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Adapting Workouts Based on Your Metabolism

April 20, 2018

In order to determine how one should adapt their workouts based on their metabolism, it is important to understand what metabolism is.

Metabolism is the net caloric expenditure or surplus of all reactions in the body, both catabolic (caloric deficit) and anabolic (caloric surplus). Your metabolism is generally dictated by:

  • Caloric intake or expenditure
  • Hormonal status (Dictated by macros, food quality, nutrient timing, genetics, and current lean body mass)
  • Personal training program

Generally speaking the more muscle mass, more intense the training, and the more precise nutrition you have means the better your metabolism will be. On the contrary, the more detrained, high body fat, excess calories and high junk food intake, the lower your metabolism will be.

How Proper Exercise Correlates With Your Metabolism

Everyone has different fitness goals and trains differently. Your metabolism is a key component in how you should workout depending on if you want to lose weight, bulk up or tone up or whatever your goals are when it comes to your health.

For people that have a lower metabolism it is easier for them to gain fat and harder to put on muscle so – they have to do a lot more to see results. In this scenario, you need to train around 4 to 5 times a week with workouts that use a large amount of muscle mass. Examples of good exercises would be:

  • Squats
  • Deadlifts
  • Presses
  • Bench press
  • Row
  • Chin-ups

These compound movements cause a large disruption from homeostasis which burns a large amount of calories and take a relatively long time to recover from (burning even more calories). By frequently stressing large muscle groups, you can take back control of their metabolism and start to get things working in their favor.

Once a new trainee has introduced these lifts consistently for a couple months, they can then add in extra cardiovascular work like HIIT (High intensity interval training) and LISS (low intensity steady state). Cardio days should be done on your “off” days to improve recovery and help fat loss. Doing both of these may help shed some extra fat and further increase their metabolism. By refining your overall body composition, you are increasing your metabolism by improving your hormonal milieu, gaining lean muscle mass, losing fat mass, stress-recovery-adaptation and reducing medications.

Put More Variety Into Your Training

If you train more or naturally have a high metabolism, it is likely to be more difficult to gain fat or weight, also known as “bulking-up”. If this is you, your body mass probably is leaner than most so you do not have to do much when it comes to working out. Exercising at least 3 times a week will be often enough to maintain or even improve your body composition.

It’s likely you can put more variation in the types of exercises you do. Sticking to the big compound lifts will still benefit your overall body composition and metabolism. Train hard, use compound lifts frequently, add in HIIT and cardio on “off” days and improve your body composition as much as you can now because your metabolism constantly changes.

There are many factors that affect your metabolism, but by addressing it in terms to the types of workouts you should be doing, it lead to improved body composition! It is never too late to make improvements to your metabolism or your health. For some it may be harder than for others but every person can increase their metabolism via training if done properly and consistently.

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