Calorie Burning Exercise Ideas

We thought we’d give you a few ideas to help you with your new year workout programme.  These floor exercises will complement any other fitness programme you’re working on right now and will help keep up your motivation by burning calories fast.

1.   Stair climbing:  It seems really simple, but why not utilise the stairs in your house (if you have stairs) and climb up and down them for 3 minutes at a pace.  It will get your heart rate up for sure and your legs will feel it afterwards.

2.   Squat thrusts:  Put your feet together flat on the floor and bend down to touch the ground in front of your feet with your knees bent, palms flat on the floor.  When you’re ready, jump backwards so you end up in a push up position then jump back again to where you started and stand up.  Repeat.  Do this 5 times, take a very short break and repeat 5 times again.

3.   Push ups – on a gym ball:  These are not that easy but worth doing to help improve your strength and also balance.  It’s often safest to prop the ball against a wall to stop it moving around.  Place both hands on the gym ball at around shoulder width apart and lower yourself down onto the ball until your chest touches the ball, then lift yourself back up again and repeat this 15 times.

4.   Side to side lunges:  Move your feet wide apart and point outwards very slightly.  Holding a weight/dumbell that you’re comfortable with, bend down to touch your right foot then lunge to the left, pushing the weight downwards towards the floor.  Lunge back up and repeat to the other side.  Try squating as low as you can and remember to keep your knee behind your toes.

5.   Step ups:  You can use exercise steps for this or a flight of stairs if you don’t have any purpose built steps.  Place your right foot onto the step and lower into a squat.  Press into the heel of the right foot then step up, lightly touching the left foot on the step.  Bring the left foot back down on the floor again and repeat 10 times.  Then switch to the other foot and repeat.  Do as many reps as you can manage.  To make this more challenging you can hold a weight in each hand whilst doing this exercise.

6.   Walking lunges:  Step forward into a lunge and hold for a count of 3.  Repeat with the other leg and hold for a count of 3.  This can be made more challenging by holding a weight in each hand at the same time.  Do as many repetitions as you can.