In its most basic form, the term “afterburn effect” refers to the calories that a person continues to burn after engaging in physical activity. While the number of calories burned during activities such as running, cycling, swimming, or weightlifting is the primary focus for a lot of people, you might be missing out on a whole other essential aspect of calorie burning that you should be paying attention to.
This is due to the fact that our bodies really burn up additional energy (calories) after certain types of workouts in order to assist us in recovering, cooling down, and coping with the hormonal changes that exercise creates. This process is referred to as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption in the scientific community.
What does the data that is now available indicating the benefits of the afterburn effect indicate for the future of your exercises and how it will affect them? If you carefully plan out your exercise routine so that you perform the appropriate kinds of high-intensity workouts multiple times per week, you will develop the ability to burn more fat with less effort.
Definition of the Afterburn Effect
High-intensity exercise is the key to improving the afterburn benefits of your workouts, which will allow you to burn more calories throughout the entire day. This will make it easier for you to shed pounds. This is because the afterburn impact is little after steady-state classical cardio activities like running but significantly greater after severe workouts like sprinting, circuit and strength training, and short bursts of activity.
The basic line is that if you want to get slimmer, grow muscle quickly, boost your cardiovascular health, and not spend a lot of time exercising, then undertaking brief, but intense, intermittent bouts of activity is the way to go. High-intensity interval training, or HIIT, produces results that steady-state cardio exercises simply can’t match, including gains in strength, speed, and fat loss.
In general, the afterburn impact will be greater the more strenuous the exercise. This means that a 20-minute workout in which you sprint as fast as you can for 30 seconds, repeated for 10 rounds with 90 seconds of rest in between, will have a greater afterburn effect than a 30-minute workout in which you run at a moderate pace.
How many additional calories does vigorous exercise expend thanks to the afterburn effect? Since everyone responds differently to vigorous activity, it’s difficult to provide a precise figure. A person’s afterburn may be more or less intense depending on their present fitness level, gender, age, training time, and intensity, among other things.
Afterburn Effect: Scientific breakdown
High-intensity interval training (HIIT) improves your metabolic rate, or the number of calories your body burns each day to function.
A person’s daily energy expenditure is the sum of the energy required for all of their daily physical activities, such as moving around, taking a shower, and bending over. Our bodies automatically burn the majority of the calories we consume each day while we are moving around, breathing, digesting food, and pumping blood.
During physical activity, we are conscious of the fact that we are expending more energy than usual. While we may be working hard at the gym and “feeling the burn,” our energy expenditure is the entire measure of calories burned during and after exercise, so we continue to consume extra energy long after we’ve stopped moving.
As you’ve already noticed, different types of exercise have different effects on post-exercise calorie expenditure. In terms of oxygen consumption, it takes twice as much effort for your body to recover from intensive exercise as it does from steady-state activity.
EPOC stands for “excess post-exercise oxygen consumption,” which is the scientific term for the calories expended after exercise. The size of the EPOC appears to increase exponentially with the intensity of the activity.
At very high exercise intensities, oxygen consumption is not proportionate to heat production; this phenomenon is known as excess postexercise oxygen consumption (EPOC). In other words, EPOC causes an oxygen deficit since that is how the body restores its organs, heart, and hormones to a resting state after strenuous physical exertion.
Afterburn occurs in part due to the oxygen debt component, which has a negative impact on efficiency. In fact, it may take up to three days for the body to return to equilibrium and normalize metabolism after strenuous physical activity.
You’re now armed with the knowledge to kickstart your Afterburn Effect journey! By embracing HIIT, incorporating strength training, nourishing your body with proper nutrition, prioritizing sleep and stress management, and maintaining a consistent workout routine, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a fat-burning machine.