So, you’ve decided to start working out – great! You’ve taken an important first step towards making yourself healthier. But what if there was a way to get even more out of your workout? In this article, you will learn several strategies that you can use to boost the number of calories that you lose while working out.
Exercise Outdoors
A large majority of people exercise exclusively indoors, whether it be at a gym or at home. Now, there isn’t anything wrong with that, but exercising outdoors can help you lose more calories. Why is this exactly? Well, studies have consistently shown that exercising outdoors allows you to exercise for longer without getting tired. This may be due to the presence of fresh air or it may be that running on trails is simply more interesting than running on a treadmill. Either way, you should seriously consider moving future cardio exercises outdoors.
Be Diligent When Stretching
Stretching is important for a few reasons. First off, the act of stretching can help burn some extra calories, it won’t be a lot, but every calorie burned helps. Secondly, stretching gets your muscles ready for a workout, which enables you to work out longer than you normally would be able to if you didn’t stretch. Finally, stretching increases the overall efficiency of aerobic and cardio exercises, which in turn leads to more calories being burned.
Make Use of Inclines
If you want to burn more calories while doing cardio, heavily consider making use of inclines. Inclines make any workout more difficult and more strenuous. Now, that may not sound fun, but when it comes to burning calories, inclines are a very effective tool. Going up even a minor incline increases your heart rate, which leads to more calories being burned.
Do High-Intensity Training
High-intensity training is a sort of “style” of exercise that can be applied to cardio, aerobics, weightlifting, or any other form of exercise that you want. The idea behind high-intensity exercise training is that rather than do one long set of mild exercises, you instead focus on doing short bursts of very intense exercise, interspersed with more mild exercises. This keeps your heart rate very high which, as we mentioned earlier, leads to more burned calories.
Drink Ice Cold Water
So, this may sound a bit odd, but this strategy does actually work according to researchers. According to most studies, people who use ice cold water to quench their thirst during a workout end up burning on average 20% more calories than those who don’t. Why this is, is anyone’s guess, but it can’t hurt to try right?
