Most people who want to lose weight spend all of their time doing cardio. They endlessly pedal the stationary bike while watching the news in the gym, barely breaking a sweat!

Or they walk away on the treadmill like a hamster in the cage. And if you take a look around your gym each year, the bodies never change! All that time and nothing to show for it.

Why is that? That’s what they’ve been told for years. The “wisdom” has always been cardio for weight loss. Unfortunately, this just isn’t true! There are a number of drawbacks to only doing cardio workouts.

Firstly, it takes a lot of time to see any kind of results. Did you know the average runner burns less than one single pound of fat from running a marathon? It’s true!

By only doing cardio, you don’t work your muscles with any kind of resistance, which means you could lose muscle. Losing muscle combined with lots of cardio and a lower calorie diet can also wreak havoc on your metabolism. Your body will reset its resting metabolic rate, making it even more difficult for you to burn body fat and lose weight.

In addition, muscle is what allows you to move and also gives your body its shape. Without muscle, you’ll look lumpy or stringy. It’s not healthy or healthy looking.

Sprinters use mostly intervals in their training, which is a form of metabolic training. Look at a sprinter then a marathoner. Now which would you rather be?

If you want to boost your metabolism and burn lots of calories, you need to start doing metabolic workouts.

What are metabolic training workouts? These workouts combine lots of full body movements, usually a combination of body weight exercises with dumbbells or kettlebells, done with high intensity and utilizing short rest periods.

This means forget about sitting at all the fancy machines in the gym and using exercises that force you to move your body.

Exercises like:

• All kind of body weight squats (also can be done with dumbbells or kettlebells)

• All kinds of push ups

• All kinds of lunges (also can be done with dumbbells or kettlebells)

• Kettlebell or Dumbbell Swings, presses, snatches, get ups and more

In its purest form, metabolic training workouts combine intense resistance training with a cardio conditioning component. This type of training works all three biological systems, the circulatory, respiratory and muskoskeletal.

Many athletes train in this manner, as it’s a big part of most sports, except ones that are specifically geared toward endurance. Sports like soccer, basketball, hockey, football, lacrosse and field hockey are all stop and go sports played at various speeds and intensities. Metabolic training workouts mimic that style.

Two of the most popular forms of metabolic training involve intense intervals with short rest periods. For example, you perform an exercise for 30 seconds, rest for 15 seconds and repeat for a set number of rounds before moving on to the next exercises. Or, you can do one round for each exercise and then start the exercise sequence all over again.

Another version that can be considered part of the metabolic training family is to perform repetitions for each exercise and then try and complete the entire workout as fast as possible and look to beat your time the next time you hit the same workout.

Here are examples of both, using just body weight exercises.

Perform each exercise in 30 / 15 fashion for the noted number of founds.

• Alternate Reverse Lunge – 3 rounds

• Regular Push Ups – 2 rounds

• Jumping Jacks – 3 rounds

• Mountain Climbers – 3 rounds

• Jump Squats – 3 rounds

• Spiderman Push Ups – 2 rounds

• Split Squat – 4 rounds (alternate legs)

• Burpees – 2 rounds

Here’s an example of a ‘for time’ style workout.

• Bodweight Squats – 20 repetitions

• Push Ups – 10 repetitions

• Mountain Climbers – 30 repetitions

• Jump Lunges – 10 repetitions

• Clap Push Ups – 5 repetitions

• Burpees – 8 repetitions

Complete 5 rounds as quickly as possible, resting only when needed.

Metabolic workouts don’t take nearly as much time as traditional workouts and they have the added benefit of boosting your metabolism for up to 39 hours after the workout is completed, something cardio definitely does not do!

If you want to see better results in less time, build lean, shapely sexy muscle, get rid of that ugly body fat and just feel, look, and move better, you must give metabolic training workouts a serious try.

For more information and some good examples of Metabolic Training Workouts you can check the video below.

Have a great day!

Madiosn and Riley