When we talk about high intensity workouts, the first thing we think about is cardiovascular exercises as the main unit of our workouts; but the metabolic trainings, despite being very similar to HIIT routines , have significant differences, so we must analyze them separately.

This method of training is based on a mixture of cardiovascular exercise and strength training as a method to accelerate the pulsations of our body and thus achieve the main effect of increasing our basal metabolic expenditure (energy expenditure when we are at rest) .

What is metabolic training?

For a training to be considered metabolic , there is a premise that must necessarily meet: that is able to raise our basal metabolic rate and generate what we know as ” COPD effect “, ie the effect of post-exercise oxygen consumption. We must remember that the COPD effect can last up to 72 hours once our routine is finished.

Generally, this type of training is composed of sessions HIIT type , characterized by high intensity training and in which we introduce brief periods of rest time or active rest between exercises or between sets.

A training that has become very fashionable when we talk about metabolic training is the “MetCon method” .

Advantages of metabolic training over conventional training

When composed mainly of sessions HIIT type , the advantages of metabolic training compared to conventional training will be similar to those that provide high intensity training:

• Reduction of the time necessary to carry out our workouts: with these trainings, we can organize sessions of shorter duration than the conventional ones due to the way of working the exercises.
• Improvement of the overall physical performance : not only for the gain of physical condition at the cardiovascular level, but also it will allow us to improve other aspects such as coordination , balance , agility …
• Variety of routines: due to the wide range of exercises that we will be able to introduce, they are routines that will become dynamic and motivate us to continue working avoiding falling into laziness and monotony.
• Improvement of the functionality of our core : due to the large number of exercises that we can introduce with components of instability, through this system of training we are going to see ourselves forced to strengthen our core, which will make us more “functional” and will protect us of certain injuries.
• Greater muscular activation : when basically composed of multiarticular or compound exercises , metabolic workouts will activate more muscle mass in less time than we would need with a conventional training .