#and they do look nice liit up

[yeeterthek33per]

Misplaced Toddlers and Mayhem (Katrina Gorry x reader)

A/n: I wrote this while I was drunk, so if theres any mistakes or something, and it doesn't add up... Y'all can blame the boxed LIIT 😂

Part two

Summary: Harper takes a walk, Kyra and Charli are in shit unless they find her, Mini has a heart attack, and you make a new friend... or two.

--------

"Harps?"

....

"Harper?"

....

"Shit."

----------

Honestly, you hadn't even expected to be out today, and now you're being forced to go out Christmas shopping and one of the places you were being forced to go to was basically a wild child haven.

Kids just about terrified you. You avoided them like the plague. One bad run-in was enough for a lifetime for you. One toddler shoving their dirty little mits into your face, leaving you coming down with a nasty lung infection, was enough for you.

They were grotty, and whiny and just not your crowd.

You used to love them. After that experience, though, you felt a little more enlightened, so you left the crotch goblins to their parents at all costs.

However, your sister was insistent you get something for your nieces. She doesn't understand why you can't stand being around them now. She knows what happened but thinks you're being ridiculous, and when you're relying on her to keep you housed for the time being, you had to play nice.

As much as you loved your nieces, you loved them from a much larger distance than your sister liked.

So you had to deal with holidays and birthdays. Meaning you were stuck doing toy shopping. In the local toy store. Where kids are allowed to run rampant, occasionally bumping into you, making you wince, and very occasionally, you receive an apologetic look from weary parents.

As you're walking down the sports aisle, with your nieces having taken a liking to soccer, you end up shopping for a couple mini balls and some cones, and what looks to be a training goal.

You aren't sure since you dont follow it majorly, but it'll do. Despite your own weariness, you knew they loved you and anything you gave them. You had to hand it to Ashley. She'd raised some otherwise pretty decent kids.

As you're browsing around for some pink cones, knowing little Emily liked the colour pink, you spot a little girl just standing there. It wouldn't be a surprise to you, considering kids are typically allowed to run rampant. But the little thing looked about two years old, if that.

What kind of parent let's their two year old go off on her own?

The moment she spots you, it's like she knows you. You had never seen this child before. She runs up to you, making grabby hands.

At first, you think she's aiming for the pink cones in your hand, but the moment you even offer them to her, she bats it away and continues making grabby hands at you.

"I- Hi kiddo? What's up, huh? Where's your mum? Or dad?"

"Wibbons, wasso"

And then it clicks. She wants your hair ribbon, though you don't register the second part. So, in an effort to keep the child calm (at bay), you pull your hair down and offer it to her. She quickly begins to play with it before trying to kind of half attach it to her own head.

It makes you laugh a little.

"Hewp me pwease"

It honestly kind of makes your heart melt a little. She seems like a nice kid. She's not really dirty as such. But you never know.

"You want them in your hair, huh?"

She nods eagerly. You sigh, knowing you're stuck now.

"Okay, turn around for me, I'll put them in, but you gotta stay very still for me."

"Okay!"

To her credit, for a two year old, she does stay very still. You carefully use the ribbon to create a mini bun with a bow and she's vibrating with excitement when you're done.

"Yayyy, tank yoou."

Well, at least she has manners.

"Wow, you look so pretty. What's your name?"

"Ha- Hart- Harp-..."

She seems to be struggling a little, and it kind of makes you giggle softly.

"Harpa!"

"Harper?"

She nods, giggling slightly.

"Alright, Harper. Can you tell me where Mum is?"

The little blonde looks confused for a second. Shakes her head at you and points off to the outside of the shop.

"Cha cha."

It makes no sense, and honestly, what did you expect from a two year old?

So you do what any responsible adult would do here, and ask the lady up the front to check the cameras to see if she'd come in with anyone.

Of course, no dice. She's visible walking into the store completely alone.

"Oh boy."

--------- meanwhile----------

"You fucking lost my daughter?! Charlotte Grant, what the fuck were you thinking?!"

Charlie glares at Kyra, who is snickering lightly as Katrina rips her a new one. Though Katrina whips around to her now too.

"Oi, what's so funny? You were supposed to be watching her too!"

Kyra gulps lightly.

"I was watching her! I went to go get ice cream for us all and told Charlie to stay with her!"

"Rubbish! I told you to stay with her while I went and got her some more chips. That kid eats like you do sometimes, I swear."

"What a load of bull!"

"Is not!"

"Will you two knock it off!"

Katrina is quick to shut the two bickering, totally adult women up. They both shut their mouths simultaneously and look to the shorter, much more terrifying woman.

"Where is she?"

"We don't know, we both came back, and she was just..gone!"

The older woman feels like she's about to have a heart attack. She starts running through different possible scenarios in her head.

"Is it possible that she could have wandered off? Maybe she went to go find that toy store we passed on the way?"

"Fine, we'll go check, but the moment she's not there, we're calling the police."

Both of the kids nod at Katrina and quickly take off running toward the area where the shop was.

--------

"Where Cha Cha? I wan ice keem now"

"Who's cha cha, Harper?"

"Cha cha sissy."

Okay, so, 'Cha cha' is her sister. That's a start. She's already had you kicking a ball around with her, and now she's demanding ice cream. So you duck outside to the ice cream truck quickly for a small cone, hoping to god she's not dairy intolerant or something.

She happily munches on the cone while you contemplate what to do. You could call the police. You probably should call the police. That is until she suddenly up on her feet, pointing erratically at a very frantic looking blonde and brunette, followed by a pissed but frantic looking shorter brunette.

"Cha Cha! Cha Cha, Mummy! Kywa!"

You're relieved. But now also mad. You were about to give this person a piece of your mind. It is so dangerous leaving kids on their own like that.

"Oh, Harper baby! thank god."

"Mummy, I made new fwend!"

The shorter looking woman looks up at you and the words you were going to say just kind of stop in your throat.

"You did, huh? Well, you gotta thank her for getting you that cone, then."

The kid looks up at you with a cheesy grin.

"Tank you y/nn"

The Mum turns to look at the other two, who are now looking at the ground, shuffling awkwardly.

"And you two! Apologise to this poor woman right now. You couldn't watch Harper for two seconds on your own, seriously! You're 21 years old! The pair of you!"

"Sorry!"

"We are really sorry."

You smile a little.

"Honestly, it's not a problem at all. She had us all a little worried when she walked in on her own. But she was really good, no trouble at all, honestly... well... aside from the glaringly obvious."

Seriously? Stick to your guns, you said. You're pissed, you said. Yeah, right. She is pretty hot, though...

Seriously..?

"Honestly, though, thank you so much for looking after Harper, I know she can be a little much for some, especially considering it looks like she's raided your hair ribbons too."

You chuckle a little shaking your head.

"Not at all, honestly. She was a little demanding, but she's definitely well mannered, and she was pretty relaxed the whole time. All I got from her, though, was 'Cha Cha', 'Ribbons' and 'Wasso'... I wasn't really sure what to make of that too much. I assume one of you is Kyra, though."

The shorter woman nods slightly, pointing to the brunette behind her. She waves a little. "I'm Kyra, this one is Charlie, or as we affectionately call her, 'Cha Cha'. I just call her Idiot though."

"Hey!"

The two of them start bickering, and eventually, Charlie has Kyra in a headlock. The woman in front of you facepalms and shakes her head at the two of them.

"I'm so sorry, just ignore those two. You'd think they were 5 and not 21 year old adults. I'm Katrina, Harper is my actual child. These two just forcefully adopted themselves to me."

At that, both of them stop for a second. Kyra speaks, "Hey! You still love me like your own!"

"Excuse me! She loves me more than you." And they're back to wrestling.

At this point, you're trying to stifle a laugh behind your hand. You look down towards the little blonde girl, who is now on her feet, looking at the two of them, the cone she had now fully eaten but completely covering her face and hands.

Katrina looks down at her as well.

"Oh my goodness, Harper. How do you do this every time?"

The little girl giggles as her mother crouches down to wipe her face with the napkin that had been around the cone, but you notice it's kind of already messy, so you grab some of the sanitiser wipes you usually keep on you and offer them to her.

She has a grateful look in her eyes as she accepts them from you.

"Oh my god, thank you, honestly, I swear I normally keep this kind of stuff on me but I kind of just dumped everything in the car when I got the phone call saying she was missing."

"It's all good. I'm happy to help."

She smiles gratefully at you.

When she's done, she picks Harper up to keep her still and in eye sight, but the toddler has other ideas and reaches for you instead making grabby hands, wanting into your arms instead.

Katrina goes to protest, but you reassure her and take Harper into your grasp, the little girl quickly latching onto you and starts playing with your necklace.

"I swear, I've never seen her like this before. She's usually pretty shy around strangers or any of my friends that she doesn't spend a lot of time with."

"Really?" You ask, surprised. The girl had been so friendly with you. Why you?

"Really. I've never seen her like this."

You look down at her, smiling softly. You poke her hand a little.

"Guess I have a new friend."

What has gotten into you. You thought you were supposed to be terrified of kids. What's different about this one?

"Guess so." You meet Katrina's gaze, and she suddenly looks down at the ground before she turns to look at the other two, and you think you see a hint of a small blush rising to her cheeks.

Must be imagining things.

"Hey, you two! Stop fighting. Can you go back to the car and get Harper's bag, please? I'llmeet you both where we were sitting"

Kyra quickly let's go of Charlie, and they both nod and take off towards the carpark. You watch as Charlie shoves Kyra a little on the way, and you snort slightly.

"Hey.. I was wondering if you wanted to come and get something to eat with us. If you have time, of course, I wouldn't wanna take any more time from your day."

"Honestly, I'd take anything to get away from christmas shopping, but if I come home with nothing for my nieces, my sister might actually kick me out." You say jokingly, rubbing at your neck.

"Oh! Of course! We better let you get going then." She looks a little disappointed at first but quickly covers it with a smile. She just kind of stands there.

"Yes.. yep.." You hesitate for a second, and then you slowly gesture at the happily occupied Harper in your arms.

"Right! Sorry, yep, taking her now."

