Whether you call it HIIT, HIST, Tabata, or MetCon, metabolic conditioning-style interval workouts of all kinds can help you to melt the fat off your body, lose weight, and build muscle faster than any other form of exercise known to man.
While steady state cardio (SSC) is good for building endurance (at the sacrifice of some muscle and a lot of precious time), MetCon can give you fast results with 0 sacrifices. Period.
You get in shape in half the time and unlike the negatives that come with fast weight loss, there is no down side to getting sculpted and lean quickly with HIIT. It’s good for you, good for your heart, and good for you in that the weight isn’t sucked back onto your body at the speed of light, as it will when you burn up all your fat burning muscle.
My clients cant seem to get enough of it, the results that is! I wouldn’t get the same synopsis mid MetCon that is for sure.
As a personal trainer, MetCon is very dear me because of what it enables me to do for others.
What I’ve seen is that MetCon regimes keep people coming back to fitness, keeps them coming back to the gym—especially those who need it the most—those who are most doubtful that they can lose weight and that they really can get the body of their dreams.
When new clients come to me needing help with weight loss or physical problems caused by high levels of body fat, there’s no greater joy than introducing them to a form of exercise which shows immediate and noticeable results and helps them whittle off that weight day by day.
See, people who haven’t been working out at all will feel they get toned and getting leaner quite quickly. It’s the way to work out if you’re feeling flabby—no doubt. It’s immediately body fat reducing and muscle building. For overweight people this is a win-win, slimming them down and increasing their lean muscle tissue so swiftly they want more.
I’ve seen clients completely transform themselves in one year or less and their lives transform with them. They meet the man or woman of their dreams, become financially successful, finally starting their own business or writing that book they had always thought about writing.
They start feeling attractive and confident again, which flows into every aspect of their lives.
Myself, I love interval training for all kinds of reasons. It helped me to get the body that I’ve
achieved and it takes me half the time to keep it now, leaving me more time for work, study, rest and relationships.
Why Does it Work So Well for Everyone?
Any time you get an immediate payoff from an experience, you want to do it again, right?
Well, that’s the real beauty of MetCon . . . it’s exercise where you can feel yourself getting harder every day, you can go a little longer with every workout, and you’re noticeably stronger once you let yourself recover and then work out again.
Plus, metabolic conditioning pumps up your metabolism long after you leave the gym, you won’t lose muscle like you will with SSC, it’s great for your heart, and you build lean muscle mass much faster than you will slogging away on a treadmill at a steady 3.3 mph.
Even for my clients over 60 or those who are extremely overweight and out-of-shape, I recommend a modified Met-Con program where we use metabolic conditioning with weights and HIIT forms of exercise such as inclines and varying speeds on the treadmill to help them burn fat off their bodies faster.
I recommend it for everyone.
Researched Benefits of MetCon
In one important 2004 study, researchers found that HIIT could decrease mortality rates in patients with coronary artery disease and, as they note, “High intensity aerobic interval exercise is superior to moderate intensity exercise for increasing aerobic capacity in patients with coronary artery disease.”
VO2 max is measures your capacity to utilize oxygen and to transport oxygen throughout the lungs and heart during exercise. It is a reliable measure of total physical fitness. Typically, improving your VO2 max rate, means you are becoming increasingly healthier and more fit.
A higher VO2 max also = enhanced endurance for longer periods of exercise with higher energy expenditure (i.e. you can run harder and faster, lift more and lift longer).
Studies evidence that HIIT improves VO2 max significantly, by at least 10% for some athletes. See study, and study.
Other fantastic benefits
So, Why Do They Call it MetCon and What is Met Con?
MetCon is simply an abbreviation for metabolic conditioning. Most people assume that MetCon’s sole focus is to improve the speed up the metabolism, and yes, that happens, but it is about much more than just that.
“Metabolism” is simply a word for how we transform food into energy.
Metabolic conditioning is the process of challenging our energy systems, our myriad energy systems to burn maximum fat and improve fitness on all levels. See, while steady state cardio only challenges one energy system, our aerobic energy system, HIIT works to challenge all our metabolic systems—hence, metabolic conditioning.
