The Extra Calories Burned With an Incline in Exercise

To figure out how many calories you're likely to burn during exercise, you need to take your age and level of fitness into consideration. But your level of exertion plays a bigger role in weight loss than almost anything else. The harder you work during exercise, the more calories you'll burn. Working at an incline adds the natural resistance of your body weight and gravity into the equation, increasing the number of calories you burn.

  1. Calories Burned

    • A 40-year-old person weighing 155 pounds can expect to burn around 230 calories running 2 miles on level ground at a moderate pace. By increasing the incline to 5 percent, you'll increase your calorie-burn to 291 calories, upping your caloric expenditure by more than 20 percent. Raising the incline to 12 percent increases the number of calories burned to 385, a 31-percent increase in caloric expenditure.

    Heart Rate

    • The easiest way to measure your level of effort during a workout is to take your pulse. The higher your heart rate, the more calories your body burns during exercise. Walking at a brisk pace of 3 miles per hour on a 12-percent incline increases your heart rate as much as running twice that speed on level ground, according to research conducted by Dr. Matthew Rhea at A.T. Still University. To find your heart rate, take your pulse on the inside of your wrist for six seconds and then multiply that number by 10.

    Mechanism

    • It may seem obvious, but the reason incline training is so much more taxing on your body than training on a flat surface is the effect of gravity on your workout. Walking, running or biking uphill requires up to two or three times the number of muscle fibers as completing the same exercise on level ground, according to U.K. track coach Brian Mackenzie. The more muscles you use in a workout, the more blood and oxygen they need to keep them going, which expends more energy in the form of calories.

    Disadvantages

    • All of the things that make incline training an effective method of burning calories also make it more stressful on the body. Hill workouts are especially tough on muscles and joints and shouldn't be done on consecutive days to allow time for proper rest and recovery. Additionally, since you're likely to tire more quickly training at an incline, you won't be able to keep up a workout for as long as you would on a level road, though you may burn the same number of calories in half the time.