How Can You Burn Calories Hours After You Finish Your Workout?

If you have recently started working out then chances are you may have heard the term ‘afterburn’ floating around, but what does it actually mean and could it be too good to be true? After all, could we really continue burning calories hours after our session has finished? 

Let’s get down to the science. 

“Afterburn” is formally called EPOC, meaning excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. A high-intensity workout forces our body to take in higher rates of oxygen in order to be able to cool down, repair and returning to its resting state. What this means is that our metabolism is forced to work harder, in turn burning more calories in the hours following a workout. 

Depending on the person, the type and the intensity of the exercise, ‘afterburn’ can cause a person to burn between 6% -15% more calories throughout the day.  

What causes the most afterburn? 

Time to get acquainted with another useful term – HIIT. HIIT refers to high-intensity resistance training or high-resistance interval training. These types of workouts not only chew through calories at an accelerated rate but are also shown to create far greater benefits after you have left the gym. 

Think bicep curls mixed with squats and jumping jacks mixed with burpees. The more effort required, the better.  It means mixing your weights training with high-intensity bursts of cardio. This may mean following your bench presses with a minute of skipping and alternating between the two.   

Doing high-intensity cardio intervals can also have the same effect. Get on the bike or the treadmill and get the heart racing. Focus on your heart rate to measure exertion. Instead of going at a steady pace during your entire workout, focus on 20 seconds of high-intensity bursts followed by 40 seconds of low intensity.