exercises that combine two or more exercises into one, called hybrid exercises. It also moves from one exercise to the next quickly with little downtime and will frequently combine aerobic dominated lower body activity with anaerobically dominated upper body movements.
Research supports these techniques. The journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise published a study in 2001 showing this effect. Thirty-five females did a workout merging lower body aerobic exercise with resistance exercises for the upper body. This strategy generated a lower body fat and greater muscle gain among participants, as well as improved endurance and muscle strength over aerobics alone. Volume 94 (2005) of the European Journal of Physiology as well as volume 97 (2006) of the same journal came to the same conclusion. In one of these studies, thigh circumference decreased by 11% while abdominal fat dropped 12% while muscle mass increased between 2% and 14% in nine different muscle groups in 3 months. Irish researchers have previously shown exercisers burn up to 50% greater fat by combining upper and lower body exercise. Finally, a study published in the September 2008 Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research showed a ten fold greater fat loss for an exercise protocol that intermixed weight training and aerobic exercise compared to the exact same workout that separated the two. Two other studies, one in March 2000 in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism and the other in the March 2002 issue of the European Journal of Applied Physiology showed that workouts using the techniques of metabolic conditioning described above generate a large metabolic after-burn that can last up to 16 hours for women and 48 hours for men.
The old way does not work
The numbers above are shocking especially when you consider what science has to say about more traditional modes of exercise. A study published in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition in 1997 (Vol. 21) shocked many in the exercise world. This study was a meta-analysis, which is a study that looks at many different studies done on the same subject over several years to try to get at the truth of a subject. In this study, they looked at hundreds of studies done over a 25-year period on the benefit of aerobic exercise to help people lose weight. The results showed that aerobic exercise provided only a 2- pound weight loss advantage over diet alone for weight loss. A more recent study published in Exercise and Sport Science Reviews (2009, vol. 37) showed that traditional aerobic and resistance training workouts had no effect on stimulating the metabolism to burn more fat. Given the stark contrast of these studies with the others highlighted above, it makes sense that metabolic conditioning should begin to become the focus of personal trainers and fitness enthusiasts alike.
Making it Happen
As a trainer or fitness enthusiast, there are four goals you will want to keep in mind for any metabolic conditioning program. We call these the “Bs” and “Hs”, which stand for breathless, burning, heavy, and heat. In order to make sure you are generating the desired metabolic effect unique to metabolic conditioning, your workout must accomplish these four elements. Each workout should have the goal of making you breathless as if you have been running wind sprints. This can be accomplished with a short sprint on a treadmill in between hard-hitting weight training sets or busting out 10 squat thrusts while carrying weights. At the same time, the workout should generate a feeling of burning in the muscles. This will involve using lightweights on compound exercise like a pushup and reping them out until the chest and arms are screaming for you to stop. The workout must also force the body to stress and strain under heavy weights at times. This may involve going immediately from 15 explosive squat jumps to a 10-rep max on a leg press machine. Finally, you have to generate heat and that means sweat. Sweating is a sure sign you are generating the desired effect. If you can accomplish these four goals every workout, you are absolutely doing metabolic conditioning.
You can probably tell these types of workouts are seriously intense. However, you should not make the mistake of thinking this style of training cannot be tolerated by the less fit. As long as you don’t break the cardinal rule of metabolic training any one can do this workout. That rule is not resting. Resting in a metabolic conditioning workout is essential without taking rest you are reverting right back to the same tired aerobic driven exercise protocols of the past. If you don’t rest, you will pace yourself and that is the last thing you want in a metabolic training session. Resting, whether you take lots of short little rest or a few longer ones, is essential and will drive the results of the workout. The more you rest the harder you will push and the harder you push the more you will have to rest. We use a proprietary method we call “rest-based training” or RBT, which exploits rest in a way to generate big results. In this system, rest is taken anywhere in the workout it is needed after which the workout is resumed right where you left off.
Final Thoughts
Metabolic conditioning is a new fitness genre that is creating a revolution in the way many think about and practice exercise. While this form of exercise is relatively new, it is beginning to make big waves in the industry. As a personal trainer or fitness enthusiasts you need tools that go beyond single dimensional exercise protocols modeled after bodybuilders or marathon runners. What you need is something that addresses the needs of 99% of the people who