Why sprinting burns more fat

The same team of researchers previously found that women can also shed a significant amount of body fat doing sprint stationary cycling for 20 minutes, three times a week. Another recent study found that interval training might also boost heart health. Convinced yet? Here's what she recommends:. How do you work out to burn belly fat? Tell us your tummy-trimming plan in the comments. For more fitness, diet, and weight loss news, follow weightloss on Twitter from the editors of EverydayHealth.

But one form may trump all others when it comes to blitzing body fat. New research suggests sprinting burns more fat than other forms of HIIT or traditional, steady-state cardio. But the benefits of a good sprint session go beyond fat loss.

Your preferred choice of cardio should be one you enjoy doing. Include a variation you enjoy, and watch the weight loss roll in. Typical forms of HIIT include circuits using a variety of equipment kettlebells, dumbbells, exercise bikes and more.

While your body repairs muscle tissues and replenish cell nutrients, it uses fat as the main fuel source for energy in EPOC. In , Dr. One group did high-intensity exercise at several intervals, while the second group did steady-pace aerobics.

The first group burned three times more body fat than the second group. Therefore, sprinting causes your body to undergo EPOC, which uses fat for energy to recover.

Many people believe that doing low-intensity exercise for a long period of time burns of the most amount of fat. Although your body uses about 50 percent of your calories from fat during low-intensity exercise, the number of calories you burn is much lower than that of high-intensity exercise, which uses about 90 percent of its energy from glucose.

According to Gambetta, the effects of EPOC from doing sprinting and other high-intensity exercise will help you burn fat after exercising. The frequency and duration of your exercise sessions has a profound effect on how much fat you burn over time.

Long-duration endurance exercise can be just as effective as sprinting if it is performed on a consistent basis. While sprinting burns more calories in a single bout, the duration of a single sprint is mere seconds compared to minutes or hours of endurance exercise.

Interspersing sprints between longer bouts of endurance exercise, a technique called high-intensity interval training, or HIIT will result in both aerobic and anaerobic benefits for fat metabolism.