How to Burn More Calories in the Gym

The key to burning the most calories possible at the gym is a combination of increasing intensity, shortening or eliminating rest periods, adding variety to your workouts and spending more time working out. This applies to various aerobic exercises such as running and biking, as well as strengthening exercises like weightlifting and dynamic plyometric work. Mix it up to maximize your calorie-burning potential.

Instructions

    • 1

      Make your cardio more intense by varying the speed, incline or resistance. For example, when doing a treadmill workout, rather than doing 30 minutes at an even effort, warm-up 5 minutes, do two minutes at a faster speed or steeper incline five times, with two minutes easy in between each hard segment. For a stationary bike workout, do the same but increase the resistance and RPM above 100 for each hard two-minute segment. By the end of each segment you should be out of breath but not dead tired.

    • 2

      Quit resting while you are lifting weights. The key to burning the most calories during your weight lifting workouts is to do supersets. After you perform a lifting exercise, rather than resting, you should be performing another exercise before coming back to the original exercise. For example, if you are doing flat bench press, rather than resting between sets, do a set of lat pulldowns or physio-ball crunches. This keeps your heart rate up similar to circuit training, and makes the time you spend in the gym as efficient as possible.

    • 3

      Add variety to your workouts. If you are doing the same type of workout and the same exercises every day, then your body has most likely adapted and become efficient at performing those exercises. The key to burning the most calories possible, getting in the best workout you can and making the most significant changes to your body is to "shock" your physiological system by adding significant variety to your workouts. For example, if you plan to do the same weightlifting exercises from one week to the next, you should vary the order of those exercises at the least, in addition to varying the sets, reps and weight used for each exercise. Use the same approach for your cardio work.

    • 4

      Lengthen your workouts to maximize calories burned. This is probably the most obvious step -- the more time spent working out, the more calories you will burn. But if you don't have time to spare, the key to burning the most calories is to focus on the first three steps while maximizing your workout time within the limits of your own personal circumstances.