The Metabolism Boosting Workouts I Do When I Don’t Have Time!!

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What are you waiting for? Good night. What do you do when you don't have time? You don't have time to work out. And, you know, in this episode we won't go into it, but quite often it's, I don't have time to make breakfast. I don't have time to eat well. What do I do then? I will come back with that one. Actually, what I'd love is some kind of response to this episode if that is an issue. If you get stuck with, I don't have time, like what do you do to make food fast but make good food— good for you food, maybe I should say. But this episode is totally about how do you get a metabolism-boosting workout when you don't have time. And let's just be clear, the best metabolism-boosting workouts are not necessarily high intensity. So we're gonna focus on strength training, because if you're due for a strength training workout, it is the smartest and the best investment of your time, both for now and and for later. So a little bit on the science of that. The for now, the for later is you're definitely creating lean muscle tissue, more muscle mass that, that bodes well for your future. We've got to be strong and have lean muscle later. We don't want to be losing it. But how does it help you now? Because notoriously, if you and I compare 20-minute workout with weights, 20-minute workout to high-intensity interval training, the number of calories burned at the end of 20 minutes if we just stopped right there, would definitely be higher with HIIT. We— I can't argue that, that's exactly truth. However, if we looked at it again in 24 hours or 36 or 48, the strength training actually wins. And long term, if we look at it 6 months and a year later, the person who's doing HIIT all the time or doing cardio all the time is actually doing some muscle wasting. You cannot preserve your lean muscle mass as you age if you're only doing cardio. You have to have that strength training. So there's my persuasive argument, but I won't go into that. The episode is actually to give you the tools and the tricks that I use, literally. So in this podcast post, oddly enough, I'm gonna put a video that I recently posted on YouTube about this. So if you're not in a program, you're not in a Flipping 50 program, you're not in the Cafe, the membership, by the way, what are you waiting for? So if we release this on time, and which is in July while we're open, there's a monthly and there's an annual version. But if you're not in a program and doing something where I'm actually helping you, giving you protocols that are proven to work for women in menopause and beyond, and not only proven in science but proven for 10 years because we put them to the test with hundreds and thousands of women flipping 50, if you're not doing something like that, I would take a good look at joining us. But I want to give you some way to know even if you are not, if it's not in the cards for you right now, it's not in the budget, you just simply can't, or you're just stubborn enough and you, you maybe know enough and you're empowered enough, but you just want to confirm, am I doing the right thing? Here you are. All right. I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50, where I address your top struggles and concerns. But you know, that's kind of a drag. So most of all, we hope to inspire you so you expect a new demand to get science, get programs, get courses, get memberships, get things that are built for you, made for you. You're not a small man, quote unquote, Stacy Sims. But you're not a mouse, you're not a man, and you're not a young woman à la Debra Atkinson, not even younger you. So your hormones have changed, your exercise also needs to change. And that doesn't mean you have to settle for being less fit. And in fact, it doesn't always mean restore before more, meaning you're gonna do less. Sometimes it means you're just doing something less frequently, but you're gonna go a lot harder and push the accelerator either on the speed or on the intensity with heavier weight. Truth. I share what to eat, how to move, and how to change your mindset so you can get the energy and vitality that you want, need, and deserve in the second and better half. Let's dive back into this. Metabolism-boosting workouts are key to losing weight after 40. Just quote-unquote lifting weights may miss the mark though. Just checking that box like, oh yeah, I went to that class without a plan and the right sequence, the right protocol. All of this matters. You may be just missing the boat. You may be doing something but maybe just getting tired, or just kind of scratching the surface, not even getting tired, but not doing enough. In this episode, I'm going to give you a crash course on how I program at Flipping 50. You'll have a very short course in personal training, and we should all know a few basics about what's enough stimulus, What's too much? What's the best amount of rest time between not just workouts like Monday to