A Great Way to Finish Your Workout

Being a personal trainer I pride myself in being able to plan as challenging a session as possible for all of my clients. Often my sessions are limited to an hour or sometimes even less, this is when I need to ensure that every last detail is correct so my clients can get the full benefits from the session.

I don’t know if you are the same but I feel unfulfilled if I leave the gym after my session without breaking a full sweat! It may hurt at the time but finishing your session gasping for air gives me an enormous sense of achievement (a bit later on).

Often the reason for me leaving the gym in this state is the way that I finish my workouts. Yes I do cool down and take time to stretch but in the remaining 5 minutes I have beforehand I will often (and use with my clients) do something known as a metabolic finisher.

The thinking behind a metabolic finisher is it gets your heart pumping, depletes your working muscles and boosts your metabolism. You would perform it at the end of your resistance workout to ensure that you have well and truly used up every bit of energy in your muscles, boosting your fat burning potential enormously at the same time.

You can perform a metabolic finisher using anything from 2-6 exercise which you perform in a row with no rest. By taking away the rest you are challenging your body to cope with the extra demands with no time to recover.

I often use just bodyweight exercises for this purpose, sometimes one or two bits of equipment.
Here are a couple examples of how to finish your session the hard way:

1.
• Mountain climbers – 30 sec
• Squat jumps – 30 sec
• Press ups – 30 sec
• Burpees – 30 sec

2.
• Speed skipping (with rope) – 30 sec
• Split squat jumps – 30 sec
• Squat thrusts – 30 sec
• Squats – 30 sec

So remember there is no rest between exercises, and to gain the full rewards you want to be doing this at least 3 times. Allow yourself a breather for around a minute after each set then go again.

So if you were maybe looking for that one thing your workout was missing, you could well have found it. Finishing a workout in this manner will give you a great mental boost as well as sending your metabolism into overdrive!

Thanks for reading,

Richard Clarke