Different types of exercise not only burn different amounts of calories, they burn different percentages of fat, train your muscles differently and affect your heart and lungs differently. If you are interested in improving your heart health, building muscle or improving your sports performance while you burn calories, you can find a variety of exercise options that will work for you.
Types of Exercise
Depending on the heart rate you achieve while you're exercising, you'll work out in one of three target heart rate ranges. Moderate-intensity exercise, such as brisk walking, is known as "fat-burning" exercise because most of the calories you burn come from fat. Vigorously intense exercise, done at a pace similar to jogging, is aerobic and burns roughly 50 percent of the calories you burn from fat and 50 percent from glycogen. Aerobic exercise burns more calories per hour than fat-burning exercise and more fat calories overall. If you exercise in short, intense bursts at a very high intensity, you will use your anaerobic energy system, burning most of your calories from glycogen and the most calories overall.
Heart Rates
To exercise in the fat-burning range, exercise at 50 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate. Your maximum heart rate is the maximum number of times your heart beats per minute. To do aerobic workouts, exercise at 70 percent to 80 percent of your maximum heart rate. Work at 80 percent to 90 percent for anaerobic workouts.
Calories Burned
MayoClinic.com publishes a chart of the estimated number of calories you will burn per hour, depending on your weight, for more than 30 exercises. For example, a 160-lb. person will burn 183 calories per hour walking at 2 mph. If this person increases the pace to 3.5 mph, she will burn 277 calories per hour. High-impact aerobics for this person will burn an estimated 511 calories per hour, as will activities like cross-country skiing or using a rowing machine. Anaerobic activities, such as tennis singles or basketball, will burn 584 calories per hour. You can achieve all three heart rate ranges using the same exercise or equipment. For example, using a stationary bike, you can pedal steadily to do fat-burning and aerobic workouts or do sets of high-intensity, anaerobic sprints.
Personal Calorie Numbers
Charts like the one at MayoClinic.com are only estimates and don't take into account your age, gender, weight, resting heart rate or other factors. To get a more accurate estimate of the amount of calories you burn, use a heart rate monitor, online heart rate calculator or calories-burned calculator. These monitors and calculators let you enter your personal data to more accurately assess calories burned.
Maximizing Calorie Burn
If you will be exercising at a fat-burning pace, your goal should be to work longer, not harder. Maintain a pace that won't make you tire quickly and add five minutes to subsequent workouts as you build stamina. When you are ready to do aerobic exercise, work at a pace that lets you talk during your activity. If you can't talk, you are working too hard and may tire too soon. If you are in good enough shape, add two to three sprints during aerobic exercise to elevate your heart rate and burn more calories. Start anaerobic, or sprint training, using high-intensity bouts of 30 seconds, followed by two minutes of recovery. As you build your conditioning, add 30 more seconds to each sprint, working your way up to two-minute sprints. Consult with a physician before attempting sprint training.
Member Comments