Boost Your Metabolism Anywhere: The Ultimate No-Gym Workout with Ben Greenfield

All right. Do you want the minimum effective dose of exercise, a workout you can do just about anytime, any place, hotel, gym, the average health club, or even your house. And you want a workout that's specifically designed not necessarily to build massive amounts of muscle or gain herculean strength, but to instead boost your metabolism, increase fat burning and get you into a state where you're metabolically active the rest of the day. Well, this workout is designed just for you. I'm first going to show you some of the key things that I like to use in a pre workout blend for workout just like this. And then I'm going to walk you through each and every element of today's workout. I'm often asked by people, what supplements do you take before a workout, particularly one that you want to boost your metabolism for to turn yourself into so called fat burning machine? Well, if you eat a whole bunch of calories before a workout like that, you may actually wind up burning a lot of glucose prior to tapping into your body's own fat stores. So I like to choose supplements for a pre workout metabolism boosting routine that allow me to have ample amounts of energy and increase production of ATP without actually consuming a lot of calories. So I've got a few key things that I would rely on if I were you before you do something like let's say a fasted morning workout or a workout before which you're not going to eat oodles of energy bars and protein shakes and all sorts of calorie laden ingredients. So what I have here are a few key products that you can all put together into one solution that I think work really well. So first of all, I have a glass here of what is called molecular hydrogen. Now this is a little gray tablet. You drop it into water and dissolve it in water. And this gray tablet comes from a company called Water and Wellness. It's called Active H2 with Chromax. Chromax stands for chromium picolinate and that allows for for improved insulin sensitivity and blood glucose control while also giving you a little spark in your metabolism. It's combined with molecular hydrogen which is a selective antioxidant, unlike antioxidants that you might be familiar with like vitamin C or vitamin E. The cool thing about molecular hydrogen is it helps your body fight inflammation which you are going to have after workout, but it doesn't blunt what is called the hormetic response of the workout. So I like it as a way to do things like reduce post workout soreness or allow you to battle inflammation the production of free radicals without restricting your ability to, say, build muscle or build new mitochondria. But that's just one component of what I'm going to add to this water. So the second one is ketones, drinkable ketones such as these. These are made by a company called hvmn. They allow for your body to burn fat and to access energy without actually consuming an appreciable amount of calories. So just one shot of this will shift your body into the same state of ketosis that many people would have to restrict carbohydrates or fast for a long period of time in order to achieve. So I'm going to put a little bit of ketones. You can see that HVMN has their ketone bottle, even though they do have single shots as well. But these big bottles I like because they're marked with the exact amount you need. So I'm just going to eyeball this and put in about as many ketones as we'd be considered. One serving. So we've got the ketones in there. Drinkable ketone est. And then the next component, in addition to boosting my ketone production, is to give my body a bioavailable pool of amino acids. Now, when I interviewed professional bodybuilder Milo Sarkev, which is a fantastic show, we talked about all sorts of pre workout, intra workout and post workout formulas, he actually turned me on to the idea that when you go into a workout with elevated blood levels of amino acids, you're able to build muscle. And you're able to build muscle again without consuming a lot of calories which you have to digest and which of course may blunt a little bit of the fat burning that you get from a metabolism boosting workout. So for this I've got the Kion Aminos product. These are essential amino acids. Now be careful. You don't want branch chain amino acids or BCAAs. The dirty secret in the nutrition industry is that that's basically expensive flavored water that companies can make a lot of money, but it doesn't provide your muscles with all nine amino acids essential for muscle building and recovery. Now, myself and the team at Kion worked on an amino acid formula that directly mimics the amino acid composition that you find in human muscle. And so when you take this, you elevate your pools of amino acids, but again, it doesn't have a lot of calories in it. So you're able to stay in what would be almost like a fasting, mimicking state. So one scoop of this is 5 grams of amino acids. And my sweet spot for a Pre workout is two scoops. So I've got 10 grams of amino acids in here along with the molecular hydrogen and the ketones. Now I'm going to stir all this up and this will be my pre workout drink. And all I'm going to do is take two capsules of one other secret sauce, really cool metabolism boosting ingredient prior to this workout and that's thyroid fixer. So I interviewed a thyroid specialist named Dr. Amy Horneman on my podcast several months ago and she turned me on to this stuff called T2. T2 is a little known or at least lesser known component that supports thyroid hormones. It actually is a thyroid hormone, but unlike the others, it doesn't lead to imbalances in your thyroid hormones and allows for a potent metabolism boosting effect. And Amy formulated this stuff called thyroid Fixture. She sent me a couple bottles after the podcast. I've been using this as a pre workout specifically for fasted workouts where again want that metabolism boosting effect. So I'll take two capsules of this thyroid fixer and what I'm showing you right now is something that a lot of people in the workout and nutrition industry don't really know about or talk about when it comes to a really good DIY pre workout blend for fat burning and metabolism boosting. But again, we've got molecular hydrogen, ketone esters and essential amino acids all in one glass of water. And all I'm taking are two of these thyroid fixers. And I'm going to drink this down.

