Confusing Cost and Benefit: METCON, mass and strength

Strength Coach Charles Staley said that everything has a cost, but not everything has a benefit.  There is a lot of training wisdom in that statement.  This is the most common mistake most trainers and trainees make.  Just because something is hard, does not mean it is going to get you closer to your goals.  METCON is perhaps the most widely abused training method that comes to mind.  If you have done any METCON training, the cost is obvious.  METCON is really, really hard.  But what are the benefits?  METCON is not effective for building muscle mass (beyond beginners).  METCON is not effective for building strength.  In fact METCON can interfere with both strength and muscle hypertrophy.  METCON loading is not heavy enough for either and it is taking away recovery reserves that would be used to grow muscle.  It is hard (cost), but for some, it may move them further away from their goals (negative benefit).   A skinny guy looking to get big and strong should be doing very little METCON.  Very little.  When I see groups of skinny guys doing air squats and burpees I often wonder what they are trying to achieve.  I see this often.  Most likely they are confusing cost with benefit.  They assume that since the workout is really, really hard it must be good, right?  Good for what?  Mostly good for keeping skinny guys skinny.  For a skinny guy, METCON has a definite cost, but may not have the benefit they want, unless they want to stay skinny.

Training (as opposed to just working out) is a process of applying progressive overload to get from your current condition (point A) to your goal condition (point B).  It is not about cost, it is about benefit (getting to point B)!  It is easy to be hard, but it is hard to be smart (USMC quote).

So what is METCON good for?

1. Burning calories, weight loss
2. Conditioning for high intensity work
3. Building mental toughness
4. Non-specific cardio training

What is METCON not good for?

1. Muscle hypertrophy
2. Building strength

Every thing you do in training should be scrutinized from the perspective of whether it helps to get you from point A to point B.  Never add in something just to increase the cost of your training session unless that cost is associated with a benefit.  It is better to think in terms of adding benefit.  As simple as this concept is, few trainees, and sadly, few trainers get this right.  Train smart.