So this post is likely to make me unpopular with a percentage of my readership……Zumba®, Combat, distance running and similar activities are not the optimal way to change your body shape! How many still overweight, flabby people can you see on that London Marathon TV coverage, even after all of that training? Loads right?
That is because extreme cardio may burn off calories, but it generally doesn’t dramatically change overall body composition i.e. the percentage of body fat, or ratio of fat to lean tissue. Some experts even say that too much cardio actually has the opposite effect and encourages the body to hold on to fat.
With predominantly cardiovascular (CV) exercise, even if scale weight is lost we simply become smaller versions of our shapeless selves. I can tell you this from personal experience. I was a competitive triathlete for much of my 20’s and early 30’s, training hard for between 10 and 20 hours every week, and I never built the body I really wanted (see the photos below but please excuse the clothing as I did live in Florida).
I became pretty good at my sport, but even at my ‘race weight’ of 137 pounds (9 stone 11) I was soft and not particularly lean. These days I am quite a bit heavier, even more so since Christmas as I have deliberately gained more than 10 pounds of flab on a ‘diet experiment’ which I will explain in my blog post next week! That said, I think that I actually look much better than I did as a pure endurance athlete.
Why? Because I carry a lot more muscle than I did in my 20’s and early 30’s. When women think of gaining muscle, they generally believe that if they move a weight heavier than a peanut they will end up looking like a body builder. Nothing could be further from the truth!
Let me assure you that female body-builders, fitness and figure competitors spend many hours in the gym, lift moderate to heavy weights on a very structured programme, and have unbelievable discipline in their diet. Of course, some also use illegal substances, but that is another story!
The reality is that without high levels of the male hormone testosterone, or dedicated weight-training and diet, women actually struggle to build muscle.
So now you are going to ask, ‘but why would I want to build muscle?’ It’s simple really. Every pound of muscle which you can add to your body will torch its way through extra calories per day……whilst you are sitting on the couch doing nothing!
Not only that, but if you can swap just a few pounds of shapeless fat for a similar amount of solid muscle, your body-shape will dramatically change.
Muscle is our most metabolically active tissue, and requires lots of calories just to maintain it. The more muscle we have, the faster our metabolism, and the higher our resting metabolic rate (RMR), i.e. the amount of energy it takes for us simply to stay alive.
There are some wacky numbers out there stating that every pound of muscle burns 50 calories per day. Even though this is probably a gross exaggeration (one report I read recently put it at nearer to 6 calories a day), muscle is still around 5 times more metabolically active than fat, which just sits there pretty inert.
Very few women aspire to be body-builders, but almost 100% of the ladies coming to my studio and joining my Metabolic Magic programme report one of their goals as ‘toning up’. They are really asking for help to get rid of the jiggly bits and simply want to look better in their clothes – or perhaps without clothes 😉
I will tell you again that the low/moderate intensity cardio which the majority of people do in the gym is not the optimal way to achieve this. It might be a good addition to a progressive strength-based programme, but is very unlikely to be successful when used in isolation.
So having told you what doesn’t work, perhaps I should tell you what does!
The answer for the average Joe (or in this case Jane), who wants to quickly reduce their levels of body fat, build some muscle and look totally awesome in a bikini, is MRT or Metabolic Resistance Training.
Now, I should remind you that if you want to really torch your way through extreme levels of fat and completely reshape your body, it is hard to beat serious weight training. Whatever your programme, you have to be prepared to break tissue down if you want to rebuild yourself stronger.
This is why the majority of CV-based weight-loss programmes don’t change your body shape…….they don’t cause enough ‘distress’ within the muscles to force them to adapt and get stronger.
Excessive CV training is not a positive stress on the body at all. Unless you really know what you are doing when it comes to nutrition and recovery it can leave you fatigued, and in many cases with elevated stress hormones like cortisol which actually inhibit fat burning.
Worse still, too much cardio coupled with inappropriate nutrition can actually cause the body to cannibalise its own muscle tissue to use as fuel….a total disaster for body composition where we want to raise and not slow the metabolic rate.
Strength type training wins every time, but the problem for most people is that training with weights can be fairly boring as it is often done alone, following strict progressions of sets, reps and volume. Plus, it is tough to replicate the camaraderie of a group exercise programme which many people enjoy, within the free-weights section of a gym.
So what is MRT?
I don’t want to get overly technical on you here, but we need to have a quick overview of aerobic and anaerobic metabolism.
With aerobic exercise (endurance cycling, running, walking etc. and many gym-based classes) we focus primarily on our slow-twitch muscle fibres which burn predominantly fat and are slow to fatigue.
In anaerobic metabolism (strength, power and speed training) we use our fast-twitch muscle which places a greater demand on more readily available muscle glycogen (carbohydrate/sugar).
Metabolic Resistance Training (MRT) is ultimately successful because it targets both of these energy systems, using a combination of anaerobic strength and aerobic cardiovascular exercise, usually in a timed interval format.
