MetCon Workouts & Metabolism

"Met-Con" Workouts and Finishers
So a "Met-Con" workout is a workout that involves a combination of cardio and resistance exercises (using weights or harder bodyweight exercises like push-ups) There's usually a challenging element to it too. So instead of 40 seconds of push-ups with 20 seconds rest and leaving it there, you would keep doing that until you hit x amount of push-ups.

A great way to get a full-body 'met-con' style workout is to use dumbbells and a few different exercises to get 10 reps of each in. 

Such as this Dumbbell complex for 5 Rounds and 10 Reps Each:

Front Squats
Romanian Deadlifts
Rows
Hammer Curl and Press
Push-Ups

Use a timer for each round, or challenge your workout partner for a challenging effect. The main thing, as always, is to do the exercises safely. 

Metabolism Myths
But, Seán, that's not much different to other forms of exercise. Yeah, you're right. But when it comes to metabolism, we can often way overthink it. A lot of myths have developed over the years because of this.

A number of these myths include: 
- Eat breakfast to kick start your metabolism 
- A large meal will slow down your metabolism
- Eat six meals a day to keep your metabolism burning
- Eating celery burns more calories than you consume
- Skipping meals slows down your metabolism

All of the above is untrue. Our body is much smarter than that. When it comes to food consumption, think of it as a daily and weekly thing rather than a few hours and time of the day for calorie intake and fat loss. The exception is eating before you workout. Some of us find it too hard to eat in an empty stomach.

Slow metabolism
When it comes to losing body fat, one of the reasons I hear from people as to why they struggle is that they "have a slow metabolism." 

If you could only increase your metabolism, fat loss would be easier, right? Well, technically, yes. Which is why we hear a lot about metabolic conditioning classes and supplements claiming to boost metabolism in aid of fat loss. But is it true? 

Before I answer that, you may be asking: just what is metabolism anyway? 

Fair question and one I probably should have answered a few paragraphs ago. Metabolism refers to the rate our body uses energy and burns calories. We're continually burning energy throughout the day (our Basal Metabolic Heart Rate). As a Personal Trainer, I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but we expend most of our calories at rest ( well over 60% on most days). Although, when we think about it, that seems about right when you think about a training session burning from 300-500kcals (very, very, very rough estimate) and we consume over 2000kcals a day, we have to burn a lot at rest, or we would be in a massive calorie surplus. 

Most of us do not have a slow metabolism. We all burn at different rates with so many factors attributing to it, including our genes (although men seem to have a faster metabolism than females).

But if we could just increase that rate, it would help us get into a calorific deficit and help us lose weight... 

So what foods can we take to increase metabolism?
Despite what some google websites might tell you... I'm afraid the answer is none. Caffeine, green tea and spicy foods maybe give a temporary boost. But it's minor. And I wouldn't recommend drinking coffee all day to keep that little boost going. 

Boosting our metabolism through training
We can get a little more of a boost in our workouts. One of the factors in determining our metabolic rate is our lean muscle. Developing lean muscle requires you to do more strength/resistance training. As with the 'Met-Con" workouts earlier, you can see the finisher had a lot of resistance training elements to it. But it did look like a lot of regular finishers using weights or a variation of HIIT training, right?

The truth is that training is only one factor in weight loss, and it is less important than nutrition. 'Met-Con' type of training is just a form of HIIT training and should not be the only thing we do for losing body fat. Too much of this type of training only can lead to injury. But a combination of resistance training (more slow and controlled), along with cardio and HIIT can help us safely, and more effectively reach our goals. Exercise can most certainly help. But it is not a substitute for over-eating on a 'bad' diet.

If you are going to do HIIT/'Met-Con' (yep, I'm lumping them together), I wouldn't recommend doing it any more than 2-3 times a week. But "met-con" is not this revolutionary style of training rather than something you have probably done before without even knowing.