Strength training is the gift that keeps giving. You burn calories during your workout. You also burn them for hours afterwards. The harder you work, all else being equal, the more you should burn both during and after.
But there’s a catch: The most advanced lifters don’t get much of a post-workout metabolic boost, which scientists call EPOC, short for excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. A recent study at Florida State University recruited a group of experienced lifters and had them do two different workouts. (All the lifters did both workouts, with at least one week in between.) Both workouts included the same four exercises using fairly heavy weights—85 percent of their one-rep max. But one workout included twice as many sets as the other.
The big surprise is that neither workout produced any significant amount of EPOC.
The problem, if you want to call it that, is adaptation. See, the lifters in this study were probably all near their max for strength and muscle development. The average guy in this study could squat 390 pounds. The more you train, the less muscle damage you do in each workout. Less muscle damage means you burn fewer calories during recovery, since your body isn’t working as hard to make repairs.
So the more experienced you are, the more creative you have to be to get the results you want from your training, especially when your primary goal is fat loss. Here are some ways to burn a few more calories before and after each workout.
1. Do more total work. If the workout calls for sets of 10 reps, most of us stop when we get to 10, even if we could’ve done one or two more. So don’t stop. Just doing one more rep per set could give you the equivalent of 15 to 20 more per workout—the equivalent of two extra sets in the same amount of time.
2. Move more between sets. If you’re alternating between two exercises, you can add a third exercise during the rest period, as long as it doesn’t exhaust the same muscles. You might try a set of jump squats or jumping jacks between two upper-body exercises, for example. If you’re doing a heavy lower-body exercise for straight sets, you can add a core exercise, like medicine-ball slams between sets of deadlifts, or pushups between sets of squats.
So the more experienced you are, the more creative you have to be to get the results you want from your training, especially when your primary goal is fat loss. Here are some ways to burn a few more calories before and after each workout.
1. Do more total work. If the workout calls for sets of 10 reps, most of us stop when we get to 10, even if we could’ve done one or two more. So don’t stop. Just doing one more rep per set could give you the equivalent of 15 to 20 more per workout—the equivalent of two extra sets in the same amount of time.
2. Move more between sets. If you’re alternating between two exercises, you can add a third exercise during the rest period, as long as it doesn’t exhaust the same muscles. You might try a set of jump squats or jumping jacks between two upper-body exercises, for example. If you’re doing a heavy lower-body exercise for straight sets, you can add a core exercise, like medicine-ball slams between sets of deadlifts, or pushups between sets of squats.
3. Take shorter rest periods. In a 2011 study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, EPOC was slightly higher when subjects rested 1 minute between sets vs. 3 minutes. Abbreviated rest is especially useful when you’re pressed for time.
4. Focus on your biggest muscles. In the same study, the Brazilian researchers showed that subjects burned about 75 percent more total calories from 5 sets of leg presses vs. 5 sets of chest flies. The reason is simple: The more muscle mass you use, the more calories you burn. When your goal is to get leaner, you’re best off including lower-body exercises like squats, lunges, and deadlifts in every workout, rather than doing split routines. Save “chest day” and “arm day” for bodybuilders and reality-show contestants.
Most important, though, is to remember that adaptation is a win. It means you’ve made all the newbie gains and graduated to the intermediate class. But just because progress isn’t as easy as it used to be doesn’t mean it has to stop. You can stay on track with a few tweaks to your workout, combined with a more disciplined diet.
To your body, it doesn’t really matter if you burn calories during or after the workout. They all count the same.
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