It's adorable and makes you grin a little, leaving a warmth to fill your chest. Though you're a little sad that you don't get to spend more time with them.

Harper tries to cling to you as you hand her over, but she sulkily climbs back into Katrina's arms once she realizes you aren't staying.

She buries her head into her mum's neck when she's situated. It makes your heart melt a little, already a little attached to her.

"Nice meeting you all." You smile and turn to leave back into the toy store to continue shopping.

Katrina pauses for a minute before leaving with Harper. She feels weird. Like she doesn't really want to let you leave. Sure, you were attractive, and Harper clearly loved you already, but this was just a really lucky situation, and you were technically a stranger to her.

She gets back to where they were sitting and sets Harper down beside Charlie and sits next to them.

"Hey, you okay Min'?"

She looks at the blonde confused.

"I mean aside from the heart attack you gave me, fine, why?"

Charlie, at least, has the decency to look a little guilty at that.

"I know, I know, I'm sorry. I promise we'll look after her better. But not what I meant. You look a little.. I don't know... disappointed? Not mum disappointed, more like sad disappointed."

Katrina steels her features at that.

"What? No.. I'm fine. I'm a little disappointed for Harper, if anything. I've never seen her so quickly attached to someone like that."

"Yeah, I thought it was weird that she let someone near her, actually."

"Right? She's always been wary of everyone. She double took me when she was born even."

Charlie chuckles a little at that.

"Sounds about right for her, seriously though, I don't think it's just Harper on this one."

Katrina raises a brow.

"She's pretty hot, she looks about 28ish, definitely your type."

"If she's so hot, why don't you date her?"

"Because one, I'm happily single and two because she was clearly eyeing you up."

"Yeah, because I was looking for my kid, who was practically clinging to her."

"But even after that, Mini, you know we do pay attention. She clearly had the hots for you."

It's Kyra that interjects now.

"Seriously, you two, what is it with you and interceding my love life?"

Charlie grabs her by the face and turns the now suddenly defensive Katrina's head towards her.

"Because we love you, and we want to see you happy, and we want what's best for Harper and what makes her happy. We can see you were clearly attracted to her. Now, if you don't go back to that store to try and find her and get her number, I will do it for you."

She goes to protest but again she's shushed by the blonde.

"I promise we'll watch Harper with our lives. Now please go find her."

Katrina's hesitant, but she blows out a breath, and she receives a tap to the butt as she turns to go back to the shop. She glares back at Charlie, but she's already preoccupied, making her daughter laugh as she tickles her.

They were right. It's always been her and Harper. Even with the whole team and sisters like Kyra and Charlie, it felt like it's always been her and Harper against the world. That's always felt like enough, but even then, she knew something had always felt a little disconnected.

Now wasn't the time to delve into stuff like that, though. She jogs back towards the store and sees you leaving the store right as she gets to the path leading up to it... with a trolley full of... soccer gear?

She shakes away the thought for a moment and jogs up to you. "Hey!..." and she realises then that she never even got your name.

You look up at her, tilting your head in confusion but smile nonetheless.

"Hey you, I thought you'd left already. D-Did you need something?"

She's a little out of breath from the impromptu jog. To be fair, it is her off day.

"Hey..sorry to bother you like this, but I honestly couldn't leave without at least asking first."

"Is everything okay?"

"Of course, yes, everything's great, Harper is with the other two. They promised they'd keep an eye on her this time. It's just that... I've had a bit of a think and..."

You're patient while she speaks, and the curl of your lips as you listen has her heart racing a little.

"Would you want to, maybe, go out sometime?"

That catches you off guard. You weren't expecting that one. You blink in surprise at her.

"Like just the two of us?"

She nods, a little shyly.

You bite your lower lip to suppress a bigger grin than you want to let out.

"Of course, I'd love that."

"You don't have to if you dont want to though, honestly I understand if you're taken or- wait, yes?"

You stifle a little laugh and nod at her. Yeah, she's definitely cute.

"Yes, Katrina, I would love to go on a date with you."

She grins widely.

You offer your phone to her, the contact section open with a new contact.

"Add your number, and I'll shoot you a message?"

She agrees quickly and types her number in and gives you your phone back.

She gestures back to the trolley beside you. "Soccer fans?"

"Their mothers are. The girls are taking after them pretty quickly, though."

That's when she spots the pendant on your necklace, a little soccer ball. Was that why Harper was quick to go to you?

She smiles and nods, understanding, before looking at her watch. "Shoot, I have to go. The girls are probably worried I got kidnapped or something."

You let out a soft laugh and wave her goodbye as you walk to your car to load the stuff back into it.

You save her contact as "Cutie 💖" and shoot her a message when you get back to your sister's place.

-----

Katrina is just getting into her house when her phone pings in her pocket.

"Date on sunday night? The name's Y/n, btw 😉"

She's smiling a little too hard at her phone, and it doesn't take long for Kyra and Charlie to pick up on it.

"Who's that you're messaging, Min?"

She shakes her head.

"Nobody of your concern."

Kyra gasps in excitement. "It's that girl, isn't it?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

She's glad she's got the night off for sunday now, though.

"Anyway, any chance you two can watch Harper sunday night?"

The pair look at each other, exchanging looks with cheeky grins before nodding.

Katrina's watching them warily, but then they both suddenly squeal and tackle the midfielder to the ground in excitement.

"We're so proud of you! You're going on a date!"

"Who said it was a date?" She gasps from under them both, having the air knocked from her after hitting the floor boards.

"Puhlease, that look in your eye told us everything we needed to know."

"Ugh, get off me, I technically haven't even said 'Yes' yet."

"Well hurry up and do that!"

"You have to get off me for me to do that!"

Shes practically dragged to her feet and handed her phone, the two girls looking at her with sparkling grins and giddy looks in their eyes.

She types in a quick message and sends it to you.

'Hey! I'm really sorry about not asking, I can be a bit of an asshole when I'm not paying attention. 😅 but yes, definitely. Sunday sounds perfect 😊'

Her phone pings straight away, it makes her grin just that bit more.

"It's all good. You had three kids on your hands 😉 I probably would have done the same thing. 6pm sound good?"

Charlie whines pouting. Katrina hadn't even realised they were now reading over her shoulder.

"Aw man, and to think I liked her already."

"Oi! Sticky beaks, knock it off. Go get Harper cleaned up. Or something."

They both groan and take Harper to go get washed up and changed.

'6pm is good. See you then 😉'

------------

Let me know if y'all want part two for this.

[iheartliquor]

[i-am-obnoxious]

The Circle Au: Introduction Pt. 2

“I hope you’re all ready for this next round of introductions. This group really is something to behold,” Fflewddur Fflam comments as he settles in, starting off the next episode of the Circle.

“Our next player says she’s strong, she’s fierce, she’s going to be 100 percent and beat everyone else. Well, we’ll see. But I do love a girl with spark.” Fflewddur winked at the camera, and then the camera panned away to focus on a blonde girl posing for the usual circle shots.

DOT

A blonde fairy makes her way down the hallway to her room. As she does so, a voiceover starts to narrate her interview, and her introduction. “Hey guys, I’m Dot. I know a lot of people might be wondering what in the world a fairy is doing on a show like this. Most of the time we fairies don’t care too much about human money and all that.”

The scene switched to Dot sitting in the interview chair with a serious look on her face. “Unfortunately, you humans have a way of destroying everything good around you. My Hollow was ruined, and the only way my family stands a chance for growth and a new life is to win this money.” She sniffled a little, reaching up to wipe her eyes quickly. “I hate this social media stuff, but I’ll do whatever I can to get that 100,000 pounds.”

Dot made her way into the room set up for her, looking like a winter forest, and a smile lit up her face as she got a look at it. “I have to admit...this set up is pretty nice.” For human standards anyway. She could accept it. “Alright then...let’s get this silly show on the road.” 

Dot sucked in a breath and let it out again. “Circle...take me to my profile.” It did as commanded and Dot eyed her photo albums. “Okay...um. Take me to the school pics.” Dot tilted her head as she studied the options there. “Ordinarily I’d go for a more fairy look, but I don’t want to be too unrelatable with these other people, so I figure something that’s fun without being over the top...how about that one with the balloon? Yes...perfect. Okay. Circle, please lock in my profile.” Dot flopped back onto the bed there with a sigh. Hopefully this would go her way.

---

The camera pans away from Dot and back over to Fflewddur looking like the cat that got the cream. “Our next player is really interesting. Finn is someone who usually uses his social media for art and all that, but says he wants to take a different approach to try to win the circle. Let’s go meet him, shall we?”

NEMO (AKA FINN)

The camera pans over to a dark haired boy in a cozy looking sweater who’s fidgeting as he starts introducing himself. “H-Hi. My-My name is Finn,” he starts off, biting his lip a little. “I decided to join the circle as my-my b-b-best friend Nemo.” 

He smiles sheepishly at that, and an image of Finn and Nemo together pops up on the screen for a moment. “I know that so-so-social media is all ab-b-bout popularity, and there’s no-no one I can think of that c-c-could be more popular than Nemo.” Finn leans into his seat as the interview progresses, trying not to fidget any more.

“I told Nemo I w-w-would win it for us...s-s-so we c-c-could finally leave our neighb-b-borhood behind for a bit. There’s so much we’ve been liited on be-be-because we just c-c-couldn’t afford it.” Finn sighs as he explains it. The boy clearly has been worrying over money for some time. 

The camera pans back to Finn in the room he’s been given, eyeing a partially completed profile. “I think I want to pick the p-p-picture I took of Ne-Nemo at the...at the b-b-beach. I think it sh-shows an element of m-m-me without any-anyone knowing. A-And...Ne-Nemo looks a-a-amazing in it.” Finn locks that picture in and adds a description quickly, worrying at his lip. “I hope I c-c-can do this.”

LOUIE

The camera pans away again and this time it introduces a curly haired boy. “Yo, my name is Louie, and I will be the next winner of the circle.” He smiles cockily at the camera before stumbling as he settles into his chair, giggling a little to himself. “I’m in it to win it, and I’m not afraid to go hard whatever way I have to. I know not everyone’s going to be here for it, but I figure I could play the flirt game a bit. I’m single and if I make a good connection I make a good connection you know? Gotta catch the spark when it hits.”

