How to Keep Burning Calories After Your Workout

After a long road trip, your car engine takes a while to cool off, right? Your body is the same way: After a workout, it doesn’t immediately return to its resting state. It takes a while to cool down and restore homeostasis. 

During this cool-down period, your body continues to consume extra oxygen and burn calories even after you stop moving. This is called the afterburn effect, and taking advantage of it could help you make the most of your workouts. 

Understanding the afterburn

Just like a car engine, your body needs time to cool off after a lot of work. 

“Afterburn” is a buzzword for “excess post-exercise oxygen consumption” (EPOC). This phenomenon earned its buzzy name because “afterburn” accurately describes what happens in your body after an intense workout. 

The demands of a workout spur your metabolism to increase in order to produce more energy, which requires increased oxygen consumption and chemical reactions, among other things. When you finish working out, your body’s engine is still revving — now that the work is done, the recovery process begins. 

To recover, your body continues to consume a lot of oxygen. The excess oxygen you’re consuming helps your body restore blood oxygen levels, replenish muscle glycogen stores, begin the muscle repair process, and bring your body temperature back down to a normal level.

All of these goings-on require energy, meaning your body must burn calories to facilitate these recovery processes. Certain types of workouts can keep your body in that post-exercise heightened state for a longer period of time, which can contribute to greater calorie burn after your workout.

How to keep burning calories after your workout

Follow four simple rules to get the best afterburn. 

Now you know what the afterburn effect is, but the real question is: How do you actually generate EPOC? 

All workouts have four main components: 

• Intensity: How hard are you working?
• Duration: How long is your workout?
• Structure: Are you doing a steady-state workout or intervals with rest periods?
• Modality: Are you doing cardio, strength training, or something else? 

Research shows that the greatest afterburn occurs when:

• You work out at higher intensities — at least 75 percent of your VO2 max, or about an eight on the Ratings of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale.
• You exercise for at least 30 minutes.
• You do short bouts of exercise (intervals) instead of steady-state exercise.
• You lift heavy weights or perform weighted or explosive cardio circuits (like our World Gym Athletics workouts). 

Another factor to consider is novelty. The human body adapts and becomes efficient at performing the tasks it’s used to, so it’s important to add new movements to your routine. This forces your body to perform tasks it isn’t used to, thus work harder, and contribute to a greater afterburn effect.

Impact of the afterburn effect 

The afterburn effect is small but cumulative. 

Work hard and keep burning extra calories after your workout. Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, like most things in fitness, the effects of EPOC have been exaggerated and over-glamorized. EPOC exists, sure, but the impact isn’t as great as most people think. 

For starters, the level of intensity needed to generate an impactful afterburn is high. That level of intensity hurts, and most people don’t care to work out that hard more than once or twice a week (or at all). Even at a high intensity level, most research shows that EPOC burns less than 100 extra calories per workout.

Still, 100 extra calories after four or five workouts per week adds up — an extra 400 or 500 calories burned per week can definitely help you lose weight and get leaner. It really comes down to this: How many grueling workouts are you willing to do each week? 

To learn more about the most effective types of workouts, talk to a personal trainer at your World Gym.

References

1. Comparison of energy expenditure elevations after submaximal and supramaximal running
2. Effects of exercise intensity and duration on the excess post-exercise oxygen consumption 
3. Effect of exercise intensity, duration and mode on post-exercise oxygen consumption 
4. High- and moderate-intensity aerobic exercise and excess post-exercise oxygen consumption in men with metabolic syndrome 
5. Six Weeks of Moderate Functional Resistance Training Increases Basal Metabolic Rate in Sedentary Adult Women 
6. Effects of exercise intensity and duration on the excess post-exercise oxygen consumption 
7. Misconceptions about Aerobic and Anaerobic Energy Expenditure

Intensity of resistance exercise determines adipokine and resting energy expenditure responses in overweight elderly individuals