Boot-Camp Methods

According to Greg Justice of AYC Health & Fitness in Kansas City, Kansas, “the key to metabolic resistance training—or boot-camp workouts—is that it uses a perfect blend of both anaerobic and aerobic exercises to build muscle and burn fat as efficiently as possible.”

In broad terms, according to Justice, a successful boot-camp instructor can implement four basic types of interval/circuit training methods:

• Volume intervals. These are repetition-based activities; for example, 15 squats, followed by a minute of rest; then 2 more sets before moving to the next exercise.
• Time intervals. Participants alternate between exercising and resting for a set number of rounds. For a high-intensity, focused workout, for example, you may decide on 30 seconds of work followed by 30 seconds of rest for 20–30 rounds.
• Timed volume intervals. These combine the previous two methods. participants do a set number of reps in a certain amount of time. the idea is to shorten the amount of time needed to do the same number of reps. For example, you might do a series of 10 push-ups and 10 lunges every minute. If boot campers complete the movements before the minute is up, they have more time to recover before starting again.
• Density training. In this type of training, participants exercise as hard as they can for a specific length of time; for instance, they do as many jumping jacks or squats as they can for 2 minutes. the goal is to continually complete more reps as the body becomes stronger.

To read the full article from the January 2014 issue of the IDEA Fitness Journal click here.