The scene shifts to Louie bouncing around on the bed he’s been given. “Wow this is so awesome,” he commented with a grin, flopping back on the bed and then finally greeting the circle. “Circle...take me to my profile.” He had a lot of different albums to choose from, but he wanted to pick something that really gave his vibe.

“Okay circle, put that one with me in that simple shirt. Yeahhh that one. I look sort of goofy and approachable, which should make the girls wanna talk to me too. Just cause I say gay here doesn’t mean I don’t want to be tight with as many as I can.” He finished setting up his profile and leaned back. “Alright circle...lock in my profile.” 

[justyouraveragecognitionhoe]

words words words

here’s my brain dump from last sunday enjoy picking it apart. i tried to organize it cause i just kinda kept inserting paragraphs wherever when thoughts came up. 

i’ll break it up a bit cause there’s a few different topics? or i’ll just dump it flows enough ehhh here you go 

*i tried to make multiple keep reading lines but it won’t let you do that in on post so i gotta post this and reblog it from myself so bear with that crap for a moment. 

eh this first blurb turns into boys. lame. read on if you so choose. also disclaimer i start to say fuck a lot in this chunk idk why but it just happened. 

i slept over a boy’s house last night for the first time. bree and sam and i went to jordan’s for the racing banquet afterparty, and it was liit. hehe sorry i hate myself for writing that. but it was super fun! it was an adventure of a night. sam and i became fast friends, bree and i had some simp time, played fun games and drank, and then we all just slept over at jordan’s. it was v uncomfortable haha bree and i slept on a giant bean bag. comfy to nap and sit on, not so great for prolonged sleeping. but it was really worth it. i had such a great time. some formula boys came over too so playing games was fun cause there were more people. also back to banquet for a moment, i’d like to take the time to appreciate how fire i looked. i felt really confident. i wish i got to wear that outfit more, i think i need to get appreciated in it more. hmmmmm what else i haven’t been able to do this in a long time. i’m so bad at keeping tabs on my life. i need to go back to the mason jar with little weekly updates those were fun.

i had a really nice time chatting with erika on thrusday after mandarin. she’s so precious, i’m really grateful to have gotten the chance to meet her better before the year ended. she told me i was really beautiful and was surprised when i said i had no boys in my life. she’s so beautiful, i always feel like it’s the truth when i hear that i’m pretty from other pretty girls. like cause they’re pretty they know what it is, so if they say i am, i like to believe i’m pretty too. but i don’t have guys lining up for me and it just always makes me wonder what i’m doing wrong. do i give off bitch vibes, don’t date me vibes, i don’t date vibes, like why don’t i get approached if i’m so pretty. the only guys to ever tell me i’m pretty or something are always creeps and i don’t fuck with that shit. i just want a nice boy. 

wow nice transition. let’s talk about cute boys!!! cause i have no other life than think boys are cute and hope that one day one of them might like me back a little. there’s this cute little electron in the bat lab. he’s really adorable. he wore a nice light pink polo to banquet and won an award. what a cutie pie. i finally introduced myself to him during banquet. i like to think that he looks at me when i’m in the bat lab. i definitely sneak little glances at him. ugh i think bford is really cute too. he wore suspenders and a bowtie. he sent me a fb friend request and i felt accepted. that means he knows who i am. *update he asked to connect on linkedin, we can get married now. i also like to think he’s given me a double look before. who else. ooo i am hopelessly in love with smol bean. he is such a great wholesome bean with lots of protein and is the cutest stud. he’s just such a good person and i appreciate him like crazy. there’s a lot of cuties in racing i appreciate them all. but then like it kinda sucks because i know i’ll never get to be in a relationship with any of them because i’m not a “first-choice girl” i’m just that extra quirky roommate to the prettier roommate or the sidekick friend to the beautiful man character. does my desperateness show to much? do they know that i want their attention? do i act weird around them? or do they just not like me? but i’m pretty decent friends with a lot of the guys i think are cute, do they just see me as a friend? am i really on another level like trevor said that guys feel like they’re just not goof enough for me? i mean i like to think i’m at least really cute, and i think my niceness makes up for the lack of a defined waist and prettier everything. guys fall over olivia all the time, no one has ever really done that to me. i just want to be the beautiful friend once. that really pretty girl that they ask their friends who she is, because she’s smart and cute and beautiful and they want to get to know who she is. when do i get to be her? i love all of my friends so much and i’m so lucky to have them all, but fuck why are they always all prettier and skinnier and better at everything than i am. it’s just hard.

i want to believe that shades® thinks i’m cute. like i really wanna believe it. but last night he just talked about how he thought that my friend was so beautiful. but he said that he liked drunk emma and that she was fun:) and he likes my memes and admires my work ethic and thinks all my slps are dope and he thinks it’s cool that i’m learning mandarin and write notes on my laptop in mandarin and idk man he’s a cutie. we went to church together just us a week or so ago cause debbie was sick and bree was gone and i wondered if people thought we were dating. we went shopping at trader joe’s after and i thought we looked cute. he’s problematic to work with though so i idk how he’d fair in a relationship. he also has total anime hair, i appreciate it. i think blondrew may have had a crush on me for a while. he would kinda pick on me a bit and give a little sass back which he hadn’t don't before. he’s getting back to normal now which i appreciate.

jenna asks me a lot why i think i’ve never dated anyone. we always get interrupted and i never get to finish my thoughts, but the truth is, is i don’t know why. it;s not like i haven't wanted to. there have been plenty, and i mean plenty fuck all i do is think about cute boys, of boys the i think are cute and stuff but i’ve never dated any one. dude, if it wasn’t for trevor i still wouldn’t have had my first kiss. do i just seem like i don’t want to date do i flirt wrong?? do i seem like i already have a boyfriend? cause like whenever people ask about boys in my life and i say i have none and have never had any they seem surprised. like did they think i already had a boyfriend? but then their are such really pretty and accomplished girls i know that also have never had boyfriends either and like fuck it sucks. why does the world hate us. i really dislike that i think that way. but it’s always on my mind. 

ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i just want a boy to like me. like it’s so sad. i feel and think that it’ll solve my confidence issues and stuff and like i know it won’t. to me i think that it’ll mean a sign of like societal acceptance, that a guy likes me, but that’s such a backwards way to think and that in no way defines my worth in society. i think at this point it’s become something like a, “i need it to happen to know that i know it’s not what i need.” i know myself, i need the verification that it’s not what i want and i’ll know that when it happens, even if i keep telling myself from now,  i still need it to happen to have physical proof. it’s like how i told myself don’t go into college with expectations, but i still went into this year with them and now i really feel secure in knowing that expectations suck and i really need to not have them. it also makes me mad that the acceptance and love i get from my friends isn’t enough for me to feel like i am relevant. like i am someone people like and want to hangout with and be around. i’m really sad that i can’t recognize that, and i feel like i need it form a guy but goddamn i just want a nice boy to cry to and smile with and just sit next to each other and lean my head on his shoulder. but that’s not gonna fix me not knowing who i am or feeling comfortable with myself and confident in myself. 

fuck i hate how my entires always turn to love and boys. like there’s so much more to the world and i always bring it back to not having a boy. but like fuck i don’t need one!!!! look at how impressive my life and accomplishments are. and i worked for them so hard without a guy. i did them myself with the help and guidance of my amazing support systems, that i sought out myself. i set and seek goals and i fucking accomplish the fuck out of them. i am so motivated and passionate and accomplished and smart and trilingual and cultured and kind and funny and beautiful and i don’t need a guy to prove any of that because i know it all, but i don’t know if i believe myself.

[thepantomathsblog]

Train to become the green arrow

  CAN YOU BE THE GREEN ARROW??

Hello everyone, even though I don't have much of an audience yet...So, every one of us has seen the CW's Show  Arrow, Starring, Stephen Amell as The Green Arrow/Oliver Queen and a lot of us want to move and function like the green arrow.....but is what we want possible??..well the answer is yes!!..you can become green arrow (on a physical level... I am not sure if anyone can look like him...he's just too handsome)...And you don't even have to do much, and just to be clear I am not going to discuss how to be a great Vigilante, I am going to tell you how you can make your body as Functional As The Green Arrow  (liked the green touch there??), so with that said...let's bombard you with all the things you gotta do...

1. TRAINING-  To become The Green Arrow Some of you may have to train a little differently than you normally do, and for the ones who don't work out this is the perfect way to start this is how I started and Damn, my body is functional.....all you gotta add to your workouts is bodyweight training, you see Oliver Queen was trapped on an island for 5 years, so he didn't have much of a choice to keep his body fit he had to do bodyweight training like push-ups, pull-ups by grabbing the arms of the trees, etc, the goal is to involve as many muscles you can for doing a job, you are supposed to give it all you got, but it doesn't mean you strictly have to rely on body-weight training, you can also do Compound Lifts like deadlifts, weighted squats etc...basically do whatever you can to make your body functional (Oliver Queen did that, that's how he survived the island). Now, this doesn't mean you can't do isolation movements but what I recommend is that you should do it with Objects of different Shapes, by this I mean instead of doing a bicep curl with a dumbbell you can do it with a Schoolbag loaded with books because that's what'll make you functional not just Lifting Bars loaded with weights. and another thing that makes the green arrow...The green arrow is his core strength, A lot of people think that Core consists of just the Abs and Obliques They are WRONG Core muscles also include Glutes, Lower Back, and More...The reason why Core training is so important is your core helps you get you more stable and more athletic which the green arrow definitely needs as he is jumping around rooftops all night long and has to a lot of Hanging and stuff which needs the body to be stable(and also to do the Salmon Ladder). Now, Green Arrow also has to run a lot but we can not practice running in the quarantine so you can Google some HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training) or LIIT (Low-Intensity Interval Training) but if you don't like doing cardio and stuff (Even I don't) then just play some magenta riddim and start dancing and trust me that'll do it.