Thursday, but sets of exercise for the same muscle group? How much rest do you need between those? And when you have very little time, what should you choose to do versus what should you ditch? I like to think of it like a bullseye. I imagine a bullseye of a target, and every program I designed for our Flipping 50 membership, and we'll link to that so you can see a few details about it even though you're not on the inside. It's based on what's worked for menopausal women, science studies, and the workouts utilize the highest priority source of exercise volume. Now listen, that's just not more exercise. When we say exercise volume, we're not just saying, oh, more, get more, because you or 4 other women in the room may interpret that different. It's not about more frequency, it's not about more duration, it's not about more intensity, and all of those things put together, right? So it may be, yes, about more intensity, and if you increase the intensity, you also have to increase the recovery between because there's more muscle tearing potentially that happened. Tearing happens naturally in a workout, in any exercise, anything. You go for a walk, there's some muscle breakdown happening there. Less, right, than if you're doing a high-intensity interval training or you're doing a strength training workout, but it does happen. So you have to acknowledge that's a normal part and a part of the process that makes you, between— as you rest between sessions, get stronger. Okay, so it's about enough volume for major muscle groups. For instance, 3 exercises 3 or 4 or 5 times is far more valuable than 8 muscle groups done 2 times. Let me say that again. 3 exercises done 3 or 4 or 5 times is more valuable, far more, than 8 muscle groups that you do just 2 sets of. And when you have days that are short, we can't be just all or nothing. Oh, I have no time to exercise because I really only have about 10 minutes. You can do 10 minutes of exercise and say, boom, I've been consistent, stimulated those muscle groups. Maybe not all of them, maybe not all of them equally, but I got myself some overload. I got myself some support for my insulin sensitivity. I controlled my blood sugar. And that is far more valuable than just saying, well, I don't have an hour, I don't have 40 minutes, even don't have a half an hour. It's not worth it. It is worth it. It's worth it. So you want to think about that. So again, just to remind you, the video is going to be in— so as I'm going to talk a lot about exercise, it's sometimes Greek if you're not familiar with this. So before we launch into this, I want to define a few terms. Protocol. That means the way something is set up, the way it is given. Like, if I gave you a protocol, you would have a step-by-step plan and you would be able to replicate the workout that I wanted you to even if I wasn't there. And that's a little bit dependent on you understanding the vocabulary that I'm going to continue to give you right here, but that's how you put the pieces together. And We use things in protocols like circuit training, and that means there might be a long list of exercises that you go through one at a time and one after the other, and then you repeat from the top and do it again. And you might do a circuit training just one time through. You could do it twice or three or four times through, but generally it's probably two or three times through in a circuit because you've got so many exercises. It's about all most people's time will allow. Another term that is used is called supersets. Supersets means you take 2 exercises. So you have exercise A and exercise B, and you go A, B, A, B, and maybe you do it again. But you have to do A and B at least 2 different sets of that in order to have a pattern, right? So you could do 2 sets, 3 sets, 4 sets. You could do as many as you wanted to. But again, then your muscles are going to get a little fatigued, especially if we say did a chest exercise and a back exercise. That's all upper body. So it could be for same body parts, upper body, but not necessarily same muscle group, opposing muscle groups. It could be for different body parts, like we could do a lower body exercise like squats and an upper body exercise like rows. And that would give you a little more feel of rested and recovered as you go back and forth and back and forth. The cumulative fatigue and stress wouldn't be quite so bad. But when you do chest and back and chest and back, all the blood flow is going to the same place, and that becomes a little bit more fatiguing for most. Okay, but there are a lot of different ways to apply supersets, that should be said. And yet, if we're going to abide by rest, most of the time you want to give at least 1 to 2 minutes before you work the same muscle group again. Now there are times when we sometimes want to do supersets where we're going to do, say, all leg exercises— leg, leg, leg, leg, leg, leg— and then we're going to repeat them— leg, leg, leg, leg, leg, leg, leg— and that is on purpose. And on leg day, people