As much as health experts insist on the need to exercise regularly to benefit our body, many people are unable to fit an hour a day into their schedule to train, even 4 days a week. In the end, fitness professionals have ended up designing routines that fit all those busy schedules, giving rise to one of the most rising trends of recent times: workouts. microtraining. They seek to condense all the benefits of sport in the shortest possible time. The question is to move.
Microtraining, also known as routine Burst Training, have become popular in recent months as an exercise modality made up of high-intensity, short-duration exercises with multiple benefits. Metropolitan’s fitness experts help us understand how the body works in a short time and what disciplines should we introduce in a short training program. “Micro-training can help us quickly acquire a new habit, although it should not be the general trend,” they insist from the Metropolitan sports center.
Advantages of microtraining
Although it is not an adequate form of training in the long term, experts recognize that these training routines improve the cardiovascular system and basal metabolism, causing many calories to be burned after finishing the workout. They also get toned, by strengthening muscle mass. All of this inevitably leads to an improvement in physical shape, reducing the accumulation of fat, in a very short time.
“These benefits happen thanks to the high intensity to which we submit our body in a short period of time. This is how in a microtraining session you can burn between 250 and 450 calories“, the Metropolitan experts explain. Obviously, this variation is due to the various complexities between different people, although the emphasis of the effect derived from this type of session is concentrated in the recovery period, where the energy expenditure is greater than that of other lower intensity workouts.
how should microtraining be
According to what the experts tell us, the effectiveness of this type of training is not marked only by the time dedicated, but other factors such as the interval duration, type of stimulus, and exercise, the length of the cooldown period, or the number of runs that are run. In this way, any type of high-intensity exercise carried out for a few minutes is not useful, but you have to comply with some guidelines. The fitness experts at Club Metropolitan recommend that a micro-training session have a minimum of 15 minutes and maximum of 30, to be considered a micro-training discipline, without losing the effectiveness of its execution. In addition, the most effective thing is to combine strength exercises with cardiovascular exercises in such a way that bodily activity is promoted in the most complete way possible.
4 micro-trainings to practice
To put this form of training into practice in the most appropriate way, without losing sight of the fact that it is a temporary formula with which to gain the healthy habit of exercise, the Metropolitan trainers offer us several micro-training sessions. to combine or alternate throughout a week.
- routine 1. Little Burpees, Jump Lounges and Jumping Jacks: The first HIIT workout to activate the body will take you just 5 minutes and consists of performing 5 Little Burpees, followed by 10 Jump Lounges and 20 Jumping Jacks. You can perform up to 10 series of this first routine (always depending on your physical capacity and without exceeding 5 minutes) to exercise cardiovascular training and activate both the lower and upper body and core.
- routine 2. Quick Seat, Jump Squat and Scissor Jacks: After a few minutes of recovery, you can continue with the performance of 5 Quick Seats (from the floor, sit down and get up), followed by 10 Jump Squats (jump squats) and 20 Scissor Jacks. There are 3 simple high intensity exercises that you can perform in series for 5 minutes to continue your HIIT training.
- routine 3. Reverse Burpees, 10 Scissors Sumo and 20 Seal Jacks: After resting for a couple of minutes, you can now put into practice the third HIIT routine that will last 5 more minutes. In this case, you can start with 5 Reverse Burpees (remember to lie down fully, extending your arms and legs), followed by 10 Scissors Sumo with a slightly more open squat, and 20 Seal Jacks, much like the Jumping Jack but placing your arms in cross.
- routine 4. If you have access to a rack or dumbbells, the option of performing a large multi-joint movement every day would be very interesting. The weekly routine could be set out as follows: the first day squats, the second bench press, the third deadlift and the fourth shoulder press. The sequence to follow will be to start the first round with an empty bar and 30-second rest, continue with a second series at 40% of your 1RM with a 60-second rest, the third series at 60% of your 1RM with a 90-second rest and the last set, at 80-90% of your 1RM.
Once a general warm-up of about 2-3 minutes has been completed, we do four series following the sequence of the last routine. The first three routines will activate all areas of the body with short but intense exercises. “The most important thing in training is to maintain the intensity of the exercises throughout the routine to get the most out of it, all in an estimated period of 20 minutes. Focusing on the regularity of the intensity and respecting the intervals between exercises is the key to success”, say the experts who do not hesitate to point out that this type of training, although it can be done by anyone adapting it to their level, this training modality is recommended, above all, for those who are familiar with the sport, since you must have a certain physical shape to be able to achieve the required intensity.
