If you’re looking for workouts that are really going to burn off plenty of calories in the run-up to the holiday season, there are quite a few that are especially effective for burning off those pesky calories! When winter arrives, our desire to workout out can really plummet, stay indoors, and find ourselves moving much less.
Did you know that
59% of UK adults exercise less in the colder months due to the plummeting temperature and a lower sense of motivation. But there are a lot of surprising benefits to working out during the frostiest season of the year! This includes: an increase in endurance, burning more fat as well as fighting off seasonal affective disorder by gaining an average of
20 minutes extra sunlight exposure.
So, if you’re looking to be a little bit picky and choosy with your winter workouts this year, we’ve got excellent suggestions for workouts that will help keep up with your health and fitness goals no matter how cold it is outside. Here’s our top picks for workout suggestions they’ll really ensure your burning plenty of calories:
Keep it fun - try out trampolining for a whole-body workout!
Don’t count out trampolining for an intense, full-body exercise session. The
g-force created when jumping actually helps a lot to build muscle and burn fat very quickly. It also helped to improve your balance, agility, heart health, enhancing circulation and metabolic rate.
Trampolining instructor, Will Ospreay, states the value of the workout as a low-impact, super effective way to burn calories: “With any movement on a trampoline, you are
working all your core muscles - pretty much all the muscles in your torso. Because a trampoline is an unsteady surface, you’re using those muscles just to balance and not fall over. But because it’s springy and soft, it’s kind to your joints. And it’s fun - everyone’s smiling!”
Your metabolic rate (your body's ability to burn off calories)
remains higher for around 24 hours when you get off the trampoline. In fact, a
10 minute workout on a trampoline burns as many calories as a 30 minute run! In one hour, the average person burns approximately
1,000 calories!
Use a skipping rope to shred away those extra calories
Exercising with a skipping rope is a simple, low maintenance work out that can help you to burn off a high number of calories. Though it’s quite rigorous and high intensity it works to get your body in motion! It’s lower impact in comparison to jogging, but don’t be fooled you’ll be sweating off those calories from the jump!
It can burn around
15-20 calories per minute. One hour can burn off about
1,600 calories. And you don’t have to do it all at once if you find it challenging, you could split up you’re skipping into 10 or 25 minutes sessions depending on what you feel comfortable with.
There are loads of added benefits for taking up skipping aside from the weight loss aspect. Gabbi Berkow, a Personal Trainer and Nutritionist clarifies: “Jumping rope is great for developing coordination, calf and ankle strength, core strength, posture, and cardiovascular endurance.It also helps build bone density, which
guards against bone loss, osteoporosis, and bone loss.”
Forget about the lift! Take the stairs to reach your end goal
Spotted a long, steep set of stairs somewhere in your neighbourhood? Get your workout gear on and get climbing! Whether they’re in your building, local park or going down to the beach - stairs will give you a challenging cardio workout. To put that into perspective, climbing stairs twice a day could burn
6 pounds off somebody weighing 150 pounds. The University of Roehampton found that five flights of stairs a week burnt off
302 calories on average. Imagine if this was amplified even more to study and explore how many calories could be burnt weekly for exercise purposes!
The average flight of stairs has 20 steps altogether, it’s said you burn around
15 calories going up and 5 upon descent. When you’re climbing upstairs, you’re effectively doing
single leg squats mixed with cardio - this is the reason why you might get a little bit breathless going up a long flight of stairs!
Personal Trainer, Meghan Kennihan details how running stairs can enhance your training: “When you push off each stair, it’s a form of
explosive or plyometric training. It means you don’t need to work as hard to hit a particular pace, that keeps your energy expenditure lower, so you can go faster longer without fatigue or pick up the pace mid-run without getting as winded.”
Start Rowing for a thorough workout session
Whether you want to join a local rowing team or are interested in picking up a new exercise machine, rowing is a great option for a thorough calorie burning workout! Depending on the duration and intensity of a rowing, you can burn up plenty of those calories. Somebody weighing 200 pounds could lose
336 calories from a 30 minute session, whereas somebody lighter at 120 pound would likely lose about 168.
Personal Trainer, Thomas Fitzgerald, states the impact of rowing with calorie burning potential: “The benefits of rowing are unquestionable. There aren’t many forms of exercise that act as a low impact total body workout that
dramatically improves weight loss as well as muscle and joint mobility.”
It’s an ideal exercise for those looking to change up their workout routine and ensure they are focusing on improving all aspects of their overall physical health and well-being: “Rowing works your
entire body—glutes, hamstrings, back, core, hips, and arms,” states Gabbi Berkow. “It’s great for strengthening your posterior chain, a.k.a., the back of your body.”
Dancing can go a long way to burn calories - and you can do it anywhere!
Here’s another pretty low maintenance exercise that you can do at home or in a class. Don’t worry, if you’re just experimenting and switching up your workouts nobody is expecting you to come out the gate like Britney Spears. But… why not give it a shot!
“Dance gives you so much – better muscular tone and fitness, joint flexibility and bodily strength, improved coordination and physical control. It is a very holistic form of physical activity in that it can include aerobic, stretch and
weight bearing exercises which require the mind and body to work together.” states prominent dance director Phillippa Donnellan.
You can burn off anywhere between
200-400 calories an hour simply dancing around your house or learning a routine in a class. In fact, one
study states that taking up dancing is more effective for weight loss than swimming, running and cycling!
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