Now I would like to take a minute to give a shout-out to The Bioneer youtube channel, it was his video on the same topic which inspired me to write this blog.

2.TRAINING NECK AND JAW MUSCLES: A lot of people don't know that training your jaw and neck muscles doesn't only Make you look Masculine and dominating but also helps you as The Green Arrow. As the green arrow Oliver has to fight people and  Exchange punches, Having strong jaw and neck muscles helps you absorb the damage and take a hit and still be on your feet. Having a strong neck can also affect your other muscles like Traps and Delts and also helps you maintain a better posture (telling from personal experience it does help with your posture)...so the understatement is Train your neck and jaw.

3. Learn a Martial Art: This should not come to us as a surprise, we all have seen him fight, but even if you are not into Martial Arts you can still learn Boxing for Self-Defense, I personally have learned a little bit of Boxing and Kali martial arts (using one stick) and I also throw pretty good kicks from time to time...and training for a martial art also acts as a great cardio and also trains your whole body at the same time, It makes you a better and disciplined person and also sharpens your reflexes....and trust me good reflexes can come in handy anywhere, anytime.

Green Arrow also does a lot of parkouring and of course Archery, those are very important skills if you are willing to be like the green arrow....but I won't talk about them in this blog because this blog is about being functional so I don't have a reason to talk about archery and sorry, but I don't know much about parkouring.

4. NUTRITION AND RECOVERY: If you want to keep your body fit and functional nutrition and healing play a very important role in that...Think what Oliver will do if he gets in the field and hasn't recovered from last night's fight or is sleep deficient or is deficient in protein intake...yeah, He'll get his Ass kicked pretty bad, So make sure that you get all your vitamins(can take multi-vitamin tablets if you want) and also keep your protein and carbs intake nice and have 20% of your daily calories from Fats and make sure to take vitamin C as it helps with recovery(and also makes your skin glow..i mean green arrow also has flawless skin) and also make sure that you get 6-8 hours of sleep daily and try not to stress as much as possible.

5. THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE: This one's the most important...if you do this...you have gone through 25% of the work to become  The Green Arrow Are you ready for this??....are you sure...get yourself a Bad-ass Green Hoodie and equally Bad-ass BOOTS and a Green eye mask And grow a stubble.

Thank you everyone for reading....and to be clear this blog's training is not for bulking but for functionality and you can also try doing some explosive exercises as the arrow is pretty explosive and has to jump high heights.

                          THANK YOU OLLIE FANS

[gabriellakirtonblog]

Metabolic Conditioning: Don’t Say It Unless You Understand It

You’ve heard of metabolic conditioning. Many of your clients and prospects have as well. But chances are, what they’ve heard is exactly what metabolic conditioning isn’t.

Contrary to what many of us used to believe, it’s not a magical fat-melting system. It doesn’t “confuse” your muscles or induce an “afterburn” that makes you incinerate post-workout calories like an excitable lumberjack. And it won’t give you all the benefits of traditional cardio in a small fraction of the time.

So what is it? And more important, how do you employ it to help your clients get the results they want without injury, excessive soreness, or reinforcing all the reasons why they hate exercise in general and personal trainers specifically?

Let’s dig in.

READ ALSO: The Myth of Fat-Burning Workouts

What is metabolic conditioning?

Simply put, metabolic conditioning is a type of training designed to consume maximum calories during your workout, and to create an oxygen deficit that forces your body to burn calories at an accelerated rate for hours afterwards.

But you probably knew that. And even if you didn’t, it kind of sounds like what you’re trying to do in any good workout. So let’s focus on the “metabolic” part.

As explained in this classic article from Vox, metabolism is a process that happens in every cell to keep you alive. The number of calories you burn at rest is largely governed by genetics and muscle mass.

Building more lean mass, and thus burning more calories throughout the day, is one obvious goal of exercise. Another is to burn more calories through physical activity. Yet another is to train hard enough to create a large oxygen deficit.

That oxygen debt is followed by EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption), a temporary increase in your metabolic rate to allow your body to recover from the workout.

This is the process you target with metabolic conditioning, aka metcon, and it’s the goal of everything from CrossFit WODs to Orangetheory to SoulCycle. All of them promise to create a level of EPOC that, over time, contributes to a significant improvement in body composition.

As you can see by those examples, there are many ways to approach metabolic conditioning, from souped-up strength training to circuit training to something that looks a lot like traditional cardio, only with louder music at a higher price.

I’ll cover three types of metcon here, but you can mix and match exercises and intensities any number of ways, depending on your client’s abilities and goals.

READ ALSO: A Trainer’s Guide to Building Muscle

Common metabolic conditioning workouts

Before I get into the specifics, let’s consider the word “conditioning.” In the most general sense, it means “getting in shape.”

We know there are lots of ways to do it. For a severely deconditioned client, walking around the track a few times might improve their VO2 max, the standard measure of aerobic fitness. If the walking includes some stairs, they may also improve their leg strength and perhaps even gain a little muscle.

Give that same client virtually any amount of strength training, and they’ll increase their strength, power, lean mass, and muscular endurance, along with their mobility and movement skill. That client could also improve their VO2 max—either directly, by doing more exercise than before, or indirectly, if the additional strength and mobility motivates them to do other types of physical activity.

The more someone’s conditioning improves, the more specific their training needs to be if they want to keep improving. To increase strength and power, they need a program focused on strength and power. Same with aerobic fitness: Someone whose goal is to run farther and get there faster has to train specifically for endurance.

So when we talk about metabolic conditioning, we’re talking about achieving something beyond aerobic or muscular fitness. We do that by targeting anaerobic glycolysis, one of your body’s three energy systems.

As I explained in this article, glycolysis is the fantastically complex series of chemical interactions your body needs to produce energy when you’re working too hard to use the aerobic system. Your heart is beating so fast, and you’re breathing so hard, that you can’t continue for longer than about 60 seconds. You need to slow down at that point, catch your breath, and let your muscles clear lactic acid, a byproduct of glycolysis.

The more you train this pathway, using the workout techniques I’m about to describe, the better you get at using it. And the better you get at using it, the greater the oxygen deficit you can create with your training. Thus, improved metabolic conditioning means you can train harder, burning more calories both during and after your workout.

READ ALSO: The 10 Most Polarizing Fitness Topics

High-intensity interval training (HIIT)

HIIT is the most popular method of interval training for good reasons. Not only is it a great way to generate significant oxygen debt, it’s simple and straightforward. You typically use just one piece of equipment, like a stationary bike or rowing machine, both of which are relatively easy on the joints.

For an inexperienced client, you’ll probably start with 30-second intervals and a work-rest ratio of two-to-one or even three-to-one.

The client can progress in multiple ways:

Add intervals.

Raise the intensity.

Do longer intervals at the same intensity.

Reduce the rest periods.

You can also vary the equipment, so a client uses the rower for shorter, higher-intensity intervals with longer rest periods, and a bike for longer bouts with less recovery.

But you don’t want to change things up so much that the workouts become random. The goal of any type of training is to create a training effect, which means repeating the same challenges often enough to see a measurable improvement in performance.

With more advanced clients, you can progress to a one-to-one work-rest ratio. Anything beyond that becomes counterproductive because your client simply doesn’t have enough time to recover from one interval before starting the next one. That lowers the intensity of the workout, which defeats the point.

One final note about interval training: The intervals don’t actually have to be high intensity.

A deconditioned client will still benefit from low-intensity intervals, aka LIIT. As long as the intervals are harder than the client’s typical pace, they’ll get the benefits of metabolic conditioning without pushing them too far, too soon.

There’s also a place for medium-intensity intervals (MIIT). It’s obviously a bridge between LIIT and HIIT for some clients, while for others it’s a nice break from high-intensity sessions.

Traditional circuit training

Circuit training—typically five to seven exercises done consecutively, with little to no rest in between—is a classic model of increased work capacity.

The idea is simple: Build muscle while also increasing metabolic demand. Does it actually work that way? Depends.

The more you emphasize building muscle, the more recovery you need between sets, and the less oxygen debt you accumulate. The more you emphasize metabolic conditioning, the less you can focus on hypertrophy. You have to use lighter weights and stop your sets before you fully fatigue muscles.

But it’s not like you’re wasting time if you get more of one benefit than the other, or if you find a sweet spot in between. You’re still training something. It’s just hard to train an intermediate to advanced client effectively for multiple goals at the same time.

As with interval training, you can use a variety of intensities. High-effort circuits can create a massive oxygen debt for more advanced clients. Medium-intensity circuits are a good way to deload after a period of heavy lifting. And low-intensity circuits are perfect for complete beginners who still want to feel as if they’ve gotten a good workout.

Combination training

This catch-all category targets everything in the same workout.

After a thorough warm-up, you start your client with the exercises that call for the highest effort and focus. It could be technically complex lifts with low reps for strength and power. Or you could use less technical lifts with medium reps for strength and hypertrophy.

From there you might go to supersets or mini-circuits with the goal of creating an oxygen debt. You’d finish with some steady-state cardio.

Thus, you’d train all three energy systems—ATP-CP, glycolytic, and aerobic—and achieve multiple benefits without compromising anything.

READ ALSO: Five Exercise Science Principles Every Personal Trainer Must Know

Exercise selection for metabolic conditioning

The greater the metabolic challenge, the simpler the exercises need to be. You can’t ask clients to perform exercises at high intensity when they’re still learning to do them.

I had to learn that lesson the hard way.

Early in my career, I wanted to give participants in my metcon classes stuff they hadn’t seen before. The more novel it was, the better it must be. The logic seemed irrefutable: “Do cool s*** and become popular.”

In time, I moved closer to the combination training I just described. My warm-ups included corrective, mobility, and stability exercises. I followed those with the most challenging exercises and the heaviest loads. Then we’d get to the metcon portion, where I’d emphasize multiple rounds of simple loaded and unloaded exercises to fatigue muscles and create an oxygen deficit.

I’d finish the class with a low-intensity, low-complexity round, in which the participants used their aerobic systems.

READ ALSO: Here’s What a Good Core Workout Really Looks Like

How to program metabolic conditioning

Let’s start with a stipulation: Almost all the clients you train, individually or in group classes, are in the general population category.

