High-impact exercise causes your ankles, knees, hips and other joints to repeatedly absorb your body's full or partial weight as you land on the ground or against a piece of machinery. Examples of high-impact exercises would include jogging at a brisk rate, aerobic dancing or running on a treadmill. For those who don't enjoy, or can't tolerate, the physical stresses of this type of exercise, low-impact workouts can help provide the calorie burning you desire without the pounding.
Swimming
When you swim, the resistance against your body is the water, which causes no jarring, jolting or compression of your bones, organs or joints. According to women's health website Epigee, the average woman can burn 350 calories during 30 minutes of vigorous crawl stroke swimming. Switching strokes allows you to exercise different muscles, including the back, arm, shoulder and leg muscles, providing a more complete workout.
Step Aerobics
Aerobic exercise occurs when you exercise at 70 to 80 percent of your maximum heart rate for a sustained period of time. Health organizations like the American Heart Association recommend 20 to 30 minutes of aerobic exercise three to five times per week.
Step aerobics provides a low-impact workout by keeping your heart rate up without requiring you to leave the ground with both feet, then land on them with your full weight. Step exercises require the use of a step object, or riser, which can be any low, stable platform, about four to 10 inches high.
As you step on the riser, you push yourself up with your lower and upper leg muscles. The higher the step, the more difficult the lift and more muscle building benefit you'll receive. Stepping on a platform that is so high that it causes more than a 90-degree bend in your knee, however, can cause a repetitive stress injury over time.
You can vary step exercises by stepping up from behind the riser, or from the side of it, and by varying the pace at which you work. You can perform 10 to 15 repetitions stepping with one leg, or you can alternate legs.
According to the Mayo Clinic, a low-impact aerobic workout will burn about 70 percent of the calories of a high-impact workout.
Bodyweight Exercises
Using your body's weight to provide resistance during a workout, instead of free weights or machines, is a great way to get a non-impact workout. Push-ups, sit-ups, chin-ups, pull-ups, lunges and squats are all examples of bodyweight exercise.
For chin-ups (palms away from you) and pull-ups (palms facing you) hold your position at the top of the exercise for one to two seconds, then lower yourself with your arms for maximum benefit; don't let gravity drop you.
To add muscle building to an aerobic bodyweight workout, hold hand weights when performing squats and lunges. For squats, stand with feet slightly more than shoulder width apart, then lower yourself by sticking your buttocks backward, keeping your torso straight, going down as far as you can, then raising yourself up. Lunges are performed with a one-step stride straight forward or 45 degrees to the side, again lowering yourself as far as you can while keeping your torso straight.
Walking
A brisk walk can get your heart rate into your fat-burning, fitness zone, which is 50 to 65 percent of your maximum heart rate. While you will burn fewer calories than during a more intense, aerobic workout, more of the calories burned at this level of intensity are from fat (85 percent, as opposed to 50 percent during aerobic exercise). To add more resistance and increase your calorie burn, add stairs or steep hills to your work. On the way up the stairs, you'll be pushing your body weight up with your calves. On the way down a hill, you'll be braking yourself with your quadriceps.
References
- Step Aerobics: Effective in Modifying (Cholesterol) Profiles
- Epigee: Swimming
- Unique Bodyweight Exercises: Bodyweight Exercises and What They Can Achieve
- MayoClnic.com: Exercise For Weight Loss: Calories Burned in 1 Hour
- American College of Sports Medicine: Basic recommendations from ACSM and American Heart Association
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