Why High Intensity Workouts Burn More Body Fat

Improve your fat burning by speeding up the pace of your workouts. This will also shorten your workouts because of the intensity and shape your body faster. If you need to ramp up the intensity and break through your weight loss plateau, use faster paced exercises and workouts.


Doing these types of short burst workouts will change your hormones allowing your body to naturally regulate fat burning, appetite and moods. To get your muscles to improve power (how fast your muscles can produce force), do some or all of the exercises full speed. You will shape your bulkier, fast twitch muscle fibers when doing exercises at full speed.

Research at Duke University, directed by Dr. Cris Slentz, supports high-intensity exercise for better fat loss. The eight-month study showed that people could lose weight with exercise and no dieting. Those who exercised intensely (especially using interval training) lost much more fat than those who exercised moderately.

According to the research, the high-intensity exercisers had these advantages over the low-to-moderate intensity exercisers: more release of fat from cells, more fat used as fuel during exercise and increased metabolic rate after exercise

Keeping your heart rate elevated (or up and down like with intervals) during a workout will burn more calories and fat during and after your workout. Your metabolism can stay elevated for up to 48 hours after a tough, fast-paced workout.

Speed up the pace of your workouts and start burning more fat with these 7 tips:

1. Take less rest time between exercises. Thirty seconds between exercises or very little rest between exercises work well in a circuit-style strength workout.

2. Do superset workouts with strength exercises. Superset strength training burns fat better than traditional strength training. When you pair two non-competing exercises, it allows you to do more work because one or more muscle groups can rest while you work other or opposing muscle groups.

For example, you could do a set of squats followed immediately by a set of standing shoulder presses.  Rest 60 seconds and go to the next superset (such as bench press followed immediately by bentover dumbbell rows).

3. Do more full speed exercises. Medicine ball exercises such as slams, throws and chops can be done full speed with a medicine ball weighing about 10% of your body weight.

4. Do short workouts, such as 10-minute workouts to ramp up the intensity.

5. Do bodyweight cardio workouts to get strength and cardio benefits in one workout. This type of workout is typically 20-30 minutes. You could choose 3 or 4 bodyweight exercises and do a short 20-minute circuit workout. Full body exercises like squats work best to work major muscle groups and burn more fat.

6. Include more jumping exercises in your workouts. Jumps are inherently intense and the faster the better.

7. Do sprint intervals or gassers for cardio exercise. Twenty minutes of cardio exercise will burn fat and save your precious muscle mass. It also prevents the boredom that can happen with long, slow-paced cardio sessions.

Quicken the pace of your workouts and get faster results.

Be sure and download your Free Bodyweight 500 Metabolic Fat Burner Workouts and start shaping your body faster!  There are 3 levels:  beginner, intermediate and advanced.  Start at your level.


About Mark

Hi, I'm Mark Dilworth, Nutritionist, Dietary Strategies Specialist, Nutrition for Metabolic Health Specialist and Lifestyle Weight Management Specialist. Since 2006, I have helped thousands of clients and readers make lifestyle habit changes which includes body transformation and ideal body weight.