Burn an Extra 200 Calories a Day With Sprint Interval Training

Extra pounds just have a way of creeping up on your body, don?t they? You eat a few extra Doritos one here, an extra scoop of Buffalo Bills Brownie Blitz there and, before you know it, you?ve got three rolls of fat you didn?t have six months prior.

Sprint it up!

What if you could burn an extra 200 calories a day without spending hours in the gym grunting and dripping buckets of sweat? It?d sure help you avoid love handles, wouldn?t it? Well, according to a new study, you can.
Researchers at Colorado State University and the University of Colorado Anschultz Medical Campus compared the energy expenditure of five ?healthy male volunteers? on two different days. Each of the volunteers (aged 25 to 31) spent a day in a controlled room eating a prescribed diet and participating in sedimentary activities (e.g. watching movies, using a computer.) On the second day, each engaged in a sprint interval workout using a stationary bicycle. Each volunteer pedaled as fast as they could for five 30-second periods, each separated by a four minute record period.

What the researchers discovered surprised them. The room calorimeter system showed that each volunteer burned an average of 200 extra calories on the sprint interval day, despite spending only 2.5 minutes working out.
Kyle Sevits, the study?s leader pointed to the benefits of sprint interval training to those who can?t make the time to work out for hours a week:

“Research shows that many people start an exercise program but just can’t keep it up,” Sevits says. “The biggest factor people quote is that they don’t have the time to fit in exercise. We hope if exercise can be fit into a smaller period of time, then they may give exercise a go and stick with it.”

If you?re like me, you hardly have time to squeeze in a game of Words With Friends, let alone a thorough workout routine. I, like many people, sacrifice doing other perhaps more entertaining things (TV, video games, getting crunk) in order to work out a few times a week. Maybe you?re willing to do that. If you?re like lots of people, however, you might not be willing to give up that extra 30 minutes of ?Skyrim? or ?Rescue Me? every other day. If so, you might want to give interval spring training a try.

Imagine being able to burn an extra 200 calories a day in the time it takes to listen to microwave a burrito/listen to every song by The Ramones. I already work out a decent amount a week, and it sounds enticing to me. I actually just showed this article to my girlfriend (who loves riding bikes at the gym) and she?s on board.

If you?re the type of guy who has so little time you?re reading this article while brushing your teeth and texting your girlfriend, you might want to give sprint interval training a try. At least you wouldn?t have to worry about grabbing an extra handful of pork rinds every day.