We have three different metabolic pathways for all kinds of tasks we need “energy for” to perform different physical functions depending upon the duration of the action and the energy needed for performance.
You might have heard this called the “creatine” or phosphate pathway. This is our “I need speed now” pathways—and is the fastest pathway our body uses for energy to perform an action.
This is our emergency energy pathway—our fight and flight energy, and also the pathway we use for deadlifts and sprinting.
This system may be immediate but recovery from this type of exercise takes longest – 3 to 5 minutes (and this is why adrenal fatigue, combining stress and stressful exercise, can be a big problem for professional athletes).
This is our intermediate energy-metabolism pathway. It provides our energy in the short term, for one to four minutes of intense activities, like jogging at a really good clip and speed walking for five minutes. This is also the pathway weight lifters use when doing reps and sets.
This is our marathon running, long weight lifting session of low weight high reps for hours kind of system.
This is a system with limitless fuel and we can do this kind of light, steady state exercise the longest without becoming exhausted.
We are constantly moving within and between one of these pathways using a combination of them. We never use one absolute system—each pathway of energy fortifies our workouts to some degree, we just want to maximize upon certain pathways
With the three major pathways outlined, keep in mind that there is always interplay. No one sole pathway is working at a time. Throughout a workout, each system is contributing to some degree; however, certain work-to-rest ratios call upon one primary system.
What makes MetCon great is it utilizes all these pathways in a way that is immensely beneficial for the body overall.
MetCon’s Origins in Weight Lifting
Although Izumi Tabata and CrossFit aficionado Gregg Glassman have popularized cardio HIIT programs, some of the pioneering research into the benefits of interval training were actually conducted by weight lifters and resistance trainers such as Arthur Jones (inventor of Nautilus) and Charles Staley, who designed EDT (escalating density training) through modifying and building upon Jones’ pioneering theories.
In fact, it was Jones who actually coined the term “metabolic conditioning” back in the 1975 in an issue of Athletic Journal Magazine.
In the 70s, steady state in all forms of exercise was the norm, whether it was long weight lifting sessions or Olympics-style long distance running inspired by Steve Prefontaine in the 1972 Munich Olympics . . . the Olympics that sent millions of clamoring individuals to shoe stores world-wide to buy Nikes . . .
In the 70s, Arthur Jones was all excited about metabolic conditioning. He defined it as working at a super-high level of intensity for a prolonged period of time until “failure” or exhaustion was reached. He divided these long sessions into 20 minute periods followed by periods of rest, gradually lengthening the lifting periods and shortening the rest periods until there was no rest.
Jones’ theory was that this was a new key to fitness— improving one’s capacity for working at 100% of their ability by pushing the body until it needed no recovery period between sets.
What Tabata did was to shorten these bursts of exercise by a thousand fold, down to 30 second sessions to produce a less exhaustive effect and ultimately enhance endurance, speed, and strength . . . ultimately training sprint skaters to strengthen their immediate metabolic pathway so that they could harness the kind of energy they needed to take off hard and make it to the not-so-distant finish line faster.
Using Tabata’s work as a springboard, Charles Staley developed a form of weight training combining HIIT style methodologies with resistance training protocols, which he called Escalated Density Training (EDT), which is much like HIIT for weight lifters, producing similar benefits in terms of improving heart health, increasing muscle gains, and enhancing weight loss.
What Research Says About the Benefits of HIIT/MetCon
It’s not surprising in this age when we’ve finally begun embracing eating like our ancestors, that we are finally coming around to thinking about the rewards of moving like them as well.
After the barefoot running craze, now people are starting to think another kind of more primal approach to exercise, perhaps less hard on the feet and back, by imitating our ancestor’s ways of life in terms of how they moved– running like we’re running from a predator, then resting, much like ancient man running from a pterodactyl and then catching their breath behind a rock.
I think this is good because we’re primal, evolved creatures whose body has developed mechanisms to protect itself, just as animals have developed camouflage to protect them from predators over time.
I’m all for working with our evolutionary biorhythms.
In that sense, our body has all kinds of evolutionary mechanisms we have to sometimes fight against so that we can lose weight and break past weight loss plateaus, especially.
This is of course why our metabolism slows when we’re stressed, when we diet, or when we push it far too hard as we do in extreme events.
