6 WEEK Early morning Strength & Conditioning Class
TUESDAY and THURSDAY 6am
£50 (existing gym members, get a discounted price)
Contact the gym for more information and to book your place
The goal behind these workouts – trying to pack lots of high-intensity interval exercise into shorter amounts of time.
Metabolic workouts jumpstart the metabolism to burn fat while at rest and during your workout. This offers clear benefits over jogging or other steady state low intensity workouts.
what should you expect in the session.
You should expect a cardiovascular and muscular challenge. You should expect a little panting, a lot of sweating and tension in your body. You should have some reps where you can really feel your muscles working, like you’re lifting the world. You should have an elevated heart rate in the fat burning level. These are all signs that intensity is high enough to elicit an adaptive response from your body. Aka, you told your body you’ll become stronger, faster, leaner, and better. Every exercise can be taken at your own pace.
What should you NOT expect? You should not always feel like throwing up. You should not feel close to death. You do not need to be on the ground, panting for 10 minutes after workout. It isn’t judged by every muscle on your body being torn apart and taking a week to recover.
A FEW MISTAKES PEOPLE MAKE WHEN IT COMES TO TRAINING
WORKING OUT EVERYDAY
It’s not needed. Your results come from recovery (aka, nutrition and sleeping). They don’t come from working out harder. Give your body time to rest and repair, or you’ll never see progress.
Fat is really lost when outside the gym. It isn’t lost in the gym, unless you are doing a whole lot of cardio. But I also don’t recommend that, because metcon is the way to go for more efficient, effective workouts.
Your muscle is also built at rest. The mechanical load and microtears you’ve created in your muscles are repaired and built stronger when you rest and eat. You aren’t being ambitious and smart when you work out more than your body can handle.
Fitness is a gradual process. Let it take its course and transform you.
EATING NOTHING TO LOSE WEIGHT
It’s becoming common for aspiring lean people to starve themselves, to lose weight as quickly as possible.
Don’t do it! You need food to live, literally. When your over-starve yourself, your body recognizes it, says, “Oh crap, I am DYING” and starts to preserve every little bit of energy. Your metabolism goes down instead of up. Remember the entire purpose of these workouts was to increase our metabolism. Eliciting the Starvation Response is the exact opposite direction.
There is a balance between eating less than your body burns and managing your metabolism. Eat too little, and your body holds onto every bit of fat it can. Eat too much, and you’ll be adding weight (though with smart exercise, it’ll be good weight – aka muscle). But the idea is that you need food to workout and stay healthy.
You NEED food. Eat nothing, and your workout, body, health, and life suffer. Eat all 3 macronutrients: fat, carbs, and protein. Don’t ignore an entire macronutrient (basically, CARBS) because it is trendy to do so. Metabolic workouts use carbs almost exclusively for energy. I don’t care how far into ketosis you claim you are, you are burning carbs while working out and that produces the best athletic response. Period.
WORKOUTS ARE TOO LONG
The longer the metabolic workout, the worse off you’ll be. The focus of this session should be short, intense, adrenaline-inducing exercise. By nature of the program, it should force some focus and intensity. Any high-intensity workout that extends past 20 is just too much.
Hormones vital to maintaining strength are decreased the longer the metabolic workout goes for. This is especially true when you’re eating, These longer workouts will fatigue your body and mind. You thought burning fat was hard? Try doing it when you are chronically sore, tired, and dreading your workouts.
Remember when I talked about short, high intensity being good for burning fat? Well, if your metabolic workout goes too long you won’t just burn fat, you’ll burn muscle. That’s right, if you’re aiming for that “lean” look you’ll need a shorter workout. Do not overdo it! You want to maintain muscle, or you will become fragile, weak, and exhausted.