Cardio and strength training are equally important when trying to build an impressive physique, and personal trainers love to focus on both of them when designing a routine.
But the question is, should you structure these in the traditional sense or should you build your client’s routine around a metabolic workout?
A Metabolic training exercise is a combination of exercises that focus on calorie burn and a sustained increase in heart rate. They help your clients build stamina in less time than traditional weight training with compound exercises and are more effective in producing deep muscle stimulation.
The result is that metabolic training will help your clients build muscle strength, improve their endurance, and still burn more calories.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Metabolic training has many hidden benefits, and we’ll explore them in this guide. By the end, you’ll have a definite answer on whether or not you should include it in your client’s training routine.
What are Metabolic Workouts?
Metabolic training exercises are a type of structural and compound exercises. They are designed to have little rest in between and focused on increasing the number of calories burned and the client’s base metabolic rate during and immediately after the exercise.
You can think of metabolic training as a blend of P90X, HIIT training, and CrossFit training. It used to be for professional athletes and people in the military. but has now been adopted by regular people as a way to enhance their physique.
Metabolic training has “structural and compound” elements because it involves an expertly designed exercise routine that engages multiple muscle groups operating simultaneously.
Metabolic training is also high-intensity, which means you can expect your clients to quickly work up a sweat and most likely maintain the pace for the duration of the exercise.
Except for these key features, metabolic training seems very similar to other training techniques. In fact, there isn’t one specific recommendation for how to complete a metabolic exercise program. As long as clients combine strength training with calorie-intensive movements in a safe and controlled manner, you can say they are conducting a metabolic training workout.
The Hidden Benefits of Metabolic Workouts
Metabolic training boosts the overall cardiovascular health
Metabolic training requires intense involvement of the cardiovascular system because everything goes up, from the amount of oxygen consumed to your client’s heart rate.
Because metabolic training is also characterized by a few seconds of rest between sets, post-exercise oxygen consumption increases drastically.
Some recent studies have shown that metabolic training help to reduce blood pressure and help manage type 2 diabetes in many of the same ways that regular aerobic exercises help.
This is why metabolic training is best for clients looking to improve their cardiovascular health while also increasing the number of calories burned.
Metabolic exercises help improve hormonal profile
Metabolic training has been shown to stimulate the production of certain hormones like the growth hormone, glucagon, and bone development hormones.
But that’s not all because a metabolic workout routine can also boost calorie burn on another level. Some studies have also shown that these training sessions help with the production of hormones that aid lipolysis (to shed excess fat from fat stores): glucagon and catecholamines, making them practical fat burnout exercises.
Metabolic workouts improve calorie burn
It’s great to note that you can increase the number of calories burned just by reducing seconds of rest between sets. Even if you’re doing resistance training, you can easily convert it to a metabolic resistance training session by reducing rest.
Depending on how you structure them, metabolic training sessions can also stimulate muscle growth by inducing micro tears during exercise. As you know, muscles grow when they are damaged during exercise, and the body lays new fibers to replace the damaged ones. In this way, your clients can also gain strength and build muscle through metabolic training, even if they aren’t performing a strict strength training workout.
How to design the perfect metabolic resistance training routine
To design the perfect metabolic resistance training routine, you need to consider your client’s current fitness level, goals, and schedule to come up with the most effective plan possible.
That’s why we’ve put together this handy guide on designing the perfect metabolic resistance training routine! Here are 5 simple tips to think about when designing a metabolic training routine.
Considerations for any beginner
Considering a client who is a beginner is essential to consider because of the intensity of your workout. Beginners should start at a low intensity and work their way up. This way, you are helping them avoid injury and allowing them to build strength over time.
You should also capitalize on exercises that activate multiple muscle groups and use compound movements because these are both beginners friendly and guaranteed to yield great benefits.
Exercise selection
If you’ve ever performed deadlifts, you’ll know that they are highly intense. Unsurprisingly, they are excellent for metabolic workouts. Include compound movements like deadlifts, jump squats, and bench presses with a few seconds of rest to help your clients burn calories in a short period.
Number of sets
The number of sets your client performs is dependent on their goals. If they are trying to build muscle, 4-5 sets per exercise is a great point to shoot for. For endurance, increase the number of sets and reps for best results.
Rest Intervals between set
With traditional exercises, 2 minutes between sets is great. But keep in mind that metabolic training aims to burn as many calories as possible, so you want to reduce the rest period while considering your client’s tolerance level.
This will also depend on where you’re training your client. The rest duration may not be a problem if you’re using an independent gym. But for larger gyms with more members, you may want to use the available equipment as soon as they are available, in which case, you’ll need a more flexible workout plan.
Load/weight used
The load you recommend will depend on your client’s fitness level and goals. However, it should be heavy enough that it’s challenging to complete a set amount of repetitions.
Some clients will want to push past their limits, and it’s up to you to sign off or stop them. Unfortunately, this is one of the things no one tells you about being a personal trainer. You have to remember that if they get injured, your personal trainer liability waiver does not cover negligence.
To Wrap It Up
Many factors go into designing a successful metabolic resistance training routine. From deciding the kind of work to do to how much rest time is necessary, and even the total number of sessions per week, you need expertise and patience to design an effective metabolic workout routine. Hopefully, this guide has given you enough information to get you started.
If you’re struggling to scale your business as a beginner personal trainer, you should read this post next.