who do quote-unquote leg days, it's all they do, and they get much more sore, much more muscle fatigue in that area, and then they don't work it for several days. If— and some don't don't work more than once a week, which I don't recommend. And I recommend total body workouts not based on personal preference but based on number one, science. And total body gets about 8 times the lift for metabolism, as do single muscle groups or body parts like chest. Or doing a chest and triceps day, you don't get the boost of all the body, you just get the boost of that muscle group. And some trainers will argue, well, there's— you don't get enough volume, like not enough exercises or sets or repetitions for any one muscle group. Hmm. Well, I would beg to differ. Maybe it's protocol, right? But if you plan really well, you absolutely can get that. And your, your workouts will be planned better from one week to the next week to complement each other. So there is a definite progression. It's not random. Nothing about it is random. So let's move on from supersets. You've already got protocol. That's whole— that's really the plan. Supersets are one of those factors that could be a part of a plan. Another factor is tri-sets. So tri, as it sounds, is 3, and this happens to use 3 many times. So 3 exercises done 3 times through. So we'd go like exercise ABC and then go back and ABC and ABC. So 3, 3 times generally is it. Now you could do tri-sets and maybe only hit 3 exercises 2 times. For a beginner, that might be a wise choice. Some days you could do 4 times. And here's what I would suggest: if you have just 15 minutes, you know, or somewhere between 15 and 20, and that's it for strength training, that's exactly what I would do. I was to choose those 3 exercises and I would do them 3 or 4 times and be done. Warm up and cool down on either end, your time is up, but you've had a very effective workout. You've gotten good volume for those muscle groups. And usually we choose compound exercises. What are those? That work multiple joints. So a chest press is incorporating your elbow and your shoulder. Right? And a row is doing the same. Squats, at your hip and at your knee and your ankle, you're moving at all those joints, and you move all the muscles that cross those joints. So it's multiple muscles are getting worked, not just a single. So if I say do 3 exercises, we're not just doing 3 muscle groups. That's an important distinction. And a lot of women— I will say not a lot, but I do get that question— somebody said that, but I read once that— okay, danger, right? Because, um, Anything online could be written by a real person, real person who dives into science, or just a person who doesn't, or by artificial intelligence. That's just sweeping the web. It's not conducting research. It's just sweeping the web for anything that was written. And remember, that includes people who don't consult with science, who just make it up as they go along. So it's a little dangerous to say, well, I've read that. Mm-hmm. Where'd you read it? It's really important. So something for every muscle group. If you're still reading that, or you're reading that from, say, the American Heart Association, and you very well could be, or the American Medical Association, or the Mayo Clinic site, you very well could be, but these are outdated recommendations based on, you know, what we knew and what was true 40 years ago when I was still in school. 1982 to 1986, I was in college as a co-ed hearing exactly that. But now we know so much better that there are different ways to go about actually improving body composition. And what's a big concern for midlife women? Fatigue. Tired all the time. I don't mean muscle fatigue at the end of a set. That we do want. The kind of fatigue, the crushing fatigue that now I have to rest on the couch because I exercised or because I went to work today. This is wrong. Right? So when you show up already with a tendency to adrenal fatigue and stress in midlife, because we're more prone based on hormonal changes that have happened, that's not just you. It's not you being weak at all. It is simply your endocrine system and your status right now in midlife. You are a little bit more prone to stress and we're not good at detecting it, by the way. We have to be pretty much slapped on the face or slammed against the wall with that kind of fatigue before we start paying attention. We take care of everybody and everything else and then ourselves. And I give you kudos for being a 'count on me, I'll get it done' girl, but really we have to take a really good look at the fact that exercise is also a stressor and we can't contribute to the problem. So making sure we get enough rest is really crucial. So I mentioned circuits first, going through circuits. We called supersets out triceps, and those are 3 different things that are just terms and protocols that you can use. So if you have a lack of time, circuit's probably the least likely to be your best friend. Do that when you have 45 minutes, you