Designing a Metabolic Bodyweight Workout

Metabolic Bodyweight Workout – Breakdown

In order to successfully design a metabolic bodyweight workout, a trainer must have a good understanding of the main guidelines. Let’s go over these main guidelines and then show you how to formulate your own workout protocols.

Work-Rest Guidelines

If creating timed interval circuits, the following are the guidelines when putting the work and rest periods together. While not an absolute protocol, it will work best for 75% or more of the training programs that are written and with the vast majority of the clients with which most trainers work.

The guidelines to follow:

  1. Max Power Circuits: 15 seconds of work followed by 45 seconds of rest or 10 seconds of work followed by 50 seconds of rest. This will be utilized when doing exercises such as plyometrics or explosive exercise variations.
  2. Max Strength: 20 seconds of work followed by 40 seconds of rest. This will be utilized when using pure strength-focused exercises.
  3. Muscle Gain: 30 seconds of work followed by 30 seconds of rest. Here the goal is to allow for more total work time to create the damage necessary to promote optimal muscle recovery and rebuilding.
  4. Strength/Muscle/Power Endurance: 40 seconds of work followed by 20 seconds of rest or 45 seconds of work followed by 15 seconds of rest. These can be utilized quite frequently when doing both resistance as well as bodyweight circuits.
  5. Fat loss and Cardio-Conditioning circuits: 50 seconds of work followed by 10 seconds of rest or 60 seconds of work followed by 15 seconds of rest. (This is what I usually find myself using whenever I am training group classes or athletes for the primary goal of fat loss.)

While there may be some variables from these protocols, this is typically the length of time that will suit most individuals.

Exercise Guidelines

Note that the following guidelines are what I suggest when creating circuits, but are not set in stone. They will vary based on the client and the specific goals that he or she may have.

Finisher’s or Short Workouts

When doing a short workout lasting 10-15 minutes or less (or adding a finisher to a longer workout session), the goal should be 2-4 exercises overall. This may not seem like much, but when the client is pushing themselves to a point of maximum fatigue, it will add up.

Beginner/Easy To Implement Workouts

If working with beginners or just in need of workouts that are relatively easy to implement without a great deal of explanation or monitoring of the client, use 4-6 total exercises.  Most clients can effectively handle this number without too much struggle and will find they can perform the session without cues from the trainer.

Total Body Workout

If doing a total body workout and want to prioritize fun and excitement, adding 8-10 total exercises is what the target should be. The added exercise variety will keep a client’s attention and helps to cover all of the main muscle groups in the body.

When doing full body workouts, regardless of how many exercises are being used, be sure to alternate between upper body, lower body, core, total body and cardio exercises.  This helps to ensure sufficient rest is given for each main muscle group while still keeping the heart rate up and the body working hard.

Funk Roberts Signature Metabolic Bodyweight Workouts

In the following section, I’m going to go through my signature Metabolic Bodyweight Workouts.

These workouts are a 10-exercise circuit that targets the total body based on the body parts and movement patterns that you’ll want your clients doing to hit their entire body all at once.

I usually set the work period to 60 seconds, followed by 15 seconds of rest for this circuit allowing for 2 minute rest periods in between rounds. The clients will do three rounds total and will always warm-up before and stretch after their session is completed.

NOTE: The first round is usually a slower round with more adjusting and teaching taking place, as your clients get used to the exercises being performed. You should perform round two and three with the goal to increase your intensity, tempo, and rest periods from prior rounds.

When I create this workout, there are factors that I consider with my programming design.

These include:

Anytime, Anywhere

First, I wanted to be able to use this workout anywhere and at any time during the day. I wanted to be able to use it outside, at a gym, or at home. I also needed something that I could do while attending seminars around the world, but yet still be able to teach people using these workouts.

Low Skill

Another of my main requirements for this workout was that it was a low-skill requirement. Unless you specifically know that you will be instructing more advanced trainees, you want this workout to keep the skill level low so that anyone can easily do this workout, and put the effort into adding intensity with the exercises.

