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No matter what your fitness goals are, there are exercises that can help you achieve them. However, the way in which you perform an activity can make it more or less effective in helping you reach those goals.
That's why we've put together a list of weight loss exercises that can make you sweat. In addition to helping improve your health and cardio-respiratory fitness, these moves will also also burn calories and tone muscles — so they're perfect for anyone looking to drop a few pounds.
Best Weight Loss Exercises
Here's a look at six such exercises:
#1 Burpee
Burpees are one of the most despised yet useful exercises when it comes to burning calories. While there are several versions of burpees, each with trivial differences, the general idea of a burpee involves a mix of a few essential moves.
Start with a squat, and jump off the ground before moving into a push-up or a plank hold. The push-ups make the exercise more difficult, so make sure you have enough gas in the tank for them.
Burpees are an awesome way to get down and dirty with some serious cardio exercise that can leave you feeling accomplished and burning calories like crazy. You can do them anywhere with nothing but yourself (and maybe a few weights if they’re available), so no excuses not to get moving here.
Proceed as follows:
- Stand with your feet together, and extend your arms out in front of you.
- Do a push-up, but as soon as you reach the bottom of the movement, kick your legs back into a plank position, and jump up quickly so that both feet land at once in the original starting position (standing).
- Repeat for 30 seconds or more if you can handle it.
#2 Jumping rope
Jumping rope is one of the most effective cardio workouts to burn calories. In fact, you can burn more than 300 calories per hour by jumping rope for 30 minutes. It's also a great way to build cardiovascular endurance. When you jump rope, your heart rate increases and stays elevated during the workout session.
Jumping rope also improves balance and coordination, as it requires concentration while moving quickly on one leg (e.g., right foot). As a result, this exercise trains both sides of the brain simultaneously, which makes you smarter overall.
Besides these benefits, jumping rope is an excellent way to build muscle strength in almost all parts of the body, including the legs and arms but especially the calves.
That's because each calf has two heads that attach at different places along the shinbone (tibia), so when they contract, there's more force generated with every beat than any other muscle group.
#3 Brisk walk
Brisk walks are a great way to get your heart rate up, and they can be done anywhere. Unlike HIIT, brisk walks require you to maintain a consistent, steady pace for your entire walk, as opposed to the explosive highs and lows of interval training.
To find out how briskly you should be walking, take the "talk test." If you're able to talk comfortably but not rapidly, while walking, it's probably a good pace. Walk at this speed for 20 minutes or so, and slowly increase your speed till you're able to comfortably talk and breathe deeply.
Once you've found that sweet spot where things feel easy but not too easy, add some variation to make the workout more challenging:
- Increase incline on a treadmill.
- Hold weights (light!) in each hand.
#4 Tabata training
Tabata training is a form of exercise where you perform 20 seconds of intense exercise followed by ten seconds of rest.
This method can be used with any type of exercise, like running, burpees, or jumping rope. Tabata training has been shown to burn fat and boost metabolism. If you're interested in trying this type of workout, here's how it works:
- Choose an activity you enjoy doing such as jumping rope or riding a bike
- Set your timer for 20 seconds
- Perform the activity at full speed for those 20 seconds
- Rest for ten seconds before repeating the cycle again.
#5 Shock sprint
Shock sprints are a form of interval training, as it requires you to work in bursts of explosiveness to burn calories.
Here's how they're done:
- Do a warm-up. Sprint for 30 seconds, and walk for 60 seconds. Repeat this cycle three times to complete one set.
- Cool down by walking slowly for five minutes after each sprint set (so you'll do two cooldowns).
- Repeat the entire workout three times with only 90-second rest periods between your sets so that you're sprinting for ten minutes at a time.
#6 High intensity interval training
High intensity interval training (HIIT) is a workout routine that alternates between high intensity bursts of exercise and low intensity rest breaks. It’s also called HIIT, high intensity intermittent exercise, or sprint interval training.
HIIT workouts can be done anywhere — you don't need a gym membership or fancy equipment to get started. The key to getting the most out of these workouts is to push yourself during the high intensity periods and rest during the low intensity periods so that the body has time to recover from each set.
Takeaway
If you're looking to get in shape, the aforementioned workouts can help. They will not only make you sweat, but they will also tone up your muscles and improve your health. All these exercises require minimal equipment but produce big results.