Even the strongest or most jacked clients, male or female, young or old, are gen pop unless they’re actually competing in something. The odds are pretty close to 100 percent that they’re missing something important. A strong and muscular guy may not have an aerobic base or movement skill. A lean endurance enthusiast may lack strength and mobility.

Even if someone has the whole package, there’s a very good chance they achieved it by pushing their bodies to the breaking point. You don’t want your metcon workouts to push them over the edge.

I think metabolic conditioning works best when it’s part of a well-balanced program, and worst when it’s the primary component.

Let’s say a client trains with you two or three times a week. Most of your program will focus on strength, hypertrophy, movement skill, and any rehab or corrective exercises the client needs. Ten to 15 minutes of metcon at the end of more traditional workouts should work well.

For an intermediate-level client who wants to add an extra workout beyond your program, metcon makes sense. It can include anything from group cycling to bootcamps—whatever they enjoy and feel they can recover from. Just make sure you adjust your own program to account for it.

And for the ambitious client who wants to train six days a week, two bouts of 30 to 40 minutes per week should be the optimal upper limit for metabolic conditioning. Any more than that puts too much stress on the joints and central nervous system. (Chris Beardsley has a terrific explanation of CNS fatigue in this article.)

READ ALSO: What’s the Difference Between a Fitness Coach and a Personal Trainer?

Final thoughts

I want to close with a cautionary note:

Metabolic conditioning is not a beginner’s program, especially for clients who’re significantly overweight, recovering from an injury or illness, or otherwise deconditioned. In fact, one could argue that it’s highly irresponsible to emphasize output in someone who’s new to the gym, doesn’t move well, or hasn’t yet built a base of strength and endurance.

That doesn’t mean you can’t challenge these clients. Just do it in short, low-intensity intervals or circuits, using exercises the client can do proficiently. And for the love of all that’s good in the world, don’t have someone who’s 100 pounds overweight do a burpee. That doesn’t make you a good trainer. It makes you a jerk.

Your job is to meet the needs of the client, regardless of what’s trending at the moment.

    Ready to Take Your Personal Training Career to the Next Level?

Starting your career isn’t complicated. All you need is for someone to pay you to train them.

But how do you get that first client? What do you need to know? Where do you want to work, and how do you get hired?

If your answer to any of those questions is “I don’t know,” you need The Wealthy Fit Pro’s Guide to Starting Your Career, the ultimate launching pad for ambitious personal trainers.

Jonathan Goodman will show you how to …

Land the perfect job for you (pg. 17)

Attract more clients (pg. 95)

Keep more clients (pg. 55)

Get even more clients through a foolproof referral system (pg. 115)

Learn the no-fail secret to motivating clients (pg. 61)

Set yourself apart with programs your clients will brag about (pg. 71)

Master marketing skills that open up new income opportunities (pg. 152)

Become the best trainer you can be (pg. 46)

If you’re just beginning your journey in the fitness industry (or know someone who is), you won’t find a more authoritative or comprehensive resource.

Order this book in paperback today and get the audiobook and ebook 100% free (a $40 value).

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  The post Metabolic Conditioning: Don’t Say It Unless You Understand It appeared first on The PTDC.

Metabolic Conditioning: Don’t Say It Unless You Understand It published first on https://onezeroonesarms.tumblr.com/

[chartheles]

my asian grandma

my mum was adopted when she was 7 years old in 1972, she had a wonderful life in comparison to the 7 years of abuse and fear she succumbed to before she was saved by a young couple called Mr and Mrs Park, who had tried to have a child unsuccessfully for ten years prior to meeting my mum, who was ever since called Hyorin (or Heather) Park. she later married at became Heather Byrne, wife of a young irish lad straight out of university and keen to start a family straight away. That lead to my brothers being born an of course, me. I never felt particularly out of place, because well, i wasnt. i had blonde hair and green eyes with fair skin to match, im as white as they get, trust me. but there was one time when we flew over to korea to visit my grandparents and as we walked the streets of Samdongmyeon with my family, an ajhumma walked up to my grandma, they were obviously familiar with each other as she introduced us all to her as her daughter and grandchildren, and the woman laughed. she thought it was impossible that we were family, she gasped out in what i could only remember with my at the time limited korean to be something along the lines of “but look at them, Hyojin! that little girl has green eyes and white skin, she cant be your real granddaughter can she?” i remember my halmeoni explaining that when she said she adopted her only child when she lived in england with her now late husband, and that my white skin and green eyes were yellow and brown respectively in nature, but not in looks. of course i had no idea what she was talking about, i just wanted to walk on so we could get some raspberry bingsu like eomma promised earlier. growing up i spoke korean with my mother, and my halmeoni before she died when i turned 14. the funeral was before my new school year so my first day at a new school was spent practically asleep after two days of travel. i never told anyone at school about my heritage, and where my mother came from, what languages i speak, because i thought my friends would think im just a koreaboo obsessed with kpop and completely crazy. dont get me wrong, i love a good Jay Park song, and i will admit watching k dramas without subtitles before my best friend is pretty great, but thats about it for my exposure to korean pop culture. i used to hate my korean family, and walking around with my halmeoni in Yeosu, scared to hold her hand and talk wit her in her own language, scared because i thought people judged me. two out four times i have been to korea, i refused to even speak korean for the full month i was there. it was only after my halmeoni died, i realised how stupid i had been. the korean culture is beautiful, expressive albeit slightly conservative but incredibly interesting nonetheless. i barely realised that not all families have their food extra spicy and wear slippers in the house and have kimchi and gochujang with pretty much everything, eve fish and chips. (sidenote, kimchi with chips is really really good, try it.) i need to embrace this other half of my culture. so to start, ill introduce myself on tumblr again. 

Hi, my name is Charlotte Byrne, i am 17 and i live in england and am in sixth form. My Korean name is Park Chaerin, i am 18 in Korean age and my favourite drama is Legend of the blue sea, its seriously underrated and Lee Minho is life. i Dont have a Korean keyboard on my mac so i really should have written this on my phone to demonstrate that my Korean is still fairly good after a year of not atually being immersed in the culture/actually being in Korea. My family are from Busan originally, but my Halmeoni moved to Samdangmyeon when she moved back to Korea when i was 2, My dad speaks very liited Korean, although he does try, its quite funny to watch. I call my brothers Oppa when im feeling nice or want money, and my little great cousins call me noona which makes me very happy as none of my friends do (bot that i expect them to!) and i speak Korean with my mother and havea habit of speaking Korean when im surprised or angry. For example if you know me irl you know i like to shout AIGUU!! when im tired (its aigu not aigo in the south, my satoori is actually pretty strong for some reason.)

no body will read this, its just nice to be open with myself. sorry lol.

Chaerin.

Fun fact, i prefer my korean name but my school doesnt have me registered as Chaerin so when i joined everybody called me charlotte and now im stUCK.

Edit: 안녕!! 박채린입니다 :))) 엄마니, 할마니, 할아버지, 아버지, 일오빠 이오빠 그리고 삼오빠 그래 마지막 채영언니 사랑해요 😘

[gabriellakirtonblog]

Metabolic Conditioning: Don’t Say It Unless You Understand It

You’ve heard of metabolic conditioning. Many of your clients and prospects have as well. But chances are, what they’ve heard is exactly what metabolic conditioning isn’t.

Contrary to what many of us used to believe, it’s not a magical fat-melting system. It doesn’t “confuse” your muscles or induce an “afterburn” that makes you incinerate post-workout calories like an excitable lumberjack. And it won’t give you all the benefits of traditional cardio in a small fraction of the time.

So what is it? And more important, how do you employ it to help your clients get the results they want without injury, excessive soreness, or reinforcing all the reasons why they hate exercise in general and personal trainers specifically?

Let’s dig in.

READ ALSO: The Myth of Fat-Burning Workouts

What is metabolic conditioning?

Simply put, metabolic conditioning is a type of training designed to consume maximum calories during your workout, and to create an oxygen deficit that forces your body to burn calories at an accelerated rate for hours afterwards.

But you probably knew that. And even if you didn’t, it kind of sounds like what you’re trying to do in any good workout. So let’s focus on the “metabolic” part.

As explained in this classic article from Vox, metabolism is a process that happens in every cell to keep you alive. The number of calories you burn at rest is largely governed by genetics and muscle mass.

Building more lean mass, and thus burning more calories throughout the day, is one obvious goal of exercise. Another is to burn more calories through physical activity. Yet another is to train hard enough to create a large oxygen deficit.

That oxygen debt is followed by EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption), a temporary increase in your metabolic rate to allow your body to recover from the workout.

This is the process you target with metabolic conditioning, aka metcon, and it’s the goal of everything from CrossFit WODs to Orangetheory to SoulCycle. All of them promise to create a level of EPOC that, over time, contributes to a significant improvement in body composition.

As you can see by those examples, there are many ways to approach metabolic conditioning, from souped-up strength training to circuit training to something that looks a lot like traditional cardio, only with louder music at a higher price.

I’ll cover three types of metcon here, but you can mix and match exercises and intensities any number of ways, depending on your client’s abilities and goals.

READ ALSO: A Trainer’s Guide to Building Muscle

Common metabolic conditioning workouts

Before I get into the specifics, let’s consider the word “conditioning.” In the most general sense, it means “getting in shape.”

We know there are lots of ways to do it. For a severely deconditioned client, walking around the track a few times might improve their VO2 max, the standard measure of aerobic fitness. If the walking includes some stairs, they may also improve their leg strength and perhaps even gain a little muscle.

Give that same client virtually any amount of strength training, and they’ll increase their strength, power, lean mass, and muscular endurance, along with their mobility and movement skill. That client could also improve their VO2 max—either directly, by doing more exercise than before, or indirectly, if the additional strength and mobility motivates them to do other types of physical activity.

The more someone’s conditioning improves, the more specific their training needs to be if they want to keep improving. To increase strength and power, they need a program focused on strength and power. Same with aerobic fitness: Someone whose goal is to run farther and get there faster has to train specifically for endurance.

