Overview
Working out can be quite challenging, especially on those lazy days when you just want to stay in bed and watch Netflix all day long.
What makes working out even harder to stick to is seeing no results! After all, who wants to go to the gym 3-4 times a week and spend 2 exhausting hours during each session to see no real benefits?
In reality, if you exercise regularly, you might be getting some health benefits. However, they’re all intrinsic. In other words, your health is improving, but your shape is not.
In this article, we will list the best exercises that can help you burn the most calories in the shortest period of time. This will improve your health and get you in shape.
Top exercises that burn the most calories
Jumping rope
As a kid, you probably found jumping rope to be a fun and effortless exercise; however, if done correctly, it can lead to an extremely high rate of calorie burning.
The reason jumping rope burns a considerable number of calories is that you will be using your whole body, especially your lower extremities, which contain the big muscles like the quadriceps and the biceps femoris.
These big muscles require a lot of energy and ATP to contract, and as a result, jumping rope burns 7.6 to 9.8 calories per minute.
This means that you can lose up to 300 calories for every 30 minutes of jumping rope. However, since doing this exercise for 30 minutes straight with no pause can be exhausting, it is recommended to do an alternation between exercise and pauses.
Jumping rope is so efficient at burning calories that some scientists say doing this exercise for 10 minutes is equivalent to 30 minutes of jogging.
Related: Benefits of Jump Ropes: Boost Your Fitness and Agility
Kickboxing
This workout is for those who like to kick some butts. While it’s true kickboxing is a sport dominated by men, women can still find some centers and gyms that offer kickboxing training. If that does not work, you can simply train at home.
According to a study done by the American Council of Exercise (ACE), the average person can burn between 350 to 450 calories in one hour.
It is important to take pauses every now and then since this workout can be physically consuming, especially for beginners.
Burpees
This is one of the best (and most exhausting) workouts out there. You have probably heard from a friend that burpees are the most difficult thing they had to do in their lives or something like that. While this might be an exaggeration, burpees are still a serious calorie-burning exercise.
When doing a burpee, you will recruit every muscle of your body while trying to keep everything coordinated, which results in a huge energy requirement.
In fact, burpees for 30 minutes can burn up to 300 calories; that’s one pound every week. Now that might not sound too mind-blowing. However, this exercise burns pure fat, which means that every pound you lose is a pound of fat, and due to the density of fat, losing a couple of pounds can change your entire physique.
Volleyball
If you are the type of person who doesn’t like to work out alone or lacks the motivation to do so, then volleyball might just be for you.
While it’s not as intense as the exercises listed above, it’s still a great workout that is extremely fun.
Harvard medical school published a report about the different exercises and how many calories each exercise burns. For volleyball, a 185-pound person can burn up to 133 calories per 30 minutes of exercise.
This number might not seem that high; however, you can integrate volleyball as part of your physical activity routine. For example, planning a game with friends every Saturday.
Stationary bike – HIIT
Using a stationary bike for cardiovascular training can burn a significant number of calories, especially if you use high-intensity intervals AKA HIIT. For instance, you cycle at a very high pace for 5 minutes, then pace it down for the next 10 minutes.
Related: What is HIIT? – An Introduction to High Intensity Interval Training , How Long Does It Take to See Results From HIIT Workouts (2023)
For beginners, you should start the high-intensity intervals at this pace – One-minute training followed by a two minutes recovery.
This workout will improve your cardiovascular health, decrease your risk for many diseases, and burn a whopping 250-350 calories every 30 minutes.
Sprints
This exercise is an alternative for those who don’t like stationary bike exercise. Sprints are used by professional athletes to stay in shape; they involve running as fast as you can (sprinting) for a short period of time, then deaccelerating to a jogging pace.
This interval training will stimulate the metabolic pathways responsible for burning fat in your body. As a result, you will burn 300-360 calories every 30 minutes of this exercise. That’s absolutely staggering!
Note that warming up before doing sprints is crucial to avoid muscular injuries, as they are very common with this type of workout.
Additionally, in order to avoid hurting your knee, make sure to avoid stepping on your heels while running.
Strength training
As we age, our muscles start to atrophy (waste) and our body fat increases. This predisposes us to a wide variety of chronic, debilitating diseases such as diabetes, blood hypertension, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, neurodegenerative diseases, and articular problems, such as osteoarthritis.
The only way to fight this back is by increasing our lean muscle mass, which will keep us in shape and increase something called the basic metabolic rate (BMR).
Related: Calories, Macros, BMR, and TDEE – Your Complete Guideline
What makes strength training special compared to other workouts is the post-exertional calorie-burning. You see, during weight lifting, your muscles will get teared up on the cellular level, and while it might sound bad, it is actually quite beneficial.
During the repair process, your body will consume more calories, and as a result, you will be burning fat during your sleep.
Additionally, your repaired cells will grow even bigger this time, which will make them consume more energy, increasing your basic metabolic rate, as a result.
Takeaway message
Choosing your workouts carefully is crucial, as it might make the difference between getting the body you always dreamed of and quitting the gym altogether.
We hope that this article managed to highlight the best workouts to burn the most calories and lose fat tissue.
Related: Healthy Eating After Exercise