can do circuit training then, because then you can do those 8 to 10 exercises or 6. You know, you don't have to go with 8 to 10, but then you can do them, you can repeat them at least 3 times and get a real full body workout with real volume. But if you don't have that much time, it'll be very hard to do them effectively, right? Triceps, you could do one tricep, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. That'd take about 10 or 12 minutes if you knew exactly what exercise came next and you could shift and transition quickly. Boom, you're done. Gotta have a warm-up and a cool-down too. Supersets— you could do one set. I would then do an upper body, and I would make it a pull if I had to choose between push and pull. And I would do a lower body like a squat. Those would be the two. But ideally, I do two different supersets and do them each at least three times. So AB, AB, AB, move on to the next, AB, AB, AB. A set generally takes about a minute. So there's 6 and 6, that's about 12 minutes. Gotta have a little transition time, so maybe that's a 15-minute workout, but pretty effective. You've done quite a bit, right? Okay, so let's talk about metabolism-boosting workouts, how I structure them. You've got the parts, the components, you have the vocabulary, okay? We're speaking the same language. The 5 components of a workout, and here's what I'm going to give you: they should expand and shrink. There is a YouTube video that I have created— gosh, and this was years ago— is sitting on a rock outside of my home in Boulder, Colorado, where you get to look at the Great Divide. Actually, I can remember when I was doing this. I think it was back in 2014. And it was beautiful. But I talked about these 5 components, what they are, and what I want you to realize is they should expand or shrink as needed, but none of them ever really disappear. Okay, so number 1, the warm-up. But the warm-up really has 2 parts. So you need to do some kind of an overall core temperature elevation. That means some kind of aerobic movement. Generally, you're gonna get on a bike for 5 to 10 minutes, you're gonna walk around, or you're gonna dance around in your living room for 5 to 10 minutes. It's right now, it's like 115 degrees here. I don't even want to go outside. I love outdoors, I love heat, I love summer. I don't love this. Okay, it's a little too much even for me. Um, but you want to elevate that core temperature by moving around, and then you want to do some kind of dynamic work. So in the video I'm sharing in the podcast notes, you want to do something like rear lunges or side lunges and move your arms at the same time but in different ways. So as you do a side lunge, you might take your arms arms up and overhead and back to your chest. As you do a rear lunge, you might take your arms over and rotate over that leg in front. And so you're getting in rotation, flexion, extension, and movement similar to the things that you're about to do. You're also incorporating some balance. If you do a lunge on one leg, there are times you're on one leg, right? And that incorporates balance, which incorporates core. And it brings your brain into focus. You can't be doing the grocery list or thinking about what you're gonna do tomorrow or in an hour. So that's key. All right, so if this is all losing you, remember I'm gonna link to this recent video I did on YouTube. You can just watch that if you want to, but I want you to stay with me. So I'm gonna give you 3 exercises in the next 3. So just imagine this, right? So I give you a goblet squat. If you're not sure about a goblet squat, what that is. Just think of a squat or leg press, a bent-over row, and side lunges. So those are the 3 exercises. So it actually goes from a leg to a, a back pull and then to another leg. But single leg means probably less weight. You're not going to fatigue quite as much. You'll repeat those. The second tri-set is a chest press a bent arm pull over another back. So it's a push, a chest, and then a pull, and then it's a leg. So all body parts get a little bit of a break between these, right? In the first one, there were two leg exercises, and then eventually if you went from number 3 or C to back to A, there was a leg and a leg. But again, a single leg or unilateral stance versus 2 legs or bilateral stance, different kind of fatigue, right? So generally you can do more, and then you're going to cool down. So if we talk warm-up, 5 components: the core temperature warm-up, moving warm-up, then dynamic warm-up. That's 1 and 2. The main set, in this case it's strength training sets, and then cooling down comes usually after core exercise. But in this, you've got really short amounts of time. What I want you to keep in mind about your core exercise is Core exercise is happening all the time. When you do strength training, you're engaging your core, particularly if you're using free weights or something that requires balance. So I could say the same if you were using, say, a TRX. You don't see me use TRX a lot, you don't