So when we talk about metabolic conditioning, we’re talking about achieving something beyond aerobic or muscular fitness. We do that by targeting anaerobic glycolysis, one of your body’s three energy systems.

As I explained in this article, glycolysis is the fantastically complex series of chemical interactions your body needs to produce energy when you’re working too hard to use the aerobic system. Your heart is beating so fast, and you’re breathing so hard, that you can’t continue for longer than about 60 seconds. You need to slow down at that point, catch your breath, and let your muscles clear lactic acid, a byproduct of glycolysis.

The more you train this pathway, using the workout techniques I’m about to describe, the better you get at using it. And the better you get at using it, the greater the oxygen deficit you can create with your training. Thus, improved metabolic conditioning means you can train harder, burning more calories both during and after your workout.

READ ALSO: The 10 Most Polarizing Fitness Topics

High-intensity interval training (HIIT)

HIIT is the most popular method of interval training for good reasons. Not only is it a great way to generate significant oxygen debt, it’s simple and straightforward. You typically use just one piece of equipment, like a stationary bike or rowing machine, both of which are relatively easy on the joints.

For an inexperienced client, you’ll probably start with 30-second intervals and a work-rest ratio of two-to-one or even three-to-one.

The client can progress in multiple ways:

Add intervals.

Raise the intensity.

Do longer intervals at the same intensity.

Reduce the rest periods.

You can also vary the equipment, so a client uses the rower for shorter, higher-intensity intervals with longer rest periods, and a bike for longer bouts with less recovery.

But you don’t want to change things up so much that the workouts become random. The goal of any type of training is to create a training effect, which means repeating the same challenges often enough to see a measurable improvement in performance.

With more advanced clients, you can progress to a one-to-one work-rest ratio. Anything beyond that becomes counterproductive because your client simply doesn’t have enough time to recover from one interval before starting the next one. That lowers the intensity of the workout, which defeats the point.

One final note about interval training: The intervals don’t actually have to be high intensity.

A deconditioned client will still benefit from low-intensity intervals, aka LIIT. As long as the intervals are harder than the client’s typical pace, they’ll get the benefits of metabolic conditioning without pushing them too far, too soon.

There’s also a place for medium-intensity intervals (MIIT). It’s obviously a bridge between LIIT and HIIT for some clients, while for others it’s a nice break from high-intensity sessions.

Traditional circuit training

Circuit training—typically five to seven exercises done consecutively, with little to no rest in between—is a classic model of increased work capacity.

The idea is simple: Build muscle while also increasing metabolic demand. Does it actually work that way? Depends.

The more you emphasize building muscle, the more recovery you need between sets, and the less oxygen debt you accumulate. The more you emphasize metabolic conditioning, the less you can focus on hypertrophy. You have to use lighter weights and stop your sets before you fully fatigue muscles.

But it’s not like you’re wasting time if you get more of one benefit than the other, or if you find a sweet spot in between. You’re still training something. It’s just hard to train an intermediate to advanced client effectively for multiple goals at the same time.

As with interval training, you can use a variety of intensities. High-effort circuits can create a massive oxygen debt for more advanced clients. Medium-intensity circuits are a good way to deload after a period of heavy lifting. And low-intensity circuits are perfect for complete beginners who still want to feel as if they’ve gotten a good workout.

Combination training

This catch-all category targets everything in the same workout.

After a thorough warm-up, you start your client with the exercises that call for the highest effort and focus. It could be technically complex lifts with low reps for strength and power. Or you could use less technical lifts with medium reps for strength and hypertrophy.

From there you might go to supersets or mini-circuits with the goal of creating an oxygen debt. You’d finish with some steady-state cardio.

Thus, you’d train all three energy systems—ATP-CP, glycolytic, and aerobic—and achieve multiple benefits without compromising anything.

READ ALSO: Five Exercise Science Principles Every Personal Trainer Must Know

Exercise selection for metabolic conditioning

The greater the metabolic challenge, the simpler the exercises need to be. You can’t ask clients to perform exercises at high intensity when they’re still learning to do them.

I had to learn that lesson the hard way.

Early in my career, I wanted to give participants in my metcon classes stuff they hadn’t seen before. The more novel it was, the better it must be. The logic seemed irrefutable: “Do cool s*** and become popular.”

In time, I moved closer to the combination training I just described. My warm-ups included corrective, mobility, and stability exercises. I followed those with the most challenging exercises and the heaviest loads. Then we’d get to the metcon portion, where I’d emphasize multiple rounds of simple loaded and unloaded exercises to fatigue muscles and create an oxygen deficit.

I’d finish the class with a low-intensity, low-complexity round, in which the participants used their aerobic systems.

READ ALSO: Here’s What a Good Core Workout Really Looks Like

How to program metabolic conditioning

Let’s start with a stipulation: Almost all the clients you train, individually or in group classes, are in the general population category.

Even the strongest or most jacked clients, male or female, young or old, are gen pop unless they’re actually competing in something. The odds are pretty close to 100 percent that they’re missing something important. A strong and muscular guy may not have an aerobic base or movement skill. A lean endurance enthusiast may lack strength and mobility.

Even if someone has the whole package, there’s a very good chance they achieved it by pushing their bodies to the breaking point. You don’t want your metcon workouts to push them over the edge.

I think metabolic conditioning works best when it’s part of a well-balanced program, and worst when it’s the primary component.

Let’s say a client trains with you two or three times a week. Most of your program will focus on strength, hypertrophy, movement skill, and any rehab or corrective exercises the client needs. Ten to 15 minutes of metcon at the end of more traditional workouts should work well.

For an intermediate-level client who wants to add an extra workout beyond your program, metcon makes sense. It can include anything from group cycling to bootcamps—whatever they enjoy and feel they can recover from. Just make sure you adjust your own program to account for it.

And for the ambitious client who wants to train six days a week, two bouts of 30 to 40 minutes per week should be the optimal upper limit for metabolic conditioning. Any more than that puts too much stress on the joints and central nervous system. (Chris Beardsley has a terrific explanation of CNS fatigue in this article.)

READ ALSO: What’s the Difference Between a Fitness Coach and a Personal Trainer?

Final thoughts

I want to close with a cautionary note:

Metabolic conditioning is not a beginner’s program, especially for clients who’re significantly overweight, recovering from an injury or illness, or otherwise deconditioned. In fact, one could argue that it’s highly irresponsible to emphasize output in someone who’s new to the gym, doesn’t move well, or hasn’t yet built a base of strength and endurance.

That doesn’t mean you can’t challenge these clients. Just do it in short, low-intensity intervals or circuits, using exercises the client can do proficiently. And for the love of all that’s good in the world, don’t have someone who’s 100 pounds overweight do a burpee. That doesn’t make you a good trainer. It makes you a jerk.

Your job is to meet the needs of the client, regardless of what’s trending at the moment.

    Ready to Take Your Personal Training Career to the Next Level?

Starting your career isn’t complicated. All you need is for someone to pay you to train them.

But how do you get that first client? What do you need to know? Where do you want to work, and how do you get hired?

If your answer to any of those questions is “I don’t know,” you need The Wealthy Fit Pro’s Guide to Starting Your Career, the ultimate launching pad for ambitious personal trainers.

Jonathan Goodman will show you how to …

Land the perfect job for you (pg. 17)

Attract more clients (pg. 95)

Keep more clients (pg. 55)

Get even more clients through a foolproof referral system (pg. 115)

Learn the no-fail secret to motivating clients (pg. 61)

Set yourself apart with programs your clients will brag about (pg. 71)

Master marketing skills that open up new income opportunities (pg. 152)

Become the best trainer you can be (pg. 46)

If you’re just beginning your journey in the fitness industry (or know someone who is), you won’t find a more authoritative or comprehensive resource.

Order this book in paperback today and get the audiobook and ebook 100% free (a $40 value).

It all starts by clicking here: The Wealthy Fit Pro’s Guide to Starting Your Career

  The post Metabolic Conditioning: Don’t Say It Unless You Understand It appeared first on The PTDC.

Metabolic Conditioning: Don’t Say It Unless You Understand It published first on https://onezeroonesarms.tumblr.com/

[gabriellakirtonblog]

Metabolic Conditioning: Don’t Say It Unless You Understand It

You’ve heard of metabolic conditioning. Many of your clients and prospects have as well. But chances are, what they’ve heard is exactly what metabolic conditioning isn’t.

Contrary to what many of us used to believe, it’s not a magical fat-melting system. It doesn’t “confuse” your muscles or induce an “afterburn” that makes you incinerate post-workout calories like an excitable lumberjack. And it won’t give you all the benefits of traditional cardio in a small fraction of the time.

So what is it? And more important, how do you employ it to help your clients get the results they want without injury, excessive soreness, or reinforcing all the reasons why they hate exercise in general and personal trainers specifically?

Let’s dig in.

READ ALSO: The Myth of Fat-Burning Workouts

What is metabolic conditioning?

Simply put, metabolic conditioning is a type of training designed to consume maximum calories during your workout, and to create an oxygen deficit that forces your body to burn calories at an accelerated rate for hours afterwards.

But you probably knew that. And even if you didn’t, it kind of sounds like what you’re trying to do in any good workout. So let’s focus on the “metabolic” part.

As explained in this classic article from Vox, metabolism is a process that happens in every cell to keep you alive. The number of calories you burn at rest is largely governed by genetics and muscle mass.

Building more lean mass, and thus burning more calories throughout the day, is one obvious goal of exercise. Another is to burn more calories through physical activity. Yet another is to train hard enough to create a large oxygen deficit.

That oxygen debt is followed by EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption), a temporary increase in your metabolic rate to allow your body to recover from the workout.

This is the process you target with metabolic conditioning, aka metcon, and it’s the goal of everything from CrossFit WODs to Orangetheory to SoulCycle. All of them promise to create a level of EPOC that, over time, contributes to a significant improvement in body composition.

As you can see by those examples, there are many ways to approach metabolic conditioning, from souped-up strength training to circuit training to something that looks a lot like traditional cardio, only with louder music at a higher price.

I’ll cover three types of metcon here, but you can mix and match exercises and intensities any number of ways, depending on your client’s abilities and goals.

