HIIT and Traditional Cardio May Have Similar Effects on Weight Loss However, this doesn't necessarily mean that other types of exercise aren't good for weight loss. The researchers found that HIIT burned 25–30% more calories than the other forms of exercise ( 11). One study compared the calories burned during 30 minutes of HIIT, weight training, running and biking. Some research has directly compared the effects of cardio, weight training and HIIT. You can use HIIT with a variety of different exercises, including sprinting, biking, jump roping or other body-weight exercises. Typically, a HIIT workout will take about 10–30 minutes. One of these is high-intensity interval training (HIIT), which involves short bursts of very intense exercise alternated with low-intensity recovery periods ( 9, 10). High-Intensity Interval Training Provides Similar Benefits to Cardio in Less TimeĪlthough cardio and weight training are two of the most popular workouts, there are other options. Also, weight training is typically more effective than cardio at increasing the number of calories you burn after a workout. Summary: Weight training may improve your metabolism over time, although the changes aren't huge. You may keep burning calories for hours or days afterward.įor most types of exercise, a more intense workout will increase the number of calories you burn afterward ( 8). This means that the calorie-burning benefits of weights aren't limited to when you are exercising. In fact, there are reports of resting metabolism staying elevated for up to 38 hours after weight training, while no such increase has been reported with cardio ( 7). Specifically, research has shown that you burn more calories in the hours following a weight training session, compared to a cardio workout ( 5, 6, 7). However, weight training also has other important calorie-burning benefits. Thus, weight training and building a little bit of muscle won't make your metabolism skyrocket, but it may increase it by a small amount. In women, it was only about 50 calories per day. While this may sound good, it’s important to think about how many calories this represents.įor the men, resting metabolism increased by about 140 calories per day. The effects in women were smaller, with an increase of almost 4% ( 4). In men, weight training led to a 9% increase in resting metabolism. One study measured participants’ resting metabolisms during 24 weeks of weight training. Weight Training Helps You Burn More Calories Every DayĪlthough a weight-training workout doesn't typically burn as many calories as a cardio workout, it has other important benefits ( 2).įor example, weight training is more effective than cardio at building muscle, and muscle burns more calories at rest than some other tissues, including fat ( 3).īecause of this, it is commonly said that building muscle is the key to increasing your resting metabolism - that is, how many calories you burn at rest. Typically, a cardio workout burns more calories than a weight training workout of the same duration. Summary: The number of calories you burn during exercise depends on your body size and how intensely you exercise. In general, you’ll burn more calories per session of cardio than weight training for about the same amount of effort. On the other hand, if you weight trained for the same amount of time, you might only burn around 130–220 calories. If you were to run at a faster pace of 6 miles per hour, you would burn around 365 calories in 30 minutes ( 1). If you weigh 160 pounds (73 kg), you will burn about 250 calories per 30 minutes of jogging at a moderate pace ( 1). Many scientists have researched how many calories people burn during various activities.īased on this research, you can use your body weight to estimate how many calories you will burn during different types of exercise, including cardio and weight training.įor most activities, the more you weigh, the more calories you will burn.

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