If you are training athletes, then the skill level may be slightly elevated, however, all the exercises being performed should be those that mimic movements they are doing in their sport of choice.

Easy To Progress/Regress

Perhaps the most important of all my requirements was that the workout is easy to regress or progress as needed. This way, you can use it for any group setting as you simply adapt the workout to meet their needs.

In a group setting, you often have trainees of different skill levels, so by having this feature implemented into the workout protocol, you can easily adjust and adapt it for the individual. This allows you to train an advanced client and a beginner one at the same time, without having the need to perform two entirely separate workout sessions.

For me personally, when I built this workout, I had two main types of clients in mind to use for it. These included:

Bootcamp/Group Classes/Seminars

These are generally people who are looking to burn fat and build muscle and need a full body workout to really get their metabolic rate firing.

Athletes and Fighters

These individuals often look for a bodyweight-focused circuit that’s going to involve more movements, conditioning, cardio, mobility, agility, core strength, along with explosiveness. It’s important that their program falls into line with this to give them the best overall sport-specific conditioning.

Metabolic Bodyweight Blasters

As you create your metabolic training program, you’ll want to consider including these metabolic bodyweight blasters that I’ve created to maximize intensity and results.

Each Metabolic Blaster follows a template that I’ve created to ensure that the entire body is targeted using different exercises, styles, and protocols.

Let’s look at what each one entails.

1.    Burpee

This is my favorite exercise and all of my Metabolic Bodyweight Blasters start out with a burpee variation of some sort. For beginners, a basic burpee movement in the first few circuits is a must.

2.    Lower Body/Knee Dominant

Next up you have a full lower body exercise that targets all the main muscles including the quads, glutes, hamstrings, calves. This can include squats or lunge variations depending on your preferences and the client’s needs.

3.    Horizontal Push

Next, I’ll add a horizontal push exercise, which focuses on the upper body, specifically the chest, shoulders, arms and core. This might include a push-up, a side-to-side push-up, a spider push-up, dive bombers, or Hindu push-ups. Keep your clients guessing with all these variations.

4.    Back/Row

This move is meant to target the entire back region while ensuring the clients really feel the muscles working when performing the exercises. It’s vital they aren’t just going through the movement patterns, but feeling every second of it.

The best exercises to do here include inverted rows, Supermans, and bent over raises.

5.    Abs – Flexion

No workout is complete without targeting the abs, so now I put in an ab flexion exercise. This will target the entire region including the transverse, rectus, and oblique muscle groups. Great exercises to try include the leg raise and oblique movements, along with any crunch variation.

6.    Core Static

After that core move is complete, then move into a core static exercise. These focus on building core strength through anti-flexion and static movements such as the plank, the 4 point prone bridge, side plans, along with Supermans.

7.    Cardio and Calisthenics

You’ll want to build cardio into the circuit, and after the core work is a great time to do it. The client’s heart rate may be dropping during core movements, so some cardio or callisthenic exercises are sure to bring it up.

These will burn fat and improve their conditioning level. Try exercises like jumping jack variations, stationary runs, or mountain climbers.

8.    Plyometrics

Finally, to finish things off, I like to add some plyometrics to the mix. This is the ultimate way to build the fast-twitch muscle fibers so the client becomes more explosive, powerful and fast. All the while, it’ll also accelerate their rate of overall fat burning as well.

Great exercise choices here include jump squats, sprawls, skaters, jumping lunges, and thrusters.

With this powerful line-up of exercises, you can feel confident that your clients are going to get a thorough workout session that builds muscle, burns fat, and improves their fitness level immensely.

How To Build An MBB Workout

Each MBB workout is a full-body routine. The chart below shows the type of exercises that make up an MBB Workout. The key is to make sure you spread the specific exercises apart so that you are not targeting the same body part two intervals in succession.

For example, if you had a squat exercise and lunge exercise one after the other, because of pre-exhausting legs with squats directly before, the client is not going to be able to perform the lunges with optimal intensity. This leads to the complete breakdown of ineffectiveness of the exercise and technique from the start.

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