What Exercise Burns the Most Fat?

Going to the gym has become somewhat of a phenomenon nowadays. People all across the world exercise regularly with the hopes of building muscles and keeping up with a healthy lifestyle. Those who are new to the fitness world may find it difficult to master a routine that works for their specific needs from the beginning stages. 

One of the key focus areas of gym-goers is fat loss. With an emphasis on weight loss, it can help motivate people to work out regularly, but sometimes guidance can be beneficial. Read this article for tips on specific workouts that will help you burn fat at the gym and how to incorporate these methods into your existing exercise program! 

Fat-Burning Exercises

The most efficient way for the body to burn fat involves a mix of cardiovascular exercise and strength training. When it comes to cardio alone, it may be a good idea to keep track of your heart rate if you are trying to burn more calories in a specific amount of time. 

Heart rates exerting between 60-90 percent of its potential are measured as 220 minus your age (e.g., a 25-year-old would have a resting heart rate of approximately 195 BPM). Any sort of cardio that increases your heart rate to this max metric will burn more calories and, in turn, burn more fat.

You might assume that cardio exercises are enough for burning fat. In addition to cardio, strength training can be extremely beneficial as well. 

It’s commonly known that the more muscle mass you have, the more fat your body will burn in a resting state. If you’re looking for a good place to start, continue reading for fat-burning exercises that can be completed in the space of your own home.

Fat-Burning Workout Ideas

If you need an idea to help you get started in your fitness routine, we have an example workout that could help inspire you. Try the below workouts, with 30-60 seconds of rest in between each set. 

If the below exercises are too easy for you, try including resistance training into your cardio workouts for a more challenging total body workout.

Jumping Jacks

Begin in a standing position with your arms resting on your sides. Thrust your arms straight and over your head while making a similar motion with your lower body so that they’re both moving at the same time and direction. Return your arms and legs to their starting points after expanding, and then repeat this step continuously over a 30 second period.

Burpees

This exercise also begins similarly; standing straight up with your hands at your side and feet shoulder-width apart. In a smooth motion, lower your body into a squat-like formation, put your hands on the ground and extend your feet behind your body to put yourself in a plank position.

Return to the same standing position to complete one burpee; move your feet forward back into the squat position and jump as high as you can to return to your feet. If you want to make this area of exercise even more difficult, do a pushup when your body reaches the plank position. Complete as many burpees as you can in a 30 second period.

Squat Jumps

Once again, begin with your feet shoulder-width apart and lower your body into a squat position. Move your hips and butt closer to the ground while keeping your back straight in the process. 

Once you contract all the way, release your body by jumping straight into the air (similar to burpees) and land back on your feet to repeat that process for another thirty seconds.

Skater Jumps

Start this exercise with your feet at hip-length apart. In somewhat of a curtsy-styled fashion, cross your left leg behind your right while balancing on this lone leg. 

Move your arms to the right side along with your left leg, then switch base legs in between and coordinate the skater jump to your left side. This should also take no longer than 30 seconds.

Plank Jacks

Plank jacks are a bit more challenging than your traditional plank. Begin in the same position, similar to the start of a push-up. 

While upright with your hands holding your upper body out above the ground, extend your feet and legs upward and wide to eventually return them back to their starting position. This will especially burn your lower body and core muscles during its 30 second period.

High Knees

The last exercise of this sample fat burning workout incorporates a popular football term called high knees. The name doesn’t differ much from what you’ll be doing to complete this; simply lift your knees to your chest from a standing position in an alternating fashion. 

Continue changing the legs while you move your arms in a running-like motion. High knees can also be done by holding your hands level to the ground at approximately chest height and attempting to make contact with knees to arms. 

Once you have finished this final step, you can either redo the entire cycle all the way through or stop there. Your heart rate will be at its highest depending on how hard you trained and how little you rested in between exercises.

Mountain Climber

You’ll want to begin in a push-up position with your arms and feet lifting your body above the ground.

In an alternating fashion, draw one knee to your chest area while staying in the push-up form while simultaneously keeping your other leg on the ground. As you begin to bring that knee back to its starting place, switch legs and send your other knee towards your chest. Complete this process over a certain length of time, and you will feel an intense core contraction after the fact.

Kettlebell Swing

This exercise requires the equipment of a singular kettlebell, a type of free weight with a longer handle than normal dumbbells. This exercise uses compound movements to create one of the most intense full-body calorie and fat burners out there.

Begin with your feet at shoulder-width apart and the kettlebell weight in both of your hands resting below your waist. Bend at your hips in a squat-like motion and thrust the kettlebell between your legs. 

Next, thrust your hips forward while swinging the kettlebell back through your legs and up to shoulder height. Repeat the process for either an allotted time frame or by a set count.