In MRT classes, such as Merlin Fitness Metabolic Magic, we get to work hard for a set time period of between 30 and 60 seconds, and then have an incomplete rest period of 10 to 30 seconds – not enough for the anaerobic energy systems to completely recover before we push ourselves again. This is repeated multiple times until fatigue means that we are unable to work at a high intensity any more. In most of my classes this amounts to around 30 minutes of structured exercise, with the actual ‘work’ time of less than 20.
Not only are we able to challenge both the aerobic and anaerobic energy systems and burn a large number of calories with the density of work we do during the session, but we also get to benefit from a slightly raised metabolism for up to 48 hours after the session because of the ‘afterburn’ or EPOC (Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption).
If you are worried that doing less endurance exercise will cause you to lose fitness, don’t be. The cumulative fatigue caused by the negative work/rest ratios in a Metabolic Magic class also stimulate the aerobic metabolism and lead to quick improvements in cardiovascular fitness.
Many years ago when I was still competing, I was forced due to injury to do no long duration running, but instead performed repeated high-intensity short sprints every other day. At the end of 6 weeks of vastly reduced training I went to a 10km (6.2 mile) race and actually knocked over a minutes off my personal best over the distance. I am not saying that this training regime would work if you were a marathoner, but short duration, high-intensity training still has significant cardiovascular benefits.
I am not going to jump on the current bandwagon in the fitness industry, and tell you that CV training such as running or cycling is bad – it certainly isn’t if you want to be an endurance athlete. On the other hand if you simply want to change your body shape, shed fat and ‘tone up’, it is nowhere near the most effective type of training to do!
Make sure that the mode of exercise on which you are spending your precious time is the optimal way to reach YOUR goal.
If you love running, Zumba® or yoga, then please keep doing them. Just don’t be misled into believing that you are going to radically change your body shape with these types of activities alone.
The only way to do this is by shedding fat and/or building muscle (preferably a combination of both), and CV-based workouts are nowhere near as effective as MRT, strength training and several other modalities in this regard.
Yet another benefit of the Metabolic Magic classes is that they are not only scientifically designed to illicit cardiovascular and strength-building benefits whilst maximising fat-burning, but the combination of functional exercises helps build a stronger body which is better able to perform daily activities.
In our daily lives (even if you spend too much of it chained to a desk or in front of the TV), the body is expected to move through a huge variety of positions, often with a load. Bend over, carry the shopping, open a door, reach into the cupboard, push the lawn mower, make the bed, sit on the toilet….all are functional movements. Lose the ability to do these tasks, and life becomes that much harder.
Our expectations of our body become even higher if we want to practice a sport or move beyond these basic activities, and this is where the problems can really start if we make extra demands of a body which has forgotten how to move efficiently.
As we age, we tend to move less, sit more, and generally become less active. It takes a toll on our bodies, which are then prone to injury due to weakness, muscle imbalance, instability and poor proprioception (awareness of where our limbs are in space).
To counteract this, in the Metabolic Magic classes we bend, push, pull, twist, lift, move, squat, throw and perform as many functional movements as possible, either using simply our own body weight or with an added weight/resistance.
The ViPR, TRX, Alpha Ball, Bulgarian Bag, Kettlebell, RIP-trainer, battle ropes, Bodyblade etc. all modify the challenge and increase the effectiveness of the classes. We train to not only improve body composition, but to make the body stronger and better able to adapt to the demands we want to place upon it.
It would be very possible to perform an effective workout using only our own bodyweight, but it certainly wouldn’t be as much fun!
Of course, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. As I stated earlier, to be effective and illicit fitness and strength improvements, exercise has to challenge the body and cause it to break down just a very small percentage of its existing tissues.
We all know the feeling when we first go to a new exercise class, particularly one involving weighted movements, and we wake up the next day sore all over. This is the body letting you know that it has experienced micro-trauma within the muscles.
Severe DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) lasting 3-4 days, or occurring after every subsequent workout, is probably a sign that we are applying too much demand on the body. It needs rest and an opportunity to adapt, rebuild and get stronger. This is why too much higher intensity exercise is actually detrimental and leads us rapidly into a state of over-training and breakdown.
Consistently push your body too far beyond its current ability, without allowing time for recovery, and ultimately you will end up burned out, sick or injured – none of which will help you to reach your fitness and body composition goals.
This is why we recommend that new clients only attend classes three times a week to begin with, and perhaps build up to four or five later. There is little advantage for most people in training hard multiple times per day…..in fact all that happens is that the intensity within the sessions will naturally be lower due to existing fatigue.
It is fine (and perhaps beneficial) to go for a gentle walk, stretch, foam roll or another restorative activity, but don’t think that a further taxing workout will increase your results, as the opposite will probably be true.
Hopefully now you understand a little bit more of the premise behind our Metabolic Magic style of training, and why it is so effective. I am starting to see some great transformations at the studio, with clients losing weight, getting stronger and quite simply looking better.
It isn’t easy, and it takes consistent effort, but the results are worth it!
If you want to book in for a free consultation to see if Metabolic Magic is right for you, please call me at the studio on 01752 721062.
