Trick your body into melting off more calories with techniques that have science on their side. No matter if you're new to exercise or an experienced gym-goer, these simple tweaks can help you speed up weight loss, push through plateaus, and get more muscle-toning benefits out of every workout.Best of all, many of these easy moves work to jump start a lagging metabolism so you continue to burn extra calories throughout the day-even while you sleep!
1. Quench with Cool Water
A fresh-out-of-the-fridge water bottle may energise you for warm-weather exercise, finds a British study. Exercisers who drank refrigerated water (39°F) worked out about 25 percent longer than those who consumed the same amount of warmer water-and they said their exercise sessions felt easier too.Whether you're indoors or out, sipping chilled water both before and during exercise, may help keep your body temperature down and your energy up for maximum calorie burn.
2. Swing Those Arms
Turn your walking into a calorie-torching workout by bending your elbows 90 degrees and pumping your arms as you stride. It not only automatically speeds up your pace but helps you burn up to 15 per cent more calories every time you work out.For proper pumping: Trace an arc from your waist to your chest as you swing. Your thumbs should come close to touching your waistband as your elbow goes backward. Also, make sure to keep elbows in and don't let hands cross past the middle of your chest. Too much side-to-side motion drags down your pace.
3. Pop in Your Headphones
Working out to your favourite fitness playlist can help you to go up to 20% longer and burn more calories, finds a study from West London's Brunel University. Music blocks fatigue, produces feelings of vigor, and helps you keep pace by synchronising your movements, says study author Costas Karageorghis, PhD.
4. Put on Some Weight
To really rev your calorie burn, it is not about the number of reps, but the size of the weights. Even when exercisers lifted identical volumes (such as 10 pounds 10 times or 20 pounds 5 times), those using the heavier dumbbells burned about 25% more calories when they were finished. "Heavy weights create more protein breakdown in the muscle, so your body has to use more energy to repair and recover--that's how lean muscle tissue is built," says researcher Anthony Caterisano, PhD, of Furman University.
5. Break Up Your Sets
Instead of performing two or three sets of a single exercise before moving to the next one, do a circuit: Complete just one set and then immediately move to the next exercise, repeating the circuit two or three times.When researchers had testers do either standard strength-training (3 sets of 6 exercises with 2 minutes of rest in between) or circuit-training (moving through a series of 6 exercises 3 times, with 30 seconds of rest in between), the circuit-trainers burned nearly twice as many calories post workout as the standard-style lifters."Because your heart rate stays elevated longer after circuit-training, you continue burning fat as though you were still exercising," says researcher Anthony Caterisano, PhD, of Furman University.
6. Head Outside
Trade the treadmill for trails.Besides the fresh air and better scenery, heading outside can give your workout a major boost. Research finds that exercisers burn 10 per cent more calories when they walk or run outdoors than they do on a treadmill at the same speed. "You use more energy to propel yourself over the ground," explains fitness expert Jay Blahnik, author of Full Body Flexibility, "and pushing a little against the wind or other elements burns more calories, too."
7. Cut Your Workouts in Half
Introducing short bouts of vigourous activity can speed up weight loss and cut your workout time by up to half or more. Australian researchers found that women who alternated just 8 seconds of high-intensity exercise with 12 seconds of low-intensity activity for 20 minutes, 3 times a week, slimmed down faster than steady-paced exercisers who worked out twice as long. Those who did intervals lost up to 16 pounds, shrunk their bellies by 12 percent and their thighs by 15 percent, and gained, on average, 1 1/2 pounds of metabolism-revving muscle in 4 months--without dieting.
Stretching keeps your muscles flexible, helping to prepare them for exercise and recover from the effort afterward. Skip the stretches, and you won't get nearly the benefits you should from aerobic exercise and resistance training."Stretching helps you move freely during aerobic exercise, it enables your muscles to build more strength during weight training, and it helps keep muscles long and lean," says Sharon Willett, a physical therapist and sports trainer at the Virginia Sports medicine Institute in Arlington, Virginia. - prevention.com