Burn More Calories With These Workout Hacks

5 WAYS TO BURN MORE CALORIES

Simple tweaks that turn your workout from a slow burn to a furnace.

1. Going for your lunchtime walk? 
Walking 20 minutes per day can burn an additional 700 calories per week. Make sure you swing your arms when you’re out walking. Arms should swing naturally with each step.  Bend at the elbow at a 90 degree angle and push forward with the elbow in time with your stride. Straight arms on long walks lead to problems with swelling, tingling, and numbness of the fingers or hands.  Bending them will not only eliminate this problem, it will help you gain upper body strength and work your deltoids, biceps and triceps. One more great reason to keep the arms bent and moving in an athletic motion is that you will immediately be able to pick up your pace for greater periods of time. By bending the arms, you will also burn 5-10% more calories.

2. Listen to music when you train. 
The guide below helps you find music with the ideal BPM (beats per minute) to work out to. With the advent of streaming services like Spotify and Pandora, you can search for playlists already created
by clever folks that may already suit what you’re looking for.  Listening to music can help you train 30% longer!

• Powerwalking 120-140 BPM
• Jogging 145-160 BPM
• Weights 130-140 BPM

3. Up your weights. 
Whatever weight you go to lift this week, increase it.  Do more. Challenge yourself. It’ll burn more calories in your session and help you to build more metabolically active lean muscle. Women who lift more weight for fewer reps (85 percent of their max load for 8 reps) burn nearly twice as many calories during the two hours after their workout than when they did more reps with a lighter weight (45 percent of their max load for 15 reps).

4. Jump Rope
Skipping burns more than 10 calories a minute while strengthening your legs, butt, shoulders, and arms. And it doesn’t take long to reap major rewards. You can burn more than 200 calories in two, 10-minute sessions each day (that’s 1,000 calories a week)!

5. Get outside. 
Aside from the amazing effects you get from being outdoors, walking or running off the treadmill burns more calories.  Treadmills alter gait so you take smaller, cushioned steps that reduces the amount of work you do.  There’s also a handrail and if you use it, you will again reduce the calories you burn.

Outside, you have to duck and weave around people, you have uneven terrain to navigate and you’re working against gravity without cushioning. It feels harder than working on a treadmill because it is harder. You’ll burn at least an additional 10% more taking your workout outdoors.
Run on soft sand or in shallow water. Both add resistance and can burn an additional 30% more calories.

Ride to work – or at least part of the way. A 20-minute bike ride at a leisurely pace can burn around 90 calories or 140 calories if you up the intensity and ride faster at a moderate pace.
*Super duper top tip!

Inclines.  Hills. Stairs.  All burn more than flat, stable training surfaces. If you have to use a treadmill, increasing your incline by just a few percent, has the potential to increase your calorie burn by more than double what you were burning if you were training with it flat. If you can’t do an extended period on an incline, no drama.  Use intervals. 1-minute up, 1-minute rest. Vary as you find it easier – 90 seconds incline, 30 seconds rest.
If you’re outside, adding in a hill or two or finding some stairs is recommended if you can – again, you’ll burn more calories in the same time for a little bit of extra work.