It's got a great flavor. And by the way, there's three other flavors of this kion essentials. But this is the, this is the berry flavor. And basically I'll drink this and then head out to my gym for this workout that you're about to join me with. We're going to start with cardio. Now you can see me here on an air assault bike, which I consider to be one of the most potent arsenals for cardiovascular training in my home gym. But if you don't have access to an air assault bike, the big thing you want to take into account here is you want to start off with some form of cardio that moves both the arms and legs. A rowing machine is one perfect example. One of the elliptical trainers where you're moving both your arms and your legs is another example. Or of course one of these bicycles that's utilizing the arms and the legs. Your workout will start like this. You're going to do one minute of exercise breathing through your nose, and then you're going to do one minute of exercise at an all out, maximum intensity pace before you hop off the bike and move into the first actual movement for today's session. Movement number one in this circuit is kettlebell swings. As soon as you get off the cardio with minimum rest, you're going to jump straight into 12 kettlebell swings. One of the most potent ways to simulate an all out sprint without sprinting. Pay attention to hiking the kettlebell properly off the ground, back through the legs and then up to shoulder height. As you exposively exhale, squeeze your butt cheeks, tighten your core and then repeat for 12 reps. Next exercise is push ups. Any push up variation, you're doing 12 reps. You can see me here doing a special twist for my pushups. I happen to have a vibration platform called a power plate in my gym. The reason I like using vibration for things like air squats or push ups, like you see me doing here, is you use more muscles, especially some of these small stabilizing muscles. And research has shown that your metabolic rate is higher when you're working out if you're doing any given exercise using vibration. So even though vibration isn't necessary for this workout, if you have access to a vibe plate like this, definitely throw it in for those push ups. Back to the kettlebell, same thing, minimal rest. You're going to go straight into kettlebell squats, which incorporate the core, the shoulders, the grip and of course all the muscles of the legs. Anytime you're trying to boost the metabolism, make sure you include a demanding leg portion as part of that workout. And kettlebell squats are a perfect, minimal equipment required way to do it. And yes, you can also do these with a dumbbell. Okay, your next move are horizontal pull ups. Now, if you're real glutton for punishment, you can do regular vertical pull ups. But the reason I like horizontal pull ups is they're scalable. Just about anybody can do them. You can crank them out quickly as part of this metabolism boosting workout. Similar to your swings, your push ups and your squats, you got 12 reps of the horizontal pull up, pulling your chest up to that bar and then back down with an overhand grip. Alright, your last moves, one of my favorites, and that is a twist on burpees that I call humane burpees. You can see that instead of doing a standard burpee here, I'm doing a style of burpee that's friendlier to a lot of people's. Knees and shoulders and it simply involves getting down on the ground, doing a push up and standing up without that explosive jumping action. While you can do regular standard burpees for this workout, try out the humane burpees. You'd be surprised at how nice it is to have this variation added to your workout arsenal. Alright, so you're going to take each of those exercises and you're going to do a total of six rounds, starting with easy nasal breathing on the bike for one minute, back to hard effort on the bike or the other form of cardio that you choose for one minute. Then you're going to cycle through each of those six exercises from the swings to the push ups to the goblet squat to the horizontal pull up to the humane burpees with minimum rest between each. If you can't do six rounds or you don't have time to do six rounds, that's okay. You can shorten this workout out, but this one will really get you huffing and puffing and turn you into a metabolism boosted fat burning machine the rest of the day.