What is the after burn effect and what workouts produce this effect? We do a lot of things to achieve that effect at Revolution Training in Stamford, CT. Afterburn is a term used to describe EPOC—excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. The term is actually a description for oxygen debt, the body’s need for a specific amount of oxygen to get it back to resting state. That’s when various functions are returned to resting state, including the amount of oxygen consumed.
What triggers the afterburn effect?
Intense workouts can trigger the afterburn effect. The harder you workout, the longer it will take to get your body to return to resting state. Duration of the exercise session plays a level, especially if the workout is intense, but it takes more than that. Short spurts of intensity followed by equally short recovery periods and back to high intensity are the best way to stimulate EPOC. That describes HIIT—high intensity interval training.
HIIT is not a specific exercise, but a way to do exercises.
Adjusting the intensity from high intensity to recovery and back continually as you workout describes HIIT. You can do it with any type of workout, whether it’s walking, running, boxing or bodyweight workouts. In fact, boxing is a perfect example of HIIT occurring naturally as part of the sport. When you box, you have bursts of energy used for attack followed by less intense endurance moves.
Other types of exercise can help boost the afterburn effect.
Afterburn continues to burn more calories than you normally do for up to 72 hours. The calories are used to replenish your energy, oxidize the lactic acid and get hormone levels back to normal. While boxing is one way to boost afterburn, so is cardio workouts like swimming or sprinting. Weight lifting is another that also considered effective, when done using the HIIT technique. Best of all, you’ll be building muscle tissue, not burning it, like you do with aerobic workouts.
- Compound workouts, which use more than one muscle group, are perfect for creating the afterburn effect. They also provide the benefit of building several muscles at once.
- Make a bike ride a HIIT workout. Do ten minutes of warm-up on flat ground, increasing your pace slowly. Alternate your ride between high intensity and moderate every two minutes, putting in maximum effort the last 30 seconds before cooling down 5 minutes.
- Even jumping rope can be a HIIT workout and should be added to weight training workouts. It does more than just boosting EPOC. It improves coordination, cardiovascular strength, breathing and lower leg strength.
- If you want to lose weight, why not have fun doing it by boxing. At Revolution Training we also provide online training and zoom classes so you can exercise at home.
For more information, contact us today at Revolution Training