These days everyone wants to get a great bang for their time and money and that includes fitness too. Who wants to spend hours unending in the gym each day? Nobody. Who wants to spend forever in the gym and not get great results? Nobody. Here are a few ways you can spend less time and still burn more calories while working out.
8 Easy ways to burn more calories while working out
Take active rest breaks
Instead of sitting down to rest during your workout breaks, an easy way to burn more calories in the gym is to try doing some low-intensity workouts. By doing this you keep your heart rate elevated throughout your session and increase your calorie burn overall. Active rest could range from stretching the muscles you are working on or doing things as simple as a plank, jogging, jumping jacks or easy movements. Do not overwork yourself during rest breaks though because you could wear yourself out and not have enough energy to go through your next sets which is then counterproductive.
Use ankle weights to burn calories throughout the day
These are great to add extra resistance to your workouts and make you work harder. And thus, you can burn even more calories than you would have. You can wear them throughout. You can even do something as simple as walking and the ankle weights will make a huge difference in your caloric burn. You can use them when doing simple workouts like leg lifts.
Use hand weights
These like ankle weights give added resistance to your workouts and increase your endurance level because your body has to work harder due to the added pressure. Using weights on any workouts helps burn more calories throughout the day. Read more about the benefits of strength training with Active.
Switch things up to avoid plateau
Don’t stick to the same workouts day in day out or your body gets used to it and you won’t notice any changes eventually. Change the workouts frequently, add more weight, change the variation to keep your body guessing. If you are currently struggling to burn more calories despite working hard and eating clean, maybe you have hit a plateau. There are a couple of things to do when you hit a plateau.
Active Warmup
Instead of doing slowly paced warmups or regular stretches, try doing medium intensity moves to warm your muscles up. For instance do some jump jacks, squats, lunges.
Do interval workouts
Switch between high and low-intensity workouts. Go full on for like a minute then do about 30seconds to a minute of low intensity to relax a bit, then switch back to full intensity. For instance, Perform as many reps as possible for 30 seconds, rest for 15 seconds, keep repeating till you get a total of about 4 minutes. Take a minute of rest then do it again for about 3 rounds.
Turn up the music
Yes, music does help you burn more calories, depending on the music. Have you noticed when you have high pumped up music blasting, you tend to go full throttle on your workout and push yourself really hard? Give it a try. I always put my headphones on high and can hardly hear anyone or anything throughout my workout.
Stay hydrated with Water
You need to drink water and stay hydrated while working out. If you are working hard and losing water by sweating, your performance level will begin to drop if you are not well hydrated
There you have it, these are just a few simple ways you can make your time in the gym count even more without changing much. What things have you tried and noticed huge differences? Also, check out this post on how to make your workout more effective.
xoxo,
Lola