hear me talking about it, and I'm very familiar with it. It was instrumental— oh gosh, back in 2000, I don't know what, 6 or 5 in bringing it into a club where I managed 3 different locations and, and almost 2 dozen trainers by the time I left. And we brought that in as a tool and put in bars up and overhead and made it functional in all of the places where we had group training. But you know what I also learned in watching our members and watching some of our trainers be better than others about noticing when their clients were over-firing with their upper traps and using their neck muscles and their upper back instead of using the muscle that should have been working is there was more tension. People actually had more tension in the upper back and neck, you know, and that's the cause of headaches for a lot of people. And our physical therapy department was under the roof of one of these locations, and, you know, it was something they commented on too. With the advent of TRX, not just from our club but from all over, people all over town, they saw more of an influx of more people over-firing the upper traps and not working the lazy muscles that can't. When you're suspending yourself, you, you just use what you use. You use what you do to have to, to not fall. And you can't necessarily work weak muscles with your entire body weight on it. And even when we minimize that body weight, if you don't know they're not firing, you're unaware of it, you can't all of a sudden realize, oh, I can't— shouldn't be doing this because my traps aren't firing or my rhomboids aren't firing. Nobody's— you're not going to say that. So just a word of caution when you're thinking about what you need. Core exercise is firing when you're doing free weight exercise or when you reach down to pick up the dog food bag, your core should be firing. So if we do exercise correctly, teach you how to do that, we teach you how to be very functional. In bending over to pick things up and get them out of the trunk. Now I know a lot of us just open the back hatch nowadays. We don't have to bend over, but some of us still do, right? Or you've got that cute little sports car and you still have to get up and down and in it. And there are things in it or dogs or pets or something that you've got to get out of there. Bags, overhead things, right? We pick them up. So So it's key that you realize if you're in a hurry, you can leave the core out. Do a bent-over row in a standing position, that's an awful lot of core. And when you're doing a bent-arm pullover, when you're doing a chest press, when it gets heavy enough, you have to engage your core. You wouldn't be able to get that lifted. It just happens while you're doing it. So the cooldown is the last piece with a temperature warm-up, the dynamic warm-up, the main set, core exercise maybe, or you say, nope, I did that today, was inserted in everything else. And last but not least is the cool-down, and it is kind of a two-parter, but we don't count it as two. So you want to make sure that's when you do your stretches, the ones where you hold a little bit longer. And that's also potentially where you walk and move a little bit more to start flushing lactate out of your system. So if you're walking home, great. If you're just walking to your car, you might want you want to walk a little bit longer and not just directly to your car, because if you can walk for 5 to 10 minutes, that blood flow actually makes your next workout better. So I'm gonna say this because your objection may be, are you kidding? Is it worth it? I've got 10 or 15 minutes to just fit in a workout now. Absolutely. You know, less is more. Reaching complete fatigue is actually the key. And sometimes, because you only have 20 minutes or 15 we tend to make every minute count. I mean, haven't you noticed that when you have 45 minutes, you have an hour, you take your time and you end up not using all of it as effectively as you would 20 minutes? That's the biggest difference between short workouts and long ones. You get solid, you get smart, you focus because you don't have time to mess around. So if you're wondering, is it worth it? Yes, it absolutely is. Just get those fewer but target major muscle groups in instead. All right, and if you don't have enough volume, if you think you don't, you know, not enough volume in splitting up, uh, workouts, like in doing a split routine, is going to be true for sure. So if you're doing 15 to 30 minutes of weight training sessions just for body parts, the number of sets and repetitions or combinations of weight and rest you know, you may not be getting enough rest for those muscle groups. And you have to— or I would recommend, how about that, highly recommend— just pay attention to how you feel, what's happening to your percent body fat and your energy levels, and know maybe it's working for you and maybe it's not. All right, and it's a struggle, you know, split routines with one muscle group a day for metabolism. I'm really gonna challenge, based on science and