Did you know there are 3,500 calories in one pound of fat? Seems like a lot, but if you focus on maximizing the time you spend in the gym, and making it a priority to burn extra calories at the times they would be spared, you’ll see a difference in your shape. Here are 12 ways you can burn more calories, in and out of the gym. Keep in mind that small changes to your daily routine, as well as eating a healthy diet, can bring only positive change to your physique.
Tabata training
This form of exercise is short on time and tough on fat! Doing as little as four minutes (or one “Tabata”) can increase your aerobic capacity, anaerobic capacity, VO2 max and resting metabolic rate, and can help you burn more fat (and make you look leaner) than a traditional 60-minute aerobic workout. The short, high-intensity moves make this workout kick your metabolism into high gear.
Focus on compound workouts
Compound moves stimulate more muscle-building hormones. To build and create a lean, toned body you need to stimulate your androgen hormones (growth hormones) and testosterone. Growth hormone release peaks around midnight when your body regenerates overnight. Stimulating it via exercise will give it a welcome boost, but you need to get at least 8 hours of good sleep a night to maximize its potential for improved fitness and health.
Jump rope between sets
Jumping rope is one of the best cardiovascular exercises there is. It keeps our heart rate elevated while working the whole body. Instead of sitting around between sets, skip rope for 60 seconds. This is called “active recovery” and can increase caloric expenditure while preventing muscle breakdown.
Do circuit training
Doing one exercise after another keeps your heart rate at an efficient fat-burning level. The idea is not speed, but exercising continuously. The fact that there is no rest in between sets while working multiple muscle groups per workout, gives you more bang for your buck in the fat-burning department. This form of training can be done at a gym, in your home and even outdoors.
Use kettlebells
Kettlebell training offers you the ability to burn fat with high-intensity workouts while sculpting your body from head to toe. Unlike other pieces of equipment, using kettlebells in your fitness routine can challenge your body and build strength, stamina, endurance and flexibility.The functional movements you perform with a kettlebell resemble movements you perform every day. Kettlebell workouts are effective at increasing strength by using full-body functional movements that incorporate several muscle groups for each exercise, building lean muscle mass and increasing metabolism in return.
Choose sprints
Sprinting causes significant caloric expenditure, yields positively for excess post exercise oxygen consumption and provides some enhancement to the cardiovascular system. Sprinting also assists in the development in a stronger lower body and core by adapting to the performance needed for speed
Wear a weighted vest
By adding additional weight to the body, weighted vests lend themselves to a variety of workouts. For muscle-building, body-weight exercises, weighted vests create challenging resistance. This resistance and weight also increase the challenge of some cardiovascular exercises, such as running, helping to tone muscles and get the heart pumping. This in turn burns more calories and helps aid in building lean muscle mass and strength. Weight vests can be worn for multiple forms of exercises, like pull-ups, squats and even sprinting.
Bike to work
If you live a reasonable distance from your work, burn extra calories by riding your bike instead of taking your car. This is an example of burning calories at a time where calories might be reserved. Riding your bike for 30 minutes can burn 159 calories at 5.5 mph. Now, times that by two (to and from work) equals 318 and times that by five days per week and you get a whopping 1,590 calories! This means you can burn about a half-pound of fat per week!
Do jumping jacks on breaks
The average commercial break lasts two to three minutes. Take that time to do some jumping jacks. The calories burned per one minute of jumping jacks are about 7.8. Times that by three and you get 23.4 calories burned during that commercial break. Swap the snack you may eat during your favorite TV program with jumping jacks and watch the calories go right out the window!
Use supersets and giant sets
Not only are supersets time efficient, they help build muscle and burn fat by increasing lactic acid production, which in turn helps boost growth hormone (GH) levels in the body. The body responds to the reduced pH (increased acidity) in the body from the production of lactic acid by secreting GH, a powerful fat loss and muscle building hormone. Giant sets are great for bringing up your lagging muscles. Giant sets “shock” muscles into growing by forcing more blood into a specific muscle group, which helps deliver amino acids. This helps with the healing process of ripped muscle tears resulting in muscle growth. The added intensity of giant sets will also boost your metabolism and fat loss while recruiting more muscle fibers per workout due to such overload.
Opt for HIIT
High Intensity Interval Training causes metabolic adaptations that enable you to use more fat as fuel under a variety of conditions. This will improve your athletic endurance as well as your fat-burning potential. HIIT also limits muscle loss that can occur with weight loss, in comparison to traditional steady-state cardio exercise of longer duration. HIIT workouts also increase the amount of calories you burn during your exercise session and afterward because they increases the length of time it takes your body to recover from each exercise session. With HIIT, you burn a lot of calories in a short period of time.
Run stairs
Running stairs provides a quick, gym-free, fat-burning workout. The calories burned when running stairs help create a deficiency, boosting fat loss and metabolism. Running or sprinting upstairs can be done as a single workout or in between sets to further increase calorie expenditure. A fantastic lower-body workout that sculpts and tones the whole lower body can easily include the upper body by carrying dumbbells
