Regular exercise provides numerous benefits including improving your sleep, increasing your energy level, positively impacting your mood, and overall health. With that in mind, what type of exercise should you do?
One question I often hear is: what exercise burns the most calories? The thinking here is to identify the exercise that offers the greatest impact for your time spent doing it. I like this line of thought, but when it comes time to selecting what you will do, I caution using this as the sole criteria.
There are a few things to consider when deciding on what type of physical activities to include as part of your daily or weekly routine.
- Do you enjoy doing it? This may seem obvious but first and foremost, selecting activities you enjoy doing will make it so much easier to actually stay committed! Often times the hardest part of any physical activity is just getting started. This got me thinking back to my high school days and the lesson from physics class with Newton’s first law: objects at rest like to stay at rest! Choosing activities, you can get excited about, or at least reduce that barrier to starting will make it so much easier to get going and keep going!
- How long can you do it for? Lower intensity activities can be done for longer durations. There is often a corresponding increase in intensity associated with activities that burn more calories. If you plan to participate in a higher intensity activity like running sprints, or high knee running on the spot, it’s best to ease into it. Increasing the duration of exercise should be done cautiously and gradually.
- How does it make you feel afterwards? Physical activity should leave you feeling energized not worn out to the point where you are dreading the next time you plan to do it again! If you feel banged up, bruised, sore to the point where it’s difficult to walk the next day, maybe it’s a bit too intense for what you need at this point. Always listen to your body and if you feel pain during or after the activity that’s different than the general “no pain no gain” soreness we can expect, then it’s probably best to stop and back off to a lower intensity activity and/or decrease duration.
- Does it offer any additional health benefits? There are activities that offer benefits beyond just cardio. Finding activities that check the box for multiple aspects of improving overall health can be a bonus. (i.e. strength, co-ordination, balance)
Running tends to be the front runner with regards to calorie burning activities. You can burn anywhere from 300 to 500 calories in a half hour depending on your pace! High Intensity Interval Training, also referred to as HIIT Workouts are another great option to efficiently burn anywhere from 240 to 360 calories in a half hour. Cycling on a trainer and swimming can burn anywhere from 200 to 300 calories per half hour. Walking can be a very effective means of burning calories as you can burn 90 to 140 calories in a half hour and based on the low intensity can likely be done in higher amounts compared to the other activities suggested.
I’ve recently tried out rebounding as a means of increasing my daily physical activity level. If you’re not familiar with rebounding, it’s basically using a small personal size trampoline to bounce on. You can do jumping jacks, run on the spot or simply bounce 2 to 3 inches off the surface to get your heart rate pumping. I was happy to find out that depending on the intensity level while bouncing you can burn anywhere from 150 to 450 calories within a half hour! I’ve placed my rebounder in a convenient location on the main floor of our home where its easy for me to jump on, whether it’s while I’m waiting for a meal that’s cooking in the kitchen, or watching a TV show with the family. Not only does it offer a great cardio workout, it supports improved co-ordination, it’s easier on the joints than running, and is also considered a bone strengthening activity!
There are numerous options to choose from when considering what physical activities to include into your daily routine. Some ideas include dancing, playing a racquet sport, swimming, or walking the dog. Again, I believe it’s more important to select an activity you enjoy rather than simply going with the one that offers the greatest calorie burn. You’ll likely do it more often and view it as a pleasant part of the day rather than a chore!
What physical activities do you enjoy?
How do you fit physical activity into your daily routine?
https://www.healthline.com/health/what-exercise-burns-the-most-calories#on-a-time-crunch
https://www.livestrong.com/article/294387-how-many-calories-burned-for-10-minutes-trampolining/