Our bodies also become overly adapted to steady state exercise day after day and seem to do best when we exercise more primally, so to speak, in bursts that take the body by
surprise . . .
Study after study proves its benefits with few risks and 0 takeaways.
Just look at what 2011 research had to say about the benefits of HIIT/MetCon (all the underlining is mine):
Regular HIIT produces significant increases in aerobic and anaerobic fitness and brings about significant skeletal muscle adaptations that are oxidative and glycolytic in nature. HIIT appears to have a dramatic acute and chronic effect on insulin sensitivity. The effects of HIIE on subcutaneous and abdominal fat loss are promising.
Study after study prove its powers for fat burning, especially for burning adipose tissue off the stomach and trunk area.
Let’s look at the what past research has proven over the years in regards to HIIT and fitness, especially for fat burning.
A study published in the Journal of Obesity in 2011 found that in individuals who performed a 15 week cycling program, one group using steady state cardio and the other using HIIT, the HIIT group lost significantly more fat.
The most significant study by far has been the one conducted in Australia in 2014, which found that group of females who followed a 20-minute HIIT program consisting of 8-second sprints followed by 12 seconds of rest lost an amazing 6 times more body fat than a group that followed a 40-minute cardio program at a constant intensity of 60% MHR.
Another important study revealed the EPOC benefits of HIIT, finding that participants in the HIIT group burned 10% more calories 24 hours after their exercise session than those in the steady state group.
So we know that HIIT can help you achieve significant fat loss – that is certain. Steady state cardio has its place, but it also results in some burning up of precious muscle mass, as we know, making it not so much the choice for those wanting to build calorie-burning lean muscle mass and lose fat.
But what about interval weight training? High intensity strength training.
Does that produce significant gains as well?
Of course.
In fact, weight lifters have been doing HIIT (or HIST) forever, simply by simply doing reps till exhaustion, then resting, then repeating the set.
The Goals of MetCon
Overall, metabolic conditioning is simply alternating rest and work periods to improve body composition, endurance, strength, and to accelerate fat burning, muscle building and calories burned after exercise (EPOC).
So, ultimately, you can use metabolic conditioning with any kind of exercise from jumping rope, to rope slams, kettle bells, prowlers to dumbbell workouts,
With strength training, to do true “metabolic conditioning,” however, you cannot rest very long between sets. What you want to do to achieve results is shorten that rest time and challenge your energy systems more and more each time you lift, ultimately improving and shortening your recovery times between sets—you don’t rest after each machine, should move swiftly from one machine to the other.
Forms of Met Con
For me, I advocate a combination of HIIT – both HIIT cardio and HIST/Interval weight lifting with rest days interspersed between them to become ultimately fit.
But remember, the rest days are just as important as the days you’re pushing hard.
Rest days, like sleep, are when we reap rewards.
Let me add then while I’m on the subject of sleep that it’s really important when you’re on a mission to lose weight and build muscle that you get 8 or even better 9 hours of deep sleep to reap maximal benefits (see my article on the importance of delta wave sleep to learn more about this).
Delta wave sleep is when the magic happens, growth hormone is released, and you burn the fat and acquire the lean muscle you’ve worked so hard for.
Here are some different types of MetCon that produce superior results.
HIIT is an acronym for high-intensity interval training. The premise is simple: intersperse bouts of high-intensity aerobic or anaerobic activity with lower intensity bouts. For example, full out running with slower running or running hard/lifting hard and flat out stopping and starting again.
Has anyone every told you it takes more energy to turn a light bulb on and off than to simply leave it on? Or that it is harder on a computer to be constantly turned on and off than simply left on with screen savers rolling? If so, then you can see why HIIT works.
Not only are you challenging your body when you go at full out speed or full out reps with weights by going at your full capacity, you challenge the system to get going again after being completely at rest. It’s harder on you but better for you as well, as many things are.
The enhanced EPOC that HIIT creates is good for all kinds of muscle gains and fat losses because it results in increased growth hormone release (GH) which leads to lean muscle and fat loss, an elevated metabolism for 24 to 48 hours after exercise, and for burning maximum calories long after you stop lifting or working out—in fact, up to an extra 150 calories a day – which equals more food for you, maybe even a little organic frozen yogurt. YAY.
