We’re huge fans of running. It allows you to get a stress-reducing, endurance-boosting workout with just a pair of shoes and an open road.
It also burns calories, of course. At a 10-minute-per-mile pace – roughly the average guy’s marathon pace – you’ll fry about 10 calories a minute.
That’s a solid number, and if you run faster, you can burn even more.
But if running isn’t your favourite cardio activity, there are plenty of other modes of exercise that can help you torch calories at a lightning fast rate.
“In general, you burn more calories by doing high-intensity weight training than you do running,” says Harold Gibbons, a trainer at Mark Fisher Fitness in New York City, and the New York State Director of the National Strength and Conditioning Association.
Most people don’t realize this, though. That’s often because the number of calories you’re told you just burned is typically estimated from The Compendium of Physical Activities, which calculates energy expended through aerobic metabolism.
That works well for low- to medium-intensity exercise, but not so well for higher-intensity activities that rely on anaerobic metabolism.
In fact, when researchers at the University of Southern Maine used a more advanced method to estimate energy expenditure during exercise, they found that weight training burns up to 71 per cent more calories than originally thought. Which suggests that a fast-paced circuit workout burns as many calories as running at a 6-minute per mile pace.
But resistance training isn’t your only option. There are also cardio exercises that can boost your burn, too. We found 9 exercises that will help you incinerate calories – without ever having to hit pavement.