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Exercise is an essential habit to establish in order to live a long and healthy life, and regularly working out can increase your daily calorie expenditure, making it easier to maintain the deficit needed to lose weight. While finding a form of exercise that you enjoy is going to be the best way to stick to it over the years, higher intensity workouts that boost your heart rate are often the most effective for ridding your body of excess fat when you’re working to lose weight.
Both weight training and cardio have a place in your workout routine for different functions, but in order to lose weight with ease you’ll find a high calorie burn workout will be your best bet in seeing quicker results. As for which high-intensity moves you should be adding into your routine to optimize your workout, we checked in with VFit Studio owner and NAFC-certified personal trainer, Rachele Jaegers, to get her thoughts on the three most effective exercises to include in your routine. This is what she had to say.
The VFit Maker (Squat thrust to burpee)
This move requires weights in order to take it up a notch with calorie burn, but is a great way to engage the full body in a high-intensity exercise. Burpees are one of the most difficult moves you could integrate into your workout routine as they require both agility and strength, and adding weight can help to build up your muscles as well as torch fat for increased effectiveness.
How to do it:
“Take it down as a squat, lift to an overhead press, and go up on your tiptoes, or you can bring it all the way down to a burpee. Repeat for one minute,” says Jaegers.
“If you're looking for something that gives you the most bang for the buck you definitely want something that works the majority of your body if you can in a move. The more muscles working at once, obviously, the more of your body's working,” she adds. “The more lean muscle you have on your body, the higher metabolism is and the less fat you have because muscle would replace fat.”
Lateral Hop
Essentially mimicking the movement of skating from side to side, this exercise also requires agility and stamina as your full body is being recruited to keep you balanced and pushing hard. “High intensity interval training (HIIT) is really good for us a couple times a week because your body needs recovery time,” Jaegers says of this form of exercise. “If you're doing really crushing workouts, 2-3 times a week is plenty.”
How to do it:
“Punch down cross body while moving side-to-side in a lateral hop. Repeat for one minute,” says Jaegers. Not only will you feel the burn in your glutes and legs, but this move also requires you to brace your core to keep you steady as you move laterally. This can help to burn out the ab muscles and torch excess fat.
Walking Lunges
Another exercise which is best done with weight, walking lunges can help to strengthen the leg muscles while calling for you to brace your core to maintain good form. It can be easy to measure your strength gains in this move as well, as you continue to increase weights and tailor the difficulty level to fit your skillset.
How to do it:
“Take two walking lunges forward and reverse the direction and do two walking lunges back. Repeat for one minute,” explains Jaegers.
“When it comes to weight loss, I truly believe finding a fitness plan that's balanced and that you actually show up and do consistently matters more than the specific exercises. We need a balanced approach and weight loss is truly a byproduct of a healthy lifestyle,” she adds. “If it crushes you and you hate it, you’re going to find excuses so finding a well-balanced workout routine that is actually something that's sustainable and that you will do is the most important thing.”