based on what I know, for women who don't have a lot of time and they need to say, okay, 2 times a week is reasonable, I can commit to that, I can commit to 45 minutes twice a week. But when you start talking to me about 45 minutes 5 times a week, ah, and then if I get off and I can't— I miss a day, then my whole week is off. I don't know if I can do that, right? You may be asking, you know, it's split routines, or can I do those? Because I get asked that all the time. People who maybe are just new to following me and they don't know how, how I asked about this. Two things to consider: time and recovery. So not just of your muscles, not recovery of your muscles like from one day to the next, but of your adrenals, your endocrine system, and your time. So if you're doing strength training, strength training, strength training, strength training, strength training 5 days in a row, yeah, maybe smaller muscle group, but the stimulus and the adrenal fatigue still may be there. There's not much variety there. So shorten and lengthen without risk of losing that metabolism benefit. If you're doing total body workouts, you can much more easily adjust and move them around. And rest is a factor. When repetition range is low, that means the weight is really high, rest required increases. So your time doesn't necessarily decrease. Right? So if we said I want you to do 20 repetitions in whatever weight it takes you to reach fatigue, okay, so that's whatever. Now if I said I want you to do 5 repetitions in whatever weight it takes you to reach fatigue, it's going to take far less weight. Will you agree? To reach fatigue at 5 repetitions, it's got to be pretty heavy. But you now need to put that weight down, and you'll have to rest and recover. Your heart rate will be higher. You will just feel like, okay, I'm gonna shake this out, shake this off, then I'll go on to the next one. When you're working at that intensity, you still do need the rest. So structuring your workouts, not necessarily doing, oh, I'm going to work the chest and the chest and the chest and the chest today— that may not work very well for you. Okay, that's one of the, one of the backups for why total body versus a split routine. Leg day is the only one where you're really going to be able to hit a metabolism boost hard with a split routine, and that is because they're just major muscles, right? So largest muscles in your body, the glutes, you know, using them in a squat and a lunge or a hip thrust, if you will, a bridge on a ball or otherwise. And yet you can insert chest and back with a single superset of 3 to 5 with low to moderate reps and still do 3 or 4 lower body exercises that will stimulate more muscle in lower body when you do total body. So kind of an argument here for even when you're short on time, metabolism boosting is still going to be biggest and best when you do total body workouts. And then you're back on track, like you don't have to think back and say, oh, 'Oh, have I done my chest this week? Have I done my back this week?' You know, and if you're blocked off because of meetings or schedules, or somebody got sick in your household, or you went on vacation, you're traveling, you don't have to stop and think, 'Did I do— am I due for legs? Am I due for chest?' Or, 'No, I did total body on Sunday, so it's Wednesday, total body, I'm good to go,' right? Or, 'I've got to push that total body to tomorrow.' you're still good, right? So it's, it's very important for you to kind of look at what is your schedule, what is your realistic schedule, and what are your real ultimate goals, what's your level of fatigue, in order to plan a very effective workout that doesn't throw you under the bus. I, I say this frequently You can't get fit while you're exhausted. You have to be rested. You have to be good to go. So find a way for you to do that, and you'll be so much better off. All right, flooping50.com/menopauseboosting— I'm sorry, metabolism— got my M's confused— metabolism boosting workouts. That's where the show notes are, and that's where you'll find the video. Otherwise, you can go directly to youtube.com forward slash— my channel is Flipping 50 TV, Flipping 50 TV— and you will find the video that is all about, uh, 20-minute workouts for women. It's very recent, and that's the one I'm mentioning and kind of riffing off of today in this episode. If you're if this was all great, it makes much more sense to you, but you just soon have it done for you and laid out, the Flipping 50 membership is open. If you're listening in July, twice annually is when we open, and if you hurry, you might still catch it. We— if not, we have a notification list up and other options for you to start something. We don't want somebody not doing something, right? No woman over 50 wants to allow muscle loss because that's metabolism loss, and it, it is happening if you're not strength training. All right, what are you waiting for? Let's start Flipping 50 today. Show notes again: flipping50.com/metabolism-boosting-workouts. Oh, whoa.