Medicine Ball Slam

Like the previous exercise, this fat burner will also need to be done in a gym or with the purchase of the specific equipment to be done at home. Begin by holding the medicine ball over your head with your feet at shoulder-width apart and your back straight as can be.

Quickly slam the ball directly in front of your feet so that it bounces up in the air, then catch the ball, raise it back above your head, and you’ve completed one repetition.

Dumbbell Overhead Lunge

Grab a pair of dumbbells that fall within the light to medium light category. Begin by hoisting each of them over your head while standing shoulder-width apart. Rotate your wrists so that your hands face each other and your dumbbells are lined up parallel while raised.

Step forward into a lunge position and pause at the bottom while holding the weight above you. After your stoppage, continue forward and return to a standing position but a few feet in front of where you were originally standing. Repeat these steps until you’ve traveled a certain distance but be sure to emphasize the pause on each step of the process to get the best results.

Health Benefits of Burning Fat

To put it simply, burning your belly fat is the most effective way to slim your body down. It's also the most important place to slim down—the visceral fat around your belly is the most dangerous type of fat. 

The less fat you have sticking to your belly, the less you will weigh as a result. Despite the appearance of losing weight, this transition can also be extremely beneficial to your overall health.

People who have too high of a body-fat percentage can lead themselves into obesity down the road. This may increase your risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, and inheriting types of cancer and type-two diabetes as well. 

On top of these lower risks of potential diseases, losing body fat will noticeably improve your self-esteem and overall mood.

By keeping your body at a healthy weight, in turn, may prevent stress on your joints. Excessive weight can cause a degree of wear and tear on your knee cartilage, leading to osteoarthritis.

Efficient Exercises To Burn Fat In 30 Minutes or Less

There are plenty of exercises that can be done in a half-hour or less that will contribute towards burning body fat. If you can’t make it into the gym or don’t have a gym membership, there are alternative exercise methods you can do from the comfort of your home.

Interval workouts are perfect examples of exercises that can be completed in a shorter time window. 

After you work your glutes and quads, the days following, focus on your arms or your core to give your muscles adequate recovery time. Alternatively, you could incorporate yoga or aerobic exercise on your active rest days if your primary method of working out is weight training. 

If you’re completing a traditional strength training method and on a particular Monday you’re focusing on chest and triceps, here’s how incorporating interval training can ramp up your routine.

Instead of doing a set of bench presses followed by a two to three-minute rest period to only go back to a full bench press set, try mixing in push-ups in between your bench press sets. Say you’re jogging on a treadmill at six miles per hour for a half-hour time window. 

Instead of longer endurance cardio at the same moderate pace, try sprinting at a fast pace for approximately thirty seconds, then walking at a normal rate for two minutes directly following the more intense running.

By jumping from one exercise quickly to the next, your body will not have the allotted amount of time you’d normally use to catch your breath and will therefore need to pump blood at a higher rate than it’s accustomed to. As discussed earlier, this variation is ideal when it comes to burning the highest number of calories and fat possible, as we’re aiming for our heart rates to be 60-90 percent of their maximum rates while working out.

To avoid overtraining in a new gym program or exercising for the first time in a while, be sure to focus on proper form and not so much on lifting weight that may be too heavy for you to control.

What Exercises Burn the Most Fat at Home?

Cardio and strength training can be beneficial when it comes to burning fat. For those of you looking to seriously dive into these exercises but don’t really know where to begin, don’t sweat it!

Although fitness centers do provide a location for you to utilize free weights, stationary bikes, barbells, and machines to strengthen your muscles, there are alternatives that people can use at home if they’d like to familiarize themselves with a workout regiment that suits them.

Ski-Row Air From EnergyFit

One of the most effective ways to successfully burn fat and calories while maintaining muscle mass is by doing High-Intensity Interval Training, otherwise known as HIIT workouts. These workouts have the ability to be done in a range of locations, including your home; all that’s needed is ample space to exercise in. 

On top of this, they’re extremely time efficient and can cause your heart rate to remain at an optimal level for hours after you finish working out!

If you’re looking for a solid HIIT workout machine to implement into your own home, look no further than the first of its kind two-in-one HIIT machine: Ski-Row Air from EnergyFit. It can be used for ski training and rowing, or you can combine the two aspects to increase your burn once you’ve got a solid handle on the technique.

There’s actually just a foot lever that immediately alternates the machine to switch over from one function to the other, as this allows you to rapidly change your exercises while limiting your rest time, which will crank up your heart rate to fat-burning levels.

 

Sources:

Rev up your workout with interval training | Mayo Clinic

Why to Wear a Heart Rate Monitor to the Gym | Cleveland Clinic

The Mental Health Benefits of Exercise | Helpguide.org