Now I have never claimed to be a doctor, nor a nutritionist. But doesn’t this sound like me? I think we’re on to something……..
by Dr. Kareem
Accelerated Fat Loss = (# of METs used) x (# of Joints Involved)
When you want to lose fat super fast, you have to challenge as much of your body as possible in a repeatable, safe way. Heart rate alternation, Ratings of Perceived Exertion (RPE), and VO2 max are all important; none of these is as important as the multiple of your metabolic equivalent cost of an exercise and the number of joints involved in a given movement.
Essentially, the more of your body you get moving, the faster fat loss is going to take place. It often helps to think of your “metabolism” as a system of smaller metabolisms, one at each joint in your body. Together, these “local metabolisms” add up to form your “global metabolism,” or your overall metabolism.
When You Want To Raise Your Metabolism,
Get More Of Your Body Moving.
The more muscle you have involved in any given movement, the higher the # of METs (Metabolic Equivalent of Task) you’ll use, and the increased number of joints you’ll have involved. Normally, what happens is that the # of METs go up by increasing speed or intensity of a movement, such as running on a treadmill, instead of just walking. When the # of METs go up, so does the caloric expenditure – More calories burned.
The Problem: You’re Training The Wrong System
The way most workout programs are designed is by deciding which muscles to work today, and how to best set up your program to hit everything eventually; all of this while stimulating the greatest “metabolic” effect. The problem is, you’re already off to the wrong start.
But, Muscle = Metabolism, right?
So in order to stimulate the greatest metabolic effect from an exercise, we want to get as much muscle involved as possible. This just makes sense. However, stimulating as much muscle as possible may not be what it seems…
Now, what we’re talking about by working multiple joints together at once is coordinating “like” muscle groups together and multiple body parts. This requires much more electricity from our nervous systems, as well as coordination of muscle timing to execute a movement. This will allow us to activate much more muscle with every exercise we are using to increase our MET usage. So, every calorie burned gets multiplied.
What we’re talking about is a bit trickier to design, but much more effective since we’re also going to be multiplying the ‘Neuro Factor’ at the same time by adding more joints into a movement (more to come on this soon.) However, to build this level of complexity into your exercise program, it’s crtical that you remember something very important and counterintuitive:
The Best Thing You Can Do Right Now To Increase
The Metabolic Cost of Every Exercise Is Stop ‘Working’ Your Muscles
Well, that’s not completely true. Instead, shift your focus off of working your muscles and onto working your nervous system. Most people don’t have any idea how slow and debilitated the signals to their muscles have become. Consider this:
- Nerves innervate many muscles, not just one.
- Nerves get compressed all the time from poor sitting posture, awkward lifting technique, or small, repetitive injury.
- By working on improving a nerve signal, we are working on simultaneously activating more of many muscles, at once.
- More muscle activated = higher metabolic cost of the exercise = Faster Metabolism.
In my next post, we’ll talk all about the 6-Step Neuro-Activation Sequence I use with my clients to help them get as much muscle active as possible. You’re going to love it, so be sure to check your inbox tomorrow and click the link. It’ll say something like this: