Woodlands Fitness Centre

The Woodlands newsletter: Monday 3rd September 2018

Monday 3rd September 2018

Hi,

The short definition of metabolic training is completing structural and compound exercises with little rest in between exercises in an effort to maximize calorie burn and increase metabolic rate during and after the workout.

Your metabolism (aka metabolic rate) is how many calories your body burns at rest. Most people think that cardiovascular exercise on machines such as treadmills and exercise bikes burns more calories than lifting weights. But that isn't necessarily correct. Working your muscles as well as your heart and lungs can improve your health and help you drop a clothes size faster.

While cardiovascular exercise is a great way of burning the fat, adding a little strength training to your workouts will earn you extra calories every day. You'll even be burning extra calories while you're sleeping or sitting on the couch watching Eastenders.

Aerobic exercise may burn a few hundred extra calories but for every additional pound of muscle you gain, your body burns around 50 extra calories every day of the week. Research has shown that regular resistance training can increase your Basal Metabolic Rate by up to 15%. So for someone burning 2,000 calories per day, that's a potential 300 extra calories. That's more than a Mars bar burned every single day.

This subject is explored later in our article: Metabolic Training


We have 2 main membership options:

Gym Only:

Single: £23pm for 12 months, £25pm for 3 months and £27pm for 1 month.
Joint/Student: £22pm for 12 months, £24pm for 3 months and £26pm for 1 month.

Gym & Classes :

This membership includes:

✔ 139 classes every month.
✔ Classes include HIIT, Kettlebells, Body Conditioning, Pilates and more.
✔ Up to 8 people per session.
✔ Come to as many sessions as you like.

Gym & Classes membership prices:

Single: £32pm for 12 months, £34pm for 3 months and £36pm for 1 month.
Joint/Student: £30pm for 12 months, £32pm for 3 months and £34pm for 1 month.

Here is a list of our group training sessions:

http://www.woodlandsfitnessrowsley.co.uk/group-exercise

PT prices:

Here are a few examples of our most popular PT packages:

8 x 30 minute PT sessions
£112

4 x 45 minute PT sessions
£80

4 x 60 minute PT sessions
£107

All sessions must be used within 4 weeks. We use time limits with our personal training packages to encourage frequent and consistent training. Packages can be designed to your individual needs. We can adjust the time limits in advance to take into account holidays, business trips, etc.

All of our PT packages include full gym & classes membership.

Opening Hours:

Monday: 7.30am - 9.00pm
Tuesday: 8.30am - 9.00pm
Wednesday: 7.30am - 9.00pm
Thursday: 8.30am - 9.00pm
Friday: 7.30am - 8.00pm
Saturday: 8.00am - 2.00pm
Sunday 8.00am - 2.00pm


We always want to know what you think of the Woodlands Fitness Centre - the gym, prices, personal training, group personal training, and anything else. Please speak to us at the gym, email any feedback and suggestions to the email address at the end of this newsletter.

Thanks,

GW


Metabolic Training

Metabolic training involves completing compound exercises with little rest in between exercises in an effort to maximize calorie burn and increase metabolic rate during and after the workout.

Here's the key: the more muscles you're able to activate at the same time, the more you'll be able to trigger your youth-enhancing hormones. This is why using exercises that involve your entire body (upper body and lower body) at the same time is crucial. These exercises will trigger your most effective fat burning hormones, so you can burn off your old excess fat.

Below is an overview of Metabolic Training:

Metabolic Training Uses Large Muscle Groups:

Compound exercises require a maximum amount of energy because multiple joints are involved like a Squat with a Press. Sitting down and doing a biceps curl is like the exact opposite of hard core metabolic training.

Ideally, metabolic training exercises should be structural, which means the spine is loaded and the legs are engaged to some degree during the exercise. I think you can still make a workout metabolic without engaging the legs every exercise as long as the weight lifted is heavy enough, or the intensity of the exercise is very high. For example, doing a bench press then a chin up back to back can be quite metabolically intense.

Metabolic Training is High Intensity:

Metabolic training is high intensity anaerobic exercise that makes you breathless. If you are completing a metabolic workout and you are not breathing hard and sweating, something is wrong. Ideally you should be lifting as heavy as you can and resting as little as possible between sets.

For most clients, stick to workouts that are tough, but not so tough that you never want to work out again. From a 1 to 10 scale, the workouts that I do and those I designed for the group sessions are around 6 to 8 in terms of their metabolic intensity. If you are doing very metabolic workouts all the time, your body may not be able to recover properly.

Metabolic Training Makes You Feel The Burn:

A metabolic workout should help create a burning sensation in your muscles as you are working out. So by your last rep of a given exercise, you should be feeling a burn in your muscles. While the depth of the muscle stimulation from metabolic training is not as deep as a bodybuilding program where you hit one muscle the entire workout, it's still significant.

