1. Tilt your treadmill: the motor pulls the surface along. It prevents your legs from working as hard as they should, so it’s as if you’re walking on a slight downgrade. Raise it 1%. It’ll prevent that downhill force against the knee, overcome your own body weight against gravity, so your muscles work just as hard as they would on a flat surface outside.2. Confuse your feet: move to an unstable terrain when you're walking. Soft sand, waist-high water, tall grass, steep hills, narrow curbs, and loose rocks. It’ll change the intensity of a dull workout. Your body has to activate more proprioceptive muscles to keep it stable. Constantly working these muscles burns a few more calories. It teaches your body to recover during other activities or sports that may challenge your balance.
3. If you don’t have a lot of time: work out in different 10 minutes segments. You still burn the same amount of calories by dividing your workout into shorter periods of time. Since your metabolism temporarily revs up after you exercise, studies have shown that dividing your workouts may even burn more total calories, even if you’re using less fat for energy.
4. Switch it up: Stand on the treadmill or stair climber in the opposite direction. It works your quads instead of glutes and hamstrings.
5. On stair master: take longer, deeper strides. The more muscle fiber you can activate, the more calories your body uses for fuel.
6. Use everything in one workout: flip-flop between your cardio choices at the gym (stationary bike, treadmill, step routine, jump rope, stairclimber) every three minutes. Make the first minute a warm-up, the push yourself around 65% of your max heart rate for the second minute, then go all out if you're up for it (80-85% of MHR) for the last minute.
(All these suggestions are from The Workout, by Gunnar Peterson, a fitness genius in my opinion.)
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