Full-Body Metabolic-Surge Workouts

Metabolic surge workouts are routines that attempt to maximize the effects of resistance training by increasing your body’s ability to burn calories and fat. These routines are effective because they recruit the muscles of the entire body in a short period of time with little or no rest between sets. The point is to augment slower, muscle-building exercises by making them fast-paced, aerobic and geared toward fat loss as well as muscle gain.

  1. Use the Whole Body

    • When planning a metabolic surge workout, avoid exercises that isolate muscle groups, like triceps kickbacks, or exercises that use guided movements, like Smith machine shrugs. The point of this style of training is to utilize as many muscles as possible in each movement, as well as throughout the routine. Instead, choose exercises like burpees and clean and presses that use several joints and muscle groups, keep you on your feet and elevate your heart rate. The reason for this type of workout is that every muscle you use is a calorie-burning machine and the more of them you use, the more calories you burn.

    Backyard Workout Sample

    • You can do a full-body metabolic-surge workout with little or no equipment, which means you can do it almost anywhere. Start any metabolic training with a thorough full-body warm-up, starting with five to 10 minutes of jogging, jumping jacks or jump ropes, and finish up with some dynamic stretches like easy lunges and arm circles. Then try this circuit: pushups, squat jumps, pull-ups, alternating lunge jumps, medicine ball side slams, mountain climbers, bear crawls and a short sprint. Always finish with a five to 10 minute cooldown of light walking and full-body stretching.

    Surge Structures

    • Full-body metabolic surge is basically a style of high-intensity intervals crossed with circuit training. There are many different ways to structure these types of workouts. For instance, you can take the exercises and perform each for 20 to 60 seconds with 10 seconds of rest between exercises, then take a one or two minute break and repeat the circuit as many times as you can. You can also perform each exercise for a certain number of repetitions or until you reach exhaustion. Just make sure you get your heart rate up and only take short rests.

    Afterburn Effect

    • One of the main claims of the metabolic-surge system is that it increases caloric burn during exercise and also increases the amount of calories used up in excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, which lasts several hours. Studies show that performing high-intensity intervals of resistance exercises significantly increases the amount of calories your body burns as it recovers. This effect can add as much as 51 to 127 extra kilocalories burned while resting, which can add up to a lot more fat loss if you finish every workout with metabolic-surge training.