Metabolic Resistance Training: Fat Loss and Muscle Building

It’s common knowledge that cardio-aerobic exercises can burn significant calories and help you reduce fat. However, one critical issue is that prolonged cardio sessions can also break down muscles and reduce your strength.

But what if there's a way to burn tons of calories and reduce fat but still preserve your muscles while allowing you to build strength in the process?

Enter Metabolic Resistance Training or MRT. By combining the best strength exercises into a circuit routine with minimal rest periods, you can experience the best fat-burning and muscle-building workout that can transform your body composition.

This article will discuss how Metabolic Resistance Training can power up endurance, strength while optimizing your body composition.

Metabolic resistance training combines high-intensity cardiovascular and strength training workout routines. MRT uses the large muscle groups of your body to perform a high volume of movements resulting in significant energy expenditure.

Metabolic Resistance Training works by increasing the metabolic or energy cost of performing exercise. The heightened metabolism during MRT maximizes your body's potential to burn calories all day, even after working out.

For this training to work, you must give your best physical effort through a series of compound body exercises within a short but intense period.

This workout gives you the best of both worlds. MRT makes your workout shorter than the traditional cardio or strength training routine while allowing you to develop foundational strength and stamina.

Burn tons of calories

The more you move, the more calories you lose. The faster and more intense you do certain movements, the more energy you use. MRT takes advantage of this principle and can be an incredibly effective weight-loss technique without losing your hard-earned muscles.

The combination of shorter rest periods, high-intensity movements, and compound exercises in Metabolic Resistance Training elicits greater energy expenditure than a traditional steady-state cardio routine.

A single session of Metabolic Resistance Training can burn between 200-600 calories depending on how hard you go with your training, making MRT a potent tool for getting rid of stored fats.

Metabolic Resistance Training focuses on using compound body movements at high intensity resulting in increased recruitment of muscle fibers, and further exhausts them during the exercise.

This provides stimulus and triggers the release of growth hormones, testosterone, and other biochemicals in the blood, which lead to hypertrophy or muscle growth. Over time, consistent MRT training will help you achieve a more lean physique than traditional weight lifting alone.

Metabolic Resistance Training enhances the "afterburn effect," a phenomenon in which the body continues to burn calories for hours after working out. It increases your caloric expenditure and contributes significantly to weight management and fitness.

When training using MRT protocols, you'll build more muscle mass due to its strength training components. Since muscle tissues are more metabolically active than fat tissues, having more muscle mass increases your resting metabolic rate or the rate at which your body burns calories while resting.

When you train with pure cardio aerobic exercise or steady-state cardio, you risk burning not just calories and fats but also muscle tissues.

On the other hand, MRT specifically targets and builds muscles while burning stored fats allowing you to maintain and preserve lean muscle mass while losing weight and improving your body composition.

During MRT, your heart works non-stop to pump more blood that carries vital oxygen to your muscles to keep up with the intensity and pace of your training. More importantly, this allows you to build cardiovascular endurance and strengthen your heart muscles.

Ultimately, you save valuable time hitting two objectives simultaneously– developing muscle strength and endurance. The cardiovascular benefits of MRT are enough for you to ditch your "cardio days" and focus more on your aesthetic or bodybuilding goals.

Your body responds to the demands you put it through. Consistently incorporating MRT into your fitness routine can lead to long-term changes in your metabolism.

This gradual metabolic adaptation allows your body to become more efficient in using your stored energy, improve your insulin sensitivity and optimize your overall fat metabolism and utilization of nutrients.

MRT combines different exercises in various ways to create a challenging and energy-demanding workout session. These exercises can be done using weights such as dumbbells, barbells, and kettlebells as resistance.

Here are some of the most common exercises used in Metabolic Resistance Training:

• Squats
• Deadlifts
• Lunges
• Push-ups
• Rows
• Shoulder press
• Kettlebell swings
• Burpees
• Mountain Climbers
• Planks
• Jumping rope / Skipping

Even if you are going for a high-intensity MRT workout routine, it is critical to use proper form, start with appropriate weights or resistance levels, and gradually progress as you get stronger.

Here’s a metabolic resistance training workout program for women:

And for men:

Metabolic Resistance Training comes in many forms, including supersets and circuit training. Most fitness enthusiasts agree that circuit training is best for MRT due to circuit sessions' already high energy-demanding nature.

MRT is about performing a series of exercises with no rest in between. After completing a circuit, you can rest for 1-2 minutes. Perform at least 3 or 4 rounds of circuits and safely push yourself close to your limit.

A circuit training using MRT can look like this:

1. Squats: 3 sets of 12 reps
2. Push-ups: 3 sets of 10 reps
3. Bent Over Rows: 3 sets of 12 reps
4. Walking Lunges: 3 sets of 10 reps per leg
5. Mountain Climbers: 3 sets of 20 reps
6. Rest for 1 minute

1. Deadlifts: 3 sets of 10 reps
2. Dumbbell Shoulder Press: 3 sets of 12 reps
3. Kettlebell Swings: 3 sets of 15 reps
4. Plank: Hold for 30 seconds to 1 minute
5. Bicycle Crunches: 3 sets of 20 reps per side
6. Rest for 1 minute

1. Step-ups: 3 sets of 10 reps per leg
2. Dumbbell Chest Press: 3 sets of 12 reps
3. Lat Pulldowns: 3 sets of 10 reps
4. Russian Twists: 3 sets of 15 reps per side
5. Burpees: 3 sets of 10 reps
6. Rest for 1 minute

The optimal length of a Metabolic Resistance Training session is about 20-30 minutes, depending on your exercise tolerance.

Due to the high-intensity nature of MRT, it is recommended to limit your training sessions to 2-3 times per week and have one rest day in between. Remember, rest is also a crucial component of your fitness.

Metabolic Resistance Training is a highly effective method of building strength and endurance. It maximizes your body's ability to burn calories and stored fat making it an excellent physique-builder routine and weight management solution.