It's not clear exactly what causes muscle burn (the old theory of lactic acid build up has since been debunked (See: 5 Fitness Facts You Don't Know). We do know that with an increase in muscle burn comes a favorable hormonal response to help the body burn fat and/or build muscle. I'm a big believer in working muscles intensely and going for that muscle burn.

Metabolic Training Benefits:

Below are just a few of the benefits of a metabolic style of training:

Improved cardiovascular capacity:

While metabolic training is not "aerobic" like going for a jog, some studies have shown anaerobic exercise such as HIIT can increase in V02 max beyond that experienced by exercisers following an aerobic program.

Improved hormonal profile:

Several studies have shown that hormones that promote "lipolysis" (the technical term for fat loss) increase as a results of high intensity strength training. I don't want to bore you with all the studies, but strength training in general has been shown to help improve hormonal profile, and metabolic training is debatably the best type of strength training to elicit the most powerful hormonal response.

Serious calorie burn:

While calorie burn studies come to different conclusions as to the total calorie burn of metabolic training, it certainly burns a ton of calories. The calorie burn during a workout is easily around 500 calories for a 30 minute workout, but it also increases metabolic rate from anywhere between 10% to 25% for up to 48 hours, with some studies showing an increase in metabolic rate for up to even 72 hours. This equates to hundreds of extra calories, which over the course of a few workouts can become significant.

Intuitively I think the "afterburn effect" as it's called makes sense, because you are shocking your body, creating an oxygen debt (otherwise known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption), and causing muscle damage (in a good way), which the body needs to repair to become fitter and stronger. This extra repair to get your body back to homeostasis requires a lot of extra energy, it's just difficult for researchers to measure perfectly, especially after exercise. From my practical experience, the metabolic effect of intense strength training is real and it's powerful.
Example Metabolic Training Exercises

Here are just a few examples of what would be considered "metabolic exercises":

Clean & Press
Push Press
Snatch
Squats
Deadlift

Next week I will discuss variations of metabolic training methods. I'm sure all of the above makes sense but any questions just ask me.


Spaghetti Bolognese recipe

Ingredients:

1 tbsp olive oil
4 rashers smoked streaky bacon, finely chopped
2 medium onions, finely chopped
2 carrots, trimmed and finely chopped
2 celery sticks, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2-3 sprigs rosemary, leaves picked and finely chopped
500g beef mince

For the Bolognese sauce:

2 x 400g tins plum tomatoes
small pack basil, leaves picked, ¾ finely chopped and the rest left whole for garnish
1 tsp dried oregano
2 fresh bay leaves
2 tbsp tomato purée
1 beef stock cube
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped (optional)
125ml red wine
6 cherry tomatoes, sliced in half

To season and serve:

75g parmesan, grated, plus extra to serve
400g spaghetti
crusty bread, to serve (optional)

Method:

Put a large saucepan on a medium heat and add 1 tbsp olive oil.
Add 4 finely chopped bacon rashers and fry for 10 mins until golden and crisp.

Reduce the heat and add the 2 onions, 2 carrots, 2 celery sticks, 2 garlic cloves and the leaves from 2-3 sprigs rosemary, all finely chopped, then fry for 10 mins. Stir the veg often until it softens.

Increase the heat to medium-high, add 500g beef mince and cook stirring for 3-4 mins until the meat is browned all over.

Add 2 tins plum tomatoes, the finely chopped leaves from ¾ small pack basil, 1 tsp dried oregano, 2 bay leaves, 2 tbsp tomato purée, 1 beef stock cube, 1 deseeded and finely chopped red chilli (if using), 125ml red wine and 6 halved cherry tomatoes. Stir with a wooden spoon, breaking up the plum tomatoes.

Bring to the boil, reduce to a gentle simmer and cover with a lid. Cook for 1 hr 15 mins stirring occasionally, until you have a rich, thick sauce.
Add the 75g grated parmesan, check the seasoning and stir.

When the Bolognese is nearly finished, cook 400g spaghetti following the pack instructions. Drain the spaghetti and stir into the Bolognese sauce. Serve with more grated parmesan, the remaining basil leaves and crusty bread, if you like.

Enjoy!


Useless Facts

A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continually from the bottom of the glass to the top.

Adam Lavell can rub two pieces of fire together and make wood.

Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it. So there we are. Just eat celery. Problem solved.

Robert Andrews can pick oranges from an apple tree and make the best lemonade you've ever tasted.

The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words. More than 2 billion pencils are manufactured each year in the United States. If these were laid end to end they would circle the world nine times.

Ben Pink once set ants on fire with a magnifying glass. At night.








The Woodlands Fitness Centre Ltd
A: Unit 27, Molyneux Business Park, Darley Dale, Derbyshire, DE4 2HJ
T: (01629) 733 123
E: woodlandsfitness@yahoo.co.uk
W: www.woodlandsfitnessrowsley.co.uk