Everyone wants to know how to exercise most efficiently as burn the maximum amount of fat and calories in the minimum amount of time. Here are 2 major, key strategies that you should use in whatever type of exercise you are doing in order to burn the most calories you can.

As a guide the average person who is averagely fit would burn 80-100 calories per 10 minutes of exercise. So that’s 500-600 calories an hour. But this could be drastically less if you are doing the wrong things, and drastically more (over 1000 per hour is not out of the question) if you are doing the right things. Here are the 2 key strategies;

1/ Keep your heart rate as high as possible. This doesn’t mean you have to buy a heart rate monitor. It some cases it helps people to keep working hard and keep their heart rate up but it’s by no means a necessity. Just work as hard as you can and push yourself constantly and your heart rate will take care of itself.

Why do you have to work hard? Simple – the higher you heart rate, the harder your body has to work to cope and the more calories you burn as a result.

2/ Work as many muscle groups as possible in each exercise. The more muscles you work per exercise the more calories you burn. It’s simple when you actually think about it but you would be amazed how many people do ‘isolation exercises.’ This means just working 1 or few muscle groups per exercise. An example of an isolation exercise would be a bicep curl of those… Read more->

A lot of people don’t do as much exercise as they should because the idea of going to the gym or doing an hours workout at home isn’t always possible. Here are some great ways to drastically increase your activity level without really even realising it.

1 Daily targets – Set yourself targets for the day with basic exercises. For example 100 squats and 50 press ups a day. That would take very little time. You don’t have to do it all in 1 go. You could do some when you wake up, some during an ad break when you’re watching TV in the evening, etc. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to reach your target and you can set yourself new ones.

2/ Get something fun that’s active – a hoola hoop or a tramet/trampoline are 2 great examples of this. You can play around with kids/ family and barely even realise your exercising. But you will still be burning calories.

3/Walk more – I know it sounds obvious but not many people do much of it! If you have a dog then that’s perfect as you have to do it. And add an extra calorie burn to your workout by taking a football or running around with your dog. But otherwise, just get off the bus a stop early, take the stairs rather than the lift. Whatever it takes just walk around more.

Today’s Takeaway – Exercise doesn’t have to be a full on workout. Little bits can add up to a good calorie burn.

The BOSU ball is a very useful piece of kit when used in the right way. But is it really worth you getting one? A picture of one is below;

It really depends what sort of training you have done in the past and what level of fitness/skill you currently have to determine whether or not a BOSU ball would be right for you.

Anything you may normally do during your workouts, e.g. squats, lunges, press ups, planks will become far more difficult on the BOSU. So only if you can do all of the above exercises comfortably on their own should you consider it. The curved surface of the BOSU creates a lot of instability which makes it far harder for you to balance and perform the exercise as your muscles will contract a lot more and your body will shake.

So if you consider yourself a reasonably experienced exerciser and are looking for something new to jazz up your workouts a bit, then give the BOSU a go. But if you are not too experienced you are far better off sticking to bodyweight, dumbbell and stability ball exercises, otherwise not only will you struggle to perform the exercises correctly, but you may injure yourself as well.

The other thing to consider is the price of a BOSU. They start at around £100, which is far more than other things. You could pick up a stability ball, some decent weights and a medicine ball together for far less than that, so if you are on a budget then it’s probably not right for you either.

Today’s takeaway – If you work-out a lot already and want something new to try the… Read more->

I am often asked how much exercise is necessary to actually lose weight and make a difference. This is not a simple question, but I will try to answer it as succinctly as possible.

Firstly, any exercise, even if we are only talking 5/10 mins a day will make a difference. Even if you are not exercising for long enough to burn that many calories, the exercise will have a boosting effect on your metabolism, i.e. you will burn more fat. So some is always better than none.

But if you are looking to make more large-scale changes and do it quickly,  a little more exercise is required. Losing weight is not an exact science, i.e. if you burn 3500 calories a week (1 pound) it doesn’t necessarily mean you will lose that much weight each and every week. But if you stick with it the numbers will balance out over time.

So let’s say the average person burns 500 calories per hour of exercise. It is certainly possible to burn more than this with hard work, but 500 is a good, conservative estimate. And let’s say your post workout calorie burn due to the workout is also 500 calories (this figure is dependent on your metabolism). So all in all that’s 1000 calories an hour.

1 pound of bodyweight is 3500 calories. So on this basis you would need to do 3.5 hours exercise to lose 1 pound per week. And if you did 1 hour every day, that would be a total of 7000 calories, and 2 pounds weight loss. Obviously this loss doesn’t take into account any loss you could be getting from improvements… Read more->