Compound Training
Compound training is becoming really popular right now.
It’s also called total body exercise moves. What you want to do is challenge your upper and lower body at the same time. For example, doing a press while doing squats (thruster), or moving from a deadlift into a upright row (high pull). What these kinds of exercise do is to increase the amount of muscle mass used during the exercise. The amount of calories you burn during exercise is always equal to your output of “work” or how much muscle is worked, to say it better, during the move. Most coaches advise you to opt for moves working the most joints, elbows and knees, for example, or shoulders and hips.
Doing sets like this can cut your workout time in half but yes, it is very challenging and not recommended for beginners. It will make you too sore to work out for a week.
Circuit training is about moving from one machine to another with little rest in between, gradually decreasing rest periods by building your strength and endurance, which is ultimately the premise of EDT. This is a great way to build muscle and melt off fat. For example, you could do presses, then lats, then work on the glutes. Every time you repeat the circuit you work your metabolic pathways even harder and, of course, burn more fat, calories, and stamina.
Keep in mind though you want to keep those breaks in between machines only long enough to walk from one or another. You break between sets not machines.
Eventually, you shrink the time between your sets as you build your endurance, strength, and stamina. The whole idea is to get you stronger in every way.
It is one of the best ways to melt fat right off the body and onto the floor.
Jackson’s Go-To Favorite Circuit High Intensity Strength Training Workouts
It’s important that you warm up before doing any of these workouts. What you want to do to make this a good HIIT workout is to gradually decrease the time you spend resting between sets and gradually increase the weights you use.
So here 2 examples of EDT that I urge you to try if you wish to join the revolution:
The first is more fat loss based whilst maintaining muscle and the second is more towards lean muscle tissue gain with some fat loss.
Fat loss:
How to schedule your week:
S: rest
M day one
T day two
W rest
T day one
F day two
S rest
Day one fat loss
A series: 15 minutes of 6-8 reps on each
A1: barbell back squat heels elevated
A2: barbell bench press mid grip
B series: 15 minutes of 10-12 reps on each
B1: walking lunges db
B2: lat pulldown supinated wide grip
C series: 15 minutes of 15-20 reps on each
C1: 45 degree leg press
C2: push ups
Day two fat loss
A series: 15 minutes of 6-8 reps on each
A1: Barbell deadlift clean grip
A2: Seated db press
B series: 15 minutes of 10-12 reps on each
B1: lying hamstring curl
B2: close grip seated row
C series: 15 minutes of 15-20 reps on each
C1: Incline bench press
C2: 45 degree back ext
C3: hanging leg raise
Muscle gain
Schedule
It’s a 5-day cycle which may involve training on weekends. However, feel free to adjust to lifestyle.
S: rest
M: chest and back
T: legs
W: off
T: shoulders and arms
F: rest
S: repeat cycle starting with chest and back
Chest and back
A series: 15 minutes of 2-4 reps on each
A1: barbell incline bench press
A2: neutral grip chin ups
B series: 15 minutes of 6-8 reps on each
B1: flat db bench press
B2: dumbbell one arm row
C series: 15 minutes of 8-10 reps on each
C1: Chest flys
C2: wide grip pulldown
Legs
A series: 15 minutes of 2-4 reps on each
A1: barbell back squat heels elevated
A2: Hamstring curl single leg
B series: 15 minutes of 6-8 reps on each
B1: Stationary split squat cable
B2: Romanian deadlift barbell
C series: 15 minutes of 8-10 reps on each
C1: leg press 45 degree
C2: 90 degree back extensions
Shoulders and arms
A series: 15 minutes of 2-4 reps on each
A1: barbell preacher curl
A2: close grip bench press
B series: 15 minutes of 6-8 reps on each
B1: incline dumbell curl
B2: cable French press
C series: 15 minutes of 10-12 reps on each
C1: barbell upright row
C2: dumbbell lateral raise
C3: seated dumbbell press
Finally, I hope by now you can see how Metcon is the way forward when it comes to improving body composition over a fast timeline. I also urge you to join the Metcon movement and enjoy the many benefits of great body composition and dramatically improved overall health markers.
yours in health,
Jackson