Metabolic Enhancement Training

I’ve done a lot of different workouts. Body sculpting classes, yoga, bikram yoga, step aerobics, weight training, spinning, plyometrics and running among other things. I played hockey for six years and was subjected to some of the hardest workouts I’ve ever done in my life; where you literally want to puke.

No workout has ever made me puke, yet. But last night I did one of the hardest workouts I’ve done in a long, long time.

As you know I’m back in my hometown for a couple of weeks and last night I decided to go check out this new class at the gym I’ve been going to since I was 13 years old. The owner is a good friend of my mom’s and she’s a professional body builder who’s been featured in Oxygen magazine. She doesn’t usually teach classes, but she started offering this class at the end of last summer and she teaches it. The class is called Advanced M.E.T’s or “Advanced Metabolic Enhancement Training”.

Metabolic Enhancement Training, which is what MET stands for, is strength and/or conditioning exercises performed with the intention of increasing the capacity and efficiency of the energy pathways to store and deliver energy for activity. Metabolic Enhancement Training (MET) consists of functional movements and traditional movements, as well as any exercise that gets the job done in sequences or Circuits to stimulate metabolism. MET uses integrated movements from all sports training that involve acceleration, stabilization and deceleration and improve movement ability, core strength and neuromuscular efficiency. It comes from everywhere – from the schoolyard play of children to advanced biomechanics.

I found this definition here.

Basically, I would compare it to doing level 3 of the 30-day shred for 50 minutes straight. We were doing squat jumps, mountain climbers, pushups, skater jumps and many more exercises. It was a continuous circuit, where we spent 45 seconds at each station and we did it three times. It was SO. HARD.

So hard that I actually wanted to cry. At one of the stations we had to but a resistance belt on and they would pull on it as we did mountain climbers against the resistance. I was sweating so much that the floor was all slippery and my hands were sliding all over the place. By the third circuit my quads were screaming at me.

When she yelled “halfway!” I thought I was going to break down and start crying right there. How could I only be halfway through? My legs felt like they were going to fall off!

At one point she stopped us from doing the circuit, made us all come to the middle and hold the plank staff pose for a minute. I couldn’t do it, I had to drop to my knees, but I held it for about 20 seconds from my feet and another 40 from my knees. It was intense.

I was already sore when from a lower-level body sculpt class that I did on Monday so I KNOW I’m going to be hurting tomorrow morning. I wanted to work my body really hard this week because next week is the last week before the halfer and I’m apparently supposed to be “tapering”. For all you runners out there, does “tapering” mean that I don’t do any other workouts other than running, or can I get away with the 20-minute 30-day shred on my non-running days next week?

Have you guy’s ever done a workout/class at the gym that made you want to cry? Tell me about it.

And just to prove to you how hard I worked, here is a picture I snapped right after leaving the gym! Looks I just stepped out of the shower, doesn’t it!!?