READ ALSO: A Trainer’s Guide to Building Muscle

Common metabolic conditioning workouts

Before I get into the specifics, let’s consider the word “conditioning.” In the most general sense, it means “getting in shape.”

We know there are lots of ways to do it. For a severely deconditioned client, walking around the track a few times might improve their VO2 max, the standard measure of aerobic fitness. If the walking includes some stairs, they may also improve their leg strength and perhaps even gain a little muscle.

Give that same client virtually any amount of strength training, and they’ll increase their strength, power, lean mass, and muscular endurance, along with their mobility and movement skill. That client could also improve their VO2 max—either directly, by doing more exercise than before, or indirectly, if the additional strength and mobility motivates them to do other types of physical activity.

The more someone’s conditioning improves, the more specific their training needs to be if they want to keep improving. To increase strength and power, they need a program focused on strength and power. Same with aerobic fitness: Someone whose goal is to run farther and get there faster has to train specifically for endurance.

So when we talk about metabolic conditioning, we’re talking about achieving something beyond aerobic or muscular fitness. We do that by targeting anaerobic glycolysis, one of your body’s three energy systems.

As I explained in this article, glycolysis is the fantastically complex series of chemical interactions your body needs to produce energy when you’re working too hard to use the aerobic system. Your heart is beating so fast, and you’re breathing so hard, that you can’t continue for longer than about 60 seconds. You need to slow down at that point, catch your breath, and let your muscles clear lactic acid, a byproduct of glycolysis.

The more you train this pathway, using the workout techniques I’m about to describe, the better you get at using it. And the better you get at using it, the greater the oxygen deficit you can create with your training. Thus, improved metabolic conditioning means you can train harder, burning more calories both during and after your workout.

READ ALSO: The 10 Most Polarizing Fitness Topics

High-intensity interval training (HIIT)

HIIT is the most popular method of interval training for good reasons. Not only is it a great way to generate significant oxygen debt, it’s simple and straightforward. You typically use just one piece of equipment, like a stationary bike or rowing machine, both of which are relatively easy on the joints.

For an inexperienced client, you’ll probably start with 30-second intervals and a work-rest ratio of two-to-one or even three-to-one.

The client can progress in multiple ways:

Add intervals.

Raise the intensity.

Do longer intervals at the same intensity.

Reduce the rest periods.

You can also vary the equipment, so a client uses the rower for shorter, higher-intensity intervals with longer rest periods, and a bike for longer bouts with less recovery.

But you don’t want to change things up so much that the workouts become random. The goal of any type of training is to create a training effect, which means repeating the same challenges often enough to see a measurable improvement in performance.

With more advanced clients, you can progress to a one-to-one work-rest ratio. Anything beyond that becomes counterproductive because your client simply doesn’t have enough time to recover from one interval before starting the next one. That lowers the intensity of the workout, which defeats the point.

One final note about interval training: The intervals don’t actually have to be high intensity.

A deconditioned client will still benefit from low-intensity intervals, aka LIIT. As long as the intervals are harder than the client’s typical pace, they’ll get the benefits of metabolic conditioning without pushing them too far, too soon.

There’s also a place for medium-intensity intervals (MIIT). It’s obviously a bridge between LIIT and HIIT for some clients, while for others it’s a nice break from high-intensity sessions.

Traditional circuit training

Circuit training—typically five to seven exercises done consecutively, with little to no rest in between—is a classic model of increased work capacity.

The idea is simple: Build muscle while also increasing metabolic demand. Does it actually work that way? Depends.

The more you emphasize building muscle, the more recovery you need between sets, and the less oxygen debt you accumulate. The more you emphasize metabolic conditioning, the less you can focus on hypertrophy. You have to use lighter weights and stop your sets before you fully fatigue muscles.

But it’s not like you’re wasting time if you get more of one benefit than the other, or if you find a sweet spot in between. You’re still training something. It’s just hard to train an intermediate to advanced client effectively for multiple goals at the same time.

As with interval training, you can use a variety of intensities. High-effort circuits can create a massive oxygen debt for more advanced clients. Medium-intensity circuits are a good way to deload after a period of heavy lifting. And low-intensity circuits are perfect for complete beginners who still want to feel as if they’ve gotten a good workout.

Combination training

This catch-all category targets everything in the same workout.

After a thorough warm-up, you start your client with the exercises that call for the highest effort and focus. It could be technically complex lifts with low reps for strength and power. Or you could use less technical lifts with medium reps for strength and hypertrophy.

From there you might go to supersets or mini-circuits with the goal of creating an oxygen debt. You’d finish with some steady-state cardio.

Thus, you’d train all three energy systems—ATP-CP, glycolytic, and aerobic—and achieve multiple benefits without compromising anything.

READ ALSO: Five Exercise Science Principles Every Personal Trainer Must Know

Exercise selection for metabolic conditioning

The greater the metabolic challenge, the simpler the exercises need to be. You can’t ask clients to perform exercises at high intensity when they’re still learning to do them.

I had to learn that lesson the hard way.

Early in my career, I wanted to give participants in my metcon classes stuff they hadn’t seen before. The more novel it was, the better it must be. The logic seemed irrefutable: “Do cool s*** and become popular.”

In time, I moved closer to the combination training I just described. My warm-ups included corrective, mobility, and stability exercises. I followed those with the most challenging exercises and the heaviest loads. Then we’d get to the metcon portion, where I’d emphasize multiple rounds of simple loaded and unloaded exercises to fatigue muscles and create an oxygen deficit.

I’d finish the class with a low-intensity, low-complexity round, in which the participants used their aerobic systems.

READ ALSO: Here’s What a Good Core Workout Really Looks Like

How to program metabolic conditioning

Let’s start with a stipulation: Almost all the clients you train, individually or in group classes, are in the general population category.

Even the strongest or most jacked clients, male or female, young or old, are gen pop unless they’re actually competing in something. The odds are pretty close to 100 percent that they’re missing something important. A strong and muscular guy may not have an aerobic base or movement skill. A lean endurance enthusiast may lack strength and mobility.

Even if someone has the whole package, there’s a very good chance they achieved it by pushing their bodies to the breaking point. You don’t want your metcon workouts to push them over the edge.

I think metabolic conditioning works best when it’s part of a well-balanced program, and worst when it’s the primary component.

Let’s say a client trains with you two or three times a week. Most of your program will focus on strength, hypertrophy, movement skill, and any rehab or corrective exercises the client needs. Ten to 15 minutes of metcon at the end of more traditional workouts should work well.

For an intermediate-level client who wants to add an extra workout beyond your program, metcon makes sense. It can include anything from group cycling to bootcamps—whatever they enjoy and feel they can recover from. Just make sure you adjust your own program to account for it.

And for the ambitious client who wants to train six days a week, two bouts of 30 to 40 minutes per week should be the optimal upper limit for metabolic conditioning. Any more than that puts too much stress on the joints and central nervous system. (Chris Beardsley has a terrific explanation of CNS fatigue in this article.)

READ ALSO: What’s the Difference Between a Fitness Coach and a Personal Trainer?

Final thoughts

I want to close with a cautionary note:

Metabolic conditioning is not a beginner’s program, especially for clients who’re significantly overweight, recovering from an injury or illness, or otherwise deconditioned. In fact, one could argue that it’s highly irresponsible to emphasize output in someone who’s new to the gym, doesn’t move well, or hasn’t yet built a base of strength and endurance.

That doesn’t mean you can’t challenge these clients. Just do it in short, low-intensity intervals or circuits, using exercises the client can do proficiently. And for the love of all that’s good in the world, don’t have someone who’s 100 pounds overweight do a burpee. That doesn’t make you a good trainer. It makes you a jerk.

Your job is to meet the needs of the client, regardless of what’s trending at the moment.

    Ready to Take Your Personal Training Career to the Next Level?

Starting your career isn’t complicated. All you need is for someone to pay you to train them.

But how do you get that first client? What do you need to know? Where do you want to work, and how do you get hired?

If your answer to any of those questions is “I don’t know,” you need The Wealthy Fit Pro’s Guide to Starting Your Career, the ultimate launching pad for ambitious personal trainers.

Jonathan Goodman will show you how to …

Land the perfect job for you (pg. 17)

Attract more clients (pg. 95)

Keep more clients (pg. 55)

Get even more clients through a foolproof referral system (pg. 115)

Learn the no-fail secret to motivating clients (pg. 61)

Set yourself apart with programs your clients will brag about (pg. 71)

Master marketing skills that open up new income opportunities (pg. 152)

Become the best trainer you can be (pg. 46)

If you’re just beginning your journey in the fitness industry (or know someone who is), you won’t find a more authoritative or comprehensive resource.

Order this book in paperback today and get the audiobook and ebook 100% free (a $40 value).

It all starts by clicking here: The Wealthy Fit Pro’s Guide to Starting Your Career

  The post Metabolic Conditioning: Don’t Say It Unless You Understand It appeared first on The PTDC.

Metabolic Conditioning: Don’t Say It Unless You Understand It published first on https://onezeroonesarms.tumblr.com/

[gabriellakirtonblog]

Metabolic Conditioning: Don’t Say It Unless You Understand It

You’ve heard of metabolic conditioning. Many of your clients and prospects have as well. But chances are, what they’ve heard is exactly what metabolic conditioning isn’t.

Contrary to what many of us used to believe, it’s not a magical fat-melting system. It doesn’t “confuse” your muscles or induce an “afterburn” that makes you incinerate post-workout calories like an excitable lumberjack. And it won’t give you all the benefits of traditional cardio in a small fraction of the time.

So what is it? And more important, how do you employ it to help your clients get the results they want without injury, excessive soreness, or reinforcing all the reasons why they hate exercise in general and personal trainers specifically?

Let’s dig in.

READ ALSO: The Myth of Fat-Burning Workouts

What is metabolic conditioning?

Simply put, metabolic conditioning is a type of training designed to consume maximum calories during your workout, and to create an oxygen deficit that forces your body to burn calories at an accelerated rate for hours afterwards.

But you probably knew that. And even if you didn’t, it kind of sounds like what you’re trying to do in any good workout. So let’s focus on the “metabolic” part.

As explained in this classic article from Vox, metabolism is a process that happens in every cell to keep you alive. The number of calories you burn at rest is largely governed by genetics and muscle mass.

Building more lean mass, and thus burning more calories throughout the day, is one obvious goal of exercise. Another is to burn more calories through physical activity. Yet another is to train hard enough to create a large oxygen deficit.

That oxygen debt is followed by EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption), a temporary increase in your metabolic rate to allow your body to recover from the workout.

This is the process you target with metabolic conditioning, aka metcon, and it’s the goal of everything from CrossFit WODs to Orangetheory to SoulCycle. All of them promise to create a level of EPOC that, over time, contributes to a significant improvement in body composition.

As you can see by those examples, there are many ways to approach metabolic conditioning, from souped-up strength training to circuit training to something that looks a lot like traditional cardio, only with louder music at a higher price.

I’ll cover three types of metcon here, but you can mix and match exercises and intensities any number of ways, depending on your client’s abilities and goals.

READ ALSO: A Trainer’s Guide to Building Muscle

Common metabolic conditioning workouts

Before I get into the specifics, let’s consider the word “conditioning.” In the most general sense, it means “getting in shape.”

We know there are lots of ways to do it. For a severely deconditioned client, walking around the track a few times might improve their VO2 max, the standard measure of aerobic fitness. If the walking includes some stairs, they may also improve their leg strength and perhaps even gain a little muscle.

Give that same client virtually any amount of strength training, and they’ll increase their strength, power, lean mass, and muscular endurance, along with their mobility and movement skill. That client could also improve their VO2 max—either directly, by doing more exercise than before, or indirectly, if the additional strength and mobility motivates them to do other types of physical activity.

The more someone’s conditioning improves, the more specific their training needs to be if they want to keep improving. To increase strength and power, they need a program focused on strength and power. Same with aerobic fitness: Someone whose goal is to run farther and get there faster has to train specifically for endurance.

So when we talk about metabolic conditioning, we’re talking about achieving something beyond aerobic or muscular fitness. We do that by targeting anaerobic glycolysis, one of your body’s three energy systems.

As I explained in this article, glycolysis is the fantastically complex series of chemical interactions your body needs to produce energy when you’re working too hard to use the aerobic system. Your heart is beating so fast, and you’re breathing so hard, that you can’t continue for longer than about 60 seconds. You need to slow down at that point, catch your breath, and let your muscles clear lactic acid, a byproduct of glycolysis.

The more you train this pathway, using the workout techniques I’m about to describe, the better you get at using it. And the better you get at using it, the greater the oxygen deficit you can create with your training. Thus, improved metabolic conditioning means you can train harder, burning more calories both during and after your workout.

READ ALSO: The 10 Most Polarizing Fitness Topics

High-intensity interval training (HIIT)

HIIT is the most popular method of interval training for good reasons. Not only is it a great way to generate significant oxygen debt, it’s simple and straightforward. You typically use just one piece of equipment, like a stationary bike or rowing machine, both of which are relatively easy on the joints.

For an inexperienced client, you’ll probably start with 30-second intervals and a work-rest ratio of two-to-one or even three-to-one.

The client can progress in multiple ways:

Add intervals.

Raise the intensity.

Do longer intervals at the same intensity.

Reduce the rest periods.

You can also vary the equipment, so a client uses the rower for shorter, higher-intensity intervals with longer rest periods, and a bike for longer bouts with less recovery.

But you don’t want to change things up so much that the workouts become random. The goal of any type of training is to create a training effect, which means repeating the same challenges often enough to see a measurable improvement in performance.

With more advanced clients, you can progress to a one-to-one work-rest ratio. Anything beyond that becomes counterproductive because your client simply doesn’t have enough time to recover from one interval before starting the next one. That lowers the intensity of the workout, which defeats the point.

One final note about interval training: The intervals don’t actually have to be high intensity.

A deconditioned client will still benefit from low-intensity intervals, aka LIIT. As long as the intervals are harder than the client’s typical pace, they’ll get the benefits of metabolic conditioning without pushing them too far, too soon.

There’s also a place for medium-intensity intervals (MIIT). It’s obviously a bridge between LIIT and HIIT for some clients, while for others it’s a nice break from high-intensity sessions.

Traditional circuit training

Circuit training—typically five to seven exercises done consecutively, with little to no rest in between—is a classic model of increased work capacity.

The idea is simple: Build muscle while also increasing metabolic demand. Does it actually work that way? Depends.

The more you emphasize building muscle, the more recovery you need between sets, and the less oxygen debt you accumulate. The more you emphasize metabolic conditioning, the less you can focus on hypertrophy. You have to use lighter weights and stop your sets before you fully fatigue muscles.

But it’s not like you’re wasting time if you get more of one benefit than the other, or if you find a sweet spot in between. You’re still training something. It’s just hard to train an intermediate to advanced client effectively for multiple goals at the same time.

As with interval training, you can use a variety of intensities. High-effort circuits can create a massive oxygen debt for more advanced clients. Medium-intensity circuits are a good way to deload after a period of heavy lifting. And low-intensity circuits are perfect for complete beginners who still want to feel as if they’ve gotten a good workout.

Combination training

This catch-all category targets everything in the same workout.

After a thorough warm-up, you start your client with the exercises that call for the highest effort and focus. It could be technically complex lifts with low reps for strength and power. Or you could use less technical lifts with medium reps for strength and hypertrophy.

From there you might go to supersets or mini-circuits with the goal of creating an oxygen debt. You’d finish with some steady-state cardio.

Thus, you’d train all three energy systems—ATP-CP, glycolytic, and aerobic—and achieve multiple benefits without compromising anything.

READ ALSO: Five Exercise Science Principles Every Personal Trainer Must Know

Exercise selection for metabolic conditioning

The greater the metabolic challenge, the simpler the exercises need to be. You can’t ask clients to perform exercises at high intensity when they’re still learning to do them.

I had to learn that lesson the hard way.

Early in my career, I wanted to give participants in my metcon classes stuff they hadn’t seen before. The more novel it was, the better it must be. The logic seemed irrefutable: “Do cool s*** and become popular.”

In time, I moved closer to the combination training I just described. My warm-ups included corrective, mobility, and stability exercises. I followed those with the most challenging exercises and the heaviest loads. Then we’d get to the metcon portion, where I’d emphasize multiple rounds of simple loaded and unloaded exercises to fatigue muscles and create an oxygen deficit.

I’d finish the class with a low-intensity, low-complexity round, in which the participants used their aerobic systems.

READ ALSO: Here’s What a Good Core Workout Really Looks Like

How to program metabolic conditioning

Let’s start with a stipulation: Almost all the clients you train, individually or in group classes, are in the general population category.

Even the strongest or most jacked clients, male or female, young or old, are gen pop unless they’re actually competing in something. The odds are pretty close to 100 percent that they’re missing something important. A strong and muscular guy may not have an aerobic base or movement skill. A lean endurance enthusiast may lack strength and mobility.

Even if someone has the whole package, there’s a very good chance they achieved it by pushing their bodies to the breaking point. You don’t want your metcon workouts to push them over the edge.

I think metabolic conditioning works best when it’s part of a well-balanced program, and worst when it’s the primary component.

Let’s say a client trains with you two or three times a week. Most of your program will focus on strength, hypertrophy, movement skill, and any rehab or corrective exercises the client needs. Ten to 15 minutes of metcon at the end of more traditional workouts should work well.

For an intermediate-level client who wants to add an extra workout beyond your program, metcon makes sense. It can include anything from group cycling to bootcamps—whatever they enjoy and feel they can recover from. Just make sure you adjust your own program to account for it.

And for the ambitious client who wants to train six days a week, two bouts of 30 to 40 minutes per week should be the optimal upper limit for metabolic conditioning. Any more than that puts too much stress on the joints and central nervous system. (Chris Beardsley has a terrific explanation of CNS fatigue in this article.)

READ ALSO: What’s the Difference Between a Fitness Coach and a Personal Trainer?

Final thoughts

I want to close with a cautionary note:

Metabolic conditioning is not a beginner’s program, especially for clients who’re significantly overweight, recovering from an injury or illness, or otherwise deconditioned. In fact, one could argue that it’s highly irresponsible to emphasize output in someone who’s new to the gym, doesn’t move well, or hasn’t yet built a base of strength and endurance.

That doesn’t mean you can’t challenge these clients. Just do it in short, low-intensity intervals or circuits, using exercises the client can do proficiently. And for the love of all that’s good in the world, don’t have someone who’s 100 pounds overweight do a burpee. That doesn’t make you a good trainer. It makes you a jerk.

Your job is to meet the needs of the client, regardless of what’s trending at the moment.

    Ready to Take Your Personal Training Career to the Next Level?

Starting your career isn’t complicated. All you need is for someone to pay you to train them.

But how do you get that first client? What do you need to know? Where do you want to work, and how do you get hired?

If your answer to any of those questions is “I don’t know,” you need The Wealthy Fit Pro’s Guide to Starting Your Career, the ultimate launching pad for ambitious personal trainers.

Jonathan Goodman will show you how to …

Land the perfect job for you (pg. 17)

Attract more clients (pg. 95)

Keep more clients (pg. 55)

Get even more clients through a foolproof referral system (pg. 115)

Learn the no-fail secret to motivating clients (pg. 61)

Set yourself apart with programs your clients will brag about (pg. 71)

Master marketing skills that open up new income opportunities (pg. 152)

Become the best trainer you can be (pg. 46)

If you’re just beginning your journey in the fitness industry (or know someone who is), you won’t find a more authoritative or comprehensive resource.

Order this book in paperback today and get the audiobook and ebook 100% free (a $40 value).

It all starts by clicking here: The Wealthy Fit Pro’s Guide to Starting Your Career

  The post Metabolic Conditioning: Don’t Say It Unless You Understand It appeared first on The PTDC.

Metabolic Conditioning: Don’t Say It Unless You Understand It published first on https://onezeroonesarms.tumblr.com/