It is a known fact in the fitness training Perth industry that keeping recovery short, which means keeping your heart rate up will improve “lipolysis” (breakdown of fats) or fat loss. Doug McDade, owner of Parkfit Personal Trainers Perth agrees, “What keeps our clients lean and motivated is no doubt the metabolic workout they get from our Parkfit circuit training. Cardio is a drag, so if you move through the circuit fast, you can usually save yourself having to do 60 minutes of cardio per week. So you can effectively do your strength training and cardio in one workout! Any workout that takes you up from the ground and back down again lends itself to working the full body hard translating into a major torching of calories”
Research has shown the hormones that promote “lipolysis” (the technical term for fat loss) increase as a result of high intensity strength training. Strength training in general has been shown to help improve hormonal profile, and metabolic training is debatably the best type of strength training to elicit the most powerful hormonal response.
Even more interesting, metabolic workouts are gaining popularity because you get the fat-burning and heart-busting benefits of intense cardio along with the muscle-building properties of a weight workout.
Per a full body circuit training session used by Parkfit Personal Trainers Perth, you usually burn between 600-700 calories if you keep moving with active rest plus more when you recover sitting on the couch or asleep thorough a bodily system called EPOC “excess post-exercise oxygen consumption”. The key to circuit training for fat loss is to have knowledge of the muscle groups being used per exercise so that whilst one muscle group rests, you can work the other. This method used by the personal trainers in Perth allows you to ramp up the intensity and not fatigue in one muscle group too early like with longer bouts of running. In fact, too much steady state running can lead to muscle loss, increasing cortisol in the body and does not stimulate the muscle growth hormones.
Remember, you want to hold onto your muscle since muscle has a higher metabolic makeup at rest. The EPOC effect described above does what steady state cardio can’t do. You still need some steady-state in your program to enhance recovery and strengthen your heart, but when it comes to stripping fat off your body, nothing works like circuit training to manipulate the speed at which your metabolism burns. Research has shown that the EPOC effect increases along with the intensity level of the type of exercise you’re performing. So, while you may burn more calories during a low-impact 45-minute treadmill session, you’ll affect your metabolic rate in a far more profound way if you throw in two or three short-yet-intense ten minute metabolic full body circuits per week. Whether you’re willing to admit it or not, metabolic-style training is fun despite its high degree of difficulty. The workouts move quickly, the exercises are constantly changing, and it forces you to use your entire body as a unit— the way it’s intended to move—instead of performing the same repetitive moves for set periods of time, a la steady-state cardio. You get a lot done without too much muscle soreness. The metabolic conditioning circuits usually involve a combination of body weight, dumbbells, barbells and kettlebell equipment. When lifting the eccentric reps – the negative motion, when you lower the weight – should be performed somewhat slower. You want your working muscles to resist gravitational pull on the negative phase of each rep. Understand that eccentric exercise has been shown to have a significant effect on metabolic conditioning-induced energy expenditure. Not lowering weights under control diminishes results. An eccentric cadence of approximately 2-3 seconds is recommended.
The calorie burn during a personal trainers Perth workout is easily over 600 calories but it also increases metabolic rate from anywhere between 10% to 25% for up to 48 hours, with some studies showing an increase in metabolic rate for up to even 72 hours. This equates to hundreds of extra calories, which over the course of a few workouts can become significant.
Intuitively I think the “after burn effect” as Doug called it makes sense “ because you are shocking your body, creating an oxygen debt (i.e. excess post-exercise oxygen consumption), and causing muscle damage (in a good way), which the body needs to repair to become fitter and stronger.”
Another secret in the Perth fitness training industry is that for fat loss to occur, you need to activate the big energy consuming muscles of the body like the chest, the back, glutes and thighs when choosing exercises, especially the legs. Big sweeping moves with the legs are good. Also, choose moves that involve at least two of the major muscles and learn how to do compound moves like the barbell squat or sandbag lunges in proper form.
For more interesting facts about metabolic circuits, visit www